LIFE TRANSITIONS: ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS
“The new thing carries the day, spring supplants winter, the new year sends the old year packing. But there is no antagonism in this. Just succession. As long as our transitions continue, we are successful.”
—WILLIAM BRIDGES, THE WAY OF TRANSITION
“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
—STEVEN JOBS, FOUNDER OF APPLE INC.
Life as TransitionUndertaking any major life change is both an exciting adventure and a stressful proposition, and depending on the circumstances, typically far more of one than the other. Just about everyone goes through several changes in life, some small and a few major. Our first major life change few of us remember. That was, of course, the shockingly sudden shift from the warm comfort of the womb into life in the outer world. If we were lucky, we arrived to parents who instantly loved us and welcomed us whole-heartedly into this startling new reality.
Of course, some of us were more fortunate on that score than others, so that life began with differing perspectives on just what kind of place this old world is. We adjusted as best we could to life in the early years, until confronted with the next major life change, which for many was the infamous adolescent identity crisis. This, you may recall, involved struggling with the issue of “who am I as a person” and “who am I becoming” (as well as “who am I not” and “who/what is it my intention to refrain from becoming”). Some of us also had to weather even more traumatic changes such as the death of a sibling or loss of a parent through death or divorce. Our adult years were then filled with a stream of life-changing transitions of various kinds, some splendid and others painful (new loves and lost loves, career successes and failures, hopes achieved and those abandoned).
Most of us weathered the mid-life crisis with varying degrees of stress and success, and just when we were about settled in from that, we got hit with still another change event—offers for senior citizen discounts! Transitioning from full-time employment to retirement is one of those major life changes filled with both expected and unexpected outcomes and consequences. Then, eventually, we all must confront the final transition, departing this life for what heaven only knows.
Change Is Mother to TransitionAt this point, we need to clarify the terms change and transition. As used here, change refers to an event and transition to a process. Although a major life change alters our outer world, it also sets off a chain of inner reactions. Transition involves the inner state of adjusting to a dramatically changed life situation. Although most people are aware of what a life change such as job loss, career change, or retirement brings to their physical reality, few are as knowledgeable about the psychological adjustments required in accommodating to a new way of being. It’s the psychological adjustments to a major life change that causes stress. That is because transition not only forces you to accommodate to new and differing outer circumstances in your life but also requires that you adjust emotionally to a new view of who you are. The loss of a spouse, for example, is a dramatic change event, but it’s accommodating to the loss that is the hard part. That involves experiencing grief, adjusting to feelings of aloneness, transitioning to life again as a single, and then recreating a new life. A big life change can be almost like leaving the womb again—only this time with consciousness. The more you know about the transition process, the better equipped you are to deal with the psychological adjustments to a major life change.
Navigating in Uncertainty: A Map for TransitionHere is a rather simple but profound aspect of transitions: They begin with endings and end with beginnings. Transition implies that you are leaving behind a known past and heading into an unknown future. But a major life transition also involves a period in the middle, a kind of a gap between the structured past and a newly recreated future structure. The time in the gap can be discomforting, but it can serve as the incubation period for an exciting rebirth. Being fully in the gap involves hanging out in uncertainty for an indefinite period of time. It’s that which makes the transition unnerving for those of us grown accustomed to being decisive in knowing who we are and what we are about.
The more fulfilling and satisfying one’s past structure has been, the more difficult will be the time in the gap. It’s hard to give up what has been enjoyable and has provided a strong sense of personal identity. Saying goodbye to a valued past in some ways can be like a mini-death. We can never again be what we were, and who we are to become remains a murky question. The emotional element in transitioning to retirement is further heightened by the pervasive awareness that we can never again be young, accompanied by the fear that our best days just might be behind us.
Not everyone, of course, finds the transition gap stressful. You can avoid the uncertainty by predetermining what you are going to do and be before you launch into retirement. That’s what my good friend Steve did. He had a vision of what his retirement would be, long before departing from his 35 years of government service. Steve knew that work was in the past and the future was going to be an enjoyable mix between golf, tennis, chess, travel, mind-expanding reading and learning, along with elder parent tending. Steve is fully enjoying his new life, had little transition anxiety, and confesses that he was “born to retire.” Bob, by contrast, prior to retiring, determined only that he was going to take his comfortable pension and retire to a home in Florida. That’s about as far as his vision for new life went, and his life in retirement, as you might guess, has been far less than joyful. He simply did not provide himself the transition time to let go of his old life and provide for an incubation period to a meaningful new life.
