If you’ve been wondering whether it’s time to quit — the job, the relationship, the dream, or the story you’ve been telling yourself about who you are and what you’re capable of — this one’s for you.
- Clients are sitting with careers and businesses they’ve spent years creating, wondering if they’ve simply outgrown the container.
- Two friends have just ended long-term relationships.
- Another is questioning whether her job still fits the future she’s building.
- And me? I’m sitting with something close to my heart — JustOneThing365, my charity that I’ve nurtured and sacrificed for over ten years. Something I’ve poured myself into, body, mind, soul and business — but the way I’ve been running it no longer brings me joy. And so I’m questioning everything about it, including what I need to quit. Which is breaking my heart, just a little.
The last three years have rewritten me. I’ve quit things. I’ve been quit on. I’ve had to sit with the uncomfortable questions I usually ask other people, and answer them honestly, for myself.
Here’s what I can tell you from the other side:
I have never felt freer. More grounded. More me. But it didn’t start with leaving. It started with looking.
First, let’s reframe the word.
QUITTING
Most of us were conditioned from childhood to believe that quitting is failure. Winners never quit. Push through. Persist. And those instincts aren’t wrong — resilience matters and has been a skill that has empowered me many times — but the conversation we never had is the one that distinguishes between two very different kinds of quitting.
- There’s reactive quitting — to avoid consequences, fleeing discomfort, running from fear, leaving before something can leave you.
- And there’s aligned quitting — walking away from something with clarity, from a grounded knowledge of your own values and what you actually need to live a fulfilled and aligned life – personally and professionally.
One is escape. The other is evolution.
And here’s the early caveat I always offer: quitting is not the first move. It might be the right move. But it is rarely the first one.
The science: Kahneman and Tversky’s Sunk Cost Fallacy explains why we stay in things long past their expiry date — not because they’re still serving us, but because we’ve already invested so much. We justify continued investment based on what we’ve already lost, not on what we stand to gain. That’s not weakness. That’s neuroscience. And knowing it gives you a choice.
Before you quit — look in the mirror.
This is the part of the conversation most people skip, and it’s the most important one.
If you keep quitting — jobs, relationships, friendships — at some point the common denominator worth examining is you. Not as self-blame but as self-responsibility. There’s a significant difference.
You take yourself with you wherever you go. Your nervous system. Your attachment style. Your communication defaults. Your self-worth wounds. All of it travels. You can change the job and the relationship and still find yourself in the exact same dynamic six months later, because you brought the unexamined parts of yourself into the new situation.
The science: Freud’s concept of Repetition Compulsion, developed further through attachment theory, shows that we unconsciously recreate familiar dynamics because they feel known, even when they’re painful. Leave one emotionally unavailable partner, and without the inner work, you’ll often find another version of the same person. Leave one micromanaging boss, and land under a different one.
And further: IFS (Internal Family Systems) and Shadow Work tell us that the unintegrated parts of ourselves run the show under stress. We don’t always leave situations. Sometimes we export our unresolved material into new ones.
Before you make the exit, sit with these three questions honestly:
- Have I said what actually needs to be said — clearly, calmly, without blame?
- Am I reacting to this situation, or to an old wound it’s triggering?
- Have I shown up as the person I want to be — or have I been shutting down, playing a role, waiting for someone else to fix it?
These are the questions I ask clients before we look at what needs to change externally, because they reveal what’s running internally. And that’s always the more important conversation.
The three domains.
The Job
The question isn’t ‘do I hate this job?’ The more honest question is: does who I’m being at work feel like me?
There’s a difference between an environment that’s genuinely toxic (it’s a term we’ve throw around loosely) and one that you’ve simply outgrown or haven’t held firm boundaries in. Growing beyond a role or an organisation isn’t failure – it’s testament to your evolution. The problem is that we rarely give ourselves permission to name it that way.
Watch for these signs:
- Persistent Sunday dread
- Going through the motions
- Feeling invisible
- Consistently shrinking your ideas to fit a space that no longer fits you.
- NB: If every job has been toxic, it’s worth looking for the common thread — because the thread might not be the jobs.
An ‘aligned quit’ means leaving toward something, not just away from something. The direction matters enormously.
