When things aren’t going the way you want them to with a job, with a relationship, or with anything else, how long do you keep trying before you decide it’s time to move on? Do you exhaust every opportunity and every idea you have?  And when you do move on, do you feel guilty or like you have failed? 

I generally hang on for a long time if it is important to me; try everything I can think of and then sadly move on.  Other than my divorce, I generally didn’t feel guilty or like I’ve failed; and that I’ve since worked through.  So how do you decide when to move on? 

Some food for thought…if you give up really easily and move on, take a look at why you do that.  Do you just think if it isn’t easy it’s not meant to be?  If that’s the case you may be missing out on a lot.  Or maybe you’re afraid of all the work it could take and then you would still give up in the end because it wouldn’t work out.  Or perhaps it just feels like it isn’t meant to be, and you move on from a good place.

If you beat the dead horse, so to speak, working it untileveryo ne and their mother can see you should have given up a week ago, a month ago or maybe even a year ago, you might want to take a look at that.  If you think you should be doing something or in a relationship with someone, if you let go, do you feel you don’t want to be wrong?  Or maybe you feel guilty if you would be hurting someone.  Or maybe you just know something is meant to be and you are literally trying to force it to happen.

When do you know it’s time to move on?  Some soul searching does help.  First, if you can step back from whether you want something to happen or not, leaving your emotions out of it.  Then look at what’s going on in the situation you’re facing.  Does it look like it might work out?  How are you feeling?  Does it feel like it’s right, or is there just a feeling of “noooooooooooo, this can’t be wrong!”  If you feel desperate to make something happen, more than likely it isn’t right, and you are pushing what you want away.  And try not to be bull-headed and just want what you want no matter what. 

Sometimes we just need to shift our focus, for example, a job we want with a specific company that isn’t happening.  Maybe we just need to shift our focus slightly and look with a different company and everything will fall into place.  Not giving up exactly, but moving forward in a different way. 

If you can get to the point where you are clear on what you want out of the situation, you might be able to see if the person or people involved seem capable of stepping up. After all, don’t we want what’s best for us?  And if it isn’t where we are, we do know it.  We just don’t always want to admit it to ourselves.