LIFE IS all about letting go, according to Yann Martel, the author of Life of Pi, “I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go.” No matter how much you want to keep going, everything—including our careers, relationships, and life—will eventually come to an end.
Considering the finality of it all, it’s hard to see this in a positive light. Endings are often painful because they force upon us massive change. They leave us asking why and look inward for answers.
If you’re currently in a situation where something is coming to a close, and you’re looking for a way to process everything, you must change your current perspective. As T. S. Eliot said, “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
Endings Are Not a Bad Thing in Business
We believe that endings are a bad thing because of all the negative emotions we intuitively attach to them. When something comes to a close in a dramatic fashion, we can’t help but to feel grief, sadness, and hopelessness. These are strong forces that we fear, because they disrupt our normal way of doing things. They keep us from focusing on our vision, and in some cases, make us question the meaning of life.
Although we sometimes like to stay with these kinds of emotions to process the event, we can’t forget that the end of one chapter always followed by the start of another.
Related: Working Your Life Away? Entrepreneurship May Be Your Way Out (5 min. read)
Obstacles in Business Present New Opportunities
Temporary obstacles are especially common in business, and if we look closely, they almost always present the opportunity for a new beginning:
- A failed startup makes you understand what it takes to run a successful one
- A lost deal teaches you how to close a more important one in the future
- An employee who leaves your firm can be replaced with someone better
Rather than asking yourself, “Why do I even try?”, establish a sense of urgency and find the courage start over again. What will it take to get back on track?
Related: The Perfect 9-5 Exit Strategy: A Fail-Proof Guide to Escaping a Dull Job (8 min. read)
Some Great Books on Starting a Business
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Business Made Simple
by Donald Miller
Your Next Five Moves
by Patrick Bet-David
What Feels Like the End is Often the Beginning
We live in a world dominated by technology, where the use of smartphones and social media is now a normal part of life. Now more than ever, when we go about our day and browse the web, we can see that endings affect everyone personally. Perhaps someone moved to a new city, a friend set a new year’s resolution, or someone you went to high school lost their job.
Related: 3 Powerful Benefits of Having Better Mental Clarity (3 min. read)
Dealing with Endings in Our Personal Life
Dealing with endings in our personal life can be challenging if they catch us by surprise. Although it’s much easier to process things when we see the beginning of the end approach, massive change disrupts our life and makes it tough getting back up.
The best way to deal with these kinds of situations is to change the way you view them:
- End a romantic relationship and you will usually just miss the memories, not the person
- Get fired and you might realize you’ve been complacent perform, which can give you the motivation to perform a high level again (Great things never come from comfort zones)
- Fail a class you don’t enjoy and you might self-reflect on your passion “How do you know you are passionate about something?”
Failures are an integral part of success. Winston Churchill once said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” When things go wrong, you must put in hard work and strive to be in a better place, so that you can prevent similar situations from happening.