362. When to Quit

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 362: When to Quit.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hey everybody welcome to the podcast, 362 today. I hope you’re having a good summer. I hope you’re having a summer. I’m saying that because it’s June 15^th today and we haven’t really had summer yet here in Spokane. We’ve had cold drizzly rain and a few nice days. I should not complain about the rainy days because we have had some nice days. But my kids are still in school for two more days and we’re just starting to get some warm weather. We haven’t been able to swim, or go to the lake, or do any of the things we normally like to.

We haven’t even been able to eat dinner outside, it hasn’t been warm enough yet. And so, I’m just complaining about it one more time. That’s what you come to my podcast for, to listen to me complain. Not really. Thanks for indulging me though.

But here’s one of the things I do love about summer, one of the things we are doing, whether the weather cooperates or not is I love providing a little bit of extra help in the summer around your business endeavors. Whether that be a formal what you would call a business, maybe it’s a business you’re trying to grow or that you’re just launching. Or maybe you wouldn’t even call it a business, maybe it’s more of a project or a side gig, or something. Whatever it is that you’re working on I provide every summer some extra help.

Last summer we did a bonus podcast series. This year I’m going to be doing it in Facebook. We created a Facebook group called Business Minded with Jody Moore. And it’s totally free. And even if you’re not a Facebook person, I promise it will be worth your time to come and find that page and join it because I’m going to be going live there. Every week I’m going to teach you business strategies and how to think about your project in a way that will serve you.

And I want to do it on Facebook Live because I want to be able to take questions and interact with you and really guide you a little bit more. So come on over to our Facebook group, join me there if you haven’t already. Make sure also that you’ve got your ticket to Impact 2.0 because that event just keeps on getting better. So many of you already have tickets and are coming. And I can’t wait to teach you and learn from you, and learn from all the other amazing speakers that we have coming.

If you haven’t checked out the page you seriously have to go look. Jodymoore.com/impact is where you can find all the speakers. But we have some phenomenal speakers coming and it keeps on getting better. There are still a few seats left. That event is happening at the end of July in Salt Lake City. So don’t miss that.

Okay, so today we’re going to talk about quitting. So, I get this question a lot. How do I know if I should quit? Should I quit or should I keep going and how do I know? So, I’m going to try to speak to this in a way that makes sense. I’ll just let you know, this is the second time I have recorded this podcast because the first time I did it I thought, that’s not exactly what I want to say and how I want to present it. So, bear with me, it’s going to be even better this time.

But there’s all kinds of sayings about quitting, winners never quit, and quitters never win and whatever else nonsense is out there about quitting. I want to disagree with that. I want to say that quitting is something that winners do all the time regularly, more often than people who aren’t winning. I think quitting is a necessary part of life, a necessary part of your routine, a necessary part of your rhythm. So, when to quit, my answer is all the time, every day you should be quitting, at least once, maybe multiple times during the day.

Every day when I go to eat lunch I quit for a minute. I quit thinking about my business, I quit thinking about my clients, I quit thinking about my team. I just quit, and I pause, and I eat some food, if it’s nice enough I enjoy some fresh air and then I start again when I’m done. I go for a walk most days and I quit for that 45 minutes on a good day that I get to walk. I quit being a mom. I quit all the things in my life and I just get in my body, again get some fresh air, maybe I listen to some music or something on my Airpods while I walk and then I’m ready to start again.

Every day, at the end of the day we all quit hopefully, I get in bed and go to sleep, and power down, and restart our bodies and our brains. You have to be quitting all the time, probably you need more quitting if you’re asking me this question, should I quit. You probably need more little quits throughout your day so that you don’t feel like you have to make a decision about a big quit at some point. So, the question I want us to ask is not when should I quit. The question is, how do I know if I’m quitting for a useful reason?

