Recently a client told me she was ready to quit, just give it up. She was struggling with her business, and was just feeling hopeless in that moment. A lot of moments.
“You can trust your heart,” I told her. “It’s time to quit.”
She was talking about quitting the business. Me, I wasn’t so sure. I was going to compassionately push just a little bit.
Our hearts are infinitely tender, subtle and responsive. The heart sees quickly and moves quickly. The heart responds to truth and reality because that’s whereof it’s born. Love, truth and reality all come from the same source and the heart is a doorway to that source.
At the same time our mind is also very fast. It’s used to dancing with heart. It’s first allegiance is to safety, which it perceives to come from knowledge and control. The mystery of love is not really the safest path for the mind, although it’s the only path that goes anywhere real.
The infinite responsiveness of the heart and the rapid dancing of the mind tango together very well. The heart responds to reality, and the mind immediately tries to make it safe.
The heart knows something isn’t working, and the mind immediately makes up a story about it.
This all happens very, very quickly.
Here’s Your Job Description
You need to slow it down enough to see with the eyes of your heart, without the filter of your mind’s story.
My client did indeed need to quit, but not the business. She needed to quit the role she thought she had to play. She needed to quit thinking her gift didn’t have something very valuable to contribute to the business. She needed to quit trying to force herself to fit.
As she quit those things, she felt peace. And spaciousness. And a breath of air. She felt vitality return to her.
There were no immediate answers as to what it would look like, it was too soon. But with her business partners, she now could sit down and look at the truth of her heart and compare it to what the business actually needed.
It’s November: Time to Quit
Typically the end of the year is when many make their plans for the next year. You start to vision, imagine, sketch out what’s possible.
Before you do any planning, please do this first: quit.
Trying to fill a full cup just makes a mess. Instead, your first step is to empty the cup by quitting, luxuriating in the emptiness. Only then do you dream and vision and plan for what’s next.
Early-ish November is a great time to quit, while there’s still plenty of time to do planning for 2013.
Here’s How to Quit
First: Embrace quitting. If you have a voice in your heart that is telling you to quit, embrace it. Say yes to it. Surrender, bow your head in humility, and accept that you need to quit.
Do this without attaching to any story about what quitting actually means or looks like.
Second: Ask your heart what you need to quit. Let it be a sincere question. Forget any guesses you’ve made about what you think you need to quit. Allow yourself to be willing to be surprised. It could be a project, but it could also be a belief or a behavior.
Say “Yes” to whatever you get. And ask if there’s more you need to quit. Say “Yes” to that, too, and ask again, until you’re done.
Third: Feel the grief of quitting. Even if what you are quitting is something you don’t want anymore, yet it may be offering you comfort of some sort. If so, let yourself feel any grief you may feel at letting it go. Say goodbye. Let it go. Bye. That’s sad… And it’s okay that it’s sad.
Fourth: Luxuriate in the spaciousness. Don’t try to fill the space up with anything new yet. Just be with it.
Also, ask in your heart what will help make the quitting real. What kind of support or accountability do you need in order to truly quit?
Nicely done!
So, do you need to quit? What did your heart show you? Please tell me in the comments.
37 Responses
The Heart is where it’s at.A decision made or about to be made normally results in a disruption in my breathing pattern if it is not right and I had my mind over rule my heart.
I made changes last year and by emptying my heart of heaviness, grief, anger and letting forgiveness flow I realised a burden , a weight was lifted. The clarity of thought that resulted also allowed my mind to stop its erratic dance and mellow into a waltz.
Alam- So glad you let it all flow with forgiveness, al Ghafur indeed! Subhana’llah!
Every year during the last two weeks of December I unplug. Intentionally, I slow down to review and reflect on the year. Seeding the new year comes out of this time.
In 2011, I started earlier, actually it was November 17. While singing a hymn, one verse grabbed, “continue in word and prayer till Thou dost flow through me.” Those were my “marching orders.” I bought a nice bound notebook and began to record impressions and Bible verses for each day. Also, I recorded the prayers I uttered. It slowed me down big time. I continued in this practice till the end of December.
Many things have opened up to me in 2012 both personally and in my business that I attribute to the down time I started in November.
