How to Keep Going When You Want to Give Up
Key Takeaways
- You cannot give up. When everything falls apart, the sequence is physical: get your footing, stop the fall, then start your ascent back up.
- Grab onto something positive immediately and invest your time in it. Don’t wait until you feel ready.
- The past is worthless as a place for your attention. You can’t change it. Put your time on the present and the future, because those are the only things that can change.
- People who give up don’t announce it. They just go quiet. What I told Earl Thomas on VOICE POWER, Season 5 Episode 3: if anybody thought they wouldn’t hear from me again, that’s not the case. You can listen to the full conversation below.
- Writing your own hero’s journey (the disaster and the recovery) is a practice I recommend to anybody. It makes you the hero of the story of how you tell the story.
I’m Eric Zwigart. I built an oil and chemical company to over $150 million in annual revenue, lost $35 million personally when it collapsed, and rebuilt in real estate. When Earl Thomas had me on his podcast VOICE POWER (Season 5, Episode 3, the one he titled “Never Give Up No Matter What!!!”), he asked what kept me from giving up. My answer hasn’t changed: you cannot give up. Get your footing, stop the fall, then start your ascent. This post is how to keep going when you want to give up: the method I gave Earl, not a poster. The conversation itself is right here:
Prefer your podcast app? Listen on Buzzsprout.
How do you not give up when you lose everything?
You cannot give up. That’s the whole answer, and I mean it as a rule, not encouragement.
Here’s how I put my story to Earl on the episode: “I built a pretty big company, about $150 million a year and was an entrepreneur of the year. And then in COVID, I lost it all. And so I lost $35 million personally. […] But you can’t stop or give up. I never did that. I always move forward.”
I’ve already written the mechanics of the collapse (the pivot, the inventory, the dominoes) in I Lost $35 Million. Here’s the Only Lesson That Matters. This post covers what you do while you’re still falling.
And then my faith is really what turned it around for me. That’s one clause here, but it’s the load-bearing one. The longer version of what the comeback actually took, faith and presence and my twin boys, is in How to Come Back After Losing Everything, and how a logical brain holds faith at all gets its own page in ADHD and Faith.
What should you do when everything falls apart?
Get your footing, stop the fall, and then start your ascent back up. In that order, and immediately.
That’s not a metaphor I polished for a podcast. It’s the actual sequence, and here’s how I said it to Earl: “The good advice is, immediately try to get your footing, stop the fall, and then start your ascent back up. So you immediately need to grab onto something that’s positive and invest your time in that.”
Notice what’s not in there. There’s no step where you figure out whose fault it was. There’s no step where you wait until you feel better. The first move is footing: something under you that isn’t sliding. The second is stopping the fall, because you can’t climb while you’re still going down. The third is the ascent, and the ascent starts with one grab: something positive that deserves your time, held onto on purpose.
For me the grab was real estate and my boys. The day I talked with Earl, I hadn’t planned to be in the field at all. I took the interview from a property I was rehabbing down by the beach, working in real estate, which for me is a passion and a joy. That’s what the ascent looks like from the inside: not a comeback montage, just a man at a job site he’s glad to be at.
And it compounds. By the time of that conversation I could honestly say I was growing, adding to the team, and coming out of that hole of a disaster. Coming out of it and being okay.
How do you stop dwelling on the past and move forward?
You stop dwelling on the past by recognizing what it actually is: unchangeable. Every hour you give it is an hour spent on the one thing that can’t pay you back.
This is the part of my answer people push back on, so I’ll give it to you the way I gave it to Earl: “Anything that you focus on the past and history is just that: it’s history. It’s worthless. You can’t change it. It’s not even a good thought because you can’t change it.”
That’s not therapy language, and I’m not going to dress it up as therapy language. It’s efficiency logic. I’m not saying the loss didn’t matter or that you should pretend it didn’t happen. I tell the story of my collapse constantly, on stages and on this site, because telling it is useful. Dwelling is different. Dwelling is asking the past to change, and it can’t.
So run the math the way I do. What can change? The future and the present. So that’s what I put my time into.
Why do people give up?
People give up when they decide the fall is the end of their story. And here’s the thing nobody tells you: you almost never see it happen. Giving up isn’t a decision anyone announces. It’s a silence.
I learned that from a stranger. After I spoke to a group of capital raisers in San Diego, a man reached out to me. He’d lost $22 million. He thought he was really at the top, and he was still in a grind. We’ve stayed in touch.
What struck me wasn’t his number. It was that I’d never heard of him: a man who lost $22 million, still grinding, invisible. That was really an eye-opener. Here’s where it landed, in my words from the episode: “I thought, wow, people give up, and then you just don’t hear about them anymore, and I’m not that type of guy. So, if anybody thought they wouldn’t hear from me again after that happened to me, that’s not the case.”
That’s the test I’d give you. Not “do you feel motivated.” Feelings come and go, and some mornings mine are no help at all. The test is: are you still making noise? Still calling, still building, still showing up where people can see you? Because the people who give up don’t fail loudly. They just stop being heard from. Refusing to disappear is most of the game.
Why should you write your own hero’s journey?
Because it makes you the hero of the story of how you tell the story. Your fall stops being an ending and becomes the middle chapter it actually is.
The hero’s journey is a storytelling framework (twelve steps, or chapters), and the exercise is to bring your own life into those steps. When I did it, two steps stood out above the rest: “One is when you get the hardest challenges and you’re hit with something that really floors you. You feel the disaster of it all. And then the recovery: what would happen and how did you regain your life and your move forward process.”
Everything else is steps in between and backstory. The disaster and the recovery are the spine.
I first did the exercise for a talk in San Diego, and it surprised me how much it dissects. It goes back and shows you parts of your life you’d filed away. And here’s my recommendation, verbatim from the episode: “I recommend, to be honest, I recommend anybody doing a Hero’s Journey.” You don’t need a stage or a podcast to do it. You need to sit down and place your own disaster and your own recovery into a story shape, and use it, as I told Earl, “for inspiration on just how great of a fall I took and how you need to come back from that.”
I’ve even done a version of it in print: I co-authored Success Strategies alongside Jack Canfield, a chapter of my story bound together with other people’s, chicken-soup style.
This is why I put the hero’s journey last in this post. The footing, the fall, the ascent, the refusal to go quiet. Those get you moving. The story you write about it is what makes the whole thing repeatable, for you and for whoever’s watching you climb.
I told Earl something near the end of our conversation that I’ll leave you with: it’s funny, you have something to be able to give other people advice, and then you have to take it yourself. I’m trying to take my own advice and do the things I’ve talked about for a long time. This post is part of that.
The full conversation runs about 36 minutes and is worth every one of them. You can listen to the VOICE POWER episode here. And the whole arc, start to finish, is on my story page.
FAQ
Where can I hear the full episode?
The full episode (VOICE POWER Season 5, Episode 3, “Never Give Up No Matter What!!! with Eric Zwigart”) is on Buzzsprout. It aired May 23, 2025 and runs about 36 minutes.
What is VOICE POWER?
VOICE POWER is Earl Thomas’s podcast. Earl, known as “The VOICE,” has been running the show since May 2021, covering voiceover work and inspirational guest interviews.
Who is Earl Thomas?
Earl Thomas, “The VOICE,” is the host of VOICE POWER. He’s a voiceover artist and interviewer who’s been running the show since May 2021, and our conversation is Season 5, Episode 3.
For accredited investors only. This is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy securities. Any offering is made only pursuant to Rule 506(c) of Regulation D to verified accredited investors. All investments involve risk, including possible loss of principal.