It’s why to quit because if I’m quitting every day or I’m quitting regularly for a useful reason then do it more often. If I’m quitting for what I’m calling not a useful reason, not a reason that serves my highest good, it helps me become who I want to be then I want to question my quit. I want to examine why I’m quitting and I want to see if there’s an opportunity here to grow and evolve in some way. So, it’s not when to quit, it’s why to quit that I want to focus on today.

So, I want to talk first about why not to quit or about what is maybe a not useful reason to quit. If I’m trying to get away from a situation where I feel negative emotion, it may be that I don’t want to quit. Now, notice I said maybe because there are situations where I’m going to feel negative emotion and I want to feel negative emotion in that situation. For example, if somebody is talking to me consistently in an unkind way or treating me in a way that violates a boundary for me, maybe I would call it abuse.

Maybe I would just say, “I don’t want to be around someone who treats me that way. I choose to quit this relationship.” So, there are times when getting away from something negative or painful makes sense. I don’t want to oversimplify what are complicated situations. But in general, if it’s a question because when it’s a toxic situation even if we’re in the thick of it and we have a harder time seeing it or getting away feels really hard and scary, still I know that if I were to ask somebody else, if I were to explain to someone else what’s going on in let’s take an abusive relationship as an example.

If I were to explain to someone else what’s going on, it wouldn’t be a question, it would be a no brainer. They would say, “Get away from there, get out of there. Get out of that relationship. You need to quit it.” So, if it’s obvious like that, then yes I’m still trying to get away from something painful or negative. So, in that situation I would say it’s appropriate.

But most of the time if it’s not obvious. If I have a debate happening in my head, well, if I stay there’s this and if I go, there’s this and I can see pros and cons either way. Then I want to ask myself, am I trying to escape negative emotion? Because if so that is not a quit that I would encourage as a coach if I’m talking to a client. You know why? I want you to become more empowered in your life. I want you to be more empowered around negative emotion.

I want you to see that you’re the creator of it and that you can create something different if you want to because the skill that is required to do that will serve you so well in every area of your life. So, there are times when difficult people, difficult jobs, difficult situations, difficult goals that we’ve set, difficult things are a really useful way to grow and evolve in the way that I believe we’re actually here on Earth to do.

I think that’s the whole point of it. So, if we quit it we miss the lesson, we miss the opportunity, we’ll probably get it again later at some point because until we learn it it’s probably going to come up again. So, we might as well learn it and evolve and grow. Do you see what I’m saying? Why to quit is what matters. So, if we’re not quitting, and this is what most people think, why would I ‘quit’ something if it’s not painful? If I do the work to get to peace, to think about it in a way that empowers me, that’s positive, where I feel peaceful, and joyful, and light then why would I leave it?

Let’s talk about why. There can be so many healthy, useful empowering reasons to quit either temporarily or permanently. One of the main reasons that comes to my mind is that you just need a restart. You just need a reboot. So, before I give you examples of that let me just kind of back up and explain. I think the most useful reason to quit something is because you’re choosing you because you understand that you are the creator of your world.

And that in order to create your world intentionally the way you want to, you need either a temporary or permanent change of state. That’s it, you do, if you’re like me anyway. I need them all the time. This is why I say I need quits every day, little quits. I need bigger quits less frequently if I’m doing the little quits regularly. But I need quits all the time. Because I choose me, because I choose to empower myself, because I choose to take care of myself, because I know that I have a lot of needs. And if I don’t meet my needs then I create problems for myself with those needs.

And therefore, I need to quit all the time and I do. So, let’s go back to the restart or reboot. Literally I just rebooted my computer right before I recorded this episode. You know why? It was getting glitchy. It was taking a while to load things. I was getting that MacBook rainbow wheel that means something’s going wrong. It was popping up more often than necessary. So, I shut down everything I could, closed out everything I could, saved what I needed and then just rebooted the whole computer, took about two minutes, working like a charm now.

Guess what? I’m a lot like my MacBook Pro. I need a reboot sometimes, I just get slow. I just get glitchy. I just get crankier. I don’t have as many ideas. I’m not excited. I’m sluggish. Sometimes a short simple step away, look away, go get a drink of water, get up from my desk and walk around, count to 10. I remember having little kids at home, those of you that have little kids at home, bless your heart. You need this all the time during the day. You need to count to 10. You need to put your Airpods in maybe so you can escape the noise for a minute.

