By Kimine Mayuzumi
Life transitions are inevitable in human life. They may include career shifts, relocation for work and/or living, major changes of physical/mental status, loss of income, and loss of a relationship or a family member.
Because of the pandemic and what it brought, it may be accurate to say that everyone experienced some level of transition recently. We were forced to adapt to the situation and learn a completely new way of living over the past two years. So experiencing life transitions is not unique to anyone in particular, especially these days.
Just because everyone experienced a transition, it doesn’t make it easy. Rather, It is important or even urgent to explore the topic of life changes and their consequences because the anxiety and fatigue derived from life transitions are real.
What is life transition?
Life transition is the process of change and adjustment to new contextual norms that impact our life in one way or another. Contexts may include: environment, roles, relationships, expectations, conditions (Mikal, et al., 2013) and time (Flaherty, 2012).
The change could be anticipated or unanticipated, chosen or unchosen, sudden or gradual and short-term or long-term. The impact and its degree also differ depending on various factors like contexts, an individual’s meaning making and coping skills (Brammer, 1992), or what Schlossberg’s Transition Theory calls the 4 S’s: Situation, Self, Support and Strategies.
Life changes can take a huge toll both physically and mentally. Even when the transition is intentional, like a new job, a promotion, or arrival of a baby, you are still in a new territory with new expectations, rhythms, and routines. The work of adjusting can be confusing or draining with the time-and-energy consuming nature of learning new systems and/or department/office culture, reconfiguring and settling into your living space, and negotiating the needs of your body and those you live with.
Even if the transition was sought out and known in advance, the uncertainty that you face in the process can be quite overwhelming. When your state of being is not aligned with the hopefulness of the change, you may recognize your resistance to it. This whole unsettling feeling can have an impact on the quality of your on-going work, health, and relationships. Yet, you may have to carry and present yourself as if everything is fine.
What was my life transition like?
Reflecting on my own journey, one of the major life transitions that my partner, Riyad, and I experienced was when moving from Toronto, Canada to Michigan, USA 10 years ago for Riyad’s first tenure-track faculty job.
Our vision started well first. But, our new life didn’t unfold the way we hoped for. There were multiple changes all at once – including an unanticipated and sudden one.
In the beginning, Riyad’s tenure-track position felt like a blessing. We were finally getting out of the grad student/unemployment stage and got our first house together. Furthermore, we were expecting another baby’s arrival after two miscarriages. What a happy scenario!
Yet, right after we moved into our new home, I got the news that my dad in Japan passed away unexpectedly. I was looking forward to introducing our baby girl to my dad. We were planning to have my parents visit our house soon. So I crumbled.
What made our new life in Michigan even worse was that Riyad and I were not a good team. When Riyad was stressed about his new job and pursuit of tenure, I didn’t provide the support he wanted from me. When I had the emotional distress triggered by my loss, I didn’t receive the support I needed either. Instead we were blaming each other for many things. The ground where we were standing was sometimes like a warzone. It was shaky. Our 4-year-old son was in the middle of all this.
What Riyad and I both wanted deep down was a healing and nurturing space shared with the meaningful other. And compassion to each other and a sense of connection that can allow us to build and affirm our partnership and family ties despite the odds.
Now I ask myself:
What advice could I give my past self now?
To answer this question, I would like to highlight one of the principles that our Being Lazy and Slowing Down blog has advocated elsewhere: transition requires intention.
Transition requires intention
If you do not have your intention for a transition, you might feel just dragged along whatever occurs to you and react to it rather than wisely responding to it. You may feel more stressed and frustrated about the process.
Setting an intention for transition entails:
- being aware that you are in transition;
- being curious of the uncertainty ahead; and
- being compassionate to ourselves and others when facing challenges along the way.
Let me elaborate on each point although they are interconnected. And all start with awareness.
Awareness
By being aware that you are in transition, you can better understand the stage of your life, the characteristics of the transition event, and the consequences that it brings such as the benefits, challenges, and your mental, physical and emotional state. This act of awareness and conceptualization may allow your experiences and feelings to make more sense and trigger the next step by providing a measure of predictability to the transition process (Brammer, 1992).
For this act, you can ask yourself the following questions:
- Am I anticipating any life transition in the near future or experiencing one right now?
- If so, what is/ are my life transition event(s) on my mind?
- What consequences or challenges am I facing that stem from the life transition?
With this set of questions, you can start ruminating on your own unique situations. The awareness will lead to the following points about the intention – Being curious and self-compassionate.
Curiosity
By being curious, you can become more open-minded and mindful of what is going on and what the change might mean in your life. You could be ready to accept and sensibly act on whatever arises. Curiosity can bring intrinsic motivation for exploring. (Silvia, 2012)
With that said, when the life change is outside your control and expectation (e.g., loss of a family member), it is hard to accept and be curious. In fact, I was in denial about my dad’s death for a long time. I was far from being curious about what life would be like without him, especially when I was in the middle of the pain.
But, now that I reflect back, I actually started embracing ‘spiritual curiosity’ and connecting his death with my daughter’s birth. I said to myself, “they must’ve passed each other somewhere out there”. This perspective helped me be more at peace with the loss of my dad.
Self-compassion
Changes can bring hardships, stress and anxiety. If you are aware of what situation you are in, you would be ready to apply self-compassion to your state of being as a default. This might have been missing in the process of mourning my dad among other challenges during the transition stage.
With the intention including awareness of our situation, curiosity about what was coming up in the new stage of our life, and compassion to ourselves, Riyad and I could have also created a space of support with each other to navigate the tough time together with a sense of connection rather than disconnection. The transition may have looked totally different.
Photo by Daniel Mingook Kim on Unsplash