Customer Reviews

Transitions: Making Sense Of Life's Changes

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In a recent survey, people were asked to list the most disturbing and disruptive things in their lives, and rank them according to difficulty to handle. It was seen that the highest proportion of difficulties involved transitions in people lives -- moving, new jobs, divorce, marriage, new child, death, etc. Surprisingly, there is not a great body of work dealing specifically with transitions and methods for coping and dealing with transitions in life. William Bridges provides a useful, accessible, and needed book on this important topic.

The book is divided into two broad topics: The Need for Change and The Transition Process. There is a brief epilogue following.

Part 1: The Need for Change
Americans seem, much more than people from more traditional, more grounded, and more static cultures, to always be in a state of transition, moving from one thing to another, both personally and professionally. This can be seen in the increasing pace of career-change, personal relocation, divorce and remarriage rates (which only scratch the surface of the larger transitional base of undocumented relationships), and so on. One could say that American culture is built upon constant transition (and some Marxists thought they were developing a system of institutionalised revolution -- they could probably never outdo modern American society for that!)

Being in transition is natural, but sometimes a confusing state, not simply because of the situational difficulties, but because they are not supposed to be difficult to handle.

'The big events -- divorce, death, losing a job, and other obviously painful changes -- are easy to spot. But others, like marriage, sudden success, and moving to your dream house, are forgotten because they are 'good events' and therefore not supposed to lead to difficulty. We expect to be distressed at illness, but it is a shock to find recovery leading to difficulty.'

Anyone who has returned from a big holiday trip knows the truth of this -- how often does one feel 'I need a vacation to recover from my vacation'?

Modern psychologists have identified different stages in life -- different psychologists offer up frameworks that vary in the particulars, but what they all have in common is a recognition of struggles and adjustment periods as one makes transition from the various stages, from childhood to adolescence, to young adulthood, etc. These are transitions that underlie the situational transitions. Like the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx, the answer to dealing with transitions depends upon understanding what underpins the human being.

The two greatest areas of transition that are addressed in this text surround those issues involving love and work. Other transitions occur, but few concern us that do not concern one of these issues. All our relationships with others, as well as our internal integrity issues, relate in some way to these two issues. Bridges provides some background, as well as a checklist to follow for understanding the transition.

Part 2: The Transition Process
It seems somewhat trite to say, but every ending can be a new beginning. The essence of the transition process lies in this statement. What most people overlook in making this statement is that most transitions are not smooth progressions from point A to B. There is a disruption, a confusion, often a sadness, sometimes an elation, but in every case some period of adjustment to the positive and negative changes that have occurred. Some cultures have specified timeframes for grief and mourning that assist in times of death; the honeymoon is meant to be a transitional period after marriage (a term co-opted by others who wish to have a smoother period of introduction after a change -- as in political honeymoons after a transition of government).

It is unfortunate that most neglect to properly grieve for things that are important but are not the 'actual death of a person'. We don't allow ourselves to grieve for the lost job, the lost relationship, the lost community when one moves -- we know and recognise there has been a change, but we are reluctant to call it grief, and thus not always able to deal with the issues properly. This is perhaps the greatest contribution of Bridges -- to put processes together to permit adjustment periods. Only when this is done may the truly new beginning be made. The conclusion of Part 2 deals with new beginnings.

The importance of keeping our grounding as human beings is emphasised over and over, so that we don't rush ourselves into a new beginning prematurely -- even if circumstances require the change (your job ended, and a new one starts immediately), you can work through the transition process to internally cope better with the change, giving up the old and embracing the new in a healthy manner.

Epilogue
Bridges uses the story of Psyche and Amor, and the trials of Psyche in her task to be reunited with Amor, to illustrate the power of transitions. There will be help along the way, but the greatest task still remains one of personal responsibility. There are no guaranteed happy endings, either.

This book is an interesting and helpful guide to understanding the constantly changing milieu in which we live from the standpoint of personally coping with change. As a society, we are undergoing various changes, the dramatic nature and radical impacts of which are unlikely to be fully known for years, if not decades. If ever a book on coping with transitions was needed, it is now.

The author, William Bridges, is a writer, lecturer, and consultant on human development. He taught at Mills College (California), and operates transition seminars in the western United States. He was president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology.

