A Roller Coaster Through the Forest - Career Transition - Full Circle 2.0
I left my corporate executive job twenty months ago to enter the second chapter of my career. I figured I’d spend some time following my passionate hobby of building, remodeling, landscaping, tinkering. All the while my subconscious would reflect, would ponder my next move, and then voilà I would move to chapter 2 - a new path.
Instead it was closer to trying to get through a thick dark forest. There were moments of light shining through the trees - oh yes - elation, positive. Then moments of deep darkness where I couldn’t see the sky - oh no - anxiety, depression. Then came a clearing in the trees, sun shining on the meadow. Yes - this must be it - my new calling. Only to realize that although I was in a clearing, the forest continued on and was still all around me. This pattern continued for weeks, turning into months. My goal stayed the same. I will get through this forest. My entire life I had set a goal, charted a path, and made it happen. I would do the same now - keep moving through the forest. OK, so I missed my original deadline of defining the next chapter in 18 months. This is harder than I thought. Friends and family noticed my roller coaster through the forest.
And then I let go.
My son had given me several books to read and I realized setting a goal, charting a path was getting in my way. I stopped. I listened. Not to others, although many tried to help. But to myself. I reflected to the beginning of my college education, retraced the path I had taken and what prompted certain decisions. I tried to uncover what lay underneath. What was the essence of my motivation, when I stripped away my ego, my desire for ever more influential positions and money as a scorecard.
In graduate school I studied Bill Bridge’s work on psychological transitions, about endings, neutral zones, and new beginnings. Built on the change work of Kurt Lewin of unfreezing, movement and refreezing it made sense, but this process is not as clean as it might sound.
Endings - I struggled with my endings. Not so with leaving my job, or changing careers. It was deeper. For 35 years I had built a professional identity, an expertise that I kept nurturing and developing to keep myself relevant in an ever changing tech / corporate world. Now, I was going to leave all that behind. What about all my Big Data and AI certification that I just finished last year. My big realization was — no. I don’t have to leave any of it behind. My graduate degrees, my experiences, are like strands of yarn that weave through the tapestry of my life. Now its time to use those existing strands of yarn, add some new ones and weave a new tapestry.
Neutral Zone - This is where ambiguity reigns and someone who is goal oriented and always focused on creating a path forward can fall into quicksand. And I was stuck and drove everyone around me crazy — until I learned to let the ambiguity wash over me — I created a space for serendipity. In that empty space your mind will make connections, or uncover old connections you had put deep into the recesses of your brain. I realized that I didn’t need to give up my interest in psychology, my interest in creating environments, my interest in VR and AI technology. Then a thought emerged - I went back 33 years to my first ever published paper - in that paper, was the seed of my future then and interestingly also now. The article was published in the Journal of Environment and Behavior. In that article we concluded that results of our study suggest that spaceflight environments are multidimensional, and that to assess habitability we must not only ask, "What is the environment?" and "Who are the environment's occupants?" but also, "What are the conditions and circumstances surrounding the environment's use?
New Beginnings - There in that old article I found the essence of what motivated me for the past 35 years - creating environments that optimized human and organization performance, and now is motivating me for the future. According to Bridges and Lewin new beginnings are never easy. There will be ups and downs as I embark on this new journey. All I can say is that for the first time in 20 months I actually feel like I am out of the forest and I see a clear vista up ahead.