Before recently, I had always felt one main emotion whenever the subject of quitting came up: shame. Growing up, my parents never wanted me to quit anything. Even though I did quit things, it was always such a big deal. They had to sit me down and ask me my reasons for quitting. Was this really what I wanted? If it was, well, then they were going to make it really hard for me to quit. They made sure I knew that they wouldn’t do it for me, I had to “let down” the person or thing I was quitting myself. Just their attitudes seemed to be saying that quitting was bad. Thus, enter shame. But I was listening to a podcast recently that turned all of this prior thinking on its head.
The podcast in question is Glennon Doyle’s podcast We Can Do Hard Things. I was listening to a particular episode earlier this year on quitting, before even “quiet quitting” had popped up as the working life buzzword of the second half of the year.
At the beginning of the episode, one of the podcast hosts mentions that the original definition of quitting was “to set free”. My jaw dropped. This definition felt so profound to me. Quitting, not as something to be shameful about. Quitting as a means of setting free.
If you had asked me previously, I would have said that I quit things when they became too hard (which then contributed to the shame spiral). If quitting is bad, and I quit because things got hard, then maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough. Why couldn’t I just try harder? I was naturally good at some things, and then I would get really good at them really fast. But the hard things? I tended to quit faster than you can say “see ya”.
Similarly, I immediately quit things I wasn’t good at. Even when my mom would say “you made this commitment, you need to see it out”, I would quit as soon as I could. In my mind, I quit soccer because I wasn’t good at it. I quit saxophone because I wasn’t good and it was hard. I quit piano as soon as it got to the “hard” part everyone (but probably in reality just my mom?) told me about. They said that once you get through the hard part, everything clicks. Another thing about me is that I’m not very patient, and so I wasn’t willing to stick around to see if it ever got any easier.
Hearing that the original definition of quitting was to set free flipped all of this thinking on its head. My mind went racing for days after listening to that podcast episode.
For starters, what if it wasn’t that I had only quit things that I was bad at…what if it was that I hadn’t quit things that brought me joy? Yes, I may have been naturally good at things, but I think that is just what got me started. It’s not that these things weren’t hard. I may have been smart and “good at school”, but I was never one of those students who could get straight As without studying one bit (I knew kids like that, and it drove my type-A self nuts). I loved school, but I think what drove me most was the learning. Yes, learning actually brought me joy.
Volleyball and tennis weren’t easy either. In fact, I didn’t even really like working out when I was younger. I loved playing the sports, that’s what drove me, but I absolutely hated all the other physical stuff we had to do to prepare for playing the sport. I hated sprints, I hated running, but I did these activities because I knew I had to do it to do the thing that I loved, to be a better player.
Maybe I had to quit a lot of those other activities (soccer, band, piano, etc.) to find the ones that would bring me true happiness. To free me up for the things that sparked more joy.
And what makes us happy and sparks joy can change in an instant. Sometimes we may need to actually quit something we’re good at to make space for something that’s gently tugging at us, trying to get our attention. A creativity whisper, if you will. And this isn’t a bad thing!
I’ve written about an example of this in a previous post, but the short version is that during my senior year of high school, I quit the basketball team (a sport I was good at and enjoyed) to be in the school play. Theater was something I hadn’t been involved in for years. But that year, for many reasons, it was calling out to me. Until one day when the call was too loud to ignore.
I wasn’t the best player on the basketball team, I knew that much, but I was good, and I had been waiting 4 years to finally be a starter on the varsity team. I didn’t love my coach, but I adored my team. We had barely missed out on the championship the year before, and we thought that this was our year. So when I found out I wouldn’t, in fact, be a starter on the team, I was crushed.
Shortly thereafter, I found out that the school play that year was going to be Les Miserables. My favorite musical in the entire world. Before I had become a jock in the 6th grade, my world revolved around theater. So when I found out that the school play was going to be my favorite musical of all time, something shifted in me. I think the universe was trying to get my attention.
