Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age

I have never written a book review--and I bought almost a hundred last year--but feel compelled to do so now. This book is utterly life changing. Feeling deeply ashamed that I was still stuck after six years of struggle following the death of a dear friend, my only child leaving the nest and the end of a two decade-long romantic relationship, I learned in the author's words that "The woods are filled with people just like us." As I closed the book I realized that while I had counterintuitively done the second and third emotional steps involved in a transition, I hadn't finished the first--the long goodbye. The release of shame was palpable, but it took the telling of deeply moving stories and the author's insight after 225 interviews that the average time of transition is five years for me to be able to let that go. An extraordinary work, I will be sharing the gift of this book with as many as I can.

This is a book that I've needed and didn't even know it. We live life expecting it to go a certain way and it doesn't always end up as expected. This book made me see things and realise things about life that I had never seen or thought of.I didn't fully understand the title until I read the book, but now I understand that truly Life Is in the Transitions. Highly recommend.

This is the first time I have been compelled to write a review. This book deserves it! We all grew up thinking that life moved in a linear path. We got a job, got married, had 2.3 kids, worked dutifully and were rewarded after 30 years with a watch and happy long retirement. That's was our base for comparing our lives trajectory, as Bruce describes in the book, it was to be "linear". Except how many of us truly have that path? Life is full of transitions and some are total disruptors to our thinking...sickness, divorce, job loss, or as in this current time something we could have never imagined on this scale, a pandemic and economic disaster. The question is not if we have disruptors in our lives but how can we cope? This book gives you the roadmap and the tools to better understand why life is not linear and how to not only gain better understanding about what you are going through, to know you are not alone, and how to prepare yourself to get to the other side. Bruce takes us through individual's stories, years of research and a heartfelt approach to giving ourselves grace in these difficult moments and tools to help us cope, survive, and rewrite our own story. This book is a must read!

Bruce Feiler is one of our greatest living storytellers. His latest work is timely and fantastic. As the saying goes “when one door closes another one opens, but it is hell in the hallways.” Bruce Feiler and the stories and insights he shares provide an invaluable guide on the journey between the doors. I found the book so helpful that I bought 10 copies for friends.

This book couldn't come at a better time. It is a wealth of information of how to not just survive a "lifequake" but how to strive in it. It becomes clear that a fresh start after a traumatic event can be incredibly invigorating and, as Hesse would say, "there is magic in every beginning".

The author has one concept, that life today is not linear but transitional. The first 20 pages or so are interesting. However, he takes a whole book to tell us that one thing! He has lots of examples and stories but his theme is stuck.It is repeated over and over again and nothing new pops up. I wasted $28.

It's almost as if Bruce Feiler is reminding us of something we all forgot, a return to the cyclic or spiral nature of time, but in a new way, and our part in how things ultimately play out. Given the major collective lifequake of 2020, I'd say this book couldn't come at a better time. The author held each person's story with such care and analysis—and I was inspired by the many stories of disruption and rebirth. What started as a truth he uncovered in his own life turned into a massive project identifying the threads that hold all of our stories together. This is our human experience.

This book gives you some valuable tools to handle the ups and downs of life. People tend to believe that life is always up and one thing positively leads to another thing all the way to retirement. I think anyone over the age of 21 knows that is a big lie up there with the checks in the mail.The author, Bruce Feiler interviewed scores of people to learn about their life transitions. He took that data to learn about how these processes occur and what steps helped people master the change. It all starts with some sort of catastrophe say like being laid off. He documents that these changes occur about every 12 to 18 months a year to every person. Bruce Feiler's findings that these changes lead to transitions in life. They frequently lead to massive changes or jumps to other things in life like a lifestyle or job change.The book breaks things down to some easy steps to follow to help you deal with these changes. The tools which stood out to me is that we should accept the change, mark it, shred the past, create new rituals, share it with others, launch a new stage and tell the world. If a person would follow those steps you can help master these life changing catastrophes vs. they mastering you.

This is an easy winding path through people’s personal stories. The key messages around our lives are made up of transitions, these often take longer than we expect, but are opportunities to grow, we write our own narratives and doing so helps us make meaning of our chaotic lives. The volume of the personal stories helps you realise just how varied people’s lives are and dismiss the structured linear myth forever.

Life is messy and wiggly and unexpected, but we still labour under the myth that life is linear and all about progression from one stage to another. This is the book’s central message and it’s something we really need to hear. It gave me new, practical insight into how we can support ourselves through the many life transitions we will experience. Like all of Bruce Feiler’s books, It’s warm, moving, compassionate, accessible and thought provoking.

This book is possibly one of the best books I’ve ever read in regards to understanding the different ways human go through transitions. Would highly recommend if you are all interested in this subject.

Much as you may believe that the disruption you are facing is unique and insurmountable, it isn't. That chaos has been and will catch up with you at any point, like it does for the rest of humanity - it is inescapable. Yet, despite the uncertainty of it all, you still have the power to shape and tell your own story, just the way you like it.

Good info but annoying, more or less it's only half a book...way too many anecdotes/case studies that I don't care about