Giving Up Too Soon

So you feel beaten up and bruised and you're ready to quit. You have no support system or the one you have is pathetically inadequate for the goals you've set. You're so tired that the couch is looking more and more inviting everyday. You have bills piling up and you probably ought to get a real job anyway. The failure rate is statistically high and nobody is going to fault you if you quit. Who really cares if you give up and quit now? You do.

Let's look at each piece one at a time. You're beaten up and exhausted. Congratulations! That means you've been working harder then you've probably ever worked in your life. You wouldn't be able to accomplish anything of real importance if you weren't willing to bust your rump plowing through everything on your to-do list. You may need some lessons in balance and patience, but not in how to apply good old fashioned elbow grease. If you can schedule a short break to replenish your strength, then do so, but don't give up and quit all together. If there's no way you can stop now because you have too many important deadlines then bust through the deadlines. Can you speed it up and finish things early so that you could squeeze in a break? After a full night sleep, do you think that you'd still want to quit or would you be ready to dive back in? The fact that you're working so hard isn't the problem, it's that you aren't getting adequate rest and relaxation. Find a way to create balance.

You have nobody that will pitch in to help you or else the help you have isn't all that helpful. Kind of reminds me of when my two year old tries to help with the laundry. He picks the dirty laundry up off of the floor and stuffs it into the dryer along with the stuff that just finished drying. Well meaning, but not as helpful as he thinks he is. I wish I could give you magic solutions as to how to find helpful people when you're working on your goals and dreams but the truth is, most people are too busy with their own lives to be able to offer much assistance anyway. Unless you can afford to hire people to help you or you promise to help them on something they're needing help with, you probably aren't going to find a whole lot of help. Also there's the learning curve and how much time it takes to teach someone how to do what it is you need help with. It's a rare and beautiful thing when the perfect person comes along with nothing better to do then to roll up their sleeves and help. It's a tough reality, but basically, it's your goal, your dream, and your job to make it happen.

If the project you are working on means anything to you, then you won't really enjoy the couch potato solution as much as you might think. Funny thing about the really big powerful dreams, they haunt us. Every time you turn around there it is following you around reminding you that you haven't finished it yet. It will keep showing up in everything you do and especially in the things that you don't do. If it really matters, if it's your calling, if it's your life's work, then it isn't going to let you become a couch potato. Laying around not doing your dream will be more exhausting and depressing then when you were working your buns off trying to make it come true. Take a quick break if you need to, but don't get too comfy sitting there and don't even think that you aren't going to get back up again. The longer you sit there, the further behind schedule you'll be and the more you'll have to do to catch up with where you were when you quit. You know how it is when you take a week off for vacation. You have to work two or three weeks to catch up with everything that fell behind. You have got to take your mental health breaks, but don't make it a permanent vacation.

What if you have financial problems or family obligations that are seriously nagging at you? That's such a difficult position to be in. Only you can determine what's in your long term best interest. Again, a support system would be nice, but if they aren't there to help, then you have to create balance. If you give up on your dreams to take care of and support everyone else, you may feel like you're doing the right thing in the moment, but was your life better off for it? If you disregard everything in order to stay focused on your dream, will it cost you the companionship of your loved ones down the road? Who will be there to celebrate with you when you finally do succeed? Not too easy to find a wealthy philanthropist to support your efforts to live out your dreams without earning a living. You have to make those really tough choices. Somehow you have to create balance between your dreams, your ability to keep a roof over your head, and your ability to keep loved ones near and dear.

It's easy to quit where so many others have already gone and failed before you. Survival of the fittest dictates that not everyone is ideally designed to accomplish all goals. Not everyone is supposed to be an entrepreneur. Not everyone is meant to be a musician. Not everyone is meant to be president. The truth is, if you've picked a goal that is suited to your own natural talents and gifts and if it's infused with your own passion and fire, then chances are that you are one of the lucky few who is meant to live that dream. Just because everyone else failed doesn't mean that you are meant to fail too. Statistics don't mean anything unless you decide to become one.

You are either going to quit or you're going to find inspiration and keep going. You can quit if you want, but you already know if quitting will feel worse then trudging through a little while longer. Somewhere you know deep down if you're meant to succeed or not. What if you were meant to succeed and role model tenacity to those around you? What if that's somehow the divine cosmic plan all along? God loves an underdog! Don't quit just yet.

Copyright 2004, Skye Thomas, Tomorrow's Edge