Getting Grit: Lessons From Seth Godin

It makes sense to create an aggregation of inspirations when trying to develop a character trait. Some of our character building efforts are the motivation and inspiration to acquire them, and some are the nitty gritty, rubber meets the road, work of intentional action. This post is in the inspiration category ( I guess all blog posts would be, wouldn’t they?)

Scott Howard posts nuggets from Seth Godin and in the Jan. 09 step to success quotes this:

Zig taught me this twenty years ago. Make your schedule before you start. Don’t allow setbacks or blocks or anxiety to push you to say, “hey, maybe I should check my email for a while, or you know, I could use a nap.” ~ First Rule of Doing Work by Seth Godin

That is an example of applying personal grit in a small daily decision. That is how big personality traits grow: they start out as small decisions to make. If you strengthen the trait to work on through to the goal, without making too many soft choices for yourself, you eventually become a person who will work with determination, then you will become a person who has personal grit to keep on going when the road gets rough. It is a useful set of traits.

It needs balancing with other traits, but lets face it: the balancing traits are more fun, and for most of us, given much more opportunities to develop.

While I’m thinking about this, it is good to remember that being the complex beings we are, all our traits come with their good and bad sides. It is mostly a case of balance and of application. I guess that is where wisdom and the ( sometimes annoying) helpful feedback from others comes into play. If we act in ways that are too much of a good thing, or a misapplication of our character traits, we find people and circumstances to give us an alert if we pay attention.

In this context grit needs to have other traits closely attached, like humility, which will be next month’s character focus. Moderation wouldn’t hurt, either.