Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Motivation Monday: How to Have More Grit in 4 Simple Steps

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

When you look at a celebrity on T.V., a rising star in the office, or an impressively fit person at the gym, it’s easy to attribute their success to in-born talent, circumstance, and luck. This is especially true when it comes to fitness, because your results are inextricably tied to your genetics. That is, you can work just as hard as someone else or even harder, and they still might get better results in the end. And once you realize this, it becomes very easy to rationalize your lack of progress. That person is stronger than you? Must be nice to have so much time to work out. That person is more muscular than you? Must be nice to have won the genetic lottery. That person is leaner than you? If only you had their metabolism. This kind of fixed mindset is comforting, but it’s also pernicious. It erodes your self confidence, saps your motivation, and poisons your perception of what you can achieve. And it overlooks something even more important than genetics, upbringing, and luck for achieving your goals: Grit. Research shows that grit, sand, pluck, spunk, moxie, or whatever else you want to call it, is a much better predictor of your success in almost any endeavor than genetics or luck. As you’ll learn in this podcast, grit is one of the most important common denominators among all high-achievers, whether in the realms of fitness, sports, business, or the arts. So, keep listening if you want to learn . . . What grit is How your grittiness affects your ability to get in shape The four most effective ways to get more gritty And more . . . Let’s get started! 4:58 - What is grit? 17:02 - What can I do if grit doesn’t come easy for me? 19:15 - Four key ways to increase grittiness 19:26 - Pursuing passion with a purpose 25:01 - Believing in positive prospects 29:09 - Practice, practice, practice 34:49 - Find your people --- Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: legionathletics.com/shop/ --- Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hello, and welcome to Muscle for Life. I'm your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for this new episode. And this time around, I'm going to talk to you about grit, what it is, and how it relates to achieving success, and particularly in competitive arenas like business and fitness and sports and, well, most of the activities we like to do outside of our hobbies. And for many of us, even our hobbies are a bit competitive as well. And I'm going to give you a few easy and evidence-based ways to increase your grit quotient. So when you look at a rising star on TV, you know, a celebrity who everyone loves, or maybe a top tier athlete who's really on the top of their game, or maybe just a really fit person in the gym, it's easy to think that they got there through inborn talent and maybe a bit of luck,

but mostly just talent. And in fitness, this can manifest in many different ways, but some of the more common ones I have observed over the years are, oh, well, it must be nice to have so much time to work out. Oh, it must be nice to have such great genetics. Oh, it must be nice to have such a great metabolism, those types of things. This is referred to in psychology as a fixed mindset. It assumes that our characteristics are fixed and that we can't really make any great changes to who we are fundamentally and how we behave and our attitudes and so forth. And that view of life can be comforting because it can absolve us of responsibility and the need to work, but it also erodes self-confidence, it saps motivation, and it poisons your perception of what you actually can do because we all can achieve

a lot more than we are currently achieving. I include myself in that statement, and I would include myself in this statement as well, that all of us can also almost certainly achieve a lot more than we think we can. And that is especially true if we are willing to give one factor the attention it deserves, a factor that isn't as sexy as genetics, upbringing, or luck, and that is grit. Research shows that grit, which can be swapped for other terms, you could say pluck or spunk or moxie, this quality is a much better predictor of success in just about any endeavor in life than genetics or luck or just circumstances. And as you will learn in this podcast,

grit is actually one of the most important and the most impactful common denominators among high achievers of all kinds, whether we are talking fitness, sports, business, or even the arts. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research, every formulation is 100% transparent, there are no proprietary blends, for example,

and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe, but there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings of artificial sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don't need pills, powders, and potions to get into great shape, and frankly, most of them are virtually useless. There are natural ingredients that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster, and you will find the best of them in Legion's products. To check out everything we have to offer, including protein powders and protein bars,

pre-workout, post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to www.buylegion.com, B-U-Y legion.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout, and you will save 20% on your entire first order. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, and if you also want all natural evidence-based supplements that work, please do consider supporting Legion so I can keep doing what I love, like producing more podcasts like this. Okay, so let's start with a simple definition of the term. What is grit? Well, researchers define it as passion and perseverance for long-term goals. And just to go a little bit further, passion is defined as an intense desire or enthusiasm for something. And perseverance is persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay

in achieving whatever you want to achieve. And that's a key point. Somebody with a high level of perseverance doesn't just keep on when things are going well, but continues when they are not going well as well. They push through difficulties, they overcome obstacles, and they come up with often creative and resourceful ways to win. Now, to many people, grit sounds basically synonymous to work ethic or conscientiousness or tenacity. And there is overlap between these different qualities. But what makes grit unique is that it describes the quality of consistently working at, to use the good to great term, a big, hairy, audacious goal, a BHAG. No matter what you encounter, it is the whatever it takes mentality.