The point here is, if it is important to recreate a new life featuring self-realization, you are going to need to take full advantage of the rich soil provided by the transition gap. That involves letting go of your past life and hanging out with the discomfort of uncertainty without jumping too quickly into new situations and providing time for self-reflection. Figure 2-1 is a graphic representation of a life cycle featuring an ongoing process of making a shift from a life structure (a stable and well-organized period) to transition (a chaotic time of change and uncertainty). This model, “The Cycle of Renewal,” is featured in an excellent book by Frederic M. Hudson and Pamela D. McLean titled Life Launch: A Passionate Guide to the Rest of Your Life (The Hudson Institute Press of Santa Barbara, Ca, 1995) (pp. 45–53).
FIGURE 2-1. THE CYCLE OF RENEWAL.
A Life Story: Change, Challenge, and TransitionHudson’s model for understanding the life cycle progresses through alternating stages of order, reordering, disorder, and rejuvenation. That process, graphically depicted in Figure 2-1, in real life translates into a story such as the following. After graduating from college with a liberal arts degree, Nan applied for and was accepted into the Navy’s Officer Candidate School. Becoming a naval officer seemed like an excellent way to acquire leadership experience, have some interesting new ventures, spread her wings, and see the world. She enjoyed the next four years, structured for her by the U.S. Navy. During this time she met Mr. Right, a Navy pilot, and they married. Shortly after that big life-changing event, she decided to leave the Navy and apply the educational training money acquired from her service to obtain an MBA degree. She saw this as a ticket into management, where she hoped to pursue a career in the private sector. Mr. Right, however, who loved flying and the military life, opted to pursue his career in the Navy.
After obtaining her MBA Nan landed a position with a large investment bank to launch her new career. Soon after, she found herself on the fast track of management, where she began making more money than she had ever dreamed of. There were, however, some pretty major downsides to this life. First, the job demanded a full commitment of time and energy, leaving very little of either for life outside of the firm. Second, she was now the mother of twin daughters, but because of her schedule she had to leave much of the mothering role to a nanny and to day care. Third, her marriage was unraveling, primarily because she had concentrated considerably more effort on her work than on her relationship, and also because Mr. Right’s military duties engaged him on long stints away from home. Last, and not least, she had to admit to herself that while her success at work was gratifying and financially rewarding, it was not fulfilling. This work, she discovered, was not her passion.
Although all of these factors had been weighing heavily on her, the whole structure of her life came crashing down when she learned that her husband had been engaging in sexual liaisons in the numerous ports-of-call visited on his extended tours of naval duty. With that revelation, she decided the time for change had come. But what should she do? How could she change her life to be more fulfilling? For these questions, she obtained the services of a counselor, who helped her clarify her aspirations and what she wanted to do with the next chapter of her life. What she decided was to leave both her high-pressure job and her philandering husband and go into teaching. She was able to parlay her management and leadership education and experience into a full-time teaching position at the local community college. But the transition associated in making this change was emotionally draining. Letting go of both a marriage and the status of a high-performing corporate professional was painful. On the positive side, she was excited about the idea of landing a job that seemed much closer to her heart, with the added benefit of having summers off to spend with her kids. She had been seduced by the fast-paced lifestyle with the kinds of status and monetary rewards that the corporate world could provide. In her heart, she knew it was time to move on. But in her head she found it difficult to let go of the life structure in which she had invested so much of herself.
Time, as we know, is the great healer, and over the next few years, Nan grew into her teaching job. She took great pride in delivering mind-stimulating lectures and in helping her students, both young and mature, master the course content. She was generous with her time, spending hours individually with her students and taking an active role in college activities. This work, she found, was considerably closer to her passion than was her life as a banker. She appreciated having more time for her girls, and was enjoying a whole new circle of friends. Eventually, her sterling leadership skills became evident, and she was voted in as chair of her department. She did so well with these administrative responsibilities that she was eventually promoted to vice president for academic affairs.
In this new role, she was motivated to implement a number of educational initiatives, which included incorporating state-of-the-art information technology into the curriculum, implementing vastly expanded professional development programs for the faculty, providing computers for students at greatly reduced prices, and instituting educational travel programs to fascinating places around the world. Her inspired leadership gained her visibility in academic circles, and she was persuaded to apply for a college presidency. She accepted the presidency of a rapidly growing community college, where she acquired a reputation for student-friendly activities, such as informal Friday afternoon gatherings with students around the college fountain, lunching with students in the college cafeteria, and invitations to the president’s home for various campus groups.
After serving for many years in this position, Nan, then in her early sixties, began confronting inner and outer pressures to retire. Although she had become a much beloved president, the board of trustees encouraged her to retire in the interest of making way for a younger person. The board was uneasy about anyone being in the president’s chair for more than a decade, and she’d been there for more than 16 years. In some ways, retirement was becoming an appealing idea. She wanted to visit more frequently with her adult children and grandchildren, to meet new people, and to travel more frequently. Retirement also offered the opportunity to do other things she had little time for, like take up tennis, assume a leadership role in a professional association and teach a leadership course. She did, however, harbor serious concerns about leaving a structured life full of meetings with important people and losing her position of power and authority. In facing the prospects of a freer but highly uncertain new life in retirement, she couldn’t help but wonder if her best days might be in the past.
