When do you harness Grit vs Grace?

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When it comes to your health and wellness, when do you harness grit vs grace? In this episode of Navigating Nourishment, Debbie and Wendy discuss the balance between grit and grace in overcoming adversity, emphasizing the importance of recognizing one’s stories, practicing self-compassion, and maintaining resilience while also being gritty when necessary. They explore the need for balance between discipline and grace in various aspects of life, including fitness, and share practical strategies for self-care and personal growth.

Transcript

edited for readability

Debbie 00:00

There’s so many times, and I’m sure this has probably happened to some of you, where you’re going about your business and doing your activities, doing your thing, and something happens, you get hurt, or you get sick, or plans are canceled, and everything just stops, and you’re mad, upset or depressed because you can’t do what you were going to do, and you just get down on yourself. And so before you know it, a few weeks have gone by, and even though you said, Okay, I’m going to pick myself up after a week, you didn’t, because you just kind of went down that drain, and you find yourself a month later feeling terrible about yourself for not doing anything.

Wendy 00:46

That sounds like someone who is totally derailed.

Debbie 00:50

Yeah, and that happens a lot.

Wendy 00:54

It does. It happens a lot with our clients, if they’ve set out to do something specific, new habit, or if they’ve committed to a specific way of eating, and then don’t do it, they just feel bad about themselves. It’s really demoralizing, and it can have a ripple effect on other places and situations in our life. It can affect our work performance, our workout performance, and our relationships with our friends and our family.

Debbie 01:29

We see it happen all the time. I’m thinking of one of our clients in particular, who was really on a great roll of walking and being active regularly for the first time in her life, where she was really getting in shape and feeling good about herself. And she got injured, and she went down a drain fast because she had worked so hard to get there, and then all of a sudden, it had to stop, and she was told she had to stop by certain people as well, and that just made her go in a completely opposite direction.

Wendy 02:05

Today, we’re going to be talking about grit and grace and that really fine line between the two of them. We’ll talk about how to pick ourselves up and hold intentions with grace AND where we need to be a little bit more gritty.

Debbie 02:25

Just those two words have helped me tremendously because I’ve felt myself starting to circle the drain a few times. I’ve had to say, wait a second here, where’s my grit? I need to just get a little bit of grit right here, and it puts me into a different state of mind. So those two words are very powerful, and that’s what we want to uncover here. Welcome to Navigating Nourishment. This is Debbie.

Questions to ask yourself when you need to decide on grit vs grace

Wendy 02:50

And this is Wendy. We’re so happy you’ve joined us. I think this is such a human nature conversation, and we can apply the idea of grit and grace to anything in our life. And it’s a matter of saying, All right, here’s my situation. Here’s my truth right in this moment:

Do I need to:

muster through this? Or rest?
actually get this out? Or wait till tomorrow?
put in more energy, more determination? Or relax?
focus on this a little bit more?

Am I giving myself excuses or being too soft on myself?

Maybe I’m being lazy?

Maybe you know the story you’re telling yourself and ask. If I put more grit into this specific situation, is it going to move me towards my goal, or is it going to bury me?

Debbie 03:43

That’s a big thing where you mentioned stories, because it really does come down to the stories that we tell ourselves and whether we choose to believe them or not. It’s a matter of looking at yourself objectively, becoming your own coach, and saying: Wait, is that story really true? Do I want to believe that story, and is it serving me? Is it really getting me on the path that I want – being a strong, healthy, vibrant, resilient person? Or is it taking me down that other path?

Are you a perfectionist? or do you know one? Read on…

Wendy 04:20

I have a client who is struggling with perfectionism. Yes, I’m going to use that word.

She’s struggling with trying to be perfect with her family life and her children and her professional life. She is an executive, and she’s got some health problems that have most recently bubbled up, and it’s pretty hardcore. She needs to be very disciplined with her food and also wants to double down on her movement, and so she’s really being hard on herself and being very strict.

And I think when I see this in clients, I literally want to give them a hug and say, You’re being really hard on yourself. You’re trying to change so many things about your life right now. You’ve got a lot of pressure from work in addition to some situations that are new and difficult with kids in school. And I just want to help them breathe for a minute and offer her grace. And we had a really long conversation together about where in her life she can double down on things, and where she needs to let go and be a little bit more soft.

It’s a difficult conversation because it goes back to her stories and her upbringing, it’s about her belief systems. If you were told as a child, in order to get anywhere, you have to work really hard, and you feel like you’re working really hard not getting anywhere, that’s really difficult to unpack, and grace needs to be inserted in there.

It’s a tricky conversation to try to figure out where we need to help clients find their own grit and grace. We hear a lot of excuses. Oh well, I was on vacation… my daughter was home from school…my girlfriends wanted to take me off for my birthday.

Debbie’s story of grit vs grace

Debbie 06:45

And this goes into the all or nothing frame of mind that so many people have: The story – I’m all or nothing. I’m either really disciplined and doing it, or I’m not. And that’s a very black and white way of being when life definitely is a gray area. I’m thinking of myself in this example, because I am pretty disciplined with my habits, and I’ve worked really hard to get here. And that said, it’s summer, and my kids are home from school. It’s rare that the four of us are together.

But last week, we ate late. I try not to eat after seven o’clock, but I wanted to eat with my family. I wanted the four of us to eat together, and it happened three nights in a row where I ate at eight o’clock at night. But for me, it was okay. I can do that. I can give myself some grace, because I’m disciplined, and I keep that habit and I’m gonna go back to that habit. I’m not even afraid of it not happening again. It was like, are those three nights really gonna derail me for the rest of my life? No, because I don’t have the ‘all or nothing’ mindset that I’ve worked really hard not to be.

