Winners do quit: when walking away is the right move
Mel Robbins takes 'winners always quit' from Olympians, Seth Godin treats quitting as an honest decision, and Georges St-Pierre, Magnus Carlsen and Matthew McConaughey each explain why they walked away at the top, from the UFC, the World Championship and a 14.5 million dollar film offer. Their accounts turn quitting from a failure of nerve into a choice about what you want next, which is useful to anyone staying in something only because they are good at it.
Quitting is the right move when the thing you are leaving has stopped giving you what you came for, and staying would cost more than it returns. Five people reach that point by different routes. None of them quit their craft. Each quit one version of it, and each knew what they wanted in its place.
Mel Robbins takes the lesson from the gymnast Simone Biles, who withdrew from most of her events at the Tokyo Olympics when she lost her sense of position in the air. Robbins reverses the old slogan and says "winners always quit." Her test is courage. Choosing to quit is different from running away because you are afraid. Biles was called a quitter, focused on herself, and came back for the Paris Games.
Seth Godin supplies the analysis. He says quitting has wrongly become shameful, since you cannot be the best at one thing without leaving others. His question is whether you are in a dip, the hard part before it gets easier, or at a dead end. People quit the gym in February because that is when it gets hard. A dead end is different: "You can't smoke your way through emphysema." Past costs are gone either way, and a good decision can turn out badly and still have been right.
Georges St-Pierre, the mixed martial arts champion, says he never liked fighting. He fought for freedom, money and access, and left healthy and wealthy once he had them. He tells fighters like him to finish on top and walk away, and tells young athletes to keep a plan B. He then put the same drive into acting.
Magnus Carlsen, the top-rated chess player, kept the game and gave up the World Championship. In title matches he was driven by fear of losing and felt mostly relief when he won. He is prouder of being ranked number one since 2011 than of the title. He decided calmly, told the people close to him, and did not reopen the question.
Matthew McConaughey walked away from romantic comedies because his life had outgrown them. He went about 20 months without work and turned down a 14.5 million dollar offer. Then the dramatic roles came. He says plainly it could have ended his career.
They differ on fear, since Carlsen and St-Pierre both left things they dreaded, though as winners and not after a defeat. They differ on how to know, on safety nets and on timing: Godin says push through the early dip, St-Pierre says leave at the top. These are personal stories with no data on how often quitting works out, and they come from people who had a cushion.
What to do with it: name what you came for and check whether you have it. Decide whether you face a dip or a dead end. Set sunk costs aside. Never decide in the hours after a loss. Quit the narrowest thing that solves the problem. Know what you are quitting toward. Build a fallback first. Decide once, tell those closest to you, and hold.
Where health or safety is at stake, the decision is more urgent and professional help belongs in it.