A couple of weeks ago I published an article that covered three lies of the grind culture. Motivational speakers, YouTube sensations, and Instagram peddlers make their living preaching the grind. Ironically, many of these folks don’t quite live the message they preach and as a result, the grind has some lies. I found that the grind culture pushes false messages of “more is better”, busy is the way to win, and sleep is for losers. I stand by those ideas and I feel the need to give the other side.
After the blog went out, I got some fun responses from people via social media and email. Many found the three lies helpful as they navigate our culture of constant action. However, some seemed to interpret the ideas in some form of, “the grind is all wrong.” That’s not what I meant to say. As I said then, the grind is a tool for us to pursue excellence and operate with love. We have to know when and how to turn it on and turn it off. A constant grind is not a sustainable lifestyle, but it is necessary at times.
This weekend let’s dive into three truths of the grind. You know, in the name of equal space.
Truth #1: Most of us in modern society need to lean into the grind more than we need to lean away from it
Most of the responses I got to the “three lies” article focused on the need for balance and I can’t agree more. Particularly for some of the men who commented, a focus on balance would be good as they are some of the hardest grinders I’ve ever met. But I also heard from some that, to be honest, I have to push back on.
The majority need more grind, not less. Here are some reasons for it. The average American adult watches 4 hours and 27 minutes of TV a day (statista, 2019). You might say, “psh, I’m a millennial, I don’t watch TV”. Ok, well IndieWire (2020) found that the average American is spending nearly 8 hours a day on streaming services. The average American also walks 3,000 – 4,000 steps per day which in my own research as a work from home-r is about what you get going to the kitchen and back throughout a regular day. We also know that the average person spends 10% of their life working. Wait, did you hear that right? Seems crazy with all the long work weeks but go from ages 18-65, take out weekends and 4 weeks of off time per year, and there you are – 10%. To top it off, the CDC recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio exercise each week, that’s 21 minutes a day. Guess how many get it…23%. Let’s be honest, the CDC isn’t exactly setting a high bar for fitness either.
Cool stats but let me also get more personal. I’ve been involved with fitness for over half my life. I was also a fitness professional for 6 years throughout college and have been working out in some capacity since I was 14. At that time, I can honestly say I thought I was pushing myself to some great limits. I gained muscle, got consistent with training and diet, and did some hard workouts. I trained with bodybuilders, Crossfitters, and powerlifters. I knew what pain was, right? Recently though, I’ve realized just how many limits I was putting on my fitness, just how little I understood the grind, and how much I needed to lean into it. I decided about 6 months ago that I was going to switch gears from lifting for size and jump into preparation for an Ironman. I had never run more than a few miles and my only bike was a mountain bike that hadn’t been ridden in years. I know an Ironman is nothing to people like Rich Roll or David Goggins, but to me, it was huge. Six months in, I can say that endurance is unlike anything else in fitness. I don’t want to offend the lifters out there because that can be brutal but there is something different about wanting to quit an hour in and knowing you aren’t even halfway. The grind becomes reality in nearly every workout. Looking back, I needed to lean into the grind way more than I needed to lean away from it for my fitness.
Chances are high you too, need to grind more, not less. You need to focus on how to turn it on, not how to turn it off. For some of you, balance is the key right now but for most of you, your scale is tipped too far away from grind right now.
Truth #2: If you want it, you’ll have to work for it
Hard work is necessary. You can’t escape it. When you are reaching for new heights, you will have a full schedule and a really crappy balance between the various piece of your life (I refuse the notion of work-life balance but I can get into that another time).
Work gets a bad rap in millennial and younger circles. The goal of a good life seems to be to avoid work at all costs. The grind though, preaches the opposite, that work is the way to the good life and even a major component of it. Work can mean different things for different people but its basic definition is, “activity involving effort done to achieve a purpose”. Work simply means taking action toward a result you want or need. Don’t overcomplicate it. The grind is right, work is the only path and when you start on the path you learn to love the work. Sometimes you have to be patient, but you can never sit on your hands and just wait.
You don’t get what you want, you get what you work for.
Truth #3: You better love the process because the product won’t be guaranteed
The grind preaches to love the process. Every speaker with the grind message from Andy Frisella and Jocko Willink to Joshua Metcalf and Kevin Dashazo, right up to Sylvester Stallone in Creed preach the process. Inky Johnson summed it up when he said plainly, “the process is more important than the product.” Every one of these inspirational figures knows that process matters more than the outcome because it is where you grow and change. The process is what prepares you to handle the product.
Just like this blog and everything else I hope to do, I’m having to learn to love the process. Let me be honest – it’s a steep learning curve. Just last week, I almost gave up because it didn’t seem worth it. As if six months of writing blogs would take my message to the world. It doesn’t work that way. I know it, the grind knows it, and you should too.
Loving process is perhaps the deepest truth of the grind culture. If you live for the validation of an outcome, you’re pretty much guaranteed to not get there. Consider Frisella who made less than $10 his first day in business and had to sleep in the back of the store for months before it started to take off. Or the famous story of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson who went to LA with $7 in his pocket and nothing else to his name. Take someone like Brene Brown who was a psychology professor with a message about vulnerability for her students before she found her way to the Ted stage and became an international figure. Frisella was focused on the next sale, The Rock put his effort into the next gig, and Brown wasn’t working all those years in her Ph.D. program with the Ted talk in mind. Each one embraced the process and when the opportunity came to attain the product, they could fully step into it, truly shine, and appreciated it more.
The grind is right, love the process not the product.
The grind is not a lifestyle, it is a tool to get where you want to go. It carries false notions and unhealthy views, but it also holds truth for many of us in the modern world of mediocrity norms and comfort above all else. When you decide what it is you want to chase – a healthier body, a fitness goal, a new habit, starting a company, raising a family – these three truths will set in. If you want to do well, you’ll have to turn on the grind, stop making excuses, learn to work harder than you knew you could, and love the process.
Weekend Challenge
I hope you can use some time this weekend to take an honest look at yourself and your relationship with the grind. Maybe you grind too much and need to lean into the three lies, or you tend not to grind enough, and these truths are important for you.
Either way, take a few minutes this weekend to reflect on it. Write some thoughts in a journal or just take a walk and really evaluate where you stand. Be careful not to oversimplify though. You’ll find that in some areas of your LIFE you need more grind and in others, you need less. Don’t fall into the trap of “all-or-nothing” (that was, after all, the main point of the three lies article).
Have a good weekend, all! Oh, and please go vote before or on Tuesday. I won’t give you my insight on who to vote for, but our country needs your engagement and participation. My only push is for you to do some research, to think for yourself on your vote. Forget about the R and D next to names and instead vote based on what you can come to know about each position.
Best today. Better tomorrow.