Tony- that’s so beautiful- I love those marching orders. Ahhh…
Thank you for this one Mark. It helps with the situation I find myself in: today I gave my first singing workshop in preparation for leading a community choir in the New Year. It went well and my heart was singing to the rooftops! There was such a wonderful feeling of spaciousness.
So what was I letting go of you may ask: I’ve been letting go of the belief that I need to make my living just through Reiki teaching and treatments. I’ve been struggling with this for years and it’s often been painful trying to live by something only a few people are looking for.
At the moment lots of people are looking for a singing group to join and I love to sing and share songs. There has been plenty of resistance and fear, but most of all there has been the part of me that didn’t want to give up on the idea of being successful just doing Reiki.
So today’s message was beautifully timely and confirming as I embrace the direction my heart calls and let go of the screaming of the mind that want things to stay the same!
Kate! That is beautiful! What a surrender… and what a joyful door to open.
Thank you Mark I completely agree! I had a real feeling of being in harmony (!) with what the Divine intends for me at this time and singing is, for me, a way of Connecting.
Kate, I just want to encourage you to keep going with the singing and community choir. Singing is another pathway to healing. My fears about acceptance somehow became all about singing. I recently joined a community chorale here in Mesa, AZ. I am so grateful for this place where I can be back in the joy of singing and have a safe place to face my fears. You are creating that space for your choir members. <3 Marta
Thank you Marta for your encouragement. Your words are confirming of what I’m feeling and I’m really excited about creating this space for people to heal through song.
Thank you, Mark. I recently moved across country and have found myself essentially starting over, continually asking “How do I do this?” My ego wants to quit but my soul refuses. I practice the heart exercises I learned in our workshops and am finding my yoga teaching and writing going to a deeper level. There is something, though, that continues to keep me from getting out and meeting new community, new friends, new clients. Patient, gracious, compassionate exploration is all I have at the moment…and the knowledge I am not alone in this. 🙂 Surrender has been a practice and mantra for this fall season, for sure. Quitting, however, doesn’t sem to be an option for this determined heart.
Wendy… your heart always knows. So glad to hear of your journey. And surrender is such a journey…
hi mark~in the zen buddhist tradition, this is a time of deep practice, honouring the time of darkness, quiet, incubation. after 6 mighty months of work w. yollana and a website waiting to be birthed in the wings, i find myself at a *full stop*. at first i wondered what happened. did i lose momentum, heart, inspiration? no. i’m resting before the next phase, and listening deeply for when that might be. not everyone has the same luxury or can do it the same way i’m able to but indeed: i’ve quit. resting in the stillness, waiting for right action to arise. ahhhh.
Meg! Ahhh…….
God, I love this. Right now isn’t the season for quitting (although there’s probably always SOMETHING unnecessary you ought to consider quitting), but I’ve had to take the big step in the past, and I know it’ll come again. Thanks for the permission, the implicit message that quitting can be a blessing.
Leslie- Good of you to know what’s true… 🙂
Wow this is so timely for me. Just today I was talking to someone about not being able to get everything done or caught up and feeling like I’m on a treadmill. She asked me if there was something I could give up but I couldn’t think how that was possible. And then I read your post and had to reread it to try to understand it fully. I love this idea and am going to open my heart and surrender to it. Thanks you.
Wendy- so glad that it worked! Here’s to letting go of the treadmill…
Mark, I just love the beginning of this article! I shared it on a community page for coaches I trained with (properly attributed, of course). Thank you!
https://www.facebook.com/ConnectedCoaches?fref=ts
Marta- Thank you! So glad it resonated so strongly!
Mark, this post reminded me that I need to let go of the role I’ve been playing. Recently, I asked my community if their business model fits their personality and if not, let it go. I had forgotten to ask myself the same question and almost fell into the trap of planning my 2013 using a business model that no longer serves my heart, my faith or my personality. I prayed for clarity and here’s your blog post, right on time.
Leesa- Whew… that feels big, eh?
I wanted to go really big with one of my private blogs and start to earn money with it as soon as possible. But I did a lot of reading and traffic analyzing, and I realized that the time isn’t right just yet. I still think it could work, but I have to improve the content and design some more. I’m glad I realized this early, because if I had already startet putting all my time and effort in this project without succeeding, quitting would’ve been much harder nevertheless.
