Transition Points: Signs that Life is Changing
Spotting chaos before it happens
Part 3 in a series
We all experience periods of change in our lives. They’re the cornerstone of our growth as humans and mark movement from one stage of life to the next. The shedding of an old way of being and the emergence of a new. Some are obvious, like our first day at school or your first job. They can range from exciting to scary, from happy to sad, a first date or experiencing your first broken heart.
Transitions are a natural part of life, they’re expected and, in some cases, even anticipated. Excitement and freedom mixed with nervousness and trepidation are normal emotions we experience when we’re confronted with change. The fact that these changes are common part of the culture shared by many, makes it less scary to navigate through.
But what do you do when there is no obvious path? What happens when the change is personal and there is no one to show you the way forward? What happens when you don’t even know you’re at a transition point in life? All you know is that things aren’t going the way you had planned, what you’ve done is no longer working, and all your attempts to navigate your day-to-day life the way you’ve always done doesn’t seem to work, and things seem to be getting worse. What then?
In my experience, the longer it goes on, and the longer you wait to turn into the change the worse things get.
Identifying the Signals
The first question that springs to mind is how would you know? How do you even know that what you’re living through is a signal for change and not just a set of circumstances outside of your control?
With the power of hindsight, I now know that answer. When I was in the middle of it I was completely blind to it, all I felt was chaos and anxiety about losing control. I didn’t have the capacity to understand that change was an option because I didn’t believe it was possible. That was until someone pointed how it was possible to change habits, which in turn would change my life and my circumstances.
Until that moment, I thought we were made a certain way and as much as I hoped and dreamed for more, that was as good as life was going to get. I could grind more, perhaps get a little smarter but progress in life was going to be down to hard work and a lot of luck.
While I’m not discounting hard work and luck, they’re only two pieces of the puzzle. For me the most important ingredient of whether you can do something is whether you believe you can or not. Having the right self-belief and mindset. But more on that later.
Like everything we experience, the signals for change come from within us. Rising up as an unspoken sense or urge to move in a different direction or learn something new. It’s a call for growth, of moving in to the unknown, which can be both confusing and unsettling.
Personally, I felt like little boy lost. I’d wanted change for so long but kept on walking the same path, and my attempts to control life just made it worse. It seems illogical, wanting change but trying to keep it familiar, as if we have the power to change the rest of the world to suit us.
It’s this game we play that leads us to becoming stuck. Internal desire for change battling with the conscious desire to stay with the familiar. And as those two opposing forces playout the more stuck and frustrated we become and the more hopeless our situation seems.
However, all is not lost. Mythologist Joseph Campbell would refer to it as the call to adventure. The very thing that is creating the chaos and is the cause of your feelings of frustration is the signal for change. You have two choices, either ignore it and carry on as you are, or turn into it and grow. While that may involve setting goals and learning new skills it will involve letting go of old habits and patterns that have been keeping right where you are.
Next up, Your Personal Transformation