The science: Higgins’ Self-Discrepancy Theory (1987) shows that the gap between who you are and who you’re performing creates measurable psychological distress. Closing that gap isn’t self-indulgence. It’s an act of alignment.
The Relationship
This one is the most emotionally loaded and our bodies usually know before our minds are willing to admit it. Call it ‘gut instinct’ or a feeling of unease you ‘just can’t put your finger on’.
The key distinction I keep coming back to is this: are you leaving because it’s hard — or because the fundamental conditions for your flourishing simply don’t exist here? Because hard and wrong are not the same thing, and conflating them costs people years.
Overstaying out of loyalty sounds noble BUT sometimes staying isn’t loyalty at all. Sometimes it’s fear dressed up as commitment — fear of being alone, fear of hurting someone, fear of what it says about you if you leave.
An ‘aligned quit’ here means grieving fully and without making yourself wrong for leaving. Both of those things at once.
The science: Eisenberger’s 2003 research demonstrated that social pain and physical pain share the same neural pathways. Not feeling valued or chosen by someone you love isn’t ‘just feelings.’ It registers as a physiological stressor. Your body isn’t being dramatic. It’s being honest.
And: Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety, built on Maslow’s foundations, confirms that when we don’t feel safe or truly chosen in a relationship, the nervous system registers it as a chronic threat. The body already knew. It was the mind that needed convincing.
Your Limiting Thoughts
This is the quit most people miss entirely – and it may be the most important one.
You can change the job and the relationship and still carry the same story into every new chapter. The story that says: who am I to want more? I should be grateful for what I have. Needing things makes me difficult. I’m not experienced enough for an opportunity like that.
I know that last one well.
These aren’t facts. They’re old software — written by a younger / previous version of you who needed them to make sense of a world that felt unsafe or uncertain. They served a purpose once. They don’t have to run the show forever.
Unlike a job or a relationship, these thoughts require no notice period. You can start today.
The tool I use with clients — and myself — is simple enough to remember and powerful enough to actually work:
- Notice — don’t fight the thought. Just see it for what it is.
- Name — give it a label. “There’s that ‘not enough’ story again.”
- Neutralise — ask yourself honestly: is this thought moving me toward my life, or away from it?
Rooted in: Daniel Siegel’s ‘name it to tame it’, mindfulness practice, and Steven Hayes’ Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Naming a thought creates cognitive distance from it — you are not the thought. You are the one noticing it.
If the answer is still yes — here’s what integrity looks like.
After the mirror work – the honest conversations and inner excavation – sometimes the answer is still: yes, it’s time. And that is entirely valid.
Choosing for yourself doesn’t have to mean choosing against someone else.
What it does mean is leaving with care — not recklessness or unkindly, not ghosting, and definitely not rewriting the other person as the villain to make your exit feel more justified.
In a job: give proper notice, do a genuine handover, acknowledge what the role gave you even if it also cost you, and leave people in a better position than you found them.
In a relationship: be honest without being cruel. Don’t disappear. Grieve it properly — for both of you and for the times when love was felt and exchanged. Allow the other person their own process without controlling the narrative.
In your mind: don’t white-knuckle a thought into submission. Release it with compassion for the version of you that needed it. That’s not weakness – that’s the most sophisticated kind of inner work there is.
The science: Dan McAdams’ research on Narrative Coherence shows that how we end chapters directly shapes how we begin new ones. Clean endings create psychological space for new beginnings. Messy exits follow us for years as unresolved stories we keep retelling to ourselves and anyone who’ll listen.
Quitting isn’t the opposite of commitment. Sometimes it’s the highest form of it.
Before you go.
Sit with whichever of these questions feels most real and true for you right now. I’d love to know which one(s) do.
- “What conversation have I been avoiding that might change everything?”
- “Am I leaving this — or am I actually running from myself?”
- “What am I staying in out of fear rather than choice?”
- “If I do need to go — am I willing to do it with grace?”
Leave a comment, send me a message, or bring it to our next WellBeing Wednesday on 919FM.
And if you’re in the middle of one of these questions right now — reach out. This is exactly the work I do.
With love,
Petra
Alignment Architect for Intentional Performance
