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Cutting off a dead-end situation isn’t a failure. It’s a victory.
By Laura Lifshitz — Written on Jan 20, 2017
There is a fine line between being done with love, giving up before you should pull the plug, and ending a bad situation when you’ve hit that “f*ck this” point. There’s a difference between defeat and the admission of failure before you’ve even given something a chance, and finally getting tired of a circus act and throwing in the towel.
Giving up is a failure. It’s backing out of something due to fear of failure, anxieties of many kinds, or low self-esteem.
Cutting off a dead-end situation isn’t a failure. It’s a victory. It’s admitting that something or someone in your life is bad for you, to you or with you. It’s deciding to win. It’s making a better choice.
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When you give up, you are cutting off a place or piece of you before it’s even begun. It’s the career you really wanted but were too afraid to go for. It’s meeting someone and feeling butterflies in the pit of your belly and running away because you don’t want him to end up like the others. It’s trying to achieve a fitness goal but realizing it’s going to take a lot of work and you’re too discouraged.
Giving up is when you see that your end result — whether it’s true love, more money, the better career — is difficult, time-consuming or risky, and you decide to back out before the curtains have even been pulled.
Giving up is relying on past narratives, self-told “truths” that really aren’t true, and negative commentary from others in order to back out on something that means a lot to you.
It’s deciding the game is over before the cards have been dealt.
It’s “rigging the game” to lose before a result has even been called.
It’s failing. It’s self-destruction. It’s cutting off your life story before the current chapter has come to a meaty compelling plot point.
It’s heartbreaking.
Having enough is when you have been through the ringer with a situation or people and decided that the cards that have been dealt, simply put, suck. It’s deciding that you already know the outcome and it’s toxic, bad or no damn good.
Having enough is when you know that you can no longer go on in the same situation and continue to grow as a person.
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It’s taking a cold, hard look in the mirror and deciding that this person, this job or this choice is making me my worst me. It’s making me unhappy. Depressed. Angry. Bitter. Frustrated. Anxious. Doubtful.
It’s taking a second look in the mirror and deciding, I like the way I used to look when I didn’t have X person in my life or when I wasn’t doing Y or Z. It’s deciding you need yourself back and the only way to find you again is to cut off the dead weight and move forward.
Having enough is a sign of winning. It’s a sign that you are choosing to have a better life. To be happier. To prune your tree in order for new growth to commence. New opportunities. New love. New life.
It’s shedding old skin and realizing that by doing so, even if it’s really painful, you will start to feel better day by day by day.
It’s winning. It’s celebrating you. It’s choosing yourself, your inner peace and your sanity over something that no longer serves you. It’s evaluating your life path and realizing you’re on the wrong road.
When you’re lost and trying to figure out where to turn, do you want to keep getting lost? No! And having enough is when you put yourself first and decide that it’s going to get better.
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It’s choosing you, time and time again. It’s not a failure even if it was a toxic situation that brought you down to even the lowest of lows. The underbelly of unhappiness. It’s only a failure if you continue to let that situation exist. Having enough means you are burying the past where it belongs: in the past, and moving forward to a glorious and bright future.
In other words, it’s ending a bad chapter in your book in order for you, the main character, to live happily ever after, however you choose.
