Transitions are Tough
Photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash
It’s the first work week of 2021 and for some of us it’s a rough transition time back from a period of holiday celebrations followed by rest and relaxation. Transitions are tricky. Our bodies and minds get into particular rhythms of being—what we eat, when we wake up and go to sleep, and the movement patterns of being free from a desk+computer— and it’s hard to change these habits.
Another transition is the hope of leaving the chaos of 2020 behind and approaching the new year of 2021. Yet many of us are also sick of that phrase “the new normal,” realize that we’re still in a challenging fight with COVID-19 and vaccination, AND can also appreciate the psychological clean slate of a fresh year. Being able to appreciate paradox and still function is a familiar state. We’ve all lived it through 2020.
Transitions refers to the messy space between two things. Right now I’m dealing with two transitions: 1. being in the space between 2020 and 2021 and 2. starting up work again after a 2 week break. I’ve been using the following strategies to dealing with transition:
1. What do you want to grieve and put behind from the past?
Joseph Campbell’s work on mythology talks about the hero’s journey, a template for a protagonist that departs home to adventure out in the world before returning a changed person. On the adventure, our heroine meets many people and has different “chapters” of adventure, learning from each one. Playing homage to the hero’s journey, we can look at each transition period as closing the chapter to the past and opening up a chapter to what’s next. A heroine can’t fully move on until she’s properly grieved and put to rest things that have happened in the past.
For me, in transitioning from 2020, I want to leave behind the anxiety around planning of events, trips, visits in a volatile and unknown public health crisis. I have a controller saboteur and can be a type A planner. I find comfort in having a road map of certainty for my year. When that wasn’t able to happen, I’ve reluctantly found a certain freedom in being spontaneous and flexible. At the same time, I grieve all the trips I haven’t been able to take and all the people I haven’t been able to see in 2020. The biggest grief is not going home to Thailand to see my mom and extended family.
2. What do you want to honor and take into the future?
Continuing with the hero’s journey, it’s also important to identity what heroine tools you want to honor and to take with you onto the next part of the journey.
From 2020, I want to keep my flexibility and ability to keep on moving with a plan B, plan C, plan D, or even to wake up each day with no plan and see what feels right. I want to keep the freedom of unplanned free time at home to play games, watch movies, do puzzles, bake and connect with my homebody girls who are delighted that I’m not pulling them out into new adventures.
At the end of December, I had a celebration-filled week with my daughter’s birthday, my birthday, and Christmas. That family time was followed by an introspective 5 days alone at a yoga and meditation retreat. I went inwards and found deep relaxation as well as a renewed creativity for my business & life. From that downtime, I want to honor the white space I gave myself to be silent, to think, to do nothing… all of which spurred more energy and creativity. I want to take this white space into the busy bustle of this packed work week and back-to-back Zoom calls, and onwards to a sustained white space practice for the year.
3. Transitions are Tough
The final non-strategy is simply acknowledging that transitions are tough. This happens when you’re the one driving the transition—quitting a job, leaving a relationship, moving to a new apartment or city—and is even harder when the transition is unwillingly happening to you.
Transitions are tough when they’re for these big examples, and they’re also tough for little things such as adjusting to an hour time change from daylight savings or transitioning back to work after a break.
Some of the darkest months of my life happened after my kids’ dad moved out of our family home. I knew all the right things to do and I was disciplined enough to do them: exercise with my trainer, eat properly, get enough sleep and supporting medication to help me sleep, continued visits to both a psychiatrist to prescribe anti-depressants and a psychologist for talk therapy, plus surrounding myself with a tight circle of loving friends and others who had been on the same journey. About 8 weeks into this transition, I remember wailing to my therapist:
“I’m doing all the right things. And it still feels terrible.”
Yes. Because transitions are tough.
And yet time passes. You get up and keep going through each day. You crawl into bed each night and hope for rest. You know that this too will pass. And when it passes, you’ll have learned from this challenging time of transition.
Bottom-Line
As we transition from 2020 to 2021, and back into the work week, think about what aspects of the hero’s journey we want to grieve or take into the future with us. And ultimately remember that transitions are tough, but they always eventually end.