Can't Quit on a Bad Day
My amazing wife reminds me of this principle we have in our family mission statement when it applies to an ongoing situation (because my memory just cannot be trusted to recall everything I've ever said, much to my chagrin), and I think it's a valuable rule to live by, when one has stumbled into a mental state which requires some nurturing and grace. I can't recall where we first came in contact with this as a decision-making principle (which contributes strongly to the parenting ethos we are establishing well in-advance of having kids), but it basically goes like this:
You can absolutely quit something you committed to, as long as it is not a result of emotions stirred up by one day of challenge or strife.
Effectively (and more concisely), "You can't quit on a bad day". Which isn't as easy as it sounds! Bad days happen to us all. Emotions arise like the wind, unexpected and yet backed up by all the justifications our minds can manufacture, faster than our awareness can catch them, often. We tell ourselves stories to justify decisions we're considering, or those we've already made. But commitments are sacred, and to back down from something you said you would do, even just to oneself, has long-lasting detrimental effects on one's self-image. For, every time you follow through on something you said you would do, big or small, you bolster your confidence in being a person of your word. And every time you flake out, make excuses, or otherwise depart from a commitment you made, it takes a chink out of that armour. So because Mary and I are all about finding the path of least resistance to the best life available, we found that this "allowing yourself a way out as long as it's not a decision made in the heat of a fleeting emotion gives us the space to breathe and decompress from that challenging experience in order to make a more clear-headed decision about how to move forward.
That being said, sometimes quitting makes sense! Strategically pivoting to a better way of accomplishing a goal is how successful campaigns in war were won, or victories in sports from football to martial arts. Companies have decided to bail on a certain product line or geographic market due to reports which came in after they made declarations to conquer such territory. Changing one's mind after charting a course is sometimes the only way to survive an unexpected setback, but doing it with a clear, rational frame of mind is vital to victory, as I recently read about in the absolutely harrowing attempt of Sir Ernest Shackleton to cross the Antarctic continent in 1914. You want to talk about making hard choices in the face of difficult circumstances? I challenge you to find a more excruciatingly difficult set of conditions from which to traverse than what Shackleton and his men faced on that voyage. Fortunately, most of us will never face what they had to, but the principle applies. Try everything you can to get to where you said you were going, make adjustments appropriate to the changing circumstances, and leave yourself a side door out of which to exit but only after the emotion of the challenge has passed and you are thinking clearly again.
I hope that's helpful. Go and grow.
2%
P.S. I forget some of these important guiding principles in part because I have departed from my practice of hanging or writing reminders around my living arrangement. It's crucial to keep guiding philosophies within view to help guide one's decisions when the mind is occupied with the decision one is making. Mission/vision statements and core philosophies exist to guide one's mind and hand in doing right according to that person's beliefs, and it is a practice worth doing to update and re-read those reminders regularly so as not to stray from the path one laid out for themselves during a time of clear-headed reflection.