Practices for Ending Well

We are coming to the end of 2009. Visionmakers pay attention to annual endings and beginnings, recognizing them as potent times for making positive changes. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be offering some thoughts about ending the year well with the intention of opening to our preferred future.  

Angeles Arrien teaches that there are four traditional ways to end well, whether it is an experience, a phase of relationship, or a year:

•expressing gratitude

•identifying positive impact

•acknowledging our challenges

•reparation work

There are natural rhythms and cycles that bear study. When we pay attention to closure, especially year-end, we integrate our life experience and honor all of the lessons we have learned. This is the preparation required to enter the New Year empowered. 

Author Eudora Welty wrote: "Events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation."

It is to revelation that Visionmakers turn for knowledge about the journey of meaning that they undertake, a journey singular and mysterious. Each of us must inform ourselves through the clues that we meet daily on this road where every stone, every turn, every encounter is disclosure.

Make yourself ready Visionmakers. The end of the year is nigh.

© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.