If you quit on the process, you are quitting on the result.
Idowu Koyenikan
Hey, Lovelies.
Everyone tells you not to be a quitter.
Everyone.
And that’s fine, if what you are quitting on is actually what you want. Hence the quote at the top of this page: If you quit on the process, you are quitting on the result.
Then there’s this quote: Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.
So, with both of these quotes in mind, I finally quit a group I have been a member of for over fifteen years.
When I was first invited to join the group it made me feel special, because it was a group based around a common interest, and where several of the members already had great success. That I was invited to join spoke to the yearning need in me for acceptance and approval – I felt like an imposter, and suddenly this group made me feel a little more legitimate – like I could be this thing, that I could belong.
It was great at first. Friendships deepened. As trust developed we began to share secrets and shames, and the group was a safe space to discuss anything, even beyond the central reason of why we were together.
But once the honeymoon was over, I saw that I didn’t fit in. The group were embarrassed about the fact that I was openly psychic, unless it was to give them private counsel, or to lend them cachet in certain circumstances that could show how liberal and artsy and bohemian and non-conformist they could be. Each member actively tried to steer me towards a way of being in the world that was more closely aligned to their own. In my insecurity I tried my best, but each change I made to the way I would have instinctively done something had the unfortunate result of making me doubt myself and my abilities even more. I became lost. And then I lost my love for the very thing that the group championed.
But I am loyal. I am not a quitter.
And anyway, I was full of self-doubt.
So, I stuck with it, I stuck with them, I did all I could to follow their processes. Still, at the same time, out in life, I began peeling myself away from the corporate world, and doing my best to live as my truth. Ah, said my friends, you’ll kill your business. Who will respect you? Why are you making this hard for yourself?
I told them I had to follow my path. They kept gently reminding me I was wrong, and that they were only telling me this because they were my friends and they could see I was making A BIG MISTAKE.
Then, one day, I heard that the group had a WhatsApp chat to which I was not invited, and that they often socialised or attended business-related functions without me. I tried to convince myself it was because they were in the city, and I often wasn’t.
I stuck with it. It was awkward, and I often brought up leaving, after which they would all insist that I needed to stay.
On Monday, I had a big meeting with my husband, planning our future, looking at family and health and goals and dreams, looking at how we could support those we love, and the causes dear to us, and still leave enough room in our own lives for each other and our personal projects.
Suddenly, on Monday afternoon, I knew it was time to leave the group. I quit via our email chat. I called each member personally to let them know. I wished them well, because I love them, and I want then to succeed, and I am grateful for our time together. I logged out one last time.
I quit on the process, because I did not need the result anymore. I chose me. And to choose me, I had to quit them.
It felt right, but I also felt shattered afterwards.
I put myself to bed early, completely wrung out. Hollow.
I woke at midnight, with energy and clarity. A problem I had sought to solve via the group, and that had eluded me for over a decade, suddenly laid itself out in front of me as I lay in the dark beside my sleeping husband. I saw where I had gone wrong. I saw how my current approach would never work, which is why I had become so stuck, and how I would need to start over one more time and begin in new energy, my way. I lay there, calm, inspired, clear.
You see, I had to let go, in order to make space for the new.
I had to quit.
I quit on the group, but not on the thing I wanted. That’s still burning bright within me.
I trust that in time I’ll find my way forward again, in right timing.
Sometimes quitting is absolutely the best thing you can do.
Much love, Nicole xx
