The surprising benefits of giving up
nautil.us
nautil.us
Our brain is aware of when we stop making progress towards a goal we care about. The feeling of frustration builds until it becomes so strong it essentially forces us to stop.
Then, to get rid of the emotion, we have to step back and reassess. And then either see if we should try a different approach to the problem, give up on the problem entirely, or triple-check that the same course of action is still worth pursuing and thus "re-energize" ourselves.
If we never felt frustrated, we'd keep attempting futile goals for so much longer. When you feel frustrated, the answer is never to just ignore the feeling and try to "power through". It's to step back and reassess at the first opportunity.
If you encounter an obstacle and just stop without feeling frustrated, then you just didn't care much in the first place. That's fine. It's not laziness, it's just not valuing that particular outcome much.
Frustration is generally a very easy emotion to identify because you tense up, get irritated, have a feeling of wanting to shout or swear, growl, etc. Even if you're in a professional environment where you can't do those things, you feel the impulse to. There's no confusing that feeling with laziness.
"Laziness" is generally a value judgment imposed by a third party, that you're not doing the thing they value as important. An employer might think an employee is "lazy", when the employee thinks they're underpaid and chooses not to do anything above the bare minimum.
What looks like laziness might actually be very prudent resource conservation if you know the whole story.
Being lazy, ie being particularly unwilling to put in much effort for a reward, is quite orthogonal to how long you keep pursuing a particular approach to achieve a reward.
1. Frustration depends entirely on the expectations of the outcome of an action. 2. Frustration is a spectrum. 3. Frustration is necessary to engage your full focus
If it were on a scale of 1-10. 4 through 8 would be the ideal frustration to keep you engaged in a goal. Below 4 and you would not be able to engage with the task fully. Above 8 and its a signal that either your expectations about the outcome are completely wrong or your approach is completely wrong, and you need to step back.
Playing your little brother in Street Fighter will never make you better at it, until he starts beating you and making you annoyed that you are losing, forcing you to concentrate and pay attention to the more subtle details of the game.
You start feeling frustrated when it takes longer than what you've planned for. When it's not going according to plan. And you need to step back and say, OK now is it still worth it...?
Some things just can't be powered through. Frustration helps us realize that so that we don't waste more energy on things that don't seem accomplishable.
Also, it is absolutely not the case that more frustration leads to higher payoff. There are tons of cases where frustration leads to zero payoff, and where you get complete payoff with zero frustration.
Frustration is not the same as hard work. If something takes a lot of hard work but progress is constant and clear, there's no frustration involved.
I did a lot of iOS development. The layout of elements was done with Auto Layout, and I really had the hang of it. It was replaced by how SwiftUI does it, and I knew it would take me a couple of weeks to get the hang of it.
I often felt what I'd call frustration. Lots of times, I knew I could easily express solutions in the old framework. But I knew I needed to learn the new one.
Are you saying that's not called frustration?
It can definitely be frustration, as you keep re-assessing whether it's really worth switching to SwiftUI, and getting upset that something isn't as easy as it was the previous way, for you. I've definitely started switching to a new library and then ultimately stopped because it was too frustrating. What I thought was going to be a better library for me, wasn't. Other times I've learned a new library and felt mostly delight, as I'd discover it was set up in ways that solved all my old problems, and I could see how much time it was going to save me in the future.
Also, you can feel frustration on a daily scale, without feeling frustrated on a larger scale. E.g. you know you want to learn SwiftUI, but today you're running into roadblocks with it, and you need to figure out whether to step back from it today and come back to it tomorrow, refreshed and having slept on it.
If there's anything frustration can be confused with, it's often resentment. E.g. when switching to SwiftUI doesn't actually help you achieve any goals of your own in any direct way, and you feel like Apple is creating busywork with some arbitrary deprecation or migration.
Often, you may feel both -- resentful that Apple is forcing you to learn something new, and frustration that learning the new technology is harder than you'd expected, or not providing the expected benefits, and therefore possibly not worth it at all, or at least not worth it today.
But that's very different from the idea that frustration is somehow intrinsic to accomplishment at all, for your own goals. It's not.
