Navigate career / life transitions

Transitions in career/life offer both challenges and opportunities. Transitions are life experiences in which strong emotions/feelings can surface in the form of excitement, surprise, joy, confusion, uncertainty, loss, stress, fear, or anger. Examples from a professional perspective could include:

• people discovering they are on the wrong career path
• relocation to a new job in a different city or state
• executives advancing to higher levels of authority and responsibility
• visionaries becoming entrepreneurs
• independent-minded, ambitious people buying a business
• selling a business or transferring responsibilities for running the business
• finding a post-retirement career or volunteer activity

From a personal perspective, the progression from young adulthood to midlife to seasoned or senior may include marriage, kids, divorce, and second marriages, to becoming empty nesters and retiring. Transitions are part of life, and dealing with, adapting to, or planning for change can be the key to experiencing joy, purpose, and fulfillment.

Coaching can help a client embrace the transition process. It aids in increasing self-awareness, challenging thought, enabling mind shifts, correcting or eliminating negative thought processes, and broadening vision. In addition, it supports the client in taking the necessary next steps - from deciding to let go or move on to preparing/planning for a transition to confidently and assertively launching into the next phase of your career/life.

Change is situational. Transition, on the other hand, is psychological. It is not those events but rather the inner reorientation or self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate any of those changes into your life. Without a transition, a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture. Unless transition happens, the change won’t work. — William Bridges, Author, Speaker and Organizational Consultant