People with grit, they will climb over, dig under, and smash through whatever is in their way to get what they want. And they are willing to forego any amount of pleasure in pursuit of that bigger prize. They will sacrifice their time. They will sacrifice their energy. They will sacrifice their money. They will often sacrifice their health, even though that is something that I would only be willing to sacrifice if circumstances really demanded it. I am not of the mindset that you should work so hard at your career, for example, that you completely neglect your body. You don't sleep well, you don't exercise, you don't eat well, you let yourself get really out of shape and overweight. I understand and I do admire in one sense people who can do that, who basically don't want to take the time away from their work to take care of their body and

who use every minute of that extra time to just work harder at their career or some other goal. But I think that is a short-sighted approach to living because you can get away with that for a time, but eventually it will catch up with you. And you are going to have accrued a lot of health and fitness debt, so to speak, that you're going to have to work much harder to pay off. And you're going to have to work harder in a literal sense, in a physical, like work in the gym harder sense, but it's also going to be psychologically harder. It is harder to get really out of shape and then work to get in shape. It's harder psychologically and emotionally to do that than it is to just stay in pretty good shape and then work to get into really good shape,

for example. But anyway, my point is gritty people are willing to endure the many slings and arrows of setbacks and defeats and failures, as well as the inevitable doldrums of despair and boredom that are major factors in any major undertaking. There is the dip, as Seth Godin likes to call it, that middle period where you are just slogging away and you are no longer as excited about everything as you were when you began. And in some cases, you're not sure if you are really making that much progress, but you just have to keep going even when you are not emotionally into it. And depending on what you are trying to do, that dip might be a long time. That might be a year or two years or even longer. And gritty people are able to

maintain their resolve. Of course, they can't maintain their enthusiasm throughout the entire endeavor. Nobody can do that, but they can maintain their determination. They can just show up to the coalface every day, regardless of how they feel and do the work. Now, this concept is not a revelation. This is something that most of us know inherently, especially those of us who have studied history at all. If you study about very successful people, whether we are talking military commanders or business people or artists or politicians or whatever, we will basically every single time see grit in action. We will see people who possessed a tremendous amount of it. I'm talking about people like Caesar and Alexander the Great. And if we want to talk business,

John Rockefeller Sr. was a great example of this. Ray Dalio is a great example of this. In politics, Benjamin Franklin, Marcus Aurelius. If you read about those people, it's hard to miss that grit was a vital ingredient to their success. That though, that observation is being vindicated now by scientific research because countless studies over the past few decades have proven that grit is one of the best predictors of success in a wide range of activities. army and weight loss and muscle building and really anything related to fitness. Because, of course, to lose weight, you're going to have to stick to your diet fairly well for at least several weeks before you really see any signs of progress. And it's going to take probably several months to ultimately reach your goal. And as far as muscle building goes, that is even more difficult in this regard because if you are

currently normal, if you have a normal physique and you want to get fairly jacked, and yes, men and women have different definitions for that, so use whichever definition is applicable to you, you're going to have to work hard and work consistently for, if you're a guy, probably at least three years to get to a point where you would consider yourself fairly jacked. And as a woman, it takes at least a year, probably more like two years to get to the point where most women have the basic physique that they want. And that means they have to gain 10 to 15 pounds or so of muscle in the right places. And they have to reduce their body fat level to probably somewhere around 20%. And that's where

most women that I've worked with over the years are happiest. And that takes, yeah, a year to two years. And as far as staying healthy and vibrant and living as long as we can, well, that's something we're going to do for the rest of our life. There are several key behaviors that we are going to have to consistently engage in for the rest of our life. And then there are several key behaviors we are going to have to consistently avoid if we want to live a long and enjoyable life. Now, I mentioned that scientific studies have looked into grit and how it impacts our ability to do many things. And I want to mention a couple of these studies that relate to fitness in particular. One good example comes from scientists over at Chicago State University,

