“Should I Quit?”
Seriously? How Dare You?
“It’s the only thing that I do that scares me shitless, but I come back to it every time. It makes me want to quit, but I never want to. So I figured I must love it and that it must be what I want to do with my life.”
These were some of the truest words to ever grace my lips.
The subject?
I was talking about playing the Horn (French Horn for those who know the instrument by that name).
I’m sitting 1 or 2 feet away from a laptop screen, on a video call with my favorite horn player, arguably the greatest horn player of all time: Martin (Marty) Hackleman.
How did I score an interview with him? I simply reached out. I asked about his thoughts on what he thinks it takes to be the greatest ever and play the horn with ease.
I asked for advice, and you know what his response was? Something along the lines of:
Let’s set up a video call. It’d be too much to try and talk about through email.
Let me say it again: I asked for advice. Through text at first.
Then he told me to email him,
and then he decided on a video call.
And now I’m just sitting there, talking to one of the greatest to ever do it, on video. He’s giving up his time, to talk to me. Simply because I reached out. He probably gets a ton of inquires like what I sent, but he still chose to talk to me.
That was a profound lesson for me, and I’m hoping it can be one for you too.
ON QUITTING
Those words at the beginning of the article are what I said to Marty during my interview with him. I was referring to a dark period in my life where I felt like quitting my passion I’ve held dear for so long.
Countless failures, fears, unknowns, and setbacks upon setbacks were pushing me over the edge.
I didn’t know if I could take it anymore.
When your dreams are constantly shitting on you as you progress and grow,
when you realize it has led you to think you are better than you actually are,
when it makes you question whether or not you have what it takes,
when you’ve experienced setbacks after setbacks, seemingly out of nowhere or especially at the end of a successful run, and you don’t quit, no matter how bad it gets, then
you’re insane.
Or…
Maybe…
just maybe…
Maybe, just maybe, you’ve proven and will continue to prove to yourself and your dreams that
you’re still insane.
(but in a good way)
And thank God you are.
Thank God you’ve found your passion and decided to pursue it.
Thank God you’re crazy enough to realize that up until a certain point you were letting life happen to you instead of “you” happening to “it”.
Most people don’t realize this.
Most aren’t living their life with intention.
And you know how long it takes. Just because you get into self-help doesn’t mean shit. You actually have to do the things that are said to see results.
Riding a “motivation high” without any step toward moving the needle forward only makes you more delusional than people who aren’t living their life with intention at all.
At least they aren’t aware of what they’re doing.
But you sit there, reading and reading and listening and listening and talking and talking and absorbing all the self-help material out there while others go about their day.
You’re learning things that took people years to figure out; countless hours of research.
People have figured out vital information that can help you get the life you want. People have already done the work for you! There’s all of this help out there to better yourself. There are tons of successful people who don’t even absorb any of this material or near as much as you and are still successful. And you, with your brain, stuffed with motivation drugs, what do you do? NOTHING.
How can you say you’re better than them?
As you continue your journey to greatness, and as I continue it with you, we must remember that during the hard times we only want to quit because it’s…hard. Duh!
Why don’t we ever believe that it could be easy for us once we actually overcome the challenge?
Are we that delusional to think that hard times equate to quitting?
How would we ever get rid of hard times, then?
Surely we don’t think our life will be devoid of challenges, right?
If there will always be hard times, why don’t we try to overcome them for the things we say we care about?
I’ve made a simple rule to myself:
I’m not gonna quit this thing I’m pursuing whenever I get angry.
My decision to quit will be a choice I make when I’m not facing a challenge that’s frustrating me. In fact, the more challenge-free I am when making the decision, the better.
Quit when things are easy. You’ll most likely find that you won’t. And if you still do, then it was really time to quit.
Can I Overcome This?
I have experienced for several years and months the same one or two challenges when it comes to taking my passion to the next level. It’s driven me to quit so many times, but I’ve challenged myself to face the challenge.
I’ve entertained myself on various occasions with this one little idea:
Can I overcome this?
So many times I’ve given up on something because it was hard.
I wanted to see if I could finally be on the opposite spectrum of that, for once in my fucking life.
For once, could I get a taste of what it feels like to fight through that challenge and win?
I can proudly say that I’ve finally beaten down the obstacles in my immediate path, and I can’t wait to face the others. I can’t believe at one point I thought some of the things I’m able to do now were impossible.
But you know this.
Everyone has done something in their life before that they once thought was “beyond” them. However, where the true worth lies is when this “thing” that is “beyond ourselves” is a challenge we have faced in the pursuit of something we truly care about, like our passion (or passions).
In my success over a few BIG challenges that took years to figure out, I’ve learned a couple of things along the way:
- You’re going to overcome challenges that you won’t realize have been overcome until much later. You’re not going to see your immediate progress. You will only see over a period of time. That, my friend, is a hard truth to grapple with, and such a hard truth that if we aren’t aware will drive us to quit.
- You’re insane (in the bad way, this time) if you don’t experiment and try different approaches, sure. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, yes, but you have to be careful with this one. I feel like so much time could’ve been saved when I was trying to find solutions if I had simply stuck with something long enough to make sure it didn’t work. I was impatient and moved too quickly to try other solutions without testing the worth of the one I had chosen. Why? Because we fear that if we stick with something for too long it may not work, right? And then all of that time would’ve been wasted, right? WRONG. I wasted more time bouncing around from idea to idea, only to realize that the solutions I’ve found have been approaches I’ve already tried but didn’t stick with long enough to know. In essence:
I’ve wasted more time trying new solutions too quickly out of the fear that I was wasting time by not trying new solutions quick enough.
- You’re going to enter a whole different realm once you’ve overcome that challenge. It’s like being let in on a secret. You’ll finally figure out how people who are where you want to be do it, and you’ll laugh at the idea that you thought you couldn’t. Everyone you see who is ahead of you are simply people who made the choice to overcome the challenge that you’ve just finally decided to overcome. Once you’ve realized and experienced this, you’ll never let a challenge beat you down and stall you. You’ll attack it head-on, knowing that the next-level-you is ahead.
Please, know this:
No one ahead of you is a “natural”.
They simply had different circumstances. But don’t act like it’s because of your situation that others are ahead either. Some people start off with a better hand, but in the end, the successful ones are the ones who have molded themselves into an intentional force that people later come to see as “naturals”.
- To go along with the previous point: Once you figure things out, you’ll wonder
Why the fuck hasn’t anyone told me this?
I’m still trying to figure this one out myself as I’ve just very recently beaten a challenge and come to this realization.
With my particular situation, there was all of this conventional advice that everyone regurgitated and passed down over and over. Advice to do this and that, more of this and less than that. People will try to explain, but no one will really tell you “how” to do something. In your journey, I would listen more to the people who tell you “how” to do something rather than “what” to do. I would also try to take the road less traveled and create my own opportunities rather than wait around for them.
IN CLOSING…
I love that you’re insane.
Boy, don’t I love it.
I love that you have that fire burning within you.
I love that you’re crazy enough to realize that you may achieve your wildest dreams.
I love that you're insane enough to bet everything on that “maybe”.
That you realize a life where one doesn’t pursue their dreams is a life that isn’t okay for you.
That the fact that some people do change and some do achieve their dreams is enough to push you.
That some people don’t quit, and “on the other side of all that suffering is greatness”. (David Goggins)
That you realize “your life is either an example or a warning” (Tony Robbins).
I love that you’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t get the life you want without action, and that true insanity would be to never quit when facing obstacles but never do anything to overcome them.
I love that you’re insane enough to realize that
you’re only insane if you don’t pull it off.
