Every essay I write seems to come from a real story or question from a client, a friend, my family, or myself.
Sometimes all three.
The universe, it seems, can be persistent.
I guess you can do whatever the hell you want when you’re 14 billion years old.
Lately, the idea of cooperating with life keeps surfacing. In conversations. In coaching. In my own decisions.
And the fact that “cooperating with life” keeps showing up until I finally cooperate with it and write this essay is... well, ironic.
As a younger man, I was intent on bending my future to my will.
Like a blacksmith hammering iron. Heat it. Hit it. Shape it. Repeat.
And to a large degree, that worked - grit has served me incredibly well.
Work harder. Prepare more. Take another shift. One more rep.
You can get a lot accomplished that way (I know I did).
Which is probably why I lived that way for so long.
But grit has a blind spot.
The problem comes when you start believing the hammer is the only tool.
The idea of cooperating with life certainly isn’t new. Taoism has wu wei, often translated as “effortless action” or “non-forcing.” It doesn’t mean sitting around waiting for the universe to deliver DoorDash. It is closer to acting without constantly trying to force reality into submission.
That idea was pretty foreign to me when I first encountered versions of it about sixteen years ago.
Because I had evidence.
Grinding worked.
The Other Guy
I once had a roommate who never planned a damn thing in his life.
“Take it as it comes,” he would say.
And he did.
Plans changed? Fine.
Something fell through? Something else would come along.
He seemed perfectly content to let life unfold and see what happened.
I could never understand it.
Honestly, I still can’t.
If that is you, bravo.
My brain remains much more comfortable with the idea that chance favors the prepared.
And yet I have to concede something.
Some of the very best experiences of my life were not planned.
Some of my biggest accomplishments were not part of some master strategy. People appeared, doors opened.
Something failed and pushed me toward something else.
A random conversation changed the trajectory.
So which is it?
Are we supposed to forge our future through sweat and determination?
Or take life’s lead?
I think the question itself may be the problem.
It assumes we have to pick one.
The Grind
6 a.m.
Get up. Dogs out. Meditate.
Egg whites, 1.5 ounces of chicken and vegetables.
Breakfast with my wife. See my daughter on her way out.
Then “green work,” the stuff that takes the highest amount of creative energy.
That’s me Monday through Friday.
Sometimes I work at night too. Planning. Writing. Thinking.
“One more rep” has been a mantra for me, whether I’m in the gym or in my mental gym.
For a long time, fatigue itself felt like evidence that I was doing it right.
If you live in that gear most of the time, try something.
Stop.
I know... you have stuff to do.
From one recovering workaholic to another, give yourself thirty minutes.
Not to meditate on a mountaintop, but to ask:
- What about this do I actually love? What am I merely enduring so I can get somewhere else?
- Am I getting the results I want?
- What keeps happening that I keep dismissing?
There are absolutely times when hustle is required.
But hustle has taxes.
The question is whether you know what you are paying.
When Grit Becomes Force
I saw this recently at a Help Build Hope wall build.
I was serving as a team lead, and one of the volunteers was trying to drive a nail into the frame. He hit it once. Bent it.
No problem.
He pulled it out and tried again in the same spot - bent it again.
Then - because apparently we are all committed to our patterns - he tried a third time. Same nail. Same hole. Same result.
Bent.
Eventually he looked up and asked for help.
The solution was not some great mystery.
Move the damn nail.
That moment stuck with me because it was funny... and uncomfortably familiar.
How often do we do exactly that in life? Same approach. Same spot. Same force. Same bent nail.
Just with more conviction.
I see this with new business owners all the time.
The business needs customers, so the answer seems obvious.
Try harder. More messages. More networking. More posts. More pitches.
But sometimes business development starts to resemble mudding drywall: the more you mess with it, the worse it gets.
You can feel this when someone gives you their full elevator pitch at an eight-year-old’s birthday party.
They are working hard, and they are also making damn sure you never want to talk to them again.
Trying harder is not always the same thing as getting better.
Sometimes the result itself is feedback.
That doesn’t mean the universe has spoken and we must obey.
It means maybe we should listen.
There is a difference between grit and forcing something that is telling you, repeatedly, that your approach needs to change.
Grit says, this matters enough to keep going.
Force says, I’m going to keep doing this the same way until reality gives in.
That distinction has been hard for me because I desperately want effort and outcome to stay connected.
If I do X, I get Y. Study hard, get the grade.
Do the reps, build the muscle.
Make the calls, get the clients.
Work hard, succeed.
Life just isn’t that clean.
Sometimes the answer really is one more rep, and sometimes one more rep is exactly how you hurt yourself.
And sometimes the answer is embarrassingly simple.
Move the damn nail.
But Floating Has a Tax Too
My old roommate represents the other end of the spectrum.
Take it as it comes.
Enjoy today.
Trust that tomorrow will work itself out.
There is something beautiful about that.
There can also be a bill.
I’ve worked with people approaching retirement who are deeply anxious about money.
By their own description, they were so “in the moment” for decades that saving for some distant future never felt urgent.
Now the future is here, and it brought an invoice.
So maybe planning isn’t the enemy either.
If traditional goals make you want to throw up, try intention.
An intention can give you direction without pretending you control the route.
I want financial freedom.
I want meaningful work.
I want to be present with my family.
I want to build this business.
I want to be healthy enough to do stupid things with my grandkids someday.
You can move toward those things deliberately without knowing exactly what the road looks like.
That is different from drifting.
It is also different from forcing.
When Grit Isn’t Enough
I’m still a grinder.
I don’t think that part of me is going anywhere.
And I don’t want it to.
Grit has carried me through some of the hardest and most important moments of my life.
But I’m learning that grit isn’t always enough.
Sometimes the moment calls for discipline.
Sometimes it calls for patience.
Sometimes you need the damn hammer.
Sometimes you need to put it down long enough to notice that what you are hitting isn’t moving.
Cooperating with life does not mean surrendering your agency.
It means paying attention to reality while you exercise it.
Sometimes life is giving me feedback.
My job isn’t necessarily to obey it.
But I probably ought to notice it.
Maybe strength isn’t just knowing when to keep swinging the hammer.
Maybe it’s knowing when to put it down.
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