Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by William Bridges

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author William Bridges.

Last updated on April 16, 2025.

William Bridges was an American author, speaker, and organizational consultant. He emphasized the importance of understanding transitions as a key for organizations to succeed in making changes. He says transition is the psychological process of adapting to change. Transition consists of three phases: letting go of the past, the "neutral zone" where the past is gone but the new isn't fully present, and making the new beginning.

American - Author | 1933 - February 17, 2013

Source: Wikipedia

All transitions are composed of an ending, a neutral zone and a new beginning

William Bridges

Change is an event but a transition is the process that you go through in response to the change.

William Bridges

Before people can begin something new, they have to end what used to be and unlearn the old way.

William Bridges

We resist transition not because we can't accept the change, but because we can't accept letting go of that piece of ourselves that we have to give up when and because the situation has changed.

William Bridges

It isn't the changes that do you in, it's the transitions.

William Bridges

Change comes more from managing the journey than from announcing the destination

William Bridges

Faith is the soul's adventure.

William Bridges

It isn't the changes that do you in, it's the transitions. Change is not the same as transition. Change is situational: the new site, the new boss, the new team roles, the new policy. Transition is the psychological process people go through to come to terms with the new situation. Change is external, transition is internal

William Bridges

Change is situational. Transition, on the other hand, is psychological. It is not those events, but rather the inner reorientation or self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate any of those changes into your life. Without a transition, a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture. Unless transition happens, the change won't work, because it doesn't 'take'.

William Bridges

Nothing so undermines organizational change as the failure to think through the losses people face.

William Bridges

It is when we are in transition that we are most completely alive.

William Bridges

Treating ourselves like appliances that can be unplugged and plugged in again at will or cars that stop and start with the twist of a key, we have forgotten the importance of fallow time and winter and rests in music. We have abandoned a whole system of dealing with the neutral zone through ritual, and we have tried to deal with personal change as though it were a matter of some kind of readjustment.

William Bridges

Transition is the natural process of disorientation and reorientation that marks the turning points in the path of growth...transitions are key times in the natural process of self-renewal

William Bridges

Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by William Bridges

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