The last two years have been extremely rough for us as small business owners. Whenever times are tough, you have to consider whether it’s time to step away, sell off, or just weather through. My opinion in the business is that 1) you sell high, not low, 2) it’s better to cut to the bone to weather through a bad economy, and 3) we’re too old to go back to traditional jobs (mostly due to agism). Our business challenges have been due to the economy, marketing support changes forced by our franchisor, and in smaller part due to some personnel changes.
Here’s what ChatGPT has to say about evaluating whether to quit or not (at least what it said before the recent boardroom coup that will lead to who knows what!)
Deciding when to quit something, whether it’s a job, a relationship, a project, or any other commitment, is a personal and often challenging decision. Here are some signs and considerations that might indicate it’s time to quit:
- Lack of Passion or Interest:
- If you’ve lost passion or interest in what you’re doing, and it no longer brings you joy or fulfillment, it might be a sign to consider moving on.
- Consistent Negative Impact on Well-being:
- If the activity or situation consistently causes stress, anxiety, or negatively impacts your mental or physical health, it’s important to prioritize your well-being.
- Values Misalignment:
- If what you’re doing goes against your core values and principles, it might be a signal that it’s time to reassess and make a change.
- No Room for Growth:
- When there’s no opportunity for personal or professional growth, and you feel stagnant or unchallenged, it could be a sign that you’ve outgrown the current situation.
- Unhealthy Environment:
- If the environment you’re in is toxic, unsupportive, or detrimental to your overall happiness, quitting might be a necessary step for your mental and emotional well-being.
- Repeated Failures or Lack of Progress:
- If despite your best efforts, you consistently face setbacks, failures, or a lack of progress, it might be worth reassessing whether this is the right path for you.
- Instincts and Intuition:
- Trust your instincts. If your gut feeling is telling you that something is not right or that it’s time to move on, it’s worth paying attention to those signals.
- Lack of Alignment with Long-Term Goals:
- If what you’re currently doing doesn’t align with your long-term goals or the direction you want to take in life, it may be time to reassess your priorities.
- Unhealthy Relationships:
- If the people you’re working or interacting with are consistently negative, unsupportive, or toxic, it can significantly impact your overall well-being.
- Financial Considerations:
- If the pursuit is causing significant financial strain and there’s no clear path to improvement, it may be prudent to reassess your situation.
It’s important to note that quitting doesn’t equate to failure. Sometimes, recognizing when to quit is a courageous decision that allows for personal growth and opens up opportunities for new and more fulfilling experiences. Before making such decisions, it can be helpful to seek advice from trusted friends, mentors, or professionals to gain different perspectives on your situation.
ChatGPT, Life & Business Coach, apparently
Just for fun, I assigned the following scale to the 10 items: 0 = not relevant, 1 = somewhat relevant, 2 = very relevant. Then I divided by 20 (the highest number of points possible). Related to our current business, I landed at a 40%, which probably means I should just weather the storm.
Here’s the thing: I did quit once, which is why we opened our business. I had an amazing executive career at American Express (Global Business Travel) which was undergoing some huge changes, and at the end of my ex-pat assignment I opted for a year of severance, turning down a different but less interesting position back in the US. While I left on my own terms, that summer after I left was a bloodbath. Nearly all of my colleagues were laid off across our division, and it’s possible I would have been included in that as well; but it’s possible I wouldn’t have been. We’ll never know. As I think back, I almost always regret my decision to leave, but at the time, if I had applied this 10-item scale, I would have scored a 75%. In other words, if these ten items are comprehensive and equally important factors in one’s (subjective) decision to quit, then my decision to leave was right.
First, regardless of what younger generations may believe, item #10 (financial considerations) on the list is probably more relevant to one’s career choices than item #1 (passion). I may have a passion for oil painting, but being a high paid executive in a Fortune 50 company buys more canvasses and linseed oil than selling paintings on etsy does.
