Mindful keys bridging life changes toward meaningful stability.
Emotional transitions are lifelong processes—internal reconfigurations in response to external change. Change, whether positive or negative, causes attitudinal shifts. We choose some changes; most just occur.
Vista Bridge Source: Scott Israel, photographer, CT
How change becomes successful depends on how feelings manage and create positive outcomes. For example, being laid off or needing thousands of dollars for an unexpected car repair ordinarily provoke frustration, anger, and sadness. Rather than let these mixed emotions well up and confuse thinking, an intentional pause is best. Pausing opens opportunities for feelings to decrease and clearer problem-solving to emerge.
Emotional transitions are keys to successful life changes. Learning mindfulness—expanded awareness characterized by immediacy and non-judgment—sharpens attention to detail without bias. This supports emotional equanimity and psychological equipoise, skills needed for successful problem-solving (Ninivaggi, 2019).
As far back as 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, pointed to change as the pivotal constant in life. Changes were the steady flux of unanticipated events altering and shaping the course of lives. The distinguished scholar William Bridges (1933-2013) developed an in-depth transition model. Today, this strategy remains valid and includes “stress” and “burnout” prevention.
Success comes from mindfully understanding the difference between change and transition. Change is external; it is something that happens to you, a situation imposed by outside circumstances or unforeseen health problems.
Transition is always an internal or psychological event. It is—and needs to be—an intentional reconfiguration—transformations to a new future. Understanding its mental and emotional components is crucial. The transitional pause makes possible accepting, working through, and incorporating changes. Transitions call for significant transformations, in your mind and life.
Change happens quickly. Transitions need a deliberate creation with guidance and management. The threefold structure of transition is:
1.) the entire cycle of loss
2.) a period of silent chaos
3.) a new beginning .
Endings are the abrupt indicators of change with distressing surprises. Loss and “letting go” are complex emotional events. Mindfulness of loss, chaos, and incipient beginnings (e.g., “emotional equanimity”) leads to fewer surprises that are disarming.
People change but forget to tell themselves. Mindfulness lessens the abruptness of surprises while fostering the bridging of endings, transitioning, and new beginnings.
Transitional Stage 1: Loss
Change becomes strikingly clear when endings occur. All developmental theories about childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and older age highlight the unfolding of ends that transition to new beginnings. Endings are outward rearrangements with real consequences. Skillfully handling them is skillful transitioning.
Change meets resistance because no one wants to leave comfortable positions. Resistance is the denial of unfolding change, perhaps an unrealistic sense of finality without sequel. Avoiding making needed adjustments to rework old routines is common. This encumbrance to moving increases stress, leading to burnout. Purposeful pause quiets the mind so that conscious goals and innovative surprises turn new beginnings into successful transitions.
Lifelong development unfolds its changes in losses such as job, relationships, living conditions, health status, and ultimately by death. Each brings challenges because interpersonal and social systems embed us. What happens in any part impacts each member and the entire system. Adapting to new circumstances with mental and emotional acceptance ushers in new beginnings.
Skillfully managing endings is “letting go.” To carry this out, we must traverse phases:
- disengaging
- dismantling of old perspectives
- releasing old self-identities
- giving up earlier versions of one’s worldview
- accepting temporary loss and directionlessness—felt as “chaos”
Mindful keys include patience, pause, and receptivity. Receptivity means listening carefully to one’s inner emotional states. This openness complements the empathetic communications from supportive others. The “end” of endings is when one intentionally and actively “lets go.”
Transitions Stage 2: Fallow Chaos, the Bridge to Change
We all know change is inevitable. Responsiveness to change can be simple or complex, depending on age and development. When transitioning from one life era to another, change has greater depth, significance, and consequences.
Simple changes are alterations of weather or running out of gas and needing to refill. An example of complex change is a child preparing to attend first grade but having an accident that causes immobility and postponing entry into school for months. This change delays both emotional and social expectations and sets up needs different from the typical group. Emotionally reorganizing for both child and family helps build a transitional bridge to a new and unexpected path.
Another example is a person of 60, not ready to retire, seeing a coworker die unexpectedly.
Such an unfortunate loss provokes normal grief—also reconsidering health and occupational trajectory. Old mindsets break down. Building bridges toward a future with new possibilities emerge.
Transitional challenges begin with confusion and distress. Pausing is inevitable when the old ceases. New routines need to emerge. Time and patience compel transitions to unfold slowly.
Managing and adapting change, transition, and transformation create bridges ushering new beginnings. New perspectives with short-term goals are low-risk and become reinforcing.
This middle phase of transition is where much nonconscious changing occurs. The flux of confusing emotions and disorientation covers the real change occurring below. Gradually, ideas arise, and newfound clarity supports successful decision-making—loss and “letting go” bridge seeing and grasping something new.
Transition Stage 3: Surprise Beginnings
Learned Mindfulness enhances transitional engagement. New beginnings emerge. Wholeheartedly embracing endings by navigating transitions builds bridges.
Learned Mindfulness emerges from self-regulation on two levels:
1.) nonconscious emotion and thought churn nonconscious change.
2.) conscious regulation promotes critical thinking.
How do you elicit more “churn”? Intentional mindfulness sparks nonconscious thinking because it quiets emotions, brings the mind into greater equipoise, and so facilitates a clear mind. Tools within the Learned Mindfulness model promote the vigorous churning of unconscious problem-solving haloing to conscious awareness.
The synergistic effect of these alignments supports self-esteem, self-respect, and a healthy self-image. With practice, implicit emotional modulation (i.e., non-effortful) enables oriented attention at each moment. Focus with immediacy is mindful attention.
Surprise is the emergence of unanticipated new beginnings.
Two new studies from MIT suggest mindfulness—the practice of focusing one’s awareness on the present moment—may enhance academic performance and mental health in middle schoolers. The researchers found that more mindfulness correlates with better academic performance, fewer suspensions from school, and less stress (Bauer et al., 2019).
This recent research supports copious positive findings with adults over the last decades. Mindfulness is a relevant tool to transition planning and mindset readjustments relevant at any age.
References
Bauer, C.C.C., Caballero, C., Scherer E., West M.R., Mrazek, M.D., Phillips, D.T., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., & Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2019). Mindfulness training reduces stress and amygdala reactivity to fearful faces in middle-school children. Behavioral Neuroscience, August 2019;DOI: 10.1037/bne0000337.
Ninivaggi, Frank, John (2019). Learned Mindfulness: Physician Engagement and MD Wellness. Cambridge, MA: Elsevier.