Resilience Strategies—Discipline

Unlike persistence, where the idea is that you keep going no matter what, there are occasionally times when the healthiest thing to do is quit. That’s right. I said it. Quit. The whole idea of quitting gets a bad rap in our culture. Is there anything worse than being called a quitter? The term seems to conjure up images of a loser, someone weak in character, who doesn’t have the guts to complete whatever it is they are doing.

Interestingly, our connotation of quitting is quite different from the original meaning of the word which accounts for our hesitancy to do it. Glennon Doyle (author of Untamed, and her wife, Abby Wambach—yes, the world-famous soccer player, that Abby Wambach) looked up the origin of the word on their “We Can Do Hard Things” podcast. Note the irony. They promote that “we can do hard things” and yet decide to look up the original meaning of quitting: quite the opposite of sticking with something hard. Turns out, the origin of the word “quit” comes from the root word “quieteth” which means to set ourselves free. Let that meaning soak in a bit—to “quit” something originally meant to set ourselves free. Wow. I did not see that one coming. Quitting used to be associated with something beautiful and liberating. What a lovely thought. Reflecting back on the times I have used this strategy and “knew when to quit,” it did, in fact, set me free, but that is not what it felt like at the time. And I cannot count the number of students I’ve had in my office who knew in their hearts, they need to quit something—a major, a club, a sport, an organization, a job, a boyfriend or girlfriend—and yet, trudge on in the toxicity because they were told to never quit.

With such a beautiful denotation, how did the concept of quitting become such a demeaning term? According to Glennon’s research—and she’s a writer and like me, loves words—the term was manipulated by wealthy business owners during the industrial revolution. They needed factory workers to be productive and work ceaselessly regardless of the low pay and horrendous work conditions. To keep people working and producing, the industrialists shamed individuals who did not conform to their neck-breaking, soul-sucking productivity demands. The industrialists suggested quitting reflected weak moral character. Real men (and women) don’t quit. And here we are today.

I agree that never giving up does have its place in life. Where would we be today without Winston Churchill’s “Never ever, ever give in” speech? We’d all be speaking German. I have nothing against persistence. I am a fan of Angela Duckworth’s grit research that demonstrates the power of stick-to-it-ive-ness. However, I have also seen and experienced times when quitting truly “set me free” and allowed other, better, opportunities to appear that would not have been possible had I insisted on being persistent. The tricky part—that I don’t have a good answer for—is knowing when to quit and when to persist.

Knowing when to quit involves having the courage to recognize and respond to a toxic situation or individual that is draining your soul and energy. Throughout the course of a typical semester where I would read an average of 600 resilience papers (120 students who each write 5 resilience papers), I would expect to see one use of this resilience strategy. Fortunately, most of us do not encounter toxic situations or people on a regular basis. Thank goodness. But when you are trapped in a toxic situation, persistence will only serve to dig your pit deeper; you need to quit and move on with your life.

As I stated earlier, I’ve only used this strategy occasionally—not to say I haven’t quit jobs, relationships, clubs because they weren’t what I wanted—but only twice that I can recall have I opted out of a toxic situation that, once relieved of the burden, my life blossomed in a different direction. In both cases, had I not quit, the new opportunity would not have been available to me. But make no mistake, quitting is hard because you have invested time and energy into the situation and, subsequently, experience loss when you quit.

The personal example I share with my students is an academic manuscript a friend and I worked on for ten—yes, count them, ten years—in an attempt to get it published in an academic journal. We started working on this research paper when we were doctoral students together. With each round of manuscript submissions and revisions, we collected new data, we analyzed the data, we added new citations, we wrote and rewrote the manuscript. We submitted to four academic journals and received more than double that in “revise and resubmit” responses. In some cases, we revised and resubmitted and received another “revise and resubmit” review. This went on for ten years and we both became obsessed with seeing this research in print. I would fantasize how I would proclaim to my colleagues that my work had been published and we would celebrate the accomplishment together. I imagined where my husband would take me for dinner and how I would explain to my daughters, in simple terms, the magnitude of this academic accomplishment. Only it was not to be. After investing ten years of our time, scouring thousands of data entries, and rewriting the paper at least twenty times, my friend and I begin to think of this paper as the albatross around our necks. We believed in our research and devoted untold amounts of cognitive and emotional energy to seeing it in print. Yet with ten years of work behind us, we had nothing to show for our trouble. At the end of ten years, we both separately came to the same conclusion. As painful as it was, we realized that this research was sucking us dry, and preventing us from pursuing other, more publishable avenues of research. We knew it was time to quit.

In this case, quitting was hard. We had both individually and collectively invested so much time and energy into seeing this research published. It was hard to watch ten years of work go down the drain with nothing, absolutely nothing, to show for our efforts. Yet, we both knew we could not continue to work on this research. It was time to quit.

Here’s the funny thing about quitting. As painful as it was to admit defeat and the loss of ten years’ worth of work, quitting work on that research project was the best thing that happened to both of us. Once free from underneath the pressure to publish that research, we both turned to different research directions. She reinvigorated her work on customer satisfaction, and I returned to my work on women in business-to-business sales. And we both were far more successful in those respective areas than we were while engaged in our original research project. Had I not let go and quit researching consumer affect (the topic of the paper), I never would have had the time, energy, or opportunity to work on women in sales, which has formed the basis of my academic and professional career. And my friend would say the same. But we had to quit, before we could see the better opportunity.

While I warn students to use this resilience strategy sparingly, and they comply, there are two notable student examples that remain etched in my memory. In the first, a women student was in a toxic relationship with a young man. He was demeaning to her and disrespectful. She categorized the relationship as toxic. Yet they had been together for a significant amount of time, she was invested in the relationship, and she was hesitant to end it because she held out hope that he would change and they could live happily ever after. Nonetheless, even though scared, she used the “know when to quit” strategy and ended the relationship. At the end of the semester, she wrote to tell me it was the best thing she ever did. She focused on her school work and healing the wounds of the toxic relationship. Last I heard, she was pursuing her dream career in New York City.

The second student example that sticks in my memory is of a woman who worked part-time in a restaurant as a server. Even though the management treated her poorly, berated her for things that weren’t her fault, and scheduled her to work on days she requested off, they dangled the promise of a promotion. As bad as things were, she continued to hold out for that promotion and pay raise. Finally, after being chastised yet again for something beyond her control, she determined it was a toxic situation that was draining her emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Even though she needed the money from the part-time job, she knew it was time to quit. And she did. To her surprise and joy, she applied for three server jobs in restaurants the following day, received two offers, and is now making more money and working for a supervisor who respects her and treats her well. But she would never have found the second job if she hadn’t quit the other one first.

How do you know when it’s time to quit? I wish I had an easy answer. Have I quit in situations I probably should have persevered? Sure. Have I stayed too long in situations where I should have quit? Absolutely. The hardest thing about this strategy is knowing when to use it. The other thing that makes it hard to know when to quit is that, in all of the cases I cite, hope has kept us all in these toxic situations. We all kept plugging away in the toxic swamp because we all hoped things would change without us having to take scary action steps. In my case, my friend and I continued to hope that some editor would finally recognize the brilliance of our manuscript and accept it for publication. In the case of my students, they held out hope that the boyfriend or the boss would change. In all cases, we eventually recognized it was time to quit.

That which you can tolerate, you will not change.

While you won’t use this strategy often, remember that sometimes it makes sense to acknowledge defeat and move on. By admitting that, you can change direction and be successful on a different path.