Youtube: MindMaze with Gari

What if the bravest move isn’t holding on? It’s letting go before everyone else sees why. Most of us were taught that winners never quit. But in real life, people don’t usually lose because they run out of grit. They lose because they stay long after the game has changed. Today, we’re going to decode the psychology of quitting at the right time, why our brains fight it, and how to build a system that frees your future. One, the trap we don’t see. Here’s the quick confession nobody likes to make. When you’ve invested months, money, and pride into something, walking away feels like admitting you were wrong. That ache has a name. Psychologists call it the sunk cost effect. Our tendency to keep pouring into a losing path just because we’ve already paid a price. The payments can be cash, hours, reputation, even love. The past payment pulls us forward like gravity, even when the road ahead is a cliff. Underneath, two forces tighten the knot. First is loss aversion. We feel losses about twice as strongly as equivalent gains. That’s why the idea of wasting what we put in can feel unbearable even when leaving would save us more. Second is the status quo bias. Once we’re on a track, our brain treats keep going as the safe default even if the evidence says otherwise. Put them together and you get a third problem escalation of commitment. That stubborn urge to double down after bad news. Not in spite of it, but because of it. If you want a picture, think of the Concord supersonic jet. Government spent so much that cancelling felt impossible even while the economics never worked. It became a textbook cautionary tale. The Concord fallacy. In our own lives, the symbol might be a startup feature nobody uses, a degree we no longer want, or a relationship we keep fixing instead of facing. But that’s not the whole story. Two, why your brain hates walking away. We don’t stick only because we’re irrational. We stick because quitting threatens identity. If I quit, does that mean I’m not persistent, not loyal, not who I said I was? That identity threat pushes us to protect the story we’ve told about ourselves, not the future we could still have. Add one more culprit. Opportunity costs neglect. We underweight the value of what we could be doing instead. When the alternative paths aren’t vivid, the current path, however, bad wins by default. Make the next best option concrete and suddenly staying stops looking safe. It looks expensive. There’s also fear of social judgment. Quitting can look like failing in public. But here’s the twist. Quitting at the right time often looks early from the outside because you’re leaving before the damage is obvious. That discomfort is a feature, not a bug. So, how do you cut through all that noise without becoming reckless? Three, flip the lens. Only the future counts. The single most useful mental shift is this. Only costs and benefits from today forward matter. The money you already spent, the months already gone, the tears already cried, none of that should vote on your next move. Economists would say, ignore sunk costs and compare the forward expected value FEV of your options. Here’s a simple way to do it without math headaches. Ask, if I were starting from zero today, knowing what I know now, would I choose this path again? If I free up this time, money, energy, what’s the next best use and what’s its likely payoff? When you answer honestly, you’ve already put the past in a museum. To tame fear, run a 10 10 regret test. How will I feel about this choice in 10 days, 10 months, 10 years? It stretches your horizon past the panic of the moment and toward the person you’re becoming. But even the best mindset folds under pressure. You need structure. Four, build a quitting system before you start. Smart quitting doesn’t happen in the heat of the moment. It happens in the design of the game. Former poker pro and decision strategist Annie Duke recommends setting kill criteria, pre-aggreede metrics, and dates that trigger a stop, a pause, or a pivot. It’s like writing a contract with your calmer self while your emotional self is still asleep. For example, if this channel’s click-through rate doesn’t hit 5 7% after 10 videos and three thumbnail hook iterations, we pivot the positioning. If the project misses two consecutive milestone KPIs without a clear leading indicator improving, we sunset and reallocate. If sleep drops under 6 hours across 10 days because of this sprint, we pause or shrink scope. When the deadline hits, you don’t negotiate with the narrative. You follow the rule you created in clear air. That’s quitting on time. And yes, on time will feel a little early. That’s the point. Still thinking, but quitting feels like giving up on my values? Let’s zoom out. Five, the culture shift you’re living through. In 2021, a record wave of people left their jobs. Some called it the great resignation, others the great re-evaluation. At the same time, a phrase went viral. Quiet quitting people doing only what their job actually requires and nothing extra. Whether you praise or criticize those trends, they signal something real. Millions are renegotiating the deal between effort, meaning, and life. The lesson for us isn’t quit everything or do the bare minimum. It’s this. Attachment to the past is expensive. And the labor market proved that switching can be rational when the value exchange is broken. Don’t confuse disengagement with wisdom. Wise quitting is engaged, intentional, and forward-looking. Okay. So, how do you make leaving easier psychologically and practically? Six. Make leaving lighter, fresh starts and options. If you’ve ever felt a surge of motivation on your birthday or the first of the month, you’ve experienced the fresh start effect. Temporal landmarks separate old me from new me, making it easier to let go. Use that time your pivots to natural chapter breaks, a quarter close, semester end, project milestone, a trip, so your mind can file the change as a clean start rather than a defeat. Next, design