Raised in rural North Carolina, Allen Welborn met Jesus as a 20-year-old Navy mechanic while stationed in Southern California. My family and I are at peace, trusting God’s goodness in whatever the next few days may bring. By the time this is published, God will most likely have made clear his will for my dad’s life. I am in transit from New York, not yet clear on whether I am traveling south to say goodbye to my hero or witness a miraculous recovery. My 71-year-old father suffered a massive heart attack while undergoing a routine examination by his cardiologist and is currently on life support at a hospital in my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Less than 24 hours ago, I received the phone call that everyone with aging parents fears the most. But instead, I ended up writing the following. This morning, I opened my laptop while on an airplane to email the district office with my apologies for not delivering on my promised post. So the idea of not quitting has been ingrained in me for along time, but over the years I think I’ve become more aware of how best to utilize my time and efforts in order to achieve certain goals.This is the blog that almost never was. I even remember Coach Ellis telling us once that the word “can’t” should not be in our dictionary, so I dutifully went home after practice that day and crossed it out of my dictionary. (I’ve actually just started his latest book on Money). I was big into the motivational stuff at an early age, and read all of Tony Robbins’ books as soon as they came out. When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill… When things go wrong as they sometimes will, I had the poem memorized within a couple of days, and many of the words have stuck with me over the years. Like many coaches, Todd was into motivational techniques, and it was through him that I first came across the poem, “ Don’t Quit“. I was about 9 years old, and I tried to do everything Coach Ellis told me. Reading today’s United Technology ad also brought back memories of my first swim coach, Todd Ellis. Such thinking leads to poor decision making. How much better off would those individuals who kept plugging away and never achieved their dream have been if they had “pivoted” (to use a popular phrase these days), if they had walked away towards some other venture where their grit and determination would have been put to better use?Īnother issue associated with quitting or walking away is that many people get caught up in the sunk cost fallacy, and think that they need to recoup everything they have put into their latest venture. Those stories aren’t as inspirational as the success stories, and so they often go unnoticed or unpublicized.Īs a result, there is an almost heroic status applied to individuals who persevere against all odds and become successful, and a stigma attached to those who “quit.” I am also quite sure that there are just as many stories, if not more, of entrepreneurs who ignored such suggestions, kept going, and never met with the success they hoped for. I realize there are hundreds of stories of successful entrepreneurs who ignored everyone’s suggestions to quit, to try something else, but kept going and eventually became successful. This kind of editor is the one who will tell you your time is better spent doing something else entirely.” “ And the editor who is your partner will tell you that the chapters are in the wrong order, that you must delete a third of what you wrote, or perhaps consider writing for TV instead. Seth Godin also wrote about this in one of his posts where he notes the difference between a copyeditor and an editor who is your partner: Sometimes, however, we get so caught up in the details of what we are doing, that it often takes a trusted third party to suggest that maybe we should be doing something else entirely. Walking away is a realization that what you are currently doing may not be helping you achieve your dream, your life’s purpose, and as a result making a conscious decision to change the path you are to help you achieve your dream. I’ve written before about what I consider the difference between quitting and walking away. I am glad that Churchill added the phrase “ except to convictions of … good sense.” I am also glad that Churchill did not use the phrase “quit”, but rather “give in.” Never yield to force never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” “… this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. It even quotes from one of Winston Churchill’s famous speeches: This week’s ad is about not quitting, about never giving in. This is the seventh in a collection of newspaper ads from United Technologies that appeared in the Wall Street Journal from the late 1970s through the early 1980s.
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