Grit and the Art of the Grind

Hi Frugal Samuraties!

Welcome back to the latest from TheFrugalSamurai.

Can you guys believe that it is the end of February already? Far out, soon it will be Easter, then June 30 (end of financial year), and before you know it we are heading into spring and knocking on the door of Xmas.

Seriously, where oh where does the time fly.

It’s been almost six months since The Frugal Samurai was born (the blog not me, I am older than 6 months), and during that time I’ve written a lot, said a lot and most of all learnt a lot.

That’s why I started the blog and continue to plug away – not just to spout forth my words of wisdom (haha) but also to learn and grow myself.

A couple of friends of mine have been poo-pooing my last post (here) in good humour, and I’m here today to poo-poo their poo-poo.

You see, when I was first caught up in the FIRE (financial independence retire early) movement, I read up and followed as many prominent bloggers as possible.

The more I read, the more I thought that the old timers in the blogging sphere have it easy.

I mean, seems like you just talk about what happened during your day, rope it in with your experiences, whack in some financial “stuff” and away you go – get affiliate marketing, pop a few ads on your website, build a distribution list, and BAM!

Borat voice on “great success” Borat voice off.

“High Five!”

Unfortunately, like anything in life – success seems so easy to achieve for the outsiders looking in than the insiders working out.

It certainly doesn’t help that we live in the digital age – where only the best of us is presented and the rest of us is rejected.

It was only when I started this blog that I received a good proper dose of FACT.

FOOL. Success is anything BUT easy.

There is so much “stuff” to do when you are creating something, anything.

Couple this in with the regular 9 to 5, throw a kid or two in the mix and HOW DO THE OLD TIMERS DO IT?

Answer: they just do.

Because like anything – it is hardest when you first start out, when you have that blank piece of nothingness in front of you, that’s when the difficulty rating is set to extreme.

But the cliché is that every journey begins with a single step, every relationship starts with hello and every great blog starts with a single word.

So next time The Frugal Samurai you ffff – when you don’t want to hit the gym because you’re “tired from work” (you fat, lazy bastard) or you don’t want to commit to your Wednesday/Sunday blogging schedule (you fat, lazy bastard) – remember the number one lesson you’ve learnt from this blog.

Grit.

Grit is by a country mile my biggest takeaway from this journey so far, perseverance, resilience and consistency – keep on banging away at that door, and sooner or later it will open by will or by till.

You gotta have grit, you gotta grind it out.

Grinding away at anything until it is ground to nothingness.

Work’s pretty intense? Just grind away.

Relationship problems? Grind it through.

Life’s too hard? Keep grinding.

But the majority of us do not want to just “grind” – because grinding is insanely hard, it’s unrewarding, sweaty, hard yakka – it involves doing work above and beyond the required norm.

Why is it that we can do the job expected of us in our 9 to 5’s – but the overwhelming majority of us cannot do the job expected from ourselves?

Where is the grind people!

Where?

Possibly, because we are stuck in our comfort zone – best to watch others with their dreams, their visions, their failures – I’m fine with this seat in the crowd thanks, let the drama unfold!

There’s safety in numbers, after all safety first right?

But come on, it’s the end of February already – that crowd is still going to be there in December.

There’s always going to be an excuse, when we are young – we just wanted to run around and be free. Goals were just two sticks to kick a soccer ball through.

Then as we get older – time accelerates, we want to be free but can’t run.

The question is when are you going to work on your goals – if not now when, if not you who?

What do you think? Did you enjoy this post? Please help me out if you enjoyed this and click on the little “follow” button at the bottom right and be a follower. This way, you’ll never miss my words of awesomeness!