The idiom “to come full circle” refers to something ending up where it started. It can apply to people’s careers or attitudes, as they may return to a previous profession or mindset. This is different from doing a 180, which means a complete change in direction.
The phrase “to come full circle” is an idiom that refers to something – be it a person, place or thing – ending up in the same place it started. It most commonly refers to people. As an idiom, which is a figure of speech, it must be interpreted because it does not literally mean what it says. In this case, “full circle” refers to the fact that a circle ends at the same point it begins, because drawing or otherwise creating a circle requires one full turn, which takes one back to where the circle began. This can transfer to the fact that people sometimes end up where they started in terms of attitude, beliefs or career.
In terms of professions, a person might hold a number of jobs in various fields before deciding that they really like a previous profession, perhaps even one in which they started out. A person might start their career as a chef, only to be disappointed and leave the kitchen for a job as a bank teller. He may then decide he doesn’t like the bank and get a job as an office administrator, only to find that neither the bank nor the office is the place for him. If he then decides that being a chef wasn’t so bad and he goes back to that career, it can be said that he has come full circle.
Attitudes and beliefs are another area where people sometimes come full circle. A person may start life with a positive and hardworking attitude in childhood; become rebellious, pessimistic and lazy in adolescence; and then deciding again to become hardworking and optimistic in early adulthood after seeing the negative effects of adolescent behavior. It can also be said that that person has come full circle. Similarly, a parent might start trying to use reasoning and rewards to keep her children in line. After hearing that physical punishment might be more effective, he might switch methods, only to realize that rewards and reasoning actually work better.
The idea of closing the circle is opposed to the idea of someone doing a 180, which refers to 180°, or half the circumference of a circle. The complete circumference of a circle, which follows this concept, is 360°. People who have done a 180 have changed so that they are, in some ways, totally opposite to how they once were, even if they may come full circle before they are done. One could say that a boss who started his job being unreasonable and unwilling to receive constructive feedback or criticism from his subordinates and later becomes easy to work with and open to suggestions.
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