When to Quit?

Sometimes things don’t go the way you want them to.  You spend hours, days, months, and tons of valuable energy working on something, or so you think.  Things just appear to never go your way. Why should you continue to follow this path?  You have now arrived at the all-important decision crossroad.  This invisible but powerful fork in the road causes anxiety to every human.  One route is to just throw in the towel, take the apparent easy way out.  At this point, the path of least resistance seems clear.  It is to quit.  Well, I am here to tell you that at times it is fine to quit, but 99% of the time we fall short of that point.
In a time of new resolutions and life goals, the health and life industry is overloaded with prideful and naive bodies.  People see the New Year as an opportunity to reflect on the past and make changes for the future.  Thanks to amazing marketing, health and fitness goals are the most common.  The problem is people don’t set themselves up for success.  The first couple days, maybe weeks, you nail the workouts and eat healthy.  Then you skip one day, give yourself a cheat day.  You reach this point where you stop going to the gym completely.  You have quit.  And the sad thing is that the industry and society never had faith that you would sustain your new goal.  I am telling you to stop, and reanalyze your life when you think you are getting close to that point.  IT IS NOT TOO LATE TO RECOVER.
Sometimes, the point of quitting can be murky and challenging to find.  Your mind will slowly ease you away from your change and return you to your previous equilibrium.  This is why it is key to set monthly checkpoints.  Every four weeks you should ask yourself:

1. Have I stuck to my commitment made for this month?
   1. If not, why?

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So you have determined that you have not stuck to your commitments.  You ask yourself why a couple of times and you come up with some good excuses.

1. Work was so busy and stressful. 
   1. My boss gave me a lot of new projects for the New Year.
2. The gym membership was too expensive for my budget.
   1. I have too many bills and things I want to do.
3. My kids got sick.
   1. They went to school where everyone is sick.

You analyze these reasons and determine that you don’t have the time and money.  At a quick glance, your friends will agree with you.  But you are all wrong! Wrong! Wrong!  You are quitting because of the wrong reasons.  You could wake up earlier and work out in the morning and go run outside or use items around the house to work out when you find time.  Basically, you are coming up with poor excuses on why you should stop.  If you push just a little farther you increase your chances of succeeding tenfold.  Another way to look at this is in terms of football.  The difficulty of moving the ball increases as the defense get squished.  You are closer to the end zone though.  The chance of scoring is a lot higher than when you were on your 10 yard line.  If you quit, it is the same thing as the offense walking off the field on the opposing team’s 20 yard line.  80% of the work was done, but the game got harder, and the 20% just seemed too difficult to obtain.  It might be a little harder, but the reward is worth it in the end.   ​