For help in looking at what interesting new options might be available in retirement she again elected to use the professional services of a career counselor, since that had proven so helpful in a previous transition. Her counselor discussed the transition process with her and suggested that she ease into retirement by taking some time off for self-reflection to attend to the emotional work required in letting go of her full-agenda life. Another purpose of the suggested sabbatical was to generate ideas for future possibilities and develop a vision of who and what she wanted next to do and to be. She liked this idea so much that she decided to devote a full year to self-reassessment before setting off in a new life course. Her counselor, therefore, was surprised when Nan returned after only a few weeks into her break for soul-searching, indicating that she needed immediately to decide what to do with her life and get on with it.
It turned out that the reason for Nan’s suddenly felt need to quickly restructure her life came from pressures from her daughters. It seems her daughters were very uncomfortable with seeing their mom in an uncharacteristic state of indecisiveness and without a well-structured life. Also, Nan was getting several offers and feeling some pressure to take on various kinds of community, professional, and various other work activities. Although some of these sounded interesting, she was afraid of jumping too quickly into something new. On the one hand, she wanted clarity about what she wanted to do and who she wanted to become. On the other hand, she was concerned about losing her marketability should she remain too long out of professional circulation.
In helping Nan respond to these pressures, her counselor again reviewed the transition process with her and advised her to inform her daughters that she was involved in meaningful work. It’s just that this particular kind of work was of a psychological nature, and for the time being did not show up as structured activity in the outer world. For support through this process, Nan established a transition team consisting of a few friends and associates. This support proved extremely helpful in a time that she was feeling disoriented, glum, and separated from organization-based demands on her time.
Nan’s days in transition were pretty emotional. At times, she was excited about her possibilities for a new and freer lifestyle. At other times she feared her best days were in the past and that she might never again be in a position to make a difference and enjoy the limelight of leadership. In coping with the uncertainties of the transition process, Nan found it helpful to take long walks down quiet country lanes, both for exercise and to contemplate her interests and options. She used her transition team to prod her with tough and thought-provoking questions, provide her with feedback to the questions she was confronting, and suggest options to explore and people with whom to talk.
After several months of wandering in the gap stage of transition, an appealing vision for her future began taking shape. Although she had seriously entertained the idea of establishing a consulting practice, she decided that it was time for something very different from her past life. She had always been interested in art history, so she decided to enroll in some courses at the local Academy of Arts. She also volunteered as a docent at the municipal art gallery, where she could apply her newly acquired knowledge. Additionally, she took up watercolor painting, and found she had a real talent for this artistic endeavor. For fitness, she took up yoga and joined a local tennis club, where she has become very competitive with a mean serve and a slashing backhand. She enjoys time with her daughters and grandchildren, though she has made it clear that she is not a built-in baby sitter. She has established a new circle of friends with whom she enjoys traveling and enjoying the many social and cultural activities of the community.
There were two areas, however, not being fulfilled in her new life. The first was that Nan, a gifted leader, felt a yearning to again exercise this aspect of her nature. After exploring a number of ways she might pursue this, including entertaining offers for board memberships of various organizations and a city council position, she eventually took on the role of spokesperson for the local chapter of Special Olympics. Second, she wanted to have some quality time with her grandchildren and to provide them with a legacy with which to remember her. For this, she elected to take each one on an extensive travel adventure as they become old enough to appreciate such a venture with grandma.
Nan’s story is really a composite of a number of actual people with whom I am well acquainted. I have selected portions from these stories to highlight key aspect of transition management. Although few people become college presidents, Nan’s story is typical of the life changes and transitions that most of us experience over the course of our life’s journey. Some of us relish change and gravitate to it, some of us deal with it if we must, and some of us just dig our heels in and resist. Then there are those passive change avoiders who end up like leaves blowing in the shifting winds of time. There are those who look backward at life, idealizing the past, and those with a forward-looking vision for what is possible.
Nan experienced most of those stages at various times in her life’s journey. In her early years, she tended to see change as an adventure, something to jump into like a youthful leap off the poolside high-board. Entering officer candidate training and being commissioned a naval officer is a case in point. Once established in a work situation, however, youthful spontaneity tends to give way to the structure imposed by the employing agency. Nan’s life, after becoming a Naval officer, was structured for her by the U.S. Navy. Leaving the Navy involved life change but it was an easy transition, due in large measure because she initiated it with forethought, vision, and preparation. Knowing where you are heading makes leaving where you have been an easier proposition, though it does eliminate some of the adventure associated with journeying into uncertainty. Jumping too quickly from one structure to the next means missing the inner gold that many come to discover in transition. Had Nan taken more time for reflection and exploration, she might have realized that corporate life was not going to be a good fit. But, at that point she was young and full of preconceived notions of what the “good life” looked like.
