How things begin is how they end

In her Dangerous Old Woman audio course (available on Hoopla, the library app) Clarissa Pinkola Estés says she had a family member who would often say "how things begin is how they end." 

Meaning, if something starts out hard or easy, we can take note and trust that as an indicator. 

This is counter-cultural. Our culture tells us to push through and fight and work hard and things will get better. What would you call this...the myth of perpetual improvement? 

But what if we trusted that the way a thing starts is often evidence of how it will go? 

I've been playing around with this idea and keep seeing the truth of it. 

I had a potential editing client ask to meet with me and then they got the time zones off and missed our meeting so we rescheduled and then their audio on the zoom call didn't work and we tried all sorts of troubleshooting. We finally connected and chatted for a bit, and it didn't seem like a great fit, for either of us. And then they emailed to tell me they went with a different editor. Of course they did! Ha. How things begin is how they end. 

Anyway, I like this practice of looking for the seeds of truth in the beginning of a new thing—a relationship, a creative work, a job—and trusting the truth in it, trusting your instincts rather than overriding them. 

It feels like a super-power to stop gas-lighting ourselves and what we likely sense from the very beginning.

And this doesn't mean that just because something starts out hard, we have let it go. It just means that we have more awareness and acceptance about how this thing will likely continue to be challenging for us. Good to know!

You can also reverse-engineer this to see how it plays out: look at an ending and see if there were seeds of truth about it in the beginning.

What do you think? Have you found this to be true in your life? I'd love to hear.
Brianna