Maybe you go take a shower. I don’t know. I remember putting my infant in his little walker and then getting in the shower and just putting his walker in the bathroom so that I could still peek outside the shower curtain if I need to make sure he’s okay but I need a minute. A shower was a good reset for me, or putting my child down for a nap and he would cry but I was like, he’s in his crib, he’s safe, and I get in the shower so I can’t hear it. Nowadays we have Airpods too, that will do the trick.

But sometimes you just need a reboot, a restart, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with my computer. Just every now and then things get a little glitchy and maybe I need to run some software and make sure we’re keeping it cleaned out. But sometimes just a restart, have you ever noticed this? You call tech support, the smartest people on the planet about computers and they’ll try a bunch of things and then they’ll say, “Let’s just restart. Let’s just try rebooting it.” Sometimes that’s all it takes and that’s true for us too.

I had this happen last week, this is what actually prompted me to do this episode. I was teaching a class, I was talking to my Business Minded Mastermind group who’s amazing, there’s 20 ish of us. We get together a few times a year and we were doing some deep dive learning and application of our sales strategies, how do we better take care of our customers and how do we sell them on themselves to get the results they want?

And anyway, it was day three of learning this content and teaching this content. And it was in North California where it had been about 100 degrees outside. I’d sat outside for lunch and gotten a little overheated, a little sleepy as a result. And I’d just eaten food. We’d come back from lunch, I literally said one thing, whatever I was teaching, I sort of kicked it off. And my energy was so low and then I looked around the room at my 20 other students who were also eyes glazed over, slumped in their chairs. There was zero energy in that room.

And I needed to quit for a minute. Now, sometimes if this happens I say, “Hey, I’m going to take a quick restroom break, I’ll be right back, or I’m going to go grab a drink of water.” Totally fine to do that, in this situation I didn’t, I just said, “Okay, this topic I’m teaching, I know a lot of you have a lot of good ideas here. So, I want to hear from one of you for a minute.” And one of my lovely students raised her hand, she came up front, I sat in her seat in the classroom. And I let her share her insight for maybe five minutes.

It was just long enough for me to have a little quit to like I’m not teaching for a minute. I’m not even going to stand up here in front of you, I’m sitting down, you’re teaching. And she handled it amazingly well. And after five minutes I was like, “Alright, good job.” And I was back ready to go. Just a reboot, a little quit, if you’re doing it because you choose you, because you realize you’re at your limit maybe, you’re tapped out. You literally are starting to freeze up like the computer, have a quit. Step outside, count to 10, breathe, do a little meditation, say a prayer.

Sometimes my quits still involve a lot of action. I’ll get overwhelmed with everything going on, with all the kids, and the house, and the business and everything, and the pets. And if I just stop and make the bed, or I stop and load up the dishwasher, even if the rest of the house is a mess, my kids their about to get out of school in a couple of days. And so, my elementary school came home with backpacks yesterday full of the random school supplies that didn’t get used up, like the oil pastel box and paper.

And one of my sons brought home eight things of glue and then all of the stuff they cleaned out from their desks, a bunch of folders, and a bunch of work they’ve been doing, and some workbooks, and booklets that they’d made. Just piles of stuff. And of course, they’re excited to have it at home so they take it out and they spread it all over the kitchen, and all over the table, and all over the counter. And it’s just so many decisions.

My brain looks at it and realizes there’s so many decisions to be made, I have to decide what do we keep? What do we get rid of? What do we donate? What do the kids want to keep versus what do I want to keep? The stuff, if we choose to keep any of it, where is it going to go? What are we going to throw away? Overwhelm hits and so I just quit for a moment. I quit by just loading up the dishes in the dishwasher. That’s what I did. I was like, I’m not thinking about the school stuff. I’m not going to look at it. I’m not going to worry about it. I’m not going to make any decisions.

