I had a fair share of doom days in a startup. The sales stumbled, nobody cared about the product, and morale ran low among the workforce. Every day, the co-founders were roaring “Never ever ever give up!” They said they learned it from Elon Musk.
As the company and I kept staggering along in our respective zombie modes, all I wanted to do each day is to quit. But it’s incredibly hard to do when you have invested so much of yourself and carried a huge weight of expectations from all the stakeholders. Nobody wants to be a quitter.
If you find yourself clicking the title of this post, chances are you are thinking about giving up something you truly care about, but that thing has been giving you a hard time. Maybe it’s a job, a partnership that went south, or a complicated relationship. And, like me, you might be experiencing a mixed bag of emotions: stress, fear, anger, or even depression, as you fought tooth and nail to hold on.
Whether you should quit that thing or not is your decision. But I’m here to tell you that “never give up” is terrible advice.
It’s not quitting. It’s a trade.
We always give up something, to avoid giving up on another thing, isn’t it? You break up with a toxic partner to not give up on your mental health and a chance of life-long happiness. You quit a job to not give up on the chance of being your own boss.
The right question is not “Should I quit?” The right question is “What do I have to give up in order to hold on?”
The trade might be favorable, or maybe it isn’t. The purpose of the question is to offer a reframing opportunity. Quitting has nothing to do with your characters, and has everything to do with what’s on the two sides of the trade. Perhaps it will help you gain clarity about some of the biggest reasons you stay or leave.
How about “never give up” on yourself?
Most people are hesitant to quit because they fear uncertainty. If I quit my job, will my side hustle succeed? If I break up with my current partner, will I ever find love again? They rationalize that although the status quo might be bad, unknowns are always worse. Disruption of the ordinaries always leaves open a chance of failure and failure is painful.
Life is nothing but change. And the only certainty is uncertainty. Isn’t it pretty much our job as human beings to muster the strength to institute some of those changes and navigate through the consequences that might be out of our control? The day we stop influencing our outcomes is the day we die.
If you are miserable at your current situation, but you are scared that you won’t make it if you walk away, there’s a limiting belief hiding underneath the fear — “I am not good enough.” That conviction presents a much bigger problem. It’s an internal self-assessment that you don’t believe you have the inner resources or confidence to go through life changes unscattered.
Allow the “never give up” mentality to define who you are and prevent you from evolving, and you’re giving up the only thing that is truly yours: the power to control your future.
Fear is the only thing you have to lose.
