In Italy, they have a wonderful expression when lives get an unexpected turn of events: lupus in fabula. It means "the wolf in the fairytale." It is when life seems to be going smoothly, something horrible comes.
Today, the world is experiencing a wolf that has killed more than half a million people and has completely changed the way people live their lives. Learning to master this new normal just may be the most essential life skill everyone needs right now.
But aside from the pandemic, many people face life transitions spurred by back-to-back personal crises like a cancer diagnosis, a near bankruptcy, a suicide attempt and many more.
These "lifequakes" as Bruce Feiler of the New York Times describe it, strike people in the core of their being and create a vacuum that makes people feel frightened, overwhelmed and stuck. Transitioning from a life quake must be done voluntarily.
People have to go through the process of turning their fears and anxiety into renewal and growth. Below are the five tips that anyone in the process of transitioning might use to go through it more efficiently.
1. Begin the transition process
Goodbyes are the hardest. Once a person is in transition, they often feel chaotic, out of control, sluggish or stuck.
Transitions have three phases: long goodbye, messy middle, and the new beginning. The first phase is saying goodbye to your old self, then the second phase is shedding old habits and creating new ones, while the last phase is unveiling the new person within.
These phases need not go in order as each person tends to gravitate to the phase they are best at and slows down in the one they are weakest.
2. Coping with emotions
In a survey conducted by Feiler, 27% said that they felt fear during their transition period. Unsurprisingly, this is the most common emotions felt by the group of people he interviewed, followed by sadness and shame.
Some cope with these emotions by writing them down, or plunged into new tasks. Almost 8 out of 10 said that they turned into rituals such as dancing, singing, hugging, purging, getting a tattoo, or sky-dived. Some even changed their names.
These rituals tend to be effective during long goodbyes as they are statements that a person has gone through a change and are ready for the next challenge.
3. Cast-off bad habits
In the second phase of transition, people shed some things like mindsets, routines, delusions, and dreams. Like the butterfly, when they enter a new phase, they cast off their cocoons and so humans in transition should cast-off parts of their personality or negative behaviors.
Shedding is a way to clear out some parts of a person to make way for new ones.
4. Be creative
During this pandemic, more and more people have indulged themselves in creative activities, such as dancing, cooking, painting, writing poems, thank you notes or diaries. At the moment of destruction, these people respond with creation.
These activities have presented people with a fresh start as they go through life transitions.
5. Don't let wolves interrupt your story, rewrite it
A life transition is an autobiographical occasion in which people could revise and retell their stories with new chapters that they found meaning during their life quakes- which could be positive or negative.
No one controls the stories of anyone's lives but themselves. Instead of seeing life transitions as periods of hardships, people should see them for what they are: a healing period that takes the frightening parts of life to repair them.
