Stay With it!!!

Thinking about quitting is not quitting.

I need people to understand that, because I’ve seen too many get down on themselves just for having the thought. They feel like their mind should be pure, and wanting to quit means they’re weak or they’re not cut out for whatever it is they’re going after. So they beat themselves up over a feeling that’s completely normal.

We have millions of thoughts a day. They’re fleeting, and if the thought of quitting enters your mind, it’s not a sign that you should stop. It’s a sign that you’re pushing yourself. It means you’re in territory you’ve never been in before, and that can be uncomfortable. That’s exactly where you need to be if you want to do something that matters.

I’ll be honest, I wanted to quit multiple times in my life, in particular, my year in college at Georgia Tech. I came in off a very successful high school career on and off the court. On one end, college the upper level education was kicking my ass in the classroom. I was used to being the smart kid, and suddenly I was constantly behind without the skills to catch up, sitting in classrooms and study halls not knowing what was going on. On the other, practices were three to three and a half hours and could tend to be torturous. The court work and the weight room were on another level and it took time for me to get used to it. My body was ravaged and sore in ways I didn’t know were possible as a result.

And on top of all of that, we were a young team that couldn’t translate what we worked on in practice into wins on the court. Everything was harder because I was getting a real dose of high level collegiate ACC basketball, and I felt every bit of it. I would call my parents with tears in my eyes wanting to leave this foreign place and go home. I began to understand why so many people before me and after me would get to a situation like that, far away from home, in an unfamiliar place, and just stop. I totally get it. But there was no other choice for me. That’s what cut through the noise. Not some inspirational speech or a magic moment of clarity. Just the simple realization that I could either go home or keep striving. And going home wasn’t an option I could live with. I was only at Georgia Tech for a year, but it was one of the hardest years of my life. And I’m glad I stayed with it.

I had to tell myself the same thing when Vince Carter left the Toronto Raptors. Once he was traded, the energy changed immediately. You could feel it in the stands, in the fans and in our play. When you have a franchise player, a superstar, a perennial All-Star talent, and that person is suddenly gone, you notice the difference everywhere. It was a huge void to fill and everything took a dip.

I was young and naive enough to believe our team could still be pretty good, and I wanted to bring that passion back to the city, but it’s not that easy. It takes work, day after day after day. Our record wasn’t good. We were one of the worst teams in the league. The dog days of the season came quicker than they ever had.

As opposed to labeling myself a loser, I just kept believing even when the days felt like they couldn’t get any worse. I kept staying with it, because I had made commitments, and I said I wanted to do certain things in my career. I had an opportunity to prove myself everyday. Change didn’t happen in a day or even a year. It happened continuously, over time, through all the losing and all the doubt.

The place where staying with it tested me the most was with the arrival to Miami. Not because of the opponents or the pressure, but because of what was being asked of me. I came as a guy who was used to scoring over 20 points a game. That was my identity. That was what I did on normal occasions for years, but the team needed me to be something different. They needed me to be someone who played a role on offense through fewer shots and I wasn’t feeling it all the time. To be honest, there were a lot of frustrating days where I wanted to quit the game plan and just be selfish so I could get my own game going. Go back to what I knew. Do what I wanted to do instead of what the team needed me to do.

That’s a different kind of wanting to quit. It’s not walking away from the sport. It’s walking away from the plan. It’s your pride telling you that you’re better than the role you’ve been given, and that you should just take matters into your own hands. And on those days, staying with it meant swallowing my ego, trusting the process, and continuing to play the way they asked me to play even when every instinct was telling me to do the opposite.

I had to keep finding a way. Not my way. The team’s way. And that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, because it wasn’t about talent or effort. It was about surrender. Surrendering what I wanted for what was needed. And doing it over and over, game after game, even on the days it didn’t feel right.

I’m glad I stayed with it. Because what came out of that sacrifice was bigger than anything I could have achieved on my own.

If you’re on your journey right now and you’re looking to your left and your right, or scrolling online, and you see your peers doing well, maybe doing better than you, maybe having some kind of success while you’re struggling, I know how tough that is. Especially when those thoughts of quitting are floating through your mind at the same time.

Don’t make any rash decisions. You set your goal. You broke it down into smaller pieces. Now it’s time to be headstrong and keep going. Don’t feel guilty that the thought of quitting came up. Analyze it, let it pass, and recognize it for what it is. It means you’re pushing yourself hard. It means you’re in the territory where great things can happen, and great things are never easy.

Don’t put yourself in a position to where your future self would ask, what if I would have just kept going instead of quitting.

Stay with it!