A Startling Fact About Persistence!
Success = persistence. Still…
There’s a time when quitting will make you more successful.
I’m going to show you a simple formula I learned from Chris Guillebeau in his book Born for This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to.
You’re going to learn when to keep going and when to “tactically quit.”
Let me share a quick story about success and quitting… I used to work for a Fortune 500 real estate company making six-figures. For the first time, I wasn’t working at a job that underpaid me.
I wanted to make as much money as possible because I wanted to retire young and rich (at least that was what I thought I wanted).
The challenge was that the company expected us to work 80 hours a week and two mandatory Saturdays a month. We got to work just after sunrise and left after sunset. The company also had an auto-dialer system where they expected us to call and sell 500–700 people a day.
I felt stressed, sick, and overwhelmed every day. I also felt exhausted at the end of the night, almost fell asleep at the wheel commuting home, and got into bed with just enough time to sleep, wake up, and repeat.
My issue was that I didn’t want to quit and leave all that money, but my body and mind were screaming at me. I didn’t know what to do because my blueprint said that quitting = failure.
But something miraculous happened that changed the course of my life…
I stopped thinking and took Action. I decided that I didn’t like what I was doing, and I decided that money wasn’t worth the price of my time. So, it allowed me to walk up to our vice president, quit on the spot, and walk out those doors a free man.
I didn’t understand the nuances behind why I made those decisions that day, but with reflection, it makes perfect sense.
I will show you two questions you need to ask yourself if you’re struggling with quitting or gritting.
1. Is what you’re doing working? If you’re continuing to do something that costs you money and time, what you’re doing is not working. I’ve stayed in jobs, businesses, and investments that didn’t work because of the sunk costs.
2. Are you enjoying what you’re doing? When I worked in real estate, I didn’t enjoy what I was doing. Although it was working for me and paying me well, it didn’t feed my soul.
If you’re doing something that isn’t working and isn’t enjoyable, it’s time to quit. However, if you’re doing something that isn’t working, but you enjoy doing it, you should keep going but try to change something you’re doing within the activity.
Using these simple two questions, I’ve turned quitting into an asset instead of a liability. There’s tremendous power in saving time by quickly recognizing that you need to exercise your right to stop.
Now that you know how to use quitting to your advantage get our FREE Lead Your Life Master Guide. Discover the five hidden insights to use leadership to get what you want from your life.
Lead Your Life will show you (in less than 5 minutes) how to free your time, your money and make the next 12 months the most extraordinary 12 months of your life.
Wes Lee
