Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age

by Bruce Feiler

Radical Honesty

Guilt is I did something bad; shame is I am bad.

The solution to shame is empathy.”

In a world with no boundaries, rituals create demarcation. In moments of deluge, rituals provide containers.

In periods of shape-shifting, rituals give shape.

Personal (getting a tattoo, building an altar) Collective (throwing a party, hosting a ceremony) Name change (adding or subtracting a married name, adopting a religious name) Cleansing (going on a diet, shaving)

At their heart, rituals are acts of meaning. They help restore a sense of agency, belonging, and cause in those times of life when we feel stripped of all three.

A) We are drawn to rituals that reassure us we still have some control over the world. We start tinkering with our bodies, lighting candles, erecting memorials.

B) We are drawn to rituals that deepen our relationships with others.

C) We are drawn to rituals that connect our pain or joy to a higher calling.

“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

“Patterns of Transformation: Designing Sex, Death, and Survival in the 21st Century.”

The first is a sandbox. These are games with strict boundaries and radical freedom within. Examples include Minecraft, Farmville, and the more exploratory version of Fortnite.

The second is a quest. These are games with the goal of achieving a certain end and earning a specific reward. Examples include Pokémon, World of Warcraft, and scavenger hunts. The third is a cycle. These are games with a series of loops in which the goal is to perform better each time. Examples include Mario Bros., Candy Crush, and Pac-Man.

Habits are “not to be flung out of the window,” wrote Mark Twain, “but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.” But my conversations suggest this isn’t always true: People often embrace the opportunity for change.

The bottom line: Giving up identities, whether painful or pleasurable, is a necessary precondition for making way for the new identities waiting to onboard. It might even be a source of satisfaction.

The biggest category of things people relinquished in their transitions was parts of their personality.

The next largest bloc was letting go of an emotion.

three stages: the long goodbye, the messy middle, or the new beginning.

‘A problem shared is a problem halved.’”

Researchers at Harvard found that people devote between 30 and 40 percent of their speech output solely to informing others of their own subjective experiences. They do so because self-disclosure is extremely rewarding. Personal revelation releases soothing chemicals in our brains and activates special systems in our bodies that help us relate better to others.

coded people’s answers and found that they sorted into four types: comforters, nudgers, slappers, and modelers.

naysayer.

They found that kind communication promotes happiness, in that it increases short-term pleasure, while honest communication promotes greater meaning, in that it prioritizes long-term fulfillment.

“Individuals find honest communication to be more enjoyable, meaningful and socially connecting than they expect.”

Robert Jay Lifton’s book on mind control under Chairman Mao.

The First Normal Moment

“flows downward more easily than upward.” My conversations were a reminder that the reverse can also be true: If we lose touch with our larger sources of meaning, we can focus on the tiniest, flukiest things that get us through the day, and build upward from there.

Over time, these small wins aggregate into larger victories and fuller narratives.

That trajectory is not linear. It’s possible that something that once brought you joy all of a sudden is empty to you. But the soul moves on, and your ego has to learn to follow. You have to let go of that old identity, go into the emptiness, and find your new life’s dream.”

If a transition is the process of making ourselves whole again after a shattering life event, repairing our life story is the crown jewel of that process.

The story is the one part of a transition that ties together all the other parts.

“The best stories are vulnerable but not raw; they come from scars not wounds.”

neuroscientists have discovered that imagining this kind of unimaginable outcome is vital to recovering from a life interrupted. The more we are able to conjure up a future that seems out of reach—I will find another job, I will laugh once more, I will love again—the more we’re able to advance toward it. A big reason is mirror neurons, the part of our brains that mimic the actions we observe. When we see someone jump, laugh, or cry, our brains imitate the same activity.

Fake it till you make it

small acts of affirmation can rewire your mind.

Once we notice them, our biology follows, and suddenly that hummingbird, or that grass, leads us to a fancy vacation; we’re in a hammock in Tahiti. I found that if we take advantage of these moments, if we give ourselves permission to follow where they lead, our minds will take us to our healing place.”

His signature insight is that the way we shape those stories affects the meaning we take from them. The two most common examples are contamination narratives and redemption narratives.

The larger point here is worth emphasizing: We have a choice in how we tell our life story.

a primary function of our life story is to allow us to place experiences firmly in the past and take from them something beneficial that will allow us to thrive in the future. Only when that happens will we know our transition is complete.

Five categories emerged. Struggle, which was the choice of 31 percent of our respondents; self-actualization, which was the selection of 28 percent; followed by service with 18 percent, gratitude with 13 percent, and love with 10 percent.

1. Transitions Are Becoming More Plentiful

2. Transitions Are Nonlinear

Transitions are not hopscotch, they’re pinball; they’re not connect-the-dots, they’re freestyle drawing.

Transitions Take Longer Than You Think (but No Longer Than You Need)

Transitions Are Autobiographical Occasions

we maintain the balance among the three primary strands of our autobiographical selves: our me story, our we story, and our thee story.

Transitions Are Essential to Life

Chaos is not noise, it’s signal; disorder is not a mistake, it’s a design element.