Welcome to the Neutral Zone: Messy and Meaningful
Welcome to the Neutral Zone.
Messy and meaningful.
When you’re looking for something more then getting out of your comfort zone is inevitable.
- leave the safety of what you know
- go deeper into what’s important to you
- make the process purposeful
Change, particularly career changes, personal pivots and entrepreneurial evolutions is never orderly.
It’s a process of transition.
According to William Bridges, the author Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, the stages of transition are:
- Letting go
- The Neutral Zone
- New beginning
The Neutral Zone is full of uncertainty but ripe with possibility.
To survive this part you need to:
- let go of perfection
- embrace playfulness
- practise self-compassion
In the Neutral Zone you’ll be experimenting with new ways of being and doing and so it’s perfectly understandable that you won’t do them perfectly.
Trying, making messy first steps and failing is part of the process.
In the Neutral Zone it’s isn’t clear where you’re going. There’s no specific direction and so it’s important to embrace playfulness or action without a end goal.
Letting go of judgement or need for progress gives you an opportunity to be with experiences and experiment without the pressure to perform.
In the Neutral Zone you’re going to feel uncomfortable.
Not knowing where you’re going and feeling like you’re getting everything wrong will take its toll.
Give yourself a break.
In the grand scheme of things you’re allowed a few mistakes.
It’s what makes you human.
And when you look back on your life you’ll be amused by these mistakes.
Making change means going deep.
Beyond the surface level of what’s comfortable and known.
It’s an exploration of the unknown outside and inside.
It’s messy and won’t always feel safe.
But if you want to do things differently and staying put isn’t an option then you’ll just have to accept the mess.
But it’s all for a purpose.
To get to the other side.
And to explore what more means to you.
Written by someone who hates mess!