Transitions

Whether you’re stepping into a leadership role, exploring a new industry, or redefining your path after a pause, transitions are a natural—and exciting—part of professional growth.

But let’s be honest: while making these changes can be exciting, they can also feel overwhelming and be accompanied by uncertainty and self-doubt.

Here’s the thing: navigating transitions successfully is all about blending emotional resilience, strategic planning, and a bit of bold reinvention.

A useful and practical tool for tackling change is William Bridges’ framework from Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes which offers invaluable insights into navigating transitions with confidence and clarity. He breaks transitions into three key stages:
1. Letting go of the old
2. Embracing the messy “in-between”
3. Stepping into your new beginning

By understanding the emotional stages of a transition, building a strong support network, and rebranding yourself for success, you can embrace change as an opportunity for reinvention.

To thrive during these transitions and embrace change as an opportunity for reinvention, it is essential to take charge of your professional brand and reimagine how you show up in the world.

Here are two things you can do to start the journey:
1. Identify Your Core Strengths:

What skills make you stand out? Think about leadership, problem-solving, or communication—things that transfer across industries.
2. Craft Your Personal Pitch:

Practice telling your story. Who are you? What have you accomplished? And most importantly, where are you headed?

Pro Tip: Write a short career story about your journey so far. Share it with a mentor or trusted colleague to get feedback and refine your narrative.

And if you want support, let’s work together! I can help you gain clarity and confidence to make the transition you desire with grace and ease.

Be a Doer not a Dreamer

“Dreams are lovely. But they are just dreams. Fleeting, ephemeral, pretty. But dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change. So, lesson one, I guess is, ditch the dream and be a doer…” – Shonda Rhimes

Never Regret

Regret can be an unwanted companion in life, whispering to you about what went wrong or what you missed out on and keeping you stuck in the “what could have been” loop.

Constant regret is tiring, and if not used well can be detrimental to your emotional well-being by dragging you down and fuelling feelings of guilt, sadness, and sometimes even self-loathing.

So, what could you do instead.

I suggest that a more useful approach to dealing with regret is to acknowledge the feeling, extract the lessons it offers, and then consciously let it go and move forward.

And why is this important? Because of two things:

1. Being preoccupied with regret can prevent you from seeing opportunities in the present moment and make you hesitant to take new risks or try new possibilities. You end up missing out on the opportunities right in front of you.

2. Regret diminishes learning and growth because if you’re drowning in regret, you miss the chance to understand what went wrong, why it went wrong and how you can grow from it. You miss out on the wisdom mistakes can provide.

So, when regret pays you a visit, don’t dwell there. Instead, acknowledge the feeling as an opportunity to learn, extract the lessons and move forward with your new found knowledge.

Daring Greatly

Ted Roosevelt once said…

“It is not the critic who counts;

not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;

who strives valiantly;

who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;

but who does actually strive to do the deeds;

who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions;

who spends himself in a worthy cause;

who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,

and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,

so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The Power of Questions

Albert Einstein once said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

A study by the Harvard Business Review found that the most successful leaders are those who ask the most questions. These leaders are more likely to uncover innovative solutions and inspire their teams to think critically.

Research published in the Journal of Educational Psychology highlights that students who ask more questions tend to have higher academic achievements and better problem-solving skills.

What are some benefits of asking questions?

There are many benefits. Asking questions can:

challenge assumptions and ingrained beliefs,
foster curiosity and drive innovation,
support informed decision-making,
enable the exploration of diverse perspectives,
improve communication and build shared understanding
enable self-reflection and learning,
encourage deeper thinking, and
aid in problem solving.

Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, exemplifies this with her mantra, “The more you ask ‘why,’ the more things become normal. When ‘why’ becomes normal, you start thinking differently, coming up with new ideas, new ways to solve problems.”

Are there good questions and bad questions?

Rather than ask Yes/No questions, we’re encouraged to ask open-ended questions, those that start with WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHY, WHEN and How. The latter are considered powerful question because they open the conversation, whereas closed questions, those leading to Yes/No answers, close the conversation

The magic of questions is in asking boldly and listening deeply. And to get better at asking questions, just ask more questions. Try it and see how much insight you get.

