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The Hidden Science Behind Navigating Life’s Toughest Transitions with Bruce Feiler

Lace Gilger
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Bruce Feiler is an author, speaker, and television personality. He is the author of 15 books including six consecutive New York Times bestsellers; the presenter of two primetime series on PBS; and the inspiration for the drama series Council of Dads on NBC. Bruce's two TED Talks have been viewed more than two million times. In his newest book, Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age, Bruce describes his journey across America, collecting hundreds of life stories, exploring how we can navigate the growing number of life transitions with greater purpose and skill.

In this interview, we dig deep into how you can navigate HUGE transitions called Lifequakes in your own life. In the past, people thought navigating transitions was an art however as Bruce will share, it’s actually much more a science. We also dig into how to find meaning in life, and much much more with Bruce Feiler. 

  • Bruce’s incredible background and his journey literally across the globe interviewing hundreds of people who have experience HUGE transitions. 

  • How the journey of writing Life is in the Transitions began and what spurred the journey. 

  • What is was like to travel the country and interview hundreds of people from all walks of life. What were the main learnings?

  • How people of different ages handle transitions differently and why some are more resistant than others. 

  • The main takeaways of these interviews...

    • Linear Life is Dead

    • We Live Non-Linear Lives

    • You Actually Can Master the Skill of Transitions

  • How the brain tends to react to transitions and what we can do to make sure we handle them with grace. 

  • It Takes Micro Steps

    • Write your own story.

    • Gratitude

    • Find Meaning, Not Happiness

  • What a “lifequake” is and how we can navigate them. 

  • The reality of just how much of your life will be spent actually in transitions. 

  • What we can do to prepare for a transition even if we don’t know what it is yet!

Thank you so much for listening!

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet, bringing the world's top experts right to you. Introducing your hosts, Matt Bodnar and Austin Fable. 

[00:00:19] AF: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Science of Success, the number on evidence-based growth podcast on the internet with over 5 million downloads and listeners just like you in over 100 countries. In this interview, we dig deep into how you can navigate huge life transitions called lifequakes, with our guest, Bruce Feiler. Very relevant topic for now. Obviously, this is being recorded in the middle of a pandemic. There’re a lot of life changes happening. So we were very happy to have Bruce on to discuss how we could handle these transitions to whatever life may be like after this pandemic and during as well. 

In the past, people thought navigating transitions was really an art. However, as Bruce is going to share in this interview, it’s actually much more of a science. We also dig in to how to find meaning in life and much, much more with our guest, Bruce Feiler. 

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying our interviews with the world's top experts? I hope so. And if so, you need to head to successpodcast.com and sign up for our email list. You will receive a ton of exclusive subscriber content as well as our free course we put a ton of time into called How to Create Time For What Matters Most in Your Life. You'll get that and so much more value and content on a weekly basis directly from myself, Matt, and the rest of our team. Sign up now at successpodcast.com. Or if you're on the move, no worries, just text 44222 to SMARTER. That's S-M-A-R-T-E-R on your phone to subscribe on the go. 

Last week, we dug into how to become an effective leader and crack the leadership code with Alain Hunkins. If you want to know how to become a more confident and impactful leader, check out that interview today. 

Now, a bit of a personal announcement. Matt and I read every piece of mail you send our way. We also read every single form you submit from the website. And one of the biggest request we’ve gotten in the past month is that Austin improved his audio quality. Some saying it quite politely. Some just saying, “Austin’s audio quality sucks.” I’m here to tell you, I understand, and I sympathize and we’re going to fix it. I’ve got a new mic on the way. So expect the audio quality from my interviews to skyrocket here in the next week. But we do appreciate you reaching out with a feedback. That’s how we continuously improve the show. We read every piece that comes our way. So, thank you for your feedback. And rest assured, it’s being corrected. 

Now, back to Bruce. Bruce Feiler is an author speaker and television personality. He’s the author of 15 books including – Now, get this. Six consecutive New York Times bestsellers. He’s the presenter of two primetime series on PBS and the inspiration for the drama series, Council of Dads on NBC. Bruce has two TED Talks that have been viewed more than 2 million times. And his newest book, Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age, Bruce describes his journey across America collecting hundreds of life stories and exploring how we can navigate the growing number of life transitions that we experience with greater purpose and skill. 

Without further ado, here is our interview with Bruce Feiler. Bruce describes his journey across America collecting hundreds of life stories and exploring how we can navigate the growing number of life transitions that we experience with greater purpose and skill. 

Without further ado, here is our interview with Bruce Feiler. 

[00:03:30] AF: Bruce, welcome to the Science of Success. 

[00:03:33] BF: Thank you, Austin. Thank you for having me. Nice to be with you.

[00:03:36] AF: Yeah, it’s great to have you on. And I think your book Life Is in the Transitions is such a timely release right now. And I want to dig in. But before we do, go ahead and just give us a little bit of your background. I know you’ve written six consecutive New York Times bestsellers. You’ve got quite the portfolio. So just for listeners who may not be familiar with your past work, just tell us a little bit about your journey.

[00:03:54] BF: I grew up in Savanna, Georgia. So I grew up around storytelling. That’s always been a huge part of my life. And I left the south and went to north to college and I found that I learned more about myself as a southerner by living in the south and going to the north. This was back in the 80s in the age of discount airfare. And I thought, “Well, I should learn about myself as an American.” So I moved to Japan and I was living with a family in the middle of nowhere. I was the only foreigner in a town of 2,000 people. I was kind of like the town pet. And I started writing letters home. You probably don’t remember this, Austin, but there was this thing called paper, like you write letters. In fact, air mail paper was very thin and there were no lines to it. And in the back of every pad of air mail paper, it used to have lines so you could keep a straight line and you have to stick it in and then you would go underneath the next line. 

