Quitting is not an option because no one ever became successful by giving up. The successful ones spent years, if not decades in perfecting their craft and propelling them forward and upward. Nothing in life that’s worth doing is meant to be easy.
There’s going to be many times in your life when you just want to crawl inside a rock and never go out. It happens even to the best of us. You’re not alone. When I was interviewing for jobs in college, do you know how many applications per year I sent out? 100+ applications. Do you know how many rejections I got?
99 rejections out of 100 applications. Each “thank you for your interest” email hurt and gave me a gut punch. However, I still never gave up and kept applying to every company I could. Looking back, I still don’t know how I had the willpower to continue applying for jobs.
However, I’m thankful that I put in the effort earlier. I’m glad that I understood that quitting was not an option and I was still going to treat the next interview as the same as the first. Every no gets you closer to a yes. When I was in college, I worked at a call center calling alumni for donations to the university.
I kept getting rejection after rejection. It was a brutal job. When I finally got one alumni to donate out of 10, I still felt ecstatic and kept going. I eventually moved up the ranks to supervisor status, managing people who were older than me. I never would have gotten there had I gave up.
When you don’t give up, it teaches you something about persistence and fighting through an infinite number of rejections.
Why Quitting is Not an Option
Quitting to DESTROY that social share button and posting to your favorite social media is never an option! Your friends just might be on the verge of quitting and they need that extra push to keep going. This article just might be it.
You don’t want your friends to quit just as the game is about to get good. The second half the game is when you reap all the rewards!
So with that said, let’s go into the concrete reasons why you shouldn’t let go and quit.
1) You Are Just About to Reach the Finish Line
Most people quit digging just right before they are about to strike some major gold. When I started my first blog, I actually got featured at a well known website. That month, I received 10,000 page views. It was the most I ever had! However, when I saw the earnings of $5 for 10,000 page views, I got dismayed.
I knew next month, I would never even reach anything close to 10k page views, even with putting in so much work. So what did I do? I gave up. I threw in the towel. What I didn’t know was that all I had to do was switch ad networks from Google Adsense to something like Ezoic. I estimate my earnings to be closer to $100, if so.
I didn’t just quit when I was about to cross the finish line, I quit after I crossed the finish line. That’s why quitting is not an option. You have no idea how close you may be to striking some major life changing gold. Don’t be me who did that. I still regret it to this day.
2) Long Lasting Success Takes a Very Long Time
I don’t know any successful person who became successful overnight. The stories you read about a guy going into the casino with $10 and winning millions of dollars? That’s not just a rare story. It’s an EXTREMELY rare story. Even most lottery winners don’t have overnight success.
Most spent months, if not years buying up lottery tickets before they found the one that stuck. You’re not trying to win at the first try. You attempt many times in the hopes that one is a winner and gets you to success. I saw so many bloggers who got to 10,000+ page views in just their sixth month.
2 years later, I checked in on their success. They are no longer around. If you want to build long lasting and consistent success, it takes a very long time to build. Give it at least a year of good effort before you give up. Otherwise, quitting is not an option.
You need to give it a fair shot before you come to the conclusion to quit.
3) You Will Dislike Your Friends Surpassing You and Regret Quitting
Before I changed jobs, a coworker and I were very close. When I left, she was at the exact same grade level I was at. It’s been 2 years since I left. She is now a Vice President and I am nowhere near to being a Vice President. I can’t say that I don’t regret my decision to leave the company. I wish someone told me that quitting is not an option.
It’s just a frustrating position to be in the sidelines while you see your friends who started at the same level achieve your dreams and goals. Right in front of your eyes. You will be thankful that you realized that quitting isn’t an option and that you kept going. The one who wins isn’t the one who is the smartest.
The one who wins are the ones who stayed in the game as much as they possibly could. They just outlasted their competition. Quitting is not an option because all you have to do is outlast your competition. You don’t have to be a genius or an expert. All you have to do is stay in the game.
Let others do the work for you and quit on their own.
4) You’re Not Just Letting Yourself Down
There are others who would love to see you succeed. For me, those people are my parents. I can’t imagine letting my parents down. They gave up their comfortable life in order to take the opportunity of a lifetime and moved their family to the United States.
Their sacrifice isn’t unnoticed. I appreciate and are grateful for their risky choice and decision. You’re not the only one who has a vested interest in succeeding. You are fighting for your loved ones who are genuinely happy for your success and want you to be successful.
Quitting is not an option because you would be selfish otherwise. Think about how many people who helped you along your journey. Do you feel OK just letting go of all their efforts at the snap of your fingers? All they want is for you to be successful and achieve success.
