Why change feels hard. Even when you want it.

We tend to assume that if we've chosen a change and wanted it, we should feel good once it arrives.

That’s often not how it works.

You can want the new house, the new job, the holiday, the new chapter. You can know that something is absolutely the right decision. And still find the arrival surprisingly hard.

A couple of years ago I moved six miles across South East London.

I’d lived in London my whole adult life. I knew the area I was moving to. My daughters had grown up in the house I was leaving, but I was ready to go.

What surprised me was how visceral it felt. Six miles. A relatively small geographical change, and yet I felt it far more than the distance seemed to justify.

At first I was almost determined to prove I’d made the right decision. The coffee shops are better. This is better. That’s better. I was building a case, mostly for my own benefit.

Then that wore off.

The streets weren’t in my muscle memory yet. The house didn't have its rhythms. Light fell differently. Putting the bins out became a small act of jeopardy because I couldn’t decode the schedule. I knew the area and one of my oldest friends lives here, but knowing somewhere and living somewhere turned out to be very different things.

It probably took a full cycle of seasons for it to click.

And I’ve started to notice that strange moment of suspension in lots of changes.

You arrive at the hotel room after months of looking forward to the holiday. You close the door on your first night in a new house. You finally get the job you’ve been working towards.

All that energy and momentum has been pointed at getting there. And then, quite suddenly, you're there. And now what?

The external change has happened. But you haven’t caught up with it yet.

That's the interesting bit.

I think we sometimes read that discomfort too quickly. Have I made a mistake? Why don’t I feel happier? Why isn’t this easier?

With the house, something shifted when I stopped requiring it to be the single answer. It didn’t have to be my forever home. I didn’t have to love everything about the move straight away. I didn't have to ace the transition.

I needed time to complete the transition. That was all.

I’ve spent much of my working life around change and transformation, which is perhaps why this experience stayed with me. I thought I did personal change well. It turns out that change will test you every time.

Organisations do something very similar.

A decision gets made. The structure changes. A founder steps aside, two teams become one, a new strategy launches. On paper, the change has happened. But the people inside it may still be catching up. That gap, between the decision and the arrival, is where most of my career has happened.

Perhaps what we misunderstand, or at least forget, about change is that we pour our attention into the moment itself and very little into the transition. William Bridges drew this distinction decades ago: change is the event; transition is the slower inner process of catching up.

The space afterwards, when the old thing is gone and the new thing hasn’t yet found its rhythm. That space can feel uncomfortable.

It doesn't necessarily mean the change was wrong.

Sometimes it just means you're still in transition. Still arriving.

If your organisation is somewhere in that gap, I'd be glad to talk it through. You can find me at rebecca@rebeccahull.com.