Start Fresh: Honor What’s Ending

 

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”― Seneca

As we turn the proverbial calendar page to a new month and a new year, we hope. We long for freshness, something new: a new chance, opportunity.

And yet we wonder: will these ideas and visions really happen, come to pass? Can we make the long-awaited changes we long for personally or professionally happen? Is this the year we actually do what we say we will?

We quickly can become jaded or cynical, and drop the possibility of change.

Here’s what I know: we long for new openings at the new year and throughout the year; and yet in order for something new to happen, something else must end.

We have to release what is over in order to move into the new way of being or operating. Some things may be renewed or reborn, but other aspects must necessarily end, never to return. This is the natural cycle of life.

What I think holds us back, and slows down the ability to make the changes we actually want to create, is the unexamined grief of change that often lurks underneath the surface.

Grief may seem like a weird word to be using when thinking about a new year or a fresh start, but it necessarily comes with change. Even with positive changes, we typically don’t want to give anything up. But we can’t move into the new – whatever it is – until we mourn what is ending and will no longer be, and release it.

Even the good stuff, the changes we easily celebrate and want – like welcoming a new baby, starting a new job, moving to a new home – come with some necessary endings and loss of the way things were.

We typically rush excitedly into the new, with little regard for what is ending. But if we don’t honor what is ending – even the good things, choices we have made willingly – the transition to the new can feel incomplete and hollow.

In order to shift cleanly and clearly into the new way, whatever that is, the old way must be named and honored. Try this set of questions as you make plans for the new year:

 

Naming: What is changing, ending, is over, won’t be returning?

Claiming: What will you miss? What’s the impact of the change?

Reframing: What remains? What is left? What isn’t changing? What stays the same?

Taming: What do you need to let go of in order to move into the new? What do you want to bring with you from the old way, into the new?

Reclaiming: What’s next? What’s possible now?

 

Over to you

If you try these steps as you make your plans for your new year, I’d love to hear how it goes.

How does naming and honoring what is ending help you make space and commitment to the new aspects you are wanting to grow this year?

 

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