The Science Behind Quitter’s Day

*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

 

Bill Berthel:
Welcome to the Get Emergent Podcast. The Get Emergent Podcast guides leaders to creatively strengthen relationships and improve performance of their leadership and those that they lead. We really like to provide concepts and ideas that you can turn into pragmatic experiments to help you develop your higher potential in your work and your leadership. And we hope that you’ll find some better practices to apply directly in your work. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone:
And I’m Ralph Simone.

Bill Berthel:
Ralph, I love it. Beginning of the year, end of year, we all have energy around what we’re going to do differently, how we’re going to change things, how we’re going to be more effective in our lives and our work. I know you’ve got a story to share here.

Ralph Simone:
I was so excited, and as part of this excitement was triggered by one of my daily readings from the Daily Creative. It’s the last couple days of the year, and it’s the year in review and then the year in preview. And I’m sharing these with a group of people. And one question, for example, is, what are your five top lessons from this year? And what were some of the things you were most excited about? And then it moves into the preview. What new skill will you learn this year? How will you change some key habits, whether they’re eating or exercise? What healthy thing will you start new this year? This one person said, you know that’s all fine and good, but by next week, game is over. In fact, he referenced, which you’re now seeing more and more in commercials. The second Friday in January. He said, look, I didn’t even get to the second Friday in January and all of these aspirational things that you are asking questions about, I’ve already given up on. I’ve already quit. And I was fascinated by, well, why is that? Because he seemed to be interested in making a change. He seemed to be thinking deeply about the questions, yet he felt like a similar pattern was gonna play out in 2025 that’s played out in the past. And I thought we ought to talk a little bit about the science behind. Quitter’s Day.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, I don’t think any of us like to be associated with the word quit, do we? There’s this stigma. And sometimes it’s really good to know when to let go or when to quit or when to maybe stop applying energy to something. But that’s not what we’re talking about here today. We’re talking about something we have good intentions on following through, a wanted change, a desired new habit to Improve something in our lives, but yet we still can’t get past, well, 80 some percent of us can’t get past that second Friday in January.

Ralph Simone:
And this person, the person I’m thinking about who shared this with me would admit that these things are important for him to change. So it wasn’t like I was suggesting he do it. These were things that he intellectually thought, man, this would be better if I made these changes this year. And still really frustrated that two weeks in and he already feels like he’s behind the eight ball.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah. So one of the hacks I’ve used personally is to not make New Year’s resolutions, but to make them around Thanksgiving. That way I don’t fall into that category of the second January. I’m done well before the year starts. That’s one way to be proactive.

Ralph Simone:
Interesting work around.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, it’s a work around. Right. So we’re very well intended, and we want good things done. Oftentimes, you know this Ralph you coach this, that we’re not connecting something. feelings based, emotionally based. We’re staying in that kind of transactional space of I’m gonna lose 10 pounds by bathing suit season, so I look and feel better. Right. We’re not attaching enough of the emotional look and feel better, really embodying that. So by the second Friday in January, I wanna go back to some of my old habits. Right. So the connection of the emotion and the feeling isn’t strong enough, isn’t meaningful enough yet.

Ralph Simone:
And what’s getting in the way? Possibly.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah. So go a little deeper. There’s this dynamic that happens for us. It’s called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is, sometimes we hold very strong core beliefs. This isn’t how we think first, believe second and then behave third. So we’re thinking about whatever the goal is. Lose some weight or get my diet in order. Maybe it’s something more work related. Maybe I’m going to be, much more proactive in my quarterly execution of this type of work that I’ve been procrastinating around. Whatever that is. Right. We first have to think it. That first creative act is thinking it. Right. It’s identifying it. The second is what do I believe in that? What core beliefs are so strong that I’m holding that when I’m presented with evidence that either works against it, like, oh, I can’t do it. Here we are two weeks into it and I’m not doing it very well yet. I’m not seeing results like I had hoped to yet. This new Evidence cannot be accepted. Like I am so committed to my core belief, negative or positive, don’t even judge it yet. It doesn’t matter if whether that belief is I can or can’t do that thing. It’s because it has been that way for so long. The cognitive dissonance is that space between, even with new evidence, I’m, making some progress or not. I still feel the pull of that old habit. Because it’s so important to protect that core belief. We do a little self-sabotage, we quit, we don’t lean into it as much as we could.

