Decision
Give up or keep going: how do you know?
Keep going if there's progress and you learn each time; change if you repeat the same mistake. Sometimes giving up one way is persisting in the dream.
There are moments when insisting looks like stubbornness and giving up looks like cowardice. No one wants to quit too early, or to spend years on a dead-end road. The good news is that there are signs that help tell the two apart.
What to do now
- Separate the dream from the method. Sometimes the dream is right and the road is wrong. Giving up a method, a partner or a product is not giving up the dream; often it's what saves it.
- Look for signs of progress. Did a customer come back? Did someone pay? Did you learn something new on the last attempt? Slow progress is still progress. A total absence of signs, for a long time, deserves attention.
- See whether you're repeating the same mistake. Persistence is trying again with what you learned. Repeating the same thing expecting a different result is something else.
- Calculate the cost of continuing. How much money, health and family time does each extra month consume? If the cost is destroying the essentials, it's time to change something, even if it isn't giving up.
- Listen to those who know the field, not only those who love you. People in the industry, mentors and customers give signals that family, out of affection, sometimes hides.
- Set a review point. "If I haven't reached such-and-such a result by such-and-such a date, I'll change the plan." That avoids deciding on the impulse of a bad day.
- Take care of exhaustion. Much of the urge to give up is actually fatigue. Rest before deciding. If the fatigue comes with deep hopelessness, CVV at 188.
- Talk with those who depend on the outcome. Family, team and partners feel the effects of the decision. Listening to them doesn't take the choice away from you, but it often reveals costs and support you hadn't seen.
When it happened to Bairo
Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez has given up too early before. He wanted to bring artificial intelligence and augmented reality into the business, was told it wouldn't work and, even believing in it, gave up. Years later, the very same thing became a trend. He kept two things from that time: the pain of having stopped and the proof that he had seen far.
Next time, he decided, he wouldn't stop at the first answer. With the natural-based cosmetics brand, he heard once again that it wouldn't work. He kept going. It worked.
No one knows for sure how many times he tried, thought about stopping and almost gave up. What is known, as he tells it, is that the seventh attempt was the one that worked.
The path
Giving up and keeping going are not absolute opposites. Bairo gave up several businesses, but never the direction. Each change of road carried something from the one before, until the attempt that held all the others inside it. If you're at that crossroads, ask: am I giving up the dream, or just one way of getting there? The answer usually shows the next step.
There's one more honest test: ask yourself whether, knowing what you know today, you would start this project again. If the answer is yes, it's probably worth continuing, adjusting what needs adjusting. If it's no, it may be time to close with dignity and carry the lesson into the next step. Neither answer is failure; both are conscious choices.