The next time you are having trouble dealing with changes in your life, or in your work, consider the possibility that the problem isn’t with the change but with the transition. “What’s the difference?” you may wonder. There’s a big difference.

Change Transition
Internal External
Situational Psychological
Event-based Experience-based
Defined by outcome Defined by process
Can occur quickly Always takes time

The difference between change and transition can be illustrated with the example of a geographical move. The change is the relocation itself; it involves packing dishes, getting a mover, selling your home, and taking an airplane trip. It is the external, visible things that are now different. The transition involves all the confusion, distress, and excitement that you and your family go through. Transition is internal to you. It is the psychological process that you go through to let go of what was, and come to embrace the new reality.

Whereas changes are always unique to the situations in which they take place, transitions show a remarkable similarity, one to another.

First, transition always starts with an ending. Even though change can be initiated by something new, the internal, psychological process that accompanies it always starts by separating from, getting closure on, or bidding farewell to the old reality and the identity that went with it. Even in a “good” change, like starting a family, one has to let go of the old life. You cannot make a new beginning without making an ending first.

After the ending has been made, a beginning is possible-but it cannot occur immediately. First you must go through an in‑between state that there is no accepted name for-a time when the old reality and the old identity are gone, but the new ones have not yet taken root in your mind and heart. Bill Bridges calls this the “neutral zone,” to capture the in‑betweenness and the neither-this-nor-that quality.

The ending disengages us and the neutral zone is a kind of fallow time when old habits are extinguished and new possibilities are born. It is out of the neutral zone that the third and final phase of the transition (the beginning) emerges. This beginning is not to be confused with the “start” of the new situation, which may have happened on Day One. The beginning is when you really buy in, get on board, and feel at home with the new.

Whenever a change occurs, those affected by it go through all three of these psychological phases as they come to terms with the new situation. If for any reason you do not go through them, the change simply fails to “take.” It is a paper change; you are living at your address; you are now a parent, where before it was just you and your spouse; you had to move to a new location to get a job. It looks different on the outside, but inside of you, nothing is any different. You have not ‘let go’ as yet. Until you do, I may be very difficult to really accept your new situation.

Now, think back to some personal change that did not work as it was supposed to. Ask yourself these questions:

  • Whatever the details, wasn’t the reason that the change failed that you didn’t work through the three stages of transition?
  • And however well the change was managed, isn’t it true that there was no explicit attention given to the transition? Did you assume that if the change was well planned and executed, the transition would take care of itself?

What you needed was a transition management plan-a way to manage the endings, the neutral zone, and the new beginnings.

Here is an exercise you can do to help you deal with changes and transitions:

PAST EXPERIENCES & COPING STRATEGIES

Directions:

Write today’s date in the timeline

Mark, on the line below, several major events, crises and transitions you’ve experienced.

Timeline

|_______________________________________________________________________________________|

Choose a particularly challenging event that you were able to work through successfully.

What coping strategies helped you get through it — helped you cope effectively?

Coping strategies are things you do in an effort to respond to and manage stressful situations, people or events. They can be such things as talking with family or friends, praying, doing research on the new situation, or simply “sucking it up” and moving on.

  • Choose the most helpful coping strategy that got you through the situation.
  • Compare coping strategies with your spouse, friends, children, etc..

Change can be a burden, or a new beginning - the choice is yours.

We all have the joy of choice.
We can either be a victim of change, or a participant in it.
One holds you,
And one frees you