Many people are afraid of endings. The end of the relationship. Leaving a job. Moving away. My earliest experiences of endings weren’t exactly positive. My parents divorce. My dad moving to another country. My first boyfriend’s father dying and a subsequent painful breakup. It’s the finality. The unknown. The sense that things will never be the same again.
Yet more recently endings have been different for me, just as powerful but I’ve got a better grip on them. Switching careers. Quitting destructive lifestyle habits. And in the last few weeks my first pregnancy coming to an end and going on maternity.
While finishing up the coaching journeys with my clients last month I tackled powerful questions with them such as-
‘What are you proud of achieving recently?’
‘In an ideal world who will you be a year from now?’
‘What needs to happen for that to be a reality?’
With so many endings in succession I realise it’s only when there’s an end in sight that we can gain a truly fresh perspective on ourselves. That an ending is never really an ending, only a transition to a new beginning. A chance to reflect on who we’ve been previously and who we are in the process of becoming.
As I step across my own threshold and transition to becoming a parent for the first time I know this is a chance to reflect, to reset and to upgrade who I will be in the world. Every decision I make moving forward won’t have my own needs at it’s centre and that skill will ultimately benefit my clients and purpose in the future.
Our lives are made up of a series of endings and beginnings. Actions and reactions. At times there seems to be no movement at all and then there is so much it becomes a crescendo. A freefall. A rebirth. We are cyclical creatures. We may live within linear time but the changes we experience have more in common with the free patterns of waves.
Change visits us constantly and becomes our enemy or our friend depending on how you look at it. It can never be beaten, change can only be fought against, tolerated or embraced. We are the only ones to decide how we approach it and how we fair. When we accept that change is an ally we can go out and create the change we want to see.
All of my recent changes are of my making and that’s why I feel enriched by them. My belief is that by consciously creating change in our lives we can step into the life we have always dreamed of. That’s why I’m no longer afraid of endings. I know that with them comes a chance to be grateful, a chance to rebuild and gain a deeper understanding of myself and the world.
So what ending can you begin to look at differently? What change do you want to see in your life? Who do you believe you could be on the other side?