"Winners never quit and quitters never win goes the famous motivational quote attributed to legendary football coach Vince Lombardi. It's a great expression of our culture's veneration of grit and persistence: We celebrate never giving up, we admire people who pushed through when others would have quit. And this makes sense. Persistence is admirable and it is essential for overcoming many of the challenges we face in life. But as the Greek philosopher Aristotle saw 2000 years ago, actions pushed to their extreme turn into vice."
"What if the spider had been climbing the wrong corner of the cave? What if the web, once built, would have caught nothing? The harder we work at the wrong thing, the more we invest in it."
While persistence and grit are culturally celebrated virtues essential for overcoming life's challenges, extreme persistence can become a vice. The sunk cost fallacy intertwines with identity, making it difficult to quit projects we've invested in emotionally and financially. The story of Robert the Bruce illustrates persistence's power, yet it overlooks a critical question: what if the effort targets the wrong goal? Recognizing when to quit requires separating personal identity from outcomes. True wisdom involves distinguishing between challenges worth persisting through and pursuits that have become obstacles. Quitting doesn't constitute failure; sometimes it represents the most rational and courageous decision available.
Read at Psychology Today
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