Good Transitions Take Time

This is my message to you.  You have time. You can settle in with this.  You can sit and think and sigh and wonder. You can squirm.  You can live in the past and imagine the future.  You can do nothing. You need to do nothing.  To do this right, you need to do nothing.  Literally nothing.

“This” is the transition you have been contemplating. Maybe it’s a move, a job change, a career pivot, or retirement.  Or maybe divorce or becoming an empty nester. Maybe you are the initiator or maybe you just got surprised.  These are journeys that take careful planning.  Careful planning takes time and sometimes that means not doing very much at all.

I learned this in my mid-40’s, when I suddenly found myself retired as a result of a severe career pivot that I didn’t see coming.  I went from running a big business and having a great team, to having nothing to do and no team.  Then I did what I’m urging you not to do.  I got busy.  Really busy.  Instead of using my “retirement” to get well and contemplate my next chapter, I began joining boards of directors and became a yoga teacher (because just practicing yoga wasn’t enough).  I took zero time.  In doing so, I ran right by the open door of contemplation.  I missed an enormous opportunity to stop and think about my life.  What happened?  What do I do now?  Where am I in my life and where do I want to be?  Where am I supposed to be?

At that point, I hadn’t met Phillip Moffitt or heard of The Moffitt Method.  If I had, I would have known that when faced with a major change or transition, you need time to settle, to rest, to examine and to plan.  I would have known that every transition has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  And, while being in the middle of a transition is scary, you have to go there.  You have to be in this space where you have left behind…who you were, what you were, what you had…but are not yet where you are going or who you will be.  This is the part I missed.  I busied myself right through the middle and it cost me.  Live and learn.

Now, several years later, as a Strategist trained in The Moffitt Method, I help individuals and leaders think through and successfully move through major change and transition.  Over the course of several conversations, I help people navigate from the near shore (contemplating/deciding to make a change), into the water (the middle place, that is so ripe for exploration and so crucial to a successful outcome), and then up onto the distant and new shore (commitment to change based on a clear understanding of values and self).  This is an amazing journey….your journey.  It takes time.