the sunk cost fallacy;

never reinforce failure;

cut your losses;

the definition insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results

We have lots of different adages to get us to stop committing our time and and goods and character to failure.  That we have so many suggests that have a hard time quitting.

Economists call this irrationality.  There is a way in which it is irrational.  Changing plans is mentally hard.  Sometimes stubbornness is just laziness.

There is a way in which it is rational.  From the outside, failure damages your reputation and success enhances it.  Continuiing to work on something means it hasn’t failed yet.

There is a deeper way in which it is rational.  From the inside, we value our experience and do not want to reject it.  We don’t want to leave any part of ourselves behind.  And we shouldn’t.

We need to make sense of where we are going.  But we also need to make sense of where we have been.  Sometimes this is impossible for us.

If you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road.

-thus C. S. Lewis.

Only a god can make it possible.

Only a god can suffer for our sins so that when we cut them off, they still have meaning and are part of our ties to him.  Only a god can offer grace that our weaknesses will become strengths, so that we can identify the thread in our failures that developed into our success.