Creating a Future, Part 1: Completing the Past
I’m going to lead you through a process to create a plan for your future. A plan that is based on what calls you forth rather than your conditioned reactivity.
But the first step has nothing to do with planning. This is the step that all the other life planning systems miss. And it’s the most important.
The first step is to complete some of your major incompletions from the past.
“Completion” means talking seriously with your parents, old flames, ex-spouses, brothers and sisters, and lost friends and any other previously unresolved separations, to resolve what is incomplete.
Completion leads to Creation
We want you to complete the unfinished business from the past because it creates the space for a new beginning. The courage to tell the truth about events, feelings, withholdings and judgments from the past is critically important to becoming a creator of your life in the future.
Radical Honesty! Works pretty good...most of the time!
About ninety percent of the time, beginning an honest discussion works to entirely renew the relationship. It doesn't work all the time. Sometimes it makes things worse for a while....but not nearly as much as your mind tells you it will.
And even if it doesn't renew the relationship with some of the people involved, it can still work for you personally, to improve the quality of contact between you and others in all your other relationships.
Not everyone in the world is up to forgiveness and completion. If they don't get over your resenting them or hurting their feelings, be as compassionate as you can without compromising your integrity. If they want you to go back to withholding, say goodbye.
The Good News and The Bad News
Having the power to create your life the way you want it with the help of others and then be able to enjoy what you have done with them...depends on your courage to complete the past!
The good news is, once you have faced the unfinished business and come forth in your life as a committedly honest person, you can begin planning and designing a new future with new power and freedom. The bad news is, until you complete unfinished issues, powerful creation is severely inhibited.
So go back and tell the truth. Go back again. Go back until you are finished with your story or finished with the person or both. Your future depends on it.
Brad Blanton, Ph.D. is the author of Radical Honesty, Practicing Radical Honesty, The Truthtellers, Radical Parenting and founder of Radical Honesty Enterprises.