Transitions! Transitions! Explosions! Transitions!
Bruce Feiler talks about how life sometimes knocks us over and down, but we can make the most of those moments and journey on
This summer has been full of transitions for us and they’re going to keep happening over the next few years. We’re starting a couple of pretty cool companies. We’re starting a really cool crime podcast in a week. I started a news blog. Our oldest daughter, Em, is starting a full year at Harvard for a master’s in public policy and just finished her MBA from Dartmouth. Xane started a program (from home) on Friday for some pretty intensive daily therapy.
It's kind of a lot.
It’s kind of a lot of change. And some of it was not voluntary.
Author Bruce Feiler believes that life is full of transitions and by mastering them, we can live more happily despite the fact that they keep coming.
He came to this conclusion by listening to other people’s life stories, collecting them, intentionally thinking about them, collecting 1,000 hours of interviews and 6,000 pages of people from all across the country, from every state.
What he realized, he told Arthur Brooks in a HarvardX interview is “that the linear life is dead.”
“The idea that we’re going to have one job, one relationship, one home, one spirituality, one sexuality, one source of happiness from adolescence to assisted living—like that’s gone.”
He explained that each culture had a sort of shape to its understanding of life. A lot of cultures in the ancient world didn’t think of time as linear. Life and time was cyclical. In Europe in the Middle Ages, he said, “They think life is a staircase up to middle age, and then it’s straight down.”
“That’s no new love at 60, no retiring and opening an Airbnb at 70. Not until 150 years ago did we adopt the idea that life precedes in a series of stages like an industrial factory,” he said in a Tedx Talk.
Erikson had stages of development. Freud had stages of development. Sheehy had stages of development.
“It is hard to overstate how powerful this idea was,” he said, “There’s only one problem. It’s not true.”
Instead, Feiler believes every 12 to 18 months something disrupts our life.
“Three dozen times in our lives, we get in an accident, we move, we start a new job, we get married, we become an empty nester. Most of these we get through relatively easily. We’re actually pretty good at adapting to change,” he said, “but one in ten of those (three to five times in our lives) we get hit by a massive period of change. I call these life quakes.”
But, there are ways, he said, to master life transitions and deal with those quakes.
It’s fascinating stuff. His Tedx Talk is pretty fun because he’s a fantastic storyteller even in that format, and he explains why he went through this journey.
A life quake can be involuntary or voluntary, he said, but to be happy, you have to lean in with those life transitions, make them voluntary and fulfilling, to get unstuck. You have to accept your emotions, understand that life quakes can occur at any time and age (not just on your fiftieth birthday) and “accept your emotions.”
A transition often has fear as a big component. Sadness and shame are also often right up there. You have to deal with those emotions. Some people do that with rituals. Some journal. But you want to deal with them and push through to you get to a place where you try something new and shed old habits and routines and mindsets.
He referenced Lee Wint, “an executive who went through cancer, divorce, and a career change all at the same time, had to shed her habit that whenever she walked in the door, she would open the fridge. She lost sixty pounds. Shedding allows us to make space for what comes next, which is astonishing acts of creativity. At the bottom of our lives, we dance, sing, garden, take up the ukulele.”
And another tip in that talk was to “seek wisdom from others.”
“Perhaps the most painful part of a life transition is that you feel isolate and alone. In fact, one under-discussed reason for the rise of loneliness is the rise in the number of life transitions we all face. Which is why it’s essential that you not be alone, that you share your experience with others,” he said.
Here’s hoping that you can turn those explosions into transitions and into wins, and that you have a great week.
STORIES AND LINKS FROM THIS LAST WEEK.
Parenting Is Sometimes a Drama-Filled Jerk
Dogs Cry Happy Tears When You Come Home Maybe We Should Too
Finding Happiness Despite Death
REFERENCES AND ROUND-UP, YOU CAN LEARN MORE ABOUT THINGS.
Bruce Feiler’s Tedx Talk is pretty remarkable and explains why he went through this journey. You should check it out.
Bruce Feiler’s Tedx Talk
Feiler’s book, Life is in the Transitions.
For more information about this research, see here and here.
Arthur Brooks’ HarvardX course, Managing Happiness.
This is great& Congratulations to Emily also for her degree