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LIFE TRANSITIONS OVERVIEW THE JOURNEY THROUGH OUR LIFE

During life transitions we are seeking not just the how but the why in our life.

When we are clear about the WHY then our actions flow freely and outcomes are embraced with ease.

 

Life Transitions

For some people a form of crisis will have created the need to ask Is This It and for others such a statement will have come simply from a time to reflect on what they have achieved to this point in their life and what more they can express.

I have focused on personal transformation and philosophy of awareness from over 35 years working experience from a background in clinical psychology; psychotherapy, counselling and business mentoring on the powerful connection with true self to create positive life transitions.

My work is to provide you with accessible, down to earth understanding of the variety of approaches which you can readily explore to understand where you are now at this stage in you life and where we want to go with your future True Self expression.

There is no teaching, but we recognise how we are all born into this life not to learn but to express who we really are and what we really know.

For some a all powerful life transitions involves the death of someone we love. I trained and have been working in bereavement counselling since 1982 and I have a dedicated page relating to this work which you can access by following this link.

YOUR LIFE STYLE AND YOUR MIND STYLE

FRIENDS > WISDOM > CAREER > WEALTH > HEALTH > FAMILY > LOVE

We progress through various stages in this, the journey of OUR life and embrace both the positives through which we connect with our inner wisdom. This is a natural and all important process but how many people take the time to stop and positively reflect? People have consulted me to share a safe space to positively embrace those elements contained in their life and to positively let go of elements borrowed from others or situations around them.

Everyone embraces transitional change in their life and the journey towards such change may result from a list of different issues which inititate such positive self reflection.

The death of one we love; the loss of a role be that in work - within society - within our family or within our sense of connection with self may have occured.

It may be that we have ended an important relationship or that we are looking for a relationship in our lives. Loss of health and wellness be this physical or psychological.

Or, and most importantly, such reflection may be the result of achievement beyond our wildest dreams for as we age we embrace a completely different perspective on life which now has to be included in our life. We let go of false ideas.

TRANSITIONS CAN CREATE A TIME OF FEELING LOST > UNSURE > CONFUSED > DISORIENTED > LACK OF CLARITY >

NATURAL STAGES OF TRANSITION

From my training and early work in 1981 I have held fast to what I learned and there are clear Stages of Growth mental and enegetic or spiritual development and the movement through these stages is to progress in our journey through life.

Naturally, as we pass through each stage there may be difficult periods of transition where we have the opportunity to learn and mature at that stage in the process. I have worked with people to acknowledge and work through the all important issues which each successive stage puts forward so we can lead a clear human as well as energetic expression.

I am going to focus on the stages from our late teenage years to post retirement and the ages are estimates given how our personality and parallel lives mean that we vary in the ages relating to each stage.

Now for the first stage 1 - personal autonomy and exploring choices which emerges between the ages of 18 to 26.

In this stage we have left childhood and are now free to explore based on independence from our family. We are developing an adult identity separate from parents and those in our childhood. We explore totally new relationships which include romantic roles; professional roles, we develop new peer groups and a whole selection of new friends.

However, we come and go as we explore taking on new roles and are open to what others around us reflect back. The good and the not so good.

We are still young and so there seems lots of time ahead to change our minds in terms of job, where we live, plans to marry or not to marry, which friends we want to have in our life, our key values and our identity. We are defining ourselves as individuals for a foundation to our future life.

The second stage is early Adult transition between the age of 27 to 31. From my clinical as well as personal experience this is often a period of significant turmoil - of looking at who we are becoming and asking lots of questions about the journey we have explored so far and what we want for this next stage of our future.

We explore and often question many of the earlier choices we made and uppermost in our mind is did we make the right decisions? Time is passing and we are aware of that in terms of making changes or are our decisions being fixed and becoming permanent. For example, 'do we want to make our home, our career direction or romantic relationship permanent? Will we or not settle down and have a family? Is time running out?

