We Need More Quitting So We Keep At What’s Important

We are told never to quit, but what if we don’t believe in it anymore? Shouldn’t we quit then, so we can believe again?

Photo by Billy Pasco

Quitting is for non-believers. So we must quit when stop believing.

This is — like so many other things — rather easy to say and not so easy to do.

It is easy to say because it is very rational. How can we justify continuing to do something in which we have lost all faith? How do we pull it off in front of others? We really don’t. We may push through and carry on, we may make an effort and keep going, but we’re only slowing down the process of our inevitable decline. Why not stop and start the next project instead?

In fact, it isn’t so easy to do because it is so very rational, and we are only rational to a certain degree. Most of the time, we are extremely irrational, passionate, impulsive beings. Quitting comes with a high social and personal price tag. Socially, it means announcing our failure, putting our hand up and saying, ‘I was wrong after all’, or ‘I’m not into this anymore’. Personally, it is a blow to our pride: all that effort, all that belief… for nothing!

“Quitting is easy, quitting is for losers, quitting is what cowards do.” We are told this…