Strategic Quitting

Written by Justin Herald
Friday, 25 April 2008 22:37

There seems to be a lot of pressure these days on people having to succeed at everything that they do. The one true fact is that not everything is going to work out the way you had planned or hope for.

If success was easy then everyone would be successful, so you may need to realise that at some point you may just not achieve what you set out to achieve. You may need to prepare yourself for a bit of disappointment along the way due to that last statement.

Along with preparing yourself for the successes in life, you also need to prepare yourself for the disappointments that may happen in the pursuit for the success that you desire. Now before you think that I am changing my tune with regards to aiming for success please let me explain.

As you need to be deliberate with planning your success and the direction and process needed to get to that success, so you should also be deliberate with when you need to give it up and stop pursuing something that just isn’t going to happen the way you had planned. Now I realise that this may not be all that motivating for you right now, but you need to learn to be a strategic quitter sometimes.

What is strategic quitting you ask?

Well simply put, too many people think that success is all about pushing and pushing and struggling until a result is reached. I do not agree with that at all. Some people also think that there is only one or two ways for them to achieve their desired outcomes. From my perspective, success is all about knowing when to pursue something and when to walk away from something that is never going to happen. The reason many people end up frustrated with aiming for levels of success in their lives is due to not knowing when to quit.

Quitting has always been seen as the easy way out, and to be honest I do believe that some people quit too early without really overcoming any obstacles, but I am not talking about those people here. I am talking about the people who no matter what the circumstances, they keep going and going wishing and hoping that something will work out when in reality they are wasting their time.

This is where we all need to be honest with ourselves and asses our attempts, our situations and our desires from a very real perspective.

Why torture yourself when you could stop what you are doing and the way you are doing it and head in a totally different direction that may produce a better and greater result?

If only we all understood that there are more than one or two ways to achieve something. There are many different ways to achieve what we desire. Your only task is to make sure that if one way doesn’t work for you, try a different way. There are many doors we can open in life, so don’t think that your choices are limited. As far as I am concerned, success is a whole lot of failures put together to reach something that we have never reached before.

I think that within our culture as a nation, we sometimes think that quitting is the easy way out. As stated before, I do believe some people quit too early, but there maybe times where you may need to suck it up and admit that things aren’t going to work out so it is time to quit.

Now the process doesn’t stop there. You then have to get back up on that horse and try something else and a different way this time. Don’t think that you haven’t progressed either; you have just found a way or ways that didn’t work which hopefully will ensure that you don’t make that same mistake again.

There isn’t a bigger prize for the person who finishes first either. Success is all about reaching whatever we wanted to reach. How long it takes is really irrelevant to be honest. Taking longer than anticipated to reach your goal is far better not reaching it at all.

Source: Think Big Magazine

Strategic Quitting

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