“Don’t give up.”
“Don’t start something you can’t finish.”
“Follow it through to the end.”
I just heard someone say this on a podcast. It’s a reminder of a motto we’ve all been told or taught growing up. And it’s a reminder of maybe our reluctance to start and commit to something we know will be a bumpy road, have its moments where we want to quit and maybe do end up quitting.
Whatever we’re trying to accomplish. Whatever goal we’re trying to reach. Whatever we’re trying to overcome. Whether it’s going back to school, striving for fitness and reaching a target weight, getting out of a mountain of debt, developing a challenging skill or breaking a difficult habit or maybe even starting a new business.
The insidious implication of the motto is you’re a quitter, loser, failure if you stop something you can’t finish. Nobody wants to be told they’re a quitter, loser, failure but even more, nobody wants that perception to become how they judge themselves.
On its face, quitting and giving up don’t sound constructive, and it seems logical that giving up on things is something we should try to avoid but an even greater fear is wanting to avoid the risk of failure. So if there is any chance of starting something but then quitting and being deemed a “failure”, the inertia to not even start that commitment is very powerful.
So then when we first start or commit to something, i.e. health, fitness, nutrition, trying to break bad habits, self improvement, skill development, education, personal and career goals, what is the biggest thing we’re trying to overcome? The task, action? Finding out we don’t love it, or it’s not for us, or we’re not good at it? The duration, consistency?
The biggest thing we’re trying to fight, uphold, defy is the idea we’re not a quitter. After all, quitting equals failing. What keeps us going through the “dark days” is telling ourselves we’re not a quitter, trying to keep a promise we made to ourselves and “winning” is the only thing that matters.
But this, I contend, is not a sustainable mindset.
Think about the emotional and psychological fallout of what happens if someone does quit, “falls off the wagon” or just can’t continue. All the motivational push of not quitting, not failing and winning becomes an emotional bombshell, and in some cases can be devastating.
So the biggest thing to overcome is the mindset of not starting something for fear of quitting or breaking that commitment.
I’m not suggesting the solution is to flippantly commit and de-commit to things that come and go. We should carefully and thoughtfully invest our time into what will better ourselves and others.
Whether we’re aware of it or not, each goal contains hundred and thousands of decisions, emotional and psychological overhead, action, work and thoughts. But we do know, at some level, all the psychological and emotional overhead that is required, and it’s overwhelming and daunting to look in the distance at the result and feel like one small step would make a difference.
But it does, each committed step has a powerful snowballing effect. Each step reaffirms the decision and discipline toward the journey.
Reframe the concept of success and failure – sustaining one long-term unbroken commitment isn’t one, single big win, instead each day, each decision are many consecutive, sustainable small wins. And if there is a break, dropping the ball” or “falling off the wagon”, it isn’t “failure” or the end of the world. Just get back up and continue stringing together more “small” wins.