When Life Gets Stressful and You Want to Quit, Here’s What to Do

Here’s a scenario: Have you ever woken up in the morning to your alarm clock blaring … bleary eyed from lack of sleep, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the day ahead … and what you’re really doing is wondering how in the world you’re going to get through the day because you have so much to do and so many people who are going to want things from you?

Perhaps you already have a few voicemails or texts on your phone from people at work. Maybe you just saw a negative balance alert on your bank account, along with several NSF fees. Maybe you can hear your children crying in the next room. They need to get up. They need their diapers changed. They need breakfast. Perhaps you just realized that you completely forgot you had a dentist appointment yesterday and that it’s your mom’s birthday today and you have no gift.

These moments can feel … overwhelming. It’s easy to get lost in this haze of stress and to feel like you’re drowning. It’s easy to want to quit and walk away from it all.

When this happens to you, here’s what to do.

What to Tell Yourself When Life Gets Too Stressful and You Want to Quit

Tell yourself this:

Life is always going to be stressful.

Let us say that again: Life will always be stressful.

Like a punch to the gut, isn’t it?

Get ready because here’s another one: You’re never going to get it all done.

That’s right. We said it.

It’s not what you want to hear, is it?

You want to hear that there is some time in the future where you are finally going to “get it all together”. You’re going to pay off your debt, lose the weight, organize your basement, have the perfect home, make $1 million, find “The One”, and have the ideal job that lets you take all the time off you need and is super rewarding and fun. Moreover, at this point, you will never feel stressed because nothing will ever go wrong, and you will die peacefully in your sleep at the age of 110.

This little story above is not something that we tell ourselves explicitly. It’s not something that clearly runs through our minds because if it did, we’d instantly realize how foolish it is. Has any of this cascade of wonderful events ever happened to you before? To anyone you know? Have you ever known a time period in your life where absolutely nothing went wrong? Do you always get what you want?

Chances are, the answer to these questions is no across-the-board.

Why are we saying all this? Because the sooner you understand it, the sooner you can get to work on improving what you can and letting go of what you can’t.

Life will always be stressful. If you feel that “life is just stressful right now,” you will imagine a dream in which it’s not stressful, and this is what will really mess with you.

It is when you can accept the current state of things and work on what you can while not letting the small stuff bother you, that you can really make progress. You, and millions of other people, have daily challenges, all of which threaten to take you down. It is those among us who rise to the occasion and accept these challenges — doing their best to combat and work with problems that arise — who will overcome and learn to enjoy and cherish life as it is … not as it “should be”.