Ralph Simone:
So this gets into the conscious and.

Bill Berthel:
The subconscious very much. We may or may not be conscious of it. Yes.

Ralph Simone:
And so if we’re not, so if it’s in the subconscious, let’s just play in this space for a little bit. Out of our need to either fit in or to protect something about ourselves or to control something, we are unknowingly sabotaging the change that we’ve identified that we want to make consciously. Is that it?

Bill Berthel:
It is just that it is part of the subconscious or reactive tendency we have to protect that core belief of the way it either has been the way it was, even though we want it differently. It almost sounds insane, doesn’t it? It almost sounds like we’re being not logical. Because it’s not logical, Ralph

Ralph Simone:
No. And it reminds me of. I used to bristle when I heard this. Well, people are, they may not be afraid of failure, they’re afraid of success.

Bill Berthel:
Absolutely.

Ralph Simone:
You would say, well, that doesn’t even make sense to me how someone could be afraid of success. But if you break it down this way, if I, I was hanging around with people that were average performers and all of a sudden, my performance skyrockets. At some subconscious level, I’m afraid I may lose those friendships.

Bill Berthel:
You might lose those relationships or not even lose them. You might be stuck in those relationships and now alienate yourself somehow as being so different from the rest of that group. It might be worse to stay in that relationship and be the high performing that guy.

Ralph Simone:
Got it. So this is, I think the essence of a lot of the work that we encourage leaders to do is to get feedback, to kind of explore more deeply into those things that may be preventing them from moving in the direction that they say they want to move in.

Bill Berthel:
Absolutely. And even say and know they really want to move into that space. Right. We can really mean it. Sometimes I think we talk about, you set the intention, and you can manifest that outcome. And that skips a lot of steps it really does. It skips the steps of getting in touch with what I may have as a core belief that’s getting in the way of me attaining that new habit or that higher level of performance. It might be asking me to look a little bit more on my shadow side, the subconscious. What I don’t know, what’s not there. I might need help with that because they’re blind spots. I might need to work with other people that might have a view of something that’s in my way. Or I might be able to look at what are my most often reactive tendencies. And what I mean by that is when I really got to buckle down, when I really need to put the nose to the grindstone or however you want to look at that. What do I rely on most often? Right. So it’s working harder, putting in more hours, maybe sacrificing self-care. There’s an answer in there. Perhaps the flip side of that might be something like if I’m sacrificing self-care, maybe what I really need to do is energize. Maybe what I really need to do is lean into the opposite of that and relax and take a break. Slow down.

Ralph Simone:
I like the example you use. I wonder if we can dig into it a little deeper. Oftentimes I’ll hear people I coach, one of their strong belief systems is around a strong work ethic.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Work harder, Work harder.

Ralph Simone:
And so then maybe the cognitive dissonance that exists when you’re looking at slowing down to go faster or less is more. Or being more focused while intellectually that makes sense to them, what sabotages them is that belief that anything worthwhile, you must work hard for. It must take a lot of energy. It must take a lot of juice. Is that.

Bill Berthel:
That’s a beautiful description of the cognitive dissonance we have in that core belief we’re holding. We may not even want to admit it sometimes as clearly as you just did. We might not want to verbalize it and say it, but that we’re protecting that belief by then sabotaging the results we’re really after.

Ralph Simone:
This is fascinating. So from a coach’s perspective, and part of the work that we do as coaches is we hold the space, we ask the questions to kind of shine the light on not only the thinking, but the beliefs that are either enhancing someone’s performance or are limiting it. And I’m wondering how we might help people look at those things that may be part of their blind spots.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, absolutely. So I think short of hiring a coach, which will definitely support you in we can ask ourselves. We can do some self-coaching in that space. So we can ask ourselves how do we know something to be true? And ask ourselves that more than once. Validate that with three to five examples of how we know something is true. How do I know I need to really buckle down and work harder? Where’d that come from? You shared that messaging or that coding with me. Where does it work? How do I know that to be true? By the time I have to validate that five times, I might really start to question it and say, ooh, I.

Ralph Simone:
love where you’re going. Cause it reminds me of Byron, Katie and some of the work she did was called the work. You ask yourself these four questions. Is it true? How do I know for sure that it’s true? What type of person am I when I subscribe to that truth? And who would I be without that belief?

