Summary
When you are born into a generation that tells you life comes in phases, you’d be dumbfounded when your life seems to be out of order. And why is that? Because life is in the transitions. If you believe so or would like to know why it is so, this book is for you. From beginning to end, you’d glean insights on how to enjoy the unpredictability of life in a way you never thought possible.
Quotes from the book
Life is the story you tell yourself.
The proper response to a setback is a story.
“All family narratives take one of three shapes,” Marshall explained. First is the ascending family narrative: We came for nothing, we worked hard, we made it big. Next, the descending narrative: We used to have it all. Then we lost everything. “The most beautiful narrative,” he continued, “is the third one.” It’s called the oscillating family narrative. We’ve had ups and downs in our family. Your grandfather was vice president of the bank, but his house burned down. Your aunt was the first girl to go to college, but she got breast cancer. Children who know that lives take all different shapes are much better equipped to face life’s inevitable disruptions.
Stories stitch us to one another, knit generation to generation, embolden us to take risk to improve our lives when things seem most unhopeful.
Stories stitch us to one another.
We’ve been led to believe that our lives will always ascend, for example, and are shocked to discover they oscillate instead.
The linear life is dead.
The nonlinear life involves more life transitions.
Life transitions are a skill we can, and must, master.
Our lives no longer follow the traditional, linear path.
…the world no longer adheres to predictable, linear mandates. Instead, life is filled with chaos and complexity, periods of order and disorder, linearity and nonlinearity. In place of steady lines, observers now see loops, spirals, wobbles, fractals, twists, tangles, and turnabouts.
William James, the father of modern psychology, said it best nearly a century and a half ago, and his wisdom has been sadly forgotten. Life is in the transitions.
Life is in the transitions.
Worldviews on how one life event influences the next:
1. Cyclical
The highest form of living was not to forge your own path — to be the hero of your own story — but to reexperience what already happened — to replicate the universal story.
2. Linear
Life is a series of ages, phases, or stages.
Individuals were expected to climb through their early lives, peak in the middle, and then slowly decline. Men and women had their own staircases, but the general shape was the same: Children play, those in their prime work, the old hobble. What’s striking is that unlike more recent paradigms, here middle age is the pinnacle.
You have only one shot, and it’s downhill from there.
3. Nonlinear
(The) expectation that life will proceed in an orderly, predictable manner is a significant source of dissatisfaction.
It was inevitable that as humans started tracking their day by the clock, they began tracking their lives by the clock as well.
The butterfly effect: Tiny influences in one part of the system can transform the outcome in other parts.
Linear thinking, writes physicist F. David Peat, views the world in terms of quantification, symmetry, mechanism; nonlinear thinking frees us from those confines. “We begin to envision the world as a flux of patterns enlivened with sudden turns, strange mirrors, subtle and surprising relationships.”
James Gleick, an early chronicler of this new science of chaos, wrote: “Nonlinearity means that the act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules.” It’s like walking through a maze whose walls rearrange themselves with each step you take.
As one neuroscientist put it, “The brain remodels itself throughout life.”
Disruptors are a fact of life–and a fact of all decades of life. They adhere to no biological clock, no social clock, and no artificial clock. They toil on their own schedule.
For better or worse, we live in a time when most of our stories start with I not we.
Three primary factors why we remake our lives:
1. Timing. Sometimes a disruptor comes along at a moment of particular vulnerability, exhaustion, or frustration and provides just enough spark to ignite a major change.
2. Disruptors fall at the end of a long string of disruptors. It’s the last straw.
3. Disruptors seem to clump together. There’s a confluence of destabilizing events that collectively create even more instability. It’s a pileup.
We are called upon to answer life’s ultimate questions: What kind of person do I want to be? What story do I want to tell? What gives me meaning?
If the symptoms of meaninglessness were alienation and emptiness, the balm was fulfillment and personal sense-making.
And the central task of every individual is to make your own meaning. There is no single formula.
Three key ingredients of a well-balanced life (ABC’s of meaning):
A is agency — autonomy, freedom, creativity, mastery; the belief that you can impact the world around you
B is belonging — relationships, community, friends, family; the people that surround and nurture you
C is cause — a calling, a mission, a direction, a purpose; a transcendent commitment beyond yourself that makes your life worthwhile
Three strands of our narrative identity:
me story — the one in which we’re the hero, the doer, the creator; we exercise agency and, in return, feel fulfilled
we story — the one in which we’re part of a community, a family, a team; we belong to a group and, in turn, feel needed
thee story — the one in which we’re serving an ideal, a faith, a cause; we give of ourselves to others and, by extension, feel part of something larger
Lifequake: a forceful burst of change that leads to a period of upheaval, transition, and renewal.
Three phases of transition (according to Vann Gennep):
Separation — when you leave the comforts of the old place
Margin — when you isolate yourself in the neutral zone
Incorporation — when you rejoin civilized life by entering the new space
Tools for navigating life transitions (because there’s no single way through a transition):
1. Accept it: Identify your emotions
2. Mark it: Ritualize the change
3. Shed it: Give up old mindsets
4. Create it: Try new things
5. Share it: Seek wisdom from others
6. Launch it: Unveil your new self
7. Tell it: Compose a fresh story
First, most people use a number of these tools, either instinctually or because they’ve worked on them; no one uses all seven. Everyone has room to grow. Second, the tools are rarely used in sequence. The first two–identifying your emotions and ritualizing the change–are broadly associated with the long goodbye. The next two–giving up old mindsets and trying new things–generally happen in the messy middle. The final two–unveiling your new self and composing a fresh story–usually happen during the new beginning. The fifth tool–seeking wisdom from others–tends to float. Still, even this sequence is not rigid. Like every other aspect of the nonlinear life, the transition toolkit gets employed out of order. Finally, only you can decide which tools you most need to work on. In the chapters to come, we’re going to explore these tools one at a time, but keep in mind, there is no single formula.
jessa 