I’m sure you’ve heard and possibly ingrained sentiments such as “Quitters never win and winners never quit,” or “There are no failures, only quitters.” Quitting has always gotten a bit of a bad rap in our achievement based culture. I’m sure you saw what happened to Simone Biles. The world turned on that poor woman because she said, “no.” But was she wrong for quitting? One of the things most of us miss is that there are two types of quitting and the knowing which is which can make all the difference.
Quitting because something is hard
If we quit something simply because it is hard, we have failed ourselves. Everything is hard to some extent. I’ll give you an example, say you love writing and you have a dream to write a novel one day, but it’s too hard to face your inner voices that tell you how you have nothing to say that anyone wants to hear. But putting off what your soul is guiding you is hard in another way. It’s a quiet hard that eats away at you.
Another example of this is, say you quit your meditation practice (ah..hem) because it’s hard to find twenty minutes twice a day to give to yourself. Sure, you may have freed up those forty minutes, but then life gets harder because you haven’t taken the time to unload your stress.
Hard just means there is action that needs taking. If your inner self is aligned with the activity, you may be jumping through all kinds of hoops and transcending countless obstacles to follow that path and it may look hard to those on the outside, but inside, it’s all flow.
Quitting because something is not right for you
Now, quitting because something is not right for you. This is a whole other thing. This kind of quitting is all kinds of brave. This kind of quitting takes facing the disappointment of others, even maybe the parts of ourselves that still believe to quit means to fail.
Sometimes jobs, endeavors, relationships are no longer relevant for us. This can be a sad truth sometimes, however, if we resist and remain past the expiration date, the quitting will happen for us. Either we’ll be fired from the job, or get an injury that gets in the way of the endeavor or the romance will turn resentful.
When we quit because something is not right for us, it is for the benefit of our evolution and the evolution of everyone else, even those we disappoint. Your stepping aside clears the space for what needs to come for you AND for them.
It takes a lot of courage to say no to something, especially when it’s something you’ve been saying yes to for so long. Miss Simone had to face the disappointment of thousands of strangers in order to not disappoint herself. However, if you can realize that quitting is simply saying no to something so you can say yes to something else, you step into a freedom without limits.
One of the great things about kids is, when they're not feeling it, they're not afraid to say no.