Tess Vigeland On Knowing When To Quit

“If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s this -- you know deep down inside yourself when something is wrong. Or when something is right. I think at first our instinct is to flee that, particularly if listening to it means there’s going to be real hard change. But there’s a reason it’s there. And if you do nothing else the rest of your life, listen to that. We listen to everybody else and what they think about us, what we think they’re saying about us. Listen to yourself!" ~Tess Vigeland

Tess Vigeland has worked in and around public radio for over 20 years, with 11 of those years as a host of NPR’s "Marketplace." In August 2012, she walked into her executive producer’s office and handed over a letter of resignation that started her on a new journey of discovery, one that led her from, “If I’m no longer the host of Marketplace ...,” to “Who am I now?”

In 2013, Tess took the stage at the World Domination Summit in Portland, OR, to regale an enthusiastic crowd of entrepreneurs and world changers on the topic of leaving a steady job and paycheck for the dark unknown of pursuing a path of discovery and change. An editor for Random House just happened to be in the audience that morning and out of her talk, Tess recently published her book Leap. Although Tess will tell you her book is not a “how to quit your job and start a new chapter in your life” book, it does recount her journey to date as well as vignettes from dozens of other people she interviewed about what they’ve experienced since making their own “leaps.”

Because The Creator’s Journey is focused on the processes that creative leaders use to ship their best work, I talk with Tess about one of the most difficult processes – the process of knowing when to quit something that may, by all appearances, appear to be going extremely well, but that’s causing your heart to stagnate and die.