As Tony Robbins says, and I paraphrase, the quality of your life depends on the quality of your questions.

About thinking patterns

Did you know that your brain spends 90% of its thinking time focused on the same set of thoughts?

As in, 90% of our undirected thoughts are repeat thoughts, and only 10% are new thoughts. This is based on studies done in the neuroscience and cognitive psychology fields.

This insight is very surprising to me. I thought I was spending my thinking time on expanding my ideas. But what studies are saying is that the brain likes efficiency and therefore forms neural pathways from past experiences and ingrained patterns that lead to repeated thoughts and behaviours.

Our brains, when not directed to a specific task, have a default mode… of thinking about the past, but of the same past events and for creating visions of the future, but it’s the same future vision on repeat.

When we don’t direct the brain to specific things to think about it goes into automatic thinking. The consequences of automatic thinking include reduced creativity because creativity relies on exploring new perspectives. Another consequence is overthinking things and worrying about potential future events or ruminating on past events, which in turn affects our mental wellbeing.

But surely repetitive thinking is good for building knowledge and cementing habits you say. Yes, indeed it is. However, this happens with awareness. When you’re aware of your thinking, you can direct it to productive activities. However, an idle brain will default to repetitive thinking.

The lesson here is to develop self-awareness so you can redirect your brain from the mindless default thinking it does 90% of the time to the more directed thinking that will lead to knowledge, creativity, habit formation and support positive mental health.

Is that what mindfulness and being mindful is all about?

I wonder!

Come on brain, let’s do some directed thinking, the 10%.

Don’t Quit

By Edgar Albert Guest

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow-
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than,
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor’s cup,
And he learned too late when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out-
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit-
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Look Back and Plan Forward

The new year is well underway and like you, I’m hoping that this will be a good year.

I’m hoping that all the pain, frustration, and disappointment of last year will not repeat itself this year.

I’m also hoping that all the joy, success, happiness, laughter, and fulfillment from last year will spread into this year and continue throughout the year.

But I’m not going to rely on hope alone, I want to be able to shape my life this year, I want to captain the ship called My Life.

And the way I do this is by taking the lessons from last year and building on them to shape my actions this year.

So, for those of you who have not done your review of last year and have not spent time deciding what you want from this year, I’m going to share the key questions I use to guide my thinking.

To do this well, find a quiet spot, arm yourself with paper and pen (or the digital equivalent) spend some time looking back and then planning forward.

It’s a great exercise to get clear on what you want and what you don’t want in your life.

Look back and ask…

What went well?
What could I have done differently?

Plan forward and ask…

What can I do more of?
What can I do less of?

Keep asking ‘what else?’ until you have at least 20 responses for each question.

Finally, ask yourself…

What have I learnt?
And what do I want?

Enjoy the insights!

Start Strong!

Hey there Thriver, Happy New Year!

So, are you ready to make 2022 a great, or even an exceptional year?

If your answer is yes, then here’s how…

Step 1: GET CLEAR on what you want to achieve this year

Step 2: CREATE A PLAN to guide your actions

Step 3: FOLLOW THE PLAN to create your results

Very simple really

But not easy

The problem is that most people get stuck, generally on either Step 1 or Step 3

At Step 1 – Lack of clarity will stop you before you even start

At Step 2 – It’s easy to create a plan, but it might be too ambitious or not courageous enough

At Step 3 – With no accountability, you may not follow your plan. This will derail your goals, projects, dreams, wants, habits, experiments or experiences (i.e., your results)

Sometimes you just need to be supported through the process…

Supported to get crystal clear on what results you want to produce or achieve
Supported to create a plan that will fit into, and weather the ups and downs of your real life
Supported to develop a method to measure progress and stay on track

If being supported is what you desire, I invite you to come into my world

Why?

Because I will introduce you to a coaching framework that produces results

EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Come, let me coach you to succeed

Email me at nancy@thriveatwork.com.au so we can get started. Speak soon.

Refuse to be a victim of someone’s negative words