Transitions in life and career
Today I found the best inspiration to write about the topic of transitions in life and career through the lens of Calculus 😅 Do you remember the limit of a function means?
Thoughts on finding your true direction, not destination
Over the past two years, and especially this year, I have found myself having the same theme coming back again and again. The theme is transitions. It is about leaving one chapter of life behind and stepping into another that is not yet fully formed.
I see it in many of my clients:
Someone moving from employment into entrepreneurship.
A mother returning from maternity leave and rediscovering her professional identity.
A leader redefining her role and influence.
Someone who has moved countries and is searching for a sense of belonging.
Someone who left 80-hour weeks in Big Tech to explore what meaningful and sustainable work might look like.
Someone who was unexpectedly let go from a job.
These are different stories and different circumstances. Yet they are woven out of the same fabric. Beneath them all is a similar experience of standing between what was and what will be.
Liminal Space
Anthropologists call this a liminal space which means a threshold, a place in-between. This is a place where the old identity no longer fits, where we don’t desire what we used to strive for before. But there is nothing else instead. The new one has not yet emerged.
And if we are honest, most of us do not enjoy being there. It is like shedding skin, can you imagine how that must feel for a snake? Scratchy, annoying, maybe painful, discomfortable and vulnerable. The experience of a transition is quite similar.
Drop in the ocean
These individual transitions are also unfolding against the backdrop of a world that feels increasingly uncertain. Wars continue without clear endings. Climate change raises difficult questions about the future. Artificial intelligence is transforming the way we work and live in ways we cannot fully predict.
As yogic philosophy teaches us, we are not separate from one another. The uncertainty in the collective inevitably colours our individual lives. You and I are the drops in the ocean and we are the ocean itself. Perhaps this is why so many people feel suspended between chapters right now.
What math teaches us
Interestingly, the concept that helps me make sense of these transitions comes from mathematics. As a student, I was fascinated by the idea of a limit — a point where a function is not defined. Some functions approach infinity at that point like in the graph above. Others approach a specific value that exists even though the point itself remains undefined. Isn’t it elegant?
Today, I see something greater in this definition of limit. Life transitions often feel like standing at such a point. The old identity no longer works. We are facing a limit to what we know about ourselves. The new identity cannot yet be clearly named. The destination is undefined.
Yet when we step back and observe the trajectory, a direction begins to emerge. It has always been there. It has spoken to you in the subtle ways, showed up in the dreams, inner images or as inspiring moments.
But this is the point where many people get stuck. Stuck at the limit. Not because they know too little about themselves. Most often because they don’t trust fully their intuition.
When I talk to people in transition, they usually know:
what they no longer want,
what gives them energy,
what drains them,
what they value,
what they need more of.
The challenge is rarely a lack of information. The challenge is trusting themselves enough to move in the direction that already feels true.
We are taught to search for certainty, to define the destination, to create the five-year plan, to know exactly where we are going before we begin. But life rarely works that way. Walking in the right direction every day often brings us somewhere greater than we could have imagined when we started.
“As you start walking the path,
the path appears.”
Importance of integration
In coaching conversations, I see that clarity does not always come fully at once, it shows itself gradually in a close collaboration with a real action. A little clarity shows up through the inner work and then a bit more clarity emerges through action, and so step by step we build clarity. Not through finding the perfect destination, but through committing to a direction. I’m wondering, perhaps that is the real work of transitions.
Creating a map of what we already know, Integrating it fully into our daily life and from that platform getting a view of what is next. And building the strength to follow it.
Reflection
If you are navigating a transition right now, I invite you to spend a few minutes journaling on these questions:
What am I leaving behind?
Who am I becoming?
What new colours, flavours, or dimensions of myself want to be explored?
What direction feels true, even if the destination remains unclear?
What will be your next step?