The back cover reads, "...one of the 50 most important self-help books of all time". While I have read more than my fair share of self-help books, I must admit to being truly impressed with this ageless bestseller. In an unassuming, understated way, William Bridges takes you to a time and place that made me feel like he is the wise, warm-hearted uncle we should all love to have in our lives. Well-crafted, Transitions does an impressive job of myth-busting the emphasis of change by putting forth compelling reasons to embrace life's transition periods instead. He challenges us to think differently by reversing the order of things; e.g. by starting with Endings, moving through a period of uncertainty (The Neutral Zone) and finishing with New Beginnings. For those who can make the time to read this book in silence and without distraction, you will be richly rewarded.

This book was recommended to me by my career advisor. I was placed in this "outplacement" company after being laid off from my employer of 10 years. This transition was difficult for me to accept. This book helped me make a "new beginning and end the old relationship with my previous employer

I first picked up this book off a friend's bookshelf. I'm reviewing it on Amazon because I bought five more to give away!

If you're not currently in a major life transition, this book might not make sense at all. But if you are, it helps make sense of everything you're going through. The best thing for me was a big sigh of relief (several actually) as I saw my experience mirrored in the book and realized it was normal.

Such a valuable guide to getting through any difficulties in Life - divorce, death of a loved one, depression, change of job, residence, bankruptcy, etc.

I worked for a company for almost ten years. I worked long hours and made personal sacrifices for the company to contribute to its growth. I enjoyed many promotions, worked with top 100 companies and had a great salary. Life was good and I was planning for retirement at age 55, it was possible the way things were going...so I thought...

I was unemployed for almost 10 months, submerged in a deep state of depression. To get out of it and do something useful with my life I started a Master degree. My first course required writing a personal essay after reading this book.

This book allowed me to change my personal perspective. I understood what I was going through. It was my light at the end of the tunnel. It made a difference in my life and gave me hope at a personal but most important at a professional level.

I strongly recommend this book, especially to those that have suffered a great impact due to a layoff.

I bought this book about five years ago and it helped me make sense of a change in my life. The book is exceptionally well written. The author writes simply and clearly. The text uses plain English, is free of jargon and is accessible to anyone who can read. The book explains the importance of endings and why one should not try to rush through them. Bridges explains about moving from the ending to to a place in between ending and beginning that he describes as the "Neutral Zone" a difflicult period that may seem as though it won't end but Bridges encourages readers not to rush through it and assures them that it too shall pass and lead to a new beginning. He explains that the new beginning cannot be rushed but will happen when you are ready.

This is a thoughtful and very loving book. I have returned to this book several times in the years I've owned it and each time I have found it helpful. The publication date is unimportant as the text is timeless.

This book deals with the general topic of dealing with dramatic events in one's life, such as divorce, loss of a job, death of a loved one, etc. It is difficult to read, for several reasons. I found the first half of the book to be very depressing. In addition, unless you are a scholar of ancient Greek literature, it may be difficult to understand all of the analogies Bridges is trying to draw. And the topics are just plain deep. Bridges outlines three phases of any of life's transitions: an ending, a period of confusion, and a new beginning. Bridges seems to want people to acknowledge their endings, and offers some good advice for handling the middle period (although I doubt many people would sit down and write their autobiographies). If you are going through a transition, and trying to make sense of why it is occuring to you (what caused the ending?), I don't think this book will help much. This book is more for people who are focusing forward, not backward.

This book remained a very close 'friend' of mine until I'd read every part so many times that it turned stale and I had to find another source of reassurance during a life change. But that speaks to the book's most challenging lesson: trusting the change we are going through even while others don't seem terribly interested. Two things I liked in particular about the book: one was the use of mythology or literature rather than psychology as source of wisdom and truth (Freud knew where to turn, too). Another was the point that transitions happen again and again over the course of one's life; developmental theories saying that "mid-life" crises happen only at 40 (whatever) are too simplistic and inflexible. Sheehy's Passages was exposed as overly linear and uni-directional in its stages and dated in its conception of gender roles. Both this book and Levoy's make the important point also that the 'change' can take years and may or may not include some kind of godsend or 'sign' of good to come. But they urge you to keep going through the motions to keep the potential for the sign alive.

I can't say enough about Transitions. Bridges takes an in-depth look at the process of change and how to understand it and handle it. He explains that each change in life is a transition consisting of an ending, a neutral zone, and a new beginning. Each part of the transition and how to deal with it is described, together with real life examples and analysis of familiar transition stories taken from the Odyssey and Greek mythology. Most importantly, Bridges explains how to take care of yourself so you can make it through life's bumps and scrapes. It's an excellent resource for anyone having trouble dealing with change of any kind.