22 April 2009

I can almost see it, that dream I'm dreamin

I suppose one of the main reasons I like the song, "The Climb," is because it's about transition, about letting go, taking risks, facing losses, and moving forward.

Last week, one of J.'s grad school friends lent me a book called Transitions by William Bridges. I've been reading it in bits and pieces and it's been quite helpful in helping me process all the changes in my life.

There are three parts to transitions--endings, a time of feeling lost, and beginnings. Sometimes, you only have one or two of those. Other times, the order gets mixed up. The key is to go through each part fully and then move on with a new beginning.

I spent some time today thinking about unfinished transitions in my life and what I can do to finish them so my load is lighter for the road ahead. Bridges also recommends examining how we've reacted to transitions in the past to gain greater awareness of our emotional programming to transitions in general.

Of interesting and serious note, the book talks about how research was done correlating specific life situations with a point system such as 100 points for a spouse's death or 11 points for a change in jobs. For Americans who had fewer than 150 points (average), they had a 1 in 5 chance of being hospitalized for a major illness in the next 2 years. For those with 300 points, they had a 9 in 10 chance of being hospitalized for a major illness. Food for thought wherever you are.

2 comments:

  1. definitely a must-read for me, too! do you feel your transition is parallel to his description in the book?

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  2. yeah for sure. it's helpful. have you read it?

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