So I wrote a whole series of letters home like, “You’re not going to believe what happened to me.” And when I got back to Georgia six months later, everywhere I went people said, “I love your letters.” I was like, “Great. Have we met?” And it turned out that my grandmother has Xeroxed them and passed them around and they went viral in the sort of 1980 sense of the word. And I felt, “Wow! If this is that interesting to all these people, I should write a book about this. I didn’t know anyone who’d written a book.” And it doesn’t really happen this way. But I sold my first book at 24, and this is the only thing I’ve ever done since. 

So I kind of discovered early in my life what I wanted to do. I did it for no money in my 20s. I wrote books about Japan and England. I spent a year, I was a circus clown. I moved to Nashville, not far from where you are as we speak. Wrote a book about country music. Spent a year traveling around with Garth Brooks and Winona, and a bunch of gold young stars. Somewhere while I was living in Nashville, I got very interested in the bible because of maybe the country music if at all. And I thought, “I should know more about the bible.” So I took my bible off my shelf and put it by my bed and it sat there untouched for a couple of years. 

And then I went to see an old friend in Jerusalem. And on my first day, my friend said, “Over here is this controversial neighborhood, and over there is the rock where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac.” I thought, “Whoa! These are real places you can touch and feel.” Funny, you talk about evidence-based success. I’m like, “There’s evidence of these stories?” I was kind of mixing those things in my mind. So I thought, “Well, here’s an idea. What if I travel along the route and read the bible along the way?” No one thought this was a good idea, but I did it anyway. I climbed Mt. Ararat looking for Noah’s Ark, and across the Red Sea, I tasted manna, and I wrote a book called Walking the Bible. Boom! Like just became my thing. I would spend a year and half on the bestseller list. I was a joke on the Tonight’s Show. I was a question on Jeopardy. I mean, it was just everything happened. And I did this back and forth in my 30s. I ended up writing a series of books and hosting a bunch of television. And that was my life. And it might have been my life until now. I got married. I had children. But then in my 40s, I just got walloped by life, and that really is sort of what set me off on this journey.

[00:06:44] AF: So, I want to dig in more to the recent journey, but I’ve heard a rumor. Are you a big fan of Joseph Campbell? 

[00:06:50] BF: Well, yes and no. I mean, I do like the idea of old wisdom and new stories and I like the idea that you can tease-out certain sort of themes and patterns and stories and that they affect the stories of our lives. But there’s also something about Campbell that I’m a bit grumpy about, which is the rigidity of the hero’s journey that every journey has to follow a kind of certain path. Already, that’s been criticized. It’s not really applying to the paths of many women. 

And so kind of what became a lot of the foundation of this new book was a little bit pushing back against some of Campbell’s. So in some ways, I’m influenced by him. But in some ways, I’m pushing back against him.

[00:07:35] AF: Yeah, that’s a great insight there. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve read about Joseph Campbell’s work, but I do have the Hero of a Thousand Face and Power of Myth, although admittedly, a little bit more high-level probably than yourself. 

So, let’s dig in here. Tell us about the journey that kind of kicked you off to writing Life Is in the Transitions. I know that you took a cross-country tour, interviewed hundreds of people about transitions in their lives. But what kind of kicked-off this journey for you? 

[00:07:57] BF: So I was saying earlier, kind of the way I think about this now, and this grows out of the conversation we’re just having about Joseph Campbell, is I think of my life as having a linear path, okay? I discover what I wanted to do early. I did it for no money. I have some success. I got married and I got children. That’s the kind of fantasy of the fairytale, the superhero, the kind of iconic ascending life story that we were all told and many of us would like to believe is the life we’re going to live. 

But then I just got walloped by life. As you know, I got cancer as a 43-year-old new dad. I asked a group of friends to form a council of dads and wrote a book about that. It became an NBC series this year. I almost went bankrupt in the recession. My family owned real estate, and that was hit very hard. And then my dad who has Parkinson’s got very depressed and tried to take his own life. Six times in 12 weeks, he tried to commit suicide.  

The conversations you have in that time are unhavable as a family and we were struggling with business, and we were struggling with medicine. But I’m the story guy. I’m the meaning guy? I’m the Campbell guy and the bible guy and I thought, “Well, here’s an idea.” And so one Monday morning, on a whim, I send my dad a question about his life. Tell me about the toys you played with as a kid. He couldn’t move his fingers, but he thought about it all week. He dictated it to Siri. Siri spit it out. And it worked for the first in weeks. Something happened. And then I sent another one. Tell me about the house you grew up in. And this went on, Austin, week after week. Tell me about how did you become an Eagle Scout. How did you join the Navy? How did you meet mom? This man who would never written anything longer than a memo in his life backed into writing an autobiography, and it was this incredibly powerful change. 

And whenever I would tell somebody about it, they would have a similar story. My wife had a headache, went into the hospital and died. My boss is a crook. My daughter tried to cut herself. My brother got diagnosed with stage IV cancer. And what everybody was saying in one way or the other was the same thing. Like the life I’m living is not the life I expected. I’m living life out of order. 

And one day I called my wife and I said, “You know what? No one knows how to tell their life story anymore.” We all are getting so beaten up by life and we don’t really expect it and it’s a pattern that we don’t understand. It’s not that linear thing that we’ve been led to expect. It’s not all the hero’s journey. I have to figure out how I can help. 

