Transitions: Endings - Part Two
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In Part one of ‘Endings’ we focused on intentionality and preparedness. More often than not, we know that an ending is coming. There is an opportunity to consider how we want the ending to, well, end. I don’t mean to make it sound easy, it’s not. But if you approach an ending intentionally, with a future oriented mindset, and perhaps even take active steps to ensure the ending gives you and others meaningful closure, then it is far more likely that your ending will result in creating the conditions under which a new beginning is possible. In this second installment of ‘Endings’ we focus on what is actually happening to us during an this first stage of the transition process. Bridges breaks down the ending stage into 5 experiences: Disengagement, Dismantling, Disidentification, Disenchantment, and Disorientation.
Much like the stages of the transition process itself; endings, neutral zone, and new beginnings, these five experiences could happen in any order, at any time, all at once, or not at all. As I reread the five ‘Dis’s’, I was transported back to 2020 when I moved through my own ending as a leader in the field of music education. I’ve layered some of those experiences over Bridges’ descriptions to hopefully bring them to life.
Disengagement - “Divorces, deaths, job changes, moves, illnesses, and many lesser events disengage us from the contexts in which we have known ourselves. They break up the old cue system that served to reinforce our roles and to pattern our behavior… As long as a system is working, it is very difficult for a member of it to imagine an alternative way of life and an alternative identity. But with disengagement, an inexorable process of change begins.”
I’m not sure I would ever have pulled out my own rug – made the purposeful decision to disengage from my role as an Executive Director. It was a position I had been working towards my whole career and by obtaining it, I had ‘arrived’, and proven myself to be capable of leading an institution. I had lived up to my own expectations, as well as those of others who had been supportive cheerleaders to me throughout my career. We rarely opt out of something while we’re ‘in it’, especially if it involves giving up a salary and starting completely over. Who would choose that? But I didn’t choose it, my rug was pulled out and a transition began.
Dismantling - “Disengagement only stops the old signals and cues from being received. It leaves untouched the life infrastructure that you’ve constructed in response to those signals. The disengagement can take place in a moment… but old habits and practices and behaviors that made you feel like yourself can only be dismantled… one piece at a time.”
Leaving Manhattan and following the moving truck back to Boston with my well-travelled baby grand piano wrapped in plastic, starkly began my dismantling experience. I packed up my home for the sixth time in seven years. The experience I had been through saturated every cell of my being. I was full of it. The depth and breath of the emotions I was holding in my body was like nothing I had experienced before. For the better part of 15 years, I had got up, selected my clothes for the day depending on what was on my calendar, gone to an office, led meetings, prepared reports, managed teams, reviewed budgets etc. etc. How on earth was I going to fill my day now?
Disidentification – Labels make us feel safe, and they make the people around us feel safe. When we meet new people, as hard as we might try to find a more meaningful question, it’s a matter of time before we ask, ‘So what is it you do?’ We are more comfortable when people have a straightforward answer, one that we understand like, ‘I’m a schoolteacher,’ or ‘I’m raising my three children.’ When you respond with ‘I’m in a career transition,’ or ‘I’m working on figuring that out,’ you get something between awkward clarifying questions, unneccessary (although well-intentioned) sympathy, and an awkward silence. There is an inevitable time in the ending phase of a transition when you are not the person you were, but you’re new identity is at best, under construction. Bridges encourages us to get comfortable with ‘I don’t know yet,’ as ‘Holding onto old identity gets in the way of self-renewal and transformation.’ For more about this, check out a previous ramble, ‘I’m not lost, I’m deciding which way to go.’
Disenchantment – Fellow Ramblers, this ‘Dis’ is REAL. I’d been through the other four at various times in my life, but nothing could have prepared me for this one. “Disenchantment is a recurrent experience throughout the lifetime of anyone who has the courage and trust to believe in the first place…The disenchantment experience is the signal that the time has come to look below the surface of what has been thought to be so. The disenchanted person recognizes the old view as sufficient in its time, but insufficient now.”
For 15 years, ‘what I had thought to be so’ was that my career destination and purpose was to lead others. Moveover, I believed this is what I wanted. It was tempting of course to question my competency after what was admittedly an extraordinarilly difficult leadership experience, but no, it wasn’t about whether I could lead, it was about whether I should. Did leading make me happy? Did the stress, pace, and level of responsibility for others live comfortably in my body? As it turned out, the answer was no. This was really, really hard to admit, but once I said it out loud to myself, I knew it was my truth. There were other ways I could be helpful and influential to the field I had dedicated my career to other than running an organization. And, fortunately, I had ideas about what they were.
Disorientation – If the neutral zone and the new beginning are characterized by a process of reorientation, then the ending period of any transition must contain a process of disorientation. Here, you are standing on the shore of your past and stepping out into the water. You can’t yet see the shoreline on the other side and when you turn around, the shore you left behind is no longer visible. I was no longer a leader of an organization, but my new path had yet to be forged. I was going to be lost for a while. It is here, during the experience of being disoriented, that the gateway to Bridges’ ‘neutral zone’, the middle stage of any transition process, becomes visible, In next month’s ramble, we will open the gate and step through.
I hope to see you there.