Improving Our “Signals” and “Beings”

Are you a quitter?

That feels like someone asking you if you’re “too chicken”. It feels judgmental and seems like a weakness test to see how strong you really are. This is the sad perception we have of quitting. We think the weak, unmotivated, lazy, unsuccessful, and losers quit.

You might be thinking at the moment that this is going to be a motivational, never give up, stick with it, go get-em tiger, and you can do it type of article.

Nope.

I want to destroy a false belief about quitting, that is:

“Winners never quit, and quitters never win.”

Straight off let me say winners do quit and quitters do win. The original saying has a degree of truth about it yet in terms of the “never” part in saying “winners NEVER quit”, it is wrong. Let me explain.

For those who enjoy their current job, take that as an example. For those who hate their current job, learn from this and pretend you enjoy your job.

How did you get to work in a place you enjoy so much?

The answer is you made a radical choice. You made a choice to quit a previous job or whatever else you were doing and you got the enjoyable job. Do you think you were weak because you quit? Are you a loser? Were you unmotivated? No!

The main reason you quit your old work was because you acknowledged the job was not for you and that there was some other work out there that is better for you. In other words, you did not quit of weakness. You quit out of strength.

Here is another useful example. You are single and are looking for a partner. You go out to your usual club and make a serious effort to look for a partner. After many unsuccessful attempts you begin to lose confidence. Frustration and anger begin to set in as you are left wondering “What am I doing wrong?”

What if you weren’t doing something wrong, but the club is a bad place to meet people? What if the people you meet are the ones who have something wrong themselves and not you? The music could be too loud or the people are already in relationships are two reasons you could be failing that you cannot control.

I don’t want you to develop the point of view, “Nothing is wrong with me. It is the world who has the problem.” Certain things will always be out of your control.

So let’s get things straight. Some relationships do not work. Some people will always hate you. Some people are not going to be friends with you. Some bosses, co-workers, and customers will be jerks no matter what.

Whether you are religious or not, take the story of Jesus. He was perfect yet people hated him and killed him. He could not fully accomplish his goals in getting everyone to believe in him regardless of his perfectionism because other people make their own choices that influence the situation. There are situations that you cannot succeed in no matter how good you are.

No longer is “if at first we don’t succeed, try again” true. That is the old paradigm. The new paradigm is “if at first we don’t succeed, see why it failed, and quit or try again though more intelligently.”

If you follow the saying about never quitting, you would be persisting and pursuing such failures. The saying is a blindfold to push and motivate you into continuing with what will always fail.

When you learn something such as a relationship isn’t going to work, an employee isn’t going to change, or your work is making you unhappy, stop persisting and running towards failure everyday. Understand that certain things will not work out and learn how to identify them. Once you are able to pick out what a failure is you will be able to quit out of strength or change your course of action and stop walking down the road of fruitless attempts to succeed in what you are after.

How to Identify a Failure so You can Quit

Alright, here comes the tricky part. How to identify a failure so you can quit out of strength.

There are events out of your control and can be destined for failure. You either have to perform so good that the efforts are not worth your energy or it is impossible to succeed. When the return is not worth the expense do not invest yourself into pursuing failures. Financial investors would never make an investment where the return is less than the cost. They are the situations I want you to quit in. The trick is being able to measure the required costs and expected returns.

Probably the best technique to identify when to quit is using your experience. You have experienced heaps of highs-and-lows throughout your life in many areas. You can use your failing experiences to your advantage. These experiences form your intuition, gut-feelings, second-nature, sixth-sense, or whatever you want to call it. You can sense when something is not going to work out. Unfortunately, with this technique you need to have experienced failures in a similar situation to your current circumstance.

Here’s another technique to identify a failure. Say the problem is argumentative co-workers. You wonder why certain co-workers argue with you. After looking into yourself and seeing if you are doing something bad such as using poor communication skills, project this ‘bad’ co-worker onto a co-worker you get along with well. Identify what is so different about this person. Visualize what characteristics made the situation a failure onto the successful situation and see what similarities and differences there are.

Act on your newly gained knowledge by adapting too what you have learned. The adapting survives and thrives while the stubborn persists and resists. The 1925 Nobel Prize winner in literature and known for his playwriting, George Bernard Shaw said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.” You need to adapt and change your course of action and sometimes this must be by quitting.

You can also visually project yourself in the failing situation onto the successful one to contrast what you are doing differently. This technique filters through the many variables of what could be causing the problem.

One other technique is you can go talk to friends and family or ask an expert in the problematic field and see what the person says. By talking to other people you overcome your perceptions and beliefs that filter reality. Other people are able to see what you cannot and may have the answer for you. Additionally and more importantly about this technique, is the people you ask may have the knowledge and experiences to guide you.

If after seeing nothing in yourself you can change, the situation is failing, the people are stubborn, and nothing good is coming from it, then I want you to give up and let it go. Become a quitter and win!

Remember, Don’t Quit out of Weakness

I’m a firm believer in persistence. To go anywhere and become the person you want to be you need persistence. You need the will to persist to overcome the many obstacles and barriers you face. Anthony J. D’Angelo was quoted in saying, “Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance.”

Don’t make the mistake of giving up out of weakness, having a lack of desire, being lazy, acting, stubborn, or not possessing the skills to handle the situation. Be strong, be smart. Identify the failures and learn from them to place you in a more favorable situation next time.

I give you permission to relinquish the failing situations in your life. Stop dragging an anchor in your life that’s holding you back. Remember, quitters can be losers but it’s the smart quitters that win. Learn to quit and you will learn to win.

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I'm creator of a highly praised program called "Communication Secrets of Making People Like You". You can read about it here and order it here.