There’s a time to stay and a time to go. Whether it’s a job, relationship, or educational path, the decision to quit is never easy. Sometimes it feels like surrender, other times like liberation.
With this blog I share my experiences with quitting through the lens of different quotes, stories and metaphors that inspired me in the last 2 decades. These words have offered me valuable perspective during my own struggles wiht quitting and my hope is some inspire you.
Give things a decent go before quitting
“Ne tentes, aut perfice.”
I don’t speak latin. But once upon a time this motto decorated my bedroom wall. Good thing I didn’t get it tattooed, because different versions are now circulating online!
As for me, “Ne tentes, aut perfice” was always a “stick it out” quote. Back when I was a teen, I loosely translated it as “Do not attempt or finish what you’ve started.”
When I was 14, I dropped out of music school. My mom initially worried this signaled a tendency to give up easily when things get tough. Music school was extra curricula and I was in my second to final eight years. But honestly, although I enjoyed playing piano, I can’t hold a tune to save my life. And in a choir class, the next thing up was conducting a choir. I couldn’t bring myself to do it and I felt such a relief when I ‘escaped’.
That being said, my mom’s concern stayed with me. Was I too weak to get stuff done? So this Latin phrase resonated and kept me accountable so I wouldn’t become someone who gives up when things get tough.
Instead of becoming a serial quitter, this played out in my 20s as a fear of quitting altogether. I was afraid of quitting too early, not trying hard enough and giving up too soon.
This led to pursuing and getting a degree in a field I realized I wasn’t cut out for. Yet, I followed it up with getting a corporate job in the same area. I felt obliged to continue on the journey I had started.
Today I would rather say that quitting shouldn’t be the first step you take if something starts to feel off. But it is fine to quit situations that don’t serve you in general. The selection of the next quotes will put this into context.
Quit it you must, but not at first
“Bloom where you’re planted.”
―Saint Francies de Sales
Who knows what inspired this thought back in 1600s. But this is one of the quotes that I hold close whenever I wrestle with a quitting decision. Not because it determines the outcome, e.g. you must stay where you are. Instead, I feel it it encourages trying before quitting.
“The grass is greener where you water it.”
This is another metaphor that echoes the same message, essentially inviting you to consider some inner work to see if the issue is truly external.
Simply because the truth is—wherever you go, there you are. Even if you change the external circumstances, even if you move across the world or get another job, if the issue was within you to start with, you will be in the new place with the same old problems.
And even if it is not a job—anyone who has fallen into the same type of unhealthy relationships time and time again, will vouch that this is true. A new partner often turns into the same old story.
I’m not an expert on life, but to anyone bouncing between unfulfilling jobs or relationships I’d suggest looking at the self. It doesn’t mean you’ll bloom, but while doing some inner work through therapy, yoga, reading or even self-help guides, you’ll get to know yourself better. And you’ll eventually know if you should stay or let go.
Overcome fear of judgment
“Do what you feel in your heart is right to do for you’ll be criticized anyway.”
―Eleanor Roosevelt
You may wonder this quote is relevant to quitting. But it is more so than any other.
Once you’ve lived through the ‘stick it out’ phase and have given it all to working things out and you still can’t blossom where you’ve been planted, there is only quitting left on the table.
But even when all the above is exhausted, we’re often in the pursuit of external validation. Fear of judgment and criticism can stall our quitting journey. I still have to reference this whenever I am at the crossroads.
When I was already on the other side of my 20s, I finally admitted to myself that I was not in the right job, relationship and country. I had tried all sorts of things and practices to essentially bloom where I was, but it was time to let go. However, moving back in with my mom with no plan felt like a bad look.
Funnily enough, today I wonder whose opinion mattered so much? And I don’t know.
Often it is just our own assumptions and the internal bully that hold us back. So I’ll finish this thought with a line from Jen Vallens’ book for yoga teachers:
“The only person you need to impress is your 5-year-old self and your 85-year-old self.”
Isn’t it just a nice way to look to things?
Take the plunge
Luckily, around the time I was trying to bloom where I was planted, I started practicing yoga and attending some day retreats and meditation sessions at a meditation and yoga center in Manchester. And the mindfulness community really has this quitting thing right. Quitting isn’t about giving up. It’s about making space for something new.