It's surprising how effective being lazy can sometimes be. Some tasks that could be brute-forced seem to magically melt away if you adopt round about ways and let time pass. It's a latency/throughput tradeoff.
It’s obviously true that some people chase almost “fantasy-level” ambitions. But for most of us, the reason we keep going is that, somewhere in the background, we still believe our goals are possible, possible enough to justify the time, effort, and even psychological pain. If some external standard comes along and declares “this is impossible, you should give up,” that can reduce stress in the short term, but it may also plant a long-term regret that keeps growing with age.
Looking back on my own life, the goals I abandoned for internal reasons (“this no longer fits who I am / I don’t want to pay this price anymore”) are the ones I can live with. I learned from those failures and even feel a bit stronger because of them. The painful ones are the goals I dropped mainly because someone else convinced me they were impossible. Those still feel like open loops.
So maybe the more useful takeaway isn’t “giving up is good,” but: keep reassessing your goals realistically as you grow. If, after a sober look at your skills and constraints, you still feel a goal is worth the cost, then commit and try. At least when you’re old and sitting in a chair somewhere, you’ll be less haunted by “I never even gave it a shot.”
This is ultimately what the article is talking about. It's not about giving up on your ultimate goal, it's about giving up on your current approach and finding other ways to progress towards your goal.
Here’s a demotivational poster that comes to mind: https://despair.com/cdn/shop/files/stupidity.jpg
On the other hand, sometimes without pushing, you won't be able to fully enjoy something "later".
Stupid example: learning piano or guitar. Which metrics would you use?
In addition, here the issue is also about children, not just grownups: when to stop paying for their "xyz" course? And how do you teach them when to stop/change?
If we're able to guess that right, I guess we can educate children better to have better grownups.
For one, it avoids the psychological traps of frustration if you keep it realistic.
The other good thing is you will not sit down complaining andnyou will put your time on something that is worth.
You can fail or succeed, but with that mindset I think things go, at least, psychologically better.
I am not convinced at all that becoming just comfy and a conformist in itself is more healthy.
If something isn't working, you can keep ramming into the same wall harder or you can try a different approach.
The paper's finding focuses on goal adjustment/flexibility being a functional response when encountering difficulty meeting a goal. Disengagement had correlations with impairment. Which probably tracks most people's life experience.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02312-4
| This interpretation aligns with our finding that dispositional flex- ibility, rather than more proximal disengagement or reengagement, more strongly predicts functioning. Notably, we observed a positive association between disengagement and impairment. Although this could reflect a ‘dark side’ of disengagement—where letting go of goals offers short-term relief but risks longer-term purposelessness and dysfunction11—this pattern was not evident in longitudinal or experi- mental studies. An alternative explanation is that the association is bidirectional, with impairment potentially prompting disengagement as a reactive strategy. Given these complexities, we advice caution in interpreting this finding and highlight the need for further research.
I'd feel the same when between employment like in 2023 the tech industry tanked so I could not get hired for a year (there were 6mo contracts which I did not accept). Before I decided to eat it and work at a factory, I was just watching TV/enjoying a couple months off (I had to sell all my possessions at a loss to get by). Eventually at the end of 2024 I did accept a 6mo contract that is now going beyond a year.
The thing I didn't realize is the 6mo contract while short pays double a factory wage so it's like being employed for a year.
That’s not to knock ambition, but to frame it in the most practical terms. How will success actually and specifically benefit you?
I wonder if the whole idea of goals and ambition being able to deliver happiness is wrong. Certainly whenever I’ve set a goal and achieve it nothing much changes in how I feel about life because I was hoping for too much and so must just find a new goal.
>Not sure if I'll ever be able to go back to ... meetings.
It's with the wisdom of age that I now understand why HR discriminates against gaps in employment history... mostly because I don't know how I could ever be employable, again.
Monk-mode is such a cheap way to exist. Highly recommend it.
Must be nice to have quitting money.
I’ve never once been able to afford being able to quit a job, and I’m like, closing in on 40 now.
