Maybe You Should Quit
Written by Kyle Ligon - MovementLink Head Coach
Just because you made a goal doesn’t mean that it’s actually worth your time and effort! Is the goal you chose, how you’re choosing to tackle it, and the effort required to reach it, in line with the life you want to live. The only way to know, is to take the time to dig deep into what you want your life to look like, so you can have a perspective that allows you to reflect on potential goals you may want to pursue.
Most resolutions get abandoned within the first week or two of the New Year and, sadly, people blame their willpower and other personal qualities. But, maybe it’s not you, but instead your goal setting process.
It is definitely not worth using incredible amounts of willpower and putting in tons of effort towards arbitrary goals that are not actually meaningful for you. In this article I’m going to explore both,
why quitting may be the right choice and
how to quit less often.
Quitting usually comes down to challenging moments. Maybe we are tired, stressed, busy, or scared. In those moments, the upcoming effort required loses priority in our life, either to comfort or other aspects like relationships, career, family, etc. Sometimes there’s even an epiphany moment - “Why am I doing this?” If you haven’t deeply considered “Why” ahead of time, then it's easy to de-prioritize your goals or give in to the more comfortable route.
So, to both, feel better about quitting and to quit less often, it comes down to understanding the life you want to live. When you have this perspective, then the right purpose can be put behind the goals you choose to target, allowing the right priorities on the required efforts.
Let’s look at one of my favorite examples: A common goal that crops up in peoples’ minds is wanting to run a marathon (or half-marathon).
Training for a marathon takes a lot of time, puts a lot of stress on your connective tissues, and people who choose this goal typically approach it with a running-only program, to the detriment of what should be their Non-Negotiable Fitness Goals. This can be a recipe for trouble.
Unlike developing muscle and cardio which can happen in a matter of months, strengthening connective tissues takes years. Unless you have been playing sports or running consistently for years, taking on a running-only program puts most people at a high likelihood of an overuse injury, mainly because of this slow developing connective tissue issue.
I found it interesting that the same issue happens often to those who take steroids. They can immediately grow muscle and strength faster and therefore use heavier and heavier weights, but their weights and workouts, although keeping pace with their muscles, outgrow their connective tissues. Nagging injuries, usually related to overuse of connective tissues, tend to start cropping up a few months into the high volume training.
Anyway, this isn’t to say that Marathons are inherently a bad goal or this connective tissue issue cannot be overcome, but without the proper foundation and a holistic cross-training program that takes this into account, someone who chooses this goal is likely to be on a tough journey. And, for what purpose? Is the marathon actually meaningful to their life or did they just pick it without much deep thought?
Many peoples’ goal setting process for things like this goes something like, “I want to lose body fat. Cardio is the best way to lose fat (this is a myth by the way), running is cardio, so I’m going to choose a running goal because when I reach it, it will give me the body composition results I want. I’m going to train for a marathon.” It happens almost as quickly as reading that sentence took.
If the real goal is fat loss, there are so many strategies that are not only more effective, but will actually better fit the actual life people are trying to live - Check out The Summary of The MovementLink Method.
But, because most people don’t put much energy into coming up with their goals, don’t work with a coach on the best ways to approach the goal, or explore why reaching that goal would be meaningful for the life they want to live, they land on arbitrary goals with poor strategies that lead them down dark paths that don’t align with the life they actually want to live. When the journey gets challenging, they either put extreme energy and effort into things that don’t actually align with their life or they quit, typically blaming themselves instead of their goal setting process.
Abandoning a goal that does not fit the life you want to live is what you should do. But, when your goal is in line with the life you want to live, you should absolutely dig deep and follow-through when things get challenging. So, if you want to quit less goals and dramatically increase the motivation behind your goals, then you need to have a clear understanding of what you want your life to be like.
Once you’ve got the vision, the purpose, and understand your priorities, it’s time to follow-through, especially when you don’t want to. Here’s my trick. It’s a goofy way of thinking of myself as two different people, one who gets to make decisions and one who doesn’t…
In-The-Moment-Me can be anxious, nervous, scared, and tends towards easy wins and comfort. I can’t trust this hedonic version of me to delay gratification and consistently make decisions that best align with the life I want to live.
Therefore, In-The-Moment-Me is not allowed to make big decisions and instead has one job - to follow through on what Rested-Motivated-Me wants him to do. This leads to In-The-Moment-Me not being allowed to change the plans, not do something, or quit, because he doesn’t have the authority. These are decisions for Rested-Motivated-Me.
In-The-Moment-Me has a very important role and identity - He is someone who is willing to go all-in, use up every bit of energy and willpower to follow through on what Rested-Motivated-MeI wants myself to do, especially when it is challenging and there’s a risk of failure.
The power of this thinking is in the confidence that the worst case scenario isn't that bad. Let’s say In-The-Moment-Me was right. The efforts and the goal actually do not align with the life I want to live and I should abandon that particular journey. In-The-Moment-Me doesn’t have the authority to quit and needs to wait for Rested-Motivated-Me to review and make the decision about whether or not to change the plans.
So, in this worst-case, In-The-Moment-Me follows through on something that Rested-Motivated-Me is going to decide to quit or change. Big whoop! In-The-Moment-Me had to do something he didn’t want to do one extra time…that’s not a big deal. That one extra time may be annoying, but will build grit, willpower, and reinforce the identity that I can and am willing to do challenging things.
But, what’s the best case scenario? All of those times that In-The-Moment-Me was wrong (which is almost all of the time), I followed-through on what Rested-Motivated-Me wanted me to do. Over my lifetime, simply showing up and following through on what Rested-Motivated-Me wants me to do, is going to compound into an incredible life.
So, to wrap this up,
You should quit things that do not align with the life you want to live.
When you find yourself quitting, check to see if the problem started with your goal setting process.
With confidence that your goal is meaningful to your life and that even if you change your mind, the worst-case scenario isn’t that bad. Put all your effort into showing up and following through on the things you’ve decided you want yourself to do.
