The Difference Between Giving In and Giving Up
Farming can teach you a lot about life and growth. It is one of the reasons I took up urban farming as a pastime several years ago.
One of our goals as an urban farmer is to encourage every urbanite to take a handful of soil in a pot, pop in some seeds, water somewhat liberally and then let nature work its magic. Growing your own food is one of those abiding traits that is part of our ancestral legacy ever since we had civilization. So is it too much to ask for city dwellers to carry on this fine tradition in their own balconies?
For some, apparently it is. And the reason they frequently cite is that, at some point years ago or even in childhood, they were nurturing their first plant, maybe a herb like mint or basil, to bloom. Yet instead of blooming, it ended up shriveling into a brown husk. They had followed all the rules and it didn’t work. Well, perhaps they were in a hurry for a harvest and in their haste flooded the soil. The scars of that experience had turned them off gardening altogether. They had convinced themselves that their hands were silent death to anything green. Yet who is to say that had they put their minds on their next plant, today their balcony wouldn’t be a lush mini-ecosystem all their own?
We All Give In
The path to progress is paved with speed bumps. Yet do we mistake speed bumps with roadblocks?
We can expect to face temporary hiccups if we are on the long haul for something worthwhile. This can be anything from savings for an overdue holiday to trying to stop smoking. We take measured and painful steps that inch us forward with often maddening slowness. But forward we do move, and forward is not backward. Yet there comes the moment, when we make an impulsive and unnecessary purchase or casually light a cigarette when nobody’s looking, when we give in.
The moment after breaking is a seminal one. We may experience disappointment or even shame. Very few of us are able to shrug it off. We then experience this emotion, to allow us to acknowledge all the emotional investment thus far on our improvement path. As a coach, I normally do not ask coachees to be in denial about what they are feeling. Instead they should recognize that giving in to the moment of desire is not the same as compromising on our goal itself.
When We Give Up
Revising and upgrading our goals is necessary to be tuned into the ebbs of life. But disavowing them altogether comes with consequences, which is why we should only commit to goals we can seriously make a self-contract with.
We can make all sorts of justifications for not pursuing the goal we have deemed important. Perhaps it is not the right time, we may not have the energy, too many distractions, or there may be bigger priorities demanding our attention. Depending on the circumstances, these may seem warranted.
Ultimately, giving up is the final admission of defeat, when we realize that resisting the resistance comes at too high a cost in terms of our time or resources. Giving up isn’t something we can take lightly, packing it neatly in our memories as we move to other challenges. It should be seen as a last resort, when we can honestly claim to ourselves that all other options to realizing our goals have been exhausted. So if you feel like giving up, ask yourself first if there is anything left in the tank to give?
Life is Compromise
From birth till date, we have to compromise between what we want in the moment and what limits reality imposes on us. Life is then a series of compromises as we progress to new levels of experience.
But when we reach maturity, very few of us are taught the crucial differences between the types of compromises we make in pursuit of what we truly want. There are those necessary compromises that delay us, that extend us and that challenge us, but in the end that help deliver us to our goals. But there are larger compromises, in which we move away altogether from our goals, our vision and our values altogether to conform to our circumstances.
For any real meaningful progress in our development, we have to be honest with ourselves, ruthlessly if needed. And we need to ask ourselves which compromises are we willing to make and which compromises are a step too far. When is it ok to give in to the present and when is it not ok to give up on our dreams.
Moving to the Final Step
Once this distinction between the two types of giving is clear, we are more prepared than ever to bring the life we desire into existence. We don’t start a pursuit with an intention of retreat, but knowing in advance how to respond to obstacles is important.
Remember that there are times to be easy on yourself and times when it’s ok to give yourself a bit of a tongue lashing. But through it all, remember never to give up too early. You never know when that extra step can be the one that sees the goal through.
