We Give Up, and That’s Okay

How giving up makes us stronger

Photo by Photo-View on Pixabay

“Never give up.”

It’s a quote we all credit; It drives us to endure, no matter how difficult the circumstances are; it’s a spark that lights the fire underneath our hearts, driving us to push forth.

As we grew up, we were faced with all sorts of challenges. Slowly, we have learned to endure and to face them head-on. When things get more challenging, we become more resilient.

At the same time, we learned that we shouldn’t give up. We knew that giving up was foolish and irresponsible. We learned that giving up meant destroying everything we’ve done so far, sabotaging all the hard work we have done so far.

In fact, we have learned so much about how bad giving up is that we avoid it whenever possible. Whenever we feel overwhelmed or feel like stopping, our minds can’t help but repeat the words in our heads…

“Don’t give up.”

Frankly, often it is those words that drive us to keep pushing, and sometimes, it might only be those words that push us to keep going.

Sometimes, we push through, ending up victorious over whatever we’re facing. We look back, we celebrate, we admire every step we have taken along the way.

Other times, we’re met with defeat. And we try again and again until we’re over the cliff, or eventually, we’re met with the ultimate defeat — we give up.

When we give up, we look back, questioning ourselves; we’re conquered by failure, full of frustration. In fact, we are often so beaten that it takes days or even weeks for us to pull ourselves back together.

To some of us, giving up is a form of defeat, a declaration of failure, a surrender to our challenges. We avoid it as much as we can and try desperately to overcome our challenges, even if deep down, we know it’s impossible for us to get through.

We’re scared to give up.

Defeat makes us weak, vulnerable, and insecure. We can’t trust ourselves to overcome challenges or to protect ourselves.

We’re haunted by defeat and try our best to escape defeat. And giving up is a surrender — a defeat. We do whatever we can to avoid defeat, and certainly, we’d do anything but give up.

We often use the phrase “never give up,” but is it driving us to success? Or are we merely “pushing through” because we fear defeat?

My guess is it’s a combination of both. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Ultimately, we are still pushing through, overcoming our challenges, and achieving higher, and that’s good regardless.

However, most of us would agree it’s probably not ideal — it gets the job done, but it’s really stressful when trying to avoid defeat as much as possible, desperately catching our breath between each step we take.

In addition, it is impossible to avoid defeat — we sometimes lose, whether we give up or not. So rather than running away from giving up just to fail in the end, why not give up and surrender?

We can’t avoid defeat, but we can foresee it. We can’t run away from defeat, but we can embrace it. And through surrendering, we can embrace defeat, use it to our advantage, and push through.

When we give up, we aren’t accepting failure but recognizing that we aren’t good enough and need to improve and grow before we can face the challenge again.

Aimlessly trying does not make us stronger — it only makes us more frustrated each time we fail and only demeans our self-values.

Giving up, however, sparks us to find innovative solutions, rethink our approach, or even grow in other aspects. Even a simple act like resting is perhaps all that we need. Giving up gives us the space to improve, recharge, and face each challenge with the best we have.

When we all first faced challenges — learning to walk, we gave up all the time. We fell all the time back then, and we gave up whenever we fall a few times in a row. But it doesn’t mean we’re ditching the challenge; we’re just taking our time to rest, recharge, and take each step with the best we’ve got.

Perhaps we have grown so scared of failure that we have forgotten that embracing failure is what drives us to succeed. We push so hard that we have also neglected that giving up is a gift that we can foresee failure and hit the halt button before everything goes wrong.

Giving up is one thing, and letting go of the urge to succeed is another. We must keep the fire burning to overcome our challenges, but taking the time to give up and inspect whenever something potentially goes wrong would certainly drive us forward until we overcome whatever’s in the way.

We can give up. We just can’t let our urge to succeed die.