Have you ever heard the phrase, “Quitters never prosper”? I grew up with it on repeat from adults in my circle. Probably because I was a quitter. If something got too hard or too frustrating, I quit. Not only did I quit, I probably threw something or slammed something or stomped away dramatically. I was a loud and impatient quitter. I was lectured, a lot, and the message I took in was that I was a failure for quitting.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s extremely important for kids to develop grit and stick-to-it-iveness, I also think it’s important not to shame them during the learning process. Somehow, despite the troubling techniques I was subjected to, I developed some gritty tendencies and rarely quit things anymore. Along with developing the skills needed to stick with frustrating or hard tasks, I also think there’s been a missed opportunity in our culture to teach when and how to know it’s time to quit.
Quitting is now something I only do after a long period of analysis and reflection. I probably made a pros and cons list along the way. I probably wrote down all the reasons why I thought the activity was a good idea to start in the first place. I’ve probably laid awake at night asking myself whether those reasons are still valid and whether the difficulties associated with continuing the activity are worth it or even valid or attainable anymore. Somewhere in the process I definitely procrastinate and maybe do a little quiet quitting for a while. Quitting is hard.
And if you, like me, still experience shame regarding quitting let’s do some mindset work. Let’s see if we can get to the place where quitting and failing are related. I know you’re thinking, that’s even worse, but hang with me for a second.
I see failure as a steppingstone. If you’re afraid of failure and let it stop you from trying something, how are you ever going to get to the thing? You have to be bad at something before you can be good at it. That’s just the way life works. There is no shame in failing, only in not trying. Similarly, there should be no shame in quitting, only in not trying.
Just as we’re not for everyone, not everything is for us. We each have a limited amount of time and energy and it’s so important for us to protect it. When we continue to stretch our time and energy beyond what is reasonable for us, we lose sight of what we love and become ineffective at what we would rather be doing. We also set ourselves up for burnout which we, as bodyworkers, seem to be especially susceptible.
Most of the time when I see advice on protecting time and energy it starts with learning to say no. A lot of us have trouble saying no. It’s a valuable skill to learn, but it takes a while and even after you’ve put your techniques together and started practicing, you can still find yourself overloaded.
Women especially are so weighed down with expectations from family, friends and society in general it can seem impossible to say no sometimes. Being in a helping profession also seems to open the door for people to ask and for us to take on too much because…see helping profession.
So what do we do when we find ourselves completely overloaded with tasks and expectations? It doesn’t matter if we took them on willingly and then found out they’re not for us or if someone volunteered us, it’s time to start a quit plan.
What’s a Quit Plan?
A quit plan is just your plan of action on how and when to quit something. You know how I said above I make pro/con lists and analyze whether certain activities are meeting my needs anymore, it’s that. You just have to customize it for your particular situation. And since I was never taught how to quit something, I applied some common sense, critical thinking techniques and came up with the following method.
Step 1: Write down all the tasks
How do you know what all the tasks are? It’s impossible to write down every, single thing that you have to do each day. I’m talking about tasks that aren’t critical. Things you might consider voluntary or other things you could delegate. I once heard someone talking about overhauling their life and her litmus test was, “If it doesn’t get me paid or doesn’t get me laid, I let it go.” I’ve remembered that all these years because it’s simple and gets right to the point of why you might need to quit something.
Also, keep in mind, this list might only need one item on it. Maybe there’s one particular unpaid task that has become problematic for whatever reason. Maybe it’s taking up time you don’t have to give, maybe you don’t have the skills to do the job adequately anymore, maybe the people you’re working with have become toxic, maybe your values have changed, or you’re just not feeling it anymore; any of these are great reasons to quit. Uncompensated labor should enrich us, not suck our souls from our bodies.
Step 2: Evaluate each item
Take a hard look at your list. Can you outsource or permanently delegate (including the mental labor) any of these tasks? If so, do it!
Is the task critical in some way? Is there some reason you’re the only human on earth who can do it? If not, outsource or delegate!
What if your list is much longer than you anticipated? Sometimes this happens when other folks volunteer you for things you didn’t agree to. These are things you can lob right back to where they came from.
“Unfortunately, I do not have the time to complete these tasks. Please find another volunteer.”
Don’t argue with them about it, just send any documentation back to the person who assigned you the task. Do this enough times and people will stop randomly assigning you work you’re not getting paid for (or laid for).
Step 3: Evaluate whether the stress is worth the payout
For the remaining tasks, start thinking about why they’re on your list. Sometimes we voluntarily take on projects. Maybe an organization works toward goals that fit within our value system. Or you want to see something offered in your community that needs volunteer hearts to get the project up and running. Hopefully by this point you’ve already offloaded those randomly assigned tasks by other folks.