There are two other considerations that should be considered that my Open AI mentor didn’t mention:
- Where will you go? What will you do instead? Deciding to quit is one thing. What you will do instead is an entirely different thing. With a career, you are giving up your livelihood, so you’d better be able to replace it. If you retire, do you have enough savings to last the rest of your life?
- What can you change if you don’t leave? This includes things you can change about yourself, your immediate circumstances, your perspective, and lastly (and leastly) the organization at large. In my case, had I stayed, the “great purge” of 2013 would have meant that everyone I worked with would be different anyway, and those who were let go got their severance, too. Weirdly, my own boss left before I did even though I gave notice first. Would I have liked the new organization created under her successor better? Who knows? My own successor stayed on for five years (we are still friends). Would my new role have protected me or made me vulnerable?
Since my return from French Polynesia, I’ve been reading The Far Land, about Pitcairn Island, and particularly Fletcher Christian’s role in the mutiny on the Bounty when he set his former mentor Captain Bligh adrift with 18 loyalists. Bligh’s leadership style was hyper-critical; he often belittled and insulted Christian who eventually decided he couldn’t take it anymore, leading to the crisis. Christian’s new crew consisted of 23 mutineers, some of whom were undisciplined malcontents with mixed motives who didn’t really want to build something new or better; they just wanted freedom without consequences in an island paradise, and they were willing to (or driven to?) murder and steal and rape to get what they wanted. After they arrived at Pitcairn, Fletcher Christian spent hours in a cave staring out at the ocean, perhaps full of regret. He was dead within 3 years of the mutiny, having been murdered in a “civil war” on his island paradise.
The mutiny on the Bounty is as good a tale as there is, full of mixed characters. While Bligh has some leadership issues, he’s also an excellent navigator and helped develop Christian’s skills as well. He was acquitted of wrongdoing in his trial. Christian, who is generally portrayed favorably in movie depictions, may have been too thin-skinned and prone to depression. Even if he was right to set Bligh adrift, some of his subsequent actions were certainly lacking in integrity (tricking Tahitians onto the Bounty to abduct enough women to satisfy his sex-starved crew as they fled the island). The fact that Christian’s (and other mutineers’) descendents are still the primary inhabitants of remote Pitcairn, and that a third of the island’s men were convicted of child sex crimes in 2004, revealing a long history and culture of sexual abuse, points to some of the negative downstream impacts of a colony founded on evading detection by authorities.
Since this is a Mormon blog, I have to drag it all kicking and screaming back to that topic. We recently had a guest post submission from someone who regretted her decision to leave. She does not believe in the Church, but leaving the Church upended all her relationships, ended her marriage, and has led to a difficult place for her, or one might say it has revealed the superficiality of relationships she once cherished.
When I apply the ten questions to the church, I get an 80%. But that doesn’t answer the two questions I added: where will you go instead and what can you change if you don’t leave. I’ll take a quick crack at these relative to the church.
Church leaders have requoted the John 6:68: “Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.” If someone believes in the Church (but doesn’t like church culture), that story is salient. But someone who doesn’t believe in the Church (like the aforementioned reader) may still wonder what is supposed to replace the Church community. Being in a community of believers without sharing their belief eventually feels untenable, but finding a new community of friends and supporters at a later stage of life may be even more difficult. Online friendships are one thing, but creating in person friendships that are lasting, especially once our kids are grown, can feel insurmountable.
Christian Kimball’s book Living on the Inside of the Edge is a “how to” manual for those who don’t believe all of the Church’s tenets but who want to participate, and it contains excellent suggestions for how to participate on one’s own terms. But still, that doesn’t make it workable for everyone. You will not be able to change the institutional church, but you can set boundaries about what you will and will not do as a participant (such as callings, tithing, and temple recommends). These limitations may also limit the amount of fellowship and support you are able to obtain within the church community. Your mileage will vary based on your locale.
