You Need Grit to Succeed in Business, but Are You Using the Right Kind?

I saw a Ted Talk once that said grit is the necessary ingredient for success, and I’ve noticed that while my clients have grit in spades, they’re accidentally harming themselves with it. To see the success they want in their business, they need to use grit in a different way.

When we hear the word grit, sweat comes to mind. Sticking with it, going the distance, pushing ourselves, working harder, and working more.

This is not the kind of grit that is going to get you the clients, the income, the time freedom, and the delight that you want. This grit will definitely get you a chronic pain syndrome or incredible fatigue, but that’s not the goal!

The main thing blocking my clients from radical success isn’t a lack of this type of grit. It’s a formula they’ve learned from parents, culture, and teachers along the way: work harder, do more, and don’t trust that wild little voice inside that tells you to leap into faith and trust your true nature.

The kind of grit that does create success does include persistence, but it’s not the sweaty kind. It’s a persistence that comes from deep inner faith that going for what you really want and owning the drive to get it is what takes you there.

You’re not doing this coaching thing just to show your spouse that it can make money and isn’t a pipe dream. You’re not doing this coaching thing because it was a whim. You’re not doing this coaching thing because you love marketing.

You’re doing it because you are freaking called to serve others, to have a creative freedom in your work that no job can give you, to make income that serves you and your family and makes you feel proud, and to feel spiritually aligned with your work.

This is where real grit comes from: knowing and owning that these are the desires that drive you forward every single day.

You want to wake up and feel excited to dig into your work and create magic with your clients.

You want to see income rolling in and feel so good that you’re making it happen.

You want to take time off at the drop of a hat and do something fun for yourself or with your kids.

Real grit means being brave enough to stop what isn’t working, stop the grind, stop pushing yourself, and actually drop what doesn’t feel right.

Hate that schedule you’ve created for yourself? Change it, today.

Feel trapped in your current marketing plan? Do it differently, today.

Real grit is taking wild leaps of faith based on the inner guidance you’re getting from your body, your emotions, and your spirit. It’s being brave enough to only create what lights you up. It’s being brave enough to step away from what’s not working, change course, and try the wild new hunch you’re getting that’s tugging at your heart.

Real grit is dreaming big and taking big actions to align yourself with what you really want.

The path to real grit is oddly simple and sometimes hard to see. We are so trained to think that pressuring ourselves is grit that we miss the true path.

This week I was in a coaching call with clients and someone was pressuring herself to write a really perfect sales page and another was pressuring herself to see clients at a certain time of day.

This is not grit. It’s just pressure. It’s not doing any good whatsoever.

Any time you notice stress and pressure, you have to stop and look at the rules your mind has created for you and then change them.

If you don’t have time to write a long, perfect sales page, write a short easy one. Just imagine the clients you love in front of you and write to them. Quick, fast, simple. If you don’t love seeing clients at a certain time, email them and change their schedule with you right now.

The real grit is the wild leap of faith behind these decisions.

I’ll be honest - today, I am probably going to skip out this afternoon and take my daughter paddle boarding on the lake. I’m breaking the rule that she has to go to the camp she’s signed up for every day. I’m breaking the rule that I need to write all my content for the week this afternoon.

The real grit is the persistent drive to create a life that feels magical, no matter the wild leaps of faith. No matter the terrifying action steps that seem too risky. No matter the opinions of others.

When we are owning our vision and going all in, it no longer matters if something doesn’t go as planned. This is because we’re not trying to prove anything to anyone. No one is let down. We know that this is just an indication that we need to make a shift, and then we get curious about how to do it. We know we’ll get there, one way or another.

That knowledge - that we’ll get there, one way or another - and that we won’t be pushing ourselves into burnout to do it - is grit.

I’ll share a wild little secret with you: burnout is just a mindset.

If I go into my day with all these things I think I have to do in certain ways lined up on my calendar in a schedule that I hate, I’m going to feel burned out by 9 am.

If I go into my day thinking about how I’m going to create a day that feels awesome and break any unnecessary rules along the way, I feel inspired. I might still be doing a lot of things during that day, but they don’t wear me down.

They don’t wear me down because I’m doing them from an aligned place. And, I’m still tuned in to my body, willing to walk away with things undone in order to care for it.

This takes a LOT more guts than just doing the old pressure-filled work style that everyone teaches us. It’s real grit to buck the system and at the same time, have a dogged determination to get where you want to go.

No matter the “failures” or things that don’t go as planned, that determination is what drives you forward. But - not in a way that drives you into the ground.

Shifting you out of detrimental grit and working with this balance between determination and listening to you what your mind, body, and spirit needs is a key part of what I do with my clients in my group program. We’ll start with identifying what isn’t aligned at all for you and your business so that you can get out of burnout quickly and back into inspiration. Then we’ll create clear, inspired steps for you and your business moving forward.

We’ll make sure you have the mind-body tools that will help you stay out of chronic pain, release stress, and take pressure off your body. We’ll also take a look at what is or isn’t working in your business, and I’ll use my intuitive gift to discover what is most aligned for your next steps to get on the money-making and delight-filled path.

We can do a revamp of your core message to tighten it and make it easier to attract the clients you love, and to make marketing and content creation feel easy and fun. (For real!)

You can learn more about the program here.