In a world where success matters more than learning, deciding to quit can feel like the coward’s choice. It’s almost as if you’re admitting to the world that you can’t do this and you will never be able to do this.
Basically, we’ve been taught that quitting is bad.
I disagree. In fact, in some cases I’d say quitting is the greater indication of strength.
Quitting means recognizing that something isn’t working and it actually requires a great deal of self-understanding. It’s scary and demotivating, knowing that people have always expected you to keep trying, and here you are giving up. The pressure alone is hard to surmount.
However, there tends to be a stigma around quitting that seems like it will never go away. In a sense, that’s a good thing. If you’re going to quit trying, you should have a valid reason and you should think long and hard about it. But I also believe that forcing people to prove that quitting is the right choice can be incredibly damaging. More often than not, when people decide to stop working towards a specific goal, they have put a lot of thought into it.
This is not to say that quitting a job requires the same thought process as quitting a video game, every situation has its own unique components that require different consideration.
I would never change my major as willingly as I would back out of a poker game with friends. It’d be foolish to say that those two decisions are of the same magnitude and gravity.
Quitting is a matter of trusting your own judgement. It requires you to know the ins and outs of whatever situation you’re in, the logistics surrounding quitting and what you’ll be losing out on. Making the decision to quit requires you to be certain that this is the right choice for you.
Maybe a bit down the road you’ll regret it, but in that time and at that moment, you believed you were making the right choice for you and your situation. That requires an immense amount of courage.
Quitting doesn’t make you weak. It makes you sensible and thoughtful and it shows that you have a greater understanding of your needs than some might believe. There are always going to be consequences when it comes to quitting, but there are consequences for every decision we make.
And really, I’d rather be happy in the moment than miserable and stuck doing something I hate.