Grit: How to Keep Going When You Want to Give Up

by Martin Meadows

The rule of the vital few says that the minority of things matter a great deal and the majority of things don’t matter a lot. The key is to focus on just a couple of crucial things and disregard the rest. Your task becomes manageable again, and you keep going with much less effort. When you apply this rule during the stage of conscious incompetence, you’ll reduce the risk of giving up. In the case of learning languages, it’s usually the ability to communicate with native speakers – basic sentences and phrases are much more important than proper grammar or getting the intonation right. In the case of building a business, it’s getting your first client, the next one, and the next one. Leave thinking about more complex business tasks for later. In fitness, you don’t have to learn more than a few basic movements (squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, chin-up). All the other exercises aren’t necessary for most trainees. Deconstruct each of your goals in a similar way and don’t let the complexity deter you from making progress.

Re-Read Your Vision And if you don’t have one, write it. A vision is a document that describes how you picture your life in a given timeframe (say, one year). However, you don’t necessarily have to write a vision describing every little aspect of your life (although it’s a powerful motivator, too). You can write a short vision describing the achievement of a single goal. Use images and videos to make your vision stronger and more appealing. For instance, if you want to lose weight and become fitter, find a picture of a person who looks the way you’d like to look. Describe how you feel, how strong you are, and how often you exercise. If you want to build a successful business, find images of things or experiences you’ll buy with the money your business will generate. Write down the vision of how your business serves its clients, how your employees feel about it, and how you feel as the owner. If you want to get a new job, make a list of your dream employers. Find pictures of their offices and other images that will motivate you to keep looking for a new job.

How many sacrifices have you made? Loss aversion can make you pursue the wrong goals, but you can also use it to motivate yourself to keep going when you know you’re working on the right thing. When you think about all the time, money, and effort you invested in striving for your goal, you’ll be much less likely to walk away.

And lastly, if you just don’t have the confidence anymore, remember this: nothing hard ever came easy to anyone. Life is supposed to be hard and for those of us who really want to make an impact, there’s always a struggle. But the value is in the journey and not the destination. I never sought to be an entrepreneur, but in the process of getting better I realized how much I can help others through my experience. That’s the one thought that stays with me every day. All the things you want in life are outside of your comfort zone. Hung is a bestselling self-help author whose books you can check here: http://amazon.com/author/hungpham. Sign up for his newsletter for more tips: http://www.missionandpossible.com/ SIX EXPERTS SHARE THEIR TOP TECHNIQUES TO NEVER GIVE UP: QUICK RECAP Stephen Guise: 1. Have a different motivation than external goals like money or fame. 2. Have a belief in what you’re doing. Joel Runyon: 1. Have a bulletproof answer to the question, “Why am I doing this?” Serena Star-Leonard: 1. Leave your problems for a couple of days to gain a fresh perspective. 2. Brainstorm 10 to 20 ways to do things differently and increase your chances of success. 3. Imagine you had a breakthrough in your project and ask yourself what could help you make it a reality. Derek Doepker: 1. Instead of trying to get motivation, try to get momentum. Ask yourself, “Can I just...?” and come up with a small action you can do no matter how unmotivated you are. 2. Reward yourself every ...