“The truth is that changing often is the more courageous thing to do?
Just because you could persevere with a toxic relationship, job, religious faith or political allegiance doesn’t necessarily mean you have to’
When to quit and when to grit.
You might also want to check out what Susan David has to say on the matter.
This piece in the Guardian however jumped out as me as it is a topic of discussion in many of the Be Braver spaces I exist in
Be it conversations with clients, team or groups about projects, relationships, roles, hires, customers. Increasingly people even discussing when to grit or quite with where they choose to reside. A sign of the times perhaps.
Truth time. It’s also a regular feature of my own internal dialogues. Life is hard.
Keller asks the question
‘how do people manage to quit successfully, make that decision their own and not one based on somebody else’s idea of what constitutes a brave and meaningful life?’
How do we answer this in Be Braver?
By having the self knowledge and a model to help you understanding how you are able to consciously make decisions that are right for YOU. Exactly what the Be Braver mindset is designed to do.
To make doing the difficult things, that move you forwards towards the person you are becoming and the future you want to create, that bit easier and clearer to do. Our coaching, programmes and courses do just that
Unpopular but true: difficult decisions need courage because they aren’t easy.
That’s the point. The outcomes aren’t certain. There is a risk and of course you want to minimise regret.
If it were certain and easy. You’d not need courage.
I commend Keller for noticing that :
‘People who are successful in this life, with private jets and multiple homes and fancy cars suggest that they have worked harder and been more gritty and we have not, serves the people in power, it doesn’t serve the people in the middle or at the lower end’
We all need to be reminded to beware the Gurus?
Life is unequal. Chance and opportunity isn’t distributed fairly. We don’t all have good choices. There are authority gaps. We have the reality of the economic climate, social mobility, discrimination. Some sectors fair better than others. Responsibilities. Nepotism. I could go on.
Beware the success stories that influence the decisions you make. People will only ever tell you a version of a story that they want to be heard. This isn’t to be bleak. But its to ensure you frame your situation in an appropriate manner to the conditions and environment around you.
As much as we don’t want to be cowards, we don’t want to make reckless decisions either. Courage is the sweet spot.
The questions that have not been answered are the ones you want to ask. Not every quit leads to something better.
Sometimes the greatest changes can be found in how we choose to relate to the environment around us.
The best thing to do, is figure out how YOU make the best of the circumstances, experience, knowledge and opportunities life has afford you. The timing matters too.
We don’t all get the same choices, but we do all have the freedom to make our own decisions. To choose what we value, where we spend our time, whom we invest it in and who we want to become.
