WHAT I'M READING WEDNESDAY : Quit by Annie Duke

I am a terrible quitter.

Let me reframe that.

I am a terrible "on time quitter," but eventually I do, sometimes, maybe, get there.

I was raised in a household that lived by the motto : "Quitters never win, and winners never quit."

All of us were meant to be winners.

We were raised by two driven parents who accepted nothing less than our best.

You know the story about Sarah Blakely and her dad asking her and her brothers about their daily failures, and how that repeated question led to her eventually success.

That would never have happened in my house.

There was no talk of failure.
And thus, no talk of quitting.

Practically all of my early relationships ended with me getting dumped.

Why?

Because I refused to give up.

I refused to quit. (which really meant that I refused to give up trying to change the other person.)

In the end, it was 2 significant moments in my early 30s that forced me to reconsider my relationship with quitting.

1) I was 5 months away from marrying a man that wasn't going to be a true partner. It took a therapist's over-sharing of her opinion to "quit" the engagement. (Mind you, NOT my mother's opinion, though she was happy to share it.)

2) I was working for a toxic boss, convinced that if I persisted a little bit longer, things would turn around. They didn't. I knew I could either resign or risk getting fired. I took the former option.

Legendary poker player, Annie Duke, has a few opinions on the matter of quitting.

In her book "Quit", she combines her lived experience at the poker table, with others people's stories, and loads of research on human behavior and psychology, to reframe quitting as something all winners SHOULD do.

I loved every moment of this book and highly recommend it for anyone who is thinking that they might need to quit more things in their life.

In the last 24 hours since finishing the book, I have quit several endeavors.

It feels like freedom.

Originally posted on LinkedIn with comments

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