Bill Berthel:
So I love that last question. Right. There’s another way to flip it around is so what if I replaced that piece of belief? This gets a little touchy, right? Ca because if I’m like, wow, these are my beliefs. Right. That’s a big lift. I’m not asking you to change your whole belief system. That’s very different. But what if I asked you just to change your belief on your work ethic and instead of as a badge of, pride, what if I asked you to look at it as well? How would I do it a little differently towards the goal you set before January 1st? Right. So towards that goal, how might you get more done by working less hard and sharing the work with others or getting a team? Right.

Ralph Simone:
It maybe we’re looking for just a slight shift in perception. I’m reminded of how some of my coaches and mentors have accused me of arguing for my limitations.

Bill Berthel:
That’s cognitive dissonance right there.

Ralph Simone:
Forcefully saying, oh, I believe. I believe in being consistent and I’m consistently failing.

Bill Berthel:
You’re protecting that core belief. Beautiful example.

Ralph Simone:
Yeah. and so really creating a safe space for people to explore their belief systems and explore it out of curiosity as opposed to judgment. I mean, I think in many of the debriefs we do of assessments and some of the discoveries that we do, we’re trying to understand life shaping experiences that are really the foundation for people’s belief system.

Bill Berthel:
I love that you went to the place of curiosity and perhaps as an antidote to the judgment. I think there’s very fertile creative tension right there with curiosity and judgment. Cause we need both. There’s a Both and between those. And that drives me to the creative tension of love and fear. And so if I can put on the lens of kind of a loving curiosity. Right in the way that, I’m really curious to see the. I used to call this the angel’s advocate. I don’t know if that lands for people, but it’s like instead of playing the devil’s advocate, which can be really fun. So, what if I was able to change my habits and my behaviors, change this one piece of my belief that really let me achieve that goal I’m after whether it’s losing weight, whether it’s doing my work differently, whatever it is, how could I get curious about that through that loving lens compared to the fear based judgments I make to continue to protect what I already know? And I think you’ll find that in that curiosity loving lens is where potential happens, where new possibilities emerge, where we really get to push the envelope and maybe not quit that second Friday.

Ralph Simone:
I don’t know if there’s research to support this, but it seems like many driven people are driven out of their fear of failure. Not looking good, not fitting in. And if you could just tweak that a little bit and look at it through this lens of love, what could they replace that belief and consequently the behavior with?

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, I don’t think this is easy work. I think it’s the work. This is the work. Yeah. I don’t want it to sound, overly simplified because I think when we are in that space of that harder work or that more meaningful work, it’s going to take our energy, it’s going to take some more commitment from us. But that doesn’t mean muscling our way through it. It might mean loving our way through it.

Ralph Simone:
Well, and so that sounds like a tip for people. But if people have never even started on this road of this type of work, where might we suggest they start? Let’s say loving. And maybe an easier first step, to begin to understand where some of your strong and deeply held beliefs may be getting in your way.

Bill Berthel:
I guess I’d encourage folks to be okay with that goal or that resolution. Maybe it was the New Year’s resolution that you did quit, you put down. What if you picked it back up? Just because you put it down on the second Friday doesn’t mean you can’t pick it up again. And how would you experiment with it through a slightly different perspective or paradigm?

Ralph Simone:
I love that suggestion. And I’m not remembering where this has come from. So I’ve been doing, I don’t admit this, but I guess I’m admitting it to a lot of people now. Chair yoga.

Bill Berthel:
Oh, yeah. Awesome.

Ralph Simone:
Yeah, I’ve got a little bit of momentum, but one of the things, and I don’t know if this came from The Daily Creative, or it came from some reading was to do things daily-ish. And so it took me 35 days to get through the first 30 days of chair yoga, but that’s pretty consistently. I was certainly doing it daily-ish. I feel better. I feel like I’ve got more mobility. It actually excited me to sign up for something else. And I think the daily-ish gave me permission that it’s not binary, it’s not all or nothing. I feel like I can commit to daily-ish and it actually, I think I’ve reshaped a belief that if you don’t do it every day, it’s not worth doing. Right. One of these or belief I used to have when I was a real athlete that if you don’t work out for two hours and if it doesn’t f feel painful, it wasn’t worth it. And in my older days when my life was fuller, I didn’t have two hours. It wasn’t easy to find two hours. So then I did nothing. And I think it’s giving yourself permission to believe differently that leads to then different actions. But daily-ish was a big breakthrough for me.