and they looked at the relationship between grit and exercise habits. Now, what they did is they had 1,171 people complete a survey that assessed their levels of grit, conscientiousness, which would be the tendency to be goal-oriented and organized, and how intensely they exercised. And what the researchers found is that conscientiousness actually didn't predict how much or how hard people worked out. That is, people who scored relatively high on that personality trait of being goal-oriented and being organized toward those goals were actually not more hashtag dedicated to their training than people who scored fairly low in conscientiousness. The people who scored the highest in terms of grit, though, were 30%

more likely to train the hardest versus reports of moderate or low intensity exercise. And these people generally worked out more often than people who scored the lowest in terms of grit. So their compliance to their program was better. They showed up to the gym more often and they worked harder when they were there. As you might expect, research shows that grittiness can help you lose weight more effectively as well. For example, in a study conducted by scientists at the University of Illinois, the researchers had 79 women complete a survey that measured their grittiness and recorded their weight in BMI. And then the women enrolled in a one-year-long weight gain prevention study. So these women were not trying to lose weight, but just to not gain weight,

which is more difficult for most people. Many people can starve themselves to lose weight. They can just cut their calories in half for, let's say, four, five, six weeks, but they cannot keep the weight off. Most people who are not a regular listener here, they slowly gain weight year after year and then one day are surprised at how much different they look, usually when they look at pictures. It is insidious because when you gain weight slowly and you look at yourself in the mirror every day, nothing much changes in terms of the day-to-day. But then if you look back at a picture of yourself five, 10 years ago, it becomes immediately apparent that, holy shit, I've gained 30 pounds. Anyway, in this study, as a part of the weight gain prevention program,

the participants met with a registered dietitian or a counselor about twice a month throughout the study. And in the meetings, they learned about the fundamentals of proper dieting. They learned about energy balance and macronutrient balance and the importance of staying active and burning calories and staying motivated and minimizing stress and getting enough sleep and so forth. They learned quite a bit, quite a bit more than the average person knows. And at the end of the study, the researchers then again measured the weight and BMI of all of the participants and had them do a survey that assessed their grittiness. And once again, what the researchers

found is that the women who scored highest on that grittiness survey at the beginning of the study were the most successful at keeping the weight off, and many of them even lost weight. And there's even research that suggests an association between grittiness and just overall happiness. There was a study that was conducted by scientists at Oklahoma State University where 470 students completed a questionnaire that assessed their grittiness and health-related quality of life and healthcare management skills. So this test, what it did is it assessed their physical fitness, their emotional health,

their energy and fatigue levels, their social functioning, and their general health, you know, how often they got sick and so forth. This was just a good overview of how healthy they were and how healthy their lifestyle was and how well they were living. And it also looked at some of their adulting skills, to use a word I don't like, such as the ability to take medications when you're supposed to take them in the right amounts and to make and keep healthcare appointments and to track and keep healthcare appointments and to track their health, communicate with doctors and so forth. As you can imagine by now, the people who had the most grit also scored the highest in terms of overall quality of life,

both in the physical and the mental domains, as well as healthcare management skills. the mental domains as well as healthcare management skills. Now, at this point, you might be thinking, okay, that's cool. And I could see how a high level of grit can translate into a high level of success in pretty much anything I might want to do, but it doesn't come easy for me. I'm not a very gritty person. So what should I do? I'm so glad you asked because what is perhaps most encouraging and most interesting about grittiness is it can be learned. Some people do come into the world with more of it than others, but it is not as immutable as IQ, for example, which can be improved. But the current weight of the evidence is that we all are born with a ceiling of general intelligence. Now, how far we can progress toward that ceiling does depend on behaviors and education and other things. But the current prevailing theory is no matter what we do,

we can only get so smart. And for someone whose ceiling is, let's say, an IQ of 110, then they are always going to be at a disadvantage compared to someone who, let's say, has a ceiling of 160 and who is currently functioning at only maybe 130 or 135. That's a big enough difference to really change the outcomes of many different activities that those people could engage in. Grittiness, however, is a lot more malleable. You might have heard of someone named Dr. Angela Duckworth. She is a psychology professor at Penn State University, and she has popularized the term grit. She has spent her entire career studying it and how to increase it. She has written a bestselling book on the topic, and she has advised White House staffers and

