Is quitting a healthy response to struggle or repeated failure? Is it OK just to toss in the towel and move on?
Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock once
wrote: “There is an old motto that runs, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ This is nonsense. It ought to read—‘If at first you don’t succeed, quit, quit at once.’” Leacock then adds, “Try something else while there is yet time.”
Leacock’s turning this adage on its head is easily refuted. Inventor Thomas Edison failed a thousand times or more to develop the light bulb, but finally succeeded. When Michael Jordan first tried out for his high school varsity basketball team, the hoops great didn’t make the cut. Some marriages are saved when couples dig in their heels, refuse to call it quits, and work out their problems. They try and try again until they make that marriage a success.
Most of us champion perseverance. When our 5-year-old has a tough time learning to ride a bike, we trot alongside and urge him to keep pedaling. When our spouse is struggling to make good on a new and difficult job, few of us would say, “Honey, you’ll never make the grade. Just give it up.”
No one wants to raise a kid to be a quitter, and no one wants to be perceived as a quitter.
And yet ...
In 2007, psychologists Gregory Miller and Carsten Wrosch published a
study they’d conducted for a year with a group of teenagers that contained both the tenacious and the quitters. By the end, the results were clear: The quitters were physically healthier than the “I’m going to achieve my goal or bust” crew. Quitters were also less prone to depression when they failed to complete the tasks set before them.
But here’s some good news for both groups. Miller and Wrosch also found that after abandoning some activity, those who jumped right away into a different project were happier than those who brooded on their faded ambitions and remained stuck in place. The “time to move on” gang was less likely to regret the past and much more inclined to embrace the future.
Most of us meet defeat and frustration at some point, and ultimately just give up. Though that failure can drag us down, some readers have surely felt, as have I, the enormous relief that comes when we finally throw up our hands, cry “Enough is enough,” and quit. Whether it’s realizing we’re never going to be a
Scottie Scheffler on the golf course, shifting our major in college, or dumping a prestigious job for which we are ill-suited, if we quit with the right attitude, the chains binding us are broken, the weight on our shoulders is lifted, and we step into the sunshine of possibility.
It may help, too, if we remember that others have happily changed direction. Search online for “
celebrities who gave up fame,” and you’ll find a whole company of performers who left behind lucrative careers for a more agreeable lifestyle. An accountant I once knew left his desk job to become a paramedic.
Others switch gears because of a matter of conscience. Recently interviewed by The Epoch Times,
Jennifer Sey left her executive position at Levi Strauss—where she was slated to become CEO—over the firm’s harsh stance on COVID-19 policies and is happy with her decision. In 1963, movie star
Dolores Hart abandoned the glitter of Hollywood and became a nun, shocking her contemporaries.
“When you fall off a horse, get back on,” “I’m a fighter, not a quitter,” and “Winners never quit”: These are all worthy words of advice.
But sometimes, quitting with the right attitude can make us winners.
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