Happy Quitter's Day!

If you've already given up on your New Year's resolutions, you're in good company

Photo by Adam Whitlock on Unsplash

Quitter’s Day is a holiday I wasn’t aware of. As this site explains:

Quitter’s Day is set aside to recognize those who set new year goals and fail to achieve them — and to encourage and equip them to try again and ultimately succeed. Research has shown that people quit their resolutions for the year by the second Friday of January.

So why is that collective failure something to celebrate? I can think of several reasons:

1. Quitter’s Day reminds us that failures are necessary steps on the path to success.
   Because social media posts are usually about accomplishments and fun experiences, it’s easy to forget that failures are normal. They are inevitable when we learn new skills. Toddlers don’t get very far on their first attempts to walk. They fall down, get back up, try again, and repeat that process until they are able to walk without falling.

   
   We may only know about or remember their successes, but famous people throughout history have failed multiple times before they succeeded. Business Insider notes that Thomas Edison was told he was “too stupid to learn anything” by teachers and fired from his first two jobs before he became a successful inventor.
   
   Walt Disney’s editor at the Kansas City Star fired him because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” His first cartoon business went bankrupt. He also failed as an actor. His concept for Mickey Mouse was rejected more than 300 times before it was approved. You can read more about his failures here.

   
   This is how bestselling author J.K. Rowling, quoted here, describes her failures on the way to success:

   I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

   No one is truly an overnight success or does everything right on their first try. They just keep trying until they succeed or decide to do something else instead.
   

2. Quitter’s Day helps us evaluate our progress (or lack of it) and adjust our plans.
   It gives us a specific day set aside for that purpose. I recently discovered how valuable it can be to evaluate and adjust my plans thanks to

   Sarah Fay
   .

   Paid subscribers to Sarah Fay’s Writers at Work newsletter get access to her workshops. In the one about setting goals for 2024, she discussed the yearly planner she uses and shared it as a PDF. I began using it on January 1. It is amazing! It helps me prioritize tasks and connect them to my larger goal. It prompts me to reflect on my progress at the end of each day, week, and month.

   
   One of the reflection questions is, “Is there anything not working right now, and what do I want to do about it?”

   That’s exactly what Quitter’s Day teaches us to do. First we figure out what kept us from achieving our goal. Then we change our original plan or create a new one to increase our odds of success.

   
   As I wrote last week, the changes we desire aren’t usually quick or easy to achieve.

3. Quitter’s Day helps us realize everyone struggles and connect with others.
   The same site that explains the holiday says that Quitter’s Day “reminds us that we are still human, and we will fail at times. This helps promote more understanding and empathetic societies.”

   James Baldwin describes how he learned that his struggles connected him with everyone else in the May 24, 1963 issue of LIFE magazine:

   You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.

   One of Brené Brown’s books is I Thought it was Just Me (But it Isn’t) [Affiliate link]. The description says it “shines a long-overdue light on an important truth: Our imperfections are what connect us to each other and to our humanity. Our vulnerabilities are not weaknesses; they are powerful reminders to keep our hearts and minds open to the reality that we're all in this together.”

So celebrate your failures! They prove you’re human like everyone else. They teach you what doesn’t work. They help you figure out what to do (or stop doing) to succeed.

P.S. If you could use more support as you figure out what’s not working in your life and what you want to do about it, let’s talk! Contact me to learn more about how I can help you get from where you are to where you want to be.