Synopsis of an article in Psychology Today by Bruce Feller, Published 23rd April 2020
Bruce Feller is author of six consecutive New York Times best sellers, his latest book is Life in Transitions: Master Change at Any Age. The article published in Psychology Today is an abbreviation from the book.
Bruce identified three takeways about life.
“First, the linear life is dead. The once-routine idea that our lives pass through a uniform set of stages, phases, or “passages,” with predictable crises on birthdays that end in zero, is hopelessly outdated. The notion that we’ll have only one job, one relationship, one sexuality, one spirituality is dead.
Bruce Feiler – Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age
Second, today we live nonlinear lives. My data show that each of us will experience three dozen disruptors in our lives—one every 12 to 18 months. Most of these we get through with relative ease, but one in 10—or three to five in our adult life—become major “lifequakes” that lead to massive life transitions.
My signature finding is that the average length of these transitional phases is five years. That means we spend half our adult life in this unsettled state. You or someone you know is going through one now.”
This is a long article adapted from his book and I hope you will read the whole article as its very interesting, if you are time poor I have summarised his key takeaways below.
There are many disruptors Bruce studied them and found 52 and then he went further to plot and understand when they might impact our lives. He determined that the follow no set pattern. People are likely to experience one of these disruptors every one or two years and one in ten will be so big that the individual will end up undergoing a major life change as a result.
The transitions that come from these disruptors can take time, the average length of time to deal with a major transition can take five years, and if you consider that we may go through as many as five transitions in life. It becomes obvious that we are spending a lot of our life in transition.
“we all need to be the hero of our own story. That’s why we need fairy tales. They teach us how to slay our fears and help us sleep at night. Which is why we keep telling them year after year, bedtime after bedtime. They turn our nightmares into dreams.”
Bruce Feiler – Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age
Read the full article at
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/articles/202004/how-master-change
or the book at
https://www.amazon.com.au/Life-Transitions-Mastering-Change-Any-ebook/dp/B07Y7MNHL1/