“Life and business involve pain.”

A thought by Henry Cloud, from his book, Necessary Endings (p. 53).

HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

That is reality, isn’t it?

Henry says, “Sometimes. . . creating an ending might cause a little hurt, like pulling a tooth. But it is good pain. It gives life to you or to your business. Similarly, the rosebush snaps back when it gets pruned. This book is about taking bold steps to embrace that kind of pain.

“But there is another kind of pain, one that should not be embraced, one that you want to do everything in your power to end. The pain I am referring to here is misery that goes nowhere. That is not normal, and when it happens, it is time to wake up. It is time to realize that anytime pain is going nowhere fast, a few things must be occurring.

“First, you might have become acclimated to the misery in some way. You have gotten so used to it that you no longer feel it as pain but view it as normal. Pain by its nature is a signal that something is wrong, and action is required. So pain should be driving you to do something to end it. But if you are not making moves to end the dull misery of something going nowhere, then you may have told yourself nothing is really ‘wrong’—it is just the way it is. You are stuck with a chronic ache that has started to feel like the new normal.”

He goes on, “Sometimes we are stuck for reasons that are truly outside of our control. But more times than we realize, we are not executing an ending because of internal factors, not external ones. Neuroscience research shows that your mind actually develops something akin to hardwiring so that you think and behave automatically. So when your hardwiring has adapted to accept some sort of ‘stuck reality,’ you will live out being stuck there. It has become ‘just normal’ to be stuck and put up with a situation that awaits a necessary ending.”

He then says, “The good news is that it doesn’t have to stay that way. Neuroscience and experience have shown that we can change, and new pathways and maps can be built that change the way we think and the way we perform.”

And that is such good news, we don’t have to feel stuck.  Even if we feel stuck, we can change.  So, let’s find new pathways and maps that will build that change in the way we think and the way we perform.  Let’s get unstuck, okay? 

Yes, yes!