The Meaning of Grit

I have bad news today…

The path to success really sucks.   

Building a successful, thriving business is bloody tough… BUT there is one thing that sucks even more: being a slave in a cubicle or a factory for forty years and never having enough money to live the life of your dreams.

Eating healthy and hitting the gym every day is bloody tough too… BUT there is one thing that sucks even more: being out of shape, low on energy, unattractively chubby and unhealthy.

And becoming a master in your dating life is equally tough… there is nothing worse than going out there day after day, getting rejected by woman after woman and failing over and over.

Except for one thing: not having options in women, and either staying alone or settling for something less than your dream girl.

Chase recently dropped an absolute value nuke on this blog… a spectacular post about how to master anything. In that post, he discussed that in our group of friends, every single last one is “crazy.” We all deviate from the “norm” in some way… which is what drives us to create lives that go way beyond a picket fence and 1.7 kids.

But there is a second trait that every one of us has, some more than others (I think Chase has us all beat there)… and that trait is GRIT.

The Nitty Gritty About Grit

If you’re not watching TED Talks on a regular basis, you’re hurting your personal growth… it is one of the places where the cutting edge of human progress is being forged right now.

And in line with today’s article, I suggest you start with this video right here… a talk by Angela Lee Duckworth about the most important personality trait that lets people succeed… or fail:

If you don’t have the time to sit through her entire talk, the gist is simple… success depends much less on talent than it does on tenacious, pig-headed perseverance… also known as GRIT.

In other words, never giving up… even and especially when the going gets tough… because it will.

Here is a quote from Napoleon Hill about that topic:

“Does the quality of PERSISTENCE set up in one's mind some form of spiritual, mental or chemical activity which gives one access to supernatural forces? Does Infinite Intelligence throw itself on the side of the person who still fights on, after the battle has been lost, with the whole world on the opposing side?”

He writes these words with a question mark, but the fact of the matter is… the accomplishments of people who will just not quit, no matter what obstacles life throws their way, are often nothing short of miraculous… and if you want miraculous results in your dating life, you might want to work on developing your own GRIT.

Do YOU Have What It Takes?

Here’s another fun personality test you can take, this one from the University of Pennsylvania:

12-Item Grit Scale

How did you score?

Are you the kind of person who sticks with things, even when “the whole world is on the opposing side?”

If you are, congratulations… you will have the dating life of a rock-star-sex-god in the near future by simply implementing the advice here on the blog and in our trainings.

If you think your grit could use some work, keep reading… there be gold in them there paragraphs.

Developing Grit

Now that we’re diving into the meaning of grit, grit really comes down to one simple question: Are you motivated enough? Or in other words… how bad do you want it?

From neurolinguistics programming (NLP), we know that people make any and all decisions in life based on one question: “How much pain or pleasure is this going to bring into my life?”

In other words, people follow through on their goals if they have a strong belief that the pleasure of success will outweigh the pain of fighting for it.

People who give up usually think that it’s not worth it… the pleasure of just doing nothing and being lazy is more real to them than the pain of never achieving their ultimate dreams in life.

That means you can develop grit by increasing your desire for your goals… by bringing the pleasure of having your ultimate ideal outcome be a reality to the forefront of your mind… and doing it consistently.

Desire – Your Inner Engine

When Adam ate that damn apple a couple of thousand years ago, he brought a pretty sucky fate down upon us… at least, according to that old book that looks suspiciously like a famous novel about seducers.

Our punishment is that life in this world is tough… we’re no longer in the Garden of Eden, and we have to work for everything we want by the sweat of our brow.

However, there is a second force at play in this world… and that force is desire.

To stick with the story as a metaphor (whether you’re a Christian or not) - God gave us an uphill battle to fight. But he also gave us an engine to carry us up that hill… and that engine is our desire.

The word desire actually comes from the Latin root words “From the Father” – meaning that our desires were given to us by God.

I don’t go to church on Sundays (as you may have guessed), but bear with me here… this is a pretty useful model of the world if you know how to apply it:

The yin and yang of grit is resistance and desire.

The world resists your efforts to obtain the things you want out of life, but it also gave you desire as a motor with which to conquer any and all of these things.

Harnessing Hungry Moments

Have you ever had a moment where your desire to achieve your goal was so overwhelming that it seemed more important than anything else in life?

Have you ever reached a point where you were so emotionally driven to succeed that you thought to yourself… you know what… I’ll do absolutely anything to make this happen?

In dating terms, it may have been when you were in love with a girl, or maybe when you were out on the town and saw a girl who was the exact physical type you go absolutely crazy for… but whatever it was, we all have those moments where we want nothing more in the world than obtaining our goal.

In these moments, we are most motivated to put in the necessary effort to make it happen.

The problem is that these moments never last… the motivational burst is an emotion, and like all and any emotion, it is fleeting… it passes, and is soon forgotten.

What if you could hold on to that emotion… how productive could you be?

The answer is, you would be able to develop true grit… and you would therefore be absolutely sure to succeed.