In his book The Way of Transition, William Bridges discusses two kinds of transitions. The first, which he refers to as a reaction transition, involves dealing with a change over which we have no control, such as loss of a job or death of a loved one. The second type is a developmental transition, which involves gradually coming to the realization that one is no longer the person they were and that the luster has gone from what once had been engaging.
Nan was in the process of a developmental transition in her role as a corporate executive in coming to the realization that this work, although gratifying her desire for challenge and income, simply was not fulfilling her as a person. She might well have made a career shift over time in any circumstance, but the revelation of her husband’s philandering changed the picture suddenly. Now she was dealing with a reaction transition on top of a developmental one—a double whammy. Her identity as a loving wife, a caring mother, and successful corporate executive were now called into question. She was suddenly thrust into a major life crisis. She needed to grieve her loss and then move on to recreate a new sense of purpose and identity. In these kinds of situations, time is the healer of a broken heart. But time alone may not necessarily provide a desirable transition outcome. Realizing this, Nan sought professional counseling for help in recreating a new, more satisfying professional life and rebuilding her self-esteem.
Reacting to any major change in what has been an important life structure can be emotionally consuming, all the more so if the change event occurs suddenly and surprisingly. Painful as the transition might be, however, it can provide a rich opportunity for self-realization and creative life-reinvention. For that to happen, however, one must be willing to first allow the loss process to fully sink in and grieve for what is gone. This stage of the transition can seem like a mini-death, for we are mourning a part of our life now gone forever. It is only through the grieving process that we can move psychologically to a place where, with an open mind and a willingness to address unknown possibilities, we can achieve self-realization and life rejuvenation. In Nan’s case, she used this time to let go of her concepts about who she was, to wonder in uncertainty for a period of time, and then to decide what next to do with her life. From this dark period she went on to choose a new direction in her career, one that originated out of a deeper awareness of who she was and what was needed for a more fulfilling life. In the years following this transition, Nan felt continually grateful that she had used this painful experience to get to a better place in life and career. Why is it that it so often takes a painful episode to break us out of an unfulfilling life structure into one that is more satisfying?
In preparing for the big life event we have labeled retirement, one often has to deal with the combined weight of both a reaction and a developmental transition. At some point in the fifty-plus years we have to confront the reality that we are no longer the person we have been—we become senior citizens! A look in the mirror one day may provide the surprising reaction that your looks have changed—where did the gray hair and the wrinkles come from?
The age factor also may hit home in other ways when, after doing yard work all day, we realize aches and pains that we never before noticed. My wife, who at the time of this writing just turned 61, just came back with a new passport picture, which she was comparing to the one she had taken 10 years earlier. Her reaction was, “My god. Look at this: I’ve become an old lady!” Although these changes have been slow, gradual, and even predictable, they nonetheless can send us into a transitional tailspin as we confront the loss of youth and the onset of old age. Oh sure, we can attempt denying that, as most of us do, at least for a while. Eventually, however, our aging catches up to us and we come to realize that we are entering the final chapters of life. It is then that we have to confront the realization that death is a reality rather than an abstract concept, as most of us tend to have perceived it in our younger days. On top of this, we must now retire and recreate a new life and a new sense of purpose. Beyond that, we need to find a new identify, one that does not define us primarily by our work or our organizational title.
Nan, as she faced the retirement inevitability, had to confront both a reactionary and a developmental transition. The time had arrived for her to retire. For the most part, she felt ready for that, but with some reservations. Developmentally, she realized the time had come to create a new life chapter, but there was much about her professional life she found hard to leave. Once you have left such a position, you can’t return. A leap off the diving board can’t be reversed. Nan was hurt that the board of trustees was strongly encouraging her to retire. After all, she had worked hard for the college and established herself in a venerable light with students, faculty, and the community. But there is a time for all seasons, and autumn had arrived. She still had a lot to offer, much she wanted to do, and a new life she wanted to create. She was satisfied with the work she’d done and who she’d been. But time caught up with her, and that required self-reinventing.