But staying in the church when you don’t believe or see it as deliberately causing harm is a lot like trying to stay in a political party while voting the other way. How long is that going to work? You are surrounded by people whose values differ from your own, whose information sources are different, who have a completely different version of truth, and who may think yours is an enemy position to be eradicated.
- What’s your score on the ten point scale? Do you like this scale?
- If you have left, how did you replace the loss? Did you change things to make it work?
- What big “quitting” decisions (non-church) have you made in your life? How did it turn out?
- What would you have done differently in hindsight?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Wow. ChatGPT is the wise friend we all need from time to time.
Great analogy — leaving the Church, whether formally or informally, seems a lot like leaving a job. Some do it impulsively, some do it after careful deliberation and planning. Some do it because they really don’t like the boss, others despite really liking the boss. Some really miss their colleagues and work friends, others are quite happy to never have another conversation with them. Some look back and say “best decision I ever made.” Others look back and say, “maybe I quit too soon.”
So ChatGPT and her 10-point list, augmented by hawk’s two extra points, are helpful guides to thinking about it. But I’m not sure “what’s the right way to leave the Church” has a clear answer like say “what’s the right way to build a deck” might. It’s much easier to look back in retrospect to say “oops, that was the wrong way to leave” than, beforehand, to come up with the right way to leave. My sense is that formal exit will always be messy, particularly within a family or a marriage (unless both are exiting together).
“But I’m not sure “what’s the right way to leave the Church” has a clear answer like say “what’s the right way to build a deck” might.” – Dave B.
One thing that I noticed is “right way to build a desk” brings up an image of a too-small, sometimes incomprehensible diagram that over-explains and under-explains “how to build the desk” as if it there was 1 process to do so in multiple languages.
I think it is more similar to “building and designing a desk from scratch” in the sense that there are “design principles” but no instruction manual, and you wind up re-purposing stuff from your environment to create the desk.
Of course, it would be nice if the “design principles” taught by the church about the process aren’t values of “laziness, offense [with implied superiority complex], and rule-breaker [as the unspoken default].”
There is a great Freakanomics episode and I think a chapter in their book where they encourage quitting. I have debated this multiple times with my corporate job and am still working there. We will see if I survive the next wave of layoffs and restructuring that is planned for 2024. I am involved with the restructuring planning and I could put my role on the chopping block. I hesitate because it pays well and I like what I do but the company is struggling and may change directions away from my speciality. I am at 60%.
We did quit the church in 2021 and it was one of the hardest and easiest decisions we have made. It was hard because we had so much of our lives invested in the church and it seemed like a lonely and harder way to raise our kids. We worried about how the kids would react to their parents seemingly sudden and extreme about face. We had recently baptized the youngest and were Uber-active to that point except for early morning seminary. A few years before I finally refused to drive kids a half hour each way before 6 am.
But when we finally were confronted with reassessing what being all the way in on the church looked like for us after the Covid reprieve it was the obvious choice. We would have rated really high on your quitting scale.
We have lost a lot of connections with ward members and our kids have mostly declared themselves atheists. I still feel adrift. I miss the community that we lost but we won’t go back. We should have left sooner.
“But I’m not sure “what’s the right way to leave the Church” has a clear answer like say “what’s the right way to build a deck” might.” – Dave B.
I am re-reading this and realizing it was “deck” not “desk” as I originally opined.
The basic premise that “construction is not the same as design + construction” still applies.
I imagine most people on this site have considered leaving the church. The question of where would you go was what ultimately kept me wanting to associate with the church. The percentage deal doesn’t work for me because some of those carry a lot more weight than others in my mind.
It was never a question in my mind of leaving religion entirely. I have seen too much goodness and service rendered by religious communities that I still believe they are vital to communities. Especially small communities. The LDS church feels familiar to me and still has enough value to keep me engaged. Admittedly, what has worked for me might not work for others. I have very kind leaders who have been very patient and understanding of my views and my ward has not tried to eradicate me yet.