5) You’re Just Thinking It’s Hard
It’s all in your head. Think the last time that you got vaccinated. Do you feel hurt more so before the actual act of getting vaccinated? All the buildup that you thought would hurt before you got vaccinated, was it justified? More likely explanation was that it wasn’t.
Quitting is not an option because it’s just in your head. You’re just thinking it’s hard because you never experienced it before. In a year from now, you’re going to be laughing at how you thought it was hard. In a year, what you thought was hard will come to you like second nature.
The act itself is not as difficult as you thinking that it’s hard. Once you actually go through with it, you’ll question why you thought it was hard in the first place. It’s always difficult before I head to the gym. Every time that I go, I thank myself that I made the decision to go through with that “hard” choice.
It was just in my head.
6) If It’s Hard for You, It’s Hard for Everyone
You’re not special. Your struggles aren’t yours and yours alone. I used to think that my struggles were mine alone but it turns out, everyone goes through the same thing. If it’s difficult for you, it’s difficult for everyone else. There’s little chance that it isn’t.
Whatever stage of challenge you’re facing, someone else faced that exact same challenge before as well. Quitting is not an option because well, you’re just letting others have an easier life. When you quit your job, that leaves the room for the other employees to take advantage of that situation.
One of my friends had a team of 5. In one year, 4 out of the 5 team members left. The company promoted that one person who remained behind. It was the easiest promotion story I ever heard so far. It’s an easy position to be in to ask for a promotion.
If you quit, it could mean that others have to take on your responsibilities as well. Then they can use that as leverage to negotiate higher pay. You don’t want to do something that makes other people’s lives better at your expense. You want to do something that makes your life better at your expense.
One and Only Exception to Quitting is Not an Option
With all of the motivational encouragement, there is an exception. It’s when you feel like you didn’t just reach your limit. It’s when you surpassed your limit so much that your physical and mental well being is over-capacitated. Then that’s a fantastic reason to let go, quit, and rejuvenate.
Don’t be like the father who encouraged his investment banking son to continue even after the son told his dad he couldn’t handle it. The stress and long hours as an investment banker got to the son. Then he committed suicide. In this exceptional case, quitting IS an option.
It’s when you don’t just feel stressed and tired, it’s when you feel you reached the end of your limit. There’s nothing wrong with taking a step back and re-evaluating your life. The investment banking son should have quit his job and enjoyed time off from work and stress.
What I suspect happened was that he felt guilty and still kept on going along with his job. Even when his body was telling him to do otherwise. If your body is telling you to not go any further, listen to it. Our bodies biological functions were created as a survival tool.
When we can’t take it anymore, our bodies are very good at communicating that information to us. Your health is one of the most important things you can have in your life. It’s not money, it’s not status, it’s health. Therefore, don’t work so hard that it jeopardizes that.
If you do, there just might be a permanent tragic ending that can’t be undone. Not going to the hospital is mountain times better than not achieving success in your life. Think about the long term goals and rank them in order of importance.
In General, Quitting is Not an Option
Although there are exceptions to the rule, quitting is generally not an option. You didn’t come this far to only come this far. The only times when you consider quitting is when you already gave a fair amount of effort. It’s when you feel like that effort isn’t yielding enough results.
If you already gave it a fair shot, it means that you already passed the first half of the game. The second half of the game is when all the fun happens. It’s the close and how you’re going to finish the game out. You get to actually see the end result of what your efforts would have actually yielded.
You don’t want to artificially quit just when the story is about to get good. Your story is already set up by you and you already built the background. Would you start a book and quit halfway, even if the story just got more interesting? If the second half the game is more challenging, it means that it’s not dull.
You are actually doing something interesting with your life. Why would you just throw that away with one decision? That doesn’t make sense. You’re not throwing away what you already invested so far, you’re throwing away what you will get going forward.
You’re losing twice. Quitting is not an option. You already came so far and you just need to continue putting in that effort to go even further. You don’t even have to do anything different. All you have to do is continue doing what you’re doing and you’ll get ahead just fine.
There is no need to add complexity to your life by trying to come up with additional smart things. You just have to stay in the ring. That’s the best part of all.