It is important to assess, when one begins to feel stagnated, whether it’s time for a mini-transition or a major life change. These decisions can be difficult during the course of one’s career and become all the more so when one comes to the big life change called retirement. They are difficult because one must continually manage two worlds. The first is the inner world of self, where we dream, feel, perceive, and learn. The second is the outer world in which we live, work, and park our cars. For self-realization, we need to know who we are from the perspective of talent, personal values, and deep-seated interested. Finding the fit, the place to best apply this self-knowledge, means knowing what options are available. With the combination of self-knowledge and identifying those possibilities in life, work, learning, and leisure, we are in a position to set course on a satisfying and fulfilling journey of self-realization. That is the challenge that Nan faced—and that we all confront—in creating a meaningful retirement.
Life Change and Transition ReadinessFor whatever reason, some of us need change and seek it out, while others hate and avoid it. But love or hate it, change is inevitable: Even after ruling the planet for millions of years, the dinosaurs finally succumbed. Sometimes change comes quickly in big surprise packages, such as a debilitating accident. At other times it comes imperceptibly slow, such as with the aging process. For the slow, unavoidable changes in life, such as the transition of our children from infancy to autonomous adults, there is not much to do but watch the process in awe. When a big change happens suddenly, we must deal with it by grieving the loss, allowing ourselves adjustment time, and then moving actively to recreate a new life.
Retirement is one of those big, life-changing events. Most of the clients I have worked with over the years looked forward with anticipation to the new freedom retirement offers. However, many have unsettling feelings about entering this new territory, citing concerns about retirement being a prelude to early death. Such concerns certainly can generate a degree of caution about leaping into retirement—or even easing into it, for that matter.
The following survey can help you assess how ready you are for undertaking a major life change and how stressful the transition might be. The assessment consists of conditions and perspectives that can cause one to view change with anticipation or trepidation. Assess where you fall on the spectrum of change, from being averse at one end to change predisposed at the other.
Directions
1. In each of the following questions, determine which statement above the dotted line best fits you, and then circle the point number below the line that corresponds to your assessment. For example, in question 1, if you have been in a stable work situation for 16 years you would circle the number 5 below the line corresponding to the entry for 15–20 years.
2. When you have completed all 10 items, record your total for all the points you have circled in the box provided at the end of the survey.
1. Until the present, about how years have you been in a stable work situation?
2. How supportive of change is the primary relationship in your life?
3. How kindly do you take to making big changes in your life?
4. How optimistic are you about your future?
5. How would you describe your memories of past changes in your life?
6. How much choice do you have over the life change situation you are facing?
7. How much of your sense of self-worth and personal esteem are wrapped up in your professional identity and/or your organizational position?
8. How big do you consider the upcoming change in your life to be?
9. How much thought, exploration, and planning have you or will you devote to preparing for all aspects (lifestyle as well as financial) of your new life?
10. How much control over your future do you feel that you can realistically exercise?
Assessing Your Results
If your score totaled 75 to 100 points, you appear ready for and well positioned psychologically and supportively to effectively manage transition stress and capitalize on any life-change situations you may be facing.
If your score totaled 50 to 75 points, you appear to be moderately well positioned psychologically and supportively to manage any life-change situation you may now be facing. There may be some things you can do, however, to better manage transition stress and improve your chances for a successful outcome to any major life change situation you will be facing. Look over the following list of “Guidelines for Managing the Stresses Associated with Life Transitions” for clues of what you might do.
If your point total was under 50, you may be facing a difficult time emotionally in managing the stresses associated with any life-changing transition. If possible you may want to postpone the transition until you can get support and better prepare for the transition. Review the following guidelines for ideas on how you might improve you transition management skills.
• Use the life chapter concept. Think of your life as a series of chapters in a book, with past chapters representing your personal history and future chapters as blank pages upon which your story will be recorded. You are more likely to achieve passion in your daily living and invent some exciting new themes to your book of life if you exercise creative authorship over your future chapters rather than being a passive observer of your life. Think of the next chapter of your life as a five-year story awaiting your narrative composition. Create that chapter from the perspective of in-depth self-knowledge, well-seasoned experience, expanded innovativeness, and fuller awareness than you ever before were capable of exercising. A cautionary note may be in order here: it’s worth bearing in mind that perfection in the creation of your story is neither likely nor necessary. After all, you can edit and revise your story as it unfolds in everyday experience. In this, you want to author interesting narrative-theme development based on creativity steeped in self-knowledge, rather than to lay out an inflexible blueprint for your future.
• Create an appealing vision for the next chapter of your life. Vision provides energy-generating power. A compelling vision energizes the human system and provides a navigational map for achieving your full potential. When the times call for reinventing your future, the lack of a coherent vision handicaps the likelihood of becoming your best. And worse, the lack of an engaging vision for you future may keep you frozen in memories of the past and anxieties about your future. At the World Bank, people talk about the ghosts who walk the halls. These are actual people who retired years ago but continue attempting to relive the good old days with whomever they can capture to reminisce about the past. Chapter 3, on vision generating, is designed to help you achieve an energizing mental image for your future.
