The first time it’s OK to Be a Quitter is when the herd is going the wrong way.

Sometimes you find yourself in a large group of people moving in a direction, and your intuition, instincts, or perhaps its God speaking to you that causes you to realize “Success and achievement isn’t down this road. We are going the wrong direction.” I don’t think you should rush to quit. You should instead seek to influence and direct. But if you can’t steer the group in the right direction, at some point you have to step outside the herd and say “I’m not going. I quit.”

Beware that when you quit, you’ll have suddenly become an outsider and you’ll start taking shots from your former colleagues who remain inside. A friend recently helped me understand that when he said “Barry, they are throwing rocks at you because they are afraid. They know that you have already made a decision that they are eventually going to have to make for themselves.” Indeed. Those who remain in the safety of the herd still live with the fear that the one who has left the herd might be right, and nobody wants to wind up being wrong. (Though it doesn’t have to end in an “I am right. You are wrong” sort of way.) As their internal pressure builds the only outlet they can see is to attack the one who left the herd.

Coming on the next post: The second time when it’s OK to quit.