Episode 1 – What is G.R.I.T. – Give, Recognize, Implement, Time®? (The G.R.I.T. Podcast)

Episode Transcript

Welcome everybody to the first ever episode of Strive For More’s G.R.I.T – Give, Recognize, Implement, Time® Podcast. I’m your host, Steve Nathenson, CEO and founder of Strive For More, and I’m hugely excited to have this opportunity to bring what I do with my coaching clients on a daily basis to you, the listeners.

That’s really what prompted this podcast was to see the impact that I have and that I am able to create with my clients and in their lives and be able to share that on a much wider scale with you is what’s really prompted this podcast to come forward. To be able to share G.R.I.T. – Give, Recognize, Implement, Time® with you.

So over the course of this podcast, there’s going to be a wide range of episode types and content, all revolving around harnessing our G.R.I.T. – Give, Recognize, Implement, Time®, to empower ourselves and to overcome the negativity in our lives, and the one promise I will always hold true to for you is to give you very tangible, actionable steps that apply to your life right now and that you can easily do and do it in a very concise and easy manner to follow.

So with that, let’s go ahead and dive in. Let’s talk about what is G.R.I.T. – Give, Recognize, Implement, Time®? Simply put, it is a process, a mantra, a method, to empower ourselves and to overcome negativity in our lives, and in short, it will help us stay focused on what we want. Help us overcome the obstacles and the challenges we face, and achieve the success we’re looking to. So what does that really mean? Today I’m going to get into an overview of what G.R.I.T. is, how it applies, and then into subsequent episodes we’ll dive more deeply into each part of it.

So G.R.I.T. – Give, Recognize, Implement, Time® starts with giving ourselves permission to be human. What that means is it’s okay to be who we are. We’re not alone in that, we all share in this human condition, and that’s okay, and it’s okay that we have a dual nature. We have ups and downs, positives and negatives, or what I like to call serving and non-serving sides. Because when we talk about positives or negatives and we get to negatives, typically there’s this connotation of something’s bad, something shouldn’t happen, and it can either keep us down, or frustrate us even further, versus when we characterize something as serving or not serving, it’s helpful or it’s not helpful. So I like to use some different words to help already start shifting that mindset that it’s okay to be who I am. It’s okay to have both parts to me and I’m not alone in that and I can control the way that I feel, I think and I behave, and most importantly, that there is hope. There is a path forward and we are capable of walking it to what we want to achieve. That’s what giving ourselves permission to be human really truly means.

The next step is recognize. Recognize we always have a choice. Whether we see it or not, that choice is always there. It’s always there for us to take, and it’s up to us to choose it. We can either let what doesn’t serve us keep us down, put us in this downward spiral that could spin out of control, all these thoughts that don’t serve us, these feelings that don’t serve us, engage in maybe these behaviors and these actions that don’t help us either as well and one of my co-hosts agrees with this as well, so throughout this podcast, you may hear some wonderful viszlas popping up now and again. Those are my two fur children and they will often be part of this podcast as well.

So part of recognize is making that choice of, “Hey, the serving side is possible for me to engage,” and to do that, it’s okay that the non-serving came up. I can be aware of it, I can recognize that it’s happening, and embrace that, “You know what? That’s a part of me,” and it’s okay because I have that choice to engage in what does serve me, what will help me get to where I want to go. The positive side, the feelings, the thoughts, the behaviors that are actually going to get me to where I want to go. That choice is and will always be ours to make. That’s what recognize is about.

Implement, the third step in G.R.I.T. – Give, Recognize, Implement, Time®, is implementing small steps. One small manageable step at a time. Because when we do that, we create small wins that build confidence, build momentum, and importantly form a foundation upon which our success is truly built because we keep climbing higher and higher and higher each step that we take, and that’s what implement is all about. One small, easy, manageable step to build confidence and create momentum.

