Quitting (previously published as Mastering the Art of Quitting) (14 page)

Visualizing a demanding relationship caused the action-oriented people to be able to pick out the happy faces in an angry crowd more quickly, which the researchers posited was due to these people's ability to self-regulate their emotions intuitively without conscious process. In addition, visualizing a demanding relationship in detail didn't affect action-oriented moods or their self-evaluations of positive traits. In contrast, the state-oriented participants
who recalled a demanding relationship were slow to pick out happy faces in an angry crowd but quick to identify negative traits in themselves; this finding reflected the propensity of state-oriented individuals to internalize negative expectations of others. This seems to be supported by other observations as well. When visualizing an accepting relationship, state-oriented people reported a more positive affect and identified more positive traits as theirs. In contrast, the moods of the action-oriented were unaffected by visualizing an accepting relationship.

Should you find yourself identifying with the list of state-oriented characteristics, don't despair. While these individuals have more trouble functioning under stress, they're just fine under friendlier circumstances, thank you very much. Indeed, although they may be at a disadvantage when it comes to artful quitting,
their orientation can stand them in good stead
in other circumstances.

State-oriented people can often outperform their action-oriented counterparts. Their hesitation in response to stress may not always be a bad thing, especially if taking action would be premature. Their wait-and-see demeanor can, sometimes, be a plus. (Note that action-oriented people also take more time with a big decision.) In addition, the state-oriented can and do get support from others and often enjoy closer relationships than action-oriented people have. Their lack of self-regulatory skills can be improved by the support of others.

Because state-oriented people rely on external cues (rather than the internal representations of self), they are good at taking direction and relatively tolerant of frustration; they work harder and longer at tasks that require concentration but aren't particularly creative or interesting. They outperform action types on these kinds of tasks and any that require self-discipline. Unfortunately, precisely because they are reliant on external cues, they are vulnerable to the
self-infiltration effect
, which means that they mistake an extrinsic goal for a self-chosen one, even it doesn't fit with their personal needs or preferences—their inner picture of self.

We are all influenced by primes in the environment, the external cues that interact with the automatic processes of the mind. We
all adopt goals or strategies that we think are consciously chosen but are really being cued from the outside without our conscious awareness. Because of their sensitivity to cues,
a series of experiments by Sander L. Koole and David A. Fockenberg
examined whether state-oriented people would be more affected by negative primes than their action-oriented counterparts. After taking an inventory to determine their orientation and performing a timed addition task, participants had to classify words as negative or positive. Before the words appeared on the computer screen, a priming word (which was either positive or negative) flashed on the screen. People usually classify words more quickly and accurately when the target word and the prime are congruent. As the researchers hypothesized, the performance of the state-oriented participants was more affected by negative priming—a function of their general dependence on external cues.

But it was the third experiment that illuminates how state orientation can be bolstered in real life. Half of the participants were asked to visualize a demanding period in their lives, while the other half were asked to visualize a relaxing time. They took another affective priming test, this one with an equal number of positive and negative target words and primes. As expected, negative priming led the action-oriented to reverse the priming effects, again using their ability to override and regulate negative cues from the environment. But—and here is the important part—after visualizing a stress-free and relaxing time in their lives, the state-oriented folks actually were less affected by negative primes than their action-oriented colleagues. Just thinking about a happy time in their lives decreased how responsive they were to negative cues. While this underscores how sensitive the state-oriented are to context and how context influences their feelings and actions, it also shows how they can help themselves by changing their focus in times of stress. Changing the context consciously—thinking of a relaxed or happy moment at a time of stress, or seeking support when it's necessary to regulate negative emotion—may be all that's needed for a state-oriented person to override his or her potential deficits.

When it comes to getting a grip on thoughts and feelings—the first step of artful quitting—the state-oriented are at a disadvantage compared with their action-oriented brethren. So, if you see yourself in the action-oriented profile, congrats! You've got a leg up. But if you don't, keep reading; we'll show you how you can better manage those pesky emotions and thoughts, learn how to set your own deadlines and plans, and listen to that inner voice of yours more carefully.

