Struggling To Build Grit & Tenacity As A Burgeoning Writer?
Do this every time your creative journey runs out of jet fuel.
July is packed and set to leave us in a couple of days and 2023 is already at its half mine run. Do you believe you’ve still got what it takes to power through the rest of the year, or are you ready to ditch and run?
Also, ask yourself. How long will you keep running?
To power through the rest of the year, race through every meter, and keep building your writing career while wrestling with the gut-wrenching feeling of giving up, you need to build grit and tenacity.
Why?
Because your writing journey is not a sprint or a relay race, it’s a marathon.
Intrinsic courage and core strength are the only two things that’ll help you charge through the deafening thoughts of defeat in your head when you’re packed and set to cut out for good.
How do you build grit and tenacity as a burgeoning writer?
It’s simple.
Every time your journey runs out of jet fuel and your lungs are burning out from the disappointments, rejections, failures, trials, near-success experiences, stagnation, doubts, fears, judgments, and pain, be gentle with yourself, your art, and your journey.
Gentility with self is the best way to build grit and tenacity that’ll fuel your writing journey and keep you moving until you’ve crossed the finish line.
Why Gentility & How Will It Help You Build Grit and Tenacity?
Most recently, I’ve thought a lot about gentility.
It’s not a concept I hear a lot in connection to creative arts, growth, and building a writing career. I’ve heard compassion, self-care, patience, trust, and belief.
But not gentility.
The shocker here is, if you look closely enough, these concepts have one thing in common. They function around the philosophy of being gentle with yourself.
— To be compassionate is to be gentle.
— Self-care encourages you to be gentle.
— To be patient/trust your process, you need to slow down and embrace your journey with gentility.
Everything we’ve accepted as a core part of our process as creative beings hinge on being gentle yet, there’s not much regard for the powerful concept itself.
— Why Gentility?
Gentility is a new way of feeling and thinking that motivates you to focus inward and tap into your core strength.
It encourages you to look past the pain, pick yourself up, follow through with your process, and put one foot forward every time you think to quit.
It is an intrinsic, resilient feeling, stimulating your mind to push through obstacles, matching your pace with efforts that count every step of the way.
— How will gentility help you build grit & tenacity as a writer?
Easier said than done, using gentility to build grit and tenacity demands more intrinsic conditioned changes than external efforts.
Whenever you feel the gut-wrenching need to quit and run, practice the following.
— Pause.
Just pause wherever you are and take a breather. Don’t punch through walls, but you can scream. Take a minute and allow everything you think is the reason you should quit to flow out of your mind & body.
— Look inward.
Don’t blame or curse your stars for not having what it takes to pursue your success. You have what it takes, but you must look inward to find it. Only when you find it will you find the courage and toughness to move forward.
— Drop the guilt. Embrace your strengths.
You are different. Your art is different. Your writing journey is unique. Teach yourself to drop the guilt and embrace your strengths. Draw from your courage and take a new step forward every time you think to quit.
— Reignite your purpose.
In your pause moment, as you dig deep to find the courage to move forward, discarding your guilt and embracing your strengths, you’ll find a new fire ignited within you.
This fire will reinvigorate you, burning through every remnant of the baggage weighing you down.
Being gentle with yourself is more than taking care of yourself and your mind. It is accepting that your creative journey is tough and doesn’t feel like much, but you’ll power through.
It is refilling your jet fuel with patience, acknowledgment, self-validation, purpose, and clarity. It is finding the spark within that’ll energize you to push forward when everything else tells you to quit.
Gentility with self is your ticket to growth.
Self Notes:
You have so much to give to the world, so much to create. Your journey is precious and timeless. Embrace it.
