What Grit looks like from the inside
I spent the eve of my 22nd birthday flying into New York with a maxed-out credit card, one month’s rent paid, and $600 remaining in my bank account. You’d think I’d be petrified. I wasn’t.
Now one step closer to making my dream come true of contributing to New York’s skyline. A dream I had since I was 16.
With one year to land a job and convince a company to sponsor my visa, how hard could it be, right? Boy, was I wrong.
Fast forward 360 days. I had 5 days left to leave the country, my visa was expiring. With only one lead from a potential job opportunity that had left me hanging for the last 2 months, I was ready to throw in the towel.
Desperate, I emailed that company letting them know I was to head back to Australia and that if they still were interested, we would have to do the final interview via video call.
I got the offer letter with 1 day to spare. True story.
This arbitrary dream that I had decided at 16, was finally coming to pass. After 6 years of living in New York, I made my dream come true of contributing to New York’s skyline. I worked for an exciting Fortune 500 company helping them build out spaces in skyscrapers.
While this story on the outside has all the markers of a person who has Grit, who persevered toward that long-term goal, I can tell you firsthand that it didn’t feel like it at all.
It felt like pursuing a series of short-term goals, a few moments of dumb luck, one or two freakouts, and some resolve that even if things didn’t work out, I’d still be ok.
This is my guide on how I stumbled into Grit.
1. The Growth Mindset
The foundation of Grit starts with the right mindset. Having the right perspective will determine how you respond to life. Being a determined person isn’t an inherent personality trait, having persistence isn’t a gender trait.
Your mindset is the patterns you reenact over and over again until it is ingrained in you, like second nature.
Meaning, you can mold your mindset into one that embodies Grit. Having a growth mindset is the first step. A growth mindset will allow you to experience life as a curious student – open to possibilities and the ability to change your opinion on things.
You’ll be more agile and resilient when things inevitably don’t go your way. How you rise to those challenges is how you develop Grit.
2. The Worthwhile Goal
A key part of having Grit is having the stamina to pursue something, to focus so intensely on one thing that everything else falls by the wayside. It’s easy to find goals to pursue, in most cases, people have too many goals that they can’t focus their attention on just one.
We’re in the era of noncommittal. We can’t commit to one relationship, so we’ll settle for situationships. If we don’t progress within 2 years at one company, that means it’s time to jump ship. We rent our clothes, our cars and homes instead of buying them.
But here’s the thing. When you don’t have anything to aim at, you hit nothing.
So how do you commit?
Start small. Have something you are working toward.
Find the one thing that excites you the most, then work backward from it. Create a series of short-term goals that work towards that thing. There will be moments of boredom, don’t get me wrong, times of doubt. That’s what the short-term goals are for. Achievable steps towards a specific direction. Little wins that keep your momentum going.
As the saying goes, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Understanding your motivation
We are generally motivated in two ways – running away from something or running towards something.
Running away from something looks like wanting to prove someone wrong, not wanting to be broke, or not meeting your potential. Running toward something looks like wanting to create a life you can be proud of, wanting to end poverty, wanting to uplift those around you.
Once you understand how you are motivated, your ability to do uncomfortable things will accelerate. Being comfortable with the uncomfortable is a super power. Learning that discipline of doing something over and over again until it gets easier.
I know this sounds trite but understanding the ‘why’ of your goal will keep you going when you feel defeated and when things feel hopeless. You will have a series of ‘why’s’ that lead toward your larger why.
Smaller ‘why’s’ can look as simple as getting that next job to make ends meet. Saving that extra $20 instead of eating out, not going on a bender so you can keep your exercise routine.
Your ‘why’ will allow you to push through uncomfortable situations and road blocks. It provides that stamina you need to keep going when others quit—staying in the proverbial race til the end.
Leverage your motivation to turn your future into a reality.
Be Flexible
On the one hand, Grit is not just about ‘staying the course’ to the very end of your goal, it’s also about the ability to veer off course toward something else. Often Grit is synonymous with having a goal and having no room to change, pushing through any and all obstacles.
But the truth is, we need to expand this idea of Grit to the long term goal of living a good life. Or more so, having a life worth living.
We can get so caught up in climbing one mountain that we don’t realize we’re climbing the wrong one.
Learning how to discern when a goal is outdated requires courage and self-awareness. Taking a look at the life you’re building and asking yourself, do these actions take me toward or away from the type of life I want? Or more importantly, the type of person I want to be?
Every decision you make either brings you closer or further away from your desired future.
This was a big lesson for me to learn. I was progressing fast in my career, I had my ‘dream’ job, but all I wanted to do was scream. It felt like putting on a mask for 50 hours a week, pretending to be this person that I just wasn’t. It was hard for me to quit my job and think about starting all over again. I had dedicated so much of my life towards this one goal. Yet, within one meeting, one resignation letter, this thing I had been running towards ended in the blink of an eye.
The courage to change course didn’t feel like courage at the time. But that’s the thing about our experiences. Sometimes we can’t label an experience until we have hindsight. In the moment, we just have to act and have a little faith.
Faith
In the famous words of Rumi “What you are seeking, is also seeking you”. Having a little faith that the things that are meant for you will find you. Trusting that those moments of dumb luck will happen, that while some things are in your control, not everything is.
When it comes to luck, it’s a two-fold process. One part external, the other internal – the luck you create for yourself.
I had applied for so many jobs online, Indeed.com was basically my screen saver, yet no responses.
At the time I was working at a bar to make ends meet. I would “casually” slip into conversations with customers about what I was trying to do. Finally, the one table with the right person could help me.
It wasn’t in my control that my future boss would walk into my bar. What was in my control was putting myself out there and letting people know what I was looking for.
Putting in the effort and creating an environment for luck to enter.
Final Thoughts
Grit like any muscle requires you to work at it for it to grow. Similar to weight training, start with a small amount of weight and build up from there.
Simple ways to increase your mental toughness could be cold exposure, running, exercising, essentially doing something uncomfortable each day to prove to yourself that you can.
You don’t want self-belief, you want proof.
My road to Grit was paved with excitement and disappointment. At times I lost sight of what I was trying to achieve. Other times, I had so much resolve that there was no backup plan, no thought about what I would do if my dream didn’t come to fruition.
I learned that there is a world of opportunity for anyone willing to have the stamina to stick things through when it is easier to just give up. And that once you’ve experienced not giving up, you have the proof that you need to do it all over again with a new goal.