So the next step of our journey is a more detailed fraction of step 1.  The purpose of this step is to gain some completion in your life.  Things that are incomplete in our life, loose ends that are untied rob us of energy.

Make a list of all the areas of your life that are incomplete, open loops, things that haven’t been settled.  Things that are incomplete actually turn into avoidance.  We try to forget about it because it’s too painful to face, you keep telling yourself “oh I’ll get to that later”.  You’ll have to be honest with yourself.  Make the list one page long, and it should take about ten minutes to complete.

Come back when you’ve got your list.

So how does your list look to actually have a list of all these things that you’ve been avoiding or just putting off in your life?  You may have physical items on the list, emotional items on your list, or intellectual items on there.  Then go through each item on your list and number them.  The one robbing you of the most energy will be number one on your list, and then go down through the rest of the page.  You want to attack the highest energy robbing item first, which will allow you to gain momentum very quickly once you get started.

You may have heard of the Pareto principal, better known as the 80/20 rule?   80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts, and 20% of our results come from 80% of our efforts.  On your list you’ve created, find the 20% of items on that list that are robbing you of 80% of your energy.  Either complete them or conciously let them go.  I was recently scammed via Craigslist on the purchase of a used camera, and I was fervently on a manhunt to find this guy to make him pay.  I was putting forth so much time, effort, and stress into the matter that I had to ask myself if this was really worth it.  Would it be worth it to hunt him down, take him to small claims court, take off work and just go through so much?  I decided it wasn’t and ended up finding a buyer for the broken camera.  In the end I was out around $15, but there was a huge burden lifted off of my shoulders after making that decision.  (Thank Tony for helping me realize that!)

It may take some effort to let things go on your list, because its a hit to your ego.  You would rather have justice served, than to see some low life get away with wrong doing.  The point is you need to get completeness, whatever that means.  It might mean making contact with an old friend or family member you have seen or talked to in decades.  The point is to close the open loop.  Tie up that loose end, and don’t let it be incomplete anymore.  Either get some completion or release it to the universe.