Fortune 500 CEOs and professional athletes. And she also gave a TED Talk on grit that is one of the most viewed of all time. And through her extensive research, Dr. Duckworth has identified four key ways to increase grittiness. One is pursue passions with a purpose. Two is believe in positive prospects. Three is practice, practice, practice. And four is find your people. So let's talk about these. Let's talk about pursuing passion with a purpose. Do you enjoy running or do you think that you have to run to lose weight and you just do it because that's the only way? Are you following a low-carb diet because you really like it or because some fake guru or fake doctor on Instagram said that's what you have to do? What about intermittent

fasting? Do you really like that or would you rather eat on a normal schedule? My point is, one of the reasons many people think they lack grit is really just because they're wasting a lot of their willpower on activities that they just don't care that much about. And in the case of running and low-carb dieting and intermittent fasting, that is wasting willpower on activities that are completely unnecessary. So before you tell yourself that, oh, you're just not gritty enough, you don't have enough grit in you to achieve your fitness goals, for example. Why don't we take a moment to reassess those goals? So you want to lose weight.

Do you need to run? No, of course not. Can you do other types of cardio? Maybe something you enjoy more? What about cycling? What about rowing? What about swimming? What about dancing? What about not doing cardio at all? If you don't want to do cardio, could we do something else for your training? I would love for you to train your muscles regardless. Can we just do, let's say four to six hours of resistance training per week and forget the cardio? How about that? Does that pique your interest? What about adding some walking? Can we do that? Could you do the resistance training? And then could you go for some walks during the week? Maybe do a few hours of walking per week outside, ideally not on a treadmill inside, but let's get outside and really ideally let's get into nature.

Do you have a trail you can go walk on maybe first thing in the morning because that is going to enhance your mood. As far as a diet goes on the low carb side of things, yes, it's very trendy, but research clearly shows low carb dieting is no better for losing fat, especially over the longterm than higher carb dieting. So it really comes down to what is going to work best for you. Same thing goes for intermittent fasting. It can work so long as you have a reasonable protocol. I would recommend the lean gains protocol, which is an eight hour eating window followed by a 16 hour fasting period. That's it. Basically it's skip breakfast. You start eating around 12 or one. That's how most people do it at least. And if you like that, if you like skipping breakfast, cool. If you don't, well, why don't you just eat on a schedule

that works for you? Again, these things are not a matter of grit. It's simply a matter of not making things harder than they need to be because even the grittiest people only have so much willpower. They only have so much discipline before even they break down. And so we have this first crucial step of narrowing down the things that are truly important. And in terms of fitness, one big element that a lot of people overlook, a lot of people are quick to jump into the mechanics, the how-tos. How do I make a meal plan? How do I make a workout plan? How do I not cheat too much on my diet, et cetera, et cetera. But they don't take time to assess why. Why are we doing this? And I've written about this in Bigger

Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, and also over at the blog, over at legionathletics.com. I recommend that people find their fitness wise. They figure out what is really going to fire them up, what is really going to keep them on track. So, for example, are you wanting to lose weight just because you want to impress people or is it because taking care of your body is important to you? Do you want to get stronger just because you think it's fun to put bigger numbers down into your workout log? Or is it something like staying healthy and vital and active into your old age or maybe keeping up with your kids and even your grandkids? And as far as eating healthier goes, is it simply a point of vanity or is it also maybe setting a good example for

your friends or for your kids? A great example of this is the actor Ethan Suplee, who I interviewed on my podcast a couple of months ago and who has his own popular podcast now called American Glutton. So Ethan played the fat guy in Hollywood for a long time. And he told me that he enjoyed being fat. He actually liked it. He liked being big. He liked eating a lot of food. But there was a point when he realized that if he wanted to be around for his wife and kids, who he loves dearly, he couldn't go on like he was. He would have to get in shape. And this is a guy who has gained and lost over a thousand pounds. I mean, over decades of dieting and then binging and dieting, Ethan finally decided to do it right and to make it stick. And now he's jacked, basically. You can

go check him out on Instagram. So my point here though is find out really what makes you tick. And if you're not sure, pick up Bigger, Leaner, Stronger if you're a man or Thinner, Leaner, Stronger if you're a woman and go through the exercise that I give in those books. You will find your fitness wise and they will be more meaningful than, oh, I just want great biceps and abs. Okay, let's move on to the next point from Dr. Duckworth, and that is believing in positive prospects. So this is the old adage, just believe in yourself, which of course is cliched, but there is a lot of truth in there because you can have all the passion in the world for doing whatever it is that you want to do, for talking fitness, for working out and eating well, watching your calories, watching your macros, getting plenty

