The fact that personal, involuntary lifequakes are by far the most common is a reminder that the nonlinear life is, at its core, not something most people seek out. We prefer to think we control the trajectory of our lives; the reality, unfortunately, is far more tenuous.

At root, the shapes fall into three buckets. The first bucket includes shapes that reflect some sort of trajectory. This group characterized their lives as primarily moving through time, rising and falling, usually in response to their individual success or failure. I would have chosen this shape, and it was the most popular. Examples include a

Since we face more of these experiences than we expect—and that number is only likely to increase in the coming years, as I’ll explain—mastering the skills necessary to pass through them becomes all the more acute. Lifequakes may be voluntary or involuntary, but navigating the transitions that flow from them can only be voluntary. We must choose to

Looking back over your life story in a slightly different way, what shape embodies your life?

In the end, we identified three key ingredients of a well-balanced life. Let’s call them the ABCs of meaning. The A is agency—autonomy, freedom, creativity, mastery; the belief that you can impact the world around you. The B is belonging—relationships, community, friends, family; the people that surround and nurture you. The C is cause—a calling, a

We’ve been led to believe that our lives will always ascend, for example, and are shocked to discover they oscillate instead. Our society tells us we should be basking in progress, but our experience tells us we are beset by slip-ups. Might this gap help explain the anxiety so many of us feel?

When I layered in these two numbers, a bright, blinking rule of thumb appears: THE AVERAGE PERSON GOES THROUGH ONE DISRUPTOR EVERY 12–18 MONTHS When I shared this finding with others, they reacted with a mix of shock and resignation. Wow, followed by yeah.

The essence of chaos is self-organizing. It’s what a river current does when it eddies around a boulder and then reforms; it’s what a flock of birds does when it takes off from a tree and then glides into formation; it’s what a weather system does when it collides into a different system, merges, and then keeps moving; the same with sand dunes,

Life is in the transitions. His point is even more true today: We can’t ignore these central times of life; we can’t wish or will them away. We have to accept them, name them, mark them, share them, and eventually convert them into a new and vital fuel for remaking our life stories.