How to navigate a slow life transition

Managing a slow and difficult change doesn’t have to be painful

1. Acknowledging the expectation

2. Grief

3. Coming to terms

4. Trusting the re-direction

5. Making connection

The idea of a linear life development that’s been fed to us since birth really messed with our appreciation of life. A day is a microcosm of our life: we rush to knock things off a to-do list in the same fashion we rush to get graduated from college and get engaged.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when everything seems to be coming to a halt. Often, this can be brought about by a crisis or an unexpected change. Time slows down and becomes acutely felt whenever things aren’t going our way. A breakup, a layoff, an illness, a natural disaster, or death — losses rearrange our timeline without permission, consideration, and grace.

Expectations — the root of suffering

There is no suffering without expectation. As soon as we get an idea of how things should be, we’re setting the stage for tremendous pain. Once you decided on the year of your graduation, you’ve signed a contract binding you to either be very disappointed and ashamed or stressed out of your mind. Once you subscribed to the societal norm of having a life-long partner, your 30s are stamped with a seal of misery.

Expectations add a layer of pain to any unwanted experience. When I got traumatised by the workplace incident, I lost a very big part of my identity, my profession. It’s one thing to be dealing with an illness but feeling shame because you are unemployed in a culture that prides itself on exhaustion, that, my friends, is next-level shit.

Grief

I like to say that every person needs a therapist. Not because I believe all people are traumatised but because nurturing connection helps us grieve. Unless you are a Buddhist monk reincarnated as a Buddhist monk, any loss will educe pain, a natural accompaniment of the end.

Healing is grieving. Some cultures handle grief better than others. Some cultures have rituals around death and dying that assist a transition and extrapolate to other areas of life. Western culture is a culture of polite pretence and endurance: not wanting to be seen as weak, we suppress uncomfortable emotions, and paint everything the bright colour of ‘at least’.

Being able to let grief in is a sign of enormous strength — but we are oh, so quick to rationalise, dismiss, and move on. Grieving is the key to navigating a painful transition. When things slow down, they do so for a reason.

“Slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be” (André De Shields)

Coming to terms

Being able to admit that your situation stinks is a sign of progress. Our default mode is a distraction, numbing, and silver lining. Facing the discomfort of being in the wrong place helps locate you on a map of life.

Mel Robbins likes to say that it is mathematically impossible to calculate a route to a destination without knowing where you are. It's true. You have to know where you are to plan how to get to where you want to be.

Trusting the re-direction

Shitty predicaments are disheartening, and yet I learned to trust the wisdom of bad times. Can you look back at the darkest time of your life and find the seed of your future wins?

Bad times are as important as good ones because it's a germination period. You can't see the process of germination, yet you do see a plant springing from the soil. Something did happen while it seemed like nothing was happening at all. The emptiness of a transition is an illusion. We need transitions as much as we need a chapter break: to pause and make a cup of tea, to put the book away for a day or two, to let your eyes rest, to ponder. Negative space is an important contribution to a work of art.

At times, change comes when we least expect it. What if what you call 'failure' is in fact a re-direction? When we look back at our life, we can see all the dots that connect to each other and create an intricate pattern of life. You might not see it from where you are now, but this time of struggle — it's a dot too.

Making connection

Being in the unknown is scary simply because our brain's main task is keeping us in the familiar. We need predictability and structure to feel safe. Instead of trying to predict our future, we can take back control on a smaller scale. Create a daily routine, a simple to-do list that will help you feel productive. Going for a short walk, making a healthy breakfast, and reading a few pages a day — these simple actions can become a substitute for a greater plan.

Being in the in-between-things space is frustrating because we weren't taught how to handle it — we're just so used to seeing milestones as achievements. What if instead, we learned to get excited about a blank space of the transition? To appreciate the magic of the messy wilderness.

We can choose to believe that everything is going to hell, or we can choose to trust that the Universe is rearranging itself to cater to our wildest dreams. It's your call.