The mid life crisis we read or hear about in the media later in our life is appearing in outline at this stage in our life as we rethink our earlier decisions in light of holding on to them or letting them go.

Stage 3 naturally now focuses on making commitments and emerges during the age of 32 to 42. Interestingly this is a period in our life of relative order and stability where we put into practice the life choices which we made during our young adult transitional phase. We settle down into deeper commitments involving work, family, and community. We reflect and focus on what we have accomplished in work realising we have become the person we aimed for and feel a sense of achievement. By now we have developed a clear sense of self and defined our identity at this point in our life and explore use this to focus on the final dream of what we want to achieve in our life and we invest a lot of energy to achieve that future dream.

Now let's focus on stage 4 - the all powerful mid life transition between the age of 42 to 48. As you may have read in the press at this stage in our life we tend to question everything all over again. If we have not achieved our dreams we explore why not. We are confident and open to asking if they were really the right dreams for us and if we have achieved our dreams we look at what values we might have neglected in their pursuit. Basically 'was it really worth it after all???

Either way this is a time for many people where they are disillusioned with their life at this stage and naturally feelings of resentment leading to making changes to create a realignment usually takes place including recognitions and re-balancing of key issues such as:

Immortality versus Mortality - whilst people often know intellectually and emotionally they seem to feel immortal until, in mid life, we realise that we have moved half way through the years composing our life and so we naturally want to make sure that we make the best of what remains. This requires our revising priorities and also re-examining our values which we place on our life with one big, powerful focus on placing less emphasis on values we have already achieved and more emphasis on those that we may have neglected.

Constructive versus Destructive. Up until our mid life most of us fool ourselves that our behaviour has been constructive whilst we had to deal with other people's destructive behaviour. In mid life we become uncomfortable when we realise how we engaged in our own share of destructive as well as constructive behaviour. For many, naturally, such an insight is painful but an essential element we have to embrace if we want to continue growing intellectually and energetically.

Nurturing versus Aggressive. Whether we have focused on aggressive lifestyles or nurturing looking after others rather than ourselves in mid-life we often want to re-balance.
Refusing to both acknowledge or even emotionally and mentally experience our mid life anxieties and questions or, as for many people to reverse and return to behaving like we did in our twenties, is the foundation for getting stuck at this all important stage in our life. Getting stuck will definitely create problems for our progressing into the next stages of our future life.

Now we focus on stage five which is basically about leaving a legacy and emerges between the ages of 49 to 65.
As I write, at the age of nearing 6o, I can assure you how this can be one of the most productive of all life stages. Most people usually are at the peak of our matured abilities and if the issues of mid-life transition have been acknowledged and worked on then in this period of our life we can make our greatest contribution to both our own life as well as to the lives of others.

Now we focus on what really matters to us, on supporting and developing younger people, focusing on our community, essentially we are aware of focusing on leaving a personal legacy that really makes things better for people and on accomplishing values that our maturing and greater energetic or spiritual connection tell us have the most TRUE meaning in the overall scheme of life and living it.

The final stage 6 is energetic or spiritual the final part of a play, film, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved. Essentially this is the stage of tidying things up, of completing the design of what we want to become, of finalizing our growth and assessing or fine tuning the person we made of ourselves in this parallel life expression. This stage can go on for many years and for some people they resolve earlier issues whereas sadly for some people their cynical view of their life means that there is no resolution.

We may move into this stage sooner or later depending on how rapidly we have worked with earlier stages in our life - how open, if you like; we were to going beyond our narrow view of self.

We are engaging with the limitations of life, our self expression in this life and the fact that time is passing and we are engaging with our personal mortality. We can honestly and expansively look at the ultimate meaning of our life and also the lives of others in a larger, broader context.

We wish to pass whatever wisdom we have gained in our journey on to others and at the same time we expansively see and accept who people are in our life. Our sense of community continually expands as we prepare for the survival of our spirit, our unique energy expression beyond this mortal life.