I have never quit anything big like a business venture. I do use questions like this in evaluating relationships, online communities and things that occupy my mental space. There have been times I have had to step away from Wheat and Tares. There was a time that I read every post and comment on this site.
I think the largest factor that keeps people from quitting is fear of the unknown. The cautionary tales of people like the gal who lost everything in your post keep people in. The fear of what comes next in business and the fear of kissing on an opportunity if sold too soon keeps people in their status quo. I have to admit that I fear long term generational consequences if I distance myself from religion.
Before I go on to the comments, and before I forget, there is one more very important question. What are the consequences of quitting? Like your example of the woman leaving the church whose husband divorced her and she lost all her friends, or quitting a job before you absolutely know you have another one.
One example, my husband hit 20 years in the Air Force. Retiring without a job lined up is risky, but there are rules about companies recruiting from the military. These rules prevented him from arranging a job, but he had dozens of comments about when he retired to contact that company. On the other hand, he was coming up for reassignment and because of his job experience, and the gulf war situation, that would 75% likely be on an aircraft carrier in the gulf, away from family for two years. So, duh, he retired. But at the same time a recession hit and all those companies who had offered a job were laying people off. So, he was without a job for over a year and then I got sick and really had to quit, so we were surviving on 1/3 the income we had before. So, bad risk staying, unknown bad risk quitting.
So, what are the consequences of quitting?
M.R. Ballard asked a very leading question once to those who consider leaving the Church: “where will you go?” Well, many of us have our own answer to that question and many of us are doing fine. But since he recently passed away I have another question: “where did he go?” I don’t have the answer but I’m pretty sure it isn’t where he thought it would be. Just my opinion of course.
I guess I just don’t understand the position of not really believing but staying anyway or ultimately saying one is really staying out of comfort or for social reasons. A very wise man once told me that being LDS is not just a religion but a lifestyle and that really hit home to me. But staying for those reasons just seems wrong to me.
I was inactive for 20 years. I left because I felt it wasn’t for me. I still lived a pretty clean life because that’s what I liked but I was married outside of the church and raised 4 kids for their entire lives up until a few years ago with no church contact. I only attended church when I visited my parents. Where did I “go”? I just lived my life. I didn’t feel the need to fill my lack of religion with another one. I still believed in God and prayed and such. But I spent my Sundays working on my house, or shopping, or taking the kids out on the boat. All while sipping my cup of coffee.
I came back 4 years ago and am very active now. It just feels different. I feel better. My family was given a choice to be introduced to the church or not. I didn’t give them any pressure. They all say they feel like their lives are significantly better now as well.
What would I do different? I don’t think I would change anything. I needed to lose myself before I found myself.
I am blessed to have a wife who has a stable job in the local school district who earns the good income. I work in investing and trading just on my own, and it can be rewarding and gut-wrenching at the same time. What I make is simply side income. When I was trying to transition from college to career, the currents simply went against me. It was the 2008 financial crisis and there were no job opportunities. So I stayed in school longer. I ended up finishing my PhD only to find that universities were shrinking. So I went into business. I am not a natural businessman. I honestly despise the stereotypical business types, who seem like phony backstabbers who lie with smiles on their faces. I know I’m being too harsh. I am an academic by nature. But the people in academia who control the purses seem like backstabbers and wage thieves as well.
The eternal problem is that if you quit too many times, you’re not giving things the chance they need. But sometimes you have to grit your teeth, cut your losses, and move onto something else. Not an easy calculation by any means. Some people simply come into the job market and just surge through to a comfortable plateau. Others never quite make it and life is an endless game of faking it to “make it.” That’s my life. But I can’t complain. I have made it to a life of comfort. Just of a different sort. I work with refugees. And when I hear their stories and their problems, I have nothing to complain about. They are paragons of trying something new. Some have been doctors in their countries only to find that they are not licensed here and have to take menial jobs.
