The ending of a significant piece of one’s life, a job, a stage of life, a relationship or a way of thinking may be difficult and even painful.
Something that you once counted on as very important to your life is over and done.
Entrepreneurs make mistakes, wrong decisions, or judgement errors.
Finding closure from mistakes is very important before moving forward.
It is okay to grieve a wrong decision, but building a monument on our mistakes keeps us from moving forward.
At the same time it is mistake to move to the next chapter before finding closure from the previous chapter.
When a chapter is not closed, you carry the baggage of that chapter into the future.
You enter the future with a heavy load.
When a chapter is not closed, you constantly look back to it instead of focusing on the current and future. It is like driving a car looking at the rear-view window.
Not finding closure is like limping from one crisis to another.
Closure means finality; a letting go of what once was.
Finding closure implies a complete acceptance of what has happened and an honoring of the transition away from what is finished to something new.
Closure describes the ability to go beyond imposed limitations in order to find different possibilities.
Not finding closure often means your hands are too full and your heart and soul are too cluttered with the past that you are unable to fully maximise the current opportunities.
When you are caught up in the past you are unable to see current opportunities.
Give yourself time to grief, take plenty of time to do this.
There is no set amount of time and no prescribed way, it is totally up to you.
Time alone to reflect is vital. It is in the silence that we are able to find closure.
Closure doesn’t come throguh the passage of time.
There are people who suffered traumatic experiences at a young age and carry those experiences with them until old age because they have not closure the chapter.
You can’t simply ignore the past and think it will go away. It often doesn’t. Something will trigger it.
Finding closure has to be intentional.
People don’t just forget the past because you say they must. It’s a process.
Finding closure allows you to move into your future, unencumbered and optimistic.
And hopefully, you will find that when all is said and done, you will have learned something valuable from all of the significant events and people in your life, even if they didn’t work out the way you thought they would.
I think there is a trick to the ‘graceful exit.’ It begins with the vision to recognise when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over, and let it go.
It means leaving what is over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives.
It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out.
Often when people look back, it is because they don’t believe that what they have currently is better than what they had in the past, hence always looking back.
In his amazing talk at the LORA Entrepreneurship Series last week, Lere Mgayiya said: Make mistakes, fail quickly and fail forward.
I want to add that in the process of failing quickly and failing forward is finding closure and making peace with the failure before moving forward.
Make mistakes, forgive yourself, and close the chapter and only then move forward and keep trying your best.
Sometimes the door closes on a job, life stage or relationship, not because we failed but because something bigger than us says this no longer fits our life.
So, lock the door, shed a tear, turn around and look for the new door that is opened. It is a sign that you are no longer that person you were, it is time to change into who you are.
It is going to be okay.
rochemamabolo 