What Will You End Today?

Last year I was in a fug.

Still searching for new feet having sold and moved on from FreeState several years before.

But moving on from old ideas, habits and patterns takes time. And the longer you’ve worn those old clothes, the harder the transition is likely to be.

15+ years running one company = a set of clothes long worn. Ideas, habits, patterns long established.

The transition was messy. Lots of cut-de-sacs: projects tried. And failed. Partnerships, people, tried and failed. Ideas tinkered with. All attempts at creating new things.

In Feb last year I joined a coaching programme with the good people at Happy Start Up School: 2020 Vision.

During a session I was listening to a conversation between Carlos and a fellow traveller. She was talking about the need to get the (old) info out of her head into the world to create space for new ideas to form.

And in this, the penny dropped.

Each of my previous post FreeState endeavours had been an attempt to create something new. To add.

But there was no room for new ideas, new people, new projects. These were like a tap running into an already full cup.

Coming up with new ideas has never been my problem.

What i needed wasn’t new ideas. It was to let go of the old ideas. To package up some of what I knew and had learned over the years and years of running businesses, but to do it in service, in orientation of the new.

In packaging up and sharing the old, I would create more space for the new.

Companies talk about need for continual innovation; of tapping into the constant stream of new information, new assumptions and new ideas. This is not a need. It’s a requirement.

But maybe what was true for my mind is true for your company, your work, too.

Companies can’t successfully create new things without first packaging up and saying goodbye to the something old.

Ending things creates space for the new.

Ending things invite opportunity to tap into our deep pools of wisdom, ingenuity and creativity.

Discontinue a product or service or way of working before adding a new one.

Maybe end a whole company in order to create space for something new.

But this goes deeper too.

As a society we’re riding the wave of transition. Old ideas of commerce and society being shaken to the core by ecological breakdown, political change, technological transition, financial inequality, environmental degradation. There is little chance the coming 30, 40, 50 years will look much like the last.

We are moving to new models of working and living. The only question is what these models will look like, what the future will look like.

Maybe the transition will be helped by the same process?

Ending things.

What ideas, projects, businesses, habits, products or services might you end today?

Because in each new ending we create a little more space for new ideas to form and take hold.

And in each new ending, we invite our creativity, our ingenuity afresh.

Ending things is a skill and practise.

What will you end today? Email and let me know. I’d love to hear, irrespective of how big or small.

Oh and if you like what you read, share with a friend. Today. You shall be rewarded with a thousand uneaten peanut butter sandwiches in heaven.