If you're listening to this,
Something in your life may have shifted,
Or is shifting,
Or perhaps you sense that it needs to.
Maybe it's your work,
Maybe it's a relationship,
A place you've called home,
Or a role that wants to find you.
Maybe something was taken away before you were ready,
Or perhaps you made a choice that felt right,
But surprisingly still left you reeling.
Maybe you can't even name what's changed.
Only that something has.
Whatever brought you here.
You're welcome.
I want to share a framework that has genuinely helped thousands of people make sense of what happens when our lives are turned upside down.
It was developed by an American author called William Bridges and it's called the Transition Model.
For the purpose of this talk,
I'm going to use career change as an example,
But as I said earlier,
It can relate to all kinds of changes and transitions in life.
Here's the key insight that makes this model so powerful.
Change and transition are not the same thing.
Change is the external event.
Redundancy,
A restructure,
A resignation.
Whereas transition is the inner journey.
The psychological and emotional process of letting go of one version of yourself and gradually growing into another.
And according to Bridges,
That inner journey always moves through three distinct phases.
Another key point here is that each of these three distinct phases are happening at the same time.
Phase 1.
The End.
It sounds counterintuitive,
Doesn't it,
That a new chapter begins with an ending?
But Bridges was clear,
Every transition starts with letting something go.
When we lose a job or leave one,
We don't just lose a role,
We lose a whole world.
A structure to our days,
Colleagues and identity.
The answer we gave when someone asked.
So,
What do you do?
And that loss is real.
It deserves to be named.
You might feel grief even if you didn't love the job.
You might feel anger or relief,
Or both at once.
You might find yourself replaying conversations,
Second-guessing decisions,
Or waking at 3am with a tight chest and no clear thoughts,
Just a formless kind of dread.
This is not weakness.
This is not failure.
This is what endings can feel like.
William Bridges invites us to let the ending be an ending.
To resist the urge to immediately fill the space with frantic activity or forced positivity.
There's something important in acknowledging this chapter is over and I am changed by it.
If you're in an ending right now.
I want to say gently to you.
You don't have to rush.
Phase 2 William Bridges calls the neutral zone.
This is the one that most people find.
Really uncomfortable.
The neutral zone.
This is the in-between.
You've left where you were,
But you haven't yet arrived anywhere new.
The old identity has gone.
The new one hasn't yet taken shape.
In the context of a work transition.
This might look like weeks or months of uncertainty.
Sending applications into what feels like a void.
Waking up without a meeting to get to.
Wondering who you are without the title,
The salary,
The structure.
It can feel like being lost.
But William Bridges had a different way of seeing it.
He said the neutral zone is not empty,
It is fertile.
It is fur time.
In many cultures and traditions.
There is an understanding that transformation requires a fallow period,
A time when the ground is not producing but is quietly being renewed beneath the surface.
In the neutral zone,
Things you've been too busy to hear can finally make themselves known.
Values you'd pushed aside,
Longings you'd dismissed as impractical.
A quieter voice that says,
I don't just want another job,
I want something different this time.
So if you're in the neutral zone right now,
I'd invite you to resist the pressure.
Internal or external,
To have it all figured out immediately.
Instead ask.
What am I noticing now that I've slowed down?
What feels important.
What do I not want to repeat?
The answers often come quietly.
And they're worth listening to.
They may take time to come.
Phase 3,
The new beginning.
The third phase is the one we're often in a hurry to reach,
The new beginning.
But Bridges was careful to distinguish a new beginning from a fresh start.
A fresh start is just a new situation.
A new beginning is something deeper.
It's a new orientation,
A new sense of who you are and what matters.
In a career transition,
A new beginning might look like stepping into a role that feels genuinely aligned with your values.
Or it might be building something of your own.
Or returning to a familiar field,
But with a completely different relationship to it.
More boundaried,
More purposeful,
More you.
The hallmark of a true new beginning is that it emerges from what the neutral zone taught you.
You're not just reacting to circumstances,
You're choosing more consciously the direction of your next chapter.
And here's what I want you to hold.
New beginnings are rarely the dramatic revelations we hoped for.
They tend to be quieter.
A small decision that feels somehow right.
A conversation that opens a door you hadn't noticed.
A moment of clarity that arrives without fuss.
They often only look like new beginnings in retrospect.
So wherever you are in this process,
In the rawness of an ending,
In the uncertainty of the neutral zone,
Or on the threshold of something new.
I want to leave you with this.
You are not behind.
You are not broken.
You're in transition.
And transition as Bridges understood it,
Is not something that happens to you.
It's something that happens in you.
It's how human beings grow.
Be patient with yourself,
Be curious rather than critical.
And trust that the ground you're standing on,
However unfamiliar it feels right now,
Is exactly where you need to be.
Take a good breath.
Trust that you are doing the work.
You are moving forward.
