Moving through significant shifts in life stages affords us a rare opportunity: to consider new options, to take stock of our accomplishments, and to develop an exciting future.  As with all transitions, this can be a time fraught with uncertainty, reluctance to let go of the familiar, and questioning who we will become.

The Next Phase, through provocative and multidisciplinary activities, will help you to understand the phases of a good transition.  It will encourage you to explore new choices and develop personal tools to make the transition successfully and with assurance.  You will look at your life history, including careers and relationships, and then individually and collectively look at your values and wishes and desires for the next stage of life.  Participants will learn to envision a broader range of possibilities, and to examine the advantages and drawbacks to having a wide variety of choices. This will provide an opportunity to look at individual styles of dealing with change, paying attention to what supports us and where we get stuck, and how to stay in dialogue with others as we journey through transition.

This Program will assist you to:

• Reexamine old dreams or interests that have been put aside

• Maintain a passion for life’s experiences

• Choose how to spend time and with whom

• Remain physically and psychologically active and healthy

• Learn how to release from past involvements and preoccupations

• Integrate new choices and directions with our significant others

• Explore your style of dealing with change

 

This Program is for you if you are facing a major life transition, whether this change is planned for by choice or imposed on you by circumstance.  Perhaps you have reached a point in life where the demands of creating and managing a career and a family are receding, and you can think about new directions for your life.  Or perhaps an unexpected change has opened the door to a future different from the one you had planned.

The Program is open to people from all walks of life. If you are in a committed, intimate relationship with someone, we strongly urge you to attend with that person.

“My husband and I attended the seminar at GISC to try to figure out what we wanted to do with the third/third of our lives. The seminar, the skilled leaders, and our colleagues in the various sessions helped us focus on our skills and how we could parlay them into a “useful” activity -- useful to ourselves and to our community. We thoroughly enjoyed the camaraderie that developed over the few days of our participation. Thank you for creating an environment that could foster such development.”    - Next Phase Participant, 2007