You're in transition.

A few years ago I was sitting with my coach trying to explain what it felt like to move from being a Managing Director and being someone who had spent thirty years as a full-on operator in hospitality, who knew how to run a hospitality business, who walked into a room and knew exactly who they were and what they were there to do - into being a coach. Into building something completely new, from scratch, in a completely different way of working and being in the world.

I was stumbling over it. Not quite sad, not quite excited, not quite anything I had a clean word for. Just in a strange, uncomfortable, unnameable place that I couldn't seem to explain properly to anyone, not least myself.

And she said, very lightly: "You're in transition."

That was it. And I remember the feeling of it - like space had been created between my thoughts and what I was experiencing, because suddenly there was a name for where I was. And if it had a name, it felt like it wasn't forever.

I don't think we name transitions nearly enough. And they are everywhere - a child moving from a cot to a bed, a house move, a friendship that's changing, a relationship ending or beginning, a parent getting older, a role shifting, a business starting, an identity that no longer quite fits the way it used to. All of it transition, all of it requiring something from us that we don't always know how to give.

The transitions that tend to catch people most off guard are the identity ones, particularly for leaders in hospitality and retail.

Stepping up from GM to area manager, when you're no longer running one site but leading people who run sites - a completely different job with a completely different version of yourself required. Moving from operator to owner, when suddenly there's nobody above you to escalate to. Moving from a large corporate group into an independent, and feeling the structure disappear almost overnight. Or being promoted to board level when your whole identity has always lived in the operation.

And then there are the quieter ones that don't come with a new job title at all. The moment your team stops needing you the way they used to. The business you built starting to outgrow you. The industry shifting around you and the skills that made you brilliant starting to feel less certain. When a business you loved and defined yourself by closes or is sold.

All of it identity transition. All of it requiring you to work out who you are when the thing that told you who you were has changed.

And then there's the space in between; the bit between what you've left and what you're moving toward. Most people try to rush through it because it's uncomfortable and disorienting and it doesn't feel productive. But that middle place is actually where the most important work happens, where you start to work out who you're becoming rather than just what you're doing next.

Transitions stack up too, and it's rarely just the one big obvious one - it's the role change and the relationship shift and the life stage thing and the friendship that's evolved and the identity that's being renegotiated, all at the same time, all unnamed, all just sitting there taking up energy you didn't know was being used.

So here are the things that can help.

Name it. Say it out loud, perhaps to yourself or to someone else. I am in transition. Because unnamed transitions can feel like permanent states.

Stop trying to rush through the middle. The in-between place is uncomfortable but it isn't wasted time. Something is happening there even when nothing seems obvious.

Lower your expectations of yourself. You are doing more than it looks like, because transition takes enormous energy.

Don't make big decisions from the middle of it. The view from inside a transition is distorted, and things tend to look clearer once you've landed somewhere, even partially.

And notice what you're grieving. Every transition involves an ending, even the ones you chose. Acknowledging what you've left behind and giving it a moment matters more than most people allow themselves.

And if none of that feels possible right now. If you're deep in the middle of something and you can't quite see the shape of it yet - maybe just start here.

You're in transition. And that's okay.