Your Total Transition Score
Psychological
0
Purpose
0
Personal
0
Physical
0
Loss
0
Professional
0
TOTAL TRANSITION SCORE
0
Understanding your score
0 to 5
A relatively smooth season of life, with one or two transitions as the priority. This is a good time to build your TQ skills before the next wave arrives.
6 to 10
A common number of transitions. You would benefit from learning TQ skills to navigate them with more clarity and confidence.
11 to 15
You are likely experiencing real stress and uncertainty from multiple transitions overlapping. The messy middle is real, and you are in it. Support and structure will make a difference.
16 to 20
Increasingly overlapping transitions are likely leaving you feeling overwhelmed or stuck. This is a signal to slow down, get support, and resist the urge to "fix" everything at once.
20+
You may be in what researcher Bruce Feiler calls a lifequake. Significant, simultaneous transitions are reshaping the landscape of your life. You are not falling apart. You are being reorganized.
Where you are: the three stages of transition
This assessment is a snapshot of where you are today. Transition is fluid. Your scores may change as you move through different life circumstances and as you develop your Transitional Intelligence. Your total score tells you how much is on your plate. But the next question matters just as much: where are you within each transition?
Psychologist William Bridges identified three stages that every transition moves through. They are not always linear, and you may be in different stages across different categories. But naming your stage helps you stop fighting the wrong battle.
The Ending
Something is leaving, changing, or dying. A role, a relationship, a belief, a version of yourself. This stage asks you to let go before you know what comes next. That is the hardest part. We are a culture addicted to beginnings, and endings feel like failure. They are not. They are the necessary first act. If many of your checked items describe something falling away or no longer fitting, you are likely here.
The Messy Middle
The old is gone but the new has not arrived. This is the chrysalis. You are between identities, between stories, between lives. It feels like confusion, but it is actually reconstruction. This is where TQ matters most. The temptation is to rush through this stage, to grab the first new thing that looks like solid ground. Resist that. If your checked items describe disorientation, uncertainty, or "I don't know who I am right now," you are in the messy middle. Stay. The work is happening even when you cannot see it.
The New Beginning
Energy returns. Clarity arrives in glimmers. You start making choices that feel like yours rather than reactions to what happened. This is not "going back to normal." It is emerging with a new shape. If you checked several of the ✦ items, you may already be sensing the first signals of a new beginning. Trust that. Follow the aliveness and remember “Imposter Syndrome” is common when we are trying something new and an opportunity to use a growth mindset of curiosity.
We often refer to these three stages of transition as moving from a caterpillar (Ending), to the gooey chrysalis (Messy Middle), to the butterfly (New Beginning) as a reminder that transitions reflect the inner process of transformation.
What is a lifequake?
Researcher Bruce Feiler coined the term "lifequake" to describe sudden, disruptive changes that have lasting consequences. Unlike the predictable life stages our grandparents experienced, modern life presents us with multiple, simultaneous transitions that can feel overwhelming.
A lifequake often looks like:
If your score indicates a lifequake is underway, you are not alone. Research shows that major life transitions now occur approximately every 12 to 18 months rather than following the traditional, predictable life stages of previous generations.
Reading your results: category insights
Your highest-scoring category is often (though not always) the transition demanding the most from you right now. Here is what each category can tell you about the terrain you are crossing.
Psychological
If Psychological is your highest category, the ground beneath your inner world is shifting. This is often where transition begins; not with an external event, but with a quiet rearrangement of how you think, feel, and make sense of things. William Bridges called this the "inner reorientation" that precedes all visible change. You are not losing your mind. You are reorganizing it.
Purpose
If Purpose is your highest category, the "why" that once organized your days is dissolving. This is one of the most disorienting transitions because it is invisible to everyone around you. From the outside, nothing looks broken. From the inside, the engine has gone quiet. Research on meaning-making by Michael Steger shows that purpose is not found once; it is renegotiated across the lifespan. You are not empty. You are between stories.
Personal (Relationships)
If Personal is your highest category, your relational landscape is being redrawn. The people around you are changing, or you are changing in relation to them. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy identified loneliness as a public health crisis with health effects comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Relational transitions hit hard because we are wired for connection. The ache you feel is not weakness. It is your biology telling you that belonging matters.
Physical
If Physical is your highest category, your body is asking for a new agreement. This is not about decline. It is about recalibration. Kerry Burnight's research on "joyspan" reframes the physical conversation entirely: the goal is not to extend life at any cost, but to extend the years worth living. The body you have now is not a lesser version of the one you had. It is the one asking you to pay attention.
Parting | Loss
If Loss is your highest category, you are carrying weight that may not have a name yet. Our culture is poor at acknowledging grief beyond death. The loss of a friendship, a future you imagined, a version of yourself that no longer exists; these are real losses that deserve real mourning. Bruce Feiler's research found that loss-driven transitions are often the ones that catalyze the deepest growth, but only when we stop rushing past the grief to get to the lesson.
Professional
If Professional is your highest category, the identity you built through your work is in transition. For many of us, "What do you do?" has functioned as "Who are you?" for decades. When that answer no longer fits, the disorientation goes far deeper than career dissatisfaction. Chip Conley's research at Modern Elder Academy shows that professional reinvention in midlife is not about starting over. It is about starting from everything you have accumulated.
What to do right now
Before you move on, do one thing. Look back at the items you checked. Find the transition that carries the most energy for you right now. Not the most urgent. Not the most logical. The one that made you pause. The one that produced a small exhale of recognition.
Write it here:
That is your starting point. Not because it is the biggest transition on your list, but because it is the one your body recognized before your mind could catch up. In TQ, we call this "following the aliveness." Start there.
Reflection questions
1. Looking at your category breakdown, which life area surprised you most? Why?
2. Which category feels most urgent or demanding of your attention right now?
3. Which category feels most exciting or full of possibility?
4. What patterns do you notice across your different life areas?
Moving forward: your learning path
This assessment is a starting point, not a destination. In our TQ programs, you will explore each of the six Life Pillars in depth. You will learn to identify which stage of transition you are in across each area of your life. You will gain practical tools matched to your stage and your personal navigation style. And you will discover that managing multiple transitions simultaneously is not about fixing them all; it is about knowing which ones need your attention now and which ones need your patience.
To learn more about Transitional Intelligence and explore our programs, visit:
www.modernelderacademy.com
Research foundation
This assessment framework draws from William Bridges' foundational work on transition stages in "Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes," Bruce Feiler's research with hundreds of individuals documented in "Life Is in the Transitions," and Modern Elder Academy's analysis of 6,000+ individuals across 60 countries experiencing midlife transitions.
✦ indicates a forward-moving transition
Modern Elder Academy | Transitional Intelligence (TQ)