• Maintain an active physical exercise program. Physical exercise serves as a magic pill for health and vitality. Exercise is especially beneficial, however, when dealing with stress or anxiety accompanying a major life transition. The endorphin release that comes through exercise lasts longer and is far more beneficial than that obtained from devouring a box of chocolates or the alcoholic spirits of your choice. The problem is that when we are undergoing a period of stress and uncertainty we are more likely to reach for the chocolates or the chardonnay than to strap on the walking shoes or hit the treadmill. A good antidote to this transition languor is a well-structured exercise regime. Decide what you are going to do, set a schedule for doing it, and then do it—rain, shine, or ennui. If you already have a physical exercise regime, stick to it religiously in times of stress and uncertainty. If you are new to the exercise business, now is a good time to join a gym and get some coaching for establishing a regular workout program. Something as simple as a 30-minute brisk walk every other day can be a life-enhancing and stress-reducing tonic. So be well, and we shall look for you in the workout room.
• Create a support team. There is a tendency with most of us, especially the self-contained types, to go it alone. When things get tough, the tough get going, right? Well, the “tough,” the wussies, the nerds, the shy wallflowers, and even the genteel sophisticates would do well to bear in mind that going it alone in times of stress can be downright stupid; here’s why. When people are operating under conditions of stress or anxiety, their intellectual systems are overpowered by emotion, and impulse tends to replace constructive thinking. It’s common knowledge that two heads are better than one. This is especially true when stress associated with a major life change undermines one’s thinking. In the interest of taking fuller advantage of the new freedoms and the opportunities for self-realization, consider creating your personal transition support team.
• Give yourself incubation time. Clients often tell me they feel pressured to take the first thing that comes along, particularly if it involves a work-related opportunity, a new relationship, or a move to a new location. They are under the impression that they had better jump on this opportunity out of fear that this may be their best and/or last option. The problem with the first on-the-radar-screen option is that this is unlikely to be one’s best opportunity. I encourage clients to take the time to define their criteria for success as the basis for knowing what to look for. It’s difficult to achieve self-realization without having some basis for determining what it is that is going to provide you with a feeling of happiness. More about this later, but for now, please keep in mind that taking full advantage of the freedom offered by retirement requires both self-knowledge and a broad range of good choices. Investing in incubation time for deepening self-knowledge and expanding choice options increases your chances of achieving self-fulfillment from less that 50–50 to upwards of 100 percent.
• Exercise your choice-making power. It’s in making choices, especially good choices, where we experience a sense of autonomy and personal power. The problem in major life transition situations is that many of us go through a necessary period of uncertainty, which renders decision-making difficult, possibly even unwise for reasons discussed later. So, how do you maintain a sense of empowerment, while in the transitional gap between the ending of one structure and the beginning of the next? First off, you don’t want to make any big life choices before investing in some research, self-reflection, and option exploration. But this involves the big things in life, which still leaves hundreds of lesser choices to be made. We’re talking about small everyday choices here, like what are my priorities today, and what do I elect to put on my daily activities list? If, for example, you need to get new tires on the car, decide when you are going to do that and then follow through. If it is time to call your sister in Connecticut, decide when you will do it and then do it. If it would be fun to spend a day with your granddaughter, decide—well, you get the picture. There are thousands of small decision situations available everyday, some that must be made, such as paying the water bill, some that might be fun (like taking a walk in the woods), and some that would be beneficial (like arranging to identify and explore work or volunteer possibilities with agencies of interest). Effectively and assertively managing the small things in your life can give you the sense of being in management control of at least some aspects of your life during a time of unsettling uncertainty. Exercising such control can help you feel a bit less adrift, powerless, and possibly even less disoriented.
• Plan together if you are in a committed relationship. Life choice decision making can be easier for those making their plans as an individual than it is for those in love relationships. It’s pretty obvious that the life-changing choices you make now as an individual are going to determine the course of your future. It’s also true that your choices will impact your spouse/partner, for good or not. For this reason, it is important to reflect, research, explore options, and make decisions jointly. The reason for team planning is pretty vivid in my memory, having to do with an example from my parents—my father, specifically—of how not to go about life-change planning. My father had created and managed a successful business throughout his adult life. The problem was that his work kept him so busy he had precious little time for fun, leisure, or family life. He was pretty much 24/7 work-preoccupied. That left my mother, a stay-at-home housewife, a kind of work-widow. When my father was in his mid-sixties, he sold the business, and my mother thought, finally—now we can do together the things we had dreamed. She was thinking of things like travel, visiting family, taking in an occasional movie, and even spending quiet times together at home, unencumbered by Dad’s preoccupying worry about work. Her hopes for the future were not to be, however, as my father—without consulting her—transferred his work preoccupation into a professional association and a part-time business he started with his brother. It somehow didn’t occur to Dad to engage his wife in retirement planning as an equal partner. The result was predictable. She felt disenfranchised and angry. So, if you are in a committed relationship—one that you want to be mutually happy and fulfilling—plan together. In doing so, be sure to take into consideration the values, hopes, and aspirations of you and your loved one.
