TRANSCRIPTION OF VIDEO
Now, this might sound like a bit of a crazy subject for the personal development industry to talk about, it’s probably very much hush hush. Ooh, we don’t talk about that. We only talk about success and, you know, overcoming things. But you know what? That’s true, but we also need to know when to quit.
Now, here’s the thing, there’s a very important way to distinguish between the two. See, the problem is most people are quitters. They give up and they frequently give up at the time at when success was really about to take off.
Now, what are we talking about here? Well, there’s a good saying: failing will never make you a failure unless you quit. So let’s look at this in the objective of a goal. We are not going to quit from the goal. That is what I want you to understand. But that’s what most people do, they shy away from, they don’t see the results showing up in their physical world, so they think it isn’t working. A lot of time has to go by sometimes for your goals and your dreams and things to show up.
You know, often you may have to go years without seeing anything and all you have is faith and you’re the only one who sees the vision. That’s part of the deal. Sometimes you need to go through that to test how strongly committed you are to your goal.
So that’s the problem, people quit off that more often than not. So we don’t want to just quit from the goal. What we might need to do, and often will have to do, is quit or change the plan or the strategy that we thought we needed to do to get towards the goal. And this is where most people get confused, because they might go, “It’s way too hard. This surely should be easier if it was to be.” Not really. As I said before, you are going to be tested. The tests you have, the challenges you have are there to set you up to grow you, to make you stronger, to make you an overcomer.
Any… any time you fall down is really just an opportunity for you to get a comeback. That’s the way you’ve got to look at things, and that’s an attitude, isn’t it? It’s being persistent. Willing to persist, which will beat resistance.
So with those attitudes in mind, we must understand that the challenges are going to come up, that there are going to be obstacles, we’re going to meet with much, as Napoleon [inaudible] would say, temporary defeat. It’s when we quit is when we’ve hit a different league of people, and we don’t want to be part of that pack at all. That is the mass way of thinking or, you know, I’ve tried and failed before and it just doesn’t work, or that idea is ridiculous. But here’s the thing, we also need a bit of intelligence. We need to also be able to be using our higher faculties to see if something is working or not working. Because at some point, sometimes you do need to stop pushing against a certain way. You know, you don’t want to be desperate.
Example is in the acting world, if you’re persistent you will ultimately get to where you want. It may take you 20 years, but you will. But the point is this, if you’re calling up directors every day, you know, because you’re persistent, that isn’t being smart. What that’s doing is it’s showing desperation. So what happens then at that point is nobody’s going to give you a gig, and then you quit. And you say, “Acting… acting doesn’t work.” Well, the problem is you weren’t really smart. You see, you need a strategy, but that strategy of calling every day and then you do it once a month may not work either, but you’re not going to be desperate so you have more chance. It might open more doors. That’s where changing the strategy or the plan is very, very important. Do not be fixated on the plan.
This is the other problem people have, they set a goal and then they think and set a plan on how to achieve the goal. That is not a goal, that is a milestone or an objective. You see, you should not know how to achieve what you want to achieve in your life, that’s a basic bottom line. You need to only know how to take the first step. So your plan is going to be quite rough, it’s always flexible, so be flexible, but have something to at least guide you in the right direction. Then have the courage and faith to take step one. You take step one, you’ll see how to take step two.
You’re going to hear me say this a lot, because it’s hard to put into practice at first. “No, no, no Vaughan. I need to know exactly how things are going to work, I need to line it all up before I go.” Well, that works for a project. That works for an idea or a book or a product. It doesn’t work for a big, big goal that you have that’s going to be exciting that you want to go after. So learning to quit is something that’s important when it isn’t going to produce the outcome you need and it’s going to slow you down. So what you really need to start getting tuned into is your intuition.
The hunches that you get, should you pursue this road? Should you call this person? Should you follow that person? You’re going to get hunches. You need to learn to follow the hunches. They’re going to guide you down the right path. And we don’t often trust the hunches within us, but the gut feeling? It knows. And just going through that you’ll be guided.
Now, the other thing you need to do is there’s a series of questions that you can ask yourself because you may be in a relationship, you may be in a job you don’t like, there may be a lot of things going against you and you’ve been considering just getting… quitting completely. And here’s where I’d like to interject my own story, because quitting will not make you a failure, please understand that, if you use it in the right context.
