Transform Your Life - Just Count Me In
Just Count Me In is a podcast designed to help us navigate and flow with our lives through conscious awareness. When we live with less resistance and more receptivity it is easier to express who we came here to be and enjoy life. We are all walking each other home.
Transform Your Life - Just Count Me In
#5 Quit or Grit - Aligning with Your True Path
Do you know when to keep pushing forward and when it's time to call it quits? In this episode of Just Count Me In, I tackle the age-old dilemma of perseverance versus walking away. Inspired by personal coaching experiences, we explore stories of individuals at crossroads, like one client who grapples with staying in the school system for retirement benefits or chasing her own dreams. Borrowing insights from Seth Godin's "The Dip," we unpack how quitting, contrary to popular belief, can actually be a strategic move that adds value and aligns with our true selves. This conversation is a deep dive into mixed messages of grit and letting go, encouraging listeners to align their decisions with personal evolution and integrity.
Reflect on the fine line between grit and over-functioning as I share family anecdotes of resilience and the courage to pivot when necessary. From my grandmother's remarkable escape from a pogrom to my own journey through challenges, we uncover the potent mix of passion and perseverance, as defined by Angela Duckworth. Yet, the courage to quit and embrace an authentic life is equally vital. Explore how understanding your zones of confidence, excellence, and genius can guide you towards a fulfilling path. This episode is a call to action: evaluate your life through the lens of personal values, and don't be afraid to forge a path uniquely yours.
Thank you for joining me!
Welcome to Just Count Me In a podcast about coming home to yourself and finding your expression, figuring out who exactly you came here to be also known as living your best life. I'm Sari Stone and I'll be your host. So is there something you need to quit? Is there something in your life that you've been contemplating just quitting, even though you might have invested some time, some money, some education into it? And is there something in your life where a situation in your life where you're questioning that maybe you just might need a little bit more grit to get through it? Maybe you just need to dig in and be that person that gets to the other side, that victorious person, the hero, and you're not sure of which way to go. So this episode is for you if you're in either one of those situations or you know someone who is.
Speaker 1:So, over the weekend, I had the chance to coach this beautiful, beautiful soul who actually approached me because she knew that I had been a teacher and a coach and left the school system to come into my own business, and that was the right choice for me at that time. And she's debating on what to do and she's just trying to decide whether she needs to just find the grit to make it through another five years before she can get full retirement, or whether she needs to choose herself and quit. So we had a long talk about it and I thought, man, the name of this episode should be quit or grit, and that's what we laughed about when we got finished and she inspired this. So we took some time and explored because, I mean, there's a lot to be said for both sides and it so depends on your circumstance and we both have mixed messages in our lives. We see people who stuck it out or used their grit and really dug in and then it was so worth it and they're so grateful and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and their success was just on the other side of them pushing through something. On the other hand, I've also seen people who should have quit, even though it didn't make logical sense.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we look for answers in the head that only live in the heart, and we know that the head is just there to keep us safe. The brain is there to keep us safe. The brain is there to keep us safe, and sometimes we need to follow our hearts a little bit more, with what's good for us and what is actually healthy, healthy quitting. So is this in integrity with my soul? Basically is the question.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to talk first about quitting and then I'm going to talk about grit. So I know Seth Seth Godin's book, the Dip. He does talk about quitting and he talks about both. Actually Quitting, he says, creates scarcity in the business world, and then scarcity creates value. Let's say you have what it takes to get to the other side of this situation and not everybody does in your life or in your company, and that makes you even more valuable. So in that case the grit could serve you or you perhaps should quit if you're not the person who has what it takes. Sometimes there's healthy, healthy quitting.
Speaker 1:Healthy quitting would look like I chose this for someone else's reasons. If I'm in a situation where it's not me anymore I've evolved past it, I've changed. If I come home from work and I feel emotionally frustrated, exhausted, angry, if there's boundary violation going on, that definitely feels like something I would quit. And am I just sticking with this to people please? I was raised in a house where I felt, to be honest, that really my value was in making other people happy and serving other people and making myself needed by other people. I've had to do a lot of work and still overcoming some of that. So I have to be careful with myself that I'm not just in situations where I feel needed. Yet it's not really what my heart desires anymore, because I used to equate that with the value of being worthy.
Speaker 1:So I think asking yourself are you at the point where you need to let go of something? I know I've witnessed people who worked their whole lives and maybe they were at a job they didn't like. They sucked it up to get the pension and support their families. They had virtuous reasons for it, they had put their education in it, and then within six, eight months of retiring, they get something wrong with them physically and they die, or they're in a car accident or something, or they get sick with something, and then they can't really enjoy life.
Speaker 1:And I think, man, you should have just quit. Maybe it didn't make sense, but who knew that you'd only have a few years left? So part of it is how much am I living my life as if this time is precious and this time is a gift? How much am I living in the moment, trusting that the next part will unfold for me as long as I'm staying true to myself and I'm living with my thoughts, my ideas, my vibrations, my energy, everything lining up. Is this part of my unfolding vision right now for myself, or is it part of an old story? So you're not obligated, seth reminds us. You're not obligated and totally allowed to let go of who you were to be, who you're becoming to be, of course. So sometimes quitting is the right thing to do. I know my mom stayed in a marriage for too long that she was making herself physically sick over and then ended up getting colon cancer, partly because she had ulcerative colitis because of the way she was dealing with her emotions when she was married and she died. She only had a couple years out of the marriage that she got to live. So that was an example of the grit not serving her and she probably should have quit a little bit sooner.
