You can admit a goal no longer matters without inventing a failure that forced you to quit.

Stopping wants a story, and the honest one, that you simply do not want this any more, can feel too thin to account for years of effort. So an obstacle gets manufactured: bad timing, an injury, the state of the market. Then the invented reason has to be maintained, sometimes for a very long time.

If you are letting something go, practice the plain sentence without the excuse in it. Changing your mind is a complete reason, and it needs no supporting evidence.