Last night, I took a moment to lie down and relax. With my hands behind my head I thought about a popular Vince Lombardi quote that I’m sure you’ve heard. You know how it goes, right? It says, “Winners never quit and quitters never win”. It’s a great quote that we should take to heart and use as inspiration when we need that extra kick in the rear end to motivate ourselves when things get tough. As such, we use this quote to instill perseverance into our character. If we want to win we can’t quit – it’s as simple as that. But as I thought more about the quote I started to realize something.

Sometimes we need to quit.

There are a lot of things we no longer need to be doing. I bet that if each of us made an honest evaluation of our life – the people we are involved with, the places we visit, the things we do – we would come to the same conclusion. There are some things that we need to quit, wouldn’t you agree?

Pause

And try this. For the next few minutes take a look at your life in the financial, family, health, and spiritual categories. See if you can discover five things you need to quit doing.

…

Okay, ready?

I did this exercise while going for a drive this morning and was fascinated at how profound, simple, and helpful this exercise is. Believe it or not I came up with five different things that I need to quit! I would like to share them with you:

• Quit procrastinating on starting business concepts
• Quit time consuming, boring tasks like surfing the internet
• Quit patronizing non-health conscious food producers
• Quit being silent about issues and be more vocal
• Quit starting up art projects and not finishing them

What did you come up with? I bet if I asked 100 of you each of us will have different answers, but we will all have one thing in common: every one of us will have something we need to quit. I’ve discovered a lot about myself through this type of assessment. And do you want to know what the most important thing is that I’ve learned? I’ve learned that in order to win there are things we no longer need to be doing. In other words…

In order to win we need to quit.

That’s right, be a winner and quit! Win for your health and quit eating unhealthy foods, stop drinking alcohol and quit smoking. Win for your family and quit being silent about challenges and procrastinating on providing them the quality resources of time, advice and love. Win for your community and quit walking over trash and not saying hello to your neighbors. If we take the time to quit doing these things I guarantee that our quality of life will improve, wouldn’t you agree? Quitting those activities may be the very things needed to make our lives, our homes, and our neighborhoods the types of places we dream of.

The next time you’re analyzing your own life or a friend is complaining to you about their challenges listen to them very closely. Listen to yourself.  Listen to them.  And pay close attention to what you are hearing. Then ask this question…

Have you ever tried quitting?

There are often underlying behaviors that are self-inhibiting and quitting them may be the precise thing we need in order to get to where we want to be. When are you going to quit so you can start winning?