Maybe it doesn’t matter why they’re on your list, maybe you just need to decide whether it is worth the amount of stress you experience by continuing with the task.
Step 4: Make a decision
By now you should have enough information to make an informed decision. Maybe the answer became clear as you evaluated what and why. Regardless it’s time to decide. Figure out what to keep and what to let go.
Step 5: Clean up
For those tasks you decide to release, notify the appropriate people and provide the appropriate documentation and information to whomever needs to receive it. Utilize email, text messages, voicemail, social media…whatever works best for you. There’s no need to agonize over making a phone call when an email will do.
Clean up the hard drive on your computer, clean up bookshelves and side tables. Archive whatever you can and get it out of your line of sight or, even better, get rid of it completely. It’s harder to get sucked back into something you’re releasing when the information is not readily available. Get used to referring people to the new keeper of the information related to the task you released.
Is it going to be messy? Maybe. Does it hurt? Sometimes there’s some grieving that needs to happen. Sometimes you’ll be navigating hurt feelings or anger in other people. While that can be a hard one to deal with, reasonable people are going to understand when you explain your why. If they’re not reasonable, then they’re not for you and you’re doing the right thing moving on.
Regardless of how other people react, your mindset might need some attention. Maybe you need to evaluate the techniques you use to decline taking on more tasks. Maybe you need an actual vacation or to sign up for that class you’ve been putting off forever because you didn’t have time. The key here is to only pick up things that enrich and restore you.
Step 6: Celebrate!
Now that you’ve offloaded a bunch of stuff you no longer enjoy doing and you’ve discovered way more free time than you expected, it’s time to do something fun! I’m not even going to attempt to tell you how to do that because we’re all different and find our fun in different ways.
I do know that sometimes we get stuck in grown up mindset and forget how to have fun. Having fun is a muscle, just like relaxing. Do you remember the first time you realized you had forgotten how to relax? Or how to have fun? We need relaxation and fun in our lives to maintain our mental health. I mean, why else are we quitting what doesn’t serve us, but for our mental health?
Maybe start by getting a massage, relaxing, and then spending some time thinking about what you used to do for fun. Or maybe set aside five minutes every day to find some solitude and focus on things to do for fun. You could journal about it, if that’s your thing. Don’t force it though. Don’t beat yourself up if it takes a while to come to you. The point is to get your brain working in the background on the ‘fun problem’ and pretty soon, magically, your brain will tell you what you want to do for fun.
But I Feel Guilty
Yeah, that’s our social conditioning. Remember the quitters never prosper thing? That was designed to keep us doing the things others want us to do and from being the captains of our own ships.
Spend a few minutes daydreaming about what you’re going to do with all that extra time and energy. I’m guessing afterward you won’t feel nearly as guilty for quitting that thing that wasn’t serving you anymore. We deserve to be in control of our time and energy and should always have the choice of when and how we extend ourselves.
I hope this exploration of how and why to utilize quitting was helpful. Have you quit anything lately? If so I’d love to hear how you’re enjoying and using the time you recovered.
And can I add how difficult it is to find images that are tagged with the word “quit”! The one above with the white flag was the only clear visual of the word quit I could find and the vast majority either involved a cigarette or motivational phrases that involved not quitting. Checking other stock image sites and search engines turned up a clear correlation between the word quit and cigarette smoking.
“Resign” produced the following…
Why is it ok to resign, but not to quit? It’s the same thing. Somehow our culture has demonized refusing to continue being used, but celebrates when someone leaves one job to step into a different role. I think this semantic split might also strongly correlate with gender and unpaid labor.
Thank you for reading!
I’d love to hear from you and what you think about Things I Should Have Learned in Massage School. And if you find what I’m sharing helpful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or donating enough to cover a cup of coffee. For now we’ll keep TISHLIMS free, but I would appreciate it if you’d share my work with your friends and neighbors so we can make the world a better place to give and receive massage!
About the Author: Sharon L Bryant has been a massage therapist since 2008 and a massage therapy educator since 2014. You can read more about the TISHLIMS project, its history, and what brought Sharon to Substack.
I'm starting to connect the dots of where this 'not quitting' shite originates from. XD
I can hear Mam-maw now screeching from the halls of memory. It's fascinating how our step process, analysis, and critical thinking skills are similar. I think you have the confidence and decisiveness skills though. That, or it's because you were the original feral beast. Love you big sister!
I quit and I resigned from my part time job and after four years now have my freedom back. It took a while to get there but once I’d made my mind up that was it. A few wobbles over the last few weeks but now I looking forwards instead of back. We have to know when to quit don’t we, and not see it as failure only that life is moving on and we can choose to go with it. Thanks for the tips.