Quitting By Design

Learn to use strategic quitting as a tool to carve out a successful life

Dr. Lynn Marie Morski

• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781645360339
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Dr. Lynn Marie Morski knows how to address fears and prepare your health, relationships, and finances for a quit because she's been there time and again. She has quit educational pursuits, jobs, careers, relationships, political parties…you name it; she's found a way to quit it while maximizing the benefits and minimizing the challenges associated with major life changes. And she wants nothing more than to pass these skills along to you. With this book, Dr. Morski aims to pass on what she's learned about quitting not only from her own experiences, but also through interviews with others who have made successful quits themselves. She tackles the stigma surrounding quitting, while highlighting what a useful and necessary tool it can be in carving out a life you enjoy.

Chapter 1: A Word About Semantics

I’m well aware that many people cringe when they hear the word ‘quit,’ and even more cringe at the thought of being called a quitter. A friend of mine summed it up best when he said, “We’ve all lost things in life, yet none of us wants to be called a loser. That’s the struggle I have with the word ‘quitter.’” And I get that. Technically one who quits is a quitter. But that’s just semantics. And I think his example of the term ‘loser’ actually works well. We have all lost something—even if it’s just a game of chess or arm wrestling. Do we then walk around for the rest of our lives self-identifying as losers? I should hope not! Similarly, having quit something at some point in our lives shouldn’t define us as quitters.

Here’s another way of thinking about the semantics involved. Imagine all the online gurus whose aim is to help you lead your best life. They often suggest making positive changes—and there are two forms that change can take: adding something or subtracting something. For you to change jobs, you have to subtract your old job and add a new one. What’s another way of referring to that subtraction? Quitting. Another way to rephrase the ever-popular ‘I’m in transition…’ is to say, ‘I quit something, and I am about to do something else.’ There are a thousand ways to refer to making a change for the better, but most of them involve removing things that weren’t working – also known as quitting.

If you think about it, ‘quitter’ is a label we only ascribe to people whose quit we don’t support. For example, imagine you are working in a fast-food restaurant waiting for your big break in Hollywood, and then you get that break and start making enough money that you no longer need to work in fast food. Does anyone call you a quitter when you quit slinging burgers? Never! They’d say “You made it.” Yet you definitely quit something, and, ergo, are a quitter.

If despite the above examples, the word ‘quitting’ still makes you uneasy or brings up negative feelings, feel free to replace it with ‘changing’ or ‘redefining’ or ‘transitioning.’ Because the name isn’t important— what’s important is that you find your way out of whatever isn’t serving you and into something that will.

Chapter 2: Should I Quit Something?

Many of us think quitting is something that only applies to a job or smoking, but quitting can apply to every area of your life. For example, you can quit something as insignificant as a gym membership, or something with a significantly larger effect on your life, like a relationship or marriage. You can quit things that are bad for you and you can quit things that are seemingly good for you. Take that gym membership. Is working out generally good for your health? Absolutely. But does quitting your gym membership mean you’ve given up on working out? Absolutely not! You may have found that running trails outside or taking a martial arts class is more your speed. You may have found a group that does free CrossFit exercises in the park. You’re not quitting working out. You’re quitting one means of working out that isn’t working out for you any longer.

Now that hopefully I’ve taken a bit of the stigma off quitting, let’s get back to the original question: Is there something you need to quit? Here’s a good place to start investigating. Is there a certain time of day, email subject line, caller ID name, or personal interaction that you can ‘feel’ in your stomach? What do I mean by this? Imagine the sensations in your body when you see flashing police lights in your rearview mirror. If you’re anything like me, your stomach probably sinks. In my experience, the first sign that something in my life may need to be on the chopping block

is that I can feel my stomach drop when I have to deal with it.

When I was co-founder of a startup, the sound of my work email going off always resulted in an instant feeling of dread. One day it hit me: if I’m going about my day, perfectly happy, and a single sound can result in a 180- degree change in my mood, maybe I should make a 180- degree change in my job.

Or maybe it’s not a sinking feeling in your stomach, but it’s some other method your body has decided to use as your wake-up call. In my experience as a doctor, the body’s two favorite wake-up calls are digestive issues and insomnia. Stress can trigger acid reflux, and it can cause or worsen the cramping and diarrhea of irritable bowel syndrome.

This connection between your thoughts and your gastrointestinal system is not imaginary. There’s a true, scientific basis to it. Inside your GI tract is something called the enteric nervous system (ENS) which consists of over 100 million nerve cells, running from esophagus to rectum. Thoughts that originate in your brain translate into signals your brain sends to the ENS which lead to responses such as moving food more quickly or slowly through the digestive system.

Similarly, anxiety, depression, and stress can all keep you awake at night or wake you up in the middle of the night. If you’re one of the way too many people who suffer from sleep-onset insomnia (the inability to fall asleep at night), I ask you to examine what you’re thinking about as you lie awake. Are you having a rough time sleeping because you’re dreading waking up and going to work? Or is it because you’re still ruminating over an argument you had with your spouse over dinner? These can be great clues in determining what may not be working.

