Hi Friends, Tuulia here.

Is there something troubling you from the past?

Do you feel a bit queasy and uneasy when you think of a certain person?

Are you hurt or angry about events that happened even years back?

I bet you said yes! Most of us do.

Completion talks or honest conversations are one of the key parts of the Radical Honesty practice.

In these talks we tell another person what we resent them for, feel sad about, what we've kept secret or not talked about, what we want to talk more about and what we appreciate them for.

Brad Blanton describes the completion process in the book Practicing Radical Honesty this way:

The first step in creating your own destiny is to complete some of your major incompletions from the past. You have to talk seriously with your parents, old flames, ex-spouses, brothers and sisters, and lost friends and any other previously unresolved separations.

Tell them the truth about your resentments and appreciations, and tell them you intend to forgive them whether they agree that they are guilty or not, and hold the intention to forgive them before you quit the conversation.

Focus on how you feel in your body to be able to tell whether you are complete. When you feel relaxed with energy and you are not avoiding eye contact or dreading what might happen next, you are complete. If you are still tense and paranoid, you are not through yet.

There are two vital parts of the talk:

sharing and being present to your own experience, and
listening to the other person share what is alive in them

Here are 10 tips for how to have a completion talk

1. Talk face to face with the person.

If that’s not possible, then talk via video call. You cannot do such talks by phone, messaging, emails, letter writing, etc. If the person is dead, talk to them at their grave site or using a photo.

2. Start your sentences as often as possible with “I resent you for…”

(or “I am mad at you for..”) or “I appreciate you for…” Be clear about what they actually said or did, and separate the fact from your interpretations or stories.

3. Speak in the present tense.

Say “I resent you for…” rather than “I resented you for…” or “I feel sad / happy / confused…” instead of "I felt..."

4. Eventually, get specific.

Don’t stop with general descriptions of behavior or judgements, get specific about concrete things that happened or were said.

5. Keep noticing your sensations.

Notice what is happening in your body moment to moment. If you notice you are drifting away from your bodily experience, you can bring yourself back to your body by noticing the floor under your feet and the chair under your butt.

6. Focus as much as you can on what did happen instead of what didn’t happen.

You saying what they didn’t do or say is about your expectations rather than about reality. Many times others didn’t even know you had such expectations.

7. Stay in touch with your experience as you talk.

Keep noticing your physical sensations, what you can see with your eyes, hear with your ears and what thoughts you have.

8. Stay with the person beyond the time it takes to exchange resentments.

Completion talk is a dialogue rather than a monologue. Let the other person express what is going on with them and what is arising for them about your sharing.

9. State your appreciations the same way, after you both have fully expressed your specific resentments.

Many times after getting over the anger we have far more ability to access our appreciations and pleasant memories of the other person.

10. Keep it up.

Keep going. Repeat and have more conversations whenever needed.

This guidance is taken from Chapter 7 of Radical Honesty (How to Deal with Anger) and Chapter 9 of Practicing Radical Honesty (Radical Honesty about Anger) with the additions from Pete and myself. (Yes, this material is so good, Brad repeated it in two different books!) Both books go into much more detail about how to express anger.

Have you had an honest conversation with someone? How was it for you? Let us know here!

Watch this video for more tips on having completion talks, and see the events below to practice Radical Honesty with us at an upcoming workshop or retreat:

Love,
Tuulia (& Pete)

Tuulia Syvänen is a Senior Certified Radical Honesty Trainer from Finland and a co-founder of the Radical Honesty Institute. Tuulia organizes and co-leads workshops around Europe with her husband, Pete, as well as coaching and sessions for companies. Tuulia has led the most Radical Honesty workshops in Europe, now over 100 and counting.

(Photos by Christoph Fink from the Honesty Gathering, a yearly meeting of RH practitioners hosted by Tuulia & Pete of Honesty Europe.)

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