We all know the old saying when one door closes, another one opens.

But the process of what happens between an ending and beginning might not always feel so simple.

While the title of this blog is meant as a playful nod to the freshness of the new year and the blank page feels of January, it’s not quite accurate when it comes to matters of personal growth.

“Transforming the Old, Creating the New, and Integrating All that Falls In Between,” would be a more apt, but rather wordy designation of this article.

That is what cyclical living is truly about: embracing the fact that we live in a world of constant change and dynamic movement where life is in a perpetual state of transformation and creation mixed with a lot of integration in between.

Let’s take a look at what each part of the cycles means.

Transformation is all about endings and change.

Transformation is what we see when we feel something ending or shifting out of one form into another.

Endings come in all shapes in sizes and range from major life events, to milestones that denote a rite of passage from one phase to the next, to smaller and subtler shifts in our lives.

Loss of relationships, the death of someone, moving, aging, changes in identity, letting go of the old ideas, values, and attitudes that no longer serve us .

All of this and more is grist for the mill when it comes to working with the alchemy of transformation in our lives, which requires us to develop the ability to release, surrender, let go, and work constructively with change.

Creation is all about beginnings.

New starts and fresh developments. Novel ideas and taking those first few brave steps.

Creation happens at all points in our journey and while it holds the same sense of permeability that transformation does, the focus of creation is on origins, building, freshness, intentions, and hope for what we’d like to grow.

Taking a new job. Moving into a new space. Starting a project or taking something you’ve already begun to the next level.

Focusing on who we’re becoming and the steps we might take to get there. Adopting a new attitude, mantra, or belief system. Learning about something and seeding new knowledge in our lives.

Creation and Transformation are two sides of the same coin, we release so we can receive something new. Let go so we can grow. Destruct so we can construct.

Yet we are missing one of the most vital parts of this process if we don’t learn to work with the art of integration.

Integration is everything that happens in between.

It is the middle of a massive jelly doughnut, whose yummy center is worth the effort, but can take some chewing to get there.

Integration is the process that occurs when we synthesize both the endings and the beginnings in our lives, so we can make sense of them, find growth, and thoughtfully reflect on the lessons we’ve learned so we can transform them into wisdom that informs who we become.

Integration can be hard. Like really hard. It’s where a lot of us get stuck.

It’s where psychological conflict and confusion can happen. We experience the uncertainty of the unknown. We might feel and sense a nebulous tension of opposites between what no longer is and what’s becoming.

For example, we might not understand why we’ve made a change for the better, yet still feel sadness or loss of what was, even if we knew it was no longer meant for us.

We might yearn to return to something that feels solid or certain, even if we’ve outgrown that space, yet we struggle to figure out a new path.

We might vacillate between anticipatory excitement of our hopes, dreams and goals while feeling pulled down by inexplicable grief.

This is where many want to shortcut the process, shut those feelings down, and talk themselves out of the emotional intelligence trying to come through.

This happens because we often don’t understand that these amorphous feelings are forms of emotional intelligence. They are fertile soil, filled with the growth from of seasons past, and rich with the seeds we are planting now.

We can learn a lot about where we want to go based on where we’ve already been.

This is where we harvest the wisdom from lessons learned. This is where we can set our course for who we’d like to become and how we’d like to move forward in our life. This is where we begin to build on new ways of being and clean up any old energetic cords or release work that we need to do.

Mostly, this is where the art of cyclical living helps support us in understanding the phases in our lives and encourages us to shift from black and white, either/or thinking and instead embrace life with a fluid, holistic perspective.

Prompts and Further Perspective.

Cyclical living helps us realize that we are often working with the energy of endings, beginnings, and integration all at once.

There is no right or wrong for how to do this work, though I belive it helps to find a way to honor the space in between where we feel both grief and joy, both cessation and causation so can embrace the tension of what was and what is, and learn to integrate disparate experiences.

To support you in this process, I’ve gathered a few helpful journaling prompts, articles and podcasts that shine further light on this topic:

Journaling Prompts:

What life themes and/or goals feel new to you right now? What themes and/or goals feel familiar and like a continuation? How can you work on integrating the new with the old and have patience for your process?
Write about how your life might look differently than planned right now, and reflect on the following questions: Is there anything that hasn't turned out as expected that you might need to grieve? How do you handle disillusion? What are the gifts in this present moment? How have you surprised yourself?
Reflect on where you've been experiencing a sense of de ja vu in your life and/or repeating patterns, situations, and themes. Write about the growth you've had in these areas: what's changed over time? how have you changed? what's different from then vs. now and how are YOU different?

Out With the Old, In With the New: Journaling Prompts and Perspectives on Cyclical Living