Every entrance is also an exit.

Any major transition has the capacity to be a catalyst for rebirth. It’s up to us to allow in what is possible – whether blissful or challenging – and respond to it in a life-affirming way.

The Graceful Exit (Step 9 in my Jump! Coaching Process) is a transitional period. You’ve detached from your old life and jumped across the threshold into your new world but you haven’t yet fully landed in your new way of being.

Once you’ve jumped, it’s not all roses and sunshine. It isn’t like you never turn around and look back. You may still have doubts and growing pains. The jump is only the beginning of your new life. It’s natural to feel disoriented during this time or even a bit out of control.

It’s okay. It’s all part of the graceful exit.

Honor the space between no longer and not yet. 

This space allows you to integrate all that has happened for you, everything you’ve experienced, and what you desire to create. This is the place where resilience, possibility and opportunity are born.

The graceful exit is a time to honor what brought you to this moment. It involves diving deeply into your memories and experiencing an acute awareness of what you have lost.

When you allow these memories, reminders, awarenesses to be there, you will easily move through the emotions (or they will move through you). But when you fight them, the feelings will linger and fester.

It’s important to understand that when these feelings come – and I would use the word “grief” to sum up the emotions I’m describing – it isn’t a setback. It’s a passing visitor. It wants to be felt. Its presence doesn’t mean you’ve chosen wrong, jumped prematurely or didn’t jump far enough. It just means you’re human.

Welcome everything you’re feeling, the full range of feelings during this transition period.

Let the grief come. 

You can’t let go of something you haven’t fully felt.

You can’t release what isn’t firmly in your grasp. 

The only way to say goodbye to anything is to allow everything to have its say. No graceful exit can happen until you accept what has been.

This isn’t an invitation to wallow in your pain. I’m not suggesting that you continue to drag the baggage of the past around with you. You’re not looking back to get caught in the net of the past.

You have the choice to let go of whatever you’ve been holding on to…including an old outdated identity that no longer serves you. 

You are relearning who you are and you’ll need to get used to the new you. The authentic self will come through when you’re no longer performing, pretending or denying – when you are true to yourself.

Being authentic is a moment to moment proposition, a never-ending journey. 

Is it time for you to make a graceful exit and jump free? Join the conversation with me on Facebook.