And what I did was I created this thing, as you said, called the Life Story Project, and I crisscrossed the country collecting what became hundreds of life stories of Americans of all ages, all walks of life, all 50 states. People who lost homes, lost limbs, changed careers, changed religions, got sober, got out of bad marriages. In the end, I had a thousand hours of interviews. You’re an audio guy. You can appreciate that. 6,000 pages of transcripts, and now here we get to the science of it all. And then I did something I had not done in decades of writing books, which I then got a team of 12 people and we spent a year coding these stories, combing through them. Turning these qualitative stories into quantitative data. Analyzing them on 57 different variables, high point, turning point. What kinds of transitions do we have? How long they last? What’s the best advice from friends to get through them? What’s the biggest emotion that we struggled with? I built this huge database of how we navigate difficult times. And I just got to tell you, I’ve been working on this book for half a decade and here it arrives at this moment when the entire planet is going through a lifequake as I call it, and we are all – Each of us, everybody listening to this conversation, is going through a transition of some kind. 

It’s almost eerie, and that’s why I think the response to this book has been almost like viscerally, “Oh my God! This is what I need.” That’s why we’ve been through four printings in 10 days, and people are just like, “This is the book that we need. And I wish I could have predicted it in a certain way.” But here we are.  

[00:11:50] AF: Yeah. I mean, it couldn’t be more timely. And I do want to dig in to, because I know you’ve done some work around happiness of the family unit and different things too. And I think it all kind of ties together. But definitely a weird kind of thing from the universe to have this book come out when it did. 

I’m curious too from a logistical standpoint. I’ve always been really interested. Of course, we’re in a data here too and we’ve done a couple projects similar to where we’ve compiled thousands of studies and tens of thousands of pages of transcripts. What was it like to find these people? Did you just post up kind of like Anthony Bourdain style at a bar and find people in transitions? Was there a process to getting in contact with them ahead of time? How did you find people that had these transitions that you could come in and speak with them with about? 

[00:12:31] BF: I started very locally, right? All politics as well. I started with people that I knew who had been through interesting transitions. Then everybody that I met, like if I had seen you, or we’d have this conversation three years ago. All of a sudden, “So, who do you know? Who’s been through an interesting life transitions?” Then there are some coupe dimensions here. One point I said to my wife, “I think I’ll do people only over 40.” Because I’m like, “I want people who’ve been beaten up by life.” And she said, “No. You’re wrong.” My wife who, Linda Rotenberg is her name. She runs an organization that supports entrepreneur in 40 countries around the world. And she has about 500 millennials working for her in every corner of the globe. And she’s like, “No. You’re wrong. Everybody has a life story. And even these people in their 20s and 30s that I work with, they also have been beaten up by life.” So she’s the one who said, “Forget that idea. Do everybody.” And she was right. 

So about two months in, I had been doing this kind of organically. She walks into my office one day here in our home in Brooklyn and I said, “Linda, I think I can get 25 states.” And this would tell you a lot about my marriage. She said, “Get 50 or shut up.” And then walked out of the room. At that point I realized I have to be more intentional. 

So at the end of conversation, I would say this. I then I wanted to make sure obviously that I met all the demographics and diversity and those kinds of questions. And then what would happen, Austin, is I would be – I don’t know if this happens to you since you are reaching out to all sorts of people. I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would think, “Oh, I need somebody who had a white collar job who then became a farmer.” And it turns out there’s an association that helps people. So I have a former model who became a lettuce farmer. I have a former veteran in Iraq who is blown up by an IED and had narcolepsy, and then he’s a farmer in North Carolina. 

So, like I would come up with a category of something that I want and then I would go seeking the people out. And then I put it on social media and it sort of metastasized, and in the end I didn’t have any trouble finding people. Delaware was hard, actually. But the senator of Delaware actually turned out to have gone to law school with my wife. And I wrote to him and I said, “Will you help me find somebody in Delaware?” He said, “I’ll do it.” So, I have a sitting US senator.  

[00:14:35] AF: Man! It’s just like classic referrals and working the connection list it sounds like. 

[00:14:40] BF: But the people, the variety of experiences. I mean, I have poor people who died and came back to life. A quarter of my stories involve addiction of some kind. I have people who were in cults, former white supremacists. I mean, national country music singer became a pastor. A two-time cancer survivor who climbed Mt. Everest. The army interpreter who found Saddam Hussein. So, the diversity is just astonishing. But that’s what the coding found. 

What the coding found – And actually something else that I would say that went wrong in the course of this is that I assume going in that how you handle a work setback – Or we can get into this in a second. A lifequake as I call it. How you handle the work lifequake, versus a family lifequake, versus losing your legs, versus facing an addiction. Each of them would be different. And it turned out that I was just flat wrong. The toolkit, the structure of these life transitions are similar. The tools are similar. And that ended up being one of the revelations. Where the science came in was finding out that there is a structure. It’s not how we’ve been told they work. Once you understand that structure, you can navigate these transitions more effectively. There are tools you can use and they are the same across gender, across age, across the types of transitions. And that’s what's exciting that my book unveils. The first new model for how to navigate life transitions in 50 years.

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[00:17:14] AF: That’s so fascinating, and it’s definitely a tee-up for the question. So, share with us. What are some of the main takeaways and some of the main tools in this toolkit that kind of universally expands how we can handle transitions?

[00:17:24] BF: Let’s work our way to the toolkit and let’s just take a step back. The big idea that emerged from all of these data analytics and from the spreadsheet is that the linear life is dead, okay? What I mean by a linear life is every culture, it turned out that with moment in this process where like I pulled a book off a shelf and the whole bookcase open and it turned out that was a whole another library that I had never been invited into. And like what I found in that other room, which is an idea that is new to me, but that I really become quite passionate about, which is the idea that every culture kind of has a paradigmatic life course that people are expected to follow. So, in the ancient world, they – Back to your Campbell, or the Bible, or a Scripture, any of these things. They didn't have linear time. So they thought that life was a cycle. That's what they understood, like farming, right? Every season, turn, turn, turn. 

