Grit: If you have it, you don’t need permission

To know grit is to know the quiet voice inside you that says "Keep going," even when you think you can’t.

It’s the feeling that pushes you forward, against life forces that try to push you back.

It’s the unwavering belief that scales the walls of limitation, whether those walls were erected by you or by someone else.

Angela Duckworth talks about grit in her book and TED Talk, explaining that it’s more than just hard work. 

It’s passion combined with unyielding persistence as you work towards a long-term goal.

Different cultures know this concept, too. 

In Finland, they call it "Sisu," the internal strength that surfaces when you’re supposed to feel weakness. It’s the act of finding an extra gear when you thought you’d reached your max.

We’re no strangers to stories of grit. 

It’s what movies are made of. 

Think Rocky. The Shawshank Redemption. Or even Noah in The Notebook.

It plays out in real life, too. 

Like Mike Jordan getting cut from his high school basketball team only to become, well, Michael Jordan.

Or The Beatles being told “they had no future in show business,” and “guitar groups were on the way out.” 

Or Steve Jobs, who built Apple for 9 years before his ouster, only to return 12 years later and create the next legendary chapter of the company. (Can you imagine spending 12 years away from something you created from scratch, only to return and take it to even greater heights?)

These are inspiring and famous examples. 

Grit lives in your city, too.

Like your unknown neighbor who gets up before dawn to open her shop, day after day, even when business is slow. 

Or the new dad working a soulless job to pay the bills, because that’s what it takes.

Or the FIRE-focused millennial working hard, living low and optimizing for maximum freedom in the years to come.

Grit isn’t all fame and fortune.

And so stories like these don’t make headlines.

Maybe that’s why they matter even more. They’re more tangible. 

Steve Jobs is legendary - but can we relate?

You could learn more from a conversation with that neighbor than by reading Isaacson’s biography (even though it’s tremendous).

In these conversations, you’ll learn that someone with true grit doesn’t define failure the same way others do. 

For the others, setbacks, deviations, “things that don’t go according to plan” are failures, but to those with grit, they’re just the shit that happens.

These setbacks are the inevitable potholes that show up along the way.

Failure is stopping; people with grit do not stop. (Or if they do, it’s only to fix the pothole-busted tire so they can keep on moving.)

Grit is the fuel that keeps you driving forward, even after hitting bump after bump.

This is the reason why sensing your grit in the moment is like trying to grab hold of smoke. It’s virtually impossible to feel grit in the moment.

Sure, from far away, it seems heroic, almost magical. 

But when you’re in it, it sucks. 

It’s not glamorous, or at least it doesn’t feel like it while you’re doing it.

It’s putting one foot in front of the other, even though your left foot is in the shit as your right foot steps over a rattlesnake.

The truth is, grit is just taking action.

You’re just doing the next thing, because you feel that it’s the right thing to do, and you believe it will carry you closer to your ideal, the end-goal, the ingrained desire that will not leave you alone.

Even when that action is to pause and reconsider your path. 

Blind action is one thing, but grit involves strategically checking in to ensure your actions are carrying you towards the goal. 

Ultimately, you are not stopping because you know that’s failure.

But you have grit, so you keep going.

This action only becomes grit when you see it in hindsight, which is both a curse and a blessing: the curse is that it doesn’t feel rewarding in the moment. 

The blessing is that you will look back on your actions with pride, which creates the motivation to act, and act again with belief it’ll turn out in your favor.

At the very least, you know you didn’t stop. You had grit.

Here’s what it really means for you today: don’t wait for permission. 

Don’t wait for perfect conditions or the right time.

They don’t exist right now. They only exist in hindsight after you’ve moved forward from where you are now.

You must believe that you will see the forest by walking past all the trees. That is grit.

Grit is action shaped by passion and persistence. 

Passion isn’t a noun: it’s a verb.

Persistence isn’t a glorious ideal: it’s showing up in the rain and getting on your knees in the mud. 

Without action, neither passion nor persistence matters, or even exists.

So remember, in tough times or smooth days, in doubts or in confidence, all that counts is taking that next step. Just act. One day you'll look back and see that every small step built something incredible.

Today, it’s a grind.

But one day you will look back and say: I had grit.

And who knows, maybe your journey will inspire someone else to keep going too.