Ep 110 - Stuck on the Doorstep

Have you ever been ready to quit something—completely ready to walk away—right before it was about to work? This episode explores one of the most painful ironies of transition: that the moment you feel most stuck is often right before things shift. We talk about why breakthroughs hide behind resistance, how your brain miscalculates progress when the work is invisible, and the difference between a path that's wrong versus a path that's just long. 

Transcript

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Have you ever been ready to quit something? And I mean completely ready to walk away right before it was about to work. Hi, this is Jordiana, the CEO of the Recon Network and host of the In Brief Podcast. And today we're talking about one of the most painful ironies of transition. The fact that the moment you feel the most stuck is often the moment right before things finally shift. We're going to talk about why breakthroughs hide behind resistance, why your brain tells you to quit when you're actually really close, and why, in the words of an old principal, you don't want to die on the doorstep when that door is about to open. This is in brief. Let's get to it. Because it's not just frustration. It's actually heavier than that. Stuck feels like you've been doing everything you're supposed to do, showing up, putting in the work, making the effort, and still nothing is changing. You apply for jobs and hear nothing back. You reach out to people and make connections that don't go anywhere. You work on yourself, build new skills, try new approaches, and still nothing moves. After enough time in that place, you start to question whether any of it matters, whether you're wasting your time, whether the thing you're working toward is even possible for you. And eventually the voice in your head gets loud enough to say, hey, maybe it's time to quit. Maybe this just isn't going to happen. But here's what that voice doesn't tell you. There's a good chance that you're actually standing on the doorstep. There's an old principle that says the hardest part of the journey is often right before the breakthrough. You may have heard it said, it's always darkest before the dawn. But no matter what metaphor you use, it speaks to the point that the moment you feel most like giving up is often the moment you're closest to the thing that you've been working toward. The end image is this: don't die on the doorstep. Don't walk away when the door you've been working to get through is about to open. And that's not just a metaphor, it's a pattern, a real, repeatable pattern that shows up in transition, in career changes, in personal growth, in every hard thing people go through. The breakthrough doesn't come when things feel easy. It comes right when things feel impossible. And if you don't know that, if no one's ever told you to expect it, you quit right before the shift happens. So why does it happen? Why does your brain tell you to quit when you're actually pretty close? Well, it's because your brain doesn't measure progress by how close you are to the outcome. It can't really see that end result. Instead, it measures progress by how much effort you're putting in versus how much reward you're getting back. It's a simple formula. And when that effort keeps going up and the visible reward stays flat, your brain reads that as a sign that the system isn't working and that you're investing in something that's never going to pay off. But that calculation is flawed because most meaningful things don't work on a linear timeline. It's not like you put in 10 units of effort and get 10 units of result. You put in 50 units of effort and get nothing. And then you put in 10 more and still nothing changes. And then one day you throw in a few more little pieces of effort and everything shifts at once. And that isn't because you magically changed how effective you were or what was happening behind the scenes. The progress was actually happening the whole time. You just couldn't see it yet. Think about it like this: if you're building something, a foundation, a structure, anything that requires actual construction, the early work is almost invisible. You dig, you pour concrete, you let it set, and from the outside, it looks like nothing's happening. But that foundation is what makes everything else possible. Without it, the structure collapses. And if you quit during the foundation phase because it doesn't feel like progress, you'll never get to the part where things actually start to build. It's a lot like the bamboo plant. The roots of bamboo take years to stabilize and root deep. It's stuff that no one ever sees. There's no visible result on top of the ground that anything's actually happening at all. If you didn't know better, you would think that the plant had died. But then within weeks, all of a sudden you've got a six-foot stalk. So it wasn't that nothing was happening. It was that the rooting was providing a stable surface for the growth that was about to happen. So let's reframe what stuck actually means in this context. Because stuck isn't always a sign that you're in the wrong place. Sometimes stuck is a sign that you're in the hardest part of the right place. You may be in the place where work is invisible, where progress is underground, where everything you're doing is setting something up that hasn't surfaced yet. But if you walk away during this phase, if you quit because it feels like nothing's happening, you don't just lose the progress you already made, you lose the breakthrough that's about to happen. But there's also this thing called the sunk cost fallacy, where you tend to think that because you've invested so much time and effort into a thing that we have to keep going or you'll lose all the progress. You don't want that either. So how do you actually know if you're on the doorstep? How do you know the thing that you're working on is about to break through, or if you're really just wasting your time? Well, here's the biggest tell. If you've been consistent, you've shown up even when it's hard, made adjustments along the way, not because you're flailing, but because you're learning. And despite all that, the external markers of progress still aren't there. If that's where you are, you're probably a lot closer than you think. Because true quitters aren't the ones who try and fail. They're the ones who are doing everything right and stop right before it works. But here's what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that you should stay in something that's fundamentally broken. It doesn't mean you should keep forcing a path that was never the right fit. And it doesn't mean that just keep going is the answer to everything. Sometimes the right move is to pivot. Sometimes the right move is to just walk away. But you have to be able to identify whether the path is the wrong path or if it's just a long path. Because if the only reason you're thinking about quitting is because it feels hard and like things are taking too long, because progress isn't visible yet, because you're tired, because you can't see the finish line, that's not a reason to quit. That's the reason to hold on a little longer. The hardest part of any journey is the part where you can't see the destination, but you're too far in to turn back without losing everything you've already built. That's the doorstep. And the people who make it through aren't the ones who had it easier. They're the ones who decided that the discomfort of staying was worth more than the relief of quitting.

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Leaving the military can feel chaotic, especially when you feel you should have a plan right away. But not knowing what's next doesn't mean you're failing. It means you're in transition. At the Recon Network, we help veterans and military spouses navigate transition by focusing on stability, direction, and alignment before outcomes are expected, so you can map your future without rushing the wrong move or spending years building a life out of sync with your purpose. Don't rush your next step. Navigate it with intention with Recon. Learn more about our programs and services at recon.vet.