Habit orientated people tend to be pulled by the inertia that they have structured within their lives. They are dedicated the process and at times this rigidity can unleash extraordinary outcomes, conversely, the opposite may become a reality, which can result in a myriad of negative results such as burnout or burned relationships. The question is how do we know when we should commit to a path irrespective of the sacrifices or hardships that may arise?
With so many of you asking me this, and with such a high potential for subjectivity due to
personalisation, it’s very important that we view this through a framework.
The Framework: Aim, Alignment, Grit It, Quit It
Aim
Without knowing where to aim you don’t truly know what the priorities are. As a result, you fill your calendar with redundant tasks and become captive to the dictates of people, places and things that yell at you the loudest for your attention. Aim is not the same thing as purpose, the reality is that many people don’t really know what this is. Aim is a precursor to purpose, it’s a “direction” that you believe is moving you towards “who you want to become”. The key is that you aren’t committed to a set view of this idealised self, rather you are committed to the path of discovery towards that idealised self, this is setting a commitment towards self-actualisation rather than being committed to what self-actualisation looks like. So first, figure out your aim.
Alignment
Once you are clear on where we are aiming, the next step is to start to refine this aim towards a target. You may not have the faintest idea on the target but because you have some vision of your idealised future self, you are at least starting focus. At this stage you start to engage in the activities, develop the networks, and learning processes that will develop the attributes, mindset and capabilities that are moving you forward in your path. It is at this stage that you will start to create multiple opportunities and pathways, it’s critical to start to develop a sense of what options are supporting your aspirations versus the red herrings that will ultimately be timewasters or an energy drain. This is no easy feat, but directly impacts your decision to stay on a path and grit it when times get challenging or to abandon it and quit it.
Grit It
This is the easier part for execution and habit orientated people. Not everything you commit to at first, should remain a commitment until the end. As you continue to align your activities with your aim, you will commence experimentation with various paths. Some of the paths will require greater levels of energy and sacrifice with varying levels of return. As you juggle these opportunities to move towards your idealised self its important to rank them, understand the commitment levels, and how they will integrate with the commitments in other areas of your life. If you find that you are engaged in an activity that once you assess deeply correlates with your aim and the direction you are keen on heading, its time to dig in. This activity is supporting your desire to self-actualise, and because of this, there is no cause more worthwhile implementing grit for. From this position you can look as to what else could be sacrificed or what support structures can you engage to ensure continuity on this path.
Quit It
Knowing when to abandon the activity or pathway requires the same assessment process, but you need to ensure that you are abandoning for the right reasons. Upon assessing, if you find that the activity isn’t quite aligned with your aim, or that it ranks very low in terms of impact versus everything else that you have going on, it is probably worth letting go, especially before burning up too much energy focusing on the wrong thing.
Fundamental Choices
Knowing when to grit it or quit it is fundamental for your travels towards purpose and idealised self, its about learning to align and double down on your aim, whilst letting go and shedding the activities that are not a priority. Keeping in mind its not only what you do that defines you, but also what you don’t do.