Knowing When to Quit

Of all strategies, knowing when to quit may be the best – Chinese Proverb

I started this post more than a year ago. It was not too long after I had written a Thanksgiving post in which I discussed the Power of Intention and how having an “attitude of gratitude” is necessary to nudge the universe in the direction of making your desires come true. The whole concept of giving thanks has a real purpose toward achieving success.

But at that time, I was also thinking about another important factor in success: recognizing when to quit, knowing when something simply is not going to work out the way you want, no matter how much effort, focus – or gratitude – you put into it. You have to be able to see when something is not working for you, when continuing along your current path is a waste of time, and when you need to turn around and move in a new direction. And when you realize it, you have to have the courage and will to take action.

I guess I was thinking about it back then because of a “relationship” that was feeling very empty and I knew wasn’t working. I had felt that it wasn’t working for a long time, and it had become especially clear early that summer, long before Thanksgiving. But I kept trying and thinking that a little more time would fix everything. And even though I knew in my gut that it wasn’t working, I kept hanging in there and hoping things would change. They didn’t. I hung on for far too long, allowed myself to be taken for granted and used far too much, and early this past summer I finally walked away – a year later than I should have.

But the point is that I did not quit when I should have, when I knew I was just pursuing the wrong thing. It was my mistake.

Winners Never Quit?

In our popular culture, the notion of never giving up is touted all the time. Social networks are filled with charming little memes telling us all to keep going, no matter what – to never quit. How many times have you seen the saying, “Winners never quit, and quitters never win”?  Enough to make it nauseating, I suppose. It’s a good sentiment, but after so much Internet overexposure, it’s become just another empty platitude.

But there is another saying that “Winners quit all the time; they just quit the right stuff at the right time.” By contrast then, losers stay with the wrong thing for far too long.  And it’s a fact that many people fail to reach their goals or realize success because they stay with the wrong thing for too long.

We see this all the time in work and careers, athletics, music, art, writing, scientific research, academic pursuits and – especially – in relationships. People keep trying for something, even after it’s become clear that it just isn’t going to work out.

I think I’ve been particularly guilty of this in my life, especially in relationships. Even worse than the situation I mentioned at the beginning of this post, earlier in my life I stayed with another “relationship” for a very, very long time. In the long run, all it did was give me false hope and keep me from finding real happiness with someone else.

I don’t blame the person involved; I blame only myself. I got out of it completely at one point, only to jump back in some years later, and I let it keep me hanging on for years. I should have known better and never looked back after I walked away the first time. It was my mistake. But, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

On the other hand, I’ve had no problem quitting and moving on from jobs that I felt were not working out. I invested more than the usual single enlistment in a navy career before realizing that it wasn’t what I really wanted to do, but I did act on my feelings and got out to pursue another career.

Many people thought it was a bad move because if I had stayed for 20 years, I could have retired at 39 with a lifetime pension and then moved on to something else. That was a valid consideration, but my spirit could not wait; I never wanted a “career” in the navy, and I didn’t want to stay simply for the promise of future security.

And I walked away from a few other jobs when the spirit moved me, not capriciously, usually, but at the right times. When I wasn’t feeling fulfilled, when I didn’t feel like I was making progress, I had no problem taking a new path. I did that after eight years in a project management company in a move that brought me to Ukraine. It was a scary decision, and perhaps not the right one, but it was what I felt compelled to do because things were no longer working well at the company.

How Do You Know?

There are two opposite and competing principles at work here. One, as I’ve already described, is staying with something too long, not walking away when you should. The other is quitting something too soon and too easily, not giving it – or yourself – enough time to make it work. Here is where the notion of not giving up does come into play.

There are many inspiring stories of people who “didn’t give up” when their ideas were rejected or when they were told they were not good enough. Henry Ford, Walt Disney and Michael Jordan are just a few of the most famous examples. They kept going and became huge successes.

But one thing most of them have in common, which is rarely mentioned, is that, in fact, they did quit. They quit the paths that were not working and set themselves along new paths that eventually led to success. In some cases, they had to quit over and over again.

Walt Disney, for example, was told early in his life that he didn’t have what it took to be a journalist. He probably knew in his heart that it was true, so he quit that early career path and went in a different direction. If he had kept trying to be a journalist and beating his head against the wall, he might have been a complete failure in his life, and the Disney entertainment empire might never have been.

In fact, Disney tried and failed several times before he finally found success. But he knew when to quit, when to change direction, and he eventually found his right path. You could say that, in the macro sense, Disney never quit, while in the micro sense, he knew when to quit strategically and channel his energy in a new direction. But how did he know when to quit?

I suppose one could perform some kind of logical situation analysis, develop a set of measurable statistical markers, evaluate the numbers, and make a clear, fact-based determination as to what to do. But we are not robots, and we rarely look at life this way.

No matter how logical and programmed we try to be, it always comes down to intuition, that “gut feeling” I mentioned earlier. But having the gut feeling isn’t enough. You also have to have confidence that what your gut is telling you is right, because sometimes what you mistake for genuine intuition is something else entirely, an emotional reaction to some event or offense, and for a time it can block out the deeper understanding in your heart. But if you go deep enough, you know which it really is.

And if you have that gut feeling and have confidence that it is real, you still need to find the courage to act on the feeling, the strength to make a change. Change can offer feelings of hope and the freshness of a new direction, but it usually comes with a certain amount of fear as well. Even when we know in our hearts that we need to change, fear can hold us back. 

Despite that gnawing seed of discontent that tells us we need to make a change, we also enjoy a measure of safety and security in what we’ve grown used to, the way things are. While we recognize that something might not be right, we are afraid to upset the whole apple cart by making a change. So we do nothing.

So the recognition of what your gut is trying to tell you has to be matched by the willingness – the courage in some cases – to make the change that your intuition is calling for.

Alternatively, you can just tell your intuition to shut up and quit complaining.

Time for a Change?

So now here I am (again) wondering if Ukraine is something else that I have stayed with for too long. I seem to do this a lot around New Year.

Often, I think I probably should have quit Ukraine and gone on to something else a long time ago. And I wonder if I’ve just become used to life here, found a certain comfort level (if one can really call it “comfort”), and been too lazy (or afraid) to make the change.

Certainly, I have at least one valid reason to stay: a work niche that would be very hard to find anywhere else. But I often feel now like this is not enough. The last time I felt strongly that I should make the change to leave Ukraine, someone came along who made me feel like I had a reason to stay. But she wound up being the inspiration to start this post a year ago.

Maybe I simply was not supposed to leave yet, and she was just a tool of the universe to keep me here a little longer for whatever reason. As I survey the landscape now, there really is nothing and no one motivating me to stay, although I sure wish there was.

For now, there is just a unique and successful work niche, an inability (at the moment) to visualize what I would do next in another place, and perhaps some fear of taking the leap into a new unknown. But decision time is fast approaching; I'll have to choose my path before my current residency permit expires next summer. If I am going to quit, it’s going to have to be relatively soon.

So it all comes down to listening to your intuition, determining whether it’s really your truth, and then having the courage to make a decision and carry it out.

It’s time for my gut and I to have a serious talk.

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