I Got Really Good at Giving Up

Something I realized recently is that I became a “giver upper.”

I didn’t used to be this way. I was the person who refused to give up or give in. Then I swung real hard in the opposite direction, said F it to everything and got real comfortable there.

Today I was on the treadmill and I was tired. Physically and mentally. I had 1,000 excuses I could have pulled out and convinced myself that any one of them was a good enough reason to quit. But I didn’t. I finished and I finished really strong.

The reason I was able to do that had very little to do with today. It was because I’ve fought the battle of wanting to give up probably 100 times over the last few months and I’ve won more than I’ve lost.

And I think that’s something we don’t talk about enough when it comes to changing our habits. We see someone doing something consistently and assume they’re just disciplined or motivated or that it somehow comes easier to them. What we don’t see are all the times they didn’t feel like doing it. The times they talked themselves out of it. The times they actually did quit and had to start again.

I’ve been all of those people over the last few decades. 🤪

What I realized later was that today I hadn’t even considered quitting. I didn’t have to talk myself into finishing or argue with all the reasons I could stop. I just kept going. And it wasn’t until hours later that it hit me how big of a fucking deal that actually was.

I think sometimes we expect change to feel like this big accomplishment. Like we’re going to wake up one day with a completely different mindset and suddenly doing the things we said we wanted to do will be easy. But a lot of the work happens long before we ever notice anything is different.

If you’re only measuring your progress by whether you followed through today, you’re missing everything you’re learning in the process. Even the days you don’t follow through can teach you something if you’re willing to look at what’s actually happening.

I’m sure you’ve experienced some version of this too. You work through something over and over again, sometimes doing better than others, and then one day you realize something has changed. You’ve changed. The old version of you didn’t even show up to the party.

Will she show up again? Absolutely. But do you have to let her in the door? Not at all.