Monday Motivation: Connecting to your GRIT

If you were to come up with a meaning of GRIT in your life, what would it say? I know for me it is the ability to keep showing up in my life even on a tough day. Ya know the day you want to crawl back in bed...we all have them. You might even ask yourself where does one even begin to embrace their GRIT? As a kid I learned to connect to my Faith and belief in God to help me keep moving forward, knowing that God had and still does have a plan for my life.

Then as I grew up I connected to the things that I was able to keep getting better at.

(Basically anything competitive!)

Growing up my in my broken household, it was a negative sharp place to grow up in Come to find out there are a lot of people my age that were raised in the same cycle of abuse...generational brokenness (if you want to give it a word). Physical, mental and emotional abuse from one parent, parenting the only way they knew how too (hence generational brokenness). The brokenness was something I learned to count on daily BUT I also learned that I could count on God through my Faith! So much unfortunately I had to learn to walk on glass at a young age and I wasn't allowed to fail in my own house. When it was go time on the field, on the court or even the rodeo arena I showed up! I protected my time in my events, this was my happy place, my safe space. I was a competitor (still am) and I had to learn at a young age how to embrace my GRIT before GRIT was even defined, let alone, "trending."

As an adult much later, I read a book that is specifically ALL ABOUT GRIT. You very well may have read it too or even heard of it. The first time I read "GRIT" by Angela Duckworth I had an endless amount of "ah-ha" moments, almost like I was a part of her years of study that lead up to such an amazing book on the study of GRIT!

>>SIDE NOTE thank you Angela if by chance this blog ever crosses your path! By dedicating yourself to your work, to you passion to connecting to your own GRIT you helped others understand their origin story of how the gained theirs!

With that knowledge it opened up a space in my mind and in my heart (grace space) to where I started understanding myself even more. As athletes that's what actually makes us BETTER is understanding ones self, what makes us tick but most IMPORTANTLY how we decide to keep showing up! It is in those moments where we find un-hatched strength and push within our passion to keep moving forward.

So athletes quick question: On your worst day to date, how did you show up?

How did you lean into the opportunity to press on in order to connect to your GRIT, even if it was a 20% level out of 100% and yet you just kept going?

Lets take a mental field trip to one of my most recent "bad days."

True story, I had a day where the morning was a mess. Already having to move things around from one vehicle to another in order to accommodate water bottles getting filled, getting 1 of my 3 kids to school, only to drop one off just to check the other one out because he wasn't feeling 100. After that I went to fill the water and wouldn't ya know it the water place is closed until 10am. From there I just sucked it up and went and bought water from a grocery store loaded up and left and literally as I was on my last street a beautiful frantic and scared grey (what looked like) a pretty Pitbull mix was running loose on such a busy street. With everything in me I quickly reacted and pulled to the right of the 5 lane road/street (one being a turning lane) in order to give everyone space to react and pull over and/or stop and the dog juked left and cut right in front of me.

The sound...the sound of hitting a dog is something I can't unhear. The feeling of hitting the dog is something I can't un-feel. I pulled to the curb pushed my hazard lights on, put the vehicle in park and broke down so hard, I was crying so hard. I hit and possibly killed a dog; One of my favorite animals. All I kept thinking was that was someone's dog and I did that. What felt like 30 minutes was more like 2-3minutes of me in shock, I hear my middle son say "Mom, mom people are driving and they aren't seeing you stopped here even with your hazards." He was worried we would be hit. I was stuck in the processing state of my brain as to what just happened. I cried more and screamed, "I have no one to call, what do I do?" "What if the dog is still alive?" ((We just moved to a new city and I don't have people that I can call that live close to me.)) I quickly remembered my oldest doesn't start class until 10:40am. I called him bawling so hard and finally when I could talk and listen to him he said, "Mom you have got to pull to a parking lot." By the grace of God I made it to one. He came to where I was, asked exactly where this happened so he could go get the dog and get it to the vet but