Necessary Endings: Give Up to Move Forward
Yet another year at an end. Yet another year about to begin.
Another cycle of giving up to move forward in life.
As we reflect upon this year, we remember both good and tough times, moments we laughed, cried, grew, and struggled.
How I Learned to Give Up+Move Forward in Life
When I think about the more formative years of my life, 2017 was a crucial crossroads. That was the year I was able to start deviating from my broken record of a life script that whatever I treasure will be taken from me.
I’m no stranger to loss: I’ve lost dear friends, communities, homes, dreams, and parts of myself in traumatic, involuntary ways.
To avoid future heartbreak, I fought hard to prevent them as much as possible, even to the point of not creating new bonds altogether.
Of course, this set me up to be hypervigilant, anxious, and wary of any signs of change, even good ones.
Whenever transitions happened, I vacillated between anxiety and numbness to control how much my experiences would impact me, not realizing how these extremes would interfere with moving forward in my personal and professional life.
That was, until 2017.
Early that year, I quit my second job to devote all my attention towards building my therapy practice. It was a risky move to take, given that I had no safety net or any guarantee that this would work out or even be worth it.
All I knew was:
I was exhausted from working more and more hours for less and less outcomes.
Despite my best efforts, things kept getting worse.
This position was increasingly deviating from my main profession as a therapist.
Thoughts and emotions about work were spilling over into my personal life.
Rest felt so out of reach, and I felt like I was drowning.
Though I deeply wished that things would turn the corner, the prognosis was poor.
I wrestled for months about whether to stay or to leave, as I haven’t had the best experience with endings. I feared that I would reexperience the same kinds of painful, negative consequences that I had before.
If only I had read a book called Necessary Endings sooner…
Why People Avoid Necessary Endings
Henry Cloud, the same author of bestselling book Boundaries, wrote why endings are natural, essential, and strategic to our personal and professional development.
However, we tend “avoid them or botch them”:
We hang on too long when we should end something now.
We do not know if an ending is actually necessary, or if “it” or “he” is fixable.
We are afraid of the unknown.
We fear confrontation.
We are afraid of hurting someone.
We are afraid of letting go and the sadness associated with an ending.
We do not possess the skills to execute the ending.
We do not even know the right words to use.
We have had too many and too painful endings in our personal history, so we avoid another one.
When they are forced upon us, we do not know how to process them, and we sink or flounder.
We do not learn from them, so we repeat the same mistakes over and over.
Of the eleven reasons listed above, I hit eight.
Not ending things well cost me heavily in the long run. Fear kept me from pushing the EJECT button, prolonging pain and stunting growth.
Fortunately, the ever-increasing frustration and depression I felt about work signaled that it was time for me to give up so that I could move forward onto the next stage of my growth.
Prune: Get Rid of the Unwanted or Superfluous to GROW
Roses don’t just spontaneously grow into their majestic form on their own; their bushes are methodically and carefully pruned so that they can reach their fullest potential.
So what exactly is pruning?
It is “the process of proactive endings,” or the art and science of cutting away what does NOT belong to the optimal end goal.
Cloud describes three types of rose branches that the gardener prunes:
Healthy branches that are good but aren’t the best.
Sick branches that aren’t getting well, despite efforts to make them healthy.
Dead branches that are just taking up space and are interfering with other branches.
For the rosebush to thrive, all three categories of branches need to be cut.
For us to thrive personally or professionally, we may need to look for and CUT OUT the activities, commitments, materials and/or relationships that are:
Taking up limited resources that could more effectively go to another area,
Causing ongoing pain and have low prospects of improvement or change,
Unnecessarily cluttering our lives and decisions.
Elimination of these instances involves insight, commitment, action, and follow through.
They will not happen on their own. We must give up to move forward in life.
We can try to prolong these uncomfortable and effortful tasks as much as possible, but we may end up experiencing much more pain than is helpful.
Onto Bigger, Better, Blissfuller Things
I’m glad that I decided to pull the plug, as I would not have experienced the surge of growth and life that soon followed.
The Monday after my last day of work, I sat down at my dinner table with a sketchpad and markers and began expressing whatever was locked deep inside of me.
From the random jumble of words and pictures came the name and logo for my therapy practice, OliveMe Counseling.
This allowed me to build the foundation on which I was able to then launch two more dream businesses: Havenly Counseling Collective and Intelligent Emotions (whose website you’re on right now!!).
I used to be stuck in my Emotional Vortex (a deadly cycle of making reactive decisions that create more stress).
This scary decision to close the door on something important actually helped me break out of that Vortex into what I call the Emotional Flow (a lifegiving process where because I take care of my needs & wants, I am free and empowered to make more decisions in alignment with what matters most to me).
If I hadn’t quit that second job, none of this would have happened the way that it did.
Rather than reactively waiting for an ending to be done FOR me or TO me, I faced the fear, rode out the wave, and reaped its rewards.
Though the process was terrifying and painful, I am proud that I went through with it.
With this new experience, I am emboldened to identify other areas of my life that need to say NO to so that I can say YES to greater things.
What do you need to prune from your life?
What would you like to see happen in your personal, relational, or professional life? What’s keeping that from happening?
What are the (1) dead, (2) sick and not healing, and (3) good but not best branches you need to prune so you can thrive?
How can you prepare to end well in those areas of your life?
What are prerequisite needs that need to be met first (e.g., encouragement, a plan, a firm kick in the ass, a session to destress) so that you can effectively go through with this?
Practice using your pruning shears so you can move forward with everything you’ve got.
It takes a crap ton of work to switch out of your Emotional Vortex and into Emotional Flow, but it’s totally worth it in the end.
The BIG Feelings First Aid Kit
Messy feelings spilling out at the WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE, WRONG WAY?
Grab this free PDF guide that shows you how to handle feelings like a pro so that you can keep moving forward in life!
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© Copyright 2024 Joanne Kim. All rights reserved.
Joanne Kim, Feelings Translator
Hi! I’m a therapist-turned feelings coach who helps Highly Sensitive Persons, Empaths, Enneagram 2s & 4s, etc. turn their BIGGEST feelings into their GREATEST superpower!
They are often the first (or only) person in their family to intuitively process and express feelings; consequently, they are often judged or criticized so that they learn to people please, placate, or perform until they hit a wall.
They’re super familiar with anxiety, guilt, and shame, partly because of an allergic reaction to anger (theirs and others').
Often the super responsible, empathic, and ethical person in their environments, they reach out to me after they're already burned out, resentful in their relationships, or sucked into their shame spiral.
The most common feedback I get from people when I share about how feelings work is,
"Why didn't anyone teach me this in school??"
Hence, I am building a school helping people work WITH their feelings so their feelings work FOR them.
Who do you go to when something bad happens? Do you tell your partner? Or your neighbor? Our connections can sustain varying degrees of difficult emotions, and some connections can only hold positive interactions. Get a clear picture of your connections using the Concentric Circles of Connection Chart and create relationships where you BOTH matter.