I’ve experienced the destruction to one’s self-esteem that happens when you become too attached to certain goals and are unable to let go even though you feel like so much of a failure, you don’t deserve to live. My goal was absolutely ridiculously impossible, and yet, due to factors from my childhood, I thought that if I could make those goals, then someone might be able to love me. Or rather, that I might feel worthy of being loved.
I thought that it was my job in life to save the world. I don’t think I ever for a second thought I could do it, but it was my job, anyway. One hardly need look beyond the end of their nose to see how badly I fucked that one up. Yeah, I failed. Rather epically.
But I’ve decided to quit that business, and to quit trying to do something my father would be proud of me for. In the end, we choose our own goals, and we decide how attached we are to them. If we want to drive ourselves nuts (as I did), we can stay attached to impossible goals.
The real problem comes when it seems like the goal is quite possible. Maybe other people have achieved it and you think you are just as good as they are. Yet the goal remains elusive.
How do you decide when you’ve sunk enough effort into it, and it doesn’t make any sense to send good effort after bad? There is actually research about this. It looks at how far people are willing to go to try to turn around their luck in gambling, or how long they will stick with a stock that is losing value, hoping it will turn around.
In most cases, people have great difficulty cutting their losses. The same is true with quitting of any kind. We should all remember that we’d probably do better if we didn’t stick with losing causes as long.