So How Do You Know When to Stop?

A man came up to me once and told me about a project he had been working on for 15 years. Because he had heard me speak about tenacity and persistence, he asked me this "simple" question: "How do I know when to quit?"

The simple answer is "Never!" But, like everything else in life, a simple answer won't always suffice. If you have been truly persistent for a long time and you have gotten nowhere, perhaps you should take time to evaluate your course of action. Is your goal realistic? Are the expected rewards worth the time and effort (and maybe money) you'll need to continue? Are there other people you can bring in to help you get to your goal (if you haven't tried that already)? The bottom line is, you may have to do some deep soul searching and, at some point, say to yourself, "It's time to move on."

On the other hand, don't give up too easily. You need to believe in yourself, to have faith that you can, and will, finish what you start. If you have that deep-seated belief in the value of what you're trying to accomplish, keep your focus and push on. You never know when you will reap what you have been sowing all this time. Things come to us in the strangest ways, in the most unexpected times. It could take a week, it could take a year. There's no way of knowing.

But you're the only one who can keep struggling along the path to get there. It's your inner drive, your unwavering faith, which will likely make the difference between reaching your goal and falling short.

The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the promptings of a brave, determined spirit.

—Mark Twain,
author

No matter how persistent we are, no matter how tenacious and focused we are in getting the job done, we cannot always count on things going smoothly. Things change. The environment changes, the people change, the situation changes. We must be able to adapt. You can't keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect to get different results. You need to focus on the ability to go in a different direction, if need be, to call on different people, to change your methods. You must be able to see change as an ally, as something that will help you deal with current situations and move with events. Persistent doesn't mean stubbornly sticking with a particular routine that just isn't working. Being persistent means that if your way doesn't work, you find another way. Trying not to change simply gets you stuck in place. Everything around us changes constantly. It always does and always will. We have to embrace it, not look away from it.