Bill Berthel:
That’s awesome. And I love that idea of daily-ish. you put it into more objective terms. It took me 35 days to go through the 30-day program, but that’s something to celebrate and not beat yourself up over. Yeah, I feel good about the results.

Ralph Simone:
I do feel good about it. And I got through 30 days and I’m seeing a change. Even though when I was for the first couple days you don’t see anything. But I’m noticing a little less pain, a little more range of motion, but even some definition around the consistency. But I think it really tugged at a couple of my what now proved to be limiting beliefs. But it’s got to take a lot of effort. If you skip a day, you’re weak. You lack discipline. All of that language, which is not loving.

Bill Berthel:
No.

Ralph Simone:
Doesn’t make you feel good about yourself. So I think that’s where sometimes changing our language can also help us change our beliefs in some cases.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah. I think what comes up for me in that example is you’re willing to recommit to the point of, okay, I let that go for A little bit. It doesn’t mean I can’t pick it up again and work with it a different way. Right. Maybe it’s not quit forever, it’s taking a pause in that, like just changing that paradigm is helpful.

Ralph Simone:
We often talk about developing the practice of stillness in creating this quiet time so that you can be inspired and so that you can hear the intuitive nudges. But people say, well, I can’t sit every day. Well, you don’t need to sit every day. Sit daily is exactly. You have a moment, just get still and notice how that may change things. But I think we put so much pressure on ourselves to do it every day at the same time. And then when that doesn’t happen, I think it triggers a belief system that while we failed.

Bill Berthel:
Absolutely, absolutely.

Ralph Simone:
I guess what tips or what would we leave our listeners with? And ah, maybe it’s listeners that have some initial momentum through the first two Fridays of January.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah.

Ralph Simone:
And maybe also to some people that are feeling a little discouraged that they’re well-intentioned resolutions have fallen by the wayside. What guidance might we give them?

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, I think one is reframing the meaning of quitting to yourself. It doesn’t mean again, you can’t recommit or pick it up again. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do at that time. Reach out to someone and see what they would think about your commitment to that goal or that task. Expand it out of your own head, have a conversation with someone. So we’re out of our own minds with it just for a moment. And someone trusted someone, a colleague, a friend, a trusted advisor who might give you a perspective or a slightly different angle on the thing you’re doing to give you a new way of approaching it.

Ralph Simone:
What I like about that is they may understand more about your belief system, and they could offer you some insights and guidance as to how to overcome any of those beliefs that might be limiting.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that holds true for whether you are falling off a little bit or if you still have momentum. I think a really great boost, your momentum is making some public declarations with again friends, colleagues, people you trust that are around you and get their perspective. It’s one thing to get their acknowledgement and validation, but you can ask them, so what do you see me doing? How am I showing up differently? What do you think about this? How does this look on me? It’s kind of the question.

Ralph Simone:
Well, and it’s getting me to think about that’s the support and the accountability and maybe there’s deeper conversations when somebody admits to falling off the wagon to say, well, you seem disappointed. I’m wondering what you learned or what could be learned about your belief system as a result of this. And maybe we need to take, I think we do this in coaching, but maybe we need to take some of our personal relationships, the conversations, to the next level so that there is less cognitive dissonance around sticking to things that people have intellectually identified as important.

Bill Berthel:
I think so. And I think out of those conversations with others, I think another value item of getting it out of our own heads and into conversation is most of our friends and colleagues and people we know are going to be much less fear based with us and more curious and more loving with us. And so they’re going to lead that conversation for you from a place of likely more support and possibility.

Ralph Simone:
So it sounds like if you engage others in the conversation, you got a better chance of getting this stuff above the line into consciousness as opposed to below the line in subconscious sabotage.

Bill Berthel:
Absolutely. You’ll be in that, conscious space. You’ll be much more creative and see things from, that curious space.

Ralph Simone:
Interesting. Really enjoyed exploring this concept around what’s now been marketed as quitters’ day

Bill Berthel:
Well, Ralph thank you.

Ralph Simone:
Thanks, Bill.

Bill Berthel:
Hey, folks, and thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode and that you’re looking forward to more. You can always listen to a new podcast two times every month here at GetEmergent or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And we hope you pick something up. You’re going to apply to your leadership and your work. Let us know how that goes by reaching out to support@getemergent.com or directly to me or Ralph Thanks for listening.