of nutritious food. But if you don't really believe that change is possible, especially in your behaviors and your attitudes, you are never going to be as gritty as you could be. We know from previous research that having a growth mindset, so that's the opposite of the fixed mindset I mentioned earlier, and this is the belief that you can change, is predictive of better motivation, which is just natural because it gives you hope and it gives you something to work toward. And that then in turn can increase grit. So when things get tough, and they always will, if you're trying to do anything, expect adversity and invite it. That's what makes it fun. Think of a life without adversity. Really

think what that would be like. Yeah, it would be relieving at first for a little bit, but then think about how bored you would actually get. Because without obstacles, you don't have a game. If all you have is freedoms and goals and you just go straight to your goals without having to overcome anything, that's no fun. That's boring. Anybody who played a lot of sports growing up remembers. You remember when you just got too good for the team that you were on and you just got bored. And then you move up to the next tier and all of a sudden you go from the best player on the team, maybe even one of the best players in your league to just another player.

And it's a bit jarring at first. I remember playing hockey. I remember that experience several times. It requires an adjustment and it definitely is humbling, but it also then gives you a game again. It stimulates your interest. It brings you alive. Now you have something to struggle against, right? And so when things get tough, many people are quick to say, oh, well, this isn't meant to be. It shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't be

like this. It should just always be smooth sailing and enjoyable. I must not be meant to have the body I really want. It's just not in the cards for me. No, no, no, no. If these people can just change their thinking and just believe that, yep, their goal is possible and the challenges that they are facing are supposed to be there and they also make the reward more satisfying. Then they can start to look at those challenges as just speed bumps along the road to wherever they're trying to get. So for instance, let's say you've lost five pounds over a period and you wanted to lose 10 pounds. And now you're stuck. Your weight has been stuck for a few weeks and you're starting to wonder if you'll ever get there. Take a moment and remind yourself that you absolutely can lose the 10 pounds. You lost five pounds. If you can lose five pounds, you can lose 10 pounds. So really, let's just

take a step back. Let's view this situation objectively. Let's look at the most common causes of a weight loss plateau or of slower than desirable weight loss. And if you're curious about that, head over to legionathletics.com, search for weight loss plateau, and you'll find an article I wrote on it. And you will find a solution quickly. And then you'll find more grit. Once you have that solution that you believe in, that makes sense to you, you will be excited to implement it and to see if it works. And again, remember, you already lost weight. You already figured out something that worked. You will be able to make it work again. Now, what's also cool about grit is the more you go

through that process, the gritter you become, the more confidence you gain in your ability to succeed in other areas as well, because you realize that the way to do anything is the way to do everything. All right, next up on the list, we have practice, practice, practice. And this is important because the more you do anything, the better you get at it. Really, it's that simple. And the better you get at something, the more you enjoy it. And then the more you enjoy it, the more you want to do it. And the more you want to do something, the grittier you are going to be regarding it. The more likely you are going to be to do it and to do it well, regardless of the circumstances. So it's a virtuous circle, right? It's a positive, self-reinforcing feedback loop. And we are fortunate that developing grit

is just a skill. It's something that we can all learn. And the more we train these muscles, the stronger they become. It really can also just ultimately turn into a habit. And just like creating any other habit, building grit involves setting small goals with relatively short-term deadlines that then keep you on track toward the bigger goals. One of the most common mistakes people make in trying to build good habits or eliminate bad habits is they just try to take on too much too fast. Let's say somebody says, I want to start reading every day. I want to build that good habit. They set themselves a target of let's say 30 pages a day. They think that sounds reasonable, or maybe they heard someone like me say, I read 30 pages a day. And then on day one, they read, let's say, 20 pages. And they're a

little bit disappointed. Obviously, they went from, let's say, zero to 20. So that's encouraging, but they didn't reach their goal that they set for themselves. So that's kind of discouraging, but they have enough grit to pick up the book the following day and they read, let's say, 10 pages. And that feels very inadequate. That's not satisfying at all. And then the following day, it's five pages. And then maybe the following day it's zero. And then they pick it up the next day and it's another five. And then it's a string of zeros and so forth. A much smarter way to go about it is to reverse that pattern. So start with something that is so simple that when you think about it, your immediate reaction is, oh, there's no way I'm