• Understand the transition process. It can be reassuring to know what to expect psychologically in adjusting to a changed state of being that comes with making a major life change. Many of my clients have found the Transition Roadmap, described previously, to be a helpful reference in dealing with psychological adjustments associated with accommodating to any big change in life. You might want to bookmark that page as a reference when reacting to the discomfort of transition disorientation. Remember, the movement arrow in the “Cycle of Renewal” points from ending, through transition gap, to new beginning. You may have days filled with high energy that comes with thoughts of new freedoms and possibilities followed by days of doubts and uncertainty. That is a normal part of transition. It’s all a part of the letting go, rediscovery, and reinvention process of life transition.
Change, Transition, and HeavenThe fifty-plus years are a time filled with change and transitions for everyone, whether we are married and have kids, are single, or engage in alternative lifestyles. It’s usually in our fifties that those of us who are parents lose our children to adulthood and become grandparents, a process both wonderful and nostalgic. When our kids abandon the nest in favor of adulthood, a significant life change ensues, whether welcomed or not. It is a predictable change and one for which we should have been preparing. But kids or not, married or not, few of us escape those life-changing events that require transition adjustments. We have all weathered life-changing events, such as lost loves, death of parents or a loved one, serious health challenges, losing your job, or paradigm shifts such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, or the technology revolution.
At some point most of us are faced with another adjustment—our parents becoming elderly and less self-reliant. And, we must adjust to the reality that they will not be with us forever. Their passing leaves us now as the clan elders—facing our own aging process and the unescapable eventuality of our own passing. Incidentally, I happen to like the word passing rather than death. It to me implies a transition to another realm. Death, by contrast, seems to speak of end and finality. This may be a mute point in the physical realm, but psychologically I feel it’s important. Certainly the end is the final chapter to an embodied reality in this little life of mine. I prefer, however, to think that beyond this existence there is another dimension. Certainly most religions speak to an afterlife and unembodied existence, even if some “hard” scientist can’t accept such an assertion. But then “hard” scientists have a difficult time accepting anything that can’t be put under a microscope or observed through the orbiting Hubble space telescope, which at the time of this writing has not yet sighted Heaven.
I believe that it is important to come to terms with the ending of our lives in order to develop a philosophy for living our time remaining unencumbered by a debilitating anxiety of death, and “the end.” In this regard, I often think of my dear friend, Dr. Faith Clark, a wonderfully vibrant woman, role model, and spiritual guide. Faith had Marfan’s disease, a fatal and incurable softening of the artery walls. In confiding this heart-rending news to me one day, she related that because she never knew which day, or minute for that matter, was going to be her last, that she lived every day full-out, as if this were to be her last. Shortly after revealing this shocking news to me, Faith passed on. She spent her last day here delivering a seminar on a mind-expanding, whole-brain learning process that she had spent her short life researching and successfully applying to both children and adults. She passed on just as she was finishing the seminar for a business group extremely interested in her work. She had just enough time before passing on to advise her husband that she was going to be leaving.
Her husband, also a Ph.D. psychologist and a personal friend, shared with me a few days after her passing an amazing incident. He said that later in the evening that Faith had passed on, he was sitting on the edge of his bed grieving and thinking he didn’t want to go on without his beloved, when a very strange thing happened. He was jolted off the bed with a sharp kick to the rear. Shocked, he looked to see who had kicked him. But, there was no one there, at least visibly. He realized then, he said, that this was a loving kick from his wife, who, communicating rather forcefully, was insisting that he get off his butt and to get on with his life. Painful as that seemed to him, that is what he decided to do. Prompted by that “kick,” he has committed to living his life in joy, as Faith had always done, knowing that she remained with him in continuation of her gift of love.
