Ways People Complete Things

By George A. Boyd © 2013

As 2022 draws to a close, I wanted to share an article that discusses incompletion. As you review the goals and resolutions you set for 2022, you may notice that you may have not accomplished a certain percentage of what you intended at the beginning of the year. I wanted to share with you some ways you can do a better job of completing the goals you set for 2023—and to gain some insights into what may have been sabotaging you fulfilling your resolutions. I extend our best wishes for a better year in 2023.

One of the major issues many people have is completing or finishing issues that occur to them. These issues may take the form of:

  • A loss, which is not resolved, which leads to unfinished grief and regret
  • A betrayal or violation, which evokes rage, and a desire for revenge
  • A traumatic experience, such as incidents that occur in a relationship, through molestation, through crime, through a terrorist incident, through a natural catastrophe, or in a war
  • A failure or embarrassment experience, which makes a person not wish to try that endeavor again
  • A fearful experience, which leads a person to avoid the object or person that made him or her afraid
  • A goal left incomplete, which rankles for completion—for example, not completing a college degree
  • A creative project left unfinished, with a strong desire to finish it

People resolve these unfinished issues through several methods:

Enactment relies upon deliberation and decision to promote change. In this method, you identify what goals or actions have been left undone, and take purposive and intelligent actions to finish the goal; you persist until the goal is completed.

Understanding and communication employs dialog and listening to work with your issues. Those who adopt this approach listen to your pain, grief, rage, and shame, and acknowledge it. It uses understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness to allow you to process through the feelings, work through them, and release them. Counseling and psychotherapy use this method.

Finding solutions seeks to find an answer through reviewing potential solutions and options. This method identifies the problem, and attempts to find solutions for it. It may look at different options to solve the process, explore outcomes of those choices, and facilitate a decision to act on one of the choices. This is called the problem solving approach; work teams and inventors commonly exercise this strategy.

Mindfulness adopts observation and process to promote insight and release. This method simply allows the mind to become aware of each traumatic issue or painful feelings, to fully experience them, and let go of this. Forms of psychotherapy that teach clients mindfulness-based solutions make use of this method.

Active remembrance and release applies process meditation or free association to uncover deep issues hidden in the unconscious mind. This method focuses on a selected issue and keeps attention upon it—this may be elicited by a repetitive question, or an inquiry as to what is associated with a theme. The issue is processed or explored until its origin is located, and the person can release it, and re-create a new intention for that theme. Variations of this approach are found in Scientology™ or other “transformational trainings” that use process meditation; Psychoanalysis and its offshoots adopt the inquiry or free association method.

Invocation of spiritual assistance primarily utilizes prayer. This method invokes the Holy Spirit, or the intervention of an angel or a spiritual Master. This method calls upon the Light of etheric and emotional healing to minister to the wounds of the heart.

Transformation takes two forms: personal and spiritual transformation:

Personal transformation approaches use perspective shift, acting from another frame of reference, confronting fear or limiting beliefs, uprooting excuses and making a firm commitment to deal with the issue, facilitating realization or “aha moments,” experiencing breakthroughs or “personal wins,” or courageously doing that which is risky or scary.

Spiritual transformation uproots the karmic seeds that underlie these unfinished issues, using techniques that lead the spirit to open the inner channels of Light and Sound (the Nada), and/or to unfold the Soul and its vehicles of consciousness through methods like Bija mantra or Kriya Yoga, or through Light Immersion methods.

If people do nothing, or simply take medication to make the bad feelings go away temporarily, the issue will not resolve. If they put off dealing with the issue, it will not be finished. If they avoid the issue, it will not be ended. If they make excuses about the issue, or blame others, it will not be worked out. If they delude themselves about what the problem really is, they will not be freed from its continual rankling. If they continually think about the problem, but don’t take action, the issue will remain incomplete.

People don’t complete things because they don’t use the tools designed to help them complete things. If you use these tools effectively and resolutely, you will finish these issues and move forward in your life.

If you don’t use them, you will remain stuck in the past—in the morass of should have, would have, could have, I regret that, sorry that I didn’t, must not have been meant to be—and all of the other mental quagmires that impede your forward progress towards success and fulfillment.

Some of these methods you can learn to use and do for yourself; others may require the assistance of a professional counselor or therapist. Realize that if you do not take action on these issues and work to resolve them, however, they will continue to hound you until you finally resolve them and finish them for good. May you summon the courage and resolve to not be bound another day by these incomplete issues of your past.