How To Know When It’s Time to Give Up

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, do me a favor, share it with someone that you know and love. The only way that we can grow this podcast really is just from you guys sharing it. So if you would share it, I would greatly appreciate it and that way we can help more people. Today, we're gonna talk about how to know when it's time to give up. And it might surprise some of you today because I'm going to talk to you about giving up, which isn't something that I really believe in most of the time, but in certain situations, giving up is actually one of the strongest things that you can do.

0:44And the reason why is because giving up is not always a sign of failure. I know people who think that if they give up on something, automatically it's a failure, but sometimes giving up on something is the smartest thing that you can do. It is the most courageous decision that you can make because sometimes when you give up on something that maybe died a long time ago and you've been carrying with you, or you give up on something that has kind of been outgrown, it leaves more space for you to fill in the next thing that's gonna be better for you in your life. And listen, I am all about following through.

1:21I obsess about following through. How do I make sure that I follow through on everything that I say I'm going to do? How do I train people and teach them how to follow through? I'm all about working your ass off and putting every ounce of energy that you can into creating the life that you want. But sometimes there is this part that the best thing that you can do for yourself and your future is to give up on something that you have been holding on to for way too long. And sometimes, honestly, what we're trying to do, and we've all done this before, and some of you listening are doing it right now, and hopefully this is a wake-up call, sometimes you're trying to breathe life into something that died a long time ago.

1:58And this, like, you've been dragging this thing for years. And it's like that thing, that relationship, that job, that mindset, that whatever it might be, you outgrew that thing years ago, but you're just using so much energy continuing to drag it down the road. And then sometimes you just got to let go. When you let go, you have more energy, you have more space, and sometimes it's the right time to turn the page. And like I said, it could be on a relationship, it could be on a job, it could be on your business, It could be on your mindset. It could be on a friendship. Hell, it could be on a belief system.

2:34And everything has some sort of lifespan. And few things are supposed to last forever. Some are, but many things are not. And so you might just be forcing energy into something that no longer serves you. And just because it's familiar doesn't mean that it's fulfilling and it's adding anything to your life anymore. And so just to be fully transparent with you guys and to really dive into it is what we're going to talk about today. Sometimes giving up is the best thing you can do. And it's hard to do because sometimes we see, and I've seen this many times, that giving up is a sign of weakness, but it can also be a sign of strength.

3:05I remember when I was in my first company that I ever had, I put hundreds and hundreds of hours, thousands of hours actually, because I worked 110 hours a week. 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every single day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, for years. And it was so hard to give up on that thing because I thought, if I give up on this business, it's me giving up. It's me being a failure. It is a sign of weakness. And if I was still in that company, I would have probably already had a mental breakdown 45 times. And so sometimes it's not weakness. Even though we can see it as weakness, sometimes it's one of the strongest things that we can do.

3:43And one of the biggest skills that we can all learn is to really understand when something is over. That's it. And it's not about quitting. That's an important part. People are like, I don't want to be a quitter. I've been there before. It's not about quitting. It's about understanding when something has run its course. And so one of the best ways that you can figure it out is to look at this thing, to look at this business or this relationship or this mindset, belief system, whatever it might be, and say, is this still adding value to my life? And just be honest with yourself, is this relationship still adding value to my life?

4:17Or am I just holding on to it out of fear or habit? That is one of the most clarifying questions you can ask yourself to see what you should do. Is this business still adding value to my life or am I holding on to it out of fear or habit? Is this belief system that I was raised with still adding value to my life or am I holding on to it and gripping on to it out of fear or habit? A lot of times I see someone stick with something just because it's part of their history. It's crazy. And this goes back to a human psychological condition that we have that's called sunken cost fallacy. And sunken cost fallacy is when people continue to keep investing time or money or effort into something just because they've already put a lot into it, even if it's no longer worth it.

5:09Like this is why you see somebody who is at a table and they're gambling in Vegas and they've lost$10 ,000 and they're like, no, but I know it's going to hit on the next one. Let me take out a mortgage and my equity that's inside of my house. I'm going to throw that on it. It's called the sunken cost fallacy where it's because we've been doing something for so long and we're so deep into it, we will double down on that thing just because we think eventually it's going to pay off. And so in sunken cost fallacy, it's when people feel stuck by like past investments or whatever it might be. Investment, I don't just mean money.

