Complete your experiences by doing "Closure"

In our busy lives, one experience tends to blend into another. Often we do not complete the previous experience before starting the next one. This keeps us from being present. The unfinished experiences start to build up. They keep us feeling anxious and overwhelmed.

One way to complete experiences (and not drag one into another) is called "Closure." Bart Anderson articulates the 6 steps of Closure as following:

1. Acceptance of the reality of the situation.

2. Reconciliation: Learning something.

3. Asking: What can I do about it?

4. Determination to have things differently.

5. Look at your possibilities.

6. Put your focus in front of you!

Closure can be done immediately following the experience, at the end of the work day, or before bed to complete the day. At the end of the day, it is useful to identify and do closure with all of the experiences that affected you significantly that day.

Within second step of closure lies the key to resolving any past experience- true reconciliation. You cannot undo an experience or "make it right". You can, however, learn from it- so that experience adds value to your life. This is called "blessing the lesson" (see previous blog).

Once completing these steps, you are free to be present for your next experience. You can sleep and dream peacefully. You can start a new day without dragging the unfinished business of the previous day into it.

And... don't forget to do closure at the end of your Friday- so you can have a good weekend.

Blessing the Lesson

We just experienced a painful lesson. We realize we did some damage. We hurt someone's feelings. We pushed someone away. We missed an awesome opportunity. We neglected someone or something that is precious to us. We cost ourselves or someone else a lot of money.

We are now beating ourselves up. "How could I be so careless? What was I thinking?"

Rarely do we see this as the opportunity that it is- to learn something. If we made this mistake, there is a good chance that we have made it before. It might even be a behavioral pattern that we keep doing over and over again. If we learn this lesson now, we never have to experience this pain again. We could actually welcome the opportunity to learn from this experience. I call this, "blessing the lesson."

If we had learned the lesson before, we would not have needed to experience it again. Unfortunately, it often takes some pain or damage to get our attention. And... how long do we have to punish ourselves before we are willing to let it go? Just make sure we learn something before we do- no need to do this one again. Why not have some compassion for ourselves? What brought us to making such a mistake? Anyway, what are our choices? We can continue to beat ourselves up or we can try to glean value from it.

"Blessing the lesson" is promising yourself to never make that same mistake again. That ought to be a good enough reason to forgive yourself. Don't cha think?