William Bridges calls them “new beginnings,” but it’s actually the final stage in a three-part map of transition.
First comes the ending. Then comes the middle bit: the “neutral zone,” which is neither here and now, nor back where you were. Only then, with luck and patience and perhaps some desperation, comes the new.
We Want Transitions To Be Decisive
Bridges noted that there were people who attended his seminars on Life Transitions, who were longing for the next chapter to begin, but who were actually stuck in phase two, the Neutral Zone. They wanted the new beginning right now and for it to start with certainty, with clarity, with something decisive. Like switching on an iPhone, or the way a baby’s life begins in Hollywood films, with a slap and a scream.
But change and new life aren’t like that, not in therapy, nor in life. New beginnings rarely arrive with a headline or a marching band. They creep in through a side door when you’re distracted. They almost feel like accidents at first.
You missed your train and got chatting to someone on the platform who later became your closest friend. You applied for a job you weren’t quite qualified for, and it changed your life. You said yes to something that scared you, or no to something that didn’t, and everything began to shift.
Looking back, these stories take on a narrative shape and can even sound guided from above, as though some unseen hand was shuffling the cards just so. Even the most rational, most atheist of my friends will sometimes refer to “the universe” as though it’s a person with an agenda. “The universe didn’t want me to go through with it,” they’ll say. Or, “I don’t know, it just wasn’t meant to be.”
Maybe they’re right of course. I know it can feel like that.
Real New Beginnings Are Often Subtle
Because real beginnings often start long before we notice them. They show up as longing. As fantasy. As those half-formed daydreams, we’re quick to dismiss because they seem impractical or embarrassing or impossible.
When I was thirty, I moved to West Cornwall. I loved it, the place, the light, the cold sea, the slightly desolate beauty of the coastline in March. But very quickly I realised I needed two things: work and people. The first was obvious. The second was less so, but just as pressing.
The work came, oddly enough, through a dream. Or a half-dream, that in-between state where you’re not quite asleep but not entirely awake either. I found myself walking through a lush Himalayan gardens, overgrown and mysterious, like something from Rebecca. Rhododendrons and bamboo and mossy stone steps leading up to a house. A house where I worked.
Shortly afterwards, I took a job as a cook at a retreat centre in a valley beyond Penzance, which had exactly this kind of garden. I was there for seven years and met dozens of interesting, quirky, inspiring people. Many of them were therapists and that led directly to my first therapy training.
The sense of friendship and community came through a conversation with my oldest friend Nicola. “You like acting” she said. “Why not ring up the local amateur theatre company?” I did and that led to many summer productions at the Minack, along with winter shows at the local Acorn Theatre. I acted, helped run things, made real friends, found community and an unknown need for creativity was also met.
New Beginnings Can Arrive Stealthily
That, I think, is how most real new beginnings begin. Not through a five-step plan or a mission statement, but through a slight nudge or a feeling or a dream you half-dismiss. A quiet suggestion from someone who sees something you’ve missed.
Bridges wrote, “To act on what we really want is the same as saying, ‘I, a unique person, exist.’” It’s not about indulgence. It’s about honesty. To act on a deep longing, especially when it doesn’t yet make sense, is to reclaim your life. This stage requires autonomy and being willing to step forward, even when you can’t yet see the path.
Plenty of well-known people have described this sort of sideways beginning. Tilda Swinton, for example, has spoken about how she stumbled into acting by accident, while at university studying politics. “I didn’t mean to become an actor,” she said. “I was just trying to avoid writing essays.” Now she’s one of the most singular screen presences in Europe.
New Beginnings Can Feel Like A Return Home
Bridges talks about the final part of a transition as not just a beginning, but a “return home.” Not to the old life, but to something essential that’s been with you all along. You re-encounter a part of yourself that was buried or exiled or simply forgotten. You end up back in touch with what matters.
“We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
I’ve seen this in therapy many times. The person who rediscovers something they loved doing as a teenager. The client who says, “I feel like myself again.” That’s not regression though. It’s integration.
Beginnings aren’t always shiny. They rarely come on time. But if you learn to listen for them, they do arrive. Not when you clap your hands or shout “I’m ready.” Often they come only once you’ve sat in the mess for longer than you’d like. But eventually they come. And when they do, they usually feel both new and familiar. Like waking up in a house you’ve never seen before, and realising, oddly, that it already feels like home.
