A listener called in wanting to know where Bobby Bones got his grit from. She explained that in her class she is writing about grit and started thinking about Bones’ story. He grew up in a small town in Arkansas, his dad was not around, he was the first person in his family to graduate from high school and college and it took him a long time to get where he is now. She pointed out that he’s done so much in life from being a small-town kid from Arkansas and wanted to know where his grit came from to get to where he is now even though he was told no all the time.
He shared that he has fear based grit. No one he knows has grit because they wanted to have it. They have it because they went through struggle and things weren’t easy. He does not consider himself super talented but he does have a passion for the things he does and has perspective to understand how hard the things he does are and he’s had a lot of perseverance. There’s been a lot of failures that people haven’t seen because he only posts the success. He thinks his grit comes from the fear of being where he started and being passionate about what he does for a living. His worst-case scenario was doing something he loved and being poor, but since he grew up poor, he already knew what that was like so at least he was doing something he loved. His best-case scenario was doing something he loved and making a living from it. He’s proud of his grit and that it’s helped him get to where he is today, and he was honored to be this listener’s inspiration for her paper!