I was 20 when I gave up my dream of playing baseball. Like so many others I had always wanted to play professionally, so when my opportunity to play college ball came, I invested everything I had in it. My brother was a talented player, already scouted in high school, so I felt a great deal of pressure to make something of myself. I quickly became consumed in the sport. I began staying late after practice and putting extra work in on the weekends, doing anything to make me better. I thought that I wanted it more than anyone else, that eventually, all this hard work would pay off.

But in the end, I just wasn’t good enough. It only took one brutal freshman year of baseball to crush nearly 15+ years of near-religious commitment to the sport. I was completely defeated. After 12 months, I left my junior college in Phoenix and came back to Grand Junction.

That was one of the hardest realities I’ve ever had to face, but also one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. Baseball was all I knew. It was a point where I measured my self-worth by my success in the game, and I truly wanted to succeed so bad. So bad in fact that I disregarded nearly everything else. Baseball was something I was good at, so I didn’t waste time with much else. When I had finally made the decision to quit, it was like freeing myself from a 15-year prison sentence. I began to explore other passions, became less stressed and was happy.

If you remember back to economics, you might recall the concept of sunk costs. This is all the time, effort and money that was spent towards a specific goal. A sunk cost is exactly that, sunk, as it can never be made back. Keep this in mind as it is important – it can never be made back. Many of us base our future decisions by the ones we make in the past. Just because I had played baseball for the last 15 years shouldn’t justify me to keep pursuing a pipe dream. With all the time I had invested in baseball, I could’ve done so many other more meaningful things.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you should regret that time spent. Cherish those memories, but learn to let them go. If you quickly feel you’re getting nowhere, quit and do something else. Unfortunately, hard work doesn’t always pay off. The faster we realize that the sooner we can start putting our hard work into other things. When making important decisions, economists use something called the opportunity cost. Unlike sunk costs, your opportunity cost is all the things you could be doing instead of what you’re currently doing. If your opportunity cost of doing something else is lower than what you’re doing right now, then you are better off doing the alternative instead. Doing this may help you step off the hamster wheel that was getting you nowhere and free up time from those mundane tasks.

Do you ever see in movies where the main character quits his dream to pursue a nine to five job, only to realize later of his mistake and triumphantly return to his passion? It’s the kind of story this country was founded on. However, the “follow your dreams” and “work hard pays off” mottos often do more harm than good. Chasing after fantastic notions is nice in theory, but often lead to situations of extreme stress or uncertainty. These situations intensify as we dive deeper into the obsession. The land of opportunity has remained a dreamer’s paradise fueled by a race-to-success mentality. The side effect is that this mentality creates harsh and unrealistic expectations for all of us. We tell ourselves if we put in the work and keep on the grind, then all roads lead to success.

When realistically only one road may lead to success and ninety-nine others lead to failure. The problem is we continue down these roads until we reach oblivion. We don’t know when to quit, so we just don’t. It’s so easy to get invested into something where to quit no longer seems an option. If we would just stop and see the opportunity cost in something else, we may find that one road to success. Even if we don’t, we can quit again until we do. If our first choice doesn’t work out, there’s always option number two, and three, and four.

The point is that you can’t be afraid of trying new things even when that means giving up on your dreams for now. When you go to bed at night, you can always dream up more.