5:46I mean time. I mean energy. And they ignore their better choice of just cutting their losses and moving on. And so for instance, let's say I'll give you a couple of examples today just to really understand like when you can understand when something's dead and you should stop trying to breathe life into it and you should just turn the page. You know, let's say that you have a job. I hear a lot. I created a video that is the most popular video I've ever created. And it went very, very viral on Facebook like eight years ago. It was called Why You Should Quit Your Job. And it was talking about if you hate your job, you should quit it.

6:20And so I've gotten thousands of messages. It's had over 110 million views. And I've gotten thousands and thousands and thousands of messages of people asking like, hey, I want to quit my job. But it's something like this. Like I've been at this company for 10 years and I don't hate my job, but I don't love it and I don't want to be here anymore. I feel like I'm getting called in another direction. And they feel like this nudge or this call towards something different. But because of the sunk cost of time of 10 years into this business and their education, four years of going to school, they're like, I've got four years of college and I've got 10 years of work.

7:04So I'm 14 years into this. I'm 40 years old. I can't change now. And because of just that sunken cost, they're going, I can't change. I've got to stay here. I put so much time into it. And then I break it down for them. I'm like, hey, whatever you decide is completely up to you. I don't, I don't, there's no skin off my back if you decide to stay there for the rest of your life. But if you're 40 years old and you're lucky, you'll be able to retire at 65. Most people won't be able to retire at 65, but if you're lucky, you will be able to. So if you're 40 and you retire at 65, you'll be doing this for another 25 years.

7:37So you're telling me that you want to keep doing something, keep doing something that you have done for another 25 years, just because you've been doing it for 14. If you actually break it down and look at it logically, it makes no sense. It doesn't. If somebody loves it, cool, keep doing it. But if you don't, maybe you should go, you know what? Those 14 years, it's not a loss. I learned a lot about myself in school and I learned a lot about myself. in this business. And I learned a lot about other people and communication. I'm sure there's a lot of stuff you've learned about life and business in yourself in the past 14 years.

8:11Sometimes it's time to turn the page though and to appreciate what you did and what you learned, but then to go, hey, it's time for a new chapter. I gotta stop rereading the same page. You know, instead of thinking so much about the past, maybe what you should do is consider the future. Like what could those 25 years look like if you pursued something that was actually something that excited you? Like where could your life be in five years, in 10 years, in 20 years? If everything that you've been doing up until this moment was just preparing you to launch off into something amazing. Maybe the first 40 years were doing what you thought you were supposed to do.

8:54Then you were, you know, based off of your parents and based off of society and based off of a less intelligent self. Maybe all of that the first 40 years was you 1.0. And now at 40 years old is you 2.0 where you go, hey, if I'm lucky, I live for another 40 years. I'm halfway through me 2.0. Now I'm going to pursue something like all of those 40 years. They were just prepping me for what's about to happen right now. You know, what could the next 25, 30, 40 years of your life look like if you stepped into the highest version of your potential? Really something to think about. Instead of looking at the past and the sunken cost, you go ahead and look at the future and see how you can take all of those skills and all of those lessons and all of the experiences from your past role, but then you give yourself permission to move on.

9:44It's not a failure. It's an evolution. That's a really key reframe. It's not a failure to let go of something. Sometimes it is required for you to evolve. It's like a snake. A snake has got to shed its skin. And if a snake does not shed its skin, it will suffocate. And so many people are metaphorically suffocating in an old skin that they were supposed to let go of seven years ago. You know, another example of that, so that's a job, like another example of that is a relationship. And believe me, I am not in the business of breaking up relationships and marriages. if you are in a happy and loving marriage that brings out the absolute best in you for you and you bring out the absolute best in them then you have found one of the most rare things in the entire world but i don't hear that a lot i usually hear the exact opposite so you know let me tell you what i hear a lot it's usually something like hey because when things are really good people don't usually come to me people usually come to me when things are bad right so people are like I've been married for 12 years.

10:44We've tried to make it work. We've seen marriage counselors. We've worked on it. We have, you know, tried to figure out our triggers and it's just not there anymore. I don't feel like I'm attracted to him. I don't feel like he's attracted to me. I feel like we're just two roommates living together and we're just staying together for the kids. Well, okay. If you want to do that, you can. I'm not against it. But if there's no love in your relationship and your children are watching you and they're learning relationships from you, do you want your marriage to be the example of perfect love for them?

