The Principles of Successful People #10
Know when to quit. When your priorities don’t line up with your heart, that’s when you quit.
Know - To perceive or understand as fact or truth.
Quit - To stop, cease, or discontinue.
Priorities - Highest, or higher in importance.
Heart - The centre of the total personality, especially with reference to intuition, feeling, and emotion.
It’s difficult to know when to quit. We can sometimes wonder down a path, and before we know it, we don’t recognise where we are anymore. While this can be seen as a new experience that can teach us lessons, if we wander aimlessly for too long, we can begin to feel directionless. We continue walking blindly, no longer knowing where we’re heading, or where we want to end up.
Sometimes when we get lost, it can help to turn around, retrace our steps, and return to a point we recognise. At this point, we can reassess our values and long-term goals, and pivot down a path that will better allow us to pursue these goals and remain aligned with our defining values.
In our world where success is celebrated, and failure is seen as better to avoid, it’s easy to continue pushing forward blindly, even if our heart isn’t in it. We could be scared to fail, or to admit that we’re lost, but there is no failure in admitting we’re stranded. In fact, it takes bravery to do this. We could also not want to lose the resources we committed into our precious pursuits, also known as the sunk cost fallacy. But the time, effort, money, and other resources taught us lessons and skills that turned us into who we are today, and we can utilise these in the future. If we pivot once again in life, we’ll undergo this transformative experience all over again, and pick up new lessons and skills.
When our priories feel forced, or at odds with our motivations, persisting can become a bear trap. Quitting before we place our foot in the bear trap isn’t failure, it’s recalibration. We make multiple such shifts throughout our long lives, and it ensures our efforts lead to fulfilment, and not frustration. If you no longer feel fuelled by your pursuits, ask yourself, is it time for a recalibration? Is it time to quit?