The Secret To Developing Unwavering Grit

Accept that success will take 10 years

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Are you ready to get gritty?

Like, nitty-gritty?

I hope so…

Cuz if you haven’t heard, grit is everything on the road to success.

Sure, talent will get you started, but grit carries you to the finish line.

And you are gonna need piles of it to fulfill those lofty goals you’ve got cooked up in that pretty little head.

So let me guess,

You’ve got big dreams (duh), but the passion fades just after the honeymoon. And you always find yourself throwing in the towel when the going gets rough.

I swear I know your pain. Hand to god.

In my life I have struggled endlessly with persistence and a racing mind of creativity. I get sucked into projects that consume every ounce of energy for short bursts of time before the next big idea crashes into my mind like a wave and commands all of my attention.

Then the cycle repeats itself again, and again, and again.

I’ve never struggled to be creative. But my follow-through has been notoriously weak.

That is until I made this one critical mental shift…

I accepted that success will take 10 years.

Simple, right?

This one simple change improved my grit 10 fold and I promise it will serve you as well.

It helped me achieve my dream of attaining a college degree when I decided to start school at the age of 27. Now, 5 years later, I have a BA in Psychology.

And it’s helped me to develop a consistent 1 hr daily writing habit for 90 day’s straight. Something that I could never do before.

No matter the dream, accepting that success will take 10 years will drastically improve your grit.

But if you’re feeling a little skeptical that this simple mental shift will 10x your grit, I invite you to prove me wrong.

So I went ahead and made a little list just for you…

Below you will find 10 perfect reasons why this change works.

Don’t let your dreams get away. Get gritty. You deserve this. And if you’re feeling even an ounce of curiosity, go ahead, find out what this simple mental shift can do for you.

I know it will work.

See ya on the other side!

1. It teaches you patience

Instead of needing instant gratification or searching for shortcuts that you naively think will propel you to overnight success, accepting that success will take 10 years allows the freedom of needing no reward. This ability to delay gratification is paramount to improving your grit.

If you read any of your hero’s success stories, you will quickly find they all share one commonality among them: They put in excessive amounts of work before the world recognized them as successful.

When Bill Gates began his foray into computer programming in 1967 he was a scrawny 13-year-old kid who never before developed a single line of code. Let alone an entire software package.

Gates, and future business partner Paul Allen, spent countless hours learning the basics of computer coding by developing rudimentary programs throughout their high-school careers.

It wasn’t until 1976, a full 9 years later, that Gates and Allen registered the trademark Microsoft. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Even the icons of the tech world paid their dues. There are no shortcuts save for the wisdom of patience. This virtue will serve you well on your journey.

Key takeaway: There is no overnight success. Be patient my friend.

2. It reveals what you are willing to fight for

Can you see yourself working toward a single goal for 10 years? Asking this question and answering honestly is a perfect litmus test to gauge your ability to summon grit toward achieving success.

If you aren’t crystal clear on the answer then add this qualifier to the mix. Are you willing to work for free for the next 10 years on this project?

This pain point keeps you honest.

In life there are no guarantees. If you aren’t willing to do something for free, how will you summon the power to continually invest your time and energy without reward?

Are you merely interested, or have you fallen in love with this project? Accepting that success will take ten years reveals the answer.

Key takeaway: The willingness to work for free is a valuable predictor of long term persistence.

3. It humbles you to have a beginners mind

Success in any endeavor requires the humility to know that you don’t know. When you chase success only for the reward you are bound to make wild assumptions that will invariably lead to roadblocks.

A beginner’s mind will see the roadblocks and learn from them, excited for the challenge and the uniqueness of the circumstance. They will seek out answers from those who have come before them and humble themselves before their master.

Someone who is only concerned with reward will run into the same roadblock again and again. They will brutishly believe that they have all the answers, and therefore do not need to seek help. Of course, this only serves to stifle their growth and keep them from experiencing the potential of their path.

A beginner's mind is gritty. Ready to face the challenges as they come.

Key takeaway: A beginner's mind is a humble mind and one that is fertile for growth.

4. It eliminates impostor syndrome

Impostor syndrome is deadly. It freezes you from taking action, but critically, only when you pressure yourself to be a fully finished product. It only has power so long as you pretend to be perfect and complete.

The old adage, “fake it til you make it” keeps you in a limbo state, one in which you must somehow pretend to have expert level skill yet no ability to execute.

When you accept that success takes 10 years, you learn to value your place in the journey and therefore function from a position of authenticity rather than that of an impostor.

When you act from a place of authenticity it is much easier to maintain constant effort toward your goal as you are no longer devoting energy to masking who you are. Perfection is impossible, and unfortunately, a consequence of impostor syndrome.

No one expects you to have everything figured out right now. It is a pressure you have placed upon yourself. They only expect you to be real. To be honest. To be you.

Key takeaway: Authenticity naturally arises when you embrace your position in the journey. Grit follows.

5. It teaches you to care about giving more than receiving

Removing the allure of instant gratification and pivoting your attention away from reward allows you to focus solely on offering value to those you are serving. In time, this becomes the reward, and people are drawn to this giving nature like a moth to the flame. They can sense it through your words, actions, and deeds.