By the Middle Ages, they believe [inaudible 00:18:16] of course I have as you’ve seen in the book these images, they believe the life is a staircase up to middle-age and then a staircase down. So straight up, then straight down. That means no new love at 40. No new career at 50. No retiring and moving and starting a new venture in your 60s. Like straight up. Straight down. Incredibly unforgiving. 

And what's interesting about that is that's exactly the inverse of what we were told in the 20th century, which is that life is a trough at middle-age, and then you climb out of it, right? Since the birth of science, now we can geek- out about the science here for a second. Since the birth of science 100+ years ago, everything kind of modeled on the industrial backbone of the economy was linear. So, Piaget says childhood development goes in stages. Freud says there’s psychosexual stages. Erickson, the eight stages of development. In fact, Erickson says this is modeled on the conveyor belt, the industrial kind of line of production. The five stages of grief. He hero’s journey. These are all linear constructs of life. 

And this reaches its peak in the 70s, a New York magazine writer named Gail Sheehy writes a book called Passages, which I often – In my generation, it’s the book our mothers all read. For you, it might be a book that your grandmother read. But Passages sold 20 million copies and was one of the 20 bestselling books of the 20th century. And it says everyone does the same thing in their 20s, in their 30s. And everybody has a midlife crisis at 39 and a half. And we can kind of chuckle at it now, but the idea of the midlife crisis, which I'm sure everybody just kind of believes is true, was popularized by this book. This all turns out to be bunk. It's just not true. But even in my conversations, people said, “Oh, I had my first midlife crisis at 27-1/2. Or I had my first midlife crisis at 54.” That will tell you how inelastic and inexact this is as a scientific matter. 

So that linear life, which manifests itself certainly in my generation is the idea that you’re going to have one job, one home, one relationship, one spirituality. One source of happiness. You are going to be a type. You’re going to have one of everything. That's all gone, and it's been replaced by what I call in this book the nonlinear life. And that involves many more changes. So that my data show that we go through three dozen what I call disruptors in the course of our lives. And these disruptors can be as small as moving, having an accident, spraining your ankle, or as big as getting cancer, losing your job, or a tornado, a pandemic. Most of these disruptors, there's 52 of them, is the category. I call them the deck of disruptors. 

So we go to one disrupter every 12 to 18 months. I mean, that's more often than most people see a dentist. And most of them will get through, but 1 in 10 of them becomes a massive life change. And that's what I call a lifequake. The lifequake is kind of bigger on the Richter scale of consequences and has aftershocks that last for years. And the signature piece of data is that it takes us five years to get through the life transitions that come out of that. And so you think 3 to 5 times in our lives, we go through a lifequake. It takes us four, five, six years to get through. That’s 25 years. That’s half of our adult lives that we’re going through a transition. You or someone you know, someone in your household, someone in your family is going through one right now. That was the idea. And then this book comes out at the moment when, “Hello! We’re all going through them.” And that’s what’s so fascinating, and that then leads us to the tools and how to get through them. But what we’re going to now, what we’re experiencing is a life quake. In this case, it's an involuntary lifequake, though some of them are in fact volunteer. 

[00:22:05] AF: There's a lot to impact there, and I’m curious too. You had mention something before we started recording about how different generations kind of embraced this thought that we don't live linear lives. And when you go through the list of the things that people expected to have in their linear life. I mean, I think through jobs, spirituality. Not trends, because that almost seems to be kind of below like a transition. But I can definitely see in my life that it is not linear. I mean, nothing about my life has been linear. But is there a reason that maybe older generations might hold on to this view of the linear life more than like, say, a millennial newer. Or is it kind of like the way we were raised, the way we were taught to deal with transitions? Or maybe avoid transitions. Or avoid the emotional side?

[00:22:49] BF: There are five storylines in my book; love, work, body, identity and beliefs. People tend to become of linear in parts of their lives and nonlinear. If you had a linear – Are you in an interfaith marriage? Like half of Americans, for example, are an interfaith or interdenominational marriage. If you've moved a lot, I think, in your life. So you’ve have nonlinear professional, nonlinear beliefs maybe. But maybe a linear relationship, right? You’ve been in the same relationship for a while. 

[00:23:16] AF: Yeah. I’ve been in the same relationship for years and just had a kid. But when you think about it, like you hit the nail on the head for a number of things. I started working when I was in high school. I had different jobs in college. I had a job that moved me around afterwards. When it comes to moving, I mean, my parents got divorced when I was in high school. I think we lived in five or six different houses during the four years I was in high school. When I started reading Joseph Campbell, weirdly enough, it kind of like opened up my eyes. It’s not a way to say it, but sort of exploring down like different faiths, right? Questioning why is the reason that I have this faith? Was because I was born into it and that's what I was told to believe. And I'm still a Christian, but I went through a phase in college. And afterwards where I like heavily investigated all these beliefs that I’d had, right? 

I almost kind of embrace nonlinear in some aspects, but then if you look like my marriage, I love the linear aspect of that, right? It’s just certain different things. But I just feel like it's almost a foregone, a conclusion for me. I would assume life is not linear. But then I look at some different generations, different people I know, and it's almost kind of like revered to have a linear life. 

[00:24:21] BF: Here's what I hear in that story. Remember, this all began with my collecting life stories and having conversations like the one that you just shared in part, except the ones [inaudible 00:24:31] were two, three, four hours. So what I would say, one of the unexpected things for me was that this idea of nonlinearity, that there is change. That X-ers get this much more intuitively than boomers. And millennials much more intuitively than the Gen-X-ers. Okay? I think there's a lot of reasons for this, right? So your generation, the peak year for divorce in America is 979. Therefore, your generation grew up kind of in a post normalizing of divorce culture. Right there, once you do that, once you go through that, that is a defining nonlinear experience in your life at a very definitional moment in your life, which allows you to be open to more nonlinear explorations. Okay? 

