Life transitions invite anxiety. There’s no way around it. But this kind of anxiety is actually good for you.
What? Did I just say anxiety is good?
To be clear, anxiety comes in different varieties. Clinical anxiety is an acute disorder that warrants professional treatment. But low levels of anxiety are a regular feature of daily experience. Anxiety arises whenever we are asked—or forced—to step outside our comfort zone. Life transitions—even positive ones - are anything but comfortable.
Transition offers opportunity for growth. And growth causes anxiety.
Here are 4-steps negotiating life transitions with ease:
1. Identify the challenge
What are you transitioning from? What do you need to release? Start where you are; get present and honest with yourself about what’s going on. Most of the messages we get from the environment pass under out radar. So pay attention to your thoughts and don’t necessarily believe all of them. Own up to what it is you’d like to release or invite into your life, and ask for it. If you are not clear, ask for clarity.
2. Bring awareness to the situation
This nature of mind is only accessible in the present moment. The easiest way to access it is through coming back to the breath. A mindfulness practice like sitting meditation is essentially a tool to train the mind to be present. Find a method and develop the habit of coming back to your experience in the present moment. Click here for a library of guided meditations.
3. Healing through feeling
Identify your style of checking out. We all have ways of dealing with the stress of life, some more helpful and healthy than others. Get to know your habitual patterns by observing your experience - your thoughts, reactions, physical sensations and storylines associated with these experiences. Recognize the emotions that cause you to contract. Notice your resistance—your urge to check out or numb an emotion. Identify blocks and obstacles and fears. Keep coming back to sensations in the body. Here is a short guided practice to help you do this:
4. Let go and allow for the unexpected
This last step is the most important: to get out of your own way! This is where your intention gets plugged in to something larger than you. You are not the driver. You don’t need to fix, explain or control the outcome. You can set the course by visualizing your intention, but you have to eventually give up the illusion of being in control. Open to magic.
Whatever life transition you are going through will be initiated by some sort of message, and often these messages come in the form of obstacles. The obstacle IS your invitation to transition, like a friendly hand held out to help you across the stream. Negotiating life transitions with ease is taking the hand, confronting the momentary anxiety and discovering where it wants to take you. You know what you are stepping away from, but there is a moment after stepping, before the next foothold becomes apparent, where you just have to wait and trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. You are.
Change is rarely ease-y, but when we struggle against it we cause more suffering. Learning to bring a sense of ease to the process of growth is a skill that can be developed. It is not a quick-fix “pill” to make the pain go away. When you learn to stay with your process, and tolerate the inconvenience of difficult emotions like anxiety, then —and only then—will you invite your heart-felt mission to manifest.