I’m just going to quit. And loading up the dishwasher for me is like alright, I’m back, ready to go. So, what are your quits? Maybe they’re small. Maybe they’re a little longer. We’ve been taught the principle of this, those of you that are members of my same faith in our faith tradition, we have what’s called a sabbath day, every Sunday, one out of seven days. We are taught to quit, not literally quit life but just quit your normal routine, quit the things that take up the rest of your week. We have a day off from all that, a day of rest we call it.

We focus our minds on something much easier, maybe it’s family, maybe it’s a spiritual practice kind of day, maybe it’s a resting and relaxing kind of day unless you’re the bishop of the ward, sorry, bishops, or certain other callings. At any rate, the idea is that the Lord understands that we have to quit once a week in a bigger way, not just a quick time out but a whole day of quitting. And I think there’s lots of reasons that we’re taught to do that but one of them is because we need it as human beings.

Other versions of this might be a night out. Do you ever have this feeling, like you are overwhelmed and everything feels hard and then you go out with some girlfriends and you come home and think, alright, I think I can keep going now? Maybe it’s taking a whole day off. Maybe it’s taking a nap. Oh man, a nap is my favorite way to quit. I don’t get to do it very often but if I can, I love to just go take a nap. Maybe you can’t get yourself out of a negative spin. Maybe you can’t get yourself out of a negative spiral, or you can’t come up with the idea or you’re stuck. You know what?

There’s a difference between taking a nap because you can’t stand a negative emotion and taking a nap because you’re saying, “I choose me.” I know they don’t feel different but they really genuinely are. There’s the nap that we spontaneously take or that whatever quit that we spontaneously take and we feel bad about it and we don’t want to tell people about it. And maybe we hadn’t planned to do it at all but we do it probably more regularly than we want to, than is serving us. There’s that kind of taking a nap or watching Netflix, or whatever.

And then there is an intentional, hey, Jody, I choose you right now. And it’s okay, we’ve done as much as we can. We’re sort tapped out or we’re just not going to think about this anymore for a couple of hours and we’re going to take a rest instead, go for a walk, exercise, go get my nails done and just step away from it all. So again, why am I doing it? This matters. If I’m overwhelmed and I’m throwing the towel in it’s different than, you know what, let’s just pause, let’s take a pause and not think about it so that when we come back we can be refreshed, we can refuel.

Do you see the difference? Now there are even longer quits we do, sometimes we call them vacation or staycation. This is the idea behind a sabbatical. Let’s quit your regular teaching position so that you can have time to regroup and maybe do research or whatever else you do on your sabbatical. Maybe it’s walking away for a month. Maybe it’s like I’m going to not write the book for the next month. I’m going to take a month off of thinking about it because I choose to refuel myself. If I don’t refuel myself I don’t have more book in me to write. You’ve got to step away from it.

Stepping away from the sewing project because you choose to take a break from it and coming back a few days later and realizing now you have renewed creativity, renewed energy, renewed ideas behind it. It’s stepping away from something in your business, something you’re trying to sell, a course, or a program, or an offering, stepping away to recharge and regroup.

Now, the last kind of quit I want to talk about is the more permanent kind. The kind when you decide I’m done with this. This is over. Now, a lot of us with this kind of quit because the other kind we tend to call a break, and this we call quitting, again, we layer so much judgment of ourselves or others who do this and I don’t think it’s necessary at all. I think that you can just decide that you’re done with something, that your time with that is complete, that you got what you needed to get out of it and you gave what you have to give, and you met whomever you were supposed to meet.

And now it feels complete. This is different than I hate this thing, I have to get away from it. This is, this part of my life is complete. So, I used to teach Turbo Kickboxing. I love Chalene Johnson’s Turbo Kick program. I don’t know if they still come out with new ones. But anyway, I used to go to it at the gym all the time in Huntington Beach. And so, it was my dream to get certified and be an instructor. And one day I did that. And then I taught classes for – I don’t know – maybe a year. And then I was just like, “I think I’m done with this.”

