Monday, January 24, 2011

Necessary Endings ... best yet to come

by Dale Shumaker
4spirit@gmail.com


Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud guides us through bringing to an end episodes
and conditions in our lives that are necessary to end. To grow, some things have had their time and need to end. Dr. Cloud guides you through the process to make an accurate determination on what to end, when its time is up and how to go about it... then rebuild again after the ending. Bringing something to an end is not being a "quitter" and sometimes painful as we must prune off what we have grown too attached to... even though it may be holding us back in our life pursuits and desires.

Bringing something to an end is a pruning path. What do we prune? What's healthy that needs room for more; what's sick and not going well that's holding us back; and what's dead and just taking up space. Jack Welch, former GE CEO, applied this at GE. Either fix it, close it or sell it. Necessary endings are a normal part of life and business.

See necessary endings as a good thing. Where do necessary endings apply?
Life has seasons and certain seasons come to an end. It's normal to end it then. Sometimes life produces too much. Pruning is vital to make room for what's most important to grow. This can be painful, but necessary. Other things are an incurable sickness and even evil. These must be eliminated... no matter how much it hurts.

Remember that pain can be a good thing when we remove something that is
hurting us, but after recovering from it we feel so much better.

Examine your internal maps. In some cases we may have a high pain threshold. We put up with things we don't like. We cover for others, when we don't need to. We may feel we have failed when ending something, although it is better that we do, so we should not feel like failures. Over-extended loyalty makes us feel overly responsible for someone else. And someone's pain may not be our responsibility. Overt codependency and enabling is not healthy for all involved.

When the old must end, how do we motivate change. A sense of complete hopelessness causes movement toward what's better. When holding on with false hope, look to see if there are grounds to abandon what we want to hold on to. Checking our realities will give us a true read of whether to hold on to a hope, with a future, or eliminate a hopeless condition absent of a future.

When entering in the process of change with someone, you cannot deal
with each person the same way. There are three types of people:
wise people,
foolish people,
and evil people.

The wise person will respond to correction and ideas that make things better.
He willingly accepts new information that can make a difference, and will work with you to bring positive change.

The foolish person
will not respond to talk. What we tell them doesn't register.
They will be defensive, be rampant with excuses, see themselves as the victim.Talk won't work, only the experience of consequences will. Doing something that makes them feel the consequences of their behavior may be what turns them around. When they experience what it costs them, they may pursue other behaviors.

The other type of person is the evil person. This person is wanting to hurt or harm you in some way. They require lawyers (legal action), guns ( law enforcement) or money. It is best to avoid them, or flee from them. So with wise people you can talk to them, foolish people need to realize consequences, and with evil people don't talk to them, period.

Urgency must be created toward an ending which creates movement. We must sense
the smoke and see the reality of a better future. Picture it, see it, smell it. Use our imaginations to create a compelling movie of a new reality. To empower this, create ending alliances, create a vision of a good future, set deadlines, create a structure to get there, stay close to the misery(which creates strong desire to move from it), measure constantly. Make urgent the new normal.

To overcome resistance, we must lose some things to free us up for the right thing. Do it now, and avoid the "I will get to it later" mind. Use self-selection. Regardless of who or what we deal with, make others meet the standard we have set. When others come toward our standard, that's self-selection. When we set the standard we draw the line in the sand where the other person must be.

Embrace grief. Along with a necessary ending, time is needed to grieve the ending before moving ahead. Don't deny or bury your grief. Have your funeral. Take time to allow metabolism to take place... find the good and use it, and eliminate what is unusable. Learn the why behind what went wrong, what needs to be made right, and then move on.

We should take the steps we need to take, maintain sustainable resources, and
make the best out of whatever we have. Learn from the process, pour yourself into what you can be, and people will notice.

Dr. Henry Cloud has more at his website.

http://www.drcloud.com/index.html

Jesus' disciples asked him when will the end of the age happen.
Jesus went on to explain all the things that will happen when the earth will have a necessary ending.

All things on earth will disappear so a new heaven and earth
will form. This may be pruning at its highest level. But before the new comes, the old will be eliminated. Jesus said you can't put new wine in old wine skins. The old ones will crack and not hold the wine. What we have on earth in this life now, will not hold water in Heaven. To experience Heaven, a wonderful existence, we must die first on earth. This is a necessary ending, so we can live in something so much better... so much better we can't even imagine it.

As one who has come close to death, what the after life is all about is very fascinating to me. Jesus made many references to the resurrection of the dead. For those who have nearly experienced death, we have had an exhilarating experience. It's hard to put in words we have today. But the vision of its future we live for has benefits that are so incredible. So we endure the pains and displeasures of earth looking for that immensely wonderful existence. The necessary ending, death, is welcomed and we look forward to it. The Apostle Paul talked about it. He said he would rather be with the Lord, in Heaven, but remains here for the sake of those on earth He is to help and prepare for this New World... an unblemished Kingdom of Heaven.

When the end of the age approaches, the discomforts of earth
will increase. Weather will be erratic, people will become more hostile toward each other, life will increase in a sense of hopelessness, and people will seek more and more for happiness but not find it. (See Matthew 24:3-9.)

The future is found in the Spirit. The Apostle Paul said that
God will put His Spirit in man and we can live in the New World in Spirit before we get there in person. The secret is that the very Spirit that Jesus said He would send from Heaven will live in us. All power of God remains at our disposal when we allow death to earth to happen spiritually and we incarnate the Spirit of God. All Powers of Heaven are in us and we can overcome all problems and troubles of earth. Hopelessness of earth is translated into hopefulness in God's Spirit. Spirit will leave this body and be transferred to a Glorious body, a body designed just for the New World completely saturated by God's Spirit.

In Paul's letter to the Colossians, he said,
"...be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy."
(NLT,
Col. 1:11)
"This is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory."
(NLT,
Col. 1:27)
This is worth doing some dreaming about. Go off to a quiet place and get a sense of what
this implies for us.

So necessary endings in life are a good thing. The ending in physical death is a good thing. The end of the age is a good thing. Be of good cheer, something so much better is just ahead. We have a future to look to and labor for.
The Best is yet to come.
..