Giving up has a bad rap. It shouldn’t.
Psychology Today
Dec 21, 2024 | 1189 words | ★★★☆☆
Perseverance is indeed important, to a limit. However, there are two problems if you take it too far. The first is that goals and dreams might be unrealistic. Stories of famous people who persevered and achieved their childhood dreams might be uplifting, but they suffer from selection bias. In other words, they are not informative, because nobody tells stories about the many people who persevered and failed after wasting a good part of their lives. Most aspiring actors and actresses never become stars. Most aspiring writers never make any serious money from their work. If your dream is beyond reach, following it will frustrate you and waste your time. Stories of people who persevered and succeeded tell you nothing about how likely it is that you will succeed.
The second problem is that your time and energy are limited. If you devote them to a goal (say, becoming a writer), you will not be able to follow other goals effectively (say, getting a raise in your current job). Economists speak of “opportunity costs,” which is just a way of saying that every road taken means another road is not taken. If you focus on an unrealistic goal, you will miss out on other opportunities. Imagine if everybody who had the childhood dream of becoming an astronaut or a movie star stubbornly kept trying forever, instead of pursuing other careers. How many excellent professionals would we lose? Winners do quit. They just wisely choose what to quit and what to pursue.
Giving up is not easy, but it is important
Many psychological studies (see a review in Barlow et al., 2020) have shown that being able to give up some goals and dreams and redirect your energy toward other, more reasonable ones is important for mental well-being and leads to higher quality of life in the long term. The psychological term is goal disengagement.
Research also shows that many people struggle to give up an important goal (see, for example, Wrosch et al., 2003). This is often because we link important goals to our core values and our identities. If you define yourself as an actor or actress who is temporarily working in a different job, it will be difficult to disengage from the goal of becoming a movie star. Worse, if you do disengage, you might think of it as a failure.
Another problem is that some common goals have created industries catering to them. If you read magazines for writers (there are many), they will invariably tell you to “just keep writing” (and subscribe), to keep submitting your stories to competitions (which typically have entry fees), and to sign up for writer’s courses and retreats (which are all expensive). Those magazines, competitions, and courses are all legitimate (and some are excellent), but the number of aspiring writers who are sustaining that small industry does not square up with the number of successful authors populating the best-seller lists. Advice to “keep trying” is often honest and well-intended, but it is not a good idea to take it from people who benefit from it. This is not to say that there is any ill intent on their part (not at all), but they are biased. If you decide to keep trying, their advice on how to do that might be invaluable. But the decision should be yours, and yours alone.
How to disengage
If you are devoting too much time and effort to an unattainable goal, or following a failing course of action, you can gently ease away from it. Here are some hints that might help (you might also be stuck in the beta zone).
First, do not tie a goal to your identity. Nobody can be defined by a single interest. We all have many sides and qualities. Do not let any goal or interest define you. You are more than a job or a single dream.
Second, there is an important difference between giving up the goal and stopping the effort. If you just stop trying but keep the goal in the back of your mind, you will be frustrated. Disengaging means that you stop being committed to the goal. Once you stop trying, you need to deliberately tell yourself that you are abandoning the goal to pursue other opportunities.
In fact, in some cases, it can be good for one’s mental well-being to disengage from a goal but keep some of the effort. It’s called “turning it into a hobby.” If you enjoy an activity in itself, there is nothing wrong in devoting some of your time to it. Few stamp and coin collectors aspire to become professionals, yet many enjoy collecting. If you enjoy writing but are honest with yourself about the extremely low chances of becoming a best-selling author, by all means do keep writing. Just see it as a hobby rather than a goal, and don’t give up your day job. That is why my comment on writing magazines above was slightly unfair.
Last and most important, do not think of giving up as a failure, but as a choice. Your time is limited. If you follow a dream, it is harder to follow a different one. Try new activities, rediscover previous interests, and revise your aspirations. Be honest with yourself about your chances, and choose the goals that best suit you. And remember that, when you give up a goal, you do not fail. You make a choice to free up your time for other interests. ■
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