Coaching practices for A Big Change is Coming and I'm So Focused on What's Next That I'm Treating the Last Weeks of This Chapter as a Waiting Room and I Have a Feeling I'll Regret Rushing Past the End of Something I'll Never Get Back
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For A Big Change is Coming and I'm So Focused on What's Next That I'm Treating the Last Weeks of This Chapter as a Waiting Room and I Have a Feeling I'll Regret Rushing Past the End of Something I'll Never Get Back, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- A big change is coming and I’m so focused on what’s next that I’m treating the last weeks of this chapter as a waiting room
- Something I love is clearly ending
- I’m never actually in what I’m doing
- I’ve got a big move (or a new job) coming up in a couple of months, and I can feel it’s a rare chance to start fresh
- I treat the ordinary moments
Practices that may help
- The last chance before a transition
Before a major life change, fully inhabit what is ending, rather than only anticipating what comes next.
The Last Time Meditation - Full presence with something passing
Deliberately be present for the last or near-last moment of something — a season, a stage, a relationship — without numbing.
Mono no Aware: The Pathos of Things - Do the task in front of you, fully
Treat each present action as if it were your last, with full attention and no half-measures.
Meditations, as Marcus Practiced It - Identify and anticipate upcoming transition windows
Treat approaching life changes as scheduled opportunities for habit installation — plan before the transition, not after.
The Habit Discontinuity Effect - "Last time" meditation
Ask yourself: when was the last time I experienced this, and how many more times might I?
Negative Visualization for Gratitude: The Stoic Path to Appreciation - Revisit and reconcile your significant regrets
Name your regrets explicitly and work through them toward acceptance — not suppression or rumination.
Life Review and Reminiscence Therapy - Make tiny tweaks, not heroic leaps
Change behavior by adjusting the smallest action in the direction of your values — not by waiting until you feel ready.
Emotional Agility, Made Practical - Memento mori as the ultimate premeditation
Premeditate the final loss — your own death — as a clarifier of what actually matters now.
Premeditatio Malorum, in Depth - Activate someday items when life opens up, not just when you decide to
The someday list is not just a holding pen — it is a menu for the next season of life.
The Someday List - The last-time awareness practice
Periodically notice when you might be doing something for the last time — and let that awareness deepen your engagement.
Mono no Aware: The Pathos of Things
Related concerns
- Do Each Act As Your Last
Treat each present action as if it were your last, with full attention and no half-measures.
Do the task in front of you, fully
- When Memento Mori The Last Time Meditation
Notice that every experience has a last time, and acknowledge when you’re in one.
Notice lasts — the last-time meditation
- When Terror Management Theory Mortality Salience Reflection
Briefly contemplate your finite lifespan to surface what actually matters to you.
Deliberate mortality reflection
- Appreciate Before It Ends
Use the awareness that pleasant things are temporary to intensify genuine appreciation for them while they are here.
The impermanence gratitude turn
- Daring Greatly During A Big Change
Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly argues that vulnerability — showing up without guarantees — is the birthplace of courage, connection, and creativity, not a weakness to hide. The ideas come from qualitative, grounded-theory research on thousands of interviews rather than controlled trials, so treat them as well-grounded patterns from lived experience rather than experimentally proven effects.
- Full Presence With Endings
Deliberately be present for the last or near-last moment of something — a season, a stage, a relationship — without numbing.
Full presence with something passing
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