So this evening I had a good Skype session with Adesola, Jess and Lauren. I didn't have too much to say at the start but then soon got waffling on about different things. We talked about all sorts but I think the most important thing that I took from todays session was the idea of a 'shift' in thinking, we all managed to identify a shift in our thinking somewhere. Mine was- when I started out this course and started to think about my line of inquiry, I was thinking of retirement within dancers, then it moved on to transition, then onto career development and then it moved onto making a career transition into a transformation.
Adesola asked me if now I had a better understanding of what transition is, my reply was I think so- I hadn't really thought about it in this much detail before doing this course, to be honest I hadn't thought about it like this at all, I just thought of it as I needed to find a new job, but now I know a lot more and I know transition is different for everyone, there are all sorts of transitions people face Schlossberg et al says
“A transition is defined as any event or ‘non event, that results in changed relationships, routines, assumption or roles”. I think transition has a lot to do with mind set. Two people could be going through the exact same thing and cope in different ways. Schlossberg et al also stated
“Even though some transitions are out of our control, we can control the way we manage them”.
Here is an excerpt from a book I read which I think sums it up really well.
Here is a small except from the book-Counselling Adults in Transition - “Parkes (1971) proposed the term, psychosocial transition, which he defined as a change that necessitates “the abandonment of one set of assumptions and the development of a fresh set to enable the individual to cope with the new altered life space” (p. 103). A transition is not so much a matter of change as of the individual’s own perception of the change. For our definition, a transition is a transition only if it is so defined by the person experiencing it. If, for example, menopause does not have much impact on a particular woman and does not change her set of assumptions or her relationships, then, in our view, it cannot be regarded as a psychosocial transition (though, of course, it is a biological change). If, however, another woman experiences menopause as an event that marks her passage from youth to old age or from sexuality to non sexuality, it does constitute a transition for her. For yet another woman who sees it as freedom from the necessity of using birth control, it is also a transition—a positive one”.
In an earlier blog I talked about an article I read 'A dancer dies twice' this was actually a quote from Martha Graham, I agreed with this quote but then thought, if this should be true this also means a dancer lives twice. So this reaffirms my ideas towards ‘mind set’. It is about how it is perceived by the holder of the idea.
So this 'shift' in thinking is very important and a good thing, however you have to be able to articulate this well, which I think I manage to do within writing ok but when I have to vocalise it sometimes it comes out as mush and I get myself all lost which is something I need to work on ready for my oral presentation.
We also talked about how the inquiry does not require you to discover a new planet or a ground breaking theory that will rock the world. We just need to find a greater understanding of ourself and to 'shift' our thinking. Ask yourself, how does this apply to me?
Goodman. J, Schlossberg.N, Anderson. M (2006)
Counselling Adults in Transition Linking Practice with Theory.3rd Edition
Parkes, C. M. (l971). Psycho-social transitions: A field for study. Social Science and Medicine, 5, 105–115.
