Quit One Thing! On Purpose!

The Parisian heatwave won’t let me forget that it’s the peak of summer. Sweat streaks down my neck and back, inviting me to throw my hair into a claw clip, strip down, and sit in front of the fan. Existence becomes simple, somehow. Just me and the fan, and the sensation of wind playing on my skin.

Summer has a way of reminding me how few things I actually need: water, sunscreen, shade, and, please, I’m begging, a light breeze. Everything else starts to feel like an itchy wool sweater in July. It makes me want to get rid of the excess. And maybe, while we’re in this season, I should lean into it.

We’re comfortable with ‘letting go.’ We squirm at the thought of ‘quitting.’ I think that needs to change. I think we need to acknowledge just how empowering it can really be. Knowing when to quit is as crucial as knowing when not to quit. Both take strength.

Quit!

Quit one thing on purpose. Right now. Don’t wait until the universe has to rip it out of your grip.

Quit a pattern. Quit a goal. Quit a dream. Quit a commitment.

Quit an expectation. Quit a habit. Quit dwelling on a thought.

Quit a person.

Quit any of those things; all the things that are outdated, misaligned, or simply no longer yours. Perhaps they were yours once. Perhaps they fit a self you’ve since outgrown, and you keep them the way we keep clothes that no longer fit, out of loyalty to a person we used to be. Release it. Strip down. Allow yourself to experience the relief of not carrying things that you don’t need to be carrying. The things that are making this season of your life more difficult or unbearable. The things that don’t let you move on. The things that don’t allow you to become who you want to be. The things that keep you circling the same tired loop. The things that waste your time, drain your energy, steal your peace.

Practice the discipline of unclenching the hand. We tend to treat holding on as the only virtue, as if endurance were proof of love or character, as if anyone were handing out medals for sweating through summer in wool. No one is. But, even if such an absurd medal did exist, it’s not a medal worth winning.

Quitting is an art form. Done consciously, it isn’t failure. It’s authorship. It’s you deciding what belongs in the story and what has merely been taking up space in it. You learned what it had to teach you. That’s enough. The lesson stays; the weight doesn’t have to.

There was a season of my life when I quit a lot of things: friendships, my marriage, projects, apartment leases. Each one felt like failure. Each one played out as liberation. Some people struggle to keep going; I struggle to stop. So for anyone like me: quitting is how you make space. There is goodness, abundance, creativity, and relationship waiting on the other side of it. At least there was for me. I wrote about my experience in my book, It’s On Me.

Thanks for being here!