Sometimes the Smartest Thing You Can Do Is Give Up

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do in a situation is to give up. I know that sounds weird. It sounds wrong. It's not what we've been taught.

But let's be clear about what giving up means and does not mean.

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Sometimes the smartest thing that you can ever do in a situation is to just give up.

William Ferrell, counsellor at Mindora Counselling

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What we've been told about quitting

It's not what you've been told your entire life, your entire career. The message is that quitting is for people who just couldn't cut it. They just couldn't make it. The people who win are the ones who keep pushing through. Push through the struggles. Push through the hardships.

And sometimes that's true, for sure. Sometimes it is. Persistence is real, and a lot of things worth having sit on the other side of a hard stretch. If I told you to quit everything the moment it got uncomfortable, I'd be contradicting what I wrote in People Don't Grow When They're Comfortable. They Grow From Pain.

But other times it's not just pushing through something that's hard. What you're doing is prolonging something that's actually already over. Something that doesn't serve you. Something that doesn't make sense.

When you're prolonging something that's already over

And the longer you keep doing it, the more you keep pushing through, the more you keep plugging away, the more it costs you. And it costs you a lot. It costs your confidence. Your judgment. Your mental health. Your sleep. Your anxiety. A lot of times your sense of what you're actually worth comes into question as well.

There is a well-known reason we stay. In their paper on the psychology of sunk cost, Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer defined the sunk cost effect as a greater tendency to continue an endeavor once money, effort or time has already been invested. In one of their studies, people who had paid more for a season subscription to a theater attended more plays over the following months. In their questionnaire studies, people who had a sunk cost rated a project as more likely to succeed than people who had not. The more you have put in, the harder it is to see clearly that it is not working.

They also found that prior economics courses did not reduce the effect. Knowing about the bias did not protect people from it. That tracks with what I see. Most people who are stuck in a job, a relationship or a habit already know, somewhere, that it is not working. Knowing is not the hard part.

The body keeps its own score of what the staying costs you. In a set of three studies, Wrosch and colleagues tested whether people who could let go of unattainable goals had better physical health. People who were better at disengaging reported fewer health problems, and in one study they had sleep efficiency gains. In another, they showed a more normal daily cortisol pattern, with a steeper decline across the day. The samples were small, so treat it as a pattern, not a final word. But it fits what exhausted people often describe: it is not only the situation that is wearing them down, it is the refusal to let it end.

An earlier paper from the same research group found that both goal disengagement and goal reengagement, finding something new to commit to, were associated with higher well-being across three studies. The point is not to give up and drift. It is to let go of the thing that is finished so your effort has somewhere better to go. If the long hours and the dread sound familiar, I wrote about how to tell burnout from depression, and about what 20 years of corporate work taught me.

Quitting because it's hard versus quitting because it's over

There's a difference between quitting something because things got difficult, versus quitting something because you finally realize it just isn't worth it anymore. Your time isn't worth it. It's not worth the stress.

That difference matters, and it is easy to fool yourself in either direction. One way to get at it is to ask what kind of "hard" you are in. Hard that comes with learning, practice, or a rough patch in something you still believe in is one thing. Hard that comes from doing the same thing, in the same way, with the same result, for a long time, is another. The first is a cost of getting somewhere. The second is a cost of staying.

A few questions can help. If you took away the fear of what other people would think, would you still choose this? If a friend described your situation to you, what would you tell them? If you were starting fresh today, would you sign up for this? And are you thinking about leaving in a moment of distress, or have you been circling the same conclusion for months? The best decisions to let go tend to come from the second place.

Why letting go means admitting who you were

And quitting these things is likely going to be one of the hardest things you're ever going to do. Because it actually means admitting that the version of you, the person that needed that job, the person that needed that relationship, that needed that identity, that needed the alcohol, that needed the drugs, that person just doesn't make sense anymore. The whole thing doesn't make sense for you anymore.

That is why it is rarely only about the job or the drink or the relationship. It is about who you are if it is gone. Researchers who study addiction have written about this. In a qualitative study of 21 adults in a drug and alcohol therapeutic community, Dingle, Cruwys and Frings described two pathways: people who lost valued social identities during addiction and wanted to renew them, and people who were socially isolated and for whom addiction had brought a new identity and sense of belonging. For the second group especially, leaving was not just stopping a substance. It meant giving up a place in the world.

That is a small study and a qualitative one, so hold it loosely. But it names something I see in the rooms. People do not only hold onto things because they are pleasant. They hold on because the thing has been telling them who they are. If you want to see how that happens, read why beliefs become identity and the performance identity trap.

I've done it a million times

And I'll tell you what. I've done it. I've given up on a lot of things that didn't serve me anymore. It was tough. I gave up jobs. I gave up friendships, drugs, careers, relationships. Everything I grew out of.

I am not saying that to make it sound easy. It wasn't. Every one of those was a loss, and every one of them came with a stretch of not knowing who I was without it. But on the far side, what I felt was relief. The weight I had been carrying was mostly the weight of holding up something that was already gone.

What giving up does not mean

I want to be careful here, because "give up" is a phrase that can land very differently on different people. I am not talking about giving up on yourself, on your life, or on the people who care about you. I am not telling anyone to stop treatment, drop therapy because it got uncomfortable, or walk away from recovery. If anything, the things worth giving up are usually the ones that were standing between you and those.

If the thing you are thinking of giving up is alcohol or another substance, please do it with support. For some people, stopping suddenly after heavy or long-term use can be dangerous, particularly with alcohol and certain medications. Talk to a doctor before you make a sudden change. A counsellor can help with the rest: the habits, the identity, and the empty space afterwards. If you want to know what that looks like, here is a guide to addiction counselling and recovery, and some thoughts on Hong Kong's drinking culture and what it costs.

And if you are in a place where you are thinking about hurting yourself or ending your life, that is not what this post is about, and I do not want you to carry it alone. Please contact your local emergency services or a crisis line right now, or tell someone you trust.

Have a think. Take a pause.

So have a think. Take a pause. Maybe it's time for you to give something up as well.

If something came to mind while you were reading, a job, a relationship, a habit, a version of yourself, you do not have to sort it out alone. Book a free consultation and we'll look at what is worth keeping, what is already over, and what comes next.

Sources

Arkes, H. R., & Blumer, C. (1985). The psychology of sunk cost. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 35, 124-140.

Wrosch, C., Scheier, M. F., Miller, G. E., Schulz, R., & Carver, C. S. (2003). Adaptive self-regulation of unattainable goals: Goal disengagement, goal reengagement, and subjective well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(12), 1494-1508.

Wrosch, C., Miller, G. E., Scheier, M. F., & Brun de Pontet, S. (2007). Giving up on unattainable goals: Benefits for health? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(2), 251-265.

Dingle, G. A., Cruwys, T., & Frings, D. (2015). Social identities as pathways into and out of addiction. Frontiers in Psychology, 6.

This post is general information and is not a substitute for individual care. If you are in crisis, please contact local emergency services or a crisis line.