Feel depleted but still plough into your next activity without a break?
A transition is the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another.
Some transitions in life we anticipate. We even plan for them.
Some we do not anticipate: an unexpected death in the family; a global epidemic with empty silent streets; 49 ambulances waiting nine hours to deliver their very ill patient to the local hospital.
Life-stage transitions are anticipated: reaching a significant age, becoming a parent, retirement.
Health transitions we don’t exactly rush towards: the slowed, stiff gait of the elderly man pushing his shopping trolley is a warning sign of this possibility.
Then there are role transitions: changing your job, losing your job; the woman I’m currently coaching who has moved from her distinct and co-located single-focus tech role to running a multicultural, multilingual team across borders.
There is the move to a new area or to an unknown country: the family move from Hong Kong to Perth because one parent is now COO at a West Australia mining company.
And then there are the daily, moment to moment transitions.
We can anticipate these.
Every day people lose tremendous amounts of focus, will, and emotional energy by managing transitions poorly. They let depleted energy bleed across from one activity to the next. Feeling depleted they still push on to their next activity without a break. They are so stressed that their well-being gets killed. This slows the production of new brain cells, reduces serotonin and dopamine, and hijacks their amygdala. The result is a frazzled person with decreased memory.
When we change the way we shift from one activity to the next, we revitalise our lives.
The evidence comes from research on high performance habits done by Brendon Burchard, UN Department of Labour, Charles Duhigg – to name a few.
I’ve been able to observe men and women leaders who make a habit of deliberately planning the chunks of their day and its transitions. They use their in-the-day transitions to renew their vitality. They are highly productive people.
You get the idea. Daily transitions are a potentially powerful space of freedom between activities.
Equip yourself to master the transitions in your day, to re-inspire yourself: Register now GENERATE ENERGY: Master Transitions. Four sessions of 90-minutes, grounded in the neuroscience of habit-building. Limited places available. Program begins Tuesday 7 September.