My experience started when I found myself feeling lethargic, without energy, motivation or a sense of purpose. As someone who is usually self-directed, motivated, and focused, I was distressed.
At first, I tried to force myself to work but that only intensified my sense of inertia. The more I tried to work, the worse I felt. Like being stuck in quicksand, the more I struggled, the deeper I sank.
Next, I tried to avoid the discomfort I was experiencing by losing myself in activities that kept me in my head and out of my emotions. I organized my desk, went through old emails, and played games of logic, like sudoku, solitaire and crossword puzzles. While that provided me with a temporary diversion, it was not helpful in the long run.
Up until that point, I had been viewing the changes I was experiencing as negative and threatening. I felt like I was stuck in a rut. But, I realized that rather than leaving me feeling better, trying to resist and avoid what was happening left me feeling trapped and powerless. I realized I needed to stop struggling against whatever was happening. I began to reframe what was happening to me as a transition I was going through rather than a rut I was stuck in. I realized that I was in that neutral place of shifting gears from one way of being to another. The simple act of reframing my experience as a transition left me feeling better already.
Read about Sitting in Ambiguity in Part 3 in the Change, Transition, and Transformation Series.