Keep Success Top-Of-Mind

As I discussed in another article, “How Do I Get Motivated?,” motivation never lasts… you can fire yourself up one moment, but by the next day at the latest, the effect is all but gone.

But guess what… that’s really no different from taking a shower, or brushing your teeth, or cleaning your apartment… some things you just need to do regularly.

The question is, how often do you need to fire up your own motivation in order to make grit (and therefore success) a virtual certainty?

The bare minimum is twice daily… you should review your ultimate goal when you wake up in the morning, and once again before you go to bed at night. That’s the absolute minimum necessary to burn a goal into your subconscious mind to where the subconscious will begin to take action on it.

If you want to keep up that momentum throughout the entire day, however, you might want to remind yourself of your goals, and more importantly, of the reasons why you want them and the emotions they will give you, more often than only twice a day.

I’m at a point now where I sometimes review my goals once every five minutes… that may sound like a lot, but I set a little timer to go off every five minutes to remind me, and every time that timer goes off, I bring the ideal life I want to live to the forefront of my mind again and it gives me a new impulse of strength and persistence and kicks my activity into the next gear.

If you just keep doing that… if you just keep taking action, and never give up no matter WHAT…

…well guess what, success is pretty much inevitable at that point.

It will come as a mere side-effect of the way you live your life.

A Question About Never Giving Up

That is really the “One Key to Success” - never giving up guarantees that you will get just about anything you want out of life.

However, one of our readers wrote in with an interesting question about this type of grit on the post on never giving up... and now we’re going to bring it all together, connect the dots and show you exactly how never giving up relates to meeting girls… and how it does NOT.

“Great article man, I just have one question though, can you explain a little bit in your own words, the difference between persistence and being creepy/annoying? Especially when it comes to getting girls, some guys just don't know when to give up.. And clearly, the girls are not interested at all!”

This is a great question… and it reminds me of that old poster from despair.com:

“Winners never quit, and quitters never win… but people who never win and never quit are IDIOTS.”

;-)

I would word that a little bit differently though: People that never win and never quit need to rethink their strategy… you need to both work hard and work smart.

But since you have access to all the training and programs offered on this site, I’m not too worried about the working smart part - we’ve got you covered there.

How Grit Can Get You Arrested

The persistence bit still deserves some clarification, though: you want to be persistent in working towards your overall goal… and NEVER give up EVER, under ANY circumstances.

That does sound pretty creepy, doesn’t it? If she tells you to go away for the 20th time but you never give up… won’t she eventually call the cops?

Yeah… she might… she probably should.

Note though, that I didn’t say: “Pursue one GIRL and never give up.”

I did say: “Pursue one GOAL and never give up.”

HUGE difference.

Your overall goal may be to have *A* beautiful women with a brain and a heart in your life. Or, your overall goal may be to date multiple models and actresses and strippers at the same time. Or your goal may be to date multiple women and have threesomes and foursomes and seventeensomes.

All those are fine.

What you DON’T want your goal to be is one specific girl – once you get stuck on a single woman, you lose control over your ability to attain that goal because she has a say in the matter!

It also violates the Law of Least Effort, it violates Pareto’s 80-20 rule that we’ve talked about here so often (see: “How to Make Her Want You”), and it violates about two dozen other rules as well (see: “Can’t Stop Thinking About Her”).

Rather than being persistent enough to text one girl 200 times, you should be persistent enough to text 100 girls two times each.

That’s the same amount of messages sent, but scenario number one will gain you a restraining order. Scenario number two will gain you a harem of beautiful girls, or a great relationship with the girl of your dreams… guaranteed.

The Meaning of Grit

No amount of grit is going to get you anywhere without implementation. To remedy that, I’m going to give you an action step to take right now.

Take some time with this. REALLY do it... I know this is going to sound like just another self-help exercise… I used to brush those off too.

“I can just do this in my head.”

I think I had that mindset for years before I finally started doing these kinds of exercises in writing… and the difference in terms of my results was tremendous.

Just do it man. Take a pen and paper… seriously.

Okay… Then let’s get started. Write down the answer to these questions:

1. If you had the skill to have your love life any way you wanted it… what would that look like?

2. How many girls would you be dating?

3. Would you have one girl of your dreams? If so, describe her in detail.

4. Or would you have a whole bunch of girls in multiple relationships?

5. How often would you meet new women, to add to your already abundant dating life?

6. Think of any further detail you could add to your vision of the love life of your dreams and write that down too.
   

Now here comes the most important question:

Hold the image of having this life right now in your mind and make it absolutely real, tangible and palpable… how does it make you feel?

Now go back to your current reality and get angry about the way things are right now.

Keep doing this exercise every time you feel your motivation wane… set a timer to remind you, if you want.

The anger and the desire combined will drive you to greater heights than you can even dream of right now.

And that’s the true meaning of grit. It’s not about hanging in there no matter what in every single circumstance regardless of the foreseeable outcome… it’s about knowing what your desired end goal is, and holding to that no matter what, despite of the setbacks you encounter, the roadblocks you hit, the hurdles you trip up over.

That’s grit. Do you have it?

Onward and upward,

Ricardus