You Can Always Choose to Give Up
But where’s the fun in that?
Life can be hard. Some days, you probably wonder why you even bothered getting out of bed. I know I feel that way sometimes.
Everyone has days where it feels like no matter what you do, you are behind, failing, losing ground, and/or otherwise struggling. No matter what you do, how much you give, all the ways that you try, it feels pointless and not very worthwhile.
The truth of the matter – of any matter – is that you can always choose to give up.
This can be on many levels and in many shapes and sizes. It can be temporary or with great finality. This can be a matter of positivity or negativity. Whatever the case might be, you can always choose to give up.
But where’s the fun in that? Realistically, what would life be like if you never struggled, everything was handed to you on silver platters, and you faced no challenges and no real opposition? It wouldn’t be long before you’d be bored. And boredom would lead to feeling even more frustrated than you feel when you’re struggling.
Believe it or not, how much you struggle in any given situation is often your choice. When you pause and reflect on a given experience or situation, you might be amazed to learn just how much harder you have gone about making it than it needed to be. Sometimes this is because of outside influences; other times it’s based on your values, beliefs, habits, experiences, and the like.
No matter what, you always choose.
You always choose
According to various scientific studies, human beings make about 35,000 choices a day. You read that right. You make over 35,000 choices a day. That’s a lot of choices, right?
The vast majority are utterly subconscious. Either/or situations or inconsequentials that are on the regular. Most of these are almost unconscious. What tooth to start with when brushing your teeth. In the shower, where you begin to wash yourself. The temperature of your shower water. Which foot to put first in front of the other. These are so highly automated that you likely give them no genuine thought at all.
This is a good thing. Could you imagine if you needed to be conscious of 35,000 thoughts a day? It’s mind-boggling. Fortunately, you have more room for making conscious choices due to rote, routine, habit, and subconscious automation.
These also have subconscious elements attached to them. You feel hungry, you choose to eat. Do you choose simple sustenance or something tasty? That’s a conscious choice you can make. Or not.
If, as multiple scientists postulate, human beings make approximately 95 percent of their choices unconsciously and/or subconsciously, that means we make about 2000 choices a day consciously. That’s still a lot of choices, but when you consider that you’re awake 16 hours a day, that’s an average of 125 choices an hour, or a little more than 2 choices per minute. That’s far more reasonable, right?
The point of this is that you always have choices available and get to choose. This is true of almost every situation, at least when it comes to your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and approach.
Where does giving up enter into this?
You can always choose to give up
I’m not going to make a distinction between quitting and giving up. To all intents and purposes, they’re the same. At least regarding the idea I’m sharing with you here.
When life offers certain challenges, you can always choose to give up. However, how and why you make that choice will impact you in many ways.
This becomes a matter of active conscious awareness. In other words, mindfulness. The question that activates mindfulness is: what do you want to give up?
If the answer makes you unhappy, challenges you, or forces you to question yourself, odds are, giving up is not the choice you truly desire to make. If, on the other hand, the answer feels like genuine relief, makes you feel lighter, calmer, and better, odds are, giving up in this instance is the right thing to choose.
While it may or may not have been Einstein who said it, this is still an important notion:
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
When you are always bombarded by messages about never quitting, never giving up, never surrendering, and the like, you’ll push on. Sometimes, though, you do so long past the point of reason. Try, try, again. But maybe not the same thing over and over and over.
Slight variations make the thing different. No variations, however, and repetition lead to the above quote. Sometimes you will reach a point where you should give up. But not because it’s too hard, impossible, or too much of a struggle. Give up because it’s time to do something new. Something different.
Just remember that many achievements in the world were attained because someone who wanted to give up chose not to. You alone know the answer for you.
Do it for your sanity
I get it. Sometimes it really feels like it’s just too hard, not worth it, and possibly insane. How many times can you try this thing with variations to it? How many variations are there available to you? What mystical elusive element is taunting you and keeping you from succeeding?
When you give up without questioning if you should, or your why, that’s not actually giving up. It’s giving in. You are surrendering to forces that in and of themselves are neither positive nor negative. They are the yin and yang, the plus and minus, give and take of the Universe at large.
Giving in is a matter of caving to the pressure. You’re defying yourself and saying, “Yup. Too hard. I can’t. I’m unable. It’s beyond me. Fuck it, I shouldn’t have bothered,” and the like.
The truth is that life is challenging. Yet it’s the challenges, the hills to climb, pools to swim in, obstacles to overcome, paths to trek, and the like, that are what life is all about. You can give up and give in, but where’s the fun in that?
You’ve overcome that feeling before. You pushed past the struggles, the voices that told you that you couldn’t, the question of whether you should have even bothered to chew through the restraints and start the day. When you have, and you succeeded, you were elated. You did it! Achievement was achieved! You proved all those naysayers, real or imagined, wrong. It all felt worthwhile, and likely you now look back fondly on it. You may see that it was a fun adventure. Or at least an adventure.
You can always choose to give up. But never do that without really questioning why. Today’s challenge is tomorrow’s solution and/or success. The choice is yours.
Using active conscious awareness if you choose to give up isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that life is often challenging, and you can choose to give up, you get to decide if you’re mindfully making that choice for your own good or if you’re giving in to pressure and not choosing for yourself. Knowing that you make lots of choices and decisions a day, and can use mindfulness to decide if you will push on or give up, you can take control and work out if you will choose to give up for good or bad reasons. Then act from there.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you for their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred-and-fifty-second (552) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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