Transitions: managing personal and organisational change + Stress: signs and strategies

Have you, your family or friends had any major changes in your work or personal life in the past year? Or do you plan and manage changes for your staff and organisation? If so you are likely to be well aware of the hazards and opportunities of coping with change and the process psychologists call transition, although you may not know it by this name.
Transitions affect us all, up to 10-20 times in our lifetime after major life-events. Coping with change has been a fundamental survival issue for millennia. So human beings have evolved a remarkable mechanism for adapting to trauma and changes. Small changes can be overcome by learning. Larger changes may challenge our identity and involve letting go of deeply held hopes or beliefs.
Transitions enable us to make fundamental changes to how we see the world and respond creatively to our new reality, good or bad. They happen spontaneously. But because they take 6-12 months or more to work through most people are unaware of the process.
Transitions offer crucial opportunities for personal and career development – the human equivalent of animals that have to shed their skins to grow. But they also involve a hazardous phase that can go wrong. The transition process offers a template for understanding the stages of personal change. We cannot avoid this process but we can learn how to make the best of it for our work and personal life.
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