The Truth Is, You’ll Always Know When It’s Time To Leave

You can see it all now when you look back with a fresh perspective. A perspective with a bit of distance. The toxic job, the toxic relationship, the toxic habit. And now you’re standing this far away, you might also see yourself stuck back there and wonder how you put up with so much for so long. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to figure out why you seemed so oblivious to the harm you were doing to yourself by staying stuck. Which isn’t to say you were weird or lazy or lacking intelligence. No, you tried to make something work. And isn’t that what we’re taught to do? Never give up. Persistence. Get up and try again. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? So you stayed for the money, you stayed for what started out as love, you may have just stayed because it’s all you knew how to do or how to behave in a situation. A lot of the time, we stay out of fear of change too. But here you are, you’re out of it now. And although you’re out, there’s a part of you that might still be scared, I know I am, because if you ended up stuck there once before, what’s to stop you getting stuck there again?

Well here’s the good news: Time and Experience are the very best of friends. And when they get together, they do a hell of a good job in keeping you from falling down those metaphorical wells again, where the light is pretty distant and no amount of screaming or cursing or crying will help. It’s a lonely place to be down there alone, and you remember that because you’ve been there. But in time, you learned to leave, and with experience you learned how and why you needed to. Time teaches us invaluable lessons that we can only understand as we age and mature and, dare I say, look back with hindsight. And experience gives us that extra edge, that sharper sword, every time we stumble across a part of life that we haven’t come across yet.

Until eventually, the end result is this: You will always know when it’s time to go. Next time you stand in toxic atmospheres or find yourself among toxic company, you’ll find yourself recognizing it almost instantly. And you go. You most likely knew before what you had to do, but maybe you didn’t act fast enough or at all and that caused pain. But this time, you get up and find the door. You graciously decline the date. You respectfully but assertively hand in your notice. And here’s the thing… you’ll often know so fast and be so sure of your path that you’re going to make some people uncomfortable. Because they’ll see you leaving the jobs, relationships, and situations quicker than they thought you would, and probably quicker than they would, and they judge. People can be awfully judgemental when you hold a mirror up to their own insecurities by embodying what they fear in themselves. But they don’t know what you know, which is okay, because you were in that space once too.

So carry on leaving the things that bring anxiety. Carry on leaving the people who do nothing for you. And carry on honoring your peace, because we already lose a lot to this world. We lose money, we lose loved ones and we lose countless moments in time. But one thing we must never lose is our peace.

If you’re on the verge of a decision and wondering if your hunch is right, it’s simply wise to look back in time at all the lessons that taught you to recognise that gut feeling. Remember your journey here. Because at the end of it all, you’ll always know when it’s time to go.