495 SelfWork: Grit: What It Takes to Fight Chronic Mental Illness

Grit. What is it? How do you develop it? And how is it important for battling mental illness? What role does it play in both outer success and inner victory?

These are the questions we’re going to answer today on SelfWork.

Here’s leading author Angela Duckworth ‘s definition of grit, described in her Ted talk.

“Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

 

Grit’s role in outer success… 

Grit plays a role both in outer success and inner victory.

With outer success, it helps to get you through the confusions that outer success holds:

• The definition of success varies from person to person.
• It can look easy from the outside in. The hard work behind your success is often.
• Once you’ve achieved success, more can and likely will be expected of you.

These confusions, coupled with your own self-critical voice, can lead to a felt need to accrue or earn external signs of success, rather than building and resting in an internal version of “enough.” It’s as if there’s never a resting place – an emotional space where you feel calm and “enough.”

To try and avoid reaching for some kind of external success that will never be “enough,” if you’re someone who approaches life with grit, then you recognize, as Dr. Duckworth notes, that you won’t get a lot of external affirmation along the way. Instead, your goal – your seeking success – will take a kind of grit that looks beyond others’ affirmation. And instead, will take months if not years of unsung work. And grit.

Grit’s role in inner victory… 

But there are other, much more private achievements that reflect powerful inner change, that may never be known as such by others, never recognized as potent moments in your life. Only you know their importance. They’re what I call “inner victories.”

Maybe someone who knows you very, very well would recognize them. They would know that you’ve beaten some struggle or another. Yet most of the satisfaction is in knowing what you accomplished in the light of where you’ve come from, and what how you had to change to get there.

Grit’s role in chronic mental illness and grief… 

This is especially true with coping with chronic mental illness. Mental illness that doesn’t have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but tends to return in some form or another and that requires years of grit for sure. It’s truly a marathon.

So is facing certain kinds of grief. The grief of losing a child. The grief of having a disease that robs you of your strength or aspects of your life. The grief of losses brought on by war or forces outside of your control. That kind of grief can make you bitter – or can become a context for grit.

Grit realizes that the resolution or goal that’s hoped for is a hell of a long way away. And it will be hard to get there. It will take a kind of focus and sense of purpose that becomes more important than what you might be able to gain from more short-term goals. Or public affirmation.

Grit is purpose in motion…

My own experience has been that when I lose my sense of purpose, when I can’t quite find the “reason” I’m writing or podcasting or whatever, I count on my grit to get me through.

I feel as if grit is the wheels that are beneath me. It keeps on keeping on. And often, leads me back to the purpose itself, when I lose sight.

You can develop grit. Listen to this episode on exactly how to do that!

By the way… 

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