But then also because you had nonlinearity in your relationship, like growing up, perhaps that's why you sought out linearity in your relationships today. Okay? But by all of these metrics, that's what I would hear in that story, right? So what's interesting about this to me, every metric, as I said, half of Americans change faith in the course of their lives. 4 in 10 Americans are interfaith marriage. Millennials will have 15.2 jobs and 11.7 moves. We know that openness to sexual fluidity. There are 72 different gender identifications on Facebook. Okay? So your generation grew up with sexual fluidity, sexual identity, transgender, interracial relationships. A whole series of things that would've been completely anathema or unheard-of when I, who was born in 1964, was growing up. 

And so one of the interesting things that I uncovered in working on the life story project, as I called it, and then what became the book Life Is in the Transitions, is that there is what I call a transition gap between baby boomers, 60 something parents and their millennial children in their 20s and 30s. So the parents are looking at their children and saying, “Wait a minute. Wait. You’re having a baby before you get married?” Or like, “Your quitting one job when you don’t even know what the next job is going to be?” Or,“You're moving to a new town when you don't even know what you would do when you would get there?” 

One of the reasons for this coming transition gap is that the boomers are still haunted by the ghost of linearity. So we, the people in their 50s and 60s and 70s grew up at a time where these kinds of job hopping, relationship changing, sexual orientation, morphing, experimentation with faith, moving around. All these different things, they were not told that. So they still are haunted by it. They’re still living the same nonlinear life, but it's harder for them. 

[00:27:09] AF: Yeah, I think I see that, and that makes a ton of sense. I want to just transition a little bit and give the people what they want. But let's take in some of these tools and the toolkit of how we can better handle transitions. If I'm dealing with a transition right now, which I think we all are in some degrees with COVID and the lack of hanging out in-person socially. What can we do to make these transitions easier?

[00:27:31] BF: Okay. The first thing I would say is that the lifequake that you experience might be voluntary or involuntary. Okay? You guys like data? Here are some data. 47% of the lifequakes that we go through are voluntary. Okay? That means we change jobs. We move. We choose to have a child. We cheat on our spouse. 53% are involuntary. Our spouse cheats on us. We get fired from a job. We go through a hurricane. A pandemic arrives. 

Now, it's interesting. I mentioned earlier, I’m technically kind of a tail end of the baby boomer. But, really, I'm on the cusp between the boomers and the X-ers. I looked at this and was like, “Whoa! 47%. Yeah, cool! We still have control over our lives. I have these 12 coders I mentioned earlier. They were all millennials. They were like, “Whoa! 53% of lifequakes in our life are involuntary. Really? I can’t control my life?” They were like upset by that. But they're not old enough to have had kids with special needs, or to lose a job, or to have a parent have cancer at an inopportune time or a spouse. 

But my reason for going through that was to say a lifequake can be voluntary or involuntary, but the life transition must be voluntary. You have to make the choice to lean in and go through the steps. Step number one, we’re all on this lifequake now and we’re going to be for a couple of years. It's deceptive. We’re all going through this together, but the wife transition that we’re all going to do is going to be different. Someone might have lost a job. Someone else may have lost a loved one. Somebody else may need to move or downside. Somebody else might be the primary caretaker for a child, and something that child is not going to school. And you have to rejigger the parenting responsibilities. 

So the life are voluntary or involuntary, but the transition has to be voluntary. Now, once you get into that transition, you're likely to feel one of two things. Either chaotic and out of control. Like I need to make a 217 point to-do-list and I need to go into it and I'm going to master it and be the king of my domain, or the queen of my domain. Or you feel sluggish and stuck in place and you’re in a fetal position on your bed, like you just can't move. The reason this is because you think I'm the only one going through this. I'm never going to make. And I have no idea what to do. 

Here, in this regard, I'm here to help. Because when you look at enough of them as I have done and certain patterns do appear. So the first pattern is that life transitions involve three-phases. And the three phases are the long goodbye where you say goodbye to the old you, the old way of life. The messy middle, where you shed certain habits and create new habits. And the new beginning where you unveil your new self. So, now, for the first century, the reason I said this is the first new model for life transitions is everybody who’s talked about this, going back to the German anthropologist hundred years ago who invented the phrase rites of passage. Everybody said that it's a line. First, you say goodbye, then you go to the betwixt and between, and then you have the new beginning. That turns out to be just wrong. Each of us is good at one of these three phases and we’re bad at one. 

The good is what I call your transition superpower and your transition kryptonite. For example, the long goodbye. I don’t know, 37%, I think. I don't have the numbers right in front of me. Around that, 37%, 39%. Say, this is their most difficult phase because they’re people pleasers. They like it. They don't want to admit that they're not going back. Think about the pandemic. For the first few months, we all thought we were going to go back. Now we know we’re not going back. 

But some people are good. I talked to a woman, Nina Collins, a biracial. Her mother died when she was 19. She had to raise her younger brother. She’s gone on to have three marriages and multiple – Twice as many jobs. And she said, “I'm good at saying goodbye, because my mother died early. I under attach to things and then I get stuck in the middle.” 

I talked to a guy name Rob Adams who was hired to run the Simon Pierce Glass Company. It’s a family company in Vermont. He starts a month after the Great Recession. Sales dropped by a quarter in the first month. And so he's like, “I was bad at saying goodbye. I wanted this job. I just moved my family. I liked being a leader. I liked my colleagues. But once I got to the messy middle, it turns I am good. I made list. I called people.” Within a few months, he moved his family to Africa to run a nonprofit. 

