The Difference Between Change and Transition

Last spring, I took an online course called “Your Roadmap for Navigating Midlife Transitions through the?Modern Elder Academy. This was the first time the course had been offered online and there were more than 300 of us from around the world.

?What surprised me in the course was the wide age range. I like to ask in workshops, “When is mid-life?” and people will say 50s and 60s. But if the average life expectancy is around 80, then midlife is 40—much earlier than most people think.?

?The course was high quality and I jumped at the opportunity because I considered it to be a graduate course for me. Since this is one of my passion topics, I had read most of the books and articles assigned. In fact, I had previously interviewed a few of the guest speakers who shared their wisdom for my book?Leading with Wisdom. It was fun listening to them again.

?One speaker was Bruce Feiler, author of?Life is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age.?It is based on research and he introduces some new concepts and?has a new twist on the classic work of William Bridges, author of?The Way of Transition.?I thought the book was longer than it needed to be to make his points. But he?reinforces the point that transitions are happening more often and we need to learn to master how to navigate them.

?Bridges makes a clear distinction between change and transition. “Change is situational: the new site, the new boss, the new team roles, the new policy. Transition is the psychological process people go through to come to terms with the new situation. Change is external, transition is internal.”

?Change is also situational. Transition, on the other hand, is psychological. Bridges reminds us that It is not those events, but rather the inner reorientation or revised self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate any of those changes into your life. “Without a transition, a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture. Unless transition happens, the change won't work.”

?Bridges and (Feiler) describe three main phases to transition:?

• ?Endings (long good-bye)
• Neutral Zone (messy middle)
• Beginnings (the new beginning)

?And transition always starts with an ending. We don’t start something new until something ends.

?It is that time again for watching the Olympics—one of my favorite things to watch. Regardless if it is the summer or winter, I love watching the Olympics--particularly figure skaters and gymnasts.

Several months ago, someone recommended I watch?The Weight of Gold?narrated by Michael Phelps.?I could not help but think about what I learned about transition as I watched the documentary. It is about the mental health challenges Olympic athletes face and the lack of support provided.

Basically, it is about how they need to learn to transition from training to be an Olympic athlete to living and working as a regular citizen like you and me. Even if they are gold medalists, it is easy to struggle if they don’t know how to transition and all that is involved. Several of the athletes said, "No one prepared me for life after being an Olympian."

?These athletes need to learn to transition and transform into someone else. According to Bridges, “Transformation isn’t something that we just want. It is something that happens?to?us.” This takes work and Olympic athletes have to “retire” and transform themselves into something else. In?The Weight of Gold,?we witness how difficult it is to transform without education and support.??

?