Andrea- good catch!
Hi Mark,
This message was perfect for us today. We were just realizing this morning that the “ease and flow” we’ve been creating in our personal lives lately, is being taken over by false images in our heads about how we should be in service from the heart, yet earn a living at the same time.
The confirmation that came through your writing was perfect for us. I think it has to do with the word, “yet” that we used in the previous sentence. “Yet”, sets up a conflict in fulfilling both desires from the get-go…one that requires us to try harder and do more, without enjoying the peace and luxuriating that you mentioned.
We will take your advice and ask to be shown what to release.
Thank you.
Dan and Alexandra- so beautiful! Subtle, subtle.. and so worth catching!
Loved this post and will be sharing with the (newly formed) Slow Marketing community (slowmarketing.org). Would love to have your voice be a bigger part of that, Mark!
Tea- I love the idea of Slow Marketing! Very cool… I can’t imagine not contributing to that idea.
Hi Mark,
I found your blog through a link to the Slow Marketing Movement on Facebook. This is lovely. I write books, and in the past few months have been plagued by this deep, soulful feeling of “I don’t want to do this anymore”. But what is the “this” in that statement? Stories and books are my passion, and that hasn’t changed. This post reinforces the question I’m asking myself about this feeling I’ve been having, and helps bring focus to the false jobs and unnecessary pressures I’d been charging myself with that have dragged down the true passion in my life. It can be so hard to sort through all the many jobs and roles we give ourselves (sometimes especially when we’ve done this to ourselves without even realizing it), but this questioning process you describe spares us from quitting the whole, when really only the false assumptions need to be replaced.
Thank you.
Megan- So glad you have that awareness and I’m grateful to further support you in that- it would be tragic to lose the jeweled core when we’re just trying to clean the dirt off so it can gleam.
I quit! What a powerful proclamation. I quit expecting myself to be any different than I am at this very present moment. I quit expecting myself to have more energy, more inspiration, more everything than I have right now. I quit lamenting and silently fretting about the increasing size of my hips and a gimp knee that doesn’t let me run anymore. I quit worrying about tomorrow and what I need to change NOW so that the worry eventually gets bored and finds another project. I quit hammering and hammering myself to figure out what I am supposed to do, what I am supposed to offer, and how I can FINALLY get whatever I think I’m supposed to friggin get. I quit. I quit the non-acceptance game. Please let the Universe know I’m sunning on the beach right now if she needs me for some miracles. Thanks, Roxanne
Roxanne- I love your quitting…
Mark,
This post struck me in a way that I can’t quite identify yet. Reading it made me anxious, but not in a bad way. It made my mind spin and run in circles trying to make sure I didn’t do anything rash. Essentially, my mind went into panic mode. But underneath that there was a quiet calmness. A knowing that it would be okay.
I’ve tagged this post in my calendar and set aside some time to come back and sit with it. It’s time to let go.
I so appreciate your giving me the opportunity to let go of that which no longer fits or serves me.
Erica- so wonderful to even notice the quiet calmness under the panic. That is a critical level of discernment… Be gentle with yourself and keep walking with it!
I wanted to go really big with one of my private blogs and start to earn money with it as soon as possible.
Thue xe may tai da nang
This is something to reflect on deeply Mark. “You need to slow it down to see it with the eyes of your heart without the filter of your mind’s story. ”
Perhaps it is no coincidence that there are two dominant threads running through posts everywhere at present. One is finding or getting clarity on your purpose, why you do what you do and the other is reference to the destructive role our Reptile brain is allowed to play in our lives.
So, if you allow the eyes of your heart to see first, will you come more readily to your purpose? And if you shut the door on the filter of your mind’s story, will you feel the quiet and calm without the persistent and insistent negativity of the LIzard’s inner communication?
The mind’s story is such a fascinating concept. If you really reflect on what you are telling yourself, how contrary is it to your hopes and aspirations? Just pausing while writing this, I was fascinated to find by tuning in to one of it’s stories that it was just that, contrary. How much are we dominated then by such reverse energy and disproportionate thinking?
Thank you for giving me a mantra with which to remind myself of that daily and a reason to keep the door shut for a period.
So glad it touched you, Sandy! Thank you for such a thoughtful reply.
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