2-3-4 Friday - on grit or quit

‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’

1 thought

There are going to be days like these.

When you wonder whether you’re doing the right thing, whether what you’re doing is going to work out, and you just think,

Maybe I should give up. Maybe I should just stop.

You might be studying for your degree. Or maybe doing your job as a social worker, when you’re in the trenches, and day in day out, the same stuff hits the fan.

Everyday.

And you wonder whether what you’re doing is even changing the face of things, in any way.

I think sometimes, it may be important to just accept, that,

Hey, things might not change. It might not ever change because of what I do.

What’s wrong with that?

Does that mean you stop trying?

Maybe think about the act of parenting. You probably have stopped appreciating your parent’s work - washing the dishes, doing your laundry, picking up the trash. But they don’t stop doing it.

They just continue.

And maybe how they deal with it is one of two ways. One, they stop questioning ‘Why am I doing this? Will this ever work out for my child?”

Two, they don’t try to change the world. Their expectation isn’t that they change the world. It’s just that they do a little to change yours.

So if we apply that to the work we do, which we have self-doubt over, then it might mean that hey, we stop questioning about whether what we do has a meaning or purpose.

Because some things don’t have their purpose immediately clear, not are the outputs immediately visible, but that definitely doesn’t mean they aren’t worth doing.

But also that when we ask ourselves, “would this work out?” we celebrate the small victories, however tiny they seem.

1 talk

When you’re in the trenches, you don’t try to change the world. You just do enough to change what’s around you.

1 tip

When do you quit, and when do you grit?

When is it time to call time on something you’ve been doing for a long time, and when is it time to double down, and work even harder?

Especially without the feedback that you’re going in the right way?

For example you might be in a job where it seems like every other day is the same. You walk in, do the work, and then walk out.

Or in my context, it might seem like everyday is the same. Where I’m just writing articles, getting readers, struggling to make enough money to pay the bills, and wondering,

Is this just a hopeless cause?

Should we just close these sites down?

Who reads these damn things anyway?

There are no easy answers, except that we do believe that whilst you may not see the whole way, and when there’s no quick feedback loop to validate that what you’re doing is good, right, correct, you cling onto the past instances when people have appreciated what you’ve done…

And secondly, that you steward the little you have, however small, and you give it your best.

It’s like having a baby. If one day, you have a baby that’s small, tiny, and not very handsome, do you just say,

Ah nah, I’m not going to care so much about it.

No right.

But you do your very best to help it grow strong, resilient, and hope that others will give it a chance too.

Thanks for giving us a chance, by spending your precious Fridays reading this.

It means a lot to me.

John