To Quit or Not to Quit?

The question of 'to quit or not to quit,' I suppose determines on what it is I want to quit. Growing up, I always tried to persevere. It was rather drilled in to my head by my Mom. Never have I considered myself a quitter. 

Vince Lombardi

Give it a chance! That was my motto and still is. Without going into details, an example would be when a bump in the road came into my life toward the end of my freshman year in college, I did not quit. Instead, I promised my Mom that I would continue on with my education. I not only did this but managed to graduate a semester early. 

Somehow, I have always considered quitters as being weak and this was never something that I wished to be called. Determination and stubbornness won out for me. 

Then one day, I read an article about how quitting can be a very positive thing. How? Let me go into some real-world examples. The founder of Whole Foods dropped out of college several times over a six year period. When it dawned on him that all along what he wanted more than anything was to open his very own grocery store. And so he did...

Billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg quit Harvard to build his goal of Facebook. 

'The Rock,' aka Dwayne Johnson was originally a football player with the Canadian Football League. He quit to join the World Wrestling Federation. His success with wrestling led him into acting. He is one of the highest paid actors in the world. 

The difference with quitting in these examples and what I try to do for myself is ask this question: Is quitting better than just carrying on? Delving in deeper by doing some heavy duty thinking about what I am doing now...  is it helping me get to what I want to achieve.

Each individual must ask and answer this question honestly. "Quitting is not giving up. It is choosing to focus your attention on something more important." Osayi Osar-Emokpae put a whole new spin on quitting with this quote. 

Asking myself about why I am doing this and is this adding value to my life are important questions. 

Definitely not something to take lightly. To me, the biggest take away that I learned from researching quitting was that no one should feel bad about quitting if they did some soul searching first. All winners have quit many times and many of these times it was an important part of the journey in finding true happiness. 

Epilogue:  What made me research this subject was in writing my novel. I have had so many interruptions that I wondered if I should just put this goal aside. By asking myself why I started and would I accomplish what I wanted to if I kept going, I knew the answer! DO NOT QUIT! It will happen, step by step.