Do you have any broken promises and agreements, mental clutter or confusion or, are you holding on to anger, resentment, or bitterness? Do you have any untidiness impacting your everyday life?
If you answer yes to any of my earlier questions, you have incompletions! An incompletion is anything in your past that occupies your thoughts and conjures up negative emotions or feelings that are on repeat, consuming your conscious or subconscious thoughts.
Incompletions can go as far back as your childhood impacting your whole experience of life, where you take two steps forward and three steps back. Never knowing why?
Incompletions can weigh you down, keeping you from moving forward with your goals in 2024, while trapping you in your past. If you don’t confront your incompletions, there is a high probability that your 2024 will be the same as 2023 or 2022.
It’s essential to have the capacity to finish things in your life, bring them to an end, close the book on them and start with a clean page because there is power in competition, there is freedom – clarity and aliveness in completing your past.
Creating an Extraordinary 2024
If want to have an extraordinary 2024, it’s important that you put 2023 behind you. You must turn the page of the past and start 2024 with a clean slate, leaving all of the negative, disempowering feelings and experiences of 2023, in 2023.
You may be aware of some of your incompletions but many are hidden from you, hidden from your view – you don’t know, that you don’t know why and how it’s impacting you.
You’ve had some huge accomplishments in 2023, some successes and some failures. But the failures stick with you, they remind you that you are not good enough, that you could have done better and you could have tried a lot harder.
Personally, I tend to feel this way too – we all do. I started 2023 excited about my new business direction only to realize that I was headed for abject failure. I failed and was rejected by 14 people until I finally decided to focus on a new business where I found success. Yes, I learned a lot, but this failure has had an impact.
Despite all of my successes and my failures, I have left a trail of incompletions that leads me to have deep feelings of regret, anger, frustration, resentment and the deep feelings of inadequacy. I had to go to work on completing my past, freeing myself of the heavy burden of incompletion.
We all live with incompletions
You, too have created a trail of uncompleted commitments and unfinished agreements – we all do, it’s an inescapable part of being human.
You can find it easy to move on after a difficult experience unfortunately, these experiences have a lasting impact on your mental, emotional and physical health especially if you have experienced trauma..
Are you carrying around a backpack with one or more incidents that you haven’t processed? If you have not dealt with, confronted or completed it, you probably are.
Incompletions shape the person you become
How we deal with our past experiences shapes the person we are today for the good and the not-so-good. How we view our past experiences both consciously and subconsciously shapes how we approach life. Your past has a profound and lasting impact on many areas of your life.
So, how do you let go of the hurtful and painful experiences of your past? It’s natural to feel that your current emotional pain is forever linked to what you experienced in your past.
Our natural tendency is to bury the past, convince ourselves to ignore it or just try to forget it. Maybe you think letting go is about being able to forget events or people without experiencing the pain or just forgive and forget.
You never forget the past, it stays with you without completion
Maybe you think forgetting the past is about moving on despite not having forgotten or forgiving, saying forget the past, leave it in the past or let’s just move on.
The philosopher George Santayana says, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. No, I’m not advocating looking back to the past or dwelling on the past which can be fruitless, I’m recommending that you confront it and bring resolution or just get it complete.
The feeling of pain, bitterness, resentment and the experience will last far longer than the reasons that created it. This is a trap since we never really forget. You will re-live the past over and over again – and you will continue to repeat the same actions that created the past again and again.
“You do not move ahead by constantly looking in a rearview mirror. The past is a rudder to guide you, not an anchor to drag you. We must learn from the past but not live in the past.”
Warren W. Wiersbe?
Personally, I’ve been at work on completing my past for 15 years. Some are obvious and others have been concealed through layers, upon layers of reasons, justifications and rationalizations.
Here is what I’ve done, perhaps it can help you.
The seven steps to being complete.
Before I get started, I must warn you that completion is not a one-time endeavour. You will always have things incomplete, but you must have the courage to confront them and put them back in your past. The process of completion takes courage, humility, and responsibility. It takes looking inward and getting present to the impact of being incomplete.
Completion is a way of being, meaning you are being complete – it’s a continuous process that will take time to master since our natural tendency is to be incomplete.
Step one: Set a goal based on your passion that scares you.
Set goals that will consume you, that you know will take all of you. Goals that are so big, you know you have no way to achieve them. Put or have something at stake, something that is important to your life, your family or your future.
This goal can be, for example, helping one million people out of poverty or becoming a billionaire regardless of how big your goals are, make a plan to achieve it and tell no one about it.
Step two: Surrender to being authentic with others and with yourself
If you want to achieve your goals, it will take being authentic, open and brutally honest first with yourself. You need to become embarrassingly honest with yourself. This will be your starting point since you can’t build your future on lies or self-deceit, you will just be going in circles.
Step three: Make a list of your incompletions and be thorough.
Take the time to search every area of your life where you may find incompletions. Areas of life where you have unresolved conflicts, unfinished business, and incomplete conversations. People with whom you have resentments or people who have resentment with you.
Take a look at your relationships and think of anyone who brings up negative feelings or thoughts. Make a list of all of your messes, financial, business and personal.
Step four: Take full 110% personal responsibility
Give up your right to be right – identify ways you have contributed to the conflict or situation, not from a place of blame or shame. By being responsible you will see how you have contributed to the situation, you can now acknowledge it, share it and own it.
Step five: Forgive yourself
Depending on the situation, you may be carrying pain, guilt and shame. Your past can be on repeat, reminding you of all your past failures, so forgive yourself. Yes, I know, this is easier said than done!
Step six: Start cleaning up your messes
Start small and then expand. Start with the easiest first, for example, clean your desk, then your office, tidy your files, and clean your room, and your closet.
Then take a look at all the other areas you are neglecting such as your personal health – set an appointment for your annual physical, and financial health, create a net worth statement – get up to date on your outstanding taxes etc. This can take time but it’s worth it. There are a hundred other items you can address, let me know if you want a list and I will send it to you.
Step seven: Share – Share & Share
Sharing is powerful and will help bring you freedom. Share both your successes and failures. This will take a level of vulnerability and authenticity. But, you can only get to step seven once you have completed steps 1-6.
Sharing authentically will bring you freedom and a solution to the situations you are dealing with. Sharing releases the emotional feelings of shame and guilt buried in your past and frees you from that burden. It’s like taking off the backpack that is weighing you down.
When you share, you will see that you are not alone, your situation is not unique and you will see that we are all the same. You will see that your situation is not as bad as you may think it is and when you share with others you will get perspective.
Taking these seven steps can be difficult and challenging, but if have the courage to practice them, you will have a true authentic sense of freedom and confidence leading you into 2024.
If you take these seven steps before or during 2024, you will have a renewed sense of power and confidence, leaving your past in the past while empowering you to achieve your goals in 2024, making 2024 your best year ever.