It’s possible to live on $1000/month in the USA if you have a shared bedroom, dine-in, and skip medical insurance.
I live on about twice that in a mid-sized US city. Own my car, rent in below-average part of town.
Avocado toast advice is dumb because it’s an expense that doesn’t move the needle.
My "6 month" runway ended up lasting a lot longer, mostly due to the stock market taking off. I ended up living off of interest for 18 months. By the time I admitted to myself that I wasn't much of an entrepreneur and needed to go work for someone else, I hadn't taken too much out of savings. I also had straightened out my head quite a bit, so I was able to figure out what kind of salaried jobs made me happy. (And paid enough for me to live a good life and save.)
I really encourage you to see if there's a way to adjust your finances so you can live more cheaply, save, and then live off of your interest for a period of time to get your head straightened out.
I can't think of a period in which markets did that well. (And "interest" is a strange term here.) Were you leveraged, or did you also just not have expenses as high as your original estimate?
The market went up much faster than I originally estimated. Basically, I got lucky.
I quit my job in 2009, right when the massive bull market started. I had a bunch of stocks and mutual funds that I planned to sell in order to support myself.
Which I did: What happened was that my stocks and mutual funds appreciated faster than I spent them. (If I hadn't sold them, they would have doubled or tripled in value over the 18 month period.)
For example: The day after the iPad came out, I sold my Apple stock at a nice profit to pay my expenses for a month.
Ironically, if I had stayed at work as long as I planned, I probably would have had even more runway. (But then I wouldn't have landed the awesome job that I got when I went back to a salaried job in 2011.)
This took me about two decades and two companies to discover, about myself.
Good timing and luck have also given me a much longer runway than I ever anticipated having. Mostly just need to work for my sanity and health benefits (at this point).
That is also what people who persist on the path of their goal do. And that's not giving up, as the title claims.
And then you will be lectured on how prosperous a country it is and how big the GDP is, probably by a foreigner lol.
And commute is unacceptable, for some even 20 mins according to same topic being discussed also here ad nausea.
Btw having a house is a luxury basically anywhere in the world, not sure why the baseline expectation is that its some UN-enforced basic human right. I for example lived, live and will live in apartments only which cost less than 50% of similarly-sized house and derive life satisfaction other things than gardening and constant upkeep of property. Really not getting this want-luxury-as-baseline mindset.
People are upset about it because together those things, plus the end of the pension somewhat earlier, mean the death of the middle class, the idea of which was a pretty big part of American post-war identity.
More economic drag on getting educated, more economic drag on becoming a property owner and the security that provides, healthcare costs are a drag on accumulating money for younger generations and will soak up anything their parents managed to accumulate. Middle class = dead.
Getting used to living in an apartment is a smaller issue in my opinion.
If the average person/family cannot work hard, save, and purchase their own safe, comfortable, living accommodations, the implication is that the landowning class will forever co-opt an increasing percentage of the economic surplus for one of the most essential goods - shelter. There is only so much adequately zoned land, and so much housing on that land. Populations, and increasing, and therefore so is demand.
You are absolutely welcome to forego property ownership if you like. There are many benefits in terms of flexibility (e.g. ability to quickly move somewhere else). But this is typically not an economically advantageous move in the long term if you're staying rooted in one place. And having dealt with toxic, abusive landlords, there is an understated element of psychological safety to ownership.
We're not just talking about big cities. We're talking about suburbs too, and even more "rural" areas that are still within a few hours of a city. Essentially where 90+% of the population actually lives.
This is not a first-world-tech-bro complaint. It is a genuine economic problem for us that affects the vast majority of people who live here, and therefore the country as-a-whole.
People would not have voted for a moronic despot had he not been promising what they've all been asking for - a radical reshaping of the system that hasn't been working for the vast majority. People cannot afford the American dream that they were promised, and they are angry about it.
Majority lives in urban areas.
Also yes, they want to live where the jobs are. If compromise on location means "being unemployed" then most just cant afford it.
We trained our mind to ignore and forget all animal instincts, body signals and wisdom acquired through ages.
