Patrick Mosher maps four phases of major life transitions: the initial doubt, the trigger that makes you act as if it's real, the departure day itself, and the uncertain period after. He shares two stories: leaving Accenture after a client deal forced his hand, and a palm reader who pushed him toward retirement.
Chapters
So the first part, the first part of a transition is where there's that inkling of, I need to go. Not sure. I think yes. Well, maybe. Well, I don't know. Well, this is okay. And you spin in that phase for a long time. And you might talk to some friends about it. You might not. It might be all an internal dialogue. But then, uh, and then somebody goes like, you say, well, I'm thinking about leaving. And somebody might ask you— I love when somebody asked me that when I was their career counselor— like, I'm thinking about leaving. It's like, how close are you to leaving? And that's impossible to answer, right? Because you don't know if you're an inch or a mile or, you know, a, a continent away from leaving. You feel closer to that than other times, but you never really know how far you are away from leaving. Does that make sense as a phase? And that's true in any life transition, right? There's the thinking about the thing, there's a dissatisfaction that's sitting there, you spin on that, you spin, spin, spin, spin, spin on that. And then for me anyway, there is a trigger that put me in the next phase, and that trigger wasn't leaving. But I was sure I was going to leave. You know, now, now my brain shifted into architecting the leave, and that became more behavioral, became more in the world. I may not talk to my supervisor or talk to the people that matter in that, but I'm talking to friends and stuff going like, oh yeah, I'm out. Okay, so that's another phase of this thing. And were you making it real? I can tell you in my Accenture story, there were two triggers in that. One was I was doing a big project at a large client, and we had sold so far like $6 million of work there, and we were— they— we had sold— we had— they had promised a value-based deal for $80 million. So it was the biggest deal of my life. And then, uh, then they fired the chief sales officer and put a new one in. And on the day we went in to sell the new chief sales officer, resell him on this project that was already committed to, Accenture dropped a $100 million contract with that client as— because it was a mutual thing that we were doing stuff for them, they were doing stuff for us. And we dropped a $100 million contract with them. So we took $100 million away from this chief sales officer on the day that I'm gonna go in and try to sell, resell this new guy on an $80 million project. We walked in and you know the phrase, he walked into the meeting, sat down and said, "Really?" And we're like, "No, no, no, you need to separate the two things. This is gonna generate revenue for you." This is gonna, it's like, And he just looked at us like, really? No. And I remember walking away from that and getting on a call with the partner that I was reporting to. And what came out of my mouth, I said, I don't have it in me to do this anymore. And that was my trigger. I was like, oh, I know that just came out of my mouth, but that was my trigger. This went away from, thinking about going to, okay, this was the first step of being real. It was a behavioral commitment to going. Now, I didn't leave for another 2 years after that because for me, I, I kind of like to win the Super Bowl before I retire. So, you know, that is, that is not a place that I wanted to leave is on a down note. So I stayed another 2 years but waited for a project that I could say, oh, this was a huge success and I want to do that. But that was the architect. I knew I was gone. And then the second indicator was this, and I know you guys have probably heard the story, and if you haven't, that's for another time. But I went to a palm reader at a Renaissance festival, and she read my palms and she said, you're thinking about transition, aren't you? And I was like, yeah. Now, I'm not a big palm reader person, but I think like 10% of people who have crystals and palm reading and, you know, talk to people in the past life and all that kind of stuff. There's like 10% of those people that have the juice. And so yes. And then there's like 90% that have some juice or just are quacks. This person had the juice. Like the way she looked at me in the eyes and said, oh, you're going through a life transition. I was like, yeah. She's like, whatever you do next will bring you more wealth than you can imagine. I was like, the next day I went in and put in my, my retirement. So I was like, we're in. So weird, right? You guys know me well enough. It's like, oh yeah, Patrick goes to palm readers and decides his life decisions. I was like, no, I'm not that guy. But it was like, that was like, oh, it was so definite. And so then it was architecting that, and it was about 6 months before I left, but I left. But that's that second phase, is now I'm architecting the thing and I'm telling people and I'm trying to figure things out. There was a severance package that they were working on and all that kind of stuff. So that's the second phase that you're like getting out. One of the things that was really important for me, and I think this is true with any life transition, whether it's positive or what you'd deem as negative, is to go through that phase with honor and respect. For where I've been and for everybody in the game. Does that make sense? Honor and respect in that phase. And then this isn't a phase, but it's a trigger. It's another gate. Then there's the day. For me at Accenture, there was the day that I left. It was February 10th, 2017. And so for these big life transitions, You remember the dates because they're that big. So now for you two, I don't know if your Accenture leave date was a date that you remember, but for me, 28 and a half years, that was worth remembering. Um, but February 10th, 2017 was the day I left that. And then you're in the next phase. And then people go, oh, the next phase is the next chapter. It's like, bullshit. That's not the next chapter. The next chapter is like, I don't know what I'm doing. Right? And so there's this next phase of trying to refigure out what you're trying to do. And for me, I left, people said you need to write books. So I said I'm going to write 5 books. Okay, it's 5 years later, I haven't started writing books yet, right? So, so part of this is like, okay, so the next part is figuring out, uh, what the next piece looks like. And then finally, after that phase, then there's the phase of Oh, I know what I'm doing now. Okay, so those are— that was my Accenture leave story, but that's also a framework of, you know, going through life transitions that we're going to go through today.
