To Those Who Are Tired of Trying…

How to quit in two steps.

I understand if you feel like quitting.

It’s easier to give up than to press on.

If you quit, at least you’ll know how this whole thing ends. You’ll know because you ended it. You’ll finally be giving yourself that certainty you thirst for.

The road to your dreams is full of uncertainty. There are no guarantees.

So I understand. I understand if you’re tired. I understand if you’re tired of being uncomfortable. Hell, lately I’ve felt like quitting myself.

And yet, something within refuses to allow me to do so. Things suck right now, but I can’t seem to alleviate the stress by giving up.

It’s not that quitting is weak. In fact, quitting will always be among the strongest decisions we make in life.

I believe my pushback is that something about me will always wonder what would’ve happened if I kept at it. I will always think about the struggles and challenges I faced, troubleshooting how I could’ve fixed it all.

But that’s just me. I hope in this article I can provide you with some value on how to determine if it’s time for you to quit. I’m no expert by any means, it’s just a subject I’ve battled (and continue to battle) many times. I hope to, at the least, give you insight into several perspectives when it comes to quitting.

1) Assess Your Current Situation

Tony Robbins always says that “The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of the questions you are asking yourself”.

In light of this, here’s a question that I think we should all be asking ourselves when we are tired of trying:

Have you actually tried?

Seriously.

Have you actually done anything? And by “anything” I don’t mean anything.

“Anything” doesn’t mean trying for a few minutes, or hours, or days, or weeks, or even a few months.

“Anything” doesn’t mean sulking on the couch after a bad day at work, kicking your feet up, popping open a can of beer, and turning on the next Marvel movie instead of grinding on your dream that you said you wanted to actualize.

The problem is we think we have time. The problem is we hate the fact that in life there are things you have to do that you aren’t going to want to feel like doing.

This means that when you’re working a job you hate, you still have to find the time to work on your passion if it truly matters to you. It doesn’t matter how tired you are. I would think the goal is to be able to build this passion up into something so special you don’t have to work a job you hate anymore. Right? Use it as motivation.

This also means that you can’t expect to follow your dreams without meeting resistance. You can’t expect to avoid the things that you don’t feel like doing. You can’t expect to be comfortable on your journey.

We humans have a way of giving ourselves credit we don’t deserve. This is your life, participation trophies and medals don’t count.

You aren’t a mere “participant” in your life. Your life is about you, and you only get one of these!

So assess your situation. Take an audit. Have you actually tried? I’m talking, eh I don’t know, six months at the most? Maybe cut out the social media, alcohol, TV, toxic friends?

I don’t know, just grind for a bit? Cut out the noise and distractions and harness all of your power and focus for some time. Get your feet wet and immerse yourself in the world your dream resides in for a while before jumping to conclusions that will alter the course of your life.

I’m all for deciding and committing to your decisions, but making decisions shouldn't happen quickly, only as quick as possible.

The goal is to not give more time than you need to when making a decision, but don’t rush it either, especially for a big decision like quitting. Assess your situation and determine if you have actually tried.

Now, like anything, there is always an exception. There are always nuances. You might find yourself in a situation in which your heart and mind and soul and body are so in tune with some inherent truth that whatever you’re pursuing is not for you.

If that’s the case, if this force is so strong, by all means, please quit. I’m all about resiliency, but I’m not about wasting your life either. Move on and try something else for some time. Life is too precious.

2) My golden measurement for deciding whether or not I will quit

If you’ve made it this far in your thought process, then maybe your issue is not that you haven’t actually tried. Maybe you’ve been doing this damn thing (emphasis on “damn”) for a while now, and you’re still pondering quitting.

I’m not the one who came up with this, but I wish I had. I use it religiously. I’ve heard it several times in different ways from different people, but it all goes something like this:

Don’t quit when things are bad and you’re struggling, quit when things are easy.

Let me clarify something: do whatever the hell you want. You don’t have to listen to me. You don’t have to listen to anybody. Quit whenever the hell you want to. Hell, if something sucks and you’re struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel, quit if you want! Now here it comes:

But…the idea behind this advice is that most people quit the moment they hit a roadblock. The problem? Life is full of them! You can’t expect to avoid challenges in your life, especially the big ones. That’s just absurd and unrealistic. And yet, we do it all the time.