Of course, ancient battle wisdom from the East tells you how to approach issues - saama, daana, bhedha, danda - that is - make friends, negotiate, divide and rule, use force. At any point, if things look infeasible, retreat and avoid. Pure common sense.
That's probably something you learn in India. In the West that'd be Machiavelli (and countless Roman/Greek philopsophers/generals, etc), for whoever went to school.
Anyway, all this is somehow unrelated to the article.
The main issue is that people nowadays have somehow internalized a weird "alpha male, never give up, don't cry, just shut up an resist, impossible is nothing" mindset. The issue is that many parents don't want to create "weak" grownups, with the side effects of creating potentially sick ones, who will grow and will have kids and "won't repeat the same mistakes as my parents".
In my experience the smartest and possibly most successful (not rich, but successful in terms of satisfied/happy/in a good state financially) people are the ones that know when to change course. Finding the sweet spot (the "when") is just pure talent. This is extremely difficult for a parent to understand: when to jump in and tell your kids "it's OK, do something else" without shame.
I don't know what counts as "nowadays" but this male image has been promoted for a really long time. "Big boys don't cry" and "strong men don't take no for an answer" have been a thing for centuries. Stoicism was centered around emotional self-control more than 2000 years ago.
This survived for so long because we used to live in societies that were very patriarchal. So men knew their role and it was also at the top of the pyramid, all in a precarious equilibrium from a mental health perspective.
What happened nowadays is that society is less patriarchal. Men are no longer at the top of the pyramid, they no longer have a clearly defined societal role, but they still carry some of the old remnants because occasionally that's the expected of them and that's still how many boys are educated. The modern man is locked into a world where his education and emotional toolset are inadequate. They are raised to lock their feelings like an "alpha" but no longer have an outlet for anything because the alpha role in society started evaporating or shifting away from them.
It's a mental health crisis that will overflow sooner or later and it won't be good for anyone around it when it happens.
This is the exact opposite of what Stoicism teaches. It's all about figuring out as early as possible when you're aiming for an "impossible goal" and should dismiss that goal as something that you really have no control over. As for the emotional control part, the real goal is not to let your emotions affect your behavior in dysfunctional ways. That's why the main focus was not in fact "big boys don't cry", it was "big boys don't get angry/freak out/throw temper tantrums, EVER". Because that kind of unrestrained anger is really bad for you and those around you.
> That's why the main focus was not in fact "big boys don't cry", it was "big boys don't get angry/freak out/throw temper tantrums, EVER"
In practical experience "boys don't cry" has been a staple of the actual education boys get for centuries. To the point that a lot of boys got a smacking for crying. Temper tantrums are as natural as crying, a reaction to the developing brain. They were considered abnormal and "destructive" because that was the limit of our understanding in child psychology.
On the other hand getting educated to never "get angry/freak out/throw temper tantrums, EVER" is just as toxic. Boys and men are asked to bottle up everything and this sort of worked, still with a high mental health price, in the past when there were outlets for that pressure. With those gone we just made the situation worse.
I don't understand what you mean by "rain, rain go away" in the context of modern upbringing of children. I know of the nursery rhyme with that line, but that's at least 350 years old.
That's an odd example.
In this society? When and where was it ever different?
First lesson of life should be "you work to buy your bread" followed by "nobody will ever give you something for free".
If the first lesson in life is "you work to buy your bread" and "nobody will ever give you something for free" you'll end up in a world filled with egoistical maniacs. Which unfortunately is where we are at the moment.
Your second lesson is not even true considering I'd have unconditional love for my children/wife. Altruistic love in the form of give for the sake of giving, not give for the sake of receiving.
People forget that we are strong together. Working together is actually the only way humanity got where its at until some maniacs invented slavery.
Notably, neurotypicals generally fundamentally know this and even priests will throw abusive assholes out of church while still preaching peace, love and tolerance - without blinking at the apparent hypocrisy.
Or, as the case may be sometimes, initiating religious wars.
It seems like neurodivergents are the ones who get hung up on the literalness.
All life requires a degree of self defense/an immune system, or it dies.
And one could argue that the big reason we don’t have slavery anymore (by and large) is because of mechanization.
