Excerpt from "Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life"

The journeys of passage that we make, both external and internal, involve physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual challenges. In preparing ourselves to meet these challenges, we should begin with a level head and an eye toward the practical. Here are some general principles to bear in mind before setting out to lands unknown:

1. Don't run away from something; run to something. Although journeys take you away from the familiar, the intention is not to escape from something unpleasant. New territory may actually provide a better, more fertile environment for finding new solutions or new ways of viewing a situation.

2. Travel light. Take as little baggage along as possible, literally and figuratively. Too much baggage is hard to keep track of. Too much energy and time is expended packing and unpacking and packing again. Essential items may get lost. If you need something bad enough, you will find a way to acquire it. (On my trip to India, I met a businessman who could well afford to take as much as he wanted with him and spend as much as he wanted once there, but he chose instead to travel with a single small bag. In addition, he took clothing ready to be given away, and that is just what he did all along the way.)

3. Don't assume anything. And especially don't assume that what you do at home is the way people do it elsewhere. Observe and appreciate differences.

4. Don't expect anything. Setting yourself up with expectations limits your experience. Thinking in a limited way will give you a limited experience. Be open to new ways of experiencing and doing things. However. . .

5. Do expect the unexpected. Being present without your usual routines, habitual behaviors, and attitudes creates room for new impressions in all realms and allows for new discoveries by all of your senses.

6. Be prepared to meet the stranger. Strangers you meet are mirrors of yourself. Conversations with strangers may provoke a dialogue with parts of yourself that seem unfamiliar and foreign.

7. Remember that the way you choose to view the world will be the way the world reveals itself to you.

The above is an excerpt from the book Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life by Abigail Brenner, M.D. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2011 Abigail Brenner, M.D., author of Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life

Abigail Brenner, M.D., author of Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life, is a board certified psychiatrist currently in private practice as well as an ordained interfaith minister who helps people design, create, and perform personally meaningful rituals. She is also author of SHIFT: How to Deal When Life Changes, and the co-author of The Essential Guide To Baby's First Year, to be released April 2011.

For more information please visit http://www.abigailbrenner.com/ and follow the author on Facebook

To purchase the book please visit Amazon