This is part of the reason why people try once on their dreams, then quit, and never do anything else before dying with regret. They decided to quit after facing adversity, and they couldn’t bring themselves to pursue that dream once more out of fear of having to face it adversity again.

Life is full of the unknown. It’s full of uncertainty. It guarantees nothing (kinda). At the same time, there are plenty of things in life that are certain, such as adversity. There are also plenty of things that are inevitable, such as death.

Don’t spend your life running away from things. Don’t spend time moving from dream to dream or passion to passion just to avoid challenges. You’ll end up nowhere. You’ll have nothing to show for the time you spent using up the Earth’s resources.

If you’re everywhere, you’re nowhere.

We are quick to quit something because we suck at it at first. If we instead decided to wait until we see some progress or even until we get quite good, we probably wouldn’t quit, would we?

If we wait until things are a little more smooth-sailing, if we waited until things got easy, only then can we approach the decision of quitting from calm, rational mind.

When things are in a frenzy and life sucks and adversity is scary, we don’t tend to make the best decisions. When we are angry because of something we are facing, we don’t tend to make the best decisions. Am I wrong?

How many things have you said because you were angry that you wish you can take back? How many things have you done because you were angry? See? We aren’t the best decision-makers at these times.

Now, if you have come to a point where things are going pretty well and you still don’t want to do it anymore, you can quit knowing that the thing you were pursuing truly wasn’t what you wanted. You can quit knowing that it wasn’t because you couldn’t figure out how to beat adversity––you just don’t want it anymore.

Once again, it should go without saying: there are always exceptions.

I shouldn’t have to stress that, but I don’t want to steer people in the wrong direction. I want to offer my advice, but I also don’t want to pigeonhole you into pursuing something and struggling forever and wasting your life away.

The exception is that not everything is worth struggling over. Sometimes you should let things go. You should if nothing else for your sanity and well-being and the well-being of others you may be dragging along with you. Like I said, quitting is one of the strongest decisions you will make. Know that you can’t live a life void of struggle, but you can choose what you will struggle with (for the most part).

You may find that the adversity of some other pursuit is more worth your time. Either way, we can’t full ourselves. We know deep in our hearts whether or not we truly want something. We know if we are quitting because things are hard or because we actually want something else.

Believe me, I know what it’s like to struggle to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I know what it’s like to question whether or not you want to pursue something and battle with the decision for years. I know what it’s like to get so fed up with a dream of yours to the point where you come to hate it within every bone of your body, to the point where just the mere sight of anything revolving around that dream makes you sick.

I also know that all of my hatred was because I kept running into adversity. I got so tired of it. But if we are always running away from adversity, what does that say about our ability to face anything?

What example do we set?

When I look back and truly assess my situation, I’ve made great progress. I’m good at what I do. It’s easy to forget that you were once good at something the moment you face adversity, especially the major ones that you cannot quickly recover from.

Here’s the thing: you are still good at what you do. Hitting a roadblock may cause your performance to plummet, but at least you have certainty of your potential. At least you know that you can be “good” again because that power lives within you.

We fail to realize that the adversity we face is the very thing that will propel us exponentially forward if, and only if, we decide to make it through to the other side.

What if we instead chose to look at our piles of failures and chain of roadblocks as necessary, inevitable stages of the journey that will make us stronger than we ever imagined we could be?

It’s easy to forget that we are a force to be reckoned with, that our potential is unlimited, and that what makes life meaningful is pursuing those things that set your soul on fire if nothing else than to prove to yourself that you are capable and worthy of a bountiful, abundant, and fulfilled life.

If you are going to die on your sword, die on a sharpened blade. Die on a blade that was forged with the toughest steel. Die on a blade that you’ve spent honest and true effort working on. Be hard to kill.

If you make the tough decision to quit, I salute you. If you decide to continue on the path, remember that you will come back stronger on the other end of adversity, but only if you approach it with all your strength.

You either give up or keep going. Don’t waste you, your dream, or anyone else’s time stuck in the middle.

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