I like to keep my gaze focused on my goal rather than agonise about my path

Winners never quit, I would tell myself, and quitters never win, writes Louise O’Neill.

Recently, I was having a deep, meaningful, stay-awake-until-3am-chatting-type of conversation with one of my best friends, Cat. (OK, 10pm. I like to imagine I can still hear the Glenroe theme music once the sun sets and need to find my nearest bed immediately).

We covered all the important topics; work, love, grief, Biden and Obama’s adorable bromance, when we began to discuss ‘mistakes’ we had made in our past. The actions that we had taken that others had dismissed as idiotic, the decisions that friends and family had warned us would have catastrophic results and were usually proven correct in their estimation.

And even though the choices we had made didn’t necessarily work out the way we had anticipated, both of us agreed that, if given a second chance, we would be unlikely to change anything.

“I would rather take big risks,” Cat said, “than be faced with What Ifs.”

Besides cementing Cat’s inevitable career with Hallmark, this comment stayed with me, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I realised that it wasn’t the idea of ‘what ifs’ that frightened me. I don’t really believe in regrets.

I like to keep moving forward, keep my gaze focused on my goal rather than agonise about the path that I’ve taken to get there. What does motivate me is my determination to keep going no matter what obstacles I face. I remember when I gave up ballet when I turned 13 and my father asked me why I was doing so.

It’s too hard, I complained, and I don’t enjoy it anymore. He sighed, telling me that I shouldn’t simply give up on something because it’s difficult, that the best things in life were those that you had to strive to achieve.

Ever since, I have had a slight sense of shame around abandoning a goal. Winners never quit, I would tell myself, and quitters never win. I have been tenacious, refusing to give up on my dreams because they seemed improbable or because the world around me deemed them unrealistic. This attitude has served me well in my career, and I am proud of that.

Yet I am beginning to doubt if that determination to prove myself has helped me on a personal level. I have maintained friendships that I haven’t found supportive rather than wishing them well and moving on. I have found it difficult to completely surrender to recovery from an eating disorder, as a tiny voice in my head tells me that to give up on the dream of thinness would be admitting defeat.

I would probably still be in New York, chasing a career that I didn’t feel creatively fulfilled by, if my work visa hadn’t expired and forced me to return to Ireland. I have stayed in situations that were toxic, swallowing my own needs to keep someone else satisfied, twisting myself to fit into another person’s narrative of what a relationship should look like regardless of whether or not it aligned with my own.

I thought that if I tried a little harder, if I was just better in some indefinable way, then everything would work out the way I had hoped.

All I had to do was wait. All I had to do was refuse to quit.

I couldn’t help but wonder (Carrie Bradshaw™) — in a world that tells us never to give up on our dreams, how do we know when is the right time to quit? When do we admit to ourselves that we feel drained after spending time with a certain friend and we would rather not do it anymore? When do we allow the dream of a relationship to die because the other person promises so much and delivers so little?

What if you are a karaoke singer but are determined to become the next Mariah Carey? Or if you were the best gymnast in your school but acceptance by the Olympic team evades you? You were the prettiest girl in town but all the modelling agencies are telling you that you’re too short, despite your protestations that Kate Moss was only 5’7?

When do we have to accept that our dreams are too big or simply not right for us anymore? And what if we quit right before the miracle happens?

I have come to the realisation that quitting something doesn’t always have to mean giving up. It doesn’t always have to negative. Sometimes quitting can be the very best thing that we can do for ourselves if the thing/person/job/habit that we have decided to release from our lives no longer serves us in a constructive way.

I think the key lies in how we reframe our decision to quit. Instead of becoming disheartened and lamenting our perceived failure, we can use it as an opportunity to refocus, to change direction, to find something or someone that is healthier for us.

There is a new-age philosophy that says the Universe abhors a vacuum, and I have found this to be true in my own life. When I have opened up space, something new, and usually better, arrives to fill that space.

Once we decide that our own happiness is more important that what other people think, when we have decided to value our own joy over our fear that others will think us cowardly for ‘giving up’, then quitting can become something that will benefit us in a myriad of ways.

Ultimately, it’s about trusting that everything will work out the way that it’s meant to, and that all will be well. Quitting can be the most courageous thing you can do for yourself, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time.

We all have to abandon certain hopes and dreams in life — that’s an inevitable part of growing up. What determines our future is not what we gave up, but the amount of grace that we adjusted to those life choices.

As the comedian WC Fields said “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”

I like to keep moving forward, keep my gaze focused on my goal rather than agonise about the path that I’ve taken to get there