Speaker 1:It's just a thought, because I hear in the back of my mind quitting has such a negative connotation to me and I'm so stubborn about things that quitters. Quitters are losers, you know, and winners never quit. Well, sometimes you know what. Sometimes winners do quit. Sometimes you've won when you have the courage to quit. Sometimes it's just not worth it to be putting yourself in those shoes that don't feel comfortable anymore, or staying in a situation that's strangling you. So if you feel stuck in what you believed you deserved at another time in your life, you lose the chance to find out what you're actually capable of. So I think we really need to investigate this a little bit before we make decisions.
Speaker 1:Then there's the subject of grit, and I'm a pretty gritty person. I wouldn't be here if I didn't have a lot of grit. Trust me, I have stories. It's another episode but to me me they define grit and actually Angela Duckworth defines grit as the power of passion and perseverance. The secret to success isn't talent, it's a combination of passion, and she makes the acronym growth, resilience, integrity and tenacity. That's her acronym for grit. Now, I totally agree with that and, as a big proponent of the growth mindset in my classroom and in my life, my kids, my students, all know a lot about Carol Dweck and her research and she totally believes in this, and I understand the value of grit and I think that it definitely serves us and the difference between somebody successful and somebody who is not successful very often is just lies on the other side of the making that push. Just that one more, that one more.
Speaker 1:And I think when we're in a situation where we feel conflicted, where we're making a big decision like do we leave a career or do we leave a relationship, or do we leave a place that we're living, that we've been trying really hard to make something work for ourselves, or do we leave a business we've started, it's not something that you enter into lightly at all. It's definitely something that you want to think about thoroughly with your heart or feel about, and I think it's important to keep in mind who you came from. So, for me, who I came from were immigrants. That's my story. My grandmother, when she was 13, witnessed her dad getting shot right in front of her in the pogroms in Russia, and she escaped in between horses' hooves, her and her mom and her sister, who I'm named after, to survive in the middle of the night, okay, only to be sent away to school because she was a very brilliant person. And so, even though this was the early, early 1900s, she was sent to school, though she was a girl and came back to find that the village had been destroyed and her mom and her sister were last seen running into a field and never saw again, last seen running into a field and never saw again. So she had true grit to pull herself up, to brush herself off, to go stay at her uncle's house in the very town where her family had been killed and got herself together, met my grandfather, married him he was also a very gritty person and came to this country with nothing. I mean, I think they came with a suitcase and made a whole new start with very little family here, didn't even know the language yet. Didn't even know the language yet. So there's grit that serves you right there. There's an example. My grandfather actually was 14, ran away from an abusive father and climbed and he was not a person who exaggerated climbed a brick wall with people chasing after him with guns and horses because they were chasing him for some reason, I'm not sure, and he literally climbed a wall. That takes grit. That's probably more grit than I have. So there would be another example where you definitely want to leave your circumstance. It's pretty much a no-bra survival. Okay, it's a little bit easier when it's a black and white example like that, but that's grit and these people inspired me throughout my life.
Speaker 1:I look at my dad. My dad had open heart surgery and instead of curling up and just becoming an invalid and dying, he was in the 2% of people that made the physical changes, made the mental changes, I'm sorry and lived for another 18 years after that actually 20 years after that. I said the wrong number, so, and they really. He was a very stubborn person, so we were all surprised that he changed so much and started expressing his emotions. But he took his circumstance and he would go into hospitals and meet with people after they had open heart surgery and he would open up his shirt and show them what he called his zipper, where they had to cut them open from one end to the other, and let them know hey, life can go on. You can still live after something like this happens and you can live well after something like this happens. He lived some of his best years after that and some of his most successful years, some of his happiest years. So I come from gritty family happiest years. So I come from gritty family.
Speaker 1:My tendency is to dig in and do whatever I can do to make it happen, and sometimes this has served me and sometimes it hasn't. So if you're at a point in your life where you're questioning. It's like that song should I stay or should I go? And you're just not sure. I would say go back to these questions. How did you choose the situation that you're in? How did you find yourself there? Did you make this choice or was this someone else's choice? Make this choice or was this someone else's choice? Does this choice authentically feel like it's in alignment with you, with yourself, or is it really not you anymore? Is it draining you or making you sick when you go home at night? Do you have nothing left? Is it in integrity with your soul? And one that I always ask myself what do I have in this situation that can be in service of my unfolding vision, as Michael Beckwith says? So is this in service of my unfolding vision? Is it just a hard time we're going through? Am I just being a lightweight here going through? Am I just being a lightweight here? Does it pay for me to go through the dip and then come back on the other side and be stronger for it? So these are questions that only you know, and as a coach, my job is never to give you answers. My job is to help ask the questions where you come to see your own answers and you find your way home, because we're all walking each other home here.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we have to be careful that what we perceive as grit is actually just over-functioning, which I have been guilty of. When I was 20, my mom was dying of cancer. I was commuting her back and forth to Mexico to get Laetrile treatments. I was pregnant, taking 22 credits in college. I had to get the Dean's approval to do that and it was just so much I was functioning so much that I did not have time to think and experience my pain. So what I perceived as grit, which was perseverance, definitely towards a goal, definitely was also a form of over-functioning. So I think we walk a fine line with that. That would be another question that you could ask yourself. Am I just throwing myself into an old pattern of over functioning?