going to fail at that. So for example, in the case of reading, start with just five pages per day. Hell, it could be one page per day. Or if you want to think about it in terms of reading, start with just five pages per day. Hell, it could be one page per day, or if you want to think about it in terms of time, five minutes, max 10 minutes a day. Start there. And then once that is on automatic, once you have established that habit and you are, let's say, accomplishing it at least 80% of the time, eight out of every 10 days you are doing it, or maybe you want to go for 10 out of 10. You could do that too. Then increase the difficulty. Let's say you started with five pages and now 10 out of 10 days in a row, you have read five pages. Okay, let's go up to 10 pages, or if that's too much, let's go up to seven or eight pages and wait until that sticks and so

on and so forth. And then in time, you are reading 30 pages a day like clockwork. As far as weight loss goes, don't make the mistake that many people make, which is trying to cut calories in half and doing two hours of cardio every day and getting rid of all of the sugar and other quote unquote bad foods they're eating, why not just start with eating an additional serving or two of vegetables per day? Just start there and maybe pulling out a serving or two of sugar. And then when that is easy, when you are not missing the sugar and when you are eating the serving or two of vegetables, additional serving or two of vegetables every day. And the point there, by the way, is not that sugar is just bad if you want to lose weight.

No, it's just that foods that contain added sugars often are very palatable and higher calorie. And so if you can replace a serving or two of those foods with vegetables, for example, which are lower calorie and more filling, then you are going to have an easier time maintaining a calorie deficit. So let's say you've got that licked and you are eating your vegetables every day and your sugar intake is a little bit lower. You could do another round of that depending on what your diet's like. Maybe it's time to look at meal planning, at sitting down and working out what you like to eat

and how many calories and macros those foods have and what you should be eating in terms of calories and macros. And you don't have to go all in right in the beginning. You don't have to make a meal plan that lays out every single calorie you are going to put in your mouth every day. Maybe you start with the one meal where you tend to overeat the most, the one meal where you find it hardest to control your calories. So maybe it's dinner, let's say. So you're just going to start with planning your dinner and making sure that it is a balanced meal that contains a reasonable amount of calories and a reasonable amount of protein, for example. And then once you have that ingrained, so you're eating your vegetables every day,

you're eating a bit less sugar, now your dinner's under control, you go back to your meal plan and you then add your lunch into it. Or maybe at that point, you feel up to creating the full plan. The point is you can do just about anything if you can break it down into enough easily accomplished steps. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere,

definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. Okay, let's move on to Dr. Duckworth's final point, which is find your people. Now there's a quote that you've probably heard from Jim Rohn, and that is you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Very true. Another cliche that is very true. And especially if we're talking about grit, because whether you want to believe it or not, your friends and family and colleagues, even your gym partners, significant others, those people all have a very big influence on how you think and how you feel and how you behave. And that, of course,

can greatly affect whether you are naturally inclined toward grittiness or averse to it. So for instance, if your parents never want to go to restaurants with lower calorie, more nutritious options, if it's always, let's say, fast food or the sit-down equivalent of it, or if your roommate is always badgering you to go out and party instead of go to the gym or go out and party late instead of going to bed so you can get up early and go to the gym, or maybe your partner always wants to watch a movie and order in fast food instead of taking the time to make a healthy home-cooked meal and eat it together without having to stare at a screen, which will improve your ability to control your calories, by the way. Mindful eating is not just

a buzzword. It is a thing. it does work. If you have that type of environment, you are going to find it very hard to be a gritty individual. Not because there's anything wrong with you, but because that's the way it works. We are social creatures after all, and we tend to conform with the people we spend the most time with. And so then if you want to have a lot of grit, if you want to have a lot of stick-to-itiveness, then you are going to have to make sure you are not surrounding yourself with very ungritty people. That is going to sabotage any and all efforts that you take in that direction. Fortunately, it doesn't mean you have to just fire everyone and disappear if you look at the people who are closest to you and one for one, they are not very gritty. Here

are a few good tips. The first one is break off contact with people who are just net negatives in your life. There are people who just should go. You are not going to change them no matter how much you might want to help and how much they might seem to be receptive to your help. It will not work. If people change for the better, most people always is a long and arduous process that they have to learn through a lot of trial and error and a lot of pain and suffering. They have to learn a lot of very hard lessons for them to finally figure out how to become a better person. And if you want to be a part of that, and if you want to devote what could be a lot of your energy to that, I suppose you can. I mean, if it's your kid, I would understand. But if this is just a roommate or a friend, I would say it's not worth it. Just cut your losses and get out of there. And I have firsthand experience with this. I have made this mistake trying to really help

