#85🕷️ How Spiderman helps me have the courage to move on more and quit less
Learning the difference between fear-based quitting and growth-based change
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I am an ADHD and product management coach helping you change one belief and take one action each week.
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Part 12 of the Self-Care Series
🦋The Takeaways
Belief: I can’t stop quitting things because of my ADHD.
Reality: There’s a difference between quitting and moving on from something.
Action: Develop self-awareness to know what still serves you and what to let go of.
⭐️Introduction
I quit a big thing in my life recently. I left the whiskey I co-founded a few weeks ago. I spent over two years taking a brand from an idea to an item sold in stores and shipped all over. I’m one of the few people who can say they have whiskey bottles in their collection they made themselves.
And then I left. I exited the company and it got added to my list of things I’ve started and quit.
Is it a failure? Is it another pattern of quitting when things get tough? No. It was choosing to move on from something that no longer served me to help me find my next purpose.
😵💫The Belief
If you're like me, you probably have many hobbies or businesses you've started and stopped. The whiskey company is one of 4 businesses I've started in the last 12 years, alongside beer photography, beer festivals, and ADHD coaching. That's not counting side jobs like being a cider sales rep, tech conference organizer, kickboxing instructor, and public speaker.
I've done a lot of things. I've quit a lot of things. I've spent a lot of time wondering how much further I would have gotten had I just stuck to one thing. If I had "just been consistent" or "stayed in one job" I could have had a higher title or pay by now.
The shame and regret can get heavy when I think about it. It makes me think I've let myself and my family down by not living up to what I could have been.
Then I remember, "nah Imma do my own thing."
🤝The Reality
I define quitting as stopping something even though you still want to do it. It requires you to decide to do something that goes against your heart consciously.
I quit the swim team after one practice in fifth grade not because I didn’t want to keep swimming. I quit because I was made of fun so much that I didn’t want to go back. To my parents, I was a lazy quitter. To me, it was easier to be a coward and quitter to my parents than to face those kids again. I wish I had known quitting meant carrying that shame and regret over 28 years later.
Moving on is stopping something that no longer serves its purpose. It’s having the self-awareness to recognize when something no longer serves its purpose and having the courage to stop.
I wasn’t sure if I could handle leading two companies, writing a newsletter, and having a full-time job. I kept trying though. I didn’t want to let anyone down. I didn’t want to quit.
That eventually hurt everyone involved, including myself and my family. Until either a decision would be made for me, like getting fired from one of the jobs (a common occurrence for us neurodiverse folks).
Or making the decision myself to let something go. In this case, I chose to move on from the whiskey company. It no longer served me as a space to create and invite others to whiskey. It was time to let it go
The key difference between quitting and moving on is how you look back on things. I regret quitting a lot of things. I don’t regret the things I moved on from.
🛠️The Action
The hardest part isn’t taking the action of quitting or moving on. It’s understanding which feeling you’re experiencing.
Here are strategies to help you distinguish between quitting and moving on:
Ask yourself key questions:
How does this serve me now?
If I think 5 years ahead, will I regret this decision?
Am I stopping out of fear or growth?
What would I tell a friend in my situation?
Check your physical response:
Notice how your body feels when thinking about stopping
Anxiety might signal fear-based quitting
Calm acceptance might signal to move on
If it’s a binary choice, put your hands into fists and imagine your options in each fist.
Which feels heavier? Drop that hand.
The lighter-feeling hand is what your heart is saying. (Thanks to Coach Supriya for this exercise)
Consider your motivation:
Are you running away from or towards something?
Or are you making space for something better?
If this thing were gone, what would you do with that space?
Evaluate your energy:
Does this activity still energize you?
Or does it consistently drain you?
✨Conclusion
Quitting and moving on feel different because they come from different places. Quitting stems from fear and avoidance while moving on grows from self-awareness and growth.
I didn't quit the whiskey company. I didn't fail. I stayed true to my vision until I could no longer serve it. Then moved on without shame, knowing I made the right choice for myself and everyone involved.
This applies to my numerous jobs and careers too. Yes, I could have a prestigious title by now. But that's not who I am. I'm not a one-career or even one-job-at-a-time person. I do my own thing, and I'm proud of it.
Your ADHD might make you prone to starting many things, but that doesn't mean every ending is a quit. Sometimes it's just time to be like Miles Morales - to embrace your story, no matter how painful or uncertain, and choose to keep moving forward in a leap of faith.
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