Today is April 11 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is "Do you realize that winners sometimes quit?"
Those who navigate the chaos, like comedian Jim Gaffigan and actor Peter Gardner Ostrum understand the value of quitting and ignore the ‘winners never quit’ advice.
While at Georgetown University, Jim Gaffigan decided to quit playing football. As he recalled “the football coach said ‘If I quit football, I will quit everything in life.’ That terrified me because I was like will I quit everything in my life?”
Gaffigan did not quit everything in life and is now a stand-up comedian, actor and author with a net worth of approximately $25 million.
Peter Gardner Ostrum is an American veterinarian and former child actor whose only film role was as Charlie Bucket in the 1971 motion picture Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
Ostrum was 12 years old when selected by talent agents for Willy Wonka. Though he enjoyed the experience of shooting the film, he quit acting and opted not to sign a three-film contract when it was over.
Ostrum became interested in horses when he returned from shooting Willy Wonka, and was particularly influenced by the veterinarian that tended to them. Receiving his Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1984. Quitting a job, a relationship, or a situation is common among successful people.
As Poet Mary Oliver wrote in her poem Wild Geese: “
You do not have to be good.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
How often do you ‘the soft animal of your body love what it loves?’
If you are stuck in a career or a relationship, are you afraid to quit in order to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves? If so, why?