The Joy of Quitting

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Flourish: A leader in the Positive Psychology movement, Dr. Martin Seligman goes beyond happiness to examine what makes a fulfilling life. Once you have grasped the concept, you’ll find yourself applying it to different areas of your life. It won’t always be dramatic, sometimes it will just be as simple as saying to yourself “I don’t need this, I think I’ll just quietly walk away.” It feels GREAT. You don’t always need to win!

Of course, we admire people who persevere. Who doesn’t love the story of Thomas Edison and how he ran hundreds of experiments in his quest to perfect the lightbulb filament? The guy simply wouldn’t quit. Why? Because he knew that inventing was part of his soul’s journey. His passion, his commitment, his calling. If it hadn’t been, things would not have worked out for him.How am I supposed to know if that was God’s voice or my own? What if I was just being lazy? I asked God to please confirm, for sure, that it was His voice. Her work gives off a kind of radical stillness. It always lowers my blood pressure... Keiler Roberts is my new hero.”—Christopher Borrelli, The Chicago Tribune Sometimes in life we come up against certain individuals who press our buttons or challenge us, which can result in behaving in ways we aren’t necessarily proud of. Sometimes there are people with who, however hard we try, are just not in the right space to hear it or just don’t want to. This is not a new concept. The Joy of Quitting covers a period of eight years in Roberts’ life and involves people she lives with or interacts with daily. Her daughter plays a prominent role, along with her partner, parents, assorted family members, friends, and pets. These interactions lend themselves to humour, not only when her daughter Xia says something precocious (like asking for Tylenol because she’s sad or whispering to avoid fat-shaming squirrels) but when her partner asks the kind of questions that rile every woman up (“If I ask you something, do you promise not to get mad?”).

I had a 20-year career on radio and TV, working for the BBC, CNN, and NPR. At one point, I had my own show on the Travel Channel. But it was the wrong path for me. Appearing on camera made me anxious. Traveling for weeks at a time without adequate sleep or nutrition stressed me out. Constantly, my inner guide told me this wasn’t for me, yet I ignored it. For two decades, I was one of those people who pursued, as Carolyn Myss puts it, “a dream that does not belong to them.” Eventually, it put me in the hospital. Anyone who’s squinted doubtfully at a parenting manual will relish The Joy of Quitting by Keiler Roberts, which skewers family life with merciless and very funny directness."— Guardian Best Graphic Novels of 2022 Think about why you want to quit smoking, and commit those reasons to paper and to memory. Start with the big, obvious reasons, and keep going until you've listed all of the little ones, too. Smoking touches so many parts of our lives. Look at how it has affected yours in detail.After worship, I hurried upstairs, called my manager, and told them I was quitting. I didn’t need any more signs. I needed to be obedient, despite if I agreed with God or not.

How do you know when to quit? I think your gut knows. How do you feel when you think about quitting? Does it bring feelings of relief or regret?How Will You Measure Your Life?: Clayton Christensen explores how to avoid the unhappiness that often traps high-achievers. The most common smoking-related causesof death for smokers are heart disease, COPD, stroke, and cancer. The idea behind quietly quitting is that you don’t always have to or need to have the last say in something. In fact, sometimes you don’t need to say anything at all – you quietly quit from the situation. How do I resolve things? Each time I pray for a job, miraculously, the Lord provides something. This has been a common theme in my life since I was young. And, just like always, this past month, I started praying for a job, and The Lord provided. It’s the same with you. You can struggle, you can fight, you can persist all you want, but if you’re pursuing the wrong dream, a destiny that does not belong to you, you’ll only ever be second or third rate. The brakes will go on, and they will stay on until you come to your senses and quit.

This is the point of the debate around changing attitudes to work where people wade in with generalisations about whiny, entitled millennials who don’t understand how the “real world” works and who expect interesting, well-paid jobs to be handed to them on a plate. These kids wouldn’t really feel fulfilled unless they were prime minister, won a Nobel prize for literature and had babies with a supermodel. Even then, they’d still wonder, am I really following my passion?It’s easy to fall into the trap of conflating an artist with a work, because it allows us, as readers, to base our critique of that work on preconceived notions about the artist. It’s easier to make that error with someone like Roberts who has wilfully and consistently chosen to draw inspiration from her life. It is also what makes her approach special though, in the way she draws attention to moments of grace and beauty lying hidden in the mundane activities we are all forced to plough through. In the grand tapestry of life, quitting is just another thread. It may be brief, but it can add depth and colour to the overall picture. The willingness to quit can open doors to new opportunities and uncharted territories. It allows you to embrace change and embrace the unknown. He loved to tell us that the only people who ever accomplished anything were the ones who persevered. And he was right, sort of. But, I’ve been working hard to correct my generational trauma. I’d mute phone calls from real life people when they came in during my leisurely social-media scroll, choosing synthetic connection over the real deal.