Why we need to Begin with Endings  

Well, here we are at last! It’s 2021 and things are looking up. It’s time to start fresh and think about those New Year’s Resolutions. The best part of January is we get to start all over again and let go of the previous year. When a new year starts, some of us go charging out of the gate on day one, resolutions and goals well in hand. But many of us will dawdle as we look over our shoulders at what we didn’t finish in the previous year.   

Really, though, did any of us get anything done in 2020? Some of us might have made a few loaves of bread or started tackling new skills and crafts, but let’s face it, the year was an emotional roller coaster, and there might have been a lot of time lost to “doom-scrolling.” 

I don’t know about you, but I have a list of unfinished business that still needs attending to. It’s hard for me to look with excitement at my goals for 2021 with this list of unfinished business dragging me down like a pair of cement shoes.   

This is a perfect lead into what I want to talk about today: The importance of beginning with endings. Let me explain what I mean. 

Unfinished business can be any number of things: a promise you made and didn’t keep; a phone call you intended to make weeks ago; a gift to buy; a report to finish; a bag of clothes you meant to take to the thrift store. Little things left undone become big things and they grow into big blobs of stuck energy. 

Unfinished business is like a vampire hiding in your shadow draining all the energy you intend to commit to your New Year’s Resolutions. It growls at you every time you look forward to the next new thing. “You can’t start something new! What about all the things you haven’t finished…if you don’t finish them first you are a failure!”  

The longer unfinished business stays there, the bigger and bigger IT becomes, and the more energy IT takes from you.  

The object of the New Year is to start out the new adventure in full use of your energy. But there is just no way that you can power up to full steam with the drain of incompletions dragging you down. 

Incompletions: 

• stick to us like glue 
• grow with time 
• drain our energy  
• create guilt 
• manipulate us 
• sabotage our ability to start new projects 
• steal our zest for living 
• cause depression  
• even immobilize us 

Too many incompletions doom any new project to failure. 

How to Banish Incompletions when Starting Something New 

The best way to start off a new project, or new year is to deal with our incompletions first, and then focus our full energy on moving forward. 

There are two categories of incompletions. The first is one that isn’t as obvious and that’s a lack of acknowledgement of completion. The second category is simply the lack of completion. 

Acknowledgement of Completions 

Let’s deal with the lack of acknowledgment first. We get so caught up in the negative—what went wrong—that we seldom look at what happened right in our lives as we rush headlong through our days. Only seeing the fact that we have failed to complete the tasks we have set for ourselves will begin to build up negativity and eventually block the flow of our energy. 

But when we acknowledge our successes, there’s an energy that’s released within us and we can thrust that energy into our next big goal.  

So, before we begin the new year, it’s important to review our past year’s accomplishments and successes. Acknowledging them with gratitude to flow your energy forward into 2021. 

Being grateful to yourself and others, and acknowledging the accomplishments, releases energy within you and clears out the blockages that can build up when you tell yourself that you didn’t get anything done, or that nothing good came out of last year. And if there was ever a year to build up those “nothing good happened” blockages, it’s 2020!  

Now you can move forward into your new year with the recovered energy from those completed events.  

Letting Go of Incompletions 

Next, it’s time to deal with your incompletions. These are the things that are still weighing on you that you want to do, feel you need to do, or feel you haven’t done. These are the things that pop into your head to give you a detailed PowerPoint presentation on guilt and failure anytime you think about applying yourself to a new project. 

Once you have gathered your energy and enthusiasm back to harness for your new project, new year, or new adventure through acknowledgement of completions you need to banish your list of incompletions to let go of that debt to your past self. 

It’s time to evaluate what’s left on the list, finish anything you can finish within a few weeks, let go of what you can’t and forgive yourself for it. The remaining items on your list were important, but you just didn’t get them done. Maybe you let them slide or underestimated the time required, and now there is not enough time to finish them. Maybe it wasn’t your fault and events beyond your control (like maybe a pandemic) derailed you. 

Whatever you thought you would have done by now and haven’t, it’s time to lighten the load and cut yourself some slack. This one is going to surprise you by the power that it releases. 

Be sure to: 

• Acknowledge that you are human and that failing now and then isn’t the end of the world.  
• Ask yourself if maybe you bit off more than you could chew or anything that might have fallen by the wayside because the Universe threw you a curveball. 

The Power of Beginning with Endings 

Now you have a clean slate for a New Year, new projects, and new adventures, with nothing hanging over your head or hanging on your back to slow your momentum. 

To make this process stronger you can do it with another person, or your whole family, or a group of people because when you put your energy together, it is increased exponentially. An impromptu gathering of friends to make your lists over coffee, wine, or share treats. Regardless, you will feel the energy shift whether you do it alone or with a group.  

It’s such a wonderful feeling to watch your energy free itself and to feel the power of harnessing it to your new year and your new adventures.