I want to quit.

A few years ago, a coach pointed out my tendency to give up when things got hard. It stung to hear her say it—because it’s true.

Now I see it everywhere. After dinner, at the sink with three filthy skillets—the kind with cooked-on food—my feet ache, my back aches, and I just want to leave them and sink into the couch. In a moment of disagreement with my husband, I want to walk out of the room. Two tasks left at the end of a long day—I think, Do they really have to be done today?

The same pattern. The same pull toward the exit. Just different scales of consequence.

Funny how life keeps offering bigger mirrors for the same lesson. Over a year into building my swim studio in Talent, I’ve hit every bureaucratic snag possible. A design, a bid, a contractor, permits ready to issue—and then the Oregon Health Authority steps in: Whoa, hey, a pool? That’s a different ballgame. Suddenly I’m in the weeds of piping schematics, stamped engineering drawings, and new rules for something that’s bigger than a spa but smaller than a pool. Do we really need three ways to get into a pool that’s eight by fourteen feet?

I want to give up.

That voice that says, This is too hard—walk away, gets loud enough to drown out everything else. Loud enough that I forget why I’m doing it in the first place.

I’m starting to recognize that voice. It’s not laziness or lack of discipline—it’s my nervous system craving safety. When things feel uncertain, my brain looks for escape. Just quit. Walk away. You’ll feel better.

And it’s true—if I step away, the suffocating feeling of not knowing does ease. But only for a little while. Because walking away doesn’t resolve the tension; it just postpones it.

Sometimes the hardest thing isn’t to keep pushing—it’s to stay. To stay in the conversation. To stay at the sink. To stay with the vision, even when it’s tangled in red tape.

And sometimes, staying means not doing it alone.

I used to think resilience was about grit—muscling through, proving I could handle it all myself. That pattern goes way back—when my kids were little and I was training to swim marathons, I would help them fall asleep, help them back to sleep in the middle of the night, then wake at dawn for practice. I kept that up until my body gave out and I found myself sick for days, sometimes weeks. That was my version of resilience: push until you break.

But I’m starting to believe that resilience is something different. It’s about trust. Trusting that if I ask for help, the right people will appear. Trusting that support—whether it’s guidance, expertise, or simply someone standing beside me—expands what’s possible beyond what I could create alone.

So, once again, I hired a coach. In our sessions, I’m often crying, trying to untangle how I feel and what’s getting in the way. It turns out it’s only at the edge of our comfort zone that we learn—only when we’re out of our depth that we can start to see possibility. And when you share the load, the next step becomes clearer.

I’m beginning to see that when I reach out instead of giving up, the weight eases, the path opens, and what once felt impossible alone becomes lighter in shared hands. The same way a marathon swimmer leans on their crew, I’m learning to lean on others—to let trust, not grit, carry me farther.

So when I feel the pull to give up, I’m trying something new. I pause. I breathe. And I ask: Who can help me stay a little longer?

Swimming alongside you,
Shannon

P.S. I’m curious—where do you feel the pull to give up? Hit reply and tell me. I read every response.