To Quit or Not to Quit your Goals

Do you get tired of starting and stopping, starting, and stopping? If you’re anything like me, you want so badly to stay consistent, but it can be hard. The motivation quickly passes, and you’re back at square one. I haven’t mastered the art of keeping motivation, so I look to those around me and find out what they do to stay motivated. How do they know when to quit or not to quit?

Why you quit your goals.

What are you paying attention to? What are you focusing on? If you focus on the hard things, and the negativity, then that’s what will grow in your mind. You begin to dwell on the bad, and it can feel like you’re defeated before you even start. 

According to Psychology Today, “We can become stronger by challenging our weakness even if at first we don’t succeed. Increasing resilience, both mental and physical, is an arduous process that’s rarely linear. That is, it’s a process filled with stops and starts, periods of progress and periods of regression.” Become okay with starting and stopping. Don’t beat yourself up.

Sometimes we dread starting because we worry that we will quit again. The more you can be at peace with the fact that life (and your goals) will ebb and flow, the easier it is. Think of your goals as a long-term solution because this will help to not get frustrated if you don’t get immediate results. The stop isn’t actually a stop, it’s a pause. And when you start, you are resuming, not starting over.

I believe if you just keep focusing on what you want to will get there. Some weeks you will feel super focused, and other weeks you will feel as if you accomplished nothing. You may even ask yourself if you should quit because things are moving so slowly. Stay the course. The more determined you are to bounce back from those pauses, the better it will get, over time.

Huff Post says we fail because we magnify our fears more than our abilities. Have you ever wanted to do something that seemed terrifying to you? The thought of doing it made you doubt yourself. You then started dwelling on the fear of all the things you would have to do to get there. At that point, accomplishing your goal, probably seemed impossible. 

When negative thoughts pop into your mind, consider thinking of all of the positive outcomes. Come up with more positive results than negative ones. Consider writing them down, so you only have to read your list, as opposed to recalling it from memory every time. Whenever you doubt yourself, look at the list of positive things. 

I meditate for 10 minutes every morning. The first five minutes are dreaming of my ideal life and thinking of all of the positive outcomes that I wish for my future. I imagine how I am going to feel, who will be there, and what I am going to say to myself. Picturing my dream life, helps me to cement the positive thoughts into my mind. I no longer think of the negative so much. I assume when bad things happen that it is a part of the journey, and I need to learn from it or pivot in a new direction. For the last five minutes of meditation, I sit in silence.

James Clear (author of Atomic habits) says we set resolutions and think the outcome is the thing that needs to change. He says, in reality, it’s the process, the system, the habits behind it that have to change. James says that instead of focusing on the outcome, focus on the type of person that you want to become. James says to start small. Do something for two minutes, so it doesn’t seem daunting to you; if you’re going to create the habit of being organized, clean for two minutes every day. Think of yourself as the type of person who cleans up after themselves.   

What do you think? Did any of those resonate with you?

 Let’s do a quick review. You are quitting, because you: 

• Are you paying attention to the bad or negative things?
• You are starting and stopping. Are you cool with that? Or maybe you are resuming and pausing as opposed to starting and stopping!
• You are you magnifying your fears more than your abilities?
• Thinking of the outcome, not the habit.

How to stop quitting

Now let’s look at some solutions to stop giving up!  First, Vine Healthcare says instead of giving up too quickly, shift to an outlook that pushes you forward by focusing on the positive outcomes of your efforts, even if you haven’t yet achieved the desired results. 

In the past, I failed when I focused on all of the hardships along the way. Consider dreaming of all of the benefits of your journey. For example, if you wanted to lose weight, focus on the fact that you will have more energy, you will feel better, and it will be easier to exercise!

Next, Brendan Burchard, author of High-Performance Habits, says we lose touch with what we want and forget about our goals. He says you can stick by your goals by doing the following.

• Bring back visualization of your goal accomplishment. Revisit it often.
• Revisit past and future week goals by rating yourself every Sunday.
• Get social support.

You will benefit from revisiting your goals. Write them down and revisit them as often as you can. I have heard people who look at their goals when they wake up in the morning and before they go to bed. That may seem like overkill to you. I get it because I used to think that! I currently imagine mine daily, so they stay fresh in my mind. That used to seem unimaginable to me. It’s okay to start small. View your goals once a week on the same day and time each week. Consider viewing your goals on Sundays.

Another thing you can do to stop quitting your goals is to focus on progress, and not perfection. Are you moving the needle forward at all? It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t need to be momentous gains. Progress is progress, my friends.

If I had waited for perfection, I would never have started ordinary to Badass. I wouldn’t have done the blog, any social media, because I didn’t have a clue how it worked. I definitely wouldn’t have started the podcast. I would have wasted time trying to be perfect. All the while beating myself up for not starting and I’d be missing out on experience. All of the knowledge I have gained in the past year has been invaluable. I’d take experience over perfection any day!

Let’s recap how you can stop giving up.

Shift your outlook, use Brendon Burchard’s 3-part method (visualization, revisit goals and get social support), and choose progress over perfection.

When should you quit?

Consider listening to TheEmotionMachine.com and quitting when your values and priorities have changed. You no longer want that thing that used to light you up. You’re human. You will change and grow. Don’t force yourself into doing something just because you started it. If it no longer aligns with who you are, then throw it out like a hot potato! I know nobody says that anymore, but you get the point!

I interviewed comedian Judy Carter on the Ordinary to Badass podcast. Judy said, “quitting, if it’s done in a conscious way, is much better than not quitting.” She said it’s better to quit and do something that is more in line with her passion. Are you wasting your time on someone else’s dreams? Doing what others think you should do, but it doesn’t light you up. QUIT, right now. This is your life. You only get one chance to live it. If someone else wants that dream, they are telling you about; then they should go after it! 

Quit when you won’t have any regrets. If you can walk away from something knowing you tried your best, because you put it all on the line, or it no longer interests you, that’s cool, but make sure you walk away. You have to be able to drop it and stop dwelling on it. We are raised to believe that we don’t want to be quitters. It’s not always bad or wrong to quit. If something is no longer serving you, it’s dead weight. Quit carrying it around.

Conclusion

Whether you want to stop giving up on yourself and your future, or you want to stop doing something that doesn’t serve you, determine what’s important to you in life. Those things that are important to you, use them as your guidepost for making decisions because those guideposts, will help you determine whether to quit or not to quit something.

The choice is yours. There is no right or wrong answer. Actually, I take it back; there is a right answer. If you are tired of the life, you are living and the direction you are headed, then make a change, because you only have one life. Start today. Either start something and be determined not to stop, only press pause or drop something that is weighing you down.

I’d love for you to respond to this post and tell me what you are going to pursue without quitting or what you’re going to stop doing that is no longer beneficial to you.

Marie