There are even people who were bad at the new beginnings. So the worst, I think, 49% in my study were the worst at the messy middle. 37% were worst at the long goodbye, and that leaves 13%, if I’ve done my correctly, who were bad at the new beginning. And you think everybody would like that because through it. I talked to a woman, Lisa Ludovici. Grew up in a broken home. Father was estranged. Mother didn't even come to her college graduation. She was homeless for a while. She went to work for America Online when it was nothing. And then became a huge Internet ad executive. She had three migraines a week from age 3 to 43. And then she logs on to a conference call one day. Her colleagues are complaining how sour she is. She walks in the next they, quits on the spot. Cuts her cable. Doesn't go shopping. Doesn't go out to eat. Saves her pennies. She's watching local access television. She sees somebody say that they help people live better lives. She's like, “That's what I want to do.” 

She enrolls in a life coach school. Moved to Santa Fe. On day one, her head is on the desk and the teacher says, “What are you doing?” She says like, “Oh, don’t worry. I'm just having a migraine. I’ve had three a week for 40 years.” Teacher says, “Come with me.” Takes her back into the office preterm. Puts her in a chair. Hypnotizes her. Liza’s never had a migraine since today. She's the country's leading medical hypnotist. And she works with military veterans and she said, “I have this amazing life. I went to this, frankly, incredible transition.” She was embarrassed to update her LinkedIn profile because she thought her friends would think it was a weird. So she writes and rewrites it for six months until she finally presses send and she's then liberated. One of the things I try to do in the book is walk you through figuring out which of these three phases you’re good at. Let’s start you there. Let’s build up some confidence, and then you work your way to the part that you’re less good at. 

[00:33:28] AF: It’s interesting. I mean, embracing the new self, like you said, just seems like something that wouldn’t be that difficult visit. This kind of implies you've been through the journey. But now that you share that story, I'm thinking of all sorts of friends who have had their struggles and found some modicum of success but like don't want to post on social media. They’re like, “Told Bruce about what you’ve been doing.” And they’re like, “Bruce doesn't want to hear that.” Even like if it is a perfect introduction. It's almost kind embracing the other end. It's not embarrassment necessarily, but it's a lack of comfort. 

[00:33:57] BF: Okay. Let’s talk about this. You talk about the tools. So then I have within these three phases, I've got seven tools. You just brought up the first one. And I'm glad you brought it up, because the first one is you have to accept that you're in this situation and the emotions that you're dealing with. I looked hundreds of people in the eye and I said – Having a conversation. Just like this, “Okay, Austin. What’s the biggest emotion that you struggled with during your transition?” 

Let me just ask you. Think of a transition. One of these, exploring your faith, or moving, your – What was the biggest emotion that you’ve struggled with in times of change? Oh, man. Bruce. On the spot here, but I love it. I got to say – 

[00:34:36] BF: You became a dad. What was the biggest emotion you struggled with when you became a dad recently?

[00:34:39] AF: Anxiety. I thought for sure I would be a dad that was like very much, “Oh, I’ll let him run around and let them fall down. No big deal. But I've got a 19-month-old little girl and I struggled to let her walk 10 feet on the playground without me being right next to her. It's taken me very much by surprise. I thought I'd be like the cool, relaxed parent, but I think I'm the exact opposite.

[00:35:01] BF: Number one thing people struggle with is fear. Fear of the unknown. Is something going to go wrong? Can I pay the bills? Am I going to be sick? Number one, fear. Number two, sadness, okay? I like the old life. I liked that job. I liked when I could go out with my friends. I liked being single and having my partner to myself. And then suddenly there is a 19-month-old in the picture. Number two, sadness. Number three, may be want to bring up this one. You mentioned this earlier. Number three, shame. This was a little surprising to me, but it was so – People are ashamed. Oh my gosh! I can't believe I drank so much, and I made a jack ass out of myself. Or I can't believe I lost my job. Or I'm ashamed that my child, a special needs, or has an addiction. Or I'm ashamed that I can’t afford this house anymore and I have to downsize. So, it’s shame. The first tool is to accept it, right? To identify this emotion. Say it out loud. Just even having you say that out loud is empowering, right? When you share something, you feel better about it. One of the later tools is sharing it. 

But the second is how do people market and like tame it? Some people write it down. Talked to a woman who left a corporate job to move to Main to help people manage their second homes. And she wrote her fears down so every morning she would see them. Some people do what I would do, which is buckle down. Stop whining, kid, and just work your way through it. But 80% of people, Austin, 8-0 use a ritual of some kind. Okay? They hold a farewell ceremony. They burry something in the backyard.

I talked to a guy, of the day. I talked to a guy, Fred [inaudible 00:36:38], who’s in a loveless marriage for 30 years just up north of you in Kentucky. And he got out, came out as gay. And he went to sweat lodge to like [inaudible 00:36:46] his old life out of him. I talked to woman, Lisa Ray Rosenberg. Had an awful year. She was a bone marrow donor to her brother. She had a big falling out with her mother. She lived in Southern California. She went on 52 first dates. She actually made a spreadsheet of everything she worn every first date, because she only went on seven second dates and she didn’t want to wear the second thing on a second date. She's like, “This is not working. I got to do something.” Her biggest fear was heights. She jumped out of an airplane. A year later she was married with a child. So we need to take your anxiety, your fear and we need to do something with it, right? Because it's going to sit there until you do something with it. 

