Noticing Incompletions + Where We Lack Energy

One very interesting line of inquiry is to look at the places in your life where you lack energy - where you are mentally committed to a situation, person, or activity but where there is no actual energy for following through, engaging or really being present.

Some examples:

• Someone you have known for many years, who your mind tells you “is a good friend and has done a lot for you,” but who you have no real energy for when you are actually with them.

• A work or volunteer project that “seemed like a good idea” in the abstract, but which you are constantly avoiding or procrastinating on in reality.

• Any quadrant of your life where the energy feels dead, stagnant or lifeless. Where the dynamic quality of being is mostly or totally absent.

Do a sweep a note what you perceive.

A second (and closely related) area of work is noticing incompletions. Incompletions are a general term for commitments we have made to others that we have not followed through on, or commitments others have been made to us that are outstanding.

Incompletions usually occur in situations where we lack energy, so in a way they are two ways of getting at the same thing.

Basically, we don’t we want to be doing what we’re doing, and we’re not being honest about that. Instead, we’re using some mental version of “I should,” to propel the situation forward when everything in our energy system is telling us to question it, change it, or remove ourselves from it.

So, as we focus in on this line of inquiry, we can work with the following questions:

• Where don’t I follow through?

• What commitments or situations do I constantly dissociate from?

• What did I take on through a sense of guilt? What is my quality of attention and quality of doing in those situations?

• Do I think that martyring myself to do something my system has no interest in will produce fruitful outcomes? Can I entertain that, when I do this, I am actually lying to the other people involved by pretending that I’m invested in something that I am not at all invested in?

Take these slow.