But first, give yourself a little task.
Take a look back at one of your goals that you set for yourself at the beginning of the year. Not the easy ones, but the one that remains pending. A book that you have wanted to complete. The figure you were going to hit. A resolution you shared with your friends last January and never spoke of again.
And then look at it for a minute, as if you were looking at a letter on the table which you had not yet opened.
Consider how it feels. For some people it is a pull, a small warm one, the pull of an open door. Others have to carry it around with them as a burden. The objective presses down on their chests slightly, accompanied by an unspoken statement. "You said you would."
Both reactions are genuine. This post focuses on the latter feeling, and on a question which we were taught to never pose ourselves: what if walking away from all this would be the smarter move?
I am not going to advise you to give up, nor am I going to advise you to strive harder. Either of these pieces of advice would be easy to write but inappropriate for half of the readers. What follows is an approach towards the goal that the research suggests is better than both.
The goal that will not close
Everyone seems to carry one of these. It is the objective that was right when you set it and is not entirely possible anymore, or is not even entirely yours. Circumstances have changed. It is your body that has changed. Those around you have changed. But your objective still stands where you have left it, waiting.
We usually consider this particular objective as a test of our personality. The saying has become so familiar that we think of it as an iron law of life. Winners never quit. As we saw in The Voice That Says You'll Fail, the inner critic loves a sentence like that. It is concise, it is definitive, and it never questions why the end was ever pursued.
Indeed, psychologists have been on the other end of this issue for a long time. In 2025, researchers Hugh Riddell and Nikos Ntoumanis reviewed the evidence available to them at that time. They conducted an analysis of 235 studies with 1,421 results related to the outcomes of goal adjustment following a setback. Their inquiry was not about the virtue of persistence. It was a question of what happens in practice when a goal is abandoned, changed, or replaced.
This conclusion is not an axiom. It consists of two parts, and the second part is often overlooked in advice.
Two hands, two jobs
This is the opening half. Individuals who were more skilled in abandoning goals that became unreachable felt less stressed, anxious, and exhibited fewer signs of depression. The researchers describe this kind of letting go as a psychological "pressure release valve." Something which had been brewing finally has an outlet.
This is the second half, and it surprised me. Giving up, by itself, was not associated with better well-being. It lightened the load, but it did not bring anything to the scales. Life satisfaction, meaning, and positive emotions increased with another factor: re-engagement, that is applying your efforts to a new objective, a new way, or even to a lesser version of the previous one.
It can be thought of as two hands. One hand releases and lays something down. This is the relief. The other hand takes hold of something. This is how the good returns. Most of us only think of the first hand when we talk about quitting, that's why quitting seems so hollow.
The idea is nothing new. In 2003 Carsten Wrosch and colleagues conducted three experiments among students, young and older adults, and parents, including the parents of children with cancer. Across those studies, both abilities, letting go and starting again, could go together with higher wellbeing, and the two seemed to work best in combination. Parents are the part of the experiment that will stick to my mind. Among the goals which they had to renounce, some were the ones they would never want to give up.
A very old distinction
Almost 2,000 years ago, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus began his small guide with a sentence that his pupils were supposed to take everywhere with them. In Elizabeth Carter's eighteenth-century English, it reads: "Of things, some are in our power and others not."
It seems straightforward. It isn't simple. The majority of goals exist between the two extremes. You control the effort. The outcome often is not. Your promotion will depend on the company. Recovery is dependent upon a body. A publishing contract depends on strangers.
The problem begins when we take ownership of the result and think it is the effort. Thus, every month that the result fails to materialize becomes a personal defeat, and the voice gets even more insistent. "You said you would."
Epictetus will not tell you to abandon your hopes; he would rather have you organize them. Which portion of this hope is within your control to accomplish? What part of this hope was never yours to control anyway?
What was the goal for?
And now for a second experiment. Think of the goal you chose earlier. Pose one question to it, and await the response.
