Not Initiating Your Own Endings

Or how to make sure that life does

Spring brings new life, but there must have been a death for a new life to emerge.

Regeneration implies that there was a death along the way.

Throughout my life, I have noticed myself lurking in a pattern of waiting.

Waiting for something to end, so I don’t have to initiate it myself. Waiting for a change to happen before I make the change myself.

When we avoid initiating our own endings —of projects, relationships, jobs, careers, friendships, even prolonged states of being—life has a way of bringing the end that we are asking for (consciously or unconsciously) in a very abrupt (many times painful) way.

It might feel like a rock bottom, like a rug is being pulled from underneath you. Like your safety and comfort are being threatened. You get fired, or broken up with, or your landlord is kicking you out.

When that happens, I realize that this is the way of life pushing me to step up and take action towards things that I really want and have been putting off.

It’s when we lose the last thread that is holding us in our comfort, or rather—in our endurism and adaptation to the limiting circumstances, is when life strikes.

Have you noticed?

Every time you drag something out, it still has a way of ending.

A job that you’ve been telling yourself you’re going to quit.

A relationship that is draining your life force, or rather has been feeling dull for a long time.

A project that you worked on for months doesn’t sit well in your heart anymore.

Circumstances arrange to end things for you and answer the desires that hide underneath. And even if it’s unexpected, a part of you has been hoping for it.

Here’s my real-life example. Recently, I learned that a project that I’ve been working on for over a year is getting discontinued and funding is being pulled out. It felt like a shock, for a while. But after a 1h conversation with my mother, I quickly realized that a) my heart has been absent from the project in the past few months due to deep changes within the project itself. For me, the project energetically ended when that deep restructuring happened, but I couldn’t admit that to myself or my team. b) I’ll be gaining more time for growing my own work. I’ve been craving fewer projects and a deeper focus on 1-3 things that I can invest my energy in fully. I am feeling grief for the ending of that project, but I am also recognizing the radical dreaming it instilled within me.

So where does this all bring us?

We don’t end things because we don’t value our own perception.

Not valuing the way your heart feels in all of these situations. Feeling unfulfilled, or stretched out, heartbroken, overlooked, or unrecognized, are just examples of feelings that we ignore that signal that something needs to change. That this situation is not good anymore. That something bigger is being asked of us.

At the same time, there’s a cognitive dissonance that happens, because a part of you knows that you are capable of more. It knows that you are more talented, more creative, and more loveable than you give yourself the credit for. Yet, you make yourself stay and drag the ending. And the drag is what feels the worst.

You don’t value your perception because you don’t value yourself.

You don’t see your intuitions, inner whispers, desires, and talents deserving of listening to and being expressed.

I wrote at length about this in my essay Denial of Your Creativity Fuels Planetary Degeneration.

me by ancient Roman ruins, Portugal. By Niels Devisscher

How to stop dragging an end

I want to bring to your awareness the things that you are dragging out and avoiding to end. I understand the need for comfort. Comfort is the number one collective human desire. And many times it triumphs over a certain kind of freedom, or deeper authentic desires that we have.

What I’ve learnt recently is that we’re not afraid of change—we aren’t resistant to change.

We are resistant to loss.

Walking away from something that you feel is ending has a potential of taking you to a new space of opportunities, that are not visible yet.

Clarissa P. Estés talks about our capacity to leave situations that are keeping us malnourished—spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically. There is always a way out, an ajar door, an open window, a tiny sliver of blue in the roof.

Where in your life is a way out of this situation, that would especially ask you to step up and move deeper towards your authenticity and your true, unobstructed desires?

Who do you become, once you initiate this ending?

The loss that comes unexpectedly removes the fear of loss, because, in a way, it’s already happening. It makes you face the fear of loss through this process and forces you to see that you are capable of renewal.

Renewal is possible, always.

Journal to these prompts to wet the surface:

1. What in my life am I dragging to end? What do I wish would end?

2. What “ways out” are presenting to me at this time?

3. What is the authenticity and trueness to myself that is on the other side of this letting go?

4. What can I not see yet that I am gaining? (Feel into the potential that is on the other side of an ending.)

5. How can I value my perception more?

This spring, I invite you to let something die intentionally.