October 21th, 2011 by Kevin Ngo
“What do you mean when it’s time to give up? I will NEVER give up!” Slow down there Rocky. Although I am a big believer and practitioner of the whole never give up motto, there will come a time in your life when it would be better to just give up. Ignorance is the person who keeps going and going and does not know when to stop even when what he is doing is completely wrong for him.
Are you considered a quitter when you give up? That depends on what you are giving up on. Now I’m not talking about quitting a bad habit, I’m actually talking about quitting your pursuit of a goal. I’m sure you have been told that in order to become successful, you must persevere, fight, stand up whenever you fall, and march forward until the end. I say those things to people all the time, so why am I telling you now that sometimes it is actually better to quit? The reason is because in certain cases, you could only go forward if you go back.
Sometimes you will be putting a lot of time and effort in achieving a goal to find out one day that your strategy is totally wrong. You could be achieving the same results in half the time had you been focusing on doing the more important things.
Let’s say your goal was to lose weight. You then set a goal to do 1000 sit up a day. After about 1 month of doing this, you realize that you have been disciplined enough to hit your goal of 1000 sit ups a day, however, you aren’t getting any closer to your main goal of losing weight. This is called focusing on a secondary goal, which sometimes is the wrong strategy.
We sometimes get so focused on a secondary goal that we lose focus on the primary goal. I see this with sales people all the time. Their main goal is to make money but they often find their focus on hitting some new position within the sales department and when that doesn’t happen, they feel like a big failure. The goal never was to hit some position; the goal was to make money whether with this company or another company.
Would it make sense, in this case, for a sales person to quit the job if his goal of making a certain amount of money just wasn’t happening? His managers would probably call him a quitter, but his goal is to make money. If he can obtain that goal through a different source, then quitting would actually be the smart thing to do.
So when is it time to give up? When what you are doing no longer makes sense in respects to achieving your main goal. Sometimes it will make more sense to give up what you are doing and start on a different path towards the same goal.
Some people will spend their entire lives on a path to a certain goal only to find out in the end that the path they took was the wrong one. There is no shame in giving up on a path you are taking to your goal as long as you always aim to reach your goal. There’s no point in staying on a path that will lead you to nowhere.
Until next time…
Love Life. Do Good. Live Well.
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Hello Kevin,
Alok here.
I think, though most of the people won't agree that giving up can be good idea in any condition; I like the way you put it here:
“Sometimes it will make more sense to give up what you are doing and start on a different path towards the same goal.”
This is very good. Since when some methods are not working they must be replaced with the other ones that will work.
In this way, we're not actually giving up. We're just changing our method but still perserving.
Thanks
Keep posting the great content.
Thanks, will do!
That's a good point, but here's my case: Sometimes you have to re-evaluate your goal….I had a goal I work toward for many years, doing what I did not enjoy. I actually finally obtained the goal. To discover it didn't bring me happiness. Now my goal is different..and so is my method.
That's true Sylvia. To take it even a step further, figure out the experience or emotion you want from your goal. If the initial reason for going for a certain goal is to feel happiness and you find out as you get closer to obtaining your goal that it's not going to give you that feeling, no shame in changing your approach. I'm sure your final outcome of your revised goal is still to bring you happiness.
Thanks for your input.
Hi Kevin,
Very inspiring post. I agree with you that you must never forget what your true goal was.
I believe that you can always tell if you have the right goal. That is when you are happy and feel joy when you are on the path towards that goal!
Kevin,
My people struggle with giving up. Instead of giving up, I like to refer to it as changing strategies. There is a big difference.
You don't have to give up on your dream, but you may need to re-evaluate how you go about it.
Yup
I've found this the most useful article on the site. I genuinly beleive you can get 'over-motivated' to the extent for which you lose track of why you're doing something in the first place and just do it because you want to succeed. So Instead of blindly chasing goals which I think are what I want I've taken the time to REALLY consider what I want. In doing this I've improved my quality of life so much and my productivity has increased dramatically.
Figuring out what you really want is definitely important. If you don't know what you want, it's easy to find yourself working hard to achieve someone else's goals/plans or even become one of their pawns. Thanks for the input.
@kevin
“My people struggle with giving up. Instead of giving up, I like to refer to it as changing strategies. There is a big difference.”
yup..I agree.. that's what i mean.
thanks for this post. I also had my experience in the past before when I had to make a decision for myself. Others thought that I didn't fight for it until the end, but in my case, weighing everything, I realized that there is no use of pursuing it. I would only give myself a false hope. So, with all the courage, I still persevere but in a new path, which allowed me to start again. And with God's help, I made it. Sigh. I am glad to know that my thinkings really do exist. I was afraid before I was only the one seeing it. Thanksss
I have just now quitted an MLM, as I was also thinking that I have been distracted from my main goal. But I was so confused that whether I am wrong or right at this time. But this article has given me the confidence that i have taken the good decision. Thanks for the article!!!!
Sure thing.
Thanks for this article, Kevin. Sometimes, persons fear failure but fear being called a quitter even more. They review their situation and realize that they need to stop but then family and friends keep pushing them to keep at it believing that eventually the wrong turns into right. Or in some situations, like you said
“…If you don’t know what you want, it’s easy to find yourself working hard to achieve someone else’s goals/plans or even become on of their pawns…. ”.
Sometimes, we need to just stop and reflect on where we are now. We might need to speak to an expert for advice, get more support or gather more resources and then choose a different path. Thanks for reminding us to stop focusing on the secondary goal. There are many paths to choose from as long as we remain focused on our primary goal. I like that Kim called it “changing strategies”. That is why it is so important to review our goals regularly.
Changing strategies when the one you’re using isn’t working out as well as you thought sounds like a logical thing to do but sometimes, people can get so attached a path that even if they can see it’s not their main purpose/goal, they have a hard time changing because they’ve put so much time and energy into it. I’ve been there.
Thanks for the article
Can I use this article on the YouTube channel?
Sure.