As a man and his friend were having coffee one morning, their conversation was continuously interrupted by the man coughing.  As he was finishing his coughing fit he lit up a cigarette. The friend said, “Man you sound like you are hacking up a lung, maybe you should consider quitting smoking”. The man with the sick cough simply smiled and said “My mom told me to never be a quitter”.

Now this is an old joke and we laugh because we can see the absurdity of the smoker’s rationalization as to why he won’t quit, however there is some truth within the humor.

As we are raised we are taught that we should not be a quitter and the adage “A quitter never wins and winner never quits” is drilled into us. We are taught that once we start something we should see it through to the end. For example if we joined a sports team and we found out it was hard work, we might express the desire to quit and the adults in our life would encourage us to keep at it and not to be a quitter.  The advice to not be a quitter is given with the intention to help us understand that there are things that we take on in life that we need to follow through, even when the going gets tough we need to see it through to the end because the outcome is worth the hard work and aggravation. This is a lesson that many of have applied successfully in our life many times. Many times we will look back upon a task and say, “Yes, it was worth all of the hard work, the frustrations, the sacrifices, etc.”

There is a side of “Never be a quitter” that does not serve us. There are times in our life where we will take on a task or begin something and find that what we are doing is not a good fit for us or that we are just not ready for what we are doing yet or because we did not have enough information to make a good decision for ourselves before we jumped into something. It is at these times when what we are doing does not serve are best interest and we feel like quitting that the voices from childhood remind us to “Never be a quitter” can haunt us and we guilt ourselves into believing we have to continue doing what we are doing and see it through to the end because we don’t want to be guilty of being a quitter. There are also social pressures and many times pressures from our family not to quit something that we embarked on and so we continue to do what we know does not serve us to save face socially or to avoid disappointing people in our life and therefore avoid the guilt we would feel if we were to quit.

Many people live a life of quiet desperation, knowing in their heart of hearts that what they are doing is not what they should be doing, knowing that what they are doing is sucking the very life from them however they have ingrained the thought of “don’t be a quitter” to a point where the pain of keeping on seems to be less than the pain of being a quitter in their mind and in the eyes of others.

There are times where the healthiest thing we could do for ourselves is to simply quit, to stop what we are doing, to change course in our journey. The key is to be able to discern weather we are quitting something because it is difficult and just don’t wanna or are we quitting something because we simply made a choice we were not ready for, that was not a good fit, that does not serve our authentic self.

As we align are feelings, thoughts words and actions and we remove the guilt and stigma of quitting we begin to know what is serving us and what is not. There are always times where we will have doubt and it is at these times where we have to be fully aware of who we are and why we are doing what we are doing.

We all know that the darkest hour is just before dawn, meaning that just when we get to the point where we feel we have nothing left to give, just when we get to a point of exhaustion that often times this is a great sign because we have arrived at our darkest hour and the dawn is upon us. It is at these times when we do not quit, it at these times where the next step we take will be over the threshold of success. Many people have quit a moment before they would have succeeded.

When we are aligned, when we are living our authentic life, we will come to be able to discern when and what we should quit and when and what we should see through to the end.

It is important that today you give yourself permission to quit that which does not serve you. Let go of the guilt that you may feel, know that in the long run living an authentic life will always serve you and serve others in your life. When you quit or let go of that which does not serve you, that which is not driven by your spirit you will feel a lightness of being and you will find the course correction of your journey that will be of great joy!