When Not to Quit Your Job

It might sound counterintuitive, but when the going gets tough, when you feel like you are on your last leg, and you boss is coming down hard on you, this is in fact the time not to quit. Don’t give up! You want to quit your job when you are most successful, when the money is coming in, when everybody is praising you and congratulating you on your career. Quit while you’re ahead. That way, your next employer will be taking on board a great success, not a defeated loser.

When your boss is berating you daily and telling you your work isn’t good enough, and meanwhile, you are bringing home that bad mood to your wife or husband, who meanwhile is full of his or her own complaints, that’s when you want to have an affair, quit your job, start drinking. Never give up at this point. This is the point where you must rise to the occasion and turn your life around. Find religion, find your inspiration, find your hope, but never give up when it’s easy to give up. That’s what losers do. And you won’t find the hunt for the next job easy without courage either.

How do you know you aren’t a loser? Simply this: you don’t give up when the going gets tough. It gets tough for everybody. Choose your favorite person. Read his biography. I promise you, you will find his success did not come easy to him. You will find that in fact he faced worse failures and deeper humiliations than you have, but kept at it. If you want to be like him, all you have to do is what he did: keep going when things seem to be their worst. That’s the moment that separates the boys from the men, the girls from the women, the mortals from the gods.

There is a time to quit your job. When your boss is making it easy to compromise your principles, when you are in danger of selling your soul, or when you are doing so well it’s easy, when you are ahead, that’s when to quit. Quitting then will leave you a legacy, and will work for you on your next job. Quitting like a coward when the going gets tough leaves no legacy, so don’t do it. Stick it out even if it seems foolish, even if it seems stupid. You won’t regret it.