Life is so paradoxical. Take quitting.
Most of us believe that it’s wrong to quit. That quitting is for losers. And that if you want to achieve anything worthwhile, you just need to keep going.
I understand where that idea comes from. You shouldn’t quit simply because something is hard. If you give up every time you’re frustrated, tired, or not getting the results you want, you’ll never become good at anything.
But quitting is also important. In some cases, it’s the only way to grow.
Henry Cloud, the author of Necessary Endings, wrote an entire book about this subject. He said it really well:
“Getting to the next level always requires ending something, leaving it behind, and moving on. Growth itself demands that we move on. Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.”
When I look at my own life, quitting has often led to something better.
I quit working at our family business and found a job at Gartner. During that period, I learned a lot about business, corporate careers, goal setting, personal responsibility, and living in a big city.
And then I quit that job too. I felt stuck in a career I didn’t like. The pain of that experience pushed me to become a writer. If I had stayed because I was afraid to quit a good job, I don’t know whether I would’ve made that change.
In 2022, I went to Spain with the idea of living there. After four months, I realized it wasn’t the right time for me to stay. So I quit that plan and moved back.
People often see quitting as a failure of commitment. But life moves in seasons. Some things serve you for years, some things for a few months, and some things turn out to be a bad fit almost immediately. You can appreciate an experience and still decide it’s time to move on.
I like a boring lifestyle on a day-to-day basis. But when I look back at a year, I want to see movement. I want to feel like I’ve learned something, made progress, tried something new, or changed direction when I needed to.
Being stuck is one of the worst feelings in life. And often, the answer is right in front of you: You need to quit something.
The hard part is knowing what to quit and when to quit.
In this guide, I’ll share how I think about that decision, how to tell the difference between a difficult period and a dead end, and how to end something without creating unnecessary damage.
I’ve sat on decisions like this for way longer than I needed to. Every time, the actual ending turned out easier than the waiting.
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