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We underestimate the power of endings. We have a strong cultural bias for beginnings. It’s much more fun to look forward than it is to look backwards, so we think. Perhaps it’s our fear of death or our struggle with our own mortality. Very frequently we avoid endings. We rob ourselves of the gift of getting complete.
Consider that avoiding ending things intentionally is costing you.
If you’re committed to living and leading more consciously, if you are interested in increasing your sense of self awareness, if you like the idea of fostering a more evolved place of work…
Pay attention to how you end things.
How do you end your meetings? Hurried, late, or incomplete as your norm.
How do you end employment agreements? Avoidance, denial, or with conflict.
How do you leave your team members? Disinterested, transactional, or critically.
How do you end a romance? Text message, blow up, or shame spiral.
How do you end your year? Unresolved, resigned, or hurried.
Human beings are frequently off to the next best thing and don’t leave what we started with intentionality.
We don’t know how to leave things clean, clear, and complete.
This may sound arduous or uncomfortable but I assure you ending things intentionally will increase your energetic aliveness, your sense of confidence and clarity, and your ability to truly enter into your next great adventure with purpose.
Get curious by paying attention to the way you leave your partner or kids in the morning. Start to notice the last five minutes of a meeting, what’s the tenor? Reflect back on the last few team members that resigned or were terminated. Notice the way you leave an interaction with a service provider. Ask yourself:
“Am I present? Am I avoidant?
What do I not want to feel? What do I not want to say?”
I am not asking you to do anything differently, yet. For now, I am just asking you to notice your tendencies. I am asking you to pay attention to the way you do endings through increased self awareness.
Much of the work I do with clients and their teams is to develop a practice of paying particular attention to what is being avoided, what isn’t being said, and how they may be leaving things incomplete.
Leaving things incomplete is a slow bleed of your energy.
Living a life that is incomplete in communication, appreciation, transparency, agreements, and desires is a lightning fast way to live an unfulfilled life.
I am not suggesting that developing a practice of clear and intentional endings will deliver sunshine and roses all the time. This is not a children’s book.
I am suggesting that as you develop increased awareness of living an integrated existence you will notice increased freedom and a sense of real power that causes you to be magnetic to what matters most to you. You will feel lighter. You will feel more free.
Being clean, clear, and complete in your endings opens you up for whatever you want.
Whether you’re at the end of a calendar or fiscal year, whether a business or romantic partnership is unraveling, whether your child is headed off to college, or your parent is entering into hospice care, we are faced with endings every single day. You have the opportunity to change the norms you live by and get honest about what’s really going on for you.
As you pay attention to the endings in your life ask yourself these three questions:
- What body sensations do I notice? Use words that end in “ing” and locate the sensations in and on your body. There is no need to explain “why” your body is experiencing what it is experiencing.
- What feelings are present? Notice anger, sadness, fear, joy, and creativity. There is no need to understand the “story” that you think is related to your feelings. Allow your feelings to be enough.
- What thought is here now? Check in on the most accessible thought. There is no need to circle back to what you’ve been thinking about all day or week. Notice what thought is present now.
Becoming a transformational leader involves doing things differently. The old ways of leadership aren’t working anymore. As a high performing and influential presence on the planet, it is necessary for you to expand your capacity. That is the good news.
Learning how to end things with intention will give you access to new opportunities and adventures that are more aligned than anything you would have created with a lifestyle of unresolved endings in the way. If you’re ready to transform your leadership and take on a new and necessary way of being in today’s world, schedule a Chemistry Call with me.
I am committed to supporting leaders that are interested in transforming the way we do business and relationships at a time when it seems everything we once knew is no longer. Your time is now.
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