Grit
Why passion and resilience are the secrets to success
