White knuckled discipline is the way to start things.
White knuckled discipline is grabbing onto what you want so hard that your hands and knuckles start turning different colors.
White knuckled discipline is sometimes what you need to do to get things moving. Starting this 75 Hard Challenge I was super unmotivated and dragging my feet. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to start it. Which means I didn’t want to make my life better (or yours for that matter).
But deep down, I really do want to be better and help you become better. So I bulldozed the first five days. Doing my 5 things every day out of put stubbornness and grit. Now I’m on day seven and starting to enjoy it… a little.
Sometimes you just have to dig in and start the wheel turning one painful revolution at a time, one painful and stubborn step at a time. It’s what people talk about grit and perseverance to be great. But can you do it everyday forever?
Everything I’ve ever read about grit, perseverance, and relentlessness says you just have to have it to succeed in life.
But how do you get it? How can you practice? How can you get more?
It’s about doing hard things. You either do voluntary hardship and continue to grow in your life or do not.
You may see only impossible tasks as those worthy of perseverance. I was like that too for a long time. Just those Everest-sized things I thought were worth the grit, determination, perseverance, and relentlessness.
But in reality, I’ve learned that if I practice those traits as I go in life, it makes me better to handle those giant things when they come.
Some of our things will be as big (and a choice) as climbing Mount Everest. Other things will be thrust upon us. You may receive a cancer diagnosis, or lose a loved one. These everyday things happen to everyday people all the time. And to get through them, you have to have as much perseverance as climbing a mountain.
What are you doing to improve yourself? Your perseverance? Your grit? Today?