This little practice may be just what you need when facing a big change.
Listen to this on my podcast at Sound Insight, episode 5.
Sometimes life brings you just what you need when you need it.
Recently, while my colleagues at Fire Inside Leadership were working with a group of leaders inside a client organization, a number of the participants announced significant life changes that meant they would be leaving the organization. As it came time for each one to leave, my colleagues shared a simple practice with them to ease the transition. They invited each leader in the group to speak from the heart to the one who was leaving and share the departing leader’s impact on them as individuals, on the group and on the organization as a whole.
With each departure, repeating this ritual affirmed the power of simply acknowledging and honoring a passage like this. It created a quality in the space that was deeply appreciative, poignant, and even cathartic. It was also healing and enabling.
It was a well-timed reminder because, as leaders and colleagues at Fire Inside Leadership, we were going through a major change of our own.
Why are transitions so difficult and how does honoring help?
Change can be tough, even when it is welcome. And when it is not welcome, it’s even tougher.
A transition, by definition, is not an event. It’s a process. We are always transitioning. But there are some changes that affect us more deeply.
Life transitions are like this – retirements, marriages, pregnancies and births, career changes, aging and death.
What makes transitions so difficult, even when they are purposeful, is that they involve changes to our identity.
They demand that we become someone new or stop becoming who we were in some way. A divorce means that I must stop being a wife or a husband. A new child demands that I become a mother or father. A retirement means I am no longer playing this role or identified by this title. An aging parent demands that I let go of being the one who was cared for and become the caregiver instead.
These identity changes can be edgy. In fact, there is a point in most major transitions that psychologist, Arnold Mindell calls “the edge”. The edge is the space when you are leaving who you were and stepping into who you are ‘not yet’. It can feel like a kind of limbo, where you don’t really know who you are anymore. It can be a time of great stress and fear. We can feel resistance, worry, panic, impatience, anger, or grief. Or sometimes excitement and joy. At these edges, the very best and very worst of our natures is revealed.
There is no ‘right way’ to move through transitions. They take extreme patience. They have their own timetable and their own trajectory. They are, by nature, something to be lived with and into rather than something to be forced.
This is where the practice of honoring can make a big difference. This is not new. We have been doing it for centuries with rituals like birthdays, weddings, and funerals.
It is the practice of taking time to pause and acknowledge what is happening. To express appreciation and gratitude. It is the practice of bestowing meaning on the process of life, growth, and change.
How to practice honoring to support change.
The practice of honoring can be as elaborate as a formal rite of passage or as simple as a connected moment of silence.
When you notice you are struggling with a change, stop. Pause. Be still.
Take the time to appreciate where you are, to forgive yourself for whatever mess you may have made along the way, to be grateful for everyone and everything that brought you to this place. Take the time to honor yourself and your essential humanity in the process.
Do this for you and make it a practice to do it for others who may be moving through change.
Honoring has two parts – giving and receiving. The more difficult for many is receiving. It requires that you put all the inner voices of judgment and disappointment aside, connect and allow the deep appreciation to sink in. To breathe in the acknowledgment and praise and let its healing energy wash over you.
When someone is skilled at hearing and taking in acknowledgment and praise, it magnifies the experience for everyone. Receiving is its own form of honoring.
When we take the time to honor our experience of transition, we make space to appreciate those parts of ourselves we are letting go of and those parts of ourselves we will include and embrace going forward.
When we honor others in transition, we say to them – I see who you are and who you are becoming. And in doing so, we make space for them to let go of their struggle and move forward into the unknown with courage.
This ritual of honoring transitions has become an essential practice, in all the groups we lead. It is difficult to describe how it feels to be in a space where this is happening among a group of skilled and appreciative leaders. Even on video, the space feels deeply connected and poignant.
How we are honoring our own transition.
On April 1st, as leaders at Fire Inside, we crossed our own significant threshold in the growth and evolution of our Company. My two business partners and I, who had founded and built the company, passed the torch to a new generation of leaders. The succession process was a thoughtful and vital transition that has now entered a new phase. It was everything you would expect of a change like this.
We are enormously proud of and grateful to our colleagues, Sandi and Julian, who have committed to take the company and the work forward. We know they will honor the vision, values, and the intent behind what we built, and we are excited to work along side them as they shape and grow it for the future.
And it is bittersweet to cross this threshold.
The night before, as my Partners and I gathered to sign the necessary documents to hand over ownership of Fire Inside, we toasted, we shared memories and we expressed deep appreciation for each other and gratitude for our 18-year business relationship. We honored all that we had built and all the people who had helped us build it including our colleagues who would take it forward. Over the next few days, the honoring continued with gifts, cards and messages of love and appreciation.
A few days later, we began to share the news with clients and stakeholders. We were surprised and delighted by the outpouring of support, congratulations, and enthusiasm for what we were doing and for the impact we have had. It was moving, humbling and inspiring.
Transitions are rarely easy. And yet they are essential to the process of life and growth. We make them easier by giving them meaning and we do that by pressing pause to express our appreciation and our gratitude.
Tell me, what or who needs honoring in your life right now?
I invite you to start that process in the comments below.
