Have you ever tried to remember what a 20 below day is like while you’re sitting sipping iced tea at 25 above?  Can you ever really capture that moment when, after a move or starting a new job, the unfamiliar slides into the familiar?  I’ve never been successful at either and lately, as the transition theme plays large in my current reality, I am musing about how we mange when time, opportunity or circumstance re-route our lives to new directions.

I remember attending a workshop with Eriksonian Hypnotherapist, Dr Stephen Gilligan and he said, “that life was really a series of mini re-births”.   Mini re-births would suggest then we experience little mini deaths as a natural part of life.  Perhaps this explains the fear and grieving that often accompany transition and change.   Each incarnation, with it’s associated sense of loss, is destined to be a roller coaster ride of mixed and confusing emotions.

Conversly, these life altering experiences are the gifts that get us closer to our “authentic self”.   We build knowledge from these experiences, we gain resilience and as a result build confidence.  If we decline opportunities to step into transition because of fear then we stall our development and cease to move forward.

Another favorite quote, from Betty Lynch of Coronation Street fame, as she spoke of losing love, went something like this, “you know Rita, it’s not that it hurts any less, it’s just that I’m old enough to know that I’ll get over it and live to see another day!” Nothing could be truer, because life experience teaches us, that when we embrace transition, we will succeed and triumph again.

As a Psychotherapist I live in the world of transition. Transition is always the sweet spot where breakthroughs happen.  As a coach I am present focused and forward directed.   In essence, constantly encouraging transitional breakthroughs on the path to each of my clients best success.

The goal is get out from under the places of fear, the places of waiting or comfort and move into a state of dis-ease.  Dis-ease, as maligned as it is, keeps us moving in search of that comfort spot again.   It propels us forward.   When we embrace the concept of dis-ease we can actually begin to have fun with the journey.  Once we land and catch our breath we can begin the cycle again.

So, it is with summer to winter.   We barely notice the change as it begins to happen and rarely truly remember the season once it’s gone.  Still, we learn to embrace the changes and as the days grow longer anticipate the birth of the new.

Change, transition, life experience add up to a full and rich life tapestry.  One filled with the color and all kinds of interesting fabric that become the sum of a life lived well.

Suggested reading;  ” Oh the Places You’ll Go”  Dr, Suess