Transitioning to the Magnificent New Normal
We all know we’re not going back to the pre-COVID world. The year 2020 will forever be known as the initiation into the transition.
But transition to what? And how painful and scary does it have to be?
Or does it have to be painful at all?
How to Ride Out the Transition
I woke today to ash floating down from an orange sky in the San Francisco Bay Area. There’s a surreal sense that things have gone awry. Words like apocalyptic are being thrown around. The Golden State is definitely burning.
And yet, I am excited. Enthusiastic. Giddy, almost.
Because I know this is what a transition looks like. To paraphrase William Bridges, author of Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes,
Change is easy. Transition is what’s hard.
Transition feels like you’re in the eye of the storm. You can’t actually see what’s moving around you, but you know there’s a ton of havoc being hurled.
I know what that’s like.
As a child growing up near Houston, my family’s lumber and hardware store was command central for the yearly hurricane threats. My dad and his employees would work day and night, to ensure that everyone in town had adequate supplies to board-up their windows and all things essential for riding out a hurricane. In the moment it seemed exciting, novel. When the storm finally hit, we waited out the torrential rains, flash flooding and howling winds, and anticipated the disarray on the other side.
And there was disarray. Downed trees and power lines, flooded creeks and bayous, upended boats, cars thrown into buildings. Homes damaged or destroyed. Lives lost.
And perpetually, when the clean-up happened, things would be different.
Perhaps those early experiences gave me a head start on gaining resilience to face the tough challenges life has brought me, and to anticipate something else on the other side.
What Bill Bridges really said was,
Transition always starts with an ending. To become something else, you have to stop being what you are now; to start doing things a new way, you have to end the way you are doing them now; and to develop a new attitude or outlook, you have to let go of the old.
Seems like we humans have been postponing the inevitable for a bit, not wanting to let go of what wasn’t working. So Mother Nature has been throwing us a perfect storm, now requiring us to let go. But…
What we choose to imagine on the other side of this transition is our choice.
From Chaos comes Order
The science of emergence shows us that following each phase of deconstruction, or chaos, there is a profound transitional window in which a more powerful and evolved higher order coherence can be reached.
If we take advantage of the opportunity.
The emergent new order is surprising in its power, with each part developing expanded capacities distinct from its origin. Emergent processes result in radical novelty, coherence, wholeness, and a powerful dynamic force. (Santa Fe Institute, Peggy Holman, New England Complex Systems Institute).
So while storms create tumult and wreak havoc, the result is change. We just have to be willing to find our way to the other side.
Who Will You Be on the Other Side?
Having endured many transitions in life, I can tell you the best way through is to imagine who you’ll be on the other side, in glorious detail.
If you allow the mystery, open to possibility and follow what’s alive in you, you will emerge as a new version of yourself.
A therapist once shared the most profound wisdom of my life, “Have no expectations. Something will happen.”
I’ve regularly recalled this moment in my 20s when these pearls were dropped in my lap. I was reeling from the heartache of a relationship that ripped off the band-aid under which I’d hidden my childhood trauma.
Yet everything shifted.
To allow the unexpected, we must let go of our beliefs about how it will be.
And, when we create intention, rather than expectation, that something miraculous will emerge, it usually does. Now demonstrated through science (Lynn McTaggart’s Intention Experiment, even reported in Harvard Business Review,) our thoughts become things and we create our reality (Bruce Lipton, The Biology of Belief).
What Will Be Your Intention? Your World Work?
Is it time for all of us to embrace the mystery of possibility? To allow what organically wants to emerge, rooted in the Golden Thread of your purpose?
What if it was not just a new normal, but a Magnificent New Normal?
Join me, and take advantage of this crucial transitional window to become who we’re next meant to be, to live into your greatest contribution and your emerging world work.
It may be one helluva ride there, but I’m betting the afterparty will be worth it.
Let’s take advantage of this critical transitional window and imagine who we will become.
I’m inviting you to join me and my friend Jeffrey Smith, host of the transformational summit, A Magnificent New Normal. Jeffrey created this event to provide an opportunity for us all to come into alignment and envision what a new normal could look like — together.
Jeffrey has interviewed me and 40 other inspiring luminaries such as Bruce Lipton, Jewel, Lynne Twist, Lynne McTaggart, David Perlmutter, Allison Armstrong, Nina Simons, Katherine Woodward Thomas, Sue Morter, Zach Bush and many more awe-inspiring visionaries!
When you register for the event, there will also be several live events in which you can meet the experts (including me!)
Ready to create your own intention for the Magnificent New Normal? Let’s do it together!
I hope to see you online at A Magnificent New Normal when you register today!
About the Author
Dr. Holly Woods is the Author of a recent #1 Bestseller, The Golden Thread: Where to Find Purpose in the Stages of Your Life. This book will dispel any notion that your life doesn’t matter. [download a free chapter from The Golden Thread here.]
Holly Woods PhD is a visionary who sees deeply into others’ souls. She activates and catalyzes what wants to come alive in people and guides them to manifest their dreams through practical strategies.
Holly brings 30 years of consulting and coaching in human and organizational development and two decades of experience building and scaling business and products to help entrepreneurs, visionaries and innovators create impact. She helps clients uncover their nuanced purpose, gain capacities and mindset to attain their unreasonable goals, and align decisions, products, strategies and systems around what matters most. Get a free copy of the tried-and-true Purpose to Impact Roadmap she uses to create that alignment and amplification in the world.
Holly earned a PhD in Human & Organizational Development, is certified as an Integral Master Coach®, Purpose Guide®, Professional Mediator and Facilitator, Master Energy Practitioner, and is a Stages of Consciousness developmental practitioner.
Connect at Holly Woods Coaching or schedule a 30 minute Strategy session.
