Once upon a time, I was a CPA with a Big Four accounting firm. I quit that.
Most people were aghast at my decision to throw away a license that I had worked so hard for and a career that had so much prestige and earning potential. To me, it felt like unshackling myself from a ball and chain. I had already looked into my future — the life that people 10 years ahead of me were living — and I knew it wasn’t what I wanted for my life. Byeeeee!
From that point forward, I felt like I became a Varsity-level quitter. I quit homeschooling when it no longer made sense for me or my kids. I quit martial arts once my shoulder joint cried uncle. I quit my corporate writing job when I realized their way of working didn’t fit the way my creative brain functioned. I quit pretending I was heterosexual when I was 38.
Each time I stepped away, I disappointed and surprised people. After all, we’ve been slathered in stories since our wee years telling us that “winners never quit and quitters never win.”
While we may equate not quitting with grit, the admirable life quality that Angela Duckworth extolled the benefits of in her book by the same name, I see people lean in on her message that “perseverance is powerful.” Yet somehow they gloss over the fact that she also found that successful people often quit the wrong goals to focus on the right ones. Duckworth sees strategic quitting as part of long-term perseverance.“Thanks Ang, can you please say that a little louder for the people in the back?”
It’s taken me years and many therapy dollars to realize that I could stop feeling bad that “Carry On My Wayward Son:” was my life’s anthem. Quitting wasn’t always a bad thing. In fact, knowing when to quit and being willing to do so can often be the best thing for us. Take, for example, people who choose to climb Mount Everest. (Why? Were the pickleball courts full?)
In the 1996 movie, “Everest,” which came out shortly before I quit my job at Blockbuster, a group of climbers succumbed to what is known as “Summit Fever.” They knew a storm was coming. They knew their odds of making it weren’t good. They went against all signs pointing them to quit and decided to go for it. Heartbreakingly, none of them survived.
This is related to a phenomenon known as goal-induced blindness, where individuals become so focused on a specific goal that they lose sight of the harm it causes them in the process.
Goal-induced blindness doesn’t just happen in extreme events either. I’ve seen goal-induced blindness in bad relationships when one partner is laser-focused on getting their dream wedding, even if it’s not with their dream spouse. Goal-induced blindness is easy to spot in the work world, where people stay in miserable roles hoping that if they just make it to the next level, or they just get their Christmas bonus, life will somehow feel more livable.
Goal-induced blindness could have easily pushed Simone Biles to compete in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, but it didn’t. In what seemed even more superhuman than the way she catapults through the air, she quit, prioritizing her mental health over whatever America’s couch-sitting experts threw her way.
For all the flack she took, Simone stayed the course, prioritized herself and returned to the 2024 Paris Olympics to prove she truly is the G.O.A.T.
Even when we feel like we want to put ourselves first, we can get sucked into the sunk cost fallacy of quitting. (See! I didn’t completely quit the little accountant that lives inside of me.) The sunk cost fallacy is a bias where we focus on everything we’ve invested in a situation — the money, the degree or license, the years in the relationship, or the effort to learn crocheting — and lose sight of the fact that it is no longer serving us.
In fact, in some situations we are sticking with goals that are simply unattainable. That job may never give us the fulfillment we seek. That relationship may never become the healthy one we dream of. And nobody wants your crocheted attempt at a penguin that looks like a lumpy purple potato.
In a 2003 study from “Psychological Science,” researchers found that people who let go of unattainable goals had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, fewer depressive symptoms and better physical health. It turns out that being a quitter isn’t simply a good way to piss off your in-laws — it may improve your biological well-being. Sometimes the best version of ourselves is on the opposite side of the quit.
I’ve quit books that weren’t interesting, reality TV shows that left me in a terrible mood, and talking to women who wanted to try me out as a testing ground to see if maybe they were a little bit gay. I’ve become more consciously aware of what I am opting into and making sure that it feels aligned, fulfilling, joy-filled, or healthy whenever possible. And while I will surely opt in to many poor choices as well, experience has gifted me the evidence that I can walk away and will be better for it.
Quitting is not the opposite of resilience — it’s often the beginning of it.
Jillian Abby is a professional ghostwriter and author of Hay House’s “Perfectly Queer.”
