This past week in my ezine Creative Careers Unleased I talked about a common challenge for professionals: How do I transition from where I am (doing a job where I’m making money) to where I want to be (Making [excellent] money doing what I love?
This week I’ll look at some answers.
FIRST: understand some fundamental, critical ideas about Transitions.
For me the best description of the essential nature of Transitions was conceived by Bill Bridges.
Bridges helped us understand that Transition was not simply Change, as in changing over your car or repainting the house. Instead, it was a psychological journey consisting of three distinct phases:
1. Ending – Finishing what was, grieving the loss of it
2. Neutral Zone – a lost, confused, befuddle state
3. Beginning – the new state, new identity, role, duties, and responsibilities
We need to understand that we need to picture, enVISION the new place we want to be with our career.
BUT, we need to understand that to get there we WILL need to move through the first two phases: Ending and the Neutral Zone (which I prefer to call the Dead Zone or the Desert).
Next post: Beginning To End It
