Courtesy of M.J. Ryan

Monica’s adult son finally got a job and moved out last September. Then she was forced into retirement when her company downsized. At first, she was grateful for the peace and quiet, but she’s now having trouble getting into motion: “I just feel like giving up and hiding in a hole for the next 10 years.”

Monica is in the midst of a transition. They often happen as we age, but they can also be brought about by an unasked-for change. One chapter of our lives has closed and a new one hasn’t begun. The uncomfortable gap in between, when we may feel malaise, or even panic, is what it means to be in transition.

I learned this perspective from Candice Carpenter in her book Chapters. Because we’re all living longer and change is accelerating, we will go through many chapters, each with its own dramas, excitement, requirements, and difficulties. Just like with a great novel, we may not be sure where the story will take us and can feel lost or confused.

My clients find this approach useful because it helps make sense of their lives as a whole and encourages them to seek their life’s narrative beneath the surface of day-to-day activities. When I work with people like Monica, I ask them to go back through their lives and name the chapters they’ve lived through so far. Then, in order to help them get their future thinking going, I ask them what they’d like the next chapter to be called. That’s important because, as the quote says, “Pain pushes until vision pulls.” The more we’re connected to what we want to go toward in our lives, the more energy and enthusiasm we have to make the journey. But just like in a book, you usually don’t know exactly what’s in the next chapter until you’ve lived it. That’s what makes life so exciting—and challenging!

This is no idle exercise. I did it when I turned 50 and noticed how much work and effort my life contained up to that point. So I named the next chapter “Easy Does It.” And so far at least, my 50s have in fact been the most effortless decade of my life. As for Monica, she labeled her next chapter “My Green Thumb” as she plans to use her love of all things green to get active in the sustainability movement.

Our lives have a trajectory that is created from some mysterious combination of outside pressures and internal longings. Even in these challenging times, we don’t have to automatically bend ourselves into whatever shape seems to be called for—we can use the pressure to become more of who we are and offer more of what we have to give. That’s positive aging!