 

Chapter Five

Managing Thoughts and Emotions

Lizabeth's career path has been a long road, full of twists and turns, and out of the ordinary. She's now sixty-two and has been, by turns, an EMT and a specialist in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, a professional Frisbee player, the owner of a holistic health center, a teacher, and, now, a farmer, writer, and beekeeper. She has been successful at all of these endeavors, and so her pattern of moving on has had little to do with failure. What she has always had is an unerring sense of when it's time to move on and quit, a quality she attributes to her parents, especially her father, who, she says, “taught me that it was important to think for myself and to be entrepreneurial. That gave me the ability to decide when I was enjoying my work and when it ceased to be important to me. I've always felt that I had the freedom to do something else without being pressured into continuing with something I no longer enjoyed or felt was worth my time and effort.” The eldest of four children in her family, she describes a childhood that was warm and supportive. She felt secure and loved by both her parents and her grandparents, each of whom imbued her with different strengths. Her father was practical, grounded, and self-made; her mother taught her to trust her intuition; and her grandmother was her cheerleader. She emerged from her adolescence into young adulthood not problem-free but trusting in herself and her instincts.

Lizabeth's story makes it clear that her goals have always been intrinsic—that is, adopted from the inside out, rather than coming
from an outside source—and have been defined by a larger, overreaching goal that is more like a philosophy of life than not: “I had this idea that I was meant to grow myself into knowledge throughout life. Moving into new situations, staying as long as I needed, and then moving on was pretty much required to live that idea.” She sees quitting as a necessary skill in life: “Each time I quit something, the next door was allowed to open up. Each successive situation I entered into was a better next step in my personal development. I really like who I have become in my life, and I count part of that education as knowing when to step away from a situation that no longer served me. I think quitting takes courage; making a leap isn't always easy. I liked tasking myself with stretching into a new way of being.”

Sometimes, when she quit one endeavor, what was next wasn't always immediately apparent. “While I'm not totally fearless, I like to do my best to keep fear and doubt at bay when deciding what to do next. I hope that doesn't come off as arrogant or self-­absorbed. I appreciate the body and brain I have and seeing how we move through life in an expansive manner.” This doesn't mean that she never ruminates. “I often have an intuition about how to make a decision and take action. If there's something more to the decision, I like to take my time and think about it.”

Living fluidly was, she admits, easier because she didn't marry until she was forty. She lost one child and then a later pregnancy that took motherhood off the table. But she says, had she had more personal responsibility, “I would hope I'd have had the courage to leap when I knew leaping was a good idea.” Still, she counts the decision to marry her husband as the most important one in her life: “Because I shift so easily, committing to doing something for the rest of my lifetime has been illuminating and wonderful.” She and her husband run a biodynamic farm together and have for the last decade.

Her ability to reframe her energies, though, shouldn't be confused with a lack of persistence because, as she sees it, “quitting because you lack the energy to bring something to a productive
close is a weakness in character.” She sends on an e-mail which is worth sharing: “The alternative to quitting is tenacious resolve to riding that horse where it's most productive to go. Staying the course until (a) you get there; (b) it's no longer right to go there; or (c) you find yourself heading to a better place. Even with resolve, two out of three of those destinations involve quitting what your original intention was. What's not on my list is (d) because it's too hard or (e) because there were too many roadblocks.”

Lizabeth's history of secure attachment, along with her ability to manage her emotions and trust her own intuition, encompass many of the characteristics associated with an innate talent for quitting. She's lucky to have been raised with a sense not just of her own capabilities but of her own autonomy, the ability to set goals for herself and, if need be, disengage from them. Those goals, though, were intrinsic, reflecting both her current and long-term needs, and when they became outdated, she was able to quit. She also had the ability to self-soothe and manage her feelings during the anxiety of transition, which sometimes felt more like a free-fall than anything else.

