Smoothing Transitions - 10 Steps to Making Change Easier

From Tuesday's Daily Om, a list of ten steps to smooth transitions - to make change easier and less daunting. There's nothing much to disagree with here, although I would probably add number 11. Take a walk in the woods, along a creek or river, in the mountains, or in a desert, but get out into nature. Doing so helps us put our own struggles in perspective.

Smoothing Transitions

10 Steps to Making Change Easier

by Madisyn Taylor

Change can be hard for anyone, following these ideas below can make it a little less stressful.

1. Begin by making small changes or break up large-scale changes into more manageable increments. This can make you feel better about handling the changes you are about to make while making you more comfortable with change in general.

2. Mentally link changes to established daily rituals. This can make changes like taking on a new habit, starting a new job, or adapting to a new home happen much more smoothly. For example, if you want to begin meditating at home, try weaving it into your morning routine.

3. Going with the flow can help you accept change instead of resisting it. If you stay flexible, you will be able to ride out change without too much turbulence.

4. When a change feels most stressful, relief can often be found in finding the good that it brings. An illness, a financial loss, or a broken relationship can seem like the end of the world, yet they also can be blessings in disguise.

5. Remember that all change involves a degree of learning. If you find change particularly stressful, try to keep in mind that after this period of transformation has passed, you will be a wiser person for it.

6. Remember that upheaval and confusion are often natural parts of change. While we can anticipate certain elements that a change might bring, it is impossible to know everything that will happen in advance. Be prepared for unexpected surprises, and the winds of change won’t easily knock you over.

7. Don’t feel like you have to cope with changing circumstances or the stress of making a change on your own. Talk about what’s going on for you with a friend or write about it in a journal. Sharing your feelings can give you a sense of relief while helping you find the strength to carry on.

8. Give yourself time to accept any changes that you face. And as change happens, recognize that you may need time to adjust to your new situation. Allow yourself a period of time to reconcile your feelings. This can make big changes feel less extreme.

9. No matter how large or difficult a change is, you will eventually adapt to these new circumstances. Remember that regardless of how great the change, all the new that it brings will eventually weave itself into the right places in your life.

10. If you’re trying to change a pattern of behavior or navigate your way through a life change, don’t assume that it has to be easy. Wanting to cry or being moody during a period of change is natural. Then again, don’t assume that making a change needs to be hard. Sometimes, changes are meant to be that easy.

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Integral Leadership Review - January 2013

A new issue of the Integral Leadership Review is online and available for your reading pleasure - table of contents here. This is a special issue focusing on Leadership in Italy, with guest editor Antonio Marturano. If you want to read an overview of the essays in the new issue to help you decide which articles are best for you, be sure to check out Particles, edited by Jeannie Carlisle.

There are some excellent articles in this new issue, but I am slightly saddened to read Russ Volckmann's CODA to this issue. He is moving to an Executive Editor role and handing the day-to-day Editor reigns over to Mark McCaslin. I have no doubt Mark will continue the excellence that is ILR, but it's simply a little sad to see a friend "experience some little deaths in relation to this publication that started as an opportunity to share my early thinking about integral leadership."

One of his new directions is to keep ILR free, which means finding some funding. If you can afford to donate, please do so.

Coda: Transitions

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How can we not think about transitions at this time of year? We have just gone through the transitions of the Mayan calendar to a new era. And we have transitioned into the beginning of a new year according to the Gregorian calendar. In a week from writing this we have a full moon in the United States, foreshadowing the entry into a new lunar cycle. According to the Hijri or Muslim calendar, the new year began in 2012 on November 15, 2012. Then the next will be November 4, 2013. So I missed that transition. Nevertheless, I like this graphic representing the lunar cycle for the 2013 Muslim New Year. Well, the point is… transitions.

Muslim New Year Poster

I remember when I attended a Bill Bridges workshop on “the journey.” He was transitioning out of his role as English professor at Mills College in the years before publishing his best selling book, Transitions. The highlight of the workshop was at the end. We rubbed each others feet with salt. This is apparently a tradition in the Middle East when a traveler arrives in your home.

Some transitions are full of hope and others feel like someone is rubbing salt into our wounds. When we get a new job that we wanted or start on a new educational program or a new relationship, we experience transitions that are usually full of hope for the future while we celebrate the joy of the present. Other transitions can induce fear as we feel we are about to step into a dark room with little assurance that there is a floor there. Too many people have these experiences when others seem to be in control of their destinies. Still other transitions can be filled with pain: a separation, an illness, a death.

Stanley Kellerman, the somatic therapist in Berkeley, California, wrote about little deaths in his wonderfully insightful book, Living Your Dying. It has been years since I have read it, but it has served to remind me that every transition involves a little death. We give up something in order to take on something new. We get lots of practice for dealing with “big” deaths.

My life has been full of little deaths. As I have gotten older I have felt the loss of grandparents, parents, friends, classmates, favorite entertainers, authors, even politicians, who have entered the big deaths. They are missed. Still, as I reflect on my life, the little deaths overwhelm the big ones in numbers and often in impact on how I realize my self and my life.

2012 and 2013 involve an important transition for Integral Leadership Review and for me. As we enter the 14th year of publishing, Mark McCaslin is moving into the role of Editor. While I will continue to play an active role for the foreseeable future as Executive Editor, I am having to let go, to experience some little deaths in relation to this publication that started as an opportunity to share my early thinking about integral leadership.

I welcome many of these little deaths, because they free me to focus my attention on other projects that are important to me. These other projects include aspects of publishing Integral Leadership Review. For example, in service of continuing to have ILR be free to all readers, I need to find some additional sponsors. I have issued pleas for gifts to ILR by the readers and their inclusion in “Friends of ILR”. Some have responded very generously and some have given modest amounts that I value as highly. Every gift is a message that what we are doing is important and worthwhile. If you are part of an organization that would be willing to help us finance this publication, we would welcome sponsorship and/or ads on our welcome page and in ILRPartices. If you are willing to give a gift to ILR you can do so on the Welcome page: “Support ILR”.

But this is not intended to be a fund raising plea. It is about transitions. While there are little deaths associated with passing a lot of responsibility over to Mark McCaslin, this is a transition that is also filled with joy for me. I am so grateful to Mark for bringing his knowledge, skill and wisdom to the task of perpetuating and growing the value of ILR and with being willing to put up with me in the little dying processes of the transition. Mark is an individual for whom I have huge respect. If you have been reading any of his material in the pages of ILR, you no doubt share this respect.

This transition is also filled with excitement. Mark has a solid understanding of integral and transdisciplinary. He is an academic, a researcher, an original thinker. He has a deep appreciation for the hard work and energy it takes to implement and address challenges in communities, organizations and in life. You will learn much more about him in the issues coming down the road.

For now, I am not quite ready for my feet to be rubbed with salt. But the time is coming. And I do hope you all find great value in ILR as it unfolds in the months and years to come.

Russ Volckmann