Growth rarely comes from comfort. The most meaningful changes we experience, the ones that actually shape who we become, tend to arrive through difficulty. That is not a reason for despair. It is a reason to stop waiting for things to get easier and start looking for what the hard times are trying to teach you. The people who move forward are not the ones who avoided struggle. They are the ones who decided that the struggle was worth it.

Quitting can be a smart decision, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. In her book Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, Annie Duke explores a bias most of us carry: we celebrate those who push through, and we quietly judge, or outright condemn, those who walk away. But Duke argues that quitting a course of action is sometimes the smartest way to win in the long run, whether you’re cutting your losses at the poker table or turning back on a mountain climb so you can try