Understanding the Need for and Applying the Cycle of Renewal

The American Dream used to mean a house with a white picket fence, 2.5 children, a station wagon, a dog, and a job that you kept until you retired. That dream ended about 20 years ago. I remember when I first started coaching individuals working for IBM in the mid-'80s, they called it "Mother Blue." They talked about having a dream career that would last their lifetime and provide them with a secure retirement. It was a company where people never had to worry about being laid off.

Soon after that, gradual changes started to happen. They didn't get laid off, but they had to make tough choices about where they would be transferred. They would have to start giving up the comfortable neighborhoods they had lived in for years to move to a new job. It wasn't too long after the closing of the local GM plant that these same IBM people were opting to take early retirements and start new careers when faced with downsizing and unattractive moves.

Where people used to be embarrassed to say that they had more than one or two jobs in their adult career, it has become common for people from the Baby Boomer era to have 4-7 different employers or jobs. Just think of all of the mergers and acquisitions that have changed people's stable careers.

The pace of change is even faster for the Generation Xs and Millennials. The world we face today is a constant flow of shifting options where we need to know what we really want and then try to make it happen. A worldly friend of mine recently sent me a link to a slide show called "Did you Know?", which focuses on the future of global growth, populations, education, and jobs. The show declares that we live in "exponential" times and that the U.S. Department of Labor "estimates that today's learner will have 10-14 jobs by age 38." While I can't verify the accuracy of this show, it does cause you to stop and think.

Frederic Hudson and Pamela McLean in their book "Life Launch" say that "the secret to a resilient life in our kind of world is knowing how to recycle yourself, over and over, letting go of what is no longer you, taking on new strengths, and shaping new chapters for your life, guided by your own emerging vision." They also suggest that the rhythm of stable behaviors and transition behaviors that we accept in our developing childhood years is a basic pattern of our entire life. They see the periods of stability and structure as the "Chapters" of our lives. The transitions link the chapters.

Hudson and McLean also suggest that the basic flow of our lives is a cycle of stable times followed by transitions and that this flow follows a pattern of four predictable phases. See their model of the four phases below:

It is important for us to recognize these different phases and to identify the phase that we are in so that we understand the work we need to do to move ourselves around the cycle and stay renewed. All too often we may confuse the "Doldrums" with having a bad attitude or "Cocooning" with being depressed. The need to withdraw and focus inward is an essential part of making the transition to the next Chapter of our lives.

By accepting the inevitability of change and using the model of the Cycle of Renewal, we can let go of the way that things have been and live creatively, making better choices that will shape our future.