Your Purpose Has a Plan. Now Do You Have the Grit to See It Through?

In Part 1 of this series, I showed you that your purpose is not missing. It is disguised as something you already do for free. 

In Part 2, I gave you the exact 7-step blueprint to turn that purpose into a concrete plan.

But there is a third thing nobody warns you about. And it is the reason most people quit.

It is not that they lacked purpose. It is not that they did not have a plan. It is that they hit a stretch where they were doing everything right and nothing was showing. They reached a messy middle where they were putting in the work, making the sacrifices, staying up late, waking up early, pushing through discomfort, and the results were not there yet.

And in that stretch, something inside them whispered: “Maybe this is not for you.”

If you are in that stretch right now, I need you to stay with me through this entire post. 

Because today, I am going to give you the two things that will carry you through every silent, thankless, invisible season between where you are and where your purpose is taking you.

Those two things are mental grit and patience. And I promise you, by the time you finish reading, you will understand both of them in a way you never have before.

The Discipline Trap: “I Have To” vs. “I Choose To”

Let me start by dismantling something you probably believe about yourself.

You might think you are a disciplined person. And maybe you are, in certain areas. You show up to work every single day. You meet your deadlines. You answer to your boss. You deliver what is expected of you. And that is real discipline.

But here is the question I want you to sit with: 

Is your discipline powered by consequences, or by identity?

There is a massive difference.

At work, the consequences are immediate and real. If you do not show up, you get a query. If you underperform, your salary gets reviewed. If you keep dropping the ball, you get terminated. 

The gap between effort and outcome is short, and the cost of falling behind is sharp enough to keep you moving. So you show up. You perform. You deliver. Not necessarily because you love the work, but because the consequences of not doing it are fast, visible, and sometimes very painful.

Now let me ask you something uncomfortable.

You are faithful to your employer’s goals every single day. But when was the last time you were faithful to your own?

You will wake up at 5am for a meeting your boss scheduled. Will you wake up at 5am for the purpose God placed inside you?

You will stay late to finish a report that has a deadline. But that book you said you would write, that business you said you would start, that skill you said you would develop, those things have been on your list for years. And you keep pushing them back. Not because you are lazy. You are clearly not lazy. You show up for work every single day to prove that!

The problem is that the consequences for neglecting your own goals are not fast enough to scare you into action. 

Nobody is going to fire you for not pursuing your purpose. Nobody is going to cut your salary because you did not post that content, did not open that business account, did not register that course. 

The deadline is not next Friday. The result is not next month. And so you keep postponing.

And here is the part that really needs to be said: 

The cushion of a monthly salary makes it worse. 

Because every month, money comes in. Bills get paid. Life goes on. And that monthly comfort validates every excuse you make. It whispers, “You are fine. There is no rush. You can start next month.” And next month becomes next year. And next year becomes “I wish I had started when I first thought about it.”

You are showing up faithfully for someone else’s vision every single day while cheating on your own. And the reason is not laziness. It is that your entire system of discipline is built on external pressure. When the consequences are fast, you move. When the consequences are slow, you stall.

If that describes you, I am not here to shame you. I am here to show you how to get past the need for constant external motivation to pursue your purpose.

It starts with two words: Mental grit. 

And it works differently from anything you have ever relied on before.

The First Key: Mental Grit Is Not What You Think It Is

Most people think mental grit is what kicks in when life gets hard. You lose the job, you push through. You get the bad news, you hold it together. Something breaks, you keep going.

And yes, grit does show up in those moments. But here is what most people miss: 

Grit is not something you put on when trouble comes. It is something you build before trouble arrives.

You would never walk into a gym for the first time on the day of a competition and expect to perform excellently. That would be madness! 

But that is exactly what some people do with their minds. They live passively, they run away from every form of discomfort, they choose convenience every time, often to the detriment of their goals, and then when life throws something heavy at you, you wonder why you crumble under the weight.

The reason is simple. Your mental grit muscle was never trained.

I have watched this happen over and over. People hear the word “grit” and they try to make up their minds and say, “Okay, I am going to be tough now.” And then hours later they can’t even push through something like the discomfort of waking up early to invest in themselves.

Yet, somehow they believe that if they sit around waiting for a hard situation to come along they will be able to demonstrate the mental fortitude of pushing through and prove how tough they are. 

But here is what actually happens: 

When tough situations do come, they lose the battle because their mental grit muscle is too weak to push through. 

They discover that their old habits keep winning. The same patterns show up. The same excuses return. The new self they are trying to become keeps losing the war to the old self they are trying to leave behind.

