Lost in Transition: How to Cope with Tough Times
Lost In Transition – A History of Morocco
It was a warm summer afternoon in Marrakech. We had wandered through the souks and then enjoyed a nice dinner in a restaurant just off the main market square in the Medina and it was time to go back to the Riad where we were staying.
The Medina was built around 1122 and is the old town of Marrakech. It’s a winding maze comprising 19 kilometers of tiny streets with pink walls and poor lighting, and it can seem like a scary place to walk at night, especially if you don’t know where you are going!
The daylight walk to the center had been pleasant enough, but walking back in the dark was not an option, so we took a taxi.
Heart of Darkness
Unfortunately, the taxi driver misinterpreted the rather dark direction of our Riad and wrongly assumed that we wanted to go somewhere at night on the other side of the Medina. Language difficulties made it impossible to remedy, so we set off on foot.
We asked a succession of strangers for directions, and yet we seemed to be delving into what was quickly beginning to feel like Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” In hindsight I’m sure the locals who tried to help us were genuine and well-meaning, but after an hour or two of this we were totally disoriented and downright scared.
Lost in transition
Being in an alien city in North Africa, late at night, in the dark, completely lost in the transition from the main market square to the dark location of our Riad, without tools for navigation and with the impossibility of Communicating with the locals, it was terrifying.
To cut a long story short, we finally found someone who seemed to understand where we were trying to get to and it was with enormous relief that we recognized the alley (I wouldn’t dignify it by calling it a street) where our Riad was located. .
Needless to say, the next day we moved to another riad in the center adjacent to the main market square.
The difference between change and transition
That experience of being lost in the transition in the Medina illustrates the disorientation of location that we can experience when we experience an unexpected change in circumstances, and especially a change that is imposed and that leads to difficult times.
At the time of this writing, with the world slowly coming out of the Covid-19 lockdown, with our economies strangled, trade failures and rising unemployment, and our national governments flailing like men drowning and grabbing straws, I think it’s It’s fair to say that many of us are going through tough times as a direct result of imposed change!
The purpose of this article is to establish a framework to understand what is happening to you and to go beyond the circumstantial changes and to address the internal psychological and emotional impacts and how you can deal with them as well.
The first key point to note is that there is a distinction between the events, situations and circumstances that are imposed on you and your internal response to these things.
In the world of change management, this is known as “transition.”
William Bridges was one of the first thought leaders in the field of organizational transformation and change management to recognize the fundamental difference between change and transition, namely:
- Change is an external event or situation that happens to you, and that is often imposed on you.
- Transition is the internal process that you have to go through as you make your readjustment and realignment to new realities.
The psychological and emotional transition is a three-stage process
Without an effective transition, a change is just a rearrangement of circumstances and you will not transition effectively, but will get stuck or get lost in the transition.
The bridge transition model involves a three-phase process:
- Finish, lose, leave Go: every transition begins with an ending. We have to let the old go before we can pick up the new, not just outwardly, but inwardly, where we maintain our connections with people and places that act as definitions of who we are.
- The neutral zone – This is a fallow time. One of the difficulties of being in transition in the modern world is that we have lost our appreciation for this gap between the end and the letting go and the new beginning, we find it unsettling. But as in nature, fallow time is a necessary part of the process. It is a time of death and rebirth.
- The new start – This is where we develop a new identity, experience a new energy, and discover a new sense of purpose that allows us to make change begin to work.
Transition is a psychological process of inner reorientation and self-definition that you have to go through to incorporate the effect of external changes in your life.
One of the main causes of the difficulty you will experience with the transition is that it necessarily involves letting go of something.
The process of letting go is often unsettling and unnerving.
Therefore, a fundamental element of the transition is the acceptance of that letting go. Without that acceptance, you will get stuck in denial, anger, or resistance.
I leave you with 2 empowering thoughts:
# “This too shall pass”
# “When you cannot control what is happening, challenge yourself to control the way you respond to what is happening. That is where your power resides.”
Read more: Lost In Transition