MindTango #6: When Is It Time to Try Again?

muguet17

Sep 28

2 min read

I’ve been thinking about the advice we hear so often: never give up.

It sounds good. And sometimes, we really do need to hear it.

But I’ve also wondered whether there are moments when continuing isn't resilience at all.

Sometimes we keep pushing because something matters to us.

And sometimes we keep pushing because walking away feels like admitting that we failed.

Those two things can look very similar from the outside.

You can spend years pursuing a career because it genuinely matters to you. Or because you've already spent years building it and don't know who you'd be without it.

You can keep trying to make something work because you believe in it. Or because changing direction would mean admitting that the version of the future you imagined isn't going to happen.

I don't think resilience means becoming someone who can endure anything indefinitely.

Sometimes resilience looks like trying again.

Sometimes it looks like trying differently.

And sometimes it looks like admitting that you've learned enough to know that it's time to choose another direction.

That's why I find the question more interesting than “How do I become more resilient?”

Maybe it's:

“What am I actually trying to stay committed to?”

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts” Winston Churchill

More on this

I explore the macros of success in my Latest YouTube https://youtu.be/-IeZj7BUquE?si=EDW4ck01P3kBSkR4

Science Corner:

Angela Duckworth's research is often reduced to one message: keep going.

But her definition of grit is more specific. She describes it as passion and perseverance for long-term goals — staying committed to something meaningful even when progress is difficult or slow.

What's interesting is that Duckworth also acknowledges an important limitation: you can be too stubborn about smaller goals. Sometimes changing the strategy, abandoning a particular path, or redirecting your effort can serve the larger goal better than simply persisting.

If you want to explore this more, Angela Duckworth's book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance is a good starting point. Her work also offers a useful distinction between perseverance toward something meaningful and simply refusing to stop.