In one of these day retreats I had a serendipitous meeting with a woman named Lizzie. During the break, I shared with her that I wanted to quit my job and move home, but was afraid of judgment and failure. It turned out she had gone through it some years back. But she suddenly upped her life and moved from London to Manchester after reading something.
Kafka’s “Sudden Walk” was the text that had inspired her to make a decision and move into the unknown years back. Everything had worked out as she was working at a local radio station and loving her life. She said it is the best thing not knowing what to do, because then you can find a job you don’t care about and take time to figure out what you want. What a shift in perspective.
So on the train home, I Googled the story. And guess what. Next thing I know, I am leaving 7 years in the UK behind me. I handed in my notice and within 3 months moved back home. I had no plan. But it was the perfect timing. I had held out long enough to land in the right place at the right time. I got a job within 10 days of arriving. Was it easy? Not at first, but 7 years down the line, quitting that time is still the best thing I’ve done. Here’s the story that has inspired at least two people to up and leave:
“When it looks as if you had made up your mind finally to stay at home for the evening, when you have put on your house jacket and sat down after supper with a light on the table to the piece of work or the game that usually precedes your going to bed, when the weather outside is unpleasant so that staying indoors seems natural, and when you have already been sitting quietly at the table for so long that your departure must occasion surprise to everyone, when, besides, the stairs are in darkness and the front door locked, and in spite of all that you have started up in a sudden fit of restlessness, changed your jacket, abruptly dressed yourself for the street, explained that you must go out and with a few curt words of leave-taking actually gone out, banging the flat door more or less hastily according to the degree of displeasure you think you have left behind you, and when you find yourself once more in the street with limbs swinging extra freely in answer to the unexpected liberty you have procured for them, when as a result of this decisive action you feel concentrated within yourself all the potentialities of decisive action, when you recognize with more than usual significance that your strength is greater than your need to accomplish effortlessly the swiftest of changes and to cope with it, when in this frame of mind you go striding down the long streets – then for that evening you have completely got away from your family, which fades into insubstantiality, while you yourself, a firm, boldly drawn black figure, slapping yourself on the thigh, grow to your true stature.All this is still heightened if at such a late hour in the evening you look up a friend to see how he is getting on.”
What this short story represents to me is quite simple. Yes, people may be surprised about your choices, e.g. leaving a successful career or the partner that seems perfect to the outside world. But it is your life. And once the initial shock settles, others move on to live their own lives. Most importantly, so should you.
Cut your losses
”Being able to quit things that don’t work is integral to being a winner. Going into a project or job without defining when worthwhile becomes wasteful is like going into a casino without a cap on what you will gamble: dangerous and foolish.”
―Tim Ferris
In a culture where we may aspire to not become ‘quitters’, I wrote this blog to suggest the opposite. The above quote is wonderful. It is almost a skill we have to build. Quitting and letting go of things that aren’t good for us.
Sometimes we know what our red flags will be. With more experience we see them in jobs and relationships and can decide when we’ll draw the line.
Other times we throw ourselves into something that promises to be amazing. Years later we realize we couldn’t see the warning signs.
I am in my 30s now. Today, I know that experience and context matter. Decisions made by a less experienced self might not be the best for you today. Ultimately, whoever you were when you started a journey doesn’t matter, as only the you who is in the current situation has the information to make a call.
Admittedly, making changes get harder the more responsibilities we have, especially if others rely on us. But if we live in a culture and environment that doesn’t imprison us, we are graced with an opportunity to make changes. Even with baby steps. But as long as we have a chance to work towards our dreams, at some point they may just come true.
Accept that nothing is more invisible than the next moment
“We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.”
―Marcel Proust
I wanted to finish with this wonderful thought. If you read the entire blog, you must be thinking hard about quitting. And you must be scared of making the wrong decision. That’s why the above quote has a deserving place in this list. It tells us that we will only discover if the choice was right once we’re on the other side of making it. The question is: will you take a risk?
Sometimes we are so comfortable with the known discomfort that leaping away is scary. And the truth is, we don’t know what any of our decisions hold for us until we look back on them.
In life there are different seasons. There is a time we should commit and stick it out. There are times where we should work on existing situations to make improvements. There are times when if the heart continues to call out for our attention, we must work ourselves up to listen to it. And then there is a time to quit, face the music and move forward to something new. Whatever it may be. We can be afraid and do it anyway.
“What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?”
― Erin Hanson