You’ve been following your new diet for a month or so, but you’re not seeing the results you expected. You’ve been following your “dream” project for six months with little success. Should you quit?
The answer is, “it depends.”
When the goal or objective is personal, not professional, then you might want to consider whether you’re still “all in.” If you can be honest with yourself and the answer is “no,” then it’s time to let it go (I feel like I’m channeling Elsa, right now.)
Is that an easy thing to do? Nope.
Why? Because chances are we’re mentally and physically invested. We’ve spent so much time on it. Other people expect us to do it. Oi! You can’t possibly quit, now!
Our hesitance or resistance sometimes comes down to one simple word — Fear. Before I give you my definition of fear, though, let’s talk about why “to persist or not” isn’t necessarily the question we should be asking.
What if what you need to do is adjust?
Maybe you “reshape” what you’re doing and keep going after “it.” Here’s a great question to ask yourself, “Is it still serving a purpose for you?” Or, how about this, “Is your energy better spent elsewhere?” What about this, “Do you need to table it for the moment?” Or even this, “Does your idea need to marinate a little longer?” (Some people might prefer “percolate.” Yeah, that works, too.)
The point is that figuring out whether you persist in order to achieve a goal isn’t a simple answer. It takes a bit of contemplation time. And that’s time worth spending when something matters to you.
Back to how I define fear — It really means “fabulous effort absolutely required.” And anything worth our time to persist doing is going to probably scare us just a little bit.
