Sam Qurashi talks about knowing when to quit versus when to push through. The conversation centers on using frustration as a signal: sometimes it means you need to keep going, sometimes it means you should stop and do something else instead.
Bulletproof radio, a state of high performance.
We tend to flip from one thing to another thing when we're very young. Like, we do it enough and somehow we get a signal. But then there's another time when we do it. Then we just give up. Right. And in my own life, I've wanted to understand, okay, when I give up on something, it could be just because I suck at it. And it's not natural for my brain to do that. It's just not a good use of energy. And then there are other things where I want it to be a practice. I would say it should be, but there's a lot of judgment there. So I want it to be a practice that I do, even if I suck at it, because it provides value for me. And so the frustration component is what we're really getting at there. So how do you know if you're giving up because you're frustrated or giving up because you're done?
That's a good question. One thing I would do is if you are frustrated, the idea is to work on the frustration. And if you release the emotion of frustration, then you. Then you can truly see the lens. Then you could truly see the reflection of that moment and be honest with yourself in that moment. A lot of the tension that we carry in life basically comes from a moment of inauthenticity, of not telling the truth about something we're resisting telling the truth. Like, I actually really don't want to continue doing this. That's the truth. And so you end up staying in something you don't actually want to continue doing or staying in. But it's really about telling the truth. It's hard to tell the truth when you have emotions that are trapped. And if you express the frustration and release it, then you can be honest. An example of that one way is what I was mentioning in terms of storming out, like, declare, you know what? I want to. I want to delete my Instagram account. It feels cathartic for me to say it, even though I know I'm not going to. But saying it is a declaration and a reminder that I have the choice of doing that even if I wanted to, but I'm not going to do it.