someone change for the better and really showing a lot of compassion and understanding and being a lot easier on this person than I should have think I'm a fairly tough person. I am not easily dissuaded from my goals and I do what I need to do every day regardless of how I feel. However, having this person in my life made things a lot more difficult and just less enjoyable than they should have been because I wasted a lot of time and energy trying to lift this guy up when he was irredeemable. It turns out I didn't know this, but he has much deeper problems than I realized. I mean, I learned this toward the end of our relationship, but he has mental disorders, things that you can't just turn off because somebody asks you to, or because you even feel bad about it and you don't want to behave or think that way. But there is something deeply embedded in you that forces you to be dysfunctional.

And so I finally did give him the air. I should have done it a long time ago, but I did finally get around to it. And I did it decisively. I cut all ties and I will never speak with him again. And I was surprised at how much of a difference this immediately made in my life. I was in a better mood every day and I wasn't having to waste time and energy trying to figure out what I'm going to do with this guy. And I was able to then put that time and energy into work. And I've been able to complete quite a few big work projects that would have taken a lot longer

with him in my life. And there was just a deep satisfaction knowing that I did something that was difficult, but that will ultimately pay big dividends in the long run. And for anyone who's thinking that that sounds a little bit callous, like, you know, Mike, we're talking about a person here. Trust me, this was probably the most dishonest and devious and defective, deeply defective people I've ever known and probably will ever know. Like it was really that bad. And so when you have someone who is so intent on destroying themselves and taking anyone they can with them, what are you going to do? Are you going to fall on their sword just on principle because you were once close? No, of course not. That makes no sense. And who knows,

maybe my disconnection from him will be a wake-up call. Maybe the concussive blow will force him to reflect on what happened and why he finds himself in this situation and why he is ultimately responsible for it. I'm a big proponent of mutual responsibility and not just laying the blame elsewhere, but there are situations where one person is mostly responsible for the negative outcome and the other person is mostly not. And this was one of those situations.

Anyway, my point with sharing that story is if you are in a similar position, if there is somebody who is very toxic, to use a popular term, and you are dreading getting rid of them because maybe you've been friends for a long time, or maybe you work together, whether it's just a co-worker or a business partner. I understand. I've been there. And it's the proverbial ripping of the Band-Aid, right? The wound is festering. You can't leave it.

It's going to kill you. And if you pull the Band-Aid off slowly, it's going to hurt a lot. So you just rip it off. You grit your teeth and you just do what has to be done, knowing that it's going to be uncomfortable and it might cost you money. It might cost you relationships with other people. It might cost you a bit of your sanity even for a period of time, but you will get through it. And once you are on the other end of it, you are going to look back and wonder why you waited so long. I promise you. Now, again, I'm not recommending you do that to all of the people in your life who are challenged in the grit department. There are

going to be people you want to stay in contact with and where it is appropriate to stay in contact with, you know, a significant other, maybe parents, a sibling, and so forth, who are not very gritty. And you can do it in a way where you make it clear politely that you are not interested in their opinions about your health choices, for example. You don't have to explain what you're doing or why you're doing. You can if you want to, but you also can just do what you know you need to do and make it clear that you are not going to accept their problems. You are not going to compromise your goals to satisfy them. And keep in mind that, and this, I'm just speaking from experience here, having worked with so many people over the years, oftentimes when we have this crabs

in the bucket syndrome, right? The little story of when you have a bunch of crabs in a bucket and one of the crabs tries to crawl out, the other crabs drag them back down. People behave that way as well. And you know, I'm not even sure if that's true of crabs. I should Google it, but it's certainly true of people. Often when people see others around them starting to do better, they don't want to see those people not do better per se. It's just, they don't want to be reminded that they are not doing well. When you start losing weight, you start getting fit, you start achieving other goals. it can make people feel bad about themselves because it holds a mirror up to them and it makes them question what they're doing. Hey, if that person can do it,