There were plenty of preachers in the US South (and plenty of religious figures everywhere in history) that preached the righteousness of slavery. While also preaching peace and love. And they put up quite a fight!
It was not an easy thing winning the Civil war, and plenty of wars were won on the back of slaves, at least in antiquity.
The Spartans weren’t feared because of their egalitarian and humanistic ethos, that’s for sure.
Humans for some reason have these traits, being jealous, egoistical and whatnot is natural, the difficulty is in acknowledging that and to actively work against these feelings instead of giving into them. A lot of humans also have the wrong perception of strength. They see the rich as the strong and the poor as the weak, but I dont want to get too deep into that.
This conversation reached pretty philosophical levels and I can admit that its unrealistic to expect altruism from each and everyone, especially when their basic needs aren't met.
Would still be cool if rich people could share a little more though, as in my view it should be impossible to be rich while other people starve... Especially considering rich people make it hard for others getting wealthier because it means competition. A lot of people got rich in highly unethical ways. Everyone should have the chance to thrive and afford basic and cultural needs, nobody should have to work 70 hour weeks or two jobs just to survive.
They get asked for money, or have many opportunities to spend money every day. If they took all of them, they’d have no money left.
The last time this happened in the US, the deal (so called ‘new deal’) was let us tax you, and give it to the poor, or we destroy you.
If they can avoid being destroyed and ALSO not lose their wealth, what do you think they are doing to do?
> adjusting our goals in response to stress or challenges, rather than grinding on, is often “a more appropriate and beneficial response.”
It depends a lot on the goals. I give up often and quickly. One reason is ... lack of time. (And also lack of discipline, but lack of time is really one key reason I toss away many things these days. You live only once, at the least most of us.)
There is, however had, one interesting study from psychology. I forgot the name, but they showed tests with kids as to "if you eat this now, you won't get an additional reward, but if you won't eat it for an hour, you get more lateron". Now this was not the setup, I am just quoting this from memory. The adults left the room so only the kid was there and some sweets on the table.
It was quite convincingly shown that the kids with more discipline and will-power, aka who refused the sweets in order to get more reward lateron, were also more successful on average lateron. Or, at the least, avoided some problems such as drug addiction and what not. So I think the "benefits of giving up" has to be put in context. It depends on what and how you give up. I may not give up on A, but then I may not be able to do B, because of lack of time, lack of resources and so forth. So these are just trade-offs, but discipline and will-power are just about almost always really excellent traits to have or train for.
It was also highlighted (recently?) iirc that it has little to do with discipline and will-power, but is surprisingly affected whether kids come from wealthy / "good" families (and thus can trust grown ups) vs kids coming from poorer / "troubled" families (and thus just leap at the opportunity and don't trust that they will actually get another marshmallow if they will wait).
so not sure if the conclusion that self-discipline is the cause of later life success is the moral of the study instead of kids with messed up parents have a worse time of it.
I know there was just a space missing in "later on", but I couldn't help but imagine "lateron" as some sort of placebo narcotic....
Aka capitulate to, or attempt to befriend/suck up to the threat.
It’s a pretty common, but particularly reviled response, actually. very apparent in some sectors of politics right now though.
From Cambridge.org:
> (an act or example of) escape, running away, or avoiding something: > They lost all their possessions during their flight from the invading army.
flight [flahyt]
noun an act or instance of fleeing or running away; hasty departure.
Its usage isn’t extinct, but it is far less common than it used to be and IS largely extinct in casual day to day speech. We would say flee, run away, escape, or any of a dozen other things more often than “flight”
The nautilus story uses one meta study and the New Scientist has many individual citations with some quotes from scientists.
For example, if you find yourself in strong disagreement with the current leadership at your company, instead of having cataclysmic battles every day on Teams, you could simply hand in your resignation letter and walk away while the boat is still afloat. Keep your chin up and firmly depart with grace.
Short term, this looks exactly like giving up. Long term, it can surface the foundation of your arguments and force those higher up the chain (investors) to potentially come back to you and your arguments in the future (assuming you were actually right).
