Slow down and turn around: Honouring Completions

The New Year often evokes within most of us the need to set new year’s resolutions. It’s an invitation to start anew with a clean slate. And it’s been my experience that so often people are so eager to move forward, that they don’t take the time to slow down, turn around, and look back to where they had come from.

At the end of last year, I wrote about the value of celebrations and why I think it’s important to choose to celebrate our successes and milestones. My thoughts here are an extension of the discussion on celebrations because I also believe there is value in truly honouring completions. One of the key things I learnt from immigrating, is to find something to run towards instead of simply running away from something. Part of the process of finding the thing to run towards, is slowing down to really appreciate the chapter of your life that you are completing, and then within that context, the new chapter you want to start writing.

Honouring completions is about learning to appreciate your own timing and life’s timing and it is a beautiful process and evolution. There is an old saying about timing and that not everyone will be on the same timeline. There is no “right time” to do something. There is only the timing in YOUR life that is right for YOU. So, part of honouring completions, is appreciating your own journey and your own evolution and that it might look very different from another person’s.

What is a completion? It could be anything really. The end of a full calendar year is the most obvious completion as it is often accompanied by a celebration of the New Year, and this sense of new beginnings and the opportunity to create something different. However, whether you have a child wrapping up the school year, are ending a vacation, going through a break-up, or taking your relationship to the next level, having a child, making a move, letting go of a job, or taking on a promotion — every new beginning starts from a completion. And completions don’t always coincide with the end of the year, as they can happen at any time.

Most people look toward their next chapter and don’t pause to look back at where they’ve been. Carving out space to honour the path you have traversed and who you’ve consequently become to arrive at this now, is empowering, life-affirming and wise. Honouring completions is an invitation for deep reflection of where you’ve been, what you’ve learnt, and how you’ve changed.

If we don’t learn from our experiences, we are destined to repeat them. So, I am committed to using every experience in my life as an opportunity for learning and growing. I’m determined to soak up every drop of wisdom and insight so I can evolve to higher levels of living and being, and not simply end up repeating the same experiences year after year with no new insights and no real growth. It’s when we turn around and look back, when we appreciate the road to here, and the lessons learned along the way, that we can begin to dream bigger and dare more greatly.

Last year I wrote about why it serves you to do a Year-End Review and I shared various approaches to completing a year-end review and different sets of questions to sit with that would serve you in reflecting on your year. I still believe it’s important to slow down to really consider your biggest accomplishments, failures, setbacks, and learnings from the past year. And, this year, I want to suggest a twist on this, based on my own insights and learning over the past year.

A year-end review is most valuable when we get a little more granular first. What that looked like for me this year, was to review each month of the past year separately and to take note of who I was at the time, what was I doing personally and professionally at the time, and then to consider what “mistakes” I had made, or which experiences were most significant. My list didn’t include everything, and yet, it was more than the general: “What were three wins from the year?”

The aim was to get more thorough and to really appreciate the small steps that led to big things this year. I used my calendar, journals and notes, social media, email, and anything else that I had used to document my day-to-day during the year. The focus was to capture anything that stood out – both in the ordinary and in the extraordinary. As I reviewed each month, I also sat with two questions:

1. What was I learning?
2. Who was I becoming?

Only once I had spent the time reviewing each month of the year, did I zoom out to the bigger picture by answering the following questions:

1. Having taken my time taking in my year (personally and professionally), what stands out to me most?
2. What am I most proud of from 2022?
3. What were three of my biggest learnings from the year?

One of my coaches, Amber Krzys, has written about completions before and she has three questions she asks herself when she is going through any kind of completion, regardless of the time of the year. Honouring a completion is a way for us to cement the learning from the life experience we just completed, so as not to have to repeat something similar without having taken the time to learn the lessons that were available, and to also really appreciate the gifts in the experience we just had.

Here are the three questions Amber asks herself when she is reflecting on the completion of a current experience:

1. What are at least three wins that occurred?
2. What are at least three learnings I never want to forget from this journey?
3. What are at least three gifts this experience gave me?

Amber shares that the answers remind her of who she is and add to the foundation she has established for herself in her own growth and learning. It allows her to expand into her next experience with a more solid rooting. From strong roots, we can grow. Without the roots, sustainable growth is not possible.

So, dear reader, before setting your goals for the New Year, I invite you to slow down and first honour the completion of 2022 and anything else that transpired as part of this year. My encouragement is to get granular. Slow down and review each month of the year. What was most valuable in each month? What were the most important lessons you learned? And when you look back over your whole year, what did you notice about how you changed as a person over the last twelve months? Who have you become? Who were you at the start of this year? And who are you now as the start of this new year? What’s most important about that?

References:

1. Breytenbach, C. (2021). Why it serves you to do a year-end review. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/why_it_serves_you_to_do_a_year_end_review/
2. Breytenbach, C. (2022). What does it mean to celebrate? Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/what_does_it_mean_to_celebrate/