Speaker 1:My mom actually graduated high school when she was 16 and went on to help support the family at that point, and that was huge. I mean, she had a brilliant brain, she was a member of the men's society and didn't actually get to go to college until she was almost 50. But that took a lot of grit and a lot of discipline and she made a whole new start at the age of 50, when she did go to college and opened up her own business, left the profession she had. She had been running really successful law offices. She was a head secretary. She of course rose to the top in everything because she was very brilliant, but it wasn't what she wanted to do or what made her feel alive inside. So she actually opened up a health place. It was considered a healing center back in the 1970s and it was called Eve's Garden of Eden and that took a lot of grit.
Speaker 1:My Aunt, charlotte her sister is another example that I can call on and I'd like to share with you. In their family they could have the pretty one and or the smart one, but you couldn't be both. So the stereotype was that my mom was the smart one and she was also pretty, and my aunt was the pretty one and she was also very smart. So they grew up. It took a lot of therapy and consciousness raising and the women's movement back then to get them over that, those stereotypes, and get them over the anger that they felt, to forgiveness and be in a loving space with their parents. But my aunt actually dug in and was the first person to graduate college in the family and the first person to get a master's in the family, which was pretty phenomenal considering she had immigrant parents that came here that didn't even technically, you know have my grandfather quit when he was 14.
Speaker 1:So I think that it's all around us and if you look in your family you can see examples and who taught you. Or look at people you looked up to in the world and think who taught you about grit and who taught you about quit? So when you think back, you've got zones, okay, you've got your zone of confidence and that's where you're functioning in an area and this is also Seth Godin. So thank you, seth, you're functioning and you're doing something that you're good at and you feel confident at it. You've done this for a while, okay, and maybe you're just ready to move on or move up. Then, after that, you've got your zone of excellence, and the zone of excellence is if you take it a step further. So say, my husband was an electrician I'll use him as an example and his he was great at that, but he always had more in him. He was always very entrepreneurial, and so he decided his zone of excellence in that type of work was having his own business running his own business and he's so good at it.
Speaker 1:On the other hand, that also in your zone of excellence, it's easy to get trapped. It's almost harder when you hit that zone of excellence. It's easy to get trapped, it's almost harder when you hit that zone of excellence because then for some people they might have the golden handcuffs. They call it, like I have a hard time maybe leaving this money behind. For some people they have so many years under their belt with the same person that they don't want to throw that out if they can possibly work through it, even though it doesn't look like they're growing in the same person that they don't want to throw that out if they can possibly work through it, even though it doesn't look like they're growing in the same direction. Once you're in that zone of excellence, you're really excellent at what you do and you get a lot of external validation for what you're doing, which can be hard to let go of.
Speaker 1:The last zone is the zone of genius, as Seth puts it, and that's when you don't even keep track of the time. You're so in your flow when I'm coaching people or I'm tutoring because I'm an academic coach as well kids or teaching a yoga class. Sometimes I don't even remember what I've said. It just comes right through me and somebody will say can you repeat that? And I'll't even remember what I've said. It just comes right through me and somebody will say can you repeat that? And I'll be like what, what? I don't have notes in front of me, and so that's the zone of genius, and I think the more we can experience that, the more we know that this is what serves us the most.
Speaker 1:Now, if we're fortunate enough to be able to make money in our zone of genius, that's the best situation, that's the best scenario. Unless you're independently wealthy, you can be in your zone of genius and not make any money, and it's still an excellent place to hang out. So if you go back and you ask yourself, you do an honest evaluation of where you are, why you got into where you are and the parts of you that are bumping up against it, you can start asking how do I know? How do I know? Well, you're not going to know for certain until you do it, unless you have an epiphany and you have that moment as I did when I left my job with the school district Like I can't do this anymore. I can't do this to my family, specifically my husband, anymore. I need to not be married to a job. I need to be married to him and be married to me most importantly. So, unless you have a moment like that, don't look for that moment. Don't wait for that moment. If you're feeling a tug and you're not sure, examine yourself, take a good look and think is there something that I need to quit? Is there a dead end in my life?
Speaker 1:I hope that if you're listening, you gain some kind of clarity from this conversation and you begin asking the questions that will help you find your way home to your answers. I would love to have conversations with you. I want this to be a dialogue, not a monologue. So please message me or email me. I would love to hear from you and I would love to talk to you sometime. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you like this episode, please let me know. Stop by social media, on Instagram or my Facebook page, just count me in and please leave a comment. If there's anybody that you think could benefit from this episode, please forward it to them and I look forward to seeing you next time we're all in this together.