But quitting can be learned and our skills buffed up, as you'll see.

Emotional Intelligence and Self-Knowledge

Another way of looking at the skills, especially self-regulation, that are key to both artful quitting and artful goal setting is in the context of
what John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey have called
emotional intelligence
. An early version of their theory was, in part, the basis for
Daniel Goleman's enormously popular and culturally influential book
of the same name,
but they have publicly disavowed
the broad-brush approach of the book and its generalizations. For simplicity—since this book is about quitting and the specific skill set it requires—we'll stick to their definition of emotional intelligence:
“the ability to perceive emotions
, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and
emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote intellectual thought.” Mayer and Salovey summarize their description: “This definition combines the idea that emotion makes thinking more intelligent and that one thinks intelligently about emotions.”

Being emotionally intelligent not only helps you manage your emotions but also lets you consciously regulate them to improve your ability to think and forecast what will make you happy—something human beings aren't generally very good at, as we've already seen. Cultivating your emotional intelligence can help you navigate not just the thicket of emotions and feelings roused by assessing your goals and aspirations but also the work of dealing with the emotional fallout from giving up something you thought you wanted.

Let's briefly consider how children learn to manage emotions in the first place, most particularly, negative affect.
Because all of this happens in early childhood
, we offer an example based on the work of Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., and Mary Hartzell, M.Ed., in their book,
Parenting from the Inside Out
. If you're a parent, the scenario will be familiar, but if you're not, you'll understand it because you were a child once. In a section titled “The Accelerator and the Brakes,” Siegel and Hartzell use the metaphor of a car to explain how the prefrontal cortex of the brain is shaped by experience. In this metaphor, a parent's
yes
is the accelerator,
no
is the brake, and the child's ability to develop emotional regulation is the clutch. Imagine a child, full of energy and old enough to voice what he or she wants and to initiate action.

The positive affect bestowed by a parental yes communicates enthusiasm and validates the child's excitement and sense of self and gives the child permission to explore. The word
no
, on the other hand, is the braking mechanism, a literal downer, as the child will feel sad and thwarted in the moment. While
yes
induces positive emotion,
no
yields a negative one. Ideally, the parent says no because what the child wants to do is dangerous, unhealthy, or inappropriate; in the best of all worlds, the attuned parent directs the child away from the off-limits activity (climbing the bookshelves,
throwing blocks at a sibling), explains why, and then—recognizing the child's need to expend some energy and do something—redirects him or her to some other appropriate activity (e.g., playing ball outside). In this scenario, the child learns how to use his or her emotional clutch.

But alas, that's not the only scenario. There will be the parent who says no simply because he or she can—controlling for the sake of controlling—and who will shame the child for an emotional response, whether it's tears or a tantrum, thus teaching him or her that these feelings aren't worthy of respect or that any response is shameful. (Imagine, from a child's point of view, the impact of a parent's saying, “I'll give you something to cry about.”) Siegel and Hartzell describe what happens when a crying boy or girl is confronted by parental anger at the child's tears of frustration as “a toxic situation, like trying to drive a car with both the accelerator and brakes applied.” Similarly, children whose parents don't set limits—who ignore the child in that sense or always say yes—also fail to teach emotional regulation.

As a result, the playing field of emotional intelligence isn't precisely level for everyone. Some of us will have family backgrounds that have bequeathed us more emotional intelligence than some of our peers. Others will leave their childhoods and embark on adulthood relatively impoverished in this domain. Nonetheless, understanding precisely which skills constitute emotional intelligence can help each of us pinpoint both our strengths and our weaknesses.

