distressed.

some of our resistance to going into transition comes from our fear of this emptiness. The problem is not that we don’t want to give up a job or a relationship, or that we can’t let go of our identity or our reality. The problem is that before we can find a new something, we must deal with a time of nothingness.

endings are

From home, from work, even from your own mind comes the appeal to continue being the one you’ve been.

The approach you take to logging these experiences is important, however, because it can easily degenerate into a trivial kind of diary keeping. What you want to capture is a day or a week of your experience: What was really going on, or even what was “trying to happen”? What was your mood? What were you thinking about, perhaps without realizing

To feel as though everything is up in the air, as one so often does during times of personal transition, is endurable if it means something—if it is part of a movement toward a desired end. But if it is not related to some larger and beneficial pattern, it simply becomes distressing.

(Rule number one: when you’re in transition, you find yourself coming back in new ways to old activities.)

Transitions is not simply a manual on how to cope; rather, it is based on a theory of personal development that views transition as the natural process of disorientation and reorientation marking the turning points in the path of growth. Throughout nature, growth involves periodic accelerations and transformations: things go slowly for a time and

2. Arrange temporary structures. When