Book Review of Sorts – Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away
This won’t be a typical book review because
The majority of the subject is more relevant to careers and relationships than the normal topics I cover here, with one exception. Toward the end of the book, Annie tells us several stories about runners in the London Marathon. Specifically, runners who suffered a rather serious injury partway through the race, and finished anyway.
It seems insane that someone would break their leg at mile 8 of a 26-mile race and run the last 18 miles on that broken leg. Yet it has happened—more than once. When asked about why someone would endure that kind of pain and suffering, it almost always comes down to the goal of finishing the race. She goes on to describe these kinds of goals as “pass/fail” goals. As in, there’s nothing in between finishing the race and failure. These runners are blind to the gap between doing nothing and doing all of the training to run a marathon as a victory that has improved their health, stamina, and strength. They see not finishing as a failure. Doesn’t matter what the reason for that failure is; it’s not just a failure but a waste of all that time and effort that went into training.
I’ve written before about how we define “healed” as child abuse survivors. As Annie talked about this idea of goals, a lot of it sounded relevant because I’ve seen so many survivors get caught in this same line of thinking. The goal is to be healed, and anything short is a failure. She talks a lot about how that line of thinking causes people to miss when their goal no longer makes sense, and when there might be better goals they should focus on instead, and how they should quit chasing a goal when there are better options.
For many survivors, their definition of healed automatically becomes a goal that can never be reached. We should quit trying to “be the person I was before the abuse” because it’s impossible. By setting that as our pass/fail goal, we sentence ourselves to a lifetime of falling short, instead of a lifetime of celebrating the gap between where we started and where we are today. We also never find a better goal that is more realistic.
Please, take a good look at how you are defining healed. More importantly, don’t lose sight of the amount of healing and growth that you’ve already done. Be proud of it. This is your life, it’s not a pass/fail exam. It’s so much bigger than that.
At least it should be.