why am I not doing it? And instead of just owning up to that and just acknowledging that, maybe they're not going to get an action, but they don't have to treat you badly because of it, right? They can just live with that and say, you know, I'm not willing to do what that person is doing to achieve that goal. And I'm not happy about that, but that's not their fault. I'm not going to treat them badly or try to stop them. Most people don't work that way. Most people who are not doing so well, instead, they just try to keep you in the bucket. And so don't let them. Just keep going. And again, you can make it clear politely that you're not interested in their comments, in their suggestions, in their warnings about what you're doing. You're going to do what you're going to do. So let's talk about something else. And if that doesn't work, if someone insists on trying to undermine your efforts or in hectoring

you, maybe that's someone who needs to be blasted out of the airlock. Because while some philosophers say that everyone is inherently good, nobody is inherently evil. There are plenty of people out there engaging in evil. There are plenty of people out there engaging in evil. There are plenty of people out there who derive deep satisfaction from seeing other people not do well, from seeing people suffer and fail. And these people, they have this idea that if others were to do well, then they would rise up and crush them. So they have taken it upon themselves. Their mission is to crush others before they are crushed. And this person I was describing to you earlier in the podcast is

probably one of these types of personalities. And I'm talking like dark triad stuff, not nice. Okay. One more tip regarding who you surround yourself with. and this is a positive one, that is find and join a group of people who are trying to do the same thing that you're trying to do. So let's say with health and fitness, you know, people who are working to lose weight and gain muscle and get stronger, people who value grit and who are embodying it. That's one of the reasons why CrossFit has done so well and why Peloton is doing so well. In the case of CrossFits, the workouts are usually kind of goofy and not optimal for most people who want to just get fitter, especially people who really just want to focus on losing fat and gaining muscle. And in terms of Peloton, it's just biking after all.

However, CrossFit and Peloton, they give people a community of like-minded, enthusiastic, gritty people who support one another. And that can be huge in increasing your grit. And that point of support is worth elaborating on a little bit more because it can be a major impediment or a major advantage. So let's say your best friend is an all or nothing type of person, right? So they're always picking up something new or starting after some new goal, and then they abandon that for something else. And then they abandon that for something else. Probably not the best person to depend on for support if you are wanting to achieve something. Let's say though that your coworker always seems to be on top of their, let's say health and fitness. We can just stick to what

we like to talk about here at Muscle for Life, what we mostly like to talk about. Well, if that person is consistent, maybe they could help you level up. Maybe they would be a much better part of your support network. And one other thing I should mention is before you just start throwing people in your life wholesale onto the room of the cutting floor, make sure that you have communicated with them because sometimes that's all it takes is a little bit of productive communication to completely eliminate whatever friction might be there. So do these people know what you are trying to do? Do they know why? Do they know why that's important to you? Have you told them explicitly why you are making these changes? And would these people be

more supportive if you were more clear about what it is that you're doing and the reason you're doing it, you might be surprised at how quickly people can flip their script after a conversation like this. All right, well, we have covered a lot in this podcast. I hope you have found it helpful. And I'll just wrap up with a quick summary. So the goal for us is to increase our grittiness and we could define grit as passion and perseverance for long-term goals. And the grittier we are, the more willing we will be to endure discomfort and disappointment and difficulty and sometimes downright despair in pursuit of goals. And we will just keep going. We will not quit. Research shows that grittiness is correlated with success in many different areas of life. And that's certainly true of health and fitness. The grittier you are, the more likely you are going to be to stick to your workout program and to work out hard when you do work out, the more likely you are to lose weight when you want to lose weight and to maintain your weight and body composition when you want to do that. And the

better you're going to be at taking care of yourself, at just having a higher quality of life. And four evidence-based tips for becoming better at being gritty. And you can become better. It is a skill. They are pursuing passions with a purpose, believing in positive possibilities, in the ability to change and improve yourself and your circumstances. The third one is practice, practice, practice. And the fourth and final is to find your people. So if you do those things, you are going to be far ahead. You are going to have a huge head start on many of your peers when it comes to your health and fitness goals, as well as really any other goals that you have. It could be career related, or maybe it's just even hobby related. Oh, you want to

learn how to play the guitar? Well, if you are a very gritty person, you are going to learn how to play the guitar. It is going to happen. It is only a question of when. All right. Well, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and you don't mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to me from in whichever app you're listening to me in, because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility. And thus it helps more people find their way to

me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any new stuff. And if you didn't like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com, just muscle, F-O-R,life.com, and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, even if it is criticism. I'm open to it. And of course, you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email.

That is the best way to get ahold of me, mikeatmusclefullife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon.