Sometimes It Is OK to Quit

Coming to terms with this fact has been a lifelong struggle.

I might be many things but quitter I am not.

That has been my, almost mantra-like way of thinking throughout most of my teenage and young adult years.

Don’t get me wrong. I am still a young adult and I still don’t like quitting. But I am slowly learning to accept the fact that giving up doesn’t always mean losing and often it might be a better and healthier choice to make.

The ‘perseverance above all else’ mindset stems, of course, from my childhood. Who would have guessed, right?

From having to finish all the food on my plate to being forced to ski, ride a bike or play the keyboard (activities all of which I hated doing) or not being allowed to leave a summer camp when I got sick on top of somehow making all the kids my enemies, I was always told to just stick through it. And so I did.

At 17 years old, I was on a semester-long high school exchange in Canada and having the worst time of my life. Two months in, I called my mom and in a hysterical crying fit, I begged her to send me home. You can already guess what the answer was.

That incident left me feeling helpless, betrayed and I ended up not talking to my mother for several months because of it. But even despite all that, deep down I still felt like she was right. That it’s the right thing to finish what we started, no matter how hard it gets and how miserable it makes us feel.

Now, in hindsight, I realize that my parents, who were stuck in a dysfunctional and toxic marriage for almost 20 years before they finally had the guts to call it quits, are probably not the people one should take advice from in this area of life.

Being programmed into thinking this way since I was just a child, the damage cannot be easily undone.

When I think about all the things I probably should have quit but didn’t, a long list comes to mind but the top 1 thing might be surprising for some and that is university.

Almost two years after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, which I haven’t used so far and very likely never will, I feel like it was never quite worth it. I don’t regret it per se and yes, I am proud of myself for the achievement. But the decision to pursue that degree was a gross overestimation of my abilities.

It was much more than I could handle and my mental health got extremely bad during those years. University made me feel stupid, worthless and severely depressed. And I don’t feel like the surprised look people tend to give me when I tell someone new what I studied balances out all the sleepless nights spent drawing hexagons and crying.

I think about how I maybe should have put my psychological well-being first, even if it meant not finishing my degree, quite often. How different would my life be right now if I didn’t go to uni at all? What if I had dropped out? What if I had changed my major to something less demanding and stressful? Would I be happier? Maybe. I will never know.

When you are considering quitting something big, you are always facing two obstacles. One is your own mind. The other is the opinions of all the people surrounding you. They are usually both saying the same thing and it sounds something like this:

“You cannot give up now! You’ve already gone so far! You are already doing the thing you said you are going to do. Quitting means sabotaging yourself. Quitters never achieve anything in life. Quitter equals loser.”

If you’re anything like me, battling those thoughts and ideas on two fronts can get very, very exhausting.

And so I endured.

I endured Canada. I endured four long years of uni. I endured jobs that didn’t even pay me and still treated me poorly. I have stuck it through all those unhappy times, all in the name of having to finish what I started or else.

Or else what?

There is no scary boogieman on the other side of that sentence. The discomfort it causes me only exists in my mind due to the way it has been programmed. Endings are nothing but new beginnings. Quitting one thing simply means moving onto another one.

Sometimes, pushing through tough times at all costs is not worth it. Not if it costs you all your vital energy and mental capacity. It is not worth it if it makes you physically or mentally sick.

And if we are not talking about something as big as education, work or relationships, if you are, like me, pushing through minor things merely out of habit, here’s the thing:

If you are not thoroughly enjoying what you are currently doing, it might be better to quit.

A couple weeks ago, I booked myself a week-long surf retreat in Bali and started it all excited to learn a new skill I’d always wanted to pick up. But as it went on, I realized that surfing might not be for me.

I still enjoyed some aspects of it. I still want to learn further. Maybe it was just not the right time or not the right setting. I felt easily overwhelmed by the waves washing over me and often found myself in a panicked state in the water.

But of course, even when freaking out, I bit my tongue and hopped onto the next wave.

I had this epiphany on my last day of surfing. I was trying out a more advanced board for the first time but as it turned out, my skills weren’t advanced enough to match the board yet and it felt like the beginning all over again.

As I was out there in the sea, all unbalanced and nervous with the waves washing over me and knocking me off of my board almost every single time, my mind kept telling me to continue trying until I catch at least one wave. It was my last day. I was supposed to make the most of it, right?

But if you ask any surfer out there, they are going to tell you that surfing is about chilling out and having fun first and catching waves is secondary. And as I was already not having fun, I realized that it made little sense for me to stay in the water, despite my anti-quitter brain screaming at me otherwise.

And so I got out of the water, laid down at the beach and watched other people riding waves until it was time to leave. It felt nice. It felt freeing. It felt healthy.

Overcoming hard times is great. Getting over obstacles that are blocking the way towards your goals is awesome. Beating your own fears and mental blocks is brave and admirable.

But I feel like sometimes it is good to pause for a minute and ask ourselves whether the price we are paying for those little victories is really worth paying.

And if we decide that it is not worth it, well, for the sake of our own health and well-being, maybe the best choice we can sometimes make is to quit.