Quitting Versus Stopping: Is There a Difference?
I think we’re all familiar with the saying, “Winners never quit and quitters never win”.
No one wants to be labeled as a quitter…because in our culture quitters are synonymous with failures…and no one wants to be a failure. But there’s no denying the fact that failing is part of life—everyone has failed.
We’ve all heard about “learning from our mistakes.” The saying goes that “hindsight is 20/20,” and we’ve all looked back on mistakes we’ve made and been able to see clearly where things went wrong and where we went wrong. We often clearly see things AFTER the fact that we couldn’t see DURING the fact.
Quitting (Jumping Ship)
Let’s review the concept of quitting. Quitting is giving up before the goal is reached. It’s abandoning the ship during the storm, or before we make it to the destination.
People quit on pursuing their education, running a business, they bail out on marriages, relationships with family and friends—they bail out on their commitments. They give up and quit…right?
What looks like we are quitting could just be a very poor ending to a situation that is headed for disaster anyway. We find ourselves in these difficult circumstances, and we don’t know how to move them forward or exit efficiently–so we bail.
Stopping (Hitting the Brakes)
When you find yourself in the kind of situation I just described, don’t quit…just stop! We often find our thoughts saying “aren’t quitting and stopping the same thing?”
No they aren’t!!
Quitting is an act of desperation, but stopping can be an act of preservation, and act that can even lead to salvation—salvaging what’s valuable in that circumstance.
Stopping is a choice to end a specific activity, and admitting, “this is not working, what I’m doing isn’t helpful…I need to look for another way to go about reaching my goal.” Stopping puts an end to an existing destructive pattern (one that isn’t working), and gives you an opportunity to evaluate other ways to continue moving forward – but in a different direction.
Stopping brings perspective, responsibility, restores balance, protects and preserves goals and resources (not to mention sanity), and it waters the seeds of hope.
Stopping is a way to acknowledge failure—but to stop failure’s unconstructive course.
Stopping is a way to fail well—to fail forward.
Jeff Arnold
Vice President of Business Development
Your Employment Solutions