For what purpose was this goal set up?
Not what it was. But what it was for. Behind most goals there is a bigger wish. The marathon was meant to help you feel confident in your body. The second degree was to get respect or do enjoyable work. The business was about freedom or self-confirmation.
These three forms of re-engagement are explained in the review and each form sustains the larger wish as well. You might think of an alternative path to achieving the desire. It is also possible for you to maintain your goal and make it smaller. Or you might think of another goal that fulfills the desire better than this one did.
Think of the goal you have chosen earlier in light of this information. Is it blocked, or just this path to it? Is the goal too large, or just too large for the current year?
This is the point where the scales tip for many people. The goal has never been the end in itself. It was merely another way to reach where they wanted. And there are normally more ways than the voice can admit.
When holding on costs more than it seems
There is actually a good reason why this is significant besides the effect on mood. In 2007, Gregory Miller and Carsten Wrosch studied 90 adolescents for one year. They first measured how easily each one could give up unattainable goals. Then they measured a marker of inflammation in the blood, at the start, after six months, and after a year.
The adolescents who had trouble letting go exhibited increasing levels of the marker during the year, even after adjusting for body mass, smoking, and depression. The authors were prudent in their description of their findings. Their conclusion was that, "in some contexts, persistence may actually undermine well-being and good health."
In some cases. This expression has significance. Persistence is quite often entirely appropriate. Many of the objectives we have are difficult just because they are worth pursuing, and many of the most meaningful parts of our lives were due to someone persevering even though it was easy for them to quit. The studies do not suggest that persistence is a bad concept. It says that persistence is a tool, which has its limitations.
What this cannot tell you
Honesty demands limitations on this point, and this discipline has many.
These studies mostly used only one point-in-time snapshot of individuals. Only about one in three followed people over months or ran an experiment. The authors of this review themselves have rated the quality of the evidence as low to moderate and have found that the subjects lived mostly in Western wealthy countries. These studies give us information about trends among many people. They cannot answer the question whether your specific goal should be abandoned or kept.
Another question which remains open is when? Releasing too soon is not without its price, but none of this research provides any kind of deadline for your release. Some goals need just another season, while others would have been better to abandon two years ago. It's only you who will be able to determine that, but even you might get it wrong from time to time.
But there is another potential drawback as well. In this review, giving up was found in some studies to have been associated with greater difficulties in performing everyday functions. The researchers did not determine whether relinquishment caused the problem or the difficulty caused people to relinquish. Regardless of that, this fact serves as an illustration that releasing is most effective when there is something to take its place.
Tomorrow, once
And now here is one thing to do, only once, tomorrow. It is not a rule for when to stop. But it will help you understand what you have in your hands.
Start with the goal you came up with at the beginning, and write it at the top of a page.
First, divide it in half by drawing a vertical line. Write the effort part of the goal on the left side: the time, the practice, the requests. Write the outcome part on the right side: the part of it that is outside of your control, the part that requires another person, a body, timing. This is something that Epictetus would understand.
Second, under the right side, answer the question that the goal will never ask itself: what was this for? One sentence. Not the goal, but the wish.
Third, write one sentence that starts with "Another way to get there is." Let it be one of the three roads: a different path, a less ambitious version, or a different goal altogether that better suits the wish. Mine reads: "Erdem, the plan was the road. It was never the place."
Fourth, choose something small on that road and accomplish it once this week. This is the second hand reaching out. In the research, the relief followed opening up the first hand. The positive feelings increased with the reach.
There is no need for you to make any more decisions just now. In fact, you may find out that the road you are walking on is the right one. That would be an excellent answer as well, if you arrived at it.
Epictetus taught his pupils that there are things in our control and things that are outside of our control. It appears the first thing that is within our control is the question that we ask of an unyielding objective. Not "why haven't you happened yet?" but "what were you for?" The answer may tell you whether to keep walking, or to take another road toward the same place.