The first and lowest branch of emotional intelligence begins with an infant's ability to recognize positive and negative emotions and includes:

• •
  The ability to identify emotion in oneself
  
• •
  The ability to identify emotion in others
  
• •
  The ability to express emotion accurately and to express needs
  
• •
  The ability to discriminate between honest and dishonest, accurate and inaccurate expressions of emotion
  

This part of the theory is relatively straightforward. How well developed these abilities are will clearly be reflected in every relationship we have, at home, at work, and in the world at large. Every goal we set that has a social context will be affected by how many of these skills we bring to the table, as well as how well honed they are.

The second branch of emotional intelligence includes the facility of using emotion to inform thought and action:

• •
  Using emotions to prioritize thinking
  
• •
  Using emotions as aids to judgment, ­assessment, and memory
  
• •
  Understanding and managing mood swings (optimism and pessimism) to foster multiple points of view
  
• •
  Using emotional states to encourage fresh approaches to problems
  

How finely developed this group of particular abilities is will directly affect how good we are at anticipating our feelings in some future situation. Being able to use emotions to inform our thinking about future events is incredibly useful when we're deciding to pursue a goal or, alternatively, to abandon it. Keep in mind, too, that according to the work done by Daniel Gilbert and others, forecasting isn't, for a number of reasons, humanity's strong suit. The more emotionally intelligent we are, the more closely our choices will mirror what we really want. Understanding our moods—and seeing that emotion is part of thought, not antithetical to it—also serves as a counterbalance to the overoptimism and other biases described earlier. Similarly, having a bead on a negative emotion (recognizing, for example, that it's coming from an external cue) allows us to step back and consider our choices differently. Understanding the link between what we're feeling and what we're thinking is useful to all aspects of goal setting, as well as artful quitting.

The third branch of emotional intelligence is more nuanced and hints at the complex role emotions play in our decision-making process on both conscious and unconscious levels, whether we are deciding to set a goal, persevere in its pursuit, or quit. These
processes of understanding and analyzing our emotions, in turn, yield
emotional knowledge
about events, situations, and people in our lives. From the most simple to the most complex, these are the following capabilities:

• •
  The ability to label emotions and recognize the relationship between the words and the feelings
  
• •
  The ability to interpret emotions
  
• •
  The ability to understand complex or blended emotions
  
• •
  The ability to recognize likely transitions between emotions
  

This part of the theory acknowledges that emotional knowledge very much depends on our ability to know precisely what we're feeling when we're feeling it. Sometimes, we can label an emotion with relative ease because the situation is comparatively simple and the cause and the emotional effect are easy to see. For example, our friend moves away or our cat dies and we are sad; we are afraid that we'll miss the deadline for our project because we're running very late; we're angry because the deal we worked on for months fell apart through no fault of our own.

But sometimes it's hard to identify precisely what we're feeling. Being fired may arouse anger at first but then may segue into shame, embarrassment, or sadness. Fighting with our partner may make us angry and frustrated, but at the same time, we may also feel guilty or sad. Sometimes, waves of different feelings may wash over us at once, making it hard to know exactly what we're feeling and why; this emotional muddle make us unsure of what we may want to do in response.

The theory of emotional intelligence suggests that labeling and knowing what we're feeling is a skill and, in addition, that it's not necessarily part of everyone's tool kit.
A study by Lisa Feldman Barrett and others
hypothesized that individuals who were able to differentiate among emotions more finely would be better able to regulate negative emotions than people who tended to think about their emotional experiences in a much more rudimentary way. As
the researchers write, some people think about their emotions “along a single unpleasant-pleasant dimension”; others, though, make finer distinctions between and among feelings. The ability to recognize an emotion and to correctly name it (distinguishing between embarrassment and shame, for example, and knowing what each feels like) lies at the heart of emotional intelligence, separating those who have a more nuanced and detailed understanding of their feelings from others who don't. The researchers hypothesized that people with a more differentiated sense of their negative emotions would, in fact, be able to regulate negative feelings with more facility and come up with specific strategies to cope with specific feelings.