In 2012, Cassidy Krug competed in her first and last Olympics. Raised by two diving coaches, Krug was in diapers when she started dreaming of competing.
At 27 years old, she had a shot at the Olympic bronze medal but landed in seventh place instead. Krug decided to retire, something she’d already been considering for three years. But how do you move forward in life when diving is the only thing you’ve ever known?
Shelf Help is a wellness column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books — all with the aim of learning how to live a more complete life.
Krug tried to replace her passion for diving with a corporate career. But after seven years in advertising and brand strategy, she felt lost and without the purpose and motivation she’d once felt for her sport. Fascinated by the endless options of what to do next, Krug wrote “Resurface: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Biggest Transitions.”
The Times spoke with Krug about why we’re so resistant to uncertainty and what tools we can use to get comfortable with change.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Why do you think transitions are an important part of life?
Transitions are an important part of life because they’re an inevitable part of life. An author named Bruce Feiler estimates that we have three to five “lifequakes” in our lives — major shifts that change our habits, our identities, our communities and our sense of purpose. These shifts are even more frequent now that it feels like the pace of change in the world is speeding up. The more we can embrace change, rather than try to hold on to our old ways, the more set up we will be to adapt and move forward.
“During a transition, we often need to change our definition of success,” says Cassidy Krug, author of “Resurface: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Biggest Transitions.”
(Natalie Fong)
For this book, you interviewed people going through all kinds of life transitions, from changing careers to leaving prison. What did you find to be universal truths about these transitions?
There were two: that transitions take away our sense of community, and that during a transition, we often need to change our definition of success. Stanley — the man I interviewed who left prison after 20 years — told me that when he did, he lost the sense of camaraderie he felt while there. He also realized that he’d previously defined success by having a family and a stable job. When he left prison, he needed to redefine success to include the impact he’d had on other people’s lives while in prison. Though my experience was not the same, I also felt a huge loss of community and the need to redefine success while leaving diving.
In the book, you write that as humans, we are resistant to change and feel a need for certainty. Why are we so resistant to such an inevitable part of our lives, and how can we overcome this?
We often waver between the need for stability and a desire for change and growth. Right now, as a society, our expectations for certainty are ever-increasing. Twenty years ago, there were no dating apps that could assess my compatibility with a partner and no Yelp reviews that could predict if I’d like where I chose to eat dinner. Now with generative AI, there are many more avenues that market a false sense of security, and I think those avenues give us even more anxiety when it comes to the inevitable moments when we are uncertain. One way to fight that need for certainty is to put ourselves in difficult and uncertain situations. The ability to live in uncertainty is a muscle: The more we rely on external things to give us a sense of certainty, the less capable and the more anxious we feel when we don’t have those crutches around.
In the book, you write that a transition never ends. What do you mean by that?
I used to think of transitions as beginning, middle, end. Instead, psychologists use the phrases moving into, moving through, and moving out of to describe transitions, acknowledging that they rarely yield a clear-cut endpoint. My friend Nora, whom I write about in the book, expected that once she was in remission from cancer, she would move forward and thrive. In reality, she’s in remission, but she has brain fog, fatigue and lingering health issues that will change her life moving forward. The damaging and false expectation is that transitions end. Often, in reality, we don’t return to our previous state, and our transition instead ripples into our future — but that rippling change means ongoing growth and forward movement.
In Cassidy Krug’s “Resurface: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Biggest Transitions,” interviewees range from a cancer survivor to injured athletes to a man starting over after 20 years in prison.
(Cassidy Krug)
How can we move forward after leaving something important to us behind?
Rituals are a great way to honor what we’re leaving behind, commemorate how it shaped us and help incorporate the lessons from it into our evolving identities. Just like holding a funeral for a lost loved one, people find creative ways to honor different parts of their lives coming to a close. One woman I interviewed who struggled with infertility threw herself a menopause party complete with tampons wrapped in ribbons and women telling their first period and menopause stories. [Author] William Bridges said that change is something that happens to us, and transition is how we choose to react to that change. I think there’s a third step to that — how we interpret that transition — and rituals can help us do so in a way that moves us forward.
What would you recommend someone do when they’re paralyzed by the thought of an upcoming change?
Firstly, I’d recommend someone reframe their anxiety by spinning those fears into opportunities. “I’m afraid to leave this job because I don’t know what will happen” can become “If I leave, there will be so many opportunities open for me, and I’m going to have my own back.” Secondly, it’s important to start with something small and concrete. The idea of finding a new passion is paralyzing, but asking yourself what you’re interested in and finding a small step you can take in the direction of exploring that interest feels much more manageable.
What would you say to someone who’s not sure if they’re ready to make a big jump?
An author named Annie Duke wrote a book called “Quit” — in it, she writes that by the time a decision appears to be 50/50, it is probably better for your upcoming happiness if you move on. We have a societal bias towards grit, and every success story seems to be of someone who had an idea and then overcame obstacles and then succeeded. Stories forget to include all the things that person quit before they chose and invested in the right path. We don’t quit nearly as often as we should, so if you’re thinking about quitting something, do it.
Now that you’ve finished writing your book, you’re going through a period of transition again. How do you feel about it this time around?
There’s grief and loss associated with all transitions. Something I have to remind myself of with each transition I face is that there will be a period where I don’t know what’s next, and that’s normal. Things aren’t supposed to last forever, and I have to remind myself to breathe into the opportunity that temporariness brings, rather than the fear. I think many of us are overwhelmed by possibilities — there are many things we could do, but we don’t know which path to take. I’m in the aftermath of a project I felt so certain about, and my instinct is to wait for that certainty to hit me again before taking a step in any direction. But if I do that, I’ll be waiting forever. What I need to do is ask myself is, “What am I curious about? What is driving me?” and then invest time into exploring it — that is how I’ll figure out what my passion is going to be next.
(Maggie Chiang / For The Times)
This story originally appeared on LA Times