When I was playing basketball that year, I was full of anger and resentment. But when I thought about being in the school play, I felt giddy and light. I felt joy. I felt like there were a million butterflies waiting to be released from my chest (probably because I was also really nervous about being in a play again for the first time in years).
By quitting basketball and choosing the school play, I set myself free. Free from my resentment. Free from the hold my friends and family had on me by not being able to believe that I would quit the basketball team in my senior year. Free from the guilt I felt around quitting. Free from the weight I felt by not choosing me.
Slow FI has set me free
After listening to that podcast, I started to think of my personal finance and slow FI journey like quitting too, because it has completely set me free.
Quitting (and setting myself free from) the rat race. Quitting living up to everyone else’s expectations. That I need to take a big fancy vacation. That I need to have a big fancy car. That I need to have a big fancy wedding.
Discovering the principles of slow FI (financial independence), or using the financial freedom you gain along the way to financial independence to enjoy the journey, has been the best thing to ever happen to me. I never wanted to retire early (the “RE” of the FIRE movement), but I had always been a saver. So when I finally got off the hamster wheel and realized that there was more to life, more to me, than work, the principles of slow FI gave me something to grab onto. Through slow FI, I realized I could utilize the financial freedom I had already gained by being a saver to create the life I wanted to live, not the life I was expected to live.
I realized what I really wanted was not to stop working but to have more time. Time to explore the things that sparked joy for me outside of my job. But with more time, and with the knowledge of how you want to spend that time, comes too the challenge of prioritization. How do you fit everything you want to do into a finite amount of time? Well, sometimes you have to quit things to make room for the good stuff. Sometimes you have to set yourself free from the things holding you back from living your best, most truest life.
This might mean daring to say no when you feel like you should say yes. We all need to get better at saying no and setting boundaries if we want to be able to live more in alignment with our values. To set ourselves free, we have to first learn how to say no.
A brief note on quiet quitting
As I mentioned above, I heard the podcast episode in reference back before the days of the quiet quitting boom. Quiet quitting was a term that never really resonated with me. With all the different definitions I heard and read, it sounded to me like quiet quitting was folks just doing their jobs. But the definitions I saw of quiet quitting seemed to put the spin that this is a bad thing.
The most common way I’ve seen quiet quitting described is an employee who is present at work but does the bare minimum to stay employed and collect a paycheck.
To me, there’s nothing wrong with people just doing their jobs, and doing them well. The “bare minimum” is, to me, the part that I think rubs me the wrong way. Is the bare minimum not just what’s in a job description? What we’re being paid to do? Sure, plenty of folks go above and beyond their job descriptions every day, either because they feel they don’t have a choice, or they are dead set on getting a promotion or raise. That’s all well and good for those people! But not everyone wants to sacrifice their personal life and time to climb the career ladder. And I’ve seen plenty of people (myself included) go above and beyond and NOT get that raise or promotion.
I’ve heard Elizabeth Gilbert talk several times, on podcasts and in books, about this topic, and it is one of my favorite opinions of hers. She speaks about a vocation versus a job (and also versus a career and a hobby). She is one of those writers who always had a job, just something to pay the bills, and wrote on her own spare time. While some people are lucky enough to have a job that is also their vocation, this was never the case for her (and she didn’t want it to be). She talks about how there’s nothing wrong with just getting your job done (and you can still do it well), but leaving space and time for a vocation, if you so choose. To me, quiet quitting seems like nothing more than setting good boundaries at work to be able to do that. But instead of making this a positive thing, quiet quitting spins it as something negative (in my opinion).
Quitting, and setting good boundaries, is a way we can set ourselves free in order to make room for the experiences that make us come alive.
And that’s what slow FI, to me, is all about. Using my money and the financial freedom I’ve gained along the way to financial independence to quit the things that aren’t serving me so that I can make time for the things that do.
In my mind, quiet quitting is old news. How about proud quitting as the next phenomenon?
What’s something you’ve been proud to quit? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear about it!
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