I live in Boise and would consider myself an outlier on this forum in that I have quit parts of the church but not others.
And am completely open about it.
I have no problem telling anyone in the church who asks what I do and do not believe, and have never had a bad experience as a result (and this is one on one, or in a class setting). I realize that I am on that list of people to be worked on, but I don’t care. And on the occasions when I pop into church, people are genuinely happy to see me.
I’ve told the bishop I’m a full tithe payer but it doesn’t go to the church. Instead, it goes to organizations that need and will spend the money to help alleviate suffering in the world. He said he understands where I’m coming from and has never said another word regarding it.
I won’t accept a calling that requires me to be there every week, because why would I make a commitment I won’t keep?
Feed the missionaries? Absolutely! But I don’t want to be given a message that involves truth claims or being asked for names of people to teach.
I’m also happy to fulfill assignments at the cannery, help people move in or out, or organize community service opportunities.
Instead of the church molding me into what it wants, I’ve turned it on it’s head and have molded the church into what I want.
It works great for me.
For those trying to meet people outside the church? Take up pickleball, gaming groups, etc. Lots of opportunities out there.
I don’t know about pickle ball. I heard it’s a cult.
marksmyname, you say you’re an outlier here because you’ve quit some parts of the church but not others. That seems like most people here. I’ve quit believing, holding calling, attending priesthood, paying a full tithe, and other parts. But I still attend weekly and interact. I’m open and candid about my non-belief when asked. However, I’ve barely ever been asked.
I scores high on the leave the church scale, and coincidentally I left about a year ago. Tbh I’m struggling with the question “where will I go.” I have friends but none are as natural or easy as church friends. On the other hand, exactly one church friend has reached out to me over the past year, so perhaps they weren’t deep friendships. My wife is ABM and some days I wonder if my marriage will survive. It sucks. Other days I think it’s better than ever. Ask me again in 5 years.
Most days my biggest regret is not leaving sooner. I’m essentially agnostic now but on the days I think God might exist I think the LDS may have the test exactly backwards. Instead of God asking us at the pearly gates why we left, might he ask us why we stayed so long?
Once I quit a well paying job to take a lower paying job in a smaller house but in a much better climate. Turned out to be a great decision. I remember telling my boss at the time that I wasn’t leaving or quitting so much as I was adopting a better lifestyle and situation. Maybe quitting is about reframing the decision to pursue something better.
My choice to leave I suppose you could say came down to misalignment of values, but in reality it wasn’t about me entirely. I guess I saw my leaving as an act of protest. I saw I couldn’t influence within fast enough to stop the hurt, particularly to lgbt kids. So I left knowing that it would be painful to not have a place to go. I’ve found some community in more liberal churches and in secular places, but what hurts is that there are so few places where I can still hold my identity as Mormon. It shaped me, for better and for worse. Those other spaces don’t get it snd they don’t feel like home.
I resent in some ways that many mormon spaces don’t allow for variation in being mormon. I’m happier in many ways and deeply sorrowful to feel banished – few friends still feel comfortable socializing. When going back to places we’ve lived I find it hard to reach out to ppl to catch up like I used to. There is just so much emotion and baggage.
“If you have left, how did you replace the loss? Did you change things to make it work?”
I go to Sunday brunch. That’s really the only change we’ve made. The kids are thriving and have better friendships, we still keep in touch with the neighbors. I was most concerned with extended family but I previously faced some surprising backlash from them when they learned I was going to vote for Obama instead of McCain so I wasn’t too concerned about opening a new rift. There are still some family we haven’t told about our relationship to the church but i also learned one of my brothers left around the same time and we’ve been able to bond over that. We’re better brothers now than we ever were before.
I got an honest 0%. This is no surprise. I have a hard time understanding staying with a high percentage.
I quit a job due to a bully management culture. Found a much better job, environment, and pay. Should have quit much earlier.
Leaving: I’d cry every time I saw a casserole somewhere.