I'm living this one right now. It's surreal watching people who attempted to game of thrones me ~every day get perp walked. I wouldn't say I enjoy this because it would have been better if we had figured out a way to work together. It definitely wasn't a skill problem on anyone's part.
It is often best to use your opponent's momentum and energy against them. If the problem you are dealing with is other people, giving up is a reasonable default. If the problem is some challenging machine learning algorithm or other personal project I think you should be more cautious about walking away. This can turn into a bad habit.
The fewer chefs you have in the kitchen, the easier it is to assign blame and figure out what the real issues are. You can become part of that refining process if you have the contingencies to endure this job market.
It was said speaking of art, but it could also apply to software projects :)
If I forget a word mid conversation, I spend a lot of time trying to remember it. I can google or ask the chat bot, but emotionally I want to get there it on my own.
I think that I’m addicted to the feeling I get when I find these things or solve a very difficult problem. After reading an earlier article about “aha” moments, I wonder if it’s the same circuit. Maybe there is also a natural predisposition for hunting in my brain, which is why food seems to help me get past these … moments.
It is of course obvious that any hard goal requires effort and effort is linked with a lot of "bad things". The whole article can be reduced to this. Trying requires effort and effort is hard.
I was into punk as a kid, still am I guess, and there's this recurring motif in Rancid tracks: "the secret to a good life is knowing when you're through".
Also recently had some words of wisdom I liked from a mate in his mid-sixties: "one door has got to close for another one to open".
But what if I would prefer to buy "the dip"?
One should become aware of one’s deluded notion in which one thinks that ‘I belong to these objects of the world and my life depends upon them. I cannot live without them and they cannot exist without me, either.’ Then by profound enquiry, one contemplates ‘I do not belong to these objects, nor do these objects belong to me’. Thus abandoning the ego-sense through intense contemplation, one should playfully engage oneself in the actions that happen naturally, but with the heart and mind ever cool and tranquil. Such an abandonment of the ego-sense and the conditioning is known as the contemplative egolessness.
-- from "Vasistha's Yoga" translated by Swami Venkatesananda.
The ego-sense is the Mind in its capacity/function as self-identification. Its is called Ahamkara (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahamkara) and is an aspect of Antahkarana - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antahkarana. It is fully capable of creating delusions from external (i.e. objects through the senses) or internal (i.e. objects through its own imagination) means.
Mind is just an orchestrator of responses by processing of sensory information, memories and instincts. Actually, such processing and response can happen throughout the body as well to a limited extent.
Philosophizing is as old as mankind with even the most primitive tribe developing a "Worldview" within which it placed itself i.e. gave meaning to its existence. "Modern Science" itself was birthed from Philosophy in order to study "Objective Reality" separately from our "Subjective Perception" of it.
But the fact that we "live in our Mind" only via subjective perceptions (i.e. experiences/feelings/emotions/thoughts/memories/etc.) has not gone away and hence the problems engendered by this must be faced.
The need for a study of this through a Philosophy is nicely stated by the opening verse of Samkhya Karika (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samkhyakarika) which is a seminal text from the Samkhya (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samkhya) school of philosophy;
Because of the torment of the three-fold suffering, arises this inquiry to know the means of counteracting it. If it is said that such inquiry is useless because perceptible means of removal exist, we say no because these means are neither lasting nor effective. (See the "Contents" section of Samkhya Karika webpage linked to above for a detailed understanding)
So what Philosophies give us is a way to orient our psychology through a appropriate worldview which promises the removal of all suffering and unhappiness which Biology by itself cannot.
Any new world view that didn't go through same level of evolution and not tested against the physical world around it, is just a sales talk to influence people who were desperate and fearful and struggling for survival. It doesn't matter who stated it and when.
> Appropriate world view was evolved over millennia through continuous cycles of adaptation helped by sensory perceptions, much before these philosophies came up.
