Knowing when to quit.
To persevere is noble. Fighting back when you've been knocked down. Struggling through without any assistance. Making lemonade out of lemons. Add your own clichés at will.
What takes real finesse, what involves a phenomenal amount of strength, is knowing when to quit. That is not saying that there isn't a time to forge ahead to achieve what you want; that is obviously a valuable trait. Learning how to let go when it is necessary can be one of the most excruciating experiences for any individual.
Once a possibility has burrowed itself into your limbic system, it can be nearly impossible to dig it out. Much like quitting cigarettes 'cold turkey' is threatened by a trying-to-be-former smoker's environment: friends who smoke, habits formed, stress building... quitting an idea can be a minute-by-minute mental battle between self-preservation, heartache and hope.
You will force yourself to remove any and all reminders from your daily life. This will happen in cyclical fashion as you will fall off the wagon an extraordinary amount of times. Getting back on comes one of two ways: your inner-monological pep talk to pick yourself up by the proverbial bootstraps and move on. Or the sickening gut-punch reminding you why you need to let go. The former is preferred; the latter is sadly more common.
Knowing when to quit is how to keep yourself from going over the precipice. Letting go when you need to allows you to hold on to some of your dignity. It's survival.
Easier said than done,
Lis
What takes real finesse, what involves a phenomenal amount of strength, is knowing when to quit. That is not saying that there isn't a time to forge ahead to achieve what you want; that is obviously a valuable trait. Learning how to let go when it is necessary can be one of the most excruciating experiences for any individual.
Once a possibility has burrowed itself into your limbic system, it can be nearly impossible to dig it out. Much like quitting cigarettes 'cold turkey' is threatened by a trying-to-be-former smoker's environment: friends who smoke, habits formed, stress building... quitting an idea can be a minute-by-minute mental battle between self-preservation, heartache and hope.
You will force yourself to remove any and all reminders from your daily life. This will happen in cyclical fashion as you will fall off the wagon an extraordinary amount of times. Getting back on comes one of two ways: your inner-monological pep talk to pick yourself up by the proverbial bootstraps and move on. Or the sickening gut-punch reminding you why you need to let go. The former is preferred; the latter is sadly more common.
Knowing when to quit is how to keep yourself from going over the precipice. Letting go when you need to allows you to hold on to some of your dignity. It's survival.
Easier said than done,
Lis