The Neutral Zone

Anyone who has ever remodeled a house knows a good deal about personal transitions because such an undertaking replicates the three-part transition process. It starts by making an ending and destroying what used to be. Then there is the time when it isn’t the old way any more, but not yet the new way, either. Some dismantling is still going on, but so is some new building. It is very confusing time, and it is a good idea to have made temporary arrangements for dealing with this interim (“neutral zone”) state of affairs--whether it is temporary housing or a time of modified activities and reduced expectations to make the old housing work. And as the contractors always warn you, remodeling always takes more time and money than new construction. Good advice in regard to transition, too.

William Bridges, Transitions

Caught Between

It is not just the pace of change that leaves us disoriented. Many Americans have lost faith that the transitions they are going through are really getting somewhere. To feel as though everything is “up in the air,” as one so often does during times of personal transition, is endurable if it means something – if it is part of a movement toward a desired end. But if it is not related to some larger and beneficial pattern, it simply becomes distressing.

It is as if we launched out from a riverside dock to cross to a landing on the opposite shore – only to discover in midstream that the landing was no longer there. (And when we looked back at the other shore, we saw that the dock we had left from had broken loose and was heading downstream.) Stuck in transition between situations, relationships, and identities that are also in transition, many Americans are caught in a semipremanent condition of transitionality.

William Bridges, Transitions

Around the Corner

There are many points in life when we cannot see what awaits us around the corner, and it is precisely at such times, when our path forward is unclear, that we must bravely keep our nerve, resolutely putting one foot before the other as we march blindly into the dark.

Richard C. Morais, The Hundred-Foot Journey

the Adventure Risk

Andre Gide once said, "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." Explorers of new worlds will always have times of ambiguity where they wonder if they are getting anywhere and whether the voyage was really worth it.

Stephen Goforth

The price of avoiding uncertainty

In order to manage the avalanche of information that our senses are absorbing at all times, our brains work to find patterns, simplify information, and look for clarity. That allows us to be able to make decisions and act. But sometimes in the rush to make order of the world, our brains jump to unwarranted conclusions — taking in the myriad of information around us and deducing something that just isn't quite right.

A high need for closure isn't necessarily a bad thing. You may just be the type of person who likes to make plans and avoid surprises. However, the need for closure can lead to two major pitfalls in decision making, says Holmes.

The first is what psychologists call the "urgency effect," which is basically the tendency to jump to conclusions. The second is the "permanence effect" -- a stubborn tendency to stick with your beliefs and not change your mind, even in the face of contradictory evidence. Both of these effects result from your brain trying to avoid feelings of uncertainty.

If you have a high need for closure, research suggests you should be careful making decisions, especially in times of fatigue or stress.

Ana Swanson writing in the Washington Post

avoiding the ditches

Make your goal a readiness to deal with new and developing circumstances--instead of simply avoiding any possibility of failure by trying to control which circumstances you are willing to deal with. Chasing the latest fade (simply because it is new) or ignoring what’s going on around us (and thus becoming irrelevant to the conversation) are two extreme temptations. We can fall into these ditches in an attempt to avoid regularly thinking hard about life and deal with the uncertainty that surrounds us. To stay on the road of maturity, we have to allow for ambiguity and endure that nagging (and sometimes frightening feeling) about what may come our way.

Stephen Goforth

Coming to terms with the unknown

A Dutch experiment gave subjects a series of 20 jolts of electricity. The group was divided between those who knew they were getting 20 strong shocks and those who were told they would receive 17 mild shocks and 3 intense jolts. The second group wasn't told which shock was coming when.

The researchers found the group that did not know what was coming had a higher level of anxiety - even though they received fewer hits than the other group. The group facing uncertainty sweated more and their hearts beat faster.

Oddly enough, the anticipation of the unknown creates more stress for us than knowing something bad is going to happen to us. We prefer knowing the bad news is a sure thing over suspecting there may be bad news to come.

It’s hard to come to terms with the unknown. When we know what we are facing, we can go ahead and grieve and move forward. But when we don’t know whether to grieve or not, or how much to grieve, we are stuck in the land of uncertainty.

Stephen Goforth

Ambiguity and narrative

The discomfort with ambiguity and arbitrariness is equally powerful, or more so, in our need for a rational understanding of our lives. We strive to fit the events of our lives into a coherent story that accounts for our circumstances, the things that follow us, and the choices we make. Each of us has a different narrative that has many threads woven into it from our shared culture and experience of being human, as well as many distinct threads that explain the singular events of one's personal past. All these experiences influence what comes to mind in a current situation and the narrative through which you make sense of it: why nobody in my family attended college until me. Why my father never made a fortune in business. Why I'd never want to work in a corporation, or, maybe, why I would never want to work for myself. We gravitate to the narratives that best explain our emotions. In this way, narrative and memory become one. The memories we organize meaningfully become those that are better remembered. Narrative provides not only meaning but also a mental framework for imbuing future experiences andinformation with meaning, in effort shaping new memories to fit our establish constructs of the world and ourselves. The narrative of memory becomes central to our intuitions regarding the judgments we make and the actions we take. Because memory is a shape-shifter, reconciling the competing demands of emotions, suggestions, and narrative, it serves you well to stay open to the fallibility of your certainties: even your most cherished memories may not represent events in the exact way they occurred.

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning