Life Transitions Letter | Edition 02 By Nikki Müller Something happened that I couldn't name.I was given the career opportunity of a lifetime. I had always dreamed of having my own show, on LIVE television, for a globally renowned TV network, to an audience of 200 million viewers across Asia. My Executive Producer, on Fox Sports Asia, sat me down for coffee and asked if I would be interested to be the lead Presenter of our Formula 1 program on primetime. Here was my opportunity to turn my career dreams into reality. I immediately (and uncontrollably) said, “NO!” I actually yelled it, which took us both by surprise. But more importantly, I was perplexed! Why would I walk away from an opportunity that ticked every single box of what I always wanted to accomplish. The reasons for this are for another newsletter. But suffice it to say, in hindsight, my body had recognised that the aspirations of the past may not be aligned with who I was becoming. When I calmed down, I tried to rationalise it by saying it was a financial decision. They weren’t prepared to offer me a salary for full-time work that matched what I was earning in my freelance projects. What happened next wasn't grief exactly. It wasn't fear exactly. It was something flatter than both. A kind of fogginess. Like someone had turned the saturation down on everything I thought I knew about my days, my purpose, my place in things. I didn't have a word for it. I do now. And I want to give that word — those words — to you today. Because one of the most quietly powerful things we can do for ourselves in times of change is to name what we are actually living through. Here's what nobody tells you about change.Change is the event. The restructure. The diagnosis. The relationship ending. The promotion. The loss. The move. Transition is what happens inside you. The psychologist William Bridges spent decades studying why intelligent, capable, resilient people so often struggle through change — even change they chose, even change they wanted. His answer was simple and profound: "Change is situational. Transition is psychological. It is not the events that are the problem, it is the inner reorientation and self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate change into your life." We plan endlessly for the external event. We announce the change, restructure the org chart, close the chapter, start the new job. And then we wonder why it still feels so hard. It feels hard because the real work of transition hasn't even started yet. And that work is internal. Invisible. Deeply personal. And almost entirely unacknowledged in most workplaces, most relationships, and most conversations we have with ourselves. It begins with an ending. And that ending is a grief.Bridges identified something counterintuitive at the heart of every transition: Every transition begins with an ending. Not a beginning. Not an exciting new chapter. An ending first. Always. And that ending is not simply the loss of a role, a relationship, a routine, or a way of life. It is something deeper and more personal than that. It is the loss of who you were in that context. Think about it. When a long career ends, you don't just lose a job. You lose the version of yourself who knew exactly what they were doing when they walked through that door. When a relationship ends, you don't just lose a person. You lose the self that existed inside that relationship — the one who had a place, a role, a sense of being known. When a team is restructured, you don't just lose your reporting line. You lose your identity within that system. Your place in the story. Bridges called this dis-identification — the quiet, destabilising process of losing the roles, relationships, and contexts that told you who you were. It shows up as:
This is not weakness. This is not a failure to adapt. This is your identity doing the slow, necessary work of letting go. And it deserves to be named. It deserves to be witnessed. It deserves your compassion — not your impatience. Then comes the place with no name. And it is the hardest place of all.Once the ending has been acknowledged — really acknowledged, not bypassed or managed or reframed too quickly — you enter what Bridges called the Neutral Zone. This is the in-between. The old is gone. The new has not yet arrived. And you are suspended somewhere between them, in a space that has no map, no landmarks, and no clear timeline. It has been called many things across human history. The mystics called it the dark night of the soul. Anthropologists call it liminal space — from the Latin word for threshold. Ancient cultures built rituals around it, recognising that the passage between identities required a period of emptiness, of withdrawal, of not-yet-knowing. We have largely lost those rituals. And so we pathologise the neutral zone instead. We call it a rut. A funk. A mid-life crisis. Burnout. We tell people to stay busy, think positive, focus on what they can control, look on the bright side. But the neutral zone cannot be bypassed without cost. If we simply try to survive it, we miss the rich opportunity for true growth and transformation. If we are willing to move through the liminality of the neutral zone with enough awareness, language, and support, we can receive what it's trying to offer. Because here is what neuroscience now confirms about this uncomfortable in-between: Your brain is not empty in the neutral zone. It is extraordinarily active. When your sense of self is destabilised — when the narrative you've been living no longer fits — your brain's Default Mode Network, the very system responsible for your sense of identity and self-story, is disrupted. Cortisol rises. Your threat response activates. Sleep, concentration, appetite, and memory are all affected. This is not anxiety. This is not weakness. This is your nervous system doing precisely what it was designed to do — registering that something significant has changed, and beginning the slow neurological work of building new pathways. he neutral zone is where that rewiring happens. The discomfort is not a sign that something is wrong. It is a sign that something is working. But it rarely feels that way from the inside. From the inside, it feels like languishing. On languishing — and why naming it matters more than you think.In 2021, the organisational psychologist Adam Grant gave the world a word for something millions of people were living but couldn't name. Languishing. Not depression. Not flourishing. The neglected middle child of mental health — a kind of joyless, aimless, foggy functioning that sits in the space between okay and not okay. "You're not burned out," Grant wrote. "You're not depressed. You just feel like you're muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windscreen." I want to suggest that languishing is not just a pandemic phenomenon. It is the emotional signature of the neutral zone. It is what it feels like to be between stories — to have lost the old identity without yet finding the new one. And it is especially acute when transitions compound. In many workplaces right now, people are not navigating one transition. They are navigating five. Ten. An unbroken sequence of restructures, leadership changes, strategic pivots amid tech disruptions, and role redefinitions — each one arriving before the last has been processed. Each new ending triggering grief that has nowhere to go, because the organisation has already moved on to announcing the next change. This is chronic neutral zone. And it is exhausting in a way that is very hard to explain because from the outside, everyone is still showing up. Still functioning. Still fine. But underneath, something quieter and more serious is happening. People are losing their sense of who they are at work. What they stand for. What their contribution means. Whether they belong. This is an identity crisis. And it is happening collectively, quietly, and largely without language or support. That is why naming it matters so much. Because you cannot seek support for something you cannot name. You cannot extend compassion to yourself for something you believe you should simply be over by now. You cannot ask for help with something that feels too vague, too internal, too embarrassing to articulate. Giving this experience a name is not indulgent. It is the beginning of finding your way through it. You cannot think your way out of transition. But you can be supported through it.This is where I want to be direct with you. Transition — real transition, the kind that touches identity — is not something to manage alone. It is not a puzzle to solve with the right framework or the right mindset or the right productivity system. It is a human experience that requires human support. This is what I encourge all leaders to acknowledge and act on. That might look like a trusted mentor who has navigated their own endings and can sit with you in yours. It might look like a coach who can help you find language for what you're living and support you in building the bridge to what comes next. It might look like a therapist who can help you understand why this particular transition has activated something older and deeper than the present circumstances. It might simply look like one honest conversation with someone you trust — where you stop performing okay and start telling the truth about where you actually are. The research is unambiguous: people who seek support during transition not only move through it more effectively — they emerge with greater self-awareness, deeper resilience, and a stronger sense of who they are on the other side. Not because support removes the difficulty. But because being witnessed in difficulty changes how we relate to it. You do not have to white-knuckle your way through the neutral zone alone. In fact, trying to do so is one of the things most likely to keep you stuck in it. A new beginning is coming. But it won't fully arrive arrive until you’ve truly sat in the neutral zone long enough to be transformed by it. Your micro-action this week.Choose one of these reflection prompts and sit with it — in a journal, on a walk, or in conversation with someone you trust: "What is it that I am actually grieving right now — not just the circumstance, but the version of myself that existed within it?" "What roles and skills am I being asked to shed, what do I need to take on and why does this matter to me?” "What is it time to let go of? And what might be waiting to make its entrance — if I can create enough space to receive it?" And perhaps the most powerful question of all: “Who am I becoming?" And if the answers feel too big to hold alone — that is not a sign of weakness. That is information. Explore with curiosity. One last thing.You are not failing to adapt, failing to cope, or failing to be resilient enough. You are in transition. And transition — real, identity-level transition — is one of the most demanding things a human being can move through. It has a shape. It has a name. It has a path through it — even when that path is invisible from where you're standing. You are exactly where the process needs you to be. And you do not have to be there alone. From wherever you are, Nikki P.S. If this resonated with someone in your life who is navigating a transition right now — a restructure, a loss, a life change they can't quite name — please pass it on. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do for someone is hand them the language for what they're living. Life Transitions Letter is a newsletter about the inner life of change — for leaders, humans, and anyone living “in-between.” |