Maybe your bad at saying goodbye. Or maybe you're good because you’ve said goodbye a lot and you're stuck in the middle. I don't know. But we got to do something with this fear. And maybe your daughter needs to get a bloody knee and you're going to find out the that's part of a life and it will toughen her up and you can stop being so overprotective. But you have to do something, some ritual that will mark kind of – That will contain it and tame it and say to yourself and to others, “I'm like leaving that old self behind, and now I'm going in to the new self.” Because if you don't do this now and you got 15-year-olds as I do – I have 15-year-old [inaudible 00:37:57] girl. And they’re now going out and you’re not going to be hovering over them. 

So, rituals, that was an interesting things. The first of these tools is accept it, and the second is to market it in some way. To contain it to say the past is past. I'm not going back there. Now, I got to go into the messy middle to come. 

[00:38:14] AF: So you're telling me that it's not socially acceptable for me to tag along on a 15-year-old date? Because I was planning on it. You’re telling me that’s not allowed?

[00:38:23] BF: I'm saying it's not in your daughter's interest nor [inaudible 00:38:25] interest. You mention my parenting. I did write a book, The Secret of Happy Families, about this. And yes, your job as a parent, it’s very unusual. Your job when your child is born, your child is entirely dependent on you and your job is to put yourself out of business. Your job is to make your child independent from you. And only the way you’re going to do that is to give your child more control over their at a major appropriate way, kind of one step at a time. But yes, your job is to make yourself obsolete. 

[00:38:51] AF: Well said. 

[00:38:56] AF: How do you start up when the world is upside down? Sit Down Startup is a his new weekly podcast from Zendesk. The startup’s team brings together entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs to discuss the latest business challenges and how to put customer experience at the heart of that success. Here from people that understand unpredictability in a coffee shop style conversation. Catch weekly episodes on Apple, Google, and Spotify. 

[00:39:27] AF: I want to encourage people to go and check out the book, Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age. But before we go, there was one other tool that I found in my research that I thought was pretty interesting, and it’s share it. So, seek wisdom from others. I'm curious too, because as someone who’ very selective on who I get advice from and also what I really share my deepest thoughts and emotions with, how can we make sure there we’re not only likes seeking the wisdom from the appropriate parties, but that we’re also sharing the deeper parts of us with people that deserve to have it?

[00:40:00] BF: Well, first of all, that’s extremely well said. And I will say, guess what? I got some data on that. So let me work my way to it. The long goodbye is marked and accepted. In the messy middle, there're basically two things, and there's too much more about this in the book. You shed certain habits and you create new habits. People turn to incredible creativity. They sing, they dance, they write. It’s just powerful. Love those stories. And in the new beginning, you ritualize the end of the transition and you unveil your new self. And then these tools, six of them are more or less attached to kind of one of the three phases. But the one you just brought up, share it, is not connected to any of the phases, because for some people it's like once. And for some people it’s all the time. 

Listening to you, you might be the person who doesn't want to share it at every step along the way. But there will be a moment in the middle where you share that you have an anxiety about your 19-month-old. And then someone comes into your life and gives you a piece of advice. People talk about these magical outsiders that come in and give them a piece of information or introduce them to somebody, or listen at the right moment that they just need it at that moment. See you might be that time.

But I asked everybody, did you get a piece of advice from a friend, or a loved one, or mentor that was very helpful? And I was surprised that the answers were different. So I I set out to quantify it. And what I found was that we have a phenotype of what kind of advice do we like? Some people like – And I’m going to ask you in a second. So you might well listen which one you're like. So some people like comforters, “I love you, Austin. I trust you. You’ll get through it, buddy. I know. I’m cheering you on.” That was the most popular, but it’s not everybody. Some people like nudgers, “I love you, Austin, but maybe you should try this, or maybe you should sit down and let your daughter bump her head, because it will be fine. Or maybe you should go on match.com. Or maybe you should go to AA. Or maybe it's time to look for new job.” So that's the second most popular. So comforters are the most popular. Nudgers, next. 

And then some, I’m kind of like this myself. They like slappers, like, “I love you, Austin. But get over yourself. I’m tired of you whining. I'm just not going to listen to this anymore. Go do this.” And I learned this because somebody was sitting in my office where I’m talking to you from right now and she was telling me a story. She lost both of her parents and a job. she thought she was going to cover the company, and she didn't. And she said, “Yeah, I was sitting there wining to one of my friends one day and she slapped me like Chare slaps Nicholas Cage in Moonstruck.” So I was like, “Oh my God! Slapper. That’s a category.” People have different phenotypes. Before I give you the piece of advice that you asked for, so which one are you?

[00:42:34] AF: I think for people that I'm having conversations with that are like various service-level, I think I'm like the majority, comforters. If it’s just someone I don't know that well and it’s like, “Okay. Yeah, I appreciate the warm and fuzzy feelings.” When it comes to someone that I’m really going to take their feedback to heart, I actually prefer a slapper. Because if I'm not doing the right thing and it's coming from the source that I trust to give me that information, then I'd like to know if I'm doing something wrong, or at least get that feedback. 

If someone that's like a dinner party and we’re just sharing things, comforters are fine. If I'm having a deep conversation with a mentor or a family member that I highly respect, I respect the slapper. And I caveat. I may not always agree with you, but I appreciate that kind of advice. 

[00:43:15] BF: Okay. This is an interesting diameter. First of all, I think that I'm similar. From my wife, sometimes I just want comfort. I want to believe that I'm a good person and that I can get through it. And then once I feel secure, I can take slapping. But what did I do? You told me you made yourself vulnerable. Not by choice. But I pulled it out of you when you collect hundreds of life stories. We’re good at that. And you told me that you felt anxious and fearful about being a dad. And what did I do? I probably nudged you, right? I said, “You’re going to have to pull back a little bit,” right? 