Between the metamorphosis of our children into adults and our own passing on, however, there are many other changes and transitions to experience. Among these are changes both within and without. The outer changes include transitioning from the full-time occupations that have kept us so fully engaged and structured for all of our adult lives. As we retire, we are forced to confront and deal with multiple considerations and changing realities. Some find the shift from organizational life to be extraordinarily painful, while others have been looking forward to it with great anticipation. One of my clients, for example, was a 62-year-old economist who had spent his whole career at the World Bank and now was being forced into retirement. Money would be no problem for his post-organizational life. His pension would provide very amply for that. The major problem for him was what to do with his life now that his World Bank career was over. This was a change of both outer and inner consequence. It was an identity issue, and a major change in the routine of daily life to which he had long grown accustomed. He knew who he was as a senior economist at the World Bank, but not who he would become and what he would do in post-Bank life. He was going to have to create a whole new life for himself, but before he could do that, he was confronting the emotional aspects of a major life transition. Adjusting to retirement is most stressful for those of us who have been so totally committed to our work and to our work identifies that we stayed too busy to prepare for retirement.
Changing Selves—Changing IdentitiesAnother transition that we fifty-plussers have to deal with is one of a much subtler nature than creating post-organizational lives for ourselves. Because of the ingrained nature of the socialization process and the expectations of our culture we tend to overidentify and adapt to sex-role stereotypes throughout our adult life—that is, until sometime into our fifty-plus years. On the one hand, for men of my generation, being a “man” looked something like the personification of John Wayne. That meant valuing toughness (men don’t cry), mincing few words, doing my job, and helping out the “little lady” (whether she wanted our big manly help or not). Women, on the other hand, were expected to be soft, gentle, kind, and loving (as well as pretty, sexy, devoted, and subservient). Women of my generation were supposed to be Barbara Billingsley’s June Cleaver of Leave it to Beaver.
The sex roles we take on become a part of who we think we are, a part of our identity, and even unspoken agreements in how we relate to each other. This is especially so in marriage. What happens to our sense of self in the fifty-plus years when men begin to experience their softer sides and women their harder sides? How do we accommodate the changes in our own identity and how does one deal with a relationship in which their loved one is changing to become a different person? If we can’t adjust to these changes in our selves and our partners there are consequences. One either has to give up on growth and development for the sake of the partner’s ego, or perhaps leave a confining relationship that is inflexible to change. That may be why many fifty-plussers desperately resist change in the futile attempt to maintain a static existence.
Change happens—like it or not, resist it or not. For those of us who are change anxious or change avoidant, we need to get creative in our thinking and expansive in our perspectives about aging (we have to age, we don’t have to get “old”). Although there is no sense denying that aging comes with some downsides, it is validating to realize that there is also an upside. Forget the face lifts and the tummy tucks. Face it, you are going to age, and that means looking older. Too many facelifts and you are apt to take on the look of a beanbag that’s pulled too tightly. Isn’t it about time we begin seeing the beauty in the face and body of well-seasoned individuals who have acquired some experience in their features? Would you rather look like a department store mannequin or a uniquely evolved individual?
Why do we value aging in wine and disdain it in the wine drinker? A better option for addressing aging gracefully is to envision and capitalize on the growth opportunities in aging, while accommodating to what’s in a natural state of decline. The following table highlights some of the potentials for growth in the fifty-plus years, in contrast to what is in decline.
One of the potential areas for growth in our later years is in the opportunity for becoming a soul mate and/or a nurturing presence to your loved ones, whether you are married, single, divorced, or widowed. We can change and grow, experiencing an expanding sense of self and providing nurturing support to our mates, partners, family, friends, and or fellow travelers. It is in the fifty-plus years that we have the greatest potential for achieving soul-expanding growth and to release and realize our full potential. But that requires leaving behind old expectations and old roles that have become too limiting.
In this regard, I recall a female client I was helping to find a new and more satisfying career direction. At that time, she was in her late forties and had been a very successful executive secretary. But, she had always thought that there was more that she wanted to do in her working life. Through the course of the counseling process, it became clear that she really wanted to finish her college degree and move into a management role. The problem was that her husband, a recently retired senior Air Force officer, had very different ideas for her—to quit her work to devote herself full time to him, their home, and traveling. She came to my office one day feeling pulled apart by her career desire on the one hand and her husband’s pressure on the other. In responding to her dilemma, I asked her to envision her life several years out if she were to follow her passion versus her husband’s wishes. It was clear to her that the path of growth was in career. But she did not want to lose her husband. I asked her what would be the likely consequences if she followed her husband’s path for her, what that might mean for her, for him, and for their relationship. She realized that in going down that path, she was likely to end up an angry and unfilled woman, and that would not bode well for their relationship.
The outcome of this story is that she elected to follow her career ambition. She came by to visit me several years later to inform me that she had gotten her college degree and was now a manager in a health-care-oriented firm. She was thrilled about the change in her life and career, was feeling great about herself, and was fulfilled in doing good work. I asked her how her husband had dealt with this. She said, “He is extremely proud of me and has become my biggest supporter.”
What might becoming a soul mate and/or a nurturing presence look like for you? What will you be letting go of, and what might lie on the other side of your next life-changing, life-evolving transition?