your projects to increase optionality. Learn skills that transfer. Build assets, scripts, systems, relationships that travel with you. When your options widen as you proceed, walking away stops feeling like starting from zero. You’re not quitting, you’re compounding. Practical moves. Premortem. Imagine it’s 6 months from now and the effort failed. List the reasons, then inoculate against them today. Partition time, 70% on the best bet, 20% on experiments, 10% on research. The experimental slice keeps you from overcommitting to one path too soon. Red team, ask someone who loves you and your future to argue for quitting. Outsource courage when your ego is loud. Before we land the playbook, a quick note for those who want to go deeper. If the ideas in this video are stirring something, I’ve put a lot of this inner work into books designed to be companions while you reset. Gari Nguyen is a 29-year-old author currently living in Silicon Valley who has published 13 books in Vietnam since she was 17. Novels, short stories, personal essays. You can find some of her works on Amazon.com like Justar Me Out and A Luxury Item Called Me. If you’re looking for language that helps you leave gently and start again stronger, those pages are there for you. Think of them as long form reflections you can return to between your own fresh starts. Now, let’s put everything into a simple repeatable sequence. Seven, the sevenstep quit to win playbook. Name the goal in numbers. In 12 weeks, I want X views, Y watch time, Z subscriber velocity, or I want three interviews in a new field. Precision is merciful. List the real costs from today forward. Time, money, sleep, reputation, risk. The past is a receipt. The future is the bill. Map your option B. Make the alternative vivid. What you do instead, what you’d likely gain, who could help. Your brain needs a movie, not a bullet point. Create kill criteria. Metrics plus dates that trigger stop, pause, pivot. Write them down. Share with a friend who will hold you to them. Schedule a fresh start. Tie the decision to a temporal landmark. Quarter end, birthday week, first Monday next month. Run the regret test. Ask how each path will feel in 10 days, 10 months, 10 years. Trust the version of you with a longer horizon. Exit like a builder. Close loops with grace. Capture what you learned and carry forward reusable assets. Quitting isn’t burning bridges. It’s building a better road. Let’s bring this down to earth with a few snapshots. Eight. Three quick vignettes. The creator. After 10 videos, the CTR sits at 3.2% and first minute retention won’t climb past 45% despite three rounds of thumbnail hook testing. The kill criteria were clear. She pivots the angle, keeps the channel, and repackages her best performing segments into shorts while she tests a new narrative style. 6 weeks later, suggested traffic finally moves. She didn’t quit creating. She quit a frame that the audience wasn’t asking for. The founder, the team has burned three sprints chasing a feature that demo users like but don’t use. A premortem predicted this. It solved a cute problem, not a bleeding one. They archive the feature, reallocate engineers to the one metric correlated with paid conversions, and send a thank you not now to the partner who was lobbying for it. Option value preserved. Morale weirdly up the relationship. Two people love a memory more than a present. Therapy helps for a season, then the same three fights loop back. The kill criteria weren’t dramatic, they were humane. If both people aren’t growing, and one person’s health is consistently worse, the relationship needs a redesign or a release. In the end, they choose the hardest kindness. Quitting here isn’t quitting love. It’s not letting love become unloving. Why? Quitting on time feels early. When you leave before failure is obvious, outsiders wonder what you’re doing. That’s okay. The uncertainty cuts both ways. You can’t know for sure that leaving was best, but you also can’t know what staying would have cost. As Annie Duke likes to point out, the knowledge you need to perfectly time a decision doesn’t exist ahead of time. That’s why quitting on time usually feels a touch too soon. It’s meant to. Common objections answered fast. But I’ve already spent so much. That’s the definition of sunk cost talking. Those costs are gone whether you stay or go. The only rational question is what creates the best future from here? What if I regret leaving? You might. You might also regret staying through another year of quiet misery. Run 10-10 then choose the regret you can learn from. Quitting makes me look flaky. Not if your exits are principled. Communicate your kill criteria upfront. When you act on them, people see integrity, not impulsiveness. Design a life that’s easy to quit. Try this experiment for the next month. Whatever you join, projects, platforms, partnerships, set a tiny exit plan as you enter. One sentence is enough. If X doesn’t happen by Y, I will pause or pivot. You’ll notice your choices get sharper at the start, not just at the end. You’ll also notice your courage increasing because optionality is courage’s best friend. And if you’re in a season where starting over feels heavy, remember the fresh start effect. Pick a landmark and make it a line in the sand. New week, new month, first day of fall, whatever gives your brain permission to write a new chapter heading. Never quit sounds heroic on a t-shirt. But the people who quietly build remarkable lives don’t worship endurance. They respect reality. They keep promises to their future self. They set rules in clear air and obey them in the storm. They leave early enough to save what matters. Quitting isn’t the end of a story. It’s the punctuation that lets the next sentence make sense. If this helped, share it with one person who’s been white knuckling a decision. And if you want language for what comes after you let go, the books I mentioned are linked below. Here’s to exits with clean edges and beginnings that don’t apologize.