There is more beyond our human intellect and our physical life and we understand the meaning in our life to surpass money, day to day recognition from roles we planned to completion in helping others around us to reach such an understanding. How life is never ending learning by reaching plateaus and finding a need for new challenges.

There are many who received high levels of material recognition and reward but appear frozen, unhappy and stagnated in a lower level life whereas others who went within reach a high level of development without material recognition. There is nothing wrong with material success and recognition as long as it is in balance and doesn't distract us from the more enduring realities and challenges of our inner life.


KEY ISSUES FROM RESEARCH which must be addressed and resolved at each life stage for a rewarding destination.


STAGE 1 - Autonomy / Tentative Choices
(18-26)

KEY ISSUES
Autonomy versus dependence. Tentative versus lasting choices -
SELF IMAGE
- Developing a sense of identity as separate from parents and childhood peer groups -
GOAL FOCUS
- Defining self as an individual and establishing an initial life style -
RELATIONSHIP
- testing out new relationships (.e.g. love interests, peer groups and friends) -
COMMUNITY
- realigning focus from family or origin to new peers and groups.

STAGE 2- young adult Transition (27-31)
KEY ISSUES
- Turmoil versus Certainty. Settling down versus Keeping things open
SELF IMAGE questioning sense of self and who/what we want to become
GOAL FOCUS
re-assessing initial life style and making more permanent choices / commitments
RELATIONSHIPS
sorting out and deciding which relationships will become more permanent -
COMMUNITY
rethinking and evaluating commitments and connection


STAGE 3 - Making commitments (32 to 40)
KEY ISSUES
master versus apprentice. Permanent versus tentative choices
SELF IMAGE
firming up/establishing a more permanent sense of self and who/what we want to become.
GOAL FOCUS
deciding a life direction and defining/aggressively pursuing a dream of what we want to accomplish in life.
RELATIONSHIPS
making more permanent commitments to love relationships, friends and peers.
COMMUNITY
establishing more permanent connections and community ties/responsibilities.



STAGE 4 - Midlife transition (41 to 48)
KEY ISSUES
Resolving key polarities Immortality versus Mortality, Constructive versus Destructive, nurturing versus aggressive
SELF IMAGE
re-examining realities of projected ego and image versus true self and struggling to define/accept true self. GOAL FOCUS questioning the dream whether or not it was achieved and developing a more mature sense of what is really important.
RELATIONSHIPS
Recognising/acknowledging ones own negative, as well as positive, impact on relationships and correcting course for deeper, more authentic connections. COMMUNITY Disengaging from groups and cultural pressures/norms to re-evaluate and restructure priorities.



STAGE 5 - Leaving a Legacy (49 to 65)
KEY ISSUES
Contribution versus personal benefit, others versus self centred, Social versus independent accomplishments
SELF IMAGE
Letting go of earlier inaccurate ego images and accepting oneself as worthwhile being with weaknesses as well as strengths.
GOAL FOCUS
Making the best of the time one has left to help others and leave a positive legacy.
RELATIONSHIPS
settling into more realistic and rewarding relationships based on recognising/forgiving each other's imperfections as human and helping each other grow. COMMUNITY re-engagement on a deeper, more objective less driven and more productive level with family, friends and society.



Stage 6 - Spiritual overview (66 and beyond)
KEY ISSUES
Hope versus despair Survival of spirit versus mortality Surrender versus control
SELF IMAGE
Accepting self as dependent on wisdom greater than one's own, recognising that wisdom as benevolent, and submitting ones self and life to that wisdoms will.
GOAL FOCUS
tying things up and completing the development of the person/spiritual being we want to become RELATIONSHIPS accepting others and recognising/respecting humankinds diversity as part of that greater wisdoms plan COMMUNITY recognising that life is only part of a larger, more enduing spiritual community and helping others understand that.

Where are you now?

 

MAKING CONTACT TO DISCUSS AND EXPLORE WITH AN INITIAL SESSION

 

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