And the reason is that their approach to grit is completely passive. They are waiting for the battle to come to them. But that is not how a soldier trains. A soldier trains in peacetime so that when the war starts, their body already knows what to do.

This is exactly what I teach in the Vision and Purpose Mastery Webinar: how to build the internal structure that holds your purpose in place when everything external is shaking. 

If you have been finding that your motivation comes and goes, that you start strong and lose steam, the webinar walks you through how to create a system of discipline that is anchored in identity, not in feelings.

Are You Training Your Mind or Just Hoping It Holds Up?

Mental grit is a muscle. And the best way to build it is to maintain daily reps of making sometimes tough choices. I created a free Mental Grit Tracker that gives you a simple daily framework:

One hard thing, tied to one goal, logged every day for 30 days. Print it, fill it in, and watch yourself become more faithful to yourself and to your goals

Learn to Build A “Hot Mind”

I want you to picture this because it will completely change the way you’ve been showing up for your goals.

Think about how seriously people train their bodies. Especially women, and I say this with love, think about how we prioritise our glutes, our hips, our abs. We will wake up at 5am. We will track our meals. We will push through soreness, exhaustion, and every excuse our bodies try to give us. All because we want a strong, hot summer body that looks and feels amazing.

Now let me ask you: 

when was the last time you trained your mind with that same intensity?

I want you to have what I call a “hot mind.” Not just a mind that survives difficulty, but a mind that has been so well trained through the practice of daily, intentional, sometimes tough decision making. The same way a fit body is built through daily reps, a strong mind is built through daily choices.

Look at athletes. I am fascinated by what they are able to endure. You watch them push through injury, push through cramps in the middle of a race, push through the kind of pain that would make the average person stop and say, “I cannot do this anymore.” But they keep going.

And the reason they can keep going in the race is not because they are a different species. It is because they trained for it. They built that capacity rep by rep, day by day, long before the race started. The race did not create their grit. It revealed it.

Your life works the same way. The hard seasons, the setbacks, the moments that test your commitment to your purpose, they do not create your grit. They reveal whether or not you have been building it.

How To Build An Unshakable Mental Grit

The Daily Practice: One Hard Thing, One Goal

So how do you actually build mental grit? Here is the practice.

Every single day, do one difficult thing and tie it to one of your goals.

Not random suffering. Not punishing yourself for the sake of it. An intentional choice connected to where you are trying to go.

If your goal is better health, the daily hard thing might be waking up 30 minutes earlier to move your body, even when every part of you wants to stay in bed.

If your goal is financial freedom, the daily hard thing might be putting money into your savings before you spend on anything else, even when there is something you want to buy right now.

If your goal is building your purpose, the daily hard thing might be creating content, studying your craft, or showing up on a platform even when nobody is watching and the results are nowhere in sight.

The specific action matters less than the principle: 

you are choosing discomfort on purpose, daily, and connecting it to something that matters to you.

Lisa Nichols put it perfectly: 

Your comfort zone and your dreams do not live on the same block. You cannot stay where it is easy and arrive where it is extraordinary. The road between those two places is paved with daily, intentional, uncomfortable choices.

And here is what happens when you start doing this consistently: the war of “becoming” gets easier. You start to win the war between the old self who wants comfort and the new self who is reaching for more. 

Not because the old self disappears, but because the new self gets stronger. Rep by rep. Day by day. Until one morning, you realise that the person you were trying to become is the person who showed up today.

The Identity Shift: “Have To” Vs “Choose To” 

The secret to building unshakable mental grit and self-discipline lies in shifting your mindset from external obligation (‘I have to’) to identity (‘I choose to’) 

If the discipline you had was built on external consequences. “I have to, otherwise I get fired.” 

That kind of discipline has an expiry date: The moment the external pressure lifts or collapses.

But true mental grit is not built on consequences. It is built on identity.

You do not do the hard thing because you are afraid of what happens if you do not. You do the hard thing because of who you have decided to become. It is not “I have to, otherwise…” It is “I choose to, because this is who I am.”

That is the foundation of grit. Faithfulness to yourself. Faithfulness to your promises. Faithfulness to your goals. Not because someone is watching. Not because there is a deadline. Not because the consequences are fast enough to scare you into action. But because you made a decision about who you are, and every day you choose that person over the version of you that wants to stay comfortable.

When you reach that place, procrastination loses its power. Self-sabotage loses its grip. Because you are no longer operating from fear. You are operating from identity. And identity does not take days off.

