Quit

This post is all about why I quit (many) things in my life, and you probably should quit (at least some) things too. I have recently finished reading “Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away” written by Annie Duke, a professional poker player. The book makes a logical and extensive argument for quitting, which I will not dive into in much detail. Instead, I will simply share my experiences of quitting things and how bad at proper quitting I still am – and I suspect, we actually (almost) all are.

The first thing I can remember quitting something was training karate. I started it because it seemed like a cool idea at the time – possibly I could had also been motivated by the wish to lose weight. You never know in my case! Either way, I think I survived perhaps 3 training sessions and then I quit. I did not like the discipline. I was bored by the repeated movements. I hated the so called “warm up” exercises. I was perhaps twelve years old and discipline and hard work were not qualities I cared much for. Fair enough.

As kids, I think most of us are allowed to try things out, experiment and fail, and of course, to quit. I tried playing piano (self-learning was not a big success), and I tried singing (and I was told by a music teacher to stop!). I tried drawing and I failed the drawing exam to get into the school of architecture. At some point along the journey, I realized that it was important to succeed and not to fail. Therefore, like many people, I started associating quitting with failure. I almost completely stopped experimenting and trying things out, as I was scared of having to quit again.

The most important thing I have ever quit was my course of studies. I started out studying civil engineering (subject close enough to architecture to be interesting, I thought). It turned out to be very boring and very math and physics heavy – the two subjects I never liked but was supposedly good at. I personally think my teachers were delusional! You might be assuming, that once I had realized that I did not like my studies, I just made decision to quit. You would be very wrong.

As in many examples cited in “Quit”, I had to first face a complete emotional meltdown with nightly bouts of crying that eventually put me on the psychotherapist couch and ended with diagnosis of depression. I had to work through my feelings and thoughts to discover that I simply must quit. Trust me, quitting was such a relief! I was young so I bounced back to life immediately, started studying business, took English exams and left the country to study abroad two years later.

There were still many things I kept pursuing though, despite there being no evidence that they were worthwhile or even beneficial at all. I somehow thought I had a good grasp on when to quit, yet I only stopped dieting, for example, when I could no longer stand constant bingeing and the physical and emotional distress it was causing. I stopped binge watching Netflix and staying alienated in my empty apartment, only when I realized none of these coping methods really helped me get the comfort I really needed.

Twenty years (or so) after quitting the studies a similar story repeated itself. This time I was facing a job-burnout situation. Decision was the same: to quit or to stay. It was just as difficult to quit as before – despite all the practice I had. I quit studies, jobs, smoking, dieting, bingeing, distracting myself with endless Netflix series. The awareness of the burnout fully arrived only after a moment of total emotional meltdown one Friday evening, preceded by a long workshop I did not want to facilitate. Then I knew: yes, I must stop. I must quit, again.

That latest quitting experience has been the final push towards integrating the mindfulness and compassion into my life. I no longer felt I fully bounced-back from the burnout so easily as in my twenties. Sometimes my brain still seems to be affected – long-time stress, anxiety and depression can have very serious consequences on our nervous systems. It is very easily for me to get anxious in situations where I would have not been bothered before. Taking that extra care and being kind to myself has become a necessity. It also means that I had to learn to quit more and earlier. I recently quit the job I was not so satisfied with as well as some extracurricular activities I had no time nor energy for.

Many people start in the exact same situation – they hit a rock bottom and look for a way to dig themselves out of it. Mindfulness certainly provides much needed rest and relaxation, and sometimes it is sufficient. No further insight and enlightenment needed. If you are currently in this spot and you need a simple way to decompress, I invite you to try it out. You can start easily by following a guided meditation, such as the one on my channel, linked below, or you can find a plethora of other relaxation videos as well.

However, you might also want to consider more than just relaxing. When we are mindful, we become aware of what is happening in the present moment. By noticing our body sensations, emotions, and thoughts in a kind and non-judgemental way, we can gain an incredible insight into ourselves. We can detect unhelpful patterns in our thoughts and behaviours, and most importantly, we can choose to think and act differently.

The latter is only possible if we can pause. However, we cannot pause or stop if we don’t quit something! This pause might be as simple as mindfully having a coffee break at work, instead of running to another meeting. Sometimes it may be quitting “the doing” by taking a seat on the meditation cushion for ten minutes. It may require taking a longer vacation or going on a silent meditation retreat. Once we learn to pause more often, we can notice the patterns earlier, reflect if and what to change, and then respond accordingly. We can, among others, quit things sooner without experiencing as much damage.

Mindfulness meditation is to be experienced, and if you wish to try it out at no cost, now is the time 😊 Starting at 10:00 CET on Saturday,  April 6^th, I will be running a 4-weeks-long mindfulness meditation course. This introductory course is suitable for everyone, and it is free as long as you are willing to provide feedback. You can check out details or sign up on the course page here.