Why Quitting is Not an Option List:
- You are just about to cross the finish line
- Success takes a very long time
- You will dislike your friends surpassing you and regret quitting
- You’re not just letting yourself down
- You’re just thinking it’s hard
- If it’s hard for you, it’s hard for everyone
Enjoyable and appreciate the comprehensive list on this subject. One observation on number 3. If the circumstance makes sense, please consider reframing this; these colleagues are not your friends. You may have some laughs, and go to lunch and happy hour. But they are your competition. Consider what it would feel like to have to ‘manage’ this person, or have her ‘manage’ you? The relationship is going to change, anyway. In my case, I spent decades ‘networking’ in professional societies, obtaining certifications and building work projects that impressed clients and colleagues. But if an opportunity for advancement came up, those people all considered me their competition; would they recommend me, or even inform me, about an opportunity that might involve me managing them? No way. My takeaway, eventually, was that my ‘network’ was vertical (my former clients and managers) and the lateral/horizontal axis was my ‘competition’.
Also, I learned not to resent them if they did better. She is not going to be a VP because you quit. It is disappointing when a person you were rooting for turns out to be someone who ‘touches base’ just to let you know they are doing better than you. But if you can find a way to be happy for her, and let her know, it is quite possible that she will turn into a ‘network node’ for you in the future. The worst part of social media and society involves ‘envy’, and there is no value in it other than provoke bad feelings. Life is long, and I’ve seen people wait a long time to ‘settle a score’ even if it is a petty insult that is meaningless to the rest of the world.
Lastly, regarding ‘quitting’. I haven’t seen the concept of ‘being run off the job’ described in my 10 years of reading PF blogs. It is a pretty ugly thing, and not always clear when it is happening. One of the reasons it is indirect, is because that way it is deniable for those who are doing the bullying, shunning, backstabbing; they can’t be direct about it, or else they will look awful to their superiors and perhaps open the company up to liability. My thought is a lot of ‘harrassment’ labor cases involve someone being ‘run off the job’ and it goes bad. If this ever happens to anyone reading this, my thought would be to 1) get another job before quitting, any job; and 2) document conversations, directions/orders, date/time, and witnesses. You can send an e-mail to confirm to your boss, or send a ‘letter to file’ to yourself so that the contemporaneous order/conversation is documented. 3) you can also inform HR and ask for a letter-to-file be placed in your folder, but be careful because HR’s first obligation is to the company. In any event, it is always better to have a soft place to land instead of quitting because you hit your ‘ouch point.’
Oh, I may have miscommunicated #3 point. I was VERY happy for her, she was one of my closest friends in the group. She didn’t reach out to me to let me know she got VP, it came up in passing. However, while you’re happy for your friends, you can’t help but think if that could’ve been you because I had higher ups who were championing for my career growth.
We shared our compensation info with each other, she gave me her expensive furnitures when she was moving out, she was just an all around trustworthy person. I messed up with the relationship because I was going through a health issue which caused me to have random bouts of anger at times (and I still do, I’m trying to figure it out still). She was the only one who I considered a real good friend from work who I didn’t think of as competition.
She absolutely could’ve gone the other way if it came to it and she would have kept the opportunity to herself if it came up that I would end up managing her if I got the opportunity. However, at that point, I wouldn’t have minded. I may react differently if it happened in reality, but I would like to think I would just shrug and say, “that was the cost of knowing more information of who she is”.
I know backstabbing happens because one vice chairman literally told me, “yeah, I regret not being a team player at times to move up in my career”. One day, I hope to get to a place where I’m not dependent on a corporate job for my financial survival. Time will tell!
Thank you for your comment, JayCeezy, they always make me think of a different perspective.
Very interesting, and am happy to hear your friend was not ‘rubbing your nose in it’. I’ve had a few of those, and they are not fun to find out that a person I was happy for (always worth it to be happy for them!) instead now viewed me as an opponent they had bested. Ugh!
As for ‘anger’, I empathize completely, and sympathize too! Because my ego and emotions have harmed me, when I did not control my reactions. A great book that helped me with this problem was ‘Quiet Your Mind’ by John Selby. One thing that has also been good, but humbling, in this regard: if I have insulted or had a flash of anger, I will apologize to anyone who witnessed it, i.e. “sorry you saw me like that, I behaved poorly and will strive to do better.” I will do this even if I don’t expect forgiveness, and say “well, you don’t have to accept my apology but you deserve to receive it” and make it clear that it is an apology.
Oh, no, my anger stems from my digestive issues I realized this year I had. I need to see a GI for it but can never find the time to because.. well.. work. On an empty stomach, I practice absolute empathy, I have no bad thoughts, and it makes me feel like myself.
I LOVE the “you don’t have to accept my apology but you deserve to receive it”. That sounds like a quote STRAIGHT from the TV show Suits (my favorite), I’m not sure if you watched that show. The show taught me there’s always 2 sides to a transaction and/or dealings with a person. “It doesn’t matter what I”m selling if there’s no one buying”. Similar to your saying, for an effective apology, someone has to offer it and the other has to accept it.
I may just starting using that quote..