If you’re just going to give up and you’re going to, “You know what? I’ve tried that, it doesn’t work,” and you go back to safety, that makes you a failure. However, if you’re pursuing your higher purpose and you need to move in occupation or you need to move location or you need to pack up and sell, well, you know, removing yourself from those situations doesn’t make you a quitter. It doesn’t make you a failure. It can make you very smart. It can make you very intelligent.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, he talks about that. He says, “Look, I’ve made billions of dollars in failures.” And he goes, “You also need to know when to quit.” That’s… these are important skills, the difference is I do not want you to just quit because it’s hard or to quit because you don’t see the results showing up. We are not quitting off the goal. We may quit the plan. Please understand the two different things. But we need to get off to a different plan if we do quit the original idea. Does that make sense?
Ok, so in my own life I was in real estate and I’ve also been a successful dancer, so these are two skills that I developed: the sales aspect and, of course, because I wanted to become a great dancer, the physical aspect of dancing and the mindset behind that. And the thing is, what I ended up doing in real estate, when I went back into the industry after taking a little break, is I decided to go back in and I was going to, you know, I was going to rebuild my career and keep going. The thing is, later in the year I got the strongest feeling to go into speaking. Like, I mean, I couldn’t explain it.
And there were very close people to me that know, you know, that I’m good at talking and that sort of thing, and they were like, “No, you shouldn’t do it.” They were against it. You see, so I was very guarded about who I shared this with. In fact, when I ended up quitting my job and quitting and leaving the real estate career, I never saw myself as a quitter. I saw myself as promoting and stepping up. You know why? Because I had a feeling to do it. And the craziest thing was, the day that I did it, the very day that I was like, “You know what? I’ve got to do it. I just… I can’t get rid of this feeling. It’s… I’ve got to make the move.” And it wasn’t because of sales, it wasn’t because of anything like that, it was just the feeling was overwhelmingly strong. Trust it. You may not know why, just… you’ve got to act.
And the thing was, that day I had appointment after appointment cancel, I had a sale fall through, and the icing on top, or the cherry on top, was that I got a phone call in the afternoon saying that our office was closing. Talk about serendipity, right? I was like, “Perfect. That makes it even easier to get my out. Right?”
But, you see, I’d already had this hunch and this feeling. So the point is, you need to follow the doors that close just as much as the ones that are open. A lot of people are looking for the open doors, you’ve also got to pay attention to the ones that close. Now, therein lies the grey area. Just because a door closes once doesn’t mean you go, “Oh, well, I quit.” It might have to close 50 times, then you start going, “You know what? Maybe this way isn’t working.” Stop it. Try something else. There’s many, many ways to make what you want happen.
Now, I’d love to know what your thoughts are on this subject, but please hear me right. I’m not advocating you just quit, you leave your marriage, you fire yourself from your own job, you self sabotage yourself, you quit something positive. I’m not saying that you’ve been… what you’re feeling is irrelevant. But before you do anything, I want you to ask yourself these questions:
Are you overextended? Are you, in your job, your business, whatever, for the wrong reasons? Have you tried every possible situation, professional help, reading, talking, whatever, to make the situation better and it’s just not working? Have you really exhausted every possible outlet?
You see, you’ve got to make sure that you give things a chance as well. And along the road you are going to have failings, that’s a natural progression of life. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong, but you could be in a situation that’s just not really good at all. You’re not supposed to be there. Some obvious things are like abuse. It could be from a boss or a loved one. Being in harassment, you know, unhealthy relationships. These are not good. You’re almost definitely going to need to get professional advice in those areas and get out of it.
But I caution you, do not quit because it’s hard. Do not divorce anyone, break up, sell anything major just on a whim without serious help. Do not give up because you don’t see the results yet. Do a thorough self analysis on yourself before you think it’s the world’s problem. Whatever you do, do not take stupid risks just because you’re inspired by what we’re talking about. And what I mean by that is being irresponsible. There is definitely a way to do things and not to do things.
And, finally, make sure you give yourself time. Give yourself a learning curve of time. Understand that nature works within her own timeframe, not just yours. You may set a date on a goal, it can move. Don’t change the goal. Don’t quit on the goal. Don’t quit on your dreams. Change the plan when needed. Be smart, be flexible, and I look forward to hearing your story below. This is Vaughan Liddicoat, I look forward to bringing you the next week’s video.
