Knowing How To Quit Is Key To Being Well
It is not an exaggeration to say that a large part of our well-being depends on knowing how to resign. Surely the word “resignation” already generates animosity to many people. It is not for less. We live in a culture that invites us all the time to achieve and accumulate, not to give up.
Psychologists’ offices are full of people who cannot find the way to feel comfortable with the reality in which they live. Many of them are surprised by the fact that they have achieved much of what they set out to do. Maybe a good job, certain comforts, or a stable partner. The options can be many. And despite having realities they longed for, they finally don’t feel good.
Perhaps the key is not exactly what to get. It is possible that the solution to that eternal disagreement lies in knowing how to resign. In striking a balance between enthusiasm for obtaining what we dream of and conformity for appreciating what we have.
A time of discomfort
If we humans have something in common, it is that desire to be well. And when we are well, to be better. It is a certain positive nonconformity, which has finally made it possible to build knowledge, science and civilizations. We want to solve the problems that reality poses to us in order to be better, always better …
However, in our time “obtaining” and “being ” have practically become synonymous. What you are depends on what you get. “Being someone” means getting recognition, money, prestige, fame, or whatever. The point is that it is these attachments that give weight to the being that holds them. You are nobody, if you do not have what puts you above others.
Likewise, we live in times when there seems to be an epidemic of unhappiness. It is not for nothing that rates of mental disorders have risen in recent decades and that most people complain about their lives.
Know how to quit
An important part of everything is in the fact that life, yes or yes, pushes us to multiple resignations. Almost every day. If you do one thing, you stop doing another. You have to choose. If you want a wonderful, gigantic house, you will probably have to leave your family alone to dedicate yourself more hard to your work. If you want a stable partner, you must give up the men or women who pass through your life.
That is the part that many do not understand, or do not want to accept. They assume that true well-being is only achieved when it is possible to have everything at the same time. Knowing how to quit is not within your calculations. Quite the opposite. What they long for is knowing how to obtain, knowing how to accumulate, knowing how to collect the complete set.
That’s where the lie is. Every decision we make in life implies a resignation. Every achievement has its price. It is not possible to have it all. Now, each person defines what their priorities are. That is why knowing how to resign is essential.
Happiness is inside
We delude ourselves that we will be happier by getting this, without losing that. We want the whole package, and when we don’t, we can become unhappy. We long for what we give up, instead of enjoying what we get from that giving up. We are always choosing, what happens is that many times we do not realize it.
Perhaps we end up getting angry with ourselves for not embodying that ideal of “being”, which we do not even build. We then began to mistreat ourselves and to demand ourselves. A better job, a higher status, a perfect harmony as a couple, some cover children and a very long etcetera. As ideals are ideal, precisely because they are not within concrete reality, we make our life a hell in pursuit of what we do not have.
If there is something clear, it is that either you are happy with little, or you are not happy. When there is truly an internal balance, that voracious anxiety to have more or to be more ceases. This is only possible if the ability to know how to resign has been acquired. Happiness is an attitude in which there is enough strength to identify what really matters to us and go after it, giving up the rest without nostalgia.
