Reframing ‘Quit’

08 Jul Reframing ‘Quit’

Thus far in my professional career, I’ve quit four jobs. Four roles that may very well have been someone else’s dream job. Four perfectly acceptable opportunities to build a career.

Except they weren’t perfect. Not for me.

Up until a couple of years ago, having quit these four jobs brought me a tremendous amount of shame. I hated talking about it with others, especially those close to me, for fear of judgement. To them, I was unstable, indecisive, flighty and impossible to satisfy. Why couldn’t I just pick something and stick with it like everyone else?

I wondered the same thing. Maybe something was wrong with me? Or maybe I just hadn’t yet come to accept that adulthood for most is decades of working in quiet misery.

Even though I knew deep down that my decision to leave these roles was the right one, I couldn’t help but feel guilty and selfish for having made these choices. I often tried to play it off like I had a grand plan, that there was a calculated reason I had to move on. But the honest truth was that I just couldn’t stand the work or how it made me feel, and deep down I knew there must be something more to my working life than this.

Most people don’t ponder these things, though. And if they do, they don’t take action on them the way I did, so my choices seemed very abnormal. To me, my quest to find work that I loved seemed like an absolutely necessary way to live, but because I didn’t know many others who had done the same, I felt like a loose cannon.

I carried that burden around with me for years. Every time I had to admit to those close to me that I had left yet another job, I wanted to hide in a dark hole. Eventually they just came to expect it. Usually around the six-month mark in a new job, I’d begin to feel the angst of dissatisfaction, and they’d begin to prod me about whether I was going to quit this one too (ouch).

Quitting each job felt like I was carving a bigger, deeper scar than the last. And to me, these scars made me feel like an imperfect, flawed candidate for any future roles or career paths I was interested in pursuing. Not to mention a completely incapable adult.

But after years of feeling this way, a simple sidebar in The Fire Starter Sessions by Danielle LaPorte helped to change it all.

Entitled, Reframing Quit, it says:

It’s not so much quitting as…stopping, ceasing, retiring, putting it to rest, letting it fly, moving on, phasing out, bringing to a conclusion, taking a bow, changing course, clarifying, focusing, perfecting, shifting, trading up.

A couple of these words and phrases jumped out at me in particular, namely “changing course,” “clarifying,” and “focusing.”

I had never though of quitting in such a positive way before.

I didn’t quit those jobs. I chose to…

Change course; take my life in a new direction.

Clarify my purpose.

Focus my time and energy on pursuits that align with who I am.

To me, the word ‘quit’ always implied fault. As though I’d done something wrong by choosing to let go of what no longer served me (or perhaps never did). But having reframed ‘quit’ in these ways makes me feel liberated and empowered. There’s no shame anymore. In fact, I’m PROUD of my decisions.