The mistake that I make in this dynamic is I assume you want nudging. Okay? So the question I think you ask me. I can't remember exactly how you phrased it, which is what do we do? The answer is don't assume that the kind of feedback you want from a loved one is the type of feedback to the person you're talking to wants. In fact, you could just simply ask. Would you like me to comfort you? Nudge you? Or slap you? I mean, even that is an empowering thing. 

This leads to an interesting point, Austin, which is we were talking earlier that this book has arrived at this moment when we’re all in a life transition. And I in no way expected that to happen. But I've learned something interesting like. One of the reasons that this book has I think exploded is because so many of us are going through a transition, and this book is helpful. But bigger audience turns out to be people who were co-piloting someone else going through a transition. So not only is it isolating and you feel alone and just against the world. When I had cancer, I would look out my window I would think you can walk and you could walk, and I'm on crutches for two years and none of you understand what I'm going through. You feel isolated and alone. But if you have loved ones in your life, it could be a roommate, it could be a partner, it could be a parent, it could be a colleague, they want to help you. They don't know what to do. So it turns out kind of an even bigger market for this book is the toolkit for the copilot, because it will give you something that you can recommend, that you can nudge the person going through the transition that will help them get through it more effectively. 

[00:45:20] AF: That’s a huge point, and I’m glad you brought that up. Because I think obviously we've gone through the data of how many transitions and even how many major lifequakes you’re going to go through in your life. But they're not going to coincide with everyone else's, right? And like we all need to have relationships in our lives to stay healthy. And human I think yearn for those relationship. So you're going to have other people dealing with these. It sounds to me, kind of like whether you're the pilot or the copilot in the scenario, you're going to be dealing with transitions your entire life.

[00:45:48] BF: That leads I think to the last point and the last piece of data. The last point is the transitions work. 90% of the people that I spoke to said that their transition came to an end. So whatever you're struggling with. If you lay in bed last night, if you're a worrier, or if you got up this morning with a cup of coffee and stared out the window and wondered, or if you just were driving down the road and missed a because you were scared about something. Whatever you're struggling with, what I want to say to you right now is that I was where you were, and I've met hundreds of people who were far worse. 

One of the curious reactions to this book and people reading it thinking, “It makes people better, because the problems that those people are dealing with, it’s a lot worse than what I'm doing.” What I want to say to you is that the process can succeed if you believe in it. So whatever you're struggling with, if you come on this journey with me and you meet these people, you're going to find – They’re going to give you hope and inspiration. But more, they’re going to give you practical things. Something you can do tonight, tomorrow, this weekend, next week, three months from now. So that whatever you're struggling with, whatever life transition you’re in, we can make it go a little bit better and a lot more effectively. There is knowledge out there. We can get through this together. 

[00:47:02] AF: Very inspirational note, and I don't want to tip the hand too far, but one of the questions that I always liked in these interviews with is if you could give our audience one piece of homework, something that they could preferably do in the next five days, what would that homework be?

[00:47:17] BF: When we go through lifequake, what happens is that our immune system gets weekend, and multiple changes descend on us at the same time. This is something I had not read about in any of the literature on personal change that was a big, bright, blinking pattern that appeared. Just when you lose your job, you wreck your car. Just when you're about to move, your mother-in-law need surgery and your daughter turns out to have special needs. I call this pileup. So we’re all going to a lifequake, and many people here are going to go through or feel like they’re going through multiple transitions at the same time. That can be overwhelming. So echoing, the idea that I shared earlier, that the lifequake can be voluntary or involuntary, but the life transition must be voluntary. 

My question, my assignment, my request in the next five days is that you pick of all the possible transitions that you thought of. You want to change your relationship. You want to move. You want to change your job. You want to become more religious or less religious. Or you want to lose 25 pounds. Or you want to get sober. Pick one. Pick one life transition and say, “You know? Starting now, I want to focus on this. Once I get underway on that transition, then I can look at other ones. You can't change everything at once. Pick one. Start there. Build from strength, and you’re going to make all the transitions in your life go more effectively, because you’re going to finally feel like you have agency and like you’re mastering the skills and you can do it better. 

[00:48:47] AF: Incredible advice, and it's actually something that’s been very top of mind for me as well is just kind of mastering the foundations. Taking off one piece at a time and then building on that strength. I think that's great homework. Bruce, you've been so generous with your time and the information. I'd love to have you back on the show again to kind of dig in even deeper. There are so many things you’ve covered from the journeys through walking the Bible and everything else. I feel like we could talk for hours and hours and hours. But I want to be respectful of your time for at least this round. Tell the audience, where can they find you? Dig in? Learn more? Buy the book? Buy your previous books? See all the different projects you're working on? Where can we go to find you?

[00:49:20] BF: Thank you very much for the invitation. It’s a pleasure. I'm happy to continue the conversation anytime. I’m Bruce Feiler, and I'm on all your various Internet ways of connecting. I have a site with all my books and two TED Talks and that kind of stuff. I am @BruceFeiler on Twitter and Instagram and LinkedIn, and Bruce Filer author on Facebook. New book is Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change in a Nonlinear Age. It’s available everywhere. It does turn out that Amazon reviews matter and ratings.  So that's been an interesting thing to discover as this book has been out of stock multiple times since it's been into the world. And please do keep in touch. Ask me any question, anything way I can be helpful. I am not to be continuing in gathering more stories for a new project I'm just beginning. So I’d love to keep in touch and keep the conversation alive.

[00:50:06] AF: Absolutely. Love to chat anytime, Bruce. And we’ll definitely have you on for a round two. Thank you again for your time. This has been a fascinating interview. Such a timely book and such a great message to get out there right now. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing all these wisdom. 

[00:50:19] BF: My pleasure, Austin. We’ll go through this, everybody. 

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