Literature in Review
By Richard Barbieri , Ph . D .
Transitions : Making Sense of Life ’ s Changes 25th Anniversary Edition
by William Bridges
Managing Transitions : Making the Most of Change
by William Bridges and Susan Bridges
Da Capo Lifelong Books
The names of some people seem to foreshadow their destinies . How could Lord Russell Brain not have become a neurologist , principal author of Brain ’ s Diseases of the Nervous System , and longtime editor of the neurological medical journal Brain ? Weren ’ t boys named Slaughter and Mercilus born to become fearsome football defenders ? ( Yes , I know , Mercilus isn ’ t spelled the right way , but any time you heard his name called , you heard “ merciless .”)
That ’ s why when I first went looking for a book on helping people manage change , I gravitated toward a pair of books called Transitions and Managing Transitions by William Bridges .* I was even more struck when I found the book ’ s first principle was to distinguish between “ change ” and “ transition .” As he put it , “ Our society confuses them constantly , leading us to imagine that transition is just another word for change . But it isn ’ t ... change is situational . Transition , on the other hand , is psychological . It is not those events , but rather the inner reorientation and self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate any of those changes into your life . Without a transition , a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture .”
His core concept is simple : “ All transitions are composed of ( 1 ) an ending , ( 2 ) a neutral zone , and ( 3 ) a new beginning .” People who have chosen to make a change tend to minimize the importance of endings , while those subjected to a change not of their own making find it “ very hard to admit that a new beginning and a new phase of their life might be at hand .”
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CSEE Connections Fall 2022 Page 15