What does this look like for you? I truly hope that there’s nothing in your life that results in your stress level spiking, your stomach sinking, your acid refluxing or your sleep not happening, but if there is, I highly recommend starting to investigate that feeling. Many people refer to

those internal feelings as your intuition. Is your intuition telling you there’s an issue? Can you change the situation? Do you need to quit the endeavor or relationship that disrupts your happiness? If so, don’t worry. I won’t leave you hanging here to quit on your own. In the next section we’ll cover more specifics on what exactly to quit, and in subsequent chapters, we’ll cover what keeps people from quitting, the difference between quitting and failing, some of the moral value we’ve attached to quitting, and other related topics that will help you make the decisions that will lead to your best life.

Before we go forward, I want to mention that in some situations you may benefit from quits that don’t lead to the above symptoms. I was speaking with someone who was thinking about leaving his relationship. I told him that I knew social media can be misleading, but from what I saw on Facebook it looked like his relationship was a pretty happy one. He told me that my perceptions were accurate. There wasn’t any fighting or anything particularly unpleasant about his relationship. So why was he contemplating leaving? Because he had goals—and his partner did not necessarily share or understand those goals, which is a completely valid reason to explore quitting a relationship.

There’s a work equivalent to this scenario as well. A friend of mine had a great job he enjoyed, but he felt a calling to start working full-time in storytelling. He eventually quit the full-time job—the one that wasn’t giving him any particular anxiety or insomnia or stress—so that he could pursue his dreams. There are plenty of situations which may be comfortable for us, but we should beware of those that make us, as the song says, comfortably numb. Numb isn’t a great state of mind for forward progress.

I throw these examples in here to let you know that just because you’re sleeping well and your gut isn’t telling you anything is wrong, it’s still a good idea to make sure everything you’re involved with is going to provide you with the best chance at achieving your goals, whatever they may

be. Evaluate whether you might want to quit your good job in pursuit of a better one, leave your comfortable city and move to one with even bigger opportunities, and separate from a relationship that’s pleasant but not inspiring or supportive of your dreams.

And finally, if you’ve gotten this far, done a thorough examination of your current situation, and decided nothing is in need of a quit, then congratulations! But I’d suggest you not put down the book just yet, as strategic quitting is an important self-care tool and life skill that will undoubtedly benefit you at some time in the future, even if it’s just knowing how to decide NOT to quit something. If nothing else, developing the practice of listening to your body is worth its weight in gold for both your physical and mental health. If you suffer from chronic headaches, they could be due to stress, or they could be signs of a serious physical medical condition. Either way, if you don’t notice and pay attention to symptoms like this, you can’t address them, and they can turn from smaller issues into more lasting concerns.

Chapter 3: What Keeps People from Quitting?

If you’ve listened to your intuition and discovered an area of your life that could benefit from a quit, there may now be something else nagging at you. The ‘what-ifs.’

If you don’t immediately know what the ‘what-ifs’ are, then congratulations, you may be a professional-level quitter. But for most, the thought of quitting leads to an initial wave of relief that is often followed by the following thoughts:

• What if I never find another job or relationship?
• What if everyone thinks less of me because I quit?
• What if this was the best option I had?
• What if I fail at my new endeavor?

I was listening to a podcast called ‘Tangentially Speaking’ in which a 57-year-old psychiatrist spoke about how she recently quit traditional medicine and was embarking on a career in more holistic medicine. The woman was a multi-lingual, respected doctor who had worked in war zones in Africa delivering babies at some point in her career, and yet she very bluntly said, “I’m afraid.” The podcast host, a psychologist himself, pointed out that “any transition creates fear because you’re going to the unknown, and what scares you is that you can’t see it.” He called it the psychic equivalent of jumping into a cold

lake. So if you’re afraid and feeling alone, know that it’s totally natural, as we’re biologically ingrained to fear the unknown, to fear what lies on the other side of that quit.

I was right there with you and I still experience a lower level of these fears every time I face another quit. Remember, I may be a professional quitter now (yes, I’m officially making that a thing), but 20 years ago quitting was much harder and I recall very well being caught in a swirl of these same fears. A lot of the quits I made required me to leave my comfort zone (like having a steady job), and leap into the uncomfortable unknown (like applying to medical school.)

There’s a quote from the book, You Are a Badass at Making Money that always amused me. The book’s author, Jen Sincero, says the following, “The walls of your comfort zone are lovingly decorated with your lifelong collection of favorite excuses.” And lest you think you are alone, you should take a look inside my comfort zone. It’s like the C...

Table of contents

• Quitting By Design
• About the Author
• Dedication
• Copyright Information
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: A Word About Semantics
• Chapter 2: Should I Quit Something?
• Chapter 3: What Keeps People from Quitting?
• Chapter 4: What About All That Time and Money I Wasted?
• Chapter 5: What Are You Missing Out on If You Don’t Quit?
• Chapter 6: Is Time or Money Really Ever Wasted?
• Chapter 7: Is Quitting Bad?
• Chapter 8: What Will People Think If I Quit?
• Chapter 9: Do Quitters Really Never Win?
• Chapter 10: What’s the Difference Between Quitting and Failing?
• Chapter 11: Contemplating a Quit
• Chapter 12: What Specifically Should I Quit?
• Chapter 13: Deciding Whether to Quit
• Chapter 14: When Should I Quit?
• Chapter 15: How Should I Quit?
• Chapter 16: Preparing Your Health for a Quit
• Chapter 17: Preparing Your Finances for a Quit
• Chapter 18: Preparing Your Relationships for a Quit
• Chapter 19: Quitting an Identity (The Hardest Quit)
• Chapter 20: Overcoming Fear