Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward

by Henry Cloud

Make the endings a normal occurrence and a normal part of business and life, instead of seeing it as a problem. Then and only then can you align yourself well with endings when they come. It has to do with your brain and how it works. If a situation falls within the range of normal, expected, and known, the human brain automatically marshals all available resources and moves to engage it. But if the brain interprets the situation as negative, dangerous, wrong, or unknown, a fight-or-flight response kicks in that moves us away from the issue or begins to resist it. Execution stops or automatically goes in the other direction. Put into the context of endings, if you see them as normal, expected, and even a good thing, you will embrace them and take action to execute them. You will see them as a painful gift. But if you see an ending as meaning “something is wrong if this has to happen,” you will resist them or fight them long past when they should be fought.