And so I gave myself grace for those three nights, and I give myself grit for sometimes saying no, I’m not going to eat after seven o’clock. It’s not worth it to me. I really want to sleep well. I don’t want to feel gross afterwards, so I’m going to keep to my seven o’clock. And that’s a place to feel good about yourself because you’re not depriving yourself and at the same time you’re keeping your discipline. Most of the time, it comes back to that 80/20 rule.

Wendy’s story of grit vs grace

Wendy 08:52

I love that story. I think it’s such a good story about keeping to your priorities and consistency of being with family. When we look at our Five Foundations of nutrition, sleep, movement, mindset and connections, sometimes the connection is more important in your example than the nourishment discipline of eating at seven. So we need to take a look at the whole life picture instead of just these single incidents. It’s really looking at the whole week, the whole month.

It’s one of the reasons we have people journal their days. We forget what happens day to day, right? We can start telling ourselves a story that I’m off my discipline and therefore I’m just gonna forget it. Forget it for the rest of the week. That’s where we need a little bit of grit.

For me, I need grit almost every time I have leg day. And I think it has become a little bit of a story for me – that leg day is so hard, I don’t want to do it. Truth is. It is hard. AND I want to do it because I want to be able to garden and not get hurt. I also want to be able to run faster. So the discipline of actually doing leg day is gritty sometimes, and I need to put aside my lack of momentum and just say, just go do it. Then be able to do something else fun that might have more grace to it – like reading.

And I think that’s what we do as health coaches, is ask hard questions to say: Okay, are you being too easy on yourself? Are you not having the discipline, and could you harness more discipline in this situation? OR Do you just need to say, I need a rest?

Debbie 11:12

We just went over this with another client who is going to be getting surgery, and she cannot be active for a few weeks at least, because of her surgery. But her surgery is on the lower part of her body, and once she gets over the anesthesia and everything else, she can still work out the top of her body and maybe even a little bit of her lower body.

That’s gritty – don’t just stop. Stopping is the all or nothing because of whatever happened. Find out where you can do things, and it’s not going to look the same. It’s not going to be the same as what you’re used to or what you used to do. The grit is in finding how you can still do something and not do nothing. And so that’s where we’re saying to her, all right, where’s your grit? How are you going to get this going so that you can still feel good despite not being able to do what you want to do?

Finding grit vs grace during injury and recovery.

Wendy 12:21

Well, this is such an important point. When we’re injured, most of us are told to stop. There is wonderful science saying how much movement affects our circulation. It’s a whole other podcast about working through pain and trying to figure out what’s right for you and what’s not.

I have another story through my husband. One of his first clients when he started doing personal training was a man who was an avid golfer and had never been to a gym before, never lifted weight, and he had hurt his shoulder and was trying to rehab back to being able to play golf. Unfortunately, he was told by a medical professional that he would no longer have the same mobility, and he needed to learn how to adjust to that, and he was devastated by the information.

And fast forward two years, he has wonderful mobility. He’s out on the golf course, and it’s because he chose grit – he kept showing up for the workouts, and if it was too painful, they made adjustments to the move, so it was still giving him enough stress to build muscle, but not too much stress to go backwards and cause pain. And that’s the sweet spot of all these choices that we’re talking about.

Debbie 14:09

It’s really a subjective judgment of grit and grace. But if you really think about it, I think intuitively, people really know when to give themselves grit and when to give themselves grace, and if they have trouble with that. Of course, there are people like us, as coaches or friends who can help you figure that out, so you won’t feel like you’re flailing on your own trying to figure out when do I push myself, or when do I not?

Mindset is key to decide grit vs grace

Wendy 14:39

I think our mindset is the key there. Going back to what we said in the beginning, understanding our stories and understanding where we have more agency and choice and recognizing patterns. We can start new every day, every meal, every run, every tennis match, every moment is new. Yep, it’s a new opportunity. And as we tell our clients every day – on Monday, you might be rocking it and feeling really strong, and on Thursday you’re just depleted, you can’t make any more choices. So maybe that’s the time to give grace, or maybe that’s the time to double down and do it anyway. A choice.

Debbie 15:33

That’s right, only you know.

Wendy 15:37

So it’s a conundrum, and it’s definitely something that we need to practice in all sorts of places in our life.

Debbie 15:45

You know a lot of these anecdotes, all these stories that we come up with, come from our clients and groups. And so this is our opportunity to tell you that we’re going to be starting a couple new groups this fall. We’ll have them on Zoom and we’ll have them in person. We know we have people all over the world who listen to our podcast. Our audience is from the US and also Sweden and Australia, and we love that. So if you’re interested in group work and coaching, we are going to start new groups this fall.

So which do you choose? grit vs grace

Wendy 16:28

To wrap up: Where in your life could you get more gritty, and where in your life can you give some grace?

And, oh, one more thing. This could also translate to our partnerships. Where can I be more graceful with my husband?

Debbie 16:49

Or kids or pets!

So that wraps up this episode of Navigating Nourishment. We hope you find our discussion helpful and inspiring.

Wendy 17:03

Remember your health and wellness journey is a marathon, not a sprint. Remember small, consistent steps over time can lead to significant, lasting changes.

Debbie 17:13

If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe, rate and leave us a review, because your feedback really helps us reach more people.

Wendy 17:22

You can follow us on social media for more tips, updates and inspiration. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Nourish Coaches,

Debbie 17:31

For more resources and information, visit our website at nourishcoaches.com and there you’re going to find some show notes, additional articles, links to other shows and podcasts and resources that we talked about today. Thanks

Wendy 17:44

Thanks for joining us today. Stay nourished, stay healthy, and we’ll see you next time on Navigating Nourishment.