Yay! You’ve made it to the new year. We have all transitioned. We all have this change in common.
During the year we go through different transitions: we travel to work, restock the pantry, plant something, fix something, wake up, change our outfit, get married, move house, move jobs, clean the house, meet someone, lose someone, graduate… the possibilities are endless. During the year, we transition at our own pace, on our own schedule. There are others who might share one or two of our transitions at a time, but it is notable when an entire community, or the whole world transitions through something together.
This is where we find ourselves. You’ll find plenty of people reevaluating things at the moment.
Recently, I read Nathan Shaw’s post: ‘Two Words for 2026: Transition and Reposition‘. It stuck with me.
For years, I have described myself as ‘in transition’. People often ask: what are you transitioning to? My answer: I don’t know. But with these two words ‘transition’ and ‘reposition’ side by side, a shift is happening in my thinking.
For some people, transition is a doorway from one room to another. They’ve been doing something or thinking a certain way then they step into the next thing. They walk to the door and open it. It’s a linear process. There’s a decision to go to the other room, one thing naturally leads to the other.
For others, transition is bigger than simply a doorframe, they’re in a hallway. Off the hallway is a series of doors. These doorways are each a transition of their own. Before these people walk through a door, they spend time walking along the hallway. Perhaps they must decide which door to open. Perhaps they know exactly where they’re going but it takes time to get there.
There are two ways to transition: with or without intention.
We can walk into a room and forget why we’re there. We wander in and look around, trying to recall why we came. Either something jogs our memory, or we wander out again, not sure why we transitioned there at all.
Usually, we walk into a room to do something. We sit down at a table or in a comfy chair, we flick on the electric jug or open the fridge, we get out the vacuum cleaner or pick up a bag – to do these things we’ve got to go to the correct place in the room. Just walking into the room isn’t enough. We have to position ourselves correctly to accomplish what we came there for.
In football, your team might get the ball, but they get it for a purpose. If they just celebrate the transition without turning toward their own goal and moving forward, there’s no point. They quickly lose the ball to the other team, and the transition is wasted.
Transition has purpose. It is the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another. Getting stuck in the hallway permanently misses the point, but being in the hallway can be an important part of the process.
In his post, Nathan refers to the transition of the nation of Israel exiting Egypt. The entire nation exited, but they allowed their thought processes to get stuck in the old way of doing things. They grumbled about the food and wished that they were back in Egypt where there was a variety of flavours. When the twelve men went to scope out the land, two men looked at the land through eyes of promise and saw what could be, ten of them only saw obstacles. The multitude agreed with the ten who saw the obstacles and they never entered the land at all. Only the two who changed their thinking got to enter the new land. They had to be patient, but in time they accomplished great things.
We’ve all stepped into a new year. Some of us have endured hard stuff in the year that has been. Some of us will reposition ourselves and step into the fullness of the year. Others will continue in the way they always have and move forward without intention. My question is: as you transition into the new year, will you persist in the thinking and mindsets of last year, or will you reposition your thinking for the year ahead?
This year is bound to have its challenges, but are you prepared to position yourself for what is coming rather than what has been? You might set some boundaries, allow space to rest, perhaps you’re making physical changes. But greater than that, what position do you take in your thinking and in your heart?
A friend has been asking me: what are you leaving behind in the old year? It’s a good question. To reposition ourselves, we need to move. Maybe leaving something behind is leaving an old position. We must leave where we were. It might be a tiny adjustment, it might be a massive shift. Either way, to reposition your thinking for the new year will set your trajectory for the foreseeable future.
You have the opportunity to be intentional. You choose what you’re going to do in this new space. Are you going to accept what this year holds or hark back to what was before? Will you allow your perspective and attitude to adapt?
We’ve entered the new year; we’re in another room. The question is – where will you position yourself? What makes sense in your context? You could just stand there or move toward something intentionally.
This thinking is more powerful than a new year’s resolution where you make a decision and will it into being. A resolution is what striving looks like, that’s why so many resolutions fall away.
Positioning yourself prepares you to step into the new when the time is right. It’s less stressful because you don’t have to scramble and make major changes when things become clear. You don’t have to push through with force of will. You might wait in position for an extended period, but when the moment comes, you’re there.
If you’re hoping for a promotion, your new thinking might be learning to think like a manager or an owner, causing your work to step up a level.
Some people you know have made substantial changes over the break. How do you reposition yourself in relationships? It might be allowing this person to be, without imposing your opinions upon them.
Others around us think differently, like the multitude did from the two men in the wilderness. But those two men continued to prepare themselves for the new and when it came, they were ready.
Years ago, my husband and I decided that we would take the family to volunteer in South America. We shared our thoughts with a group of families who, surprisingly, also wanted to take their families to serve somewhere. We started to brainstorm ideas and look for places that we could go together. The excitement grew, but over time, each family had different realisations of how this would affect them. One family was concerned about work, another about education, some couldn’t step out of their situations for a lengthy period. One by one, each family made the decision that they couldn’t make it work. We ended up being the only family that went.
Still, each of those families thrived within the decisions they had made. They did what made sense in their context. Some people hope and dream without expectation that anything will happen. They start to transition, but they’re still processing things with old mindsets. They step into the room and hover inside the doorframe without positioning themselves anywhere particular. These people are just as likely to wander off somewhere else as to set themselves up alongside you.
As we transition into the new year, consider what repositioning looks like for you, either physically, mentally, or spiritually. You can be intentional about where or how you show up, even if your context hasn’t changed.
You can’t change the people around you, but you can position yourself for what this year may hold. You may face new transitions, or things might not turn out as you hope. Despite the unknowns, keep these two words – transition and reposition – in mind and see if together, they reshape your year for the better.