However, if you focus only on receiving, people will smell your neediness from a mile away. And trust me, the stench is great. I have at times been both smelly and needy in my desire for reward and validation which only served to widen the gap between me and my goal.

Instead, seek to offer value with no concern for reward. Then watch as your grit explodes in power.

Key takeaway: Ask not what you will receive. Instead, focus all of your attention on giving value.

6. It keeps you motivated after tasting success

Mere hours after Alex Honnold completed the first-ever free-solo climb of the 3,000 ft sheer rock face of El Capitan in Yosemite he was back at his campsite practicing finger holds.

Despite having just completed the most daring climb ever recorded in human history, Alex Honnold went straight home to practice his fundamental climbing skills.

While it was a monumental moment in his life, and changed the sport of rock climbing forever, he knew it was far from the end of his personal journey.

Accepting that success takes 10 years puts milestones in perspective. Rather than representing the finish line, they become a signpost to mark your progress.

It’s easy to rest on your laurels, especially after getting an early taste of success. Reaching a milestone on your journey is absolutely something to celebrate, but be cautious that the milestone does not become the plateau.

Key takeaway: Success is a goalless goal, with no definitive ending. Don’t get stuck along the way.

7. It helps you fall in love with boredom

Every day during the off-season, basketball wizard Steph Curry makes 500 baskets in his shooting practice. Makes, not takes. Considering his in-game shooting accuracy regularly hovers around 45% it is no stretch of the imagination to assume Steph Curry is taking over 1,000 shots a day.

Even on the good days.

Developing the perfect shot is an arduous process. It requires endless repetition of the same simple tasks every single day. No shortcuts.

It’s simple, but not easy.

Steph Curry learned early on that his success would hinge on embracing the mechanics of the process and then learning to love the monotony of developing the fundamentals.

As James Clear has been known to say, he fell in love with boredom.

Falling in love with boredom requires making peace with the process. Knowing full well there is drudgery in performing the same basic tasks day in day out with no end in sight. Even if the act itself provides pleasure at times.

Accepting that success will take 10 years puts this process in perspective.

Key takeaway: Grit is all about loving the basics and perfecting the fundamentals. This is the process, the trick is to fall in love with it.

8. It teaches you self-compassion

It is easy to beat yourself up for not achieving your goals as quickly as you anticipated. Self-imposed deadlines are good measurements of progress, yet they are equally capable of stripping you of self-compassion.

You cannot operate at 100% efficiency every day. But somehow we make robotic predictions of our time and efforts as if we will always be at peak performance.

Somedays you will feel unstoppable and find yourself working effortlessly toward your goal. Other times you will feel scattered and unable to pay attention for more than a few seconds at a time.

You are human after all, aren’t you?

Accepting that success takes 10 years relieves the self-imposed pressure to operate at peak performance every single day. It reminds you of your human nature and that sometimes the act of showing up is enough. Pivoting success to a 10-year timeline forces you to view your efforts as a sum of compounded daily habits rather than a daily production quota.

You are not an assembly line, but rather a unique artisan producing a one-off custom product.

Never forget that.

Key takeaway: You are not a robot so don’t treat yourself like one. Love yourself for showing up, not for how much you produce.

9. It keeps you from comparing yourself to others

We all have our hero’s. Titans of our respected craft that set the gold standard of excellence. Hemmingway’s, Winfrey’s, Zuckerbergs, Obamas, Carter’s. If you are starting out on your journey, carving your path to success, it is valuable to admire these standouts, but you can easily get swallowed up in a ruthless sea of comparison. One that has sunk many ships before yours.

There is danger in comparing your beginning to someone else’s middle, or your middle with someone else’s end. It will infect you with hopelessness and strike a deadly blow of defeat.

However, accepting that success takes 10 years relieves this comparison as it forces you to recognize every hero started from the same place: nowhere.

Take 10 years off your hero’s journey, I bet they wouldn’t recognize themselves. You probably wouldn’t recognize them either. They may not have even started yet.

Key takeaway: You are your only competition and everyone started at the bottom.

Now go forth and get gritty

More than anything I want to see you achieve your wildest dreams. And I swear, developing grit is the surest way to make those dreams a reality.

Anyone can get started, but it’s the follow-through that counts. Grit is the fuel that powers your drive toward long term prosperity.

When you make the mental shift that success will take 10 years, you lay the foundation for developing the grit you need to follow through on your dreams.

Let's recap the benefits of accepting that success will take 10 years:

1.It teaches you patience

2. It reveals what you are willing to fight for

3. It humbles you to have a beginners mind

4. It eliminates impostor syndrome

5. It teaches you to care more about giving than receiving

6. It keeps you motivated after tasting success

7. It helps you fall in love with boredom

8. It teaches you self-compassion

9. It keeps you from comparing yourself to others

And before I let you go, here is one final benefit I want to leave you with.

10. It allows you to become the person you are meant to be

Now go forth and get gritty!

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Kevin Wilson
Writers’ Blokke

Writer. Artist. Thinker? Human. — Living Life and Sharing Discoveries Along The Way.