As we turn the last pages on 2020 we need to learn how to move on and reflect before we enter 2021. The year 2020 brought challenges not seen in an at least a generation. With these unexpected demands also came opportunity for much growth, as we adapted and came together in support for one another during difficult times.
Embracing Endings is Key to Moving Forward
To properly greet 2021 with energy and creativity, we must bid goodbye to 2020, both literally and figuratively to achieve a forward-looking mindset. Friendships end, jobs end, stages of life end, life ends. Most of us are not particularly good with endings. Instead of consciously completing what is ended, we create an argument to leave a relationship, or get fired from a job we know we have outgrown.
When a cycle is complete, it is time for a change, which is a key reason that endings make us acutely uncomfortable. We want to write a new chapter in our lives but are afraid to put a period at the end of the old chapter’s last sentence.
Creativity is a result of repeating cycles of birth, death, release, and renewal. Endings are an essential component of the creative process of renewal.
For something new to be created in 2021, what in your career or life needs to end and left behind with 2020? Do you need to be done with the pattern of not maintaining healthy boundaries? Are you done missing opportunities because of a belief that you are not enough?
Determine What Supports the Life You Want
Starting this year, lean into your emotions to determine what supports the life you want. Listen to your feelings – they hold wisdom to help you discern what to end and where to move forward.
To take this personal inventory, drop out of your head and into your body. Notice how your body feels as you answer each question.
- How did your year begin? In January 2020, what were your hopes, dreams, goals for the year ahead?
- If you set goals in 2020 – did you realize them? Which ones did you attain? How do you feel if you attained them? Do you feel more connected to yourself or less? Did it surprise you how you felt?
- Think about the goals you wanted to attain and didn’t. A job opportunity? A relationship? Fulfillment at work? Financial goals? What is your sense about why they didn’t come to pass?
- How do you feel about the goals not attained? How does each one make you feel? Do you feel glad – something else better happened? Or maybe ashamed?
How to Move On Emotionally and Recharge For 2021
How do you resolve emotional energy from the current year to be energized for 2021?
- Take a little time to follow the feelings to the source of what each goal really meant to you.
- If you are sad or feeling grief, be with it and let it finish. Your emotional self has its own cycle.
- Accept a feeling and then get curious about the important information it offers.
Our feelings guide us to what needs to end. Listen to their exquisite influence for what needs attention before you move forward. Consider these questions at yearend or any time you want to get more in touch with an ending.
I leave you with this quote from “The World According to Garp,” by John Irving.
“You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.”