No. Evolution/Biology have nothing to do with "worldviews" which is purely a human psychological concept eg. Bacteria has no worldviews but is genetically preprogrammed to do whatever is needed to survive. Adaptation under evolutionary pressure has given us a complex brain/nervous system but we also have something called "Consciousness" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness) There are various models to try and explain it (the above wiki page is pretty detailed) but regardless of any explanation we experience it from moment to moment. That gives rise to a "Mind" and its consequent "Thoughts/Emotions/Feelings/Memories/etc." which is where "we live". So the question is; how do we manage this? The obvious answer of "we always seek to maximize happiness" fails since Humans endure all sorts of hardships/self-harm in search of meaning (eg. gory rituals in many religions).
Philosophers have been studying the problems of Consciousness/Mind/etc. from time immemorial and over time have built up a body of knowledge much of which has been validated by empirical practice eg. Effects of Meditation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_meditation. It seems we have many "states of consciousness" some of which keep us in a tranquil/peaceful/calm/blissful state over long periods of time. This is what is called "end to suffering due to worldly existence". A philosophical worldview gives a practical roadmap to achieve this.
good ideas are very hard to give up on
go all the way there & imagine your life without this goal, and accept it
if it forces its way back into your life multiple times, it might be a good idea
wait for the conditions to arise where it becomes a possibility and execute
1. Job: I used to take job as my heaven, over-work, over-deliver, over everything. You are let go the moment the company please coz you are just a number. I stopped seeing workplace as heaven but as "it pays the bills", full stop.
2. Finance: Directly related to above, have an emergency saving preferably at least up to 6 months worth of paid bills. I have been layoff twice up to 5 months before finding a job. Nothing destroy you more than finance stress, giving up that fear of job loss alone will increase your well-being beyond your comprehension. Some people give up working altogether, we all will get old one day, your "giving up" must include that.
3. Cash/Minimalist: Give up having the latest phone model, the latest car model, the latest everything, nobody cares, and definitely not the people from your social media. Cash over debit card so you can easily see what you are spending on. Ban credit card and you will see money you didn't know you had.
4. Relationship: I never had much luck with it, but after ending a 6y long term relationship, I gave up. I have hobbies, pets, that is all I need.
5. Friendship: People will only show you their side that they wanna you to see, and not who they really are. Stop trying to please friends and you will see who are the real ones and who are after personal interest.
This is me giving up and yet, being happier, healthier, eating better, etc, etc.
Save your applause for the end of the road.
This seems to be a correlation, not a causation. There are many studies that show Stress, Anxiety, and Depression are prevalent in people who are smarter than the average, due to factors such as heightened self-expectations, rumination on negative experiences, and awareness of negative aspects of the world.
People who are smarter are more driven, which is how they develop their cognitive abilities. Giving up doesn't cause less anxiety, these people have less anxiety because they don't have the faculty to be affected by it.
Ah, the old “I’m anxious therefore I’m smart, they’re not therefore they’re stupid”. Lol, get your head out of your ass.
Also "I’m smart, they’re not therefore they’re stupid" said the person whose handle is WISEoWISE. Gee you must be super wise.
Go back to Reddit troll.
Couldn't find anyone interested in publishing it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Distilled it down to 1. a 3-min song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDnpZJI7jKw 2. a 5-min talk https://youtu.be/U4ZnfCmTJMY?si=Ac_jVKnR-ARQilLu
A dream is just a story you have made up, and the main character in the story isn't even the real you. Following a dream means sacrificing real happiness today trying to manifest imaginary happiness for an imaginary character in an imaginary future. Engage with your real life instead.
Seems everyone here is kinda missing the point. It looks to be less about giving up and more about engaging with new goals. You find X goal is too hard to achieve and give up but also decide to pursue Y goal that is more achievable (and still has some fulfillment to it).
I get that but doesn’t seem anything too radical… If I have impossible to achieve goals then I’d naturally be upset. Spending time on goals I feel I can accomplish is almost always going to be more fulfilling than doing ones that feel impossible.
If I’d pushed a little harder, would it have finally broken through?
Figma, Airbnb, and the other freak successes only exist because they didn’t quit.
I suspect the reason is because most of the people, at that time, have surrendered already.
I feel delusional that I still want to keep working on it.
I guess we’ll see how year 2 post-launch goes.