The locker room slogan – “Winners never quit and quitters never win” was made popular by Vince Lombardi – legendary football figure best known as the Head Coach for the Green Bay Packers during the 1960s. Lombardi believed that a team mentally prepared could not be beaten. Winning was a habit and so was losing.

Jerry Kramer, former Green Bay Packer lineman, wrote this after the Packers’ reunion in 1984, which became a best seller among football books, “Distant Replay,” “Lombardi’s Packers weren’t the champions of Super Bowl I and II, they were champions forever. Why? – Because guys used football to get out of the mines, mills, farms, and away from their dreary childhoods. Guys found in Lombardi, the father figure they had never known at home. Guys, who learned to win in Green Bay after too many losing seasons in too many towns, looked up to him. That tough little man, who coached us, knew something, knew how to look inside people, to see strengths people never knew they had, to draw out those strengths to blend them and refine them. God, I was proud, happy, and lucky to be part of it.”

Today if someone asks you, “Are you a quitter?” I believe that slogan might come to mind. Somehow the question transforms in our head and feels as if what that person is really asking is “Are you chicken?” It feels judgmental, almost like a test to measure your strength. This is the sad perception we have of quitting. We think weak, unmotivated, and lazy.

Sam Crowley – The World’s Best Quitter asks the question “Can quitters ever win?” And his answer is of course “YES!” In fact he went on to change the popular slogan in his book “The Quitters Guide” to “Quitters always win and winners always quit.” His journey to quitting started with disenchantment with his job. He said “Happiness had left me on the rise up the corporate ladder. The person I had to become in order to get where I was left me hollow. I was a corporate android playing a high stakes game of ‘follow the leader’ taking direction from the higher ups. I felt my zest for life slowly oozing out of me.”

The original slogan has a degree of truth about it, yet in terms of the “never” part – well – all of us have something we NEED to quit or something we WANT to quit. And that’s a good thing. In fact, success is all about quitting negative, nonproductive activities and behaviors and moving on to those things that bring us joy, health, and happiness. Sometimes in order for something new and great to live, something else must die. Yet some of us want to live in both worlds – like stay in what is comfortable while we test out the new waters of possibility.

So many women reach out and share how stuck they feel -that they have been contemplating ‘next steps’ but they can’t seem to get past the fear of letting go of what they know and venturing into something new. Ellen Degeneres quit TV and movies and is now an Emmy winning talk show host. Oprah quit her radio show and risked it all for TV! Her empire is unmatched by any other woman ever! Yet we think “Well I’m not Oprah or Ellen” as if it makes a difference.

I am not encouraging rash behaviour. I am not encouraging you to make a decision when you are emotionally upset. I think that you do need to make a decision – judge the pros and cons – but don’t stay too long. There are no guarantees however there are some things that you can begin thinking of quitting today:

• Quit being part of someone else’s plans
• Quit settling for a life of mediocrity
• Quit working for a pay check
• Quit devaluing your time
• Quit delaying your entrepreneurial journey
• Quit worrying what others think about you
• Quit being an absentee parent
• Quit being an absentee partner

Successful quitters stop the destructive activities and behaviours ruining their lives – such things as:

• Smoking, nagging, eating junk food and other bad habits
• Staying in relationships with the wrong people
• Continuing down a path leading nowhere in their businesses and personal lives.

Don’t you owe it to yourself to take control of your life? If you had the power – what would you quit?

Giselle Hudson is a speaker, author, and Possibilities Coach™, planting possibility seeds and helping individuals through the process of “NEXT STEPS” in their lives. If you want to find out How to take ‘Next Steps’ in your life or How to become your ‘Next’ Self, send an email to womenleaderseries@gmail.com

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