The last part of G.R.I.T. is time, and it’s literally time. Because it takes time for us to change as human beings and we often can get sucked into there’s not enough time or it should have happened already. But giving ourselves permission to take the time we need to change and allow the time for us to change is an integral part of this, especially when we’re talking about perhaps behaviors that we’ve done for 30 years. Allowing ourselves the time to overcome those, to change, to shift, to grow.

That’s what Give, Recognize, Implement, Time is. This method, this process, this mantra to help us stay focused, overcome, achieve the success we want by empowering ourselves and overcoming that negativity in our lives. As I said in subsequent episodes, we’re going to dig more fruitfully into each part of G.R.I.T., but for now, I want to share a brief story with you from my own life of how G.R.I.T. has been possible and present.

It starts in 2014 when I was an FBI agent working security for the 2014 Ironman World Championships in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. Before that point, I thought people doing Ironmans and marathons were crazy. I didn’t see that there was any reason why I would ever want to run 26.2 miles, let alone do 140.6 miles swimming, biking and running. But when I got that opportunity to work security and see how much people put aside all of the differences that cause problems today, that we see … It didn’t matter who you were, where you were from, everybody was cheered on because the crowd recognized how much of a beast that race is and the atmosphere is so incredible that at that time, I said, “This is something I have to be a part of.” I was inspired by that.

But as I found out, I went through the journey to become an Ironman, it took me just a little bit over five years to even get my toe at the start line to an Ironman. I had to go through every single step of G.R.I.T. along the way. I had to give myself permission to be human, of going through the ups and the downs of training, getting injured, rehabbing, going through the process to rebuild to where I was, and having to overcome the challenges that come mentally with here’s where I was, why can’t I get back to that? I had to allow myself that it’s okay to go through this journey where you go in a route that is not straight, it’s more of like a sine wave. Going up and down, right? We maybe take two steps forward and one step back. I had to be okay with that and learn to mentally give myself that permission that it’s okay for that to happen.

In those moments, I could also allow myself to get trapped in that mentality of here’s where I was, why can’t I be back there or it’s never going to happen for me, or embrace that, you know what? Those are natural thoughts that come out, but that’s okay because I know that I am capable of embracing their opposites. Embracing what’s going to help me get to where I want to go and engage in the behavior, the training, the mentality, that will lead to me creating enough endurance to be able to do an Ironman event and that it was going to take steps, small steps, running a marathon, doing a half-Ironman, doing even triathlons. I hadn’t done a triathlon actually at that point when I started five years ago along this journey. So small steps along the way to build up to where I wanted to go, creating that foundation, building that momentum to get me where I wanted and literally time. It took me five years with everything to get to the start of Ironman [inaudible 00:09:46] last year and that process of G.R.I.T. was hugely present throughout it. Giving myself permission, recognizing the choices that I had, taking it one small step at a time by implementing those small steps, and literally giving myself time.

It’s not only this five-year journey but it’s in that race as well there’s times that I had to embrace that I had positive thoughts and I had negative thoughts. Or like I said, I like to call them serving and non-serving thoughts, and it’s okay for that to come out during that race, and I have a choice during that race to embrace what’s not going to serve me or what will serve me and allow me to keep pedaling forward and get through that headwind and get off the bike and start running, and that I could do that by literally putting one small step at a time, one foot in front of the other and that it’s going to take time to get to that mileage and it’s going to take time perhaps when I’m having a really time on the bike in the wind or maybe I’m having a really bad time in that marathon, it’s going to take for me some time to overcome that, whether it’s five seconds, five minutes, 20 minutes, and that’s okay.

G.R.I.T. applies everywhere, not only in the moment, but along the entire journey, and that is what I am truly, truly excited to be sharing with you and I can’t wait for not only diving into each step of this further but also the other great content we’re going to have throughout this podcast with interviews of people who have really been there and done things in life that harness their own mentality in all aspects and be able to share that with you. So I hope you enjoyed today. I can’t wait for next time and until then, be the movement in your life.

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