The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward

What matters most is not what happens to us but how we respond to those events, both in the moment and, really quite importantly, on the next day. Because what we do on that next day is what makes us who we are and how we make our lives our own. This is true in all kinds of transitions, happy or sad, welcome or unwanted.

A few years ago, abandoning my old habit of creating a lengthy list of New Year’s resolutions, I started choosing a single “word of the year” to encapsulate my aspirations for the twelve months ahead. One year, I chose gentle, a reminder to go easy on myself and fight the pull of perfectionism. Another, I chose spacious and spent the year encouragi

both of them talked about developing the capacity to navigate change, the omnipresent force in all our lives. Oprah quoted the poem by MAIA and shared her own conviction that “change is there to evolve you.” Gayle said something beautiful, too: “Aging is just another word for living.”

That’s my theory. And although mine involves a lot less quantitative reasoning, it’s consistent with a theory proposed by two economists, Andrew Oswald from England’s University of Warwick and David Blanchflower from Dartmouth. These two scholars examined data on two million people from eighty countries and found that our happiness levels tend to f

I wish I knew the secret to overcoming your fears, conquering self-doubt, and finding comfort in your own skin. But over the last few years, as I approached the age of sixty, I finally realized that the “secret” may be nothing more than time. Time and experience.

In 2023, the US surgeon general released a report on loneliness arguing that “the mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.”

The little dinnertime routine we adopted became, as the best rituals are, a chance to grow closer and go deeper.

“Sharing Rituals and Traditions.” At the top, Dee Ann wrote, “Rituals and traditions are heart tending!” and went on to explain, “Experts tell us that these kinds of shared experiences have a profound effect on family life. Rituals help bind us together, give everyone a sense of belonging and create memories.”

But my advice is to leave some room for those plans to change. Resist the idea that anything you’ve done here at Stanford has already locked you into any one path—or any one kind of life or career. Be excited about the fact that you will encounter possibilities you haven’t imagined yet. And be willing to let what you learn shift your thinking about