11:21Just honestly, there's no wrong answer, but do you want that? Like if your children got married to somebody and live the same way that you do, would you be excited about that for them? Like, or is it better to have them eventually see their mother and eventually see their father in a real and loving relationship a couple years down the road? That's probably better for them. That would be my guess, right? And will it be an easy road at first? No, probably not. But could it be beneficial for your children in the long run to see their mother absolutely in love with someone, even if it's not their father and their father absolutely in love with somebody?

12:01and even if it's not their mother, in both of them being as happy as they possibly could, it could be better, right? I'm not saying yes or no, this is for someone else to figure out. In the long run, it might be able to provide a better example of what a loving relationship could look like. That's just, you know, another perspective to look on. So sometimes moving on from something doesn't mean that it was a failure. You know, it worked out exactly the way they're supposed to work out. You learned, you grew, and sometimes it might be time to move on. Everything in life, good, bad, neutral, everything is a life lesson.

12:37Did you get the lesson that you absolutely needed? You know, so that might be a possibility. Another thing that I hear a lot as well is like personality. Oh, like this is who I've always been. Like your mindset, the idea of this is who I've always been is complete BS. like you are an infinitely complex being that is made of stardust and 40 trillion cells that's constantly evolving you're like you're there's not a cell in your body that is the same as it was seven years ago so why are you trying to stay the same like don't try to stay the way that you've always been if you're stagnant and you're not growing well stagnation leads to decay and i don't know about you, I don't want to see myself as decaying.

13:20And one of my first managers used to always say, you're either green and growing or brown and dying. And I always thought to myself, I need to be green and growing. I always want to be growing. I don't want to be stagnant. Like when I hear the word stagnant, I think of like a stagnant pond, you know, and I'm like with like mold and mosquitoes on top of it. And I'm like, that's not what I want to think of myself. Like the visual of what I want to think of myself is not a stagnant pond. And so you've got to look at your life and start assessing like, is it a hell yes or a hell no? Is this relationship a hell yes or is it a hell no?

13:50Is this mindset a hell yes or a hell no? Is this job a hell yes or a hell no? Like you have to stop settling in your life and you've got to start demanding greatness from yourself in your life. Settling was you 1.0. Demanding greatness from your life is you 2.0. Don't get stuck in who you were yesterday. Like you should be constantly evolving and changing and learning and challenging your belief system and growing because growth is a continuous process. Staying the same is like settling for mediocrity. You're not listening to this podcast to settle for anything. But you've got to ask yourself, are there places in my life where I've been settling?

14:30You know, and you've got to go back to, is this thing, whatever this thing is, is it a hell yes or is it a hell no? Like that mantra, like I love using it, I use it all the time. It cuts through all the noise. Like if you're not fully excited or energized about something or someone or whatever it might be, maybe it's just time to take a step back and just consider why you're still involved. You don't have to change anything, but maybe just take a step back and look at it. Because settling for like good enough is just a slow killer of dreams and joy. And you have to stop settling and demand greatness from yourself in your life.

15:05You owe it to yourself to pursue something that lights you up inside, a job that lights you up inside, a relationship that lights you up inside, a friendship that lights you up inside, a belief system that lights you up inside, whatever it might be. You owe it to yourself. Your life is way too short to be anything but excited about what you're doing. And you have to understand, and I get it, to do something different is a step into the unknown. And that can be absolutely terrifying. But I don't know about you. I would rather fear staying stuck and staying stagnant and being in the exact same position five years from now.

15:46I would rather fear that more than the fear of the unknown. Like staying in the same, like staying stagnant and in the same position five years from today is way more terrifying than the fear of the unknown. So for you, I think it's just really important to go through different aspects of your life and where you feel like you're stuck. and just ask yourself like, is this something that I should let go of or that I should change in some sort of way? You know, if you hate your job or you don't enjoy your job, maybe you don't need to change your job completely and leave there. Maybe you evolve it in some way.

16:14If you are not really satisfied in your relationship, maybe you don't completely leave your relationship. Maybe you figure out a way to evolve it because ultimately that's what we're all trying to do. We're all trying to grow and evolve. And if we're trying to stay in something that is stuck and something that may have died years ago, we're not giving ourself any space to step into something that is more expansive for us, for our life, and for our future. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R.

16:43And if you want to learn more about coaching with me, you can go ahead and go to coachwithrob.com. Once again, coachwithrob.com. I have many ways that are more structured coaching ways that have worked with me versus just sporadic episodes. So if you want to check it out, you definitely can. And with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way. I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.