This is exactly the kind of transformation I see in the Excellence Elite community. People who join and start showing up daily, posting their wins, sharing their hard choices, holding each other accountable. 

The community becomes the environment where your new identity gets reinforced. Because it is much harder to go back to the old self when you are surrounded by people who are cheering for the new one.

The Strategy Most People Miss

Now, let me speak directly to people of faith. Because I have seen too many people who pray and trust God but do not have the courage to pursue their goals.

In the book of Joshua, after years of wandering in the wilderness, God finally brings the Israelites to the edge of the Promised Land. And before Joshua leads them in, God says something that, if you read it carefully, reveals everything about how grit and faith work together.

God says: “Be strong and of good courage.”

Now, why would God tell Joshua to be courageous if everything was going to be easy? The answer is that it was not going to be easy but victory was assured. There were real battles ahead. Real enemies. Real danger. The land was promised, but it was not going to be handed over without a fight.

And here is the part that challenges me every time I read it. God says, “I have given you the land.” Present tense. It is already yours. But you still have to go in and take it. The promise does not eliminate the fight. The promise gives you the confidence to fight and the assurance of victory.

Later in the book of Judges, something heartbreaking happens. The Israelites settle in the land, but they do not drive out all the enemy nations. And when God asks them why, their answer sounds painfully familiar:

“They refused to be driven out.”

In other words: the problem was too tough. The situation was unyielding. We tried, but they would not leave. So we just… lived with it.

And God’s response is the part I need you to hear. He told them that because they refused to push through and clear out what needed to go, those very things would become thorns in their flesh. Permanent irritations. Unresolved problems that would keep coming back, again and again, precisely because they stopped fighting too soon.

I think about this all the time. How many of us are living with thorns that were supposed to be victories? 

How many unfinished battles have we accepted as permanent features of our lives simply because the fight felt too hard and the results were not coming fast enough?

God expected them to come to Him for the strategy. Not to sit with the situation and accept defeat. He expected them to say, “This enemy is not moving. What do I do?” And He would have given them the plan. But they did not ask. They settled. And what they refused to confront became the thing that tormented them.

If you are a person of faith, you have an advantage that I do not want you to waste. You can ask God for the strategy. You can go to Him and say, “I am doing everything I know how to do and it is not enough. Show me what I am missing.” And He will. But you have to stay in the fight. Do not return to shore, but learn to ride the storms.

And whether or not you are a person of faith, the principle still applies: 

Just because you are doing your best does not mean you are doing everything that is needed. 

You might be doing all that you know right now, but that does not mean there is nothing left to learn. Get more knowledge. Seek counsel. Go outside the boundaries of what is familiar. Sometimes the breakthrough is not about pushing harder. It is about pushing differently.

If you are at that point, where you have been doing the work but you feel stuck and you need someone to help you see what you are missing, that is exactly what the Vision-to-Reality 1-on-1 Consultation is for.

It is a personalised session where I sit with you, understand your unique situation, and help you develop a strategy that is tailored to your season, your gifts, and your goals. Click here to get more clarity for your life

🎁Your gift: Try this today

The Second Key: Patience (It’s Not What You Think)

Mental grit is the first key. But it has a partner, and most people misunderstand this partner completely.

The second key is patience.

Now, before you tune out because you have heard this word a thousand times, let me tell you what patience is not. Patience is not sitting still and hoping things work out. Patience is not waiting passively and calling it trust. Patience is not doing nothing and dressing it up as faith.

Patience is the attitude you carry and the work you do while you wait for the harvest.

Think about a farmer. A farmer plants seeds, waters the ground, tends to the soil, and then waits. But the waiting is not passive. While the harvest is growing underground, the farmer is maintaining the field, pulling weeds, checking the soil, strengthening the irrigation, and preparing for the harvest that has not arrived yet.

That is patience. It is a state of increase. A state of learning, refining, strengthening relationships and partnerships, helping others on the same journey, and looking forward with confidence that the harvest is coming.

Even in sport, patience is built into the process. You do not walk into a gym on day one and lift 50 kilograms. You start with what you can handle. You build strength through daily reps. You increase the weight gradually. And you trust the process, not because you can see the results today, but because you understand that every rep is doing something beneath the surface that will show up in time.

Your purpose journey works the same way. There will be seasons where the growth is invisible. Where you are doing the work but the fruit has not appeared yet. Where you look around and it seems like everyone else is further ahead, growing faster, getting results sooner.

In those seasons, patience is not the voice that says “just wait.” Patience is the voice that says, “Keep going. Keep learning. Keep building. The harvest is coming, and when it arrives, you will be ready for it because you did not waste the waiting.”

