Don’t be a quitter.
That’s the operating system that is installed in us since we were young. Quitting is only slightly less egregious a sin than tattling. Have you ever been congratulated for quiting? Quitting is all about failing, about being weak. About giving up.
Nobody wants to be labeled a quitter.
Quit is bad. Grit, on the other hand? People write books about the benefits of grit. Grit is about stick-to-it-ness. It’s about digging deep, about fighting through.
In psychology, grit is “a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual’s perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a particular long-term goal or end state.” Basically, it’s about sticking to your goals for more than a few minutes. It’s about overcoming obstacles and challenges that lie in the path to your goal. It’s the driving force in realizing these goals.
According to Forbes, grit is built on courage, conscientiousness, follow-through on long-term goals, resilience and a pursuit of excellence.
Grit is sung about in song and story; indeed, one of the most famous lines of poetry comes at the end of Tennyson’s Ulysses:
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
And yet….
And yet, quitting, under the right circumstance can actually be a good thing.
Quitting smoking, for instance, can save your life. Toughing out situations that are harmful can be one of the worst decisions we make.
We don’t tell the woman whose husband is abusive “just stick it out.”
Actually, scratch that, some people totally do; we’d rather send women into situations where they may be abused mentally, emotionally, physically or sexually than somehow think ill of the man.
And that’s part of the problem. We live in an achievement-oriented culture, which urges us to push through adversity, overcome all obstacles, and strive for success. We have turned grit into a near mystical force. “If you just hang in there, it will all get better.”
No, it won’t. Not always.
A few years ago, I discovered, after 40-something years of being on this earth, that I actually liked running. I wasn’t very good at it, and once got passed by someone out for a walk, but, three or four times a week, I would go and run the 10 km loop around town. I enjoyed the process of running.
My ankle, however, didn’t, and every time I went out, it would protest. I could have continued on, powered through the pain.
Instead, I listened to my body, and stopped doing things that actively caused it harm. I chose to quit now, rather than lose the ability to walk in a decade.
It’s okay to quit sometimes. If keeping going leads to danger, to negative outcomes, or even, just down the wrong path.
When I lived in the Lower Mainland, I used to work at the Real Canadian Superstore, stocking milk and other dairy products onto the shelves.
A friend of mine was getting married back in Saskatchewan, and I decided that I was going to be at her wedding. Her brother was my room mate, and he and I and a third roommate—who was also friends with Charleen—made plans to travel back for her wedding.
So I asked for that week off six months in advance. Maybe more. It was an important event.
The week before the wedding, I got my schedule for the next two weeks, and I was scheduled to work the day of the wedding.
I went to my boss and asked him what happened. “I booked the time off months ago,” I protested.
He agreed, it was a tragedy that I was booked to work, and my request for time off most likely had got lost in the shuffle, but there was nothing, he said, he could do.
“That’s too bad,” I said. “You’ll need to hire someone to cover those days.”
“If you don’t show up for those days,” he warned me, “don’t bother to show up at all.”
“I wasn’t,” I said.
It was hard to quit, my protestant work ethic rebelled, but I did.
Why? Because between the two—working a dead-end job or going to a friend’s wedding—the choice I made was to quit.
There are always going to be situations where toughing it out is the worse of the two options. In our careers, in our relationships, in sports or hobbies, there is often a time when it is better to quit than to keep going. When the drawbacks outweigh the benefits, when having the free time is more important than continuing, when minimum wage just isn’t enough. And yes, change can be uncomfortable, and sometimes, it’s hard to recognize the difference between a rough patch and the point of no return. Achievement for achievement’s sake can lead to unfulfilling and bad outcomes such as burnout, poor health, reduced sleep, high stress levels, feelings of hopelessness, and increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
So no, this isn’t a call for you to quit everything. Or maybe not even anything. But it is a call for clarity. A call to take a good long look at the things in your life and honestly weigh out the pros and the cons. And if something isn’t making your life better, if it doesn’t spark joy, as Maria Conde might put it, then maybe it’s time to set it aside.
Because while grit and determination is good, sometimes, giving up and throwing in the towel can also be good, too.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
