Your Transition Is Not a Crisis. It's Rejuvenation.

What habit science, dormant friendships, and a few famous second acts tell you about the upside of starting over.

Healthcare policy analyst. Capitol Hill legislative aide. Business consultant. Co-founder of a VC-backed healthcare startup. And now, founder of Second Half Ventures. I've been through several professional transitions over the past 30-plus years. They all came with stress and uncertainty. But they all energized me as well. View the transition itself as a worthy process, not just a means to an end, and you find unexpected pleasures and opportunities for growth.

Many of us in our 40s, 50s, and 60s are thinking about what's next. Do I stay where I am and make incremental changes to move closer to my goals, or do I need a more substantial change? If so, what form does that take? I won't get into that deep consideration here (and if you want to explore that, the writings of Chip Conley are a great place to start). But if you've made the decision to make a career change, please read on.

If you're in the middle of a transition right now, the stress and uncertainty is real. But there's another thing happening at the same time that can be incredibly powerful: a transition is one of the best times in adult life when your habits, your relationships, and your own sense of who you are all become genuinely open and negotiable again. Take advantage of it.

Why a Transition Is the Best Possible Time to Reset Your Habits

Most people try to change a habit through sheer willpower, on top of a life that's still cueing the old behavior at every turn. That's the hard way, and it rarely works except for the most disciplined among us. The research says the far easier way is to change the context first, and let the new habits follow.

Wendy Wood, who has spent decades at USC studying how habits actually form, found that about 40% of what people do every day isn't a decision at all — it's a habit triggered automatically by the environment. That's why New Year's resolutions made from the couch don't stick: the couch, the fridge, the commute, the coworkers are all still there, still cueing the old behavior. But Wood also found the reverse: when the environment changes — a move, a new job, a new relationship — old habits lose their automatic trigger, and people become far more able to build new ones. In one of her studies, college students who transferred schools were able to break a heavy TV-watching habit simply because the TV was no longer in the same spot relative to everything else in their day.

A career transition is one of the biggest context changes most people ever go through. New schedules, new people, new thought patterns — all of it degrades the on-ramp back to the old routine. That's the condition Wood's research says makes a habit easiest to drop, and a new one easiest to install.

If you haven't read James Clear's Atomic Habits, add it to your reading list. Clear adds the other half of this: habits stick best when they're tied to identity, not outcomes. His framing isn't "I want to lose ten pounds," it's "I'm becoming the type of person who moves every day." A career transition hands you that identity shift on a silver platter. You're already rewriting who you are professionally. Extending that same rewrite to "the kind of person who trains three mornings a week" or "the kind of person who reads for an hour before checking email" costs almost nothing extra — you're already in the identity-revision business. Clear also points to "habit stacking" — attaching a new habit to a routine you already have, since anchoring it that way costs less willpower than starting cold. A transition gives you a full set of brand-new routines to stack onto.

COVID was one opportunity to change habits. Starting in 2020 and continuing consistently for the past six years, on the days I work from home (which is most) and many weekend days as well, I walk 10 to 15 minutes to start and end each workday. "Touching grass" in the morning helps stretch my legs and expand my perspective before narrowing my focus on work. An end-of-day walk helps transition me from my workday to personal time — ten minutes of decompression that starts my evening right. As I launch my venture, I'm adding morning mindfulness to my routine. We'll see how it goes.

An Opportunity to Rekindle Old Relationships

Researchers call a contact you haven't spoken to in three years or more a "dormant tie." A widely cited MIT Sloan study found that reconnecting with dormant ties is not only pleasant — it can be more impactful than staying in touch with your current network, because a dormant tie has spent years accumulating a completely different set of experiences, information, and contacts than the people you talk to every week.

Why don't we reach out? I suspect it's because we expect the other person will feel awkward or won't remember us. The research says the opposite is almost always true — people are glad to hear from you, not put off. A 2025 study of retirees found the same pattern showing up right at the life stage Second Half Ventures serves: people going through a major transition reactivate ties from college and even childhood as part of building their new business. The transition doesn't just make room for old friendships — it triggers you to go looking for them in the first place. I've been living this for the past couple of months as I reach out to old friends and colleagues to solicit their perspectives. I got their feedback, of course, but the smiles and laughs were an incredible bonus.

You're in Good Company

None of this is a modern phenomenon, and it isn't limited to professionals striking out on their own. Some of the most well-known reinventions in recent history follow a similar pattern: disruption first, then a version of the person that couldn't have existed without it.

Late-career, first-time reinvention. George Foreman retired from boxing in 1977, went broke, and came back a decade later. At 45, he became the oldest heavyweight champion in history. The bigger second act came after that: he endorsed a countertop grill that eventually earned him more than $200 million — several multiples of what he made in the ring. Vera Wang spent 15 years as a Vogue editor before launching her first fashion collection at 40, after being passed over for editor-in-chief — a rejection that became the reason she started her own label. Ashton Kutcher became an early investor in Airbnb, Uber, and Spotify through Sound/A-Grade Ventures. Reese Witherspoon built Hello Sunshine and sold it for roughly $900 million. Ryan Reynolds took an unusually operator-heavy approach, building and selling both Aviation Gin (to Diageo) and Mint Mobile (to T-Mobile) rather than just lending his name. (And who doesn't love his Mint Mobile commercials?) And any list of career transitions must include Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has done this three separate times: bodybuilder to actor, actor to California governor, governor back to business and advocacy — starting over each time.

I won't tell you the uncertainty and stress isn't real, since it obviously is. But research and these examples point to a reassuring conclusion: the discomfort of a transition isn't separate from the opportunity — it contributes to capitalizing on it. Right now, more than 2 million Americans between 50 and 64 are actively exploring or trying to start a business. Not despite the disruption in their lives, but very often because of it.

Your greatest work is next.

Sources

Wendy Wood, APA Monitor interview on habit science
Duke Today, "Key to Changing Habits Is In Environment, Not Willpower"
Wood, Tam & Witt, "Changing Circumstances, Disrupting Habits," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2005)
James Clear, "Identity-Based Habits: How to Actually Stick to Your Goals"
MIT Sloan Management Review, "The Power of Reconnection — How Dormant Ties Can Surprise You"
Amabile, Bailyn, Crary, Hall & Kram, retirement tie-rekindling research, via WorkTies.org
Reuters, "George Foreman, one of the great second acts in sports," obituary
AfroTech, George Foreman grill earnings
EPOP 2025, NORC/Kauffman Foundation (2HV internal analysis)