I didn’t hate it. If I had hated it by the way, I don’t know if I would have done this then but knowing what I know now if I hate something I’m like, “Let’s figure out how to not hate this. Let’s figure out how to find the joy in this. How to at least be grateful for this opportunity. Let’s get to a healthier emotional state before I’m complete with it.” But if I decide I want to move towards something else or just the excitement, and motivation, and energy I had around it has gone, that’s okay. You can just choose to walk away and not make it mean that you’re a failure or a quitter.

Sometimes marriages are complete. Some marriages, some friendships, some relationships are complete. In fact, most relationships complete themselves at least in the way that they existed, maybe they change form a little bit, maybe they change frequency of communication or the role that we play in each other’s lives. Most relationships complete themselves. Your marriage wasn’t a failure, it just completed itself. Even if you thought it was going to last longer, it wasn’t, if your marriage ended, it was complete.

Maybe your time at that job is just complete. Maybe your time living in a certain city is complete. For me I notice when I’m starting to get to the completion point of something, I want to start hating it. I want to start justifying leaving. I want to start noticing. My brain starts picking up on all the things it doesn’t like about it, all the things that are hard, all the reasons that I should leave a job, or a relationship, or a car, or a house, or whatever it is. Guess what? Not necessary.

I try to manage myself to stay in appreciation and gratitude and decide to go towards the new thing if I want to. Do you know you could do both? Maybe giving in the way you’ve been giving, maybe that part of your life is complete. Maybe you’re done giving in that way, or serving in that way, or doing whatever favors you’ve been doing for that person. Maybe your time of doing that is complete. And we don’t have to be mad at the person and start thinking that they’re taking advantage of us and noticing what’s wrong with it. It can just be complete.

Maybe thinking about a certain situation in the way you have, maybe you’re done with that, maybe it’s complete. Maybe it served you in the past even. We don’t have to go, “That was wrong, I shouldn’t have been thinking of it that way.” We can go, “I think I’m done thinking about it that way. I think it served me as far as it could and now I’m going to evolve the way I think about it.” Maybe thinking about a person or talking about a person in a certain way, maybe you’re done with that.

Maybe trying to save that certain person in your life, maybe you’re done with that. Maybe that part of being that role in their life is complete for you and it’s time to move on. Maybe doing laundry for your now teenagers, you’ve completed that part. We don’t have to get mad. We don’t have to be overwhelmed.  We don’t have to justify that we just don’t have the time anymore. You just be like, “That part where I did your laundry, that part of your life is complete, now you do your own laundry.”

Maybe you want to be done, you want to quit being indecisive about your business, about your goals, maybe it’s complete. And the last thing I want to say is that even if when you started the thing you thought the completion point was going to be different than it is now, you don’t have to label it a failure. You don’t have to label yourself a quitter. Maybe quitting is the wrong word for this situation. Maybe you decide to go back to school and get your degree. And now that you’re a year into it, your goals have changed, your interests have changed, your priorities have changed.

Don’t do it because you’re overwhelmed and it’s hard. If you’re overwhelmed and it’s hard but you still want the end goal then stay in it and figure out how to get coached or coach yourself through overwhelm and hard things. But if your end goals have changed, then you don’t have to call it a waste of time, you don’t have to call it a waste of money. You can say, “I think my time with that goal is complete. I think that I’m glad I learned what I learned, I’m glad I met whoever I met. I’m glad that I grew in the way that I grew and now it’s complete.

And I thought it was going to be complete when I got my degree but I think I was wrong about that. I think I was always going to take however many classes I took and be complete and be done.

Alright, do more quitting but do it for useful reasons. Do it because you choose you. Do it because you are responsible for creating your own experience. You are, and you want to keep ownership for that and you want to create it intentionally. Alright, thanks for joining me today you guys, I’ll see you next time. Have a great week. Bye bye.

Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.