In praise of the quitter in you.
Pick someone you admire who brims with vitality and enthusiasm for life—they carpe each diem, they inspire people, they’re wise and compassionate. Now you probably would not say this of them:
“What a great quitter they are!”.
Well, I’m here to make the case that they are. And that being a great quitter can benefit your life.
If you look up “quitter” in the dictionary, you’ll find something along the lines of “a person who gives up easily, or does not have the courage or determination to finish a task”. At first glance, who’d want to be that person? Likely you were raised to believe that never quitting would make you successful in life—at school, or on the job, or in your sports team, or at the piano.
You were misinformed. The people I work with have produced a lot of success by conventional definitions so they may start by thinking of quitting as “failing”, but come to appreciate that some of their best decisions—walking away from a bad deal, or quitting a high-paying but unwanted job, or giving up traveling nonstop—were about exercising their role as Quitter-in-Chief.
So here’s a different way to think of quitting: as an exercise of your authority. You choose to quit a habit that does not work for you any more. For example, you’d probably encourage a friend to quit smoking, wouldn’t you? And if they did quit, likely you would applaud their strength and wisdom. Well how about applying the same exercise to any habit in your life that isn’t working for you.
For example, do you want to:
Quit worrying what others think of you?
Quit repeating the same argument with your partner?
Quit stressing yourself out?
Quit “bad moods”?
All the above are habits of mind that you can unconsciously practice. But because they are habits, you can quit them. Quitting can be self-limiting of course, so this is making a case for you to be the arbiter of what works or does not work for your life—to discern the difference between quitting from fear and quitting from self-awareness. That’s the work I do with people.
Here’s a question for you: what habits of thinking do you want to quit? Make the list as long as you like. And notice if you apply another habit—self-reproach. As in, “oh look at all my bad habits, I should really improve”. Self-awareness is not self-reproach.
Do what works for you, quit what doesn’t. And enjoy the results!
To the assertive quitter in you,
Tom