This blog post is actually based on an online membership I joined earlier this year but recently cancelled my subscription for.
Prior to joining I was quite excited and I thought I would really enjoy the membership. It turned out that I thought the membership was pretty good and definetly worth the cost. However, it just wasn’t quite right for me.
But instead of cancelling when I came to that realisation I remained in the membership for a few more months. I wanted to give it a chance to see if I changed my mind plus I’d been a fan of this persons free online offerings for years so I felt conflicted that I didn’t like the membership as much as I thought I would.
In hindsight I should have just cancelled the membership staright away and then rejoined if I felt called to but instead I chose to trudge on. Looking back a key issue was the time difference. There would be interactive live sessions held in the morning but for me it was late the night before. It was difficult to interact with the content in the way it was intended because I was 10 or 11 hours behind.
The second thing was that some of the content didn’t quite resonate with me. It wasn’t that it was bad, it just wasn’t for me. It turned out that the stuff I liked the most was the stuff that was similar to what they shared for free. I came to realise that I didn’t really want all the other stuff from this person.
The last thing was that it felt a bit much for me to keep up with. There was regular short bits of content, 2 or 3 each week but after taking a break from the videos for a couple of weeks it felt like a lot to catch up with. This particular point is more that my commitment to keeping up with the content fell away and never really came back. Whilst other members were keeping up as new content was posted, I ended up viewing at my own leisure.
Despite all this it took me a few months to actually leave the membership*. But when I did, I didn’t regret it at all and I knew I wouldn’t be missing out on anything. Of course there would be great content to come but it simply wasn’t for me. I think I had a hard time accepting that because I didn’t expect it to turn out that way.
My main takeaways from this situation can apply to any sort of commitment made, it could be about work or something with a friend.
Sometimes in life, we put ourselves in situations that we think will be good for us. Perhaps we find that they are pretty good to begin with. However, it may turn out that somewhere along the line things change.
From the outside, the clear option is to leave. Yet when you’re the one in the situation suddenly it’s not so easy. You then end up staying in situations you don’t need to be in when you know that you should just leave.
Sometimes the issue is that we don’t trust ourselves enough in the moment when the thought first comes up. Instead, we give ourselves time to ponder and ruminate but more often than not we reach the conclusion that we already had to begin with.
* Another reason was because it was fairly inexpensive so it felt easier to keep paying whilst I made up my mind than to leave and potentially want to rejoin shortly after. I’ve been thinking and making notes about subscription services so expect more on this soon.
The Daily Gemm 