I went live one morning and couldn't find the button to end it — so I closed the laptop and hoped it had stopped on its own. That's exactly what we do with the conversations, decisions, and promises we don't know how to close. This one's about Open Loops: what they are, why a five-minute task can take up five days of your head, and how to close one on purpose.
This is the 100th episode of The Liberated Life. A hundred conversations about freeing yourself from what quietly drains you — and this one is about the thing underneath all of them: closing what needs an ending.
One morning I went live, said what I came to say — and then couldn't find the button to end it. The control was hidden behind something else on the screen. So I did what capable, overwhelmed people do with the things they can't figure out how to close: I shut the laptop and hoped it had ended itself in the background.
It didn't. It kept running. Still live, still draining — even after I looked away.
That hidden button has a name. It's an open loop: a conversation, a promise, a decision, or a commitment that needed an ending and didn't get one. In this episode, I walk through what Open Loops are, why they cost you far more than their size, and how to close one.
In this episode:
• Why the things we walk away from keep running in the background
• What an Open Loop actually is — and why a five-minute task can take up five days of your head
• The four types: task, decision, relational (the "Unspoken Broken"), and self
• How Open Loops get created (a late-night FaceTime from Australia taught me mine)
• CLOSE — a simple way to close a loop on purpose: Capture, Locate, Observe, Speak, End/Evolve/Honor
• PEACE — how to have the conversation when the loop is between you and someone else
You don't have to overhaul your life. Pick your loudest Open Loop. Close it. That's where your energy comes back.
Free tools at closetheloopsnow.com — a short quiz on how you communicate under pressure, the Close One Loop walkthrough, and the Difficult Conversation Simulator (try.pplskillz.com) to practice the conversation before you have it.
From Robin Quinn Keehn, author of Stop Stealing From Yourself.