The 4-Part Framework for Unshakable Mental Grit 

In Post 1, you identified your purpose. In Post 2, you built your plan. And today, you have the two things that will carry you through every silent, slow, invisible season in between.

Mental grit: the daily, intentional practice of pushing through challenges and choosing discomfort on purpose to achieve your goals. Built through identity, not fear.

Patience: the active, engaged, faithful posture of growing, learning, and preparing while waiting for the big break. 

When you have all four: purpose, plan, grit, and patience, you become a person of unshakable tenacity that achieves remarkable results. Not because life gets easier, but because you have trained yourself to outlast the difficulty.

And that, more than talent, more than resources, more than connections, is what separates the people who fulfil their purpose from the people who just talk about it.

The question is not whether the hard season will come. It will…

The question is: will you be ready when it does? Will you let difficulties deter you from fulfilling your purpose?

Start building your grit today. Not tomorrow. Not when things get hard. Today.

Do one hard thing. Tie it to your goals. Every single day.

And watch the person you are becoming start to win.

You Do Not Have to Build This Alone

The hardest part about building mental grit is doing it in isolation. When nobody around you understands what you are building, when your circle does not share your vision, when you feel like the only one swimming against the tide, your grit gets tested faster than anything else.

That is why the Excellence Elite community exists. It is a space where people who are actively building their purpose come together to stay accountable, share real-time progress, and push each other through the seasons that feel invisible. When your grit is running low, this community refuels it.

When someone in the Excellence Elite says, “I posted my first video today,” the whole community celebrates with them. When someone says, “I am struggling and I almost quit this week,” they get real support from people who understand because they are in the same fight.

If you are serious about sustaining momentum, do not try to do it alone. Join the Excellence Elite and let us walk this road together.

And if you need personalised, one-on-one guidance through a season that feels overwhelming, the Vision-to-Reality 1-on-1 Consultation is designed exactly for that. Click here to book a session with me, and let’s draft out a strategy to help you hit your goals.

In the final post of this Mapping Month series, I am going to bring everything together. We have covered purpose, plan, and grit. But there is one more piece that ties it all together: how to evaluate your progress, recalibrate when you have gone off course, and build a rhythm of reflection that keeps you aligned with where you are going. 

Because the people who sustain long-term success are not the ones who never lose their way. They are the ones who know how to find it again.

Go Deeper: Vision and Purpose Mastery

If this series has been speaking to you, if you have been reading along and feeling the stirring but you need guided, structured help putting it all together, my Vision and Purpose Mastery Replay is a 5-hour webinar where I walked over 400 attendees through the complete framework: uncovering purpose, crafting vision, building the plan, and developing the mental and spiritual stamina to see it through.

This is the same framework you have been reading about across this entire Mapping Month series, delivered in depth with live examples and guided exercises.

Over 400 people have been transformed through this programme. The next one could be you. Click here to watch the webinar

FAQ

I understand mental grit intellectually, but I still cannot make myself do the hard thing. What am I doing wrong?

You are probably still operating from a consequence-based system. You are waiting to feel motivated or waiting for the stakes to get high enough to force you into action. That is the old model. The shift is to tie your daily hard thing to your identity, not to a consequence. Ask yourself: “What would the person I am becoming do right now?” Then do that. Even if it is small. Even if nobody sees it. The reps are what build the muscle, not the size of the weight.

How do I stay patient when everyone around me seems to be progressing faster?

Their timeline is not your timeline. And what you see on the outside rarely reflects what is happening on the inside. Patience is not about speed. It is about posture. Are you learning? Are you growing? Are you building? If the answer is yes, the harvest is coming. It does not arrive on your schedule, but it does arrive for people who do not stop tending the field.

What if I have been pursuing my purpose for a long time and it genuinely feels like it is not working?

Ask yourself honestly: am I doing everything that is needed, or am I doing everything I currently know? Those are two different things. Sometimes the breakthrough is not about working harder. It is about getting new knowledge, seeking counsel, and going outside the boundaries of what is familiar. The strategy you have been using might have taken you as far as it can. That does not mean the journey is over. It means the approach needs to evolve.

How does faith factor into building grit?

If you are a person of faith, you have a strategic advantage. You can ask God for the strategy, not just the strength. Too many believers pray for endurance but never ask for direction. God told Joshua the land was already his, but Joshua still had to go in and take it. The promise does not eliminate the fight. It gives you the confidence to fight. So stay in the fight, and ask for the strategy.