A resource for the committed

On Necessary Endings, by Dr. Henry Cloud

I love green lights. The difference between arriving 5 minutes early or 5 minutes late hinges on traffic signals, and, when not even a brake tap gets in my way, there’s a sense of satisfaction for my perfectly-timed excursion. I must have done something right; I got all the greens!

Yellow lights, though, send me into quick, calculated arguments. Does this really mean I’ll have to stop? Can I accelerate? Can I just cross the white line before the light turns red?  Whenever I cruise through the yellow, I glance with pity at the car in the rearview mirror that failed to make it and has no choice but to stop. 

To keep driving like this could be disastrous, and it’s most definitely disastrous if it’s the way I progress through life itself.

But we are much more accustomed to noticing and interpreting road signs on our daily commute than we are to looking out for warning signs along our life's journey. I think it’s because if we heed the yellows to stop at the red, we experience a sense of failure, instead of commitment. Stopping is certainly failure to continue as before, but stopping is also commitment to follow the signals and recognize them as good. When the light changes, the real failure is to ignore it.

Dr. Cloud sheds light on how to follow the signs toward the end of a job, relationship, or any previous commitment and how to see endings as an essential step toward true and healthy progress in life.

“Make the concept of endings a normal occurance and a normal part of business and life, so you expect and look for them instead of seeing them as a problem.” 

-Dr. Henry Cloud, Necessary Endings

Tenacity and commitment - traits praised for their ability to keep going, stay, and persevere - are also traits that enable a stop, a departure, or a pivot.  Sometimes, you’ll need these traits even more for the red light than you needed them for the green.