292. excellence requires grit
Excellence requires repetition.
Day in and day out, repetition is necessary for you to be great at anything. Even if your passion and purpose perfectly align, and you completely love what you’re doing, there are going to be days where what you’re doing is reduced to a daily checklist. Feelings of boredom or frustration are bound to manifest even with the most ideal of routines. So besides loving what you do, it also becomes necessary to develop a gritty or tenacious mindset to make it through those days.
Without a bit of grit or tenacity to drive you through the boredom or frustration that accompanies every routine, you can quickly lose your way. Developing a mindset that allows you to bite down and make it through can save you a lot of lost time spent on distractions from what you truly enjoy and are bound to return to anyway.
So on those inevitable days where you don’t want to show up because you’re simply frustrated with the routine of having to go to the gym, sit down to write, teach what interests you, or any of the variety of things that align with your passion and purpose, remember to stay gritty and remain focused so you can make it through the day. In the end, completing the tasks you care about, no matter the frustration attached, will always be met with more gratification and therefore excellence, than succumbing to the temptation of breaking your routine.
228. what does impossible look like?
What does impossible look like?
It looks familiar.
You wake up. Eat breakfast. Check your electronic device for emails, messages, and updates. You respond accordingly. Then you travel somewhere to complete a task — work or school or another creative endeavor. You talk to people, here and there, gaining insight from shared conversations. Email, messages, and updates are checked again, before you move on to lunch. Then another task, more conversations and so on. Interspersed in there somewhere you grab a shower, get some sleep, hit the gym, and put the kids to bed. And repeat.
The underlying process and fundamental execution of your daily tasks all look the same — no matter if you’re striving for a moonshot project or implementing a new dietary regimen.
We often fail to make changes in our life because we’re afraid that pursuing the impossible means we will have to upend all the familiar processes we have in place. This isn’t necessarily the case. Yes, you will have to change who you converse with if you want to make it to Mars, just as you will have to change the way you eat if you wish to be healthier, but you still have to talk to people and you still have to eat. You still have to travel from place to place, check your email, and remain focused. It’s no different than any other day, with the caveat that in going after the impossible you can complete all the things you were already doing with a new sense of purpose.
If you can understand that doing the impossible — whatever that really means for you — isn’t going to be as unfamiliar as you think, then perhaps you will find the necessary confidence to press forward and go after the impossible.