A shock is a sudden change that comes from outside you, not from changes you’ve made in your own thinking. It might be anything from a physical disaster like fire, flood, or earthquake to an interpersonal breakdown between you and your beloved. For me, the diagnosis

8. Explore the magic of the threshold. “What am I doing with my life? I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t know where I want to be. I don’t know who I want to be with. And it’s been a whole week!”

4. Don’t mistake a Square One identity crisis for a signal that you’ve made the wrong choice. I’ve had many clients who connected with their essential selves, made major positive life changes, and then panicked when the chaos of Square One set in. These folks mistook the confusion of the liminal period for evidence that they’d made a colossal error.

Now break that step down into smaller components. Then pick one of those components, and break it down into even smaller subcomponents. Keep going until you find a ministep that you’re sure you can accomplish easily. Pay close attention to your internal compasses: You will feel changes in your body and emotions when the tasks become small enough

EXERCISE At the top of a piece of notebook paper, write the words “This Is What Happened.” Then put down a description of something that hurt you emotionally. Next, write “This Is How I Feel About It,” and describe your emotional response to the event.

whatever we intend has a very high probability of actually occurring.

All you’ve go to do now is solve for X. In order to realize your goal,

Establish an official play time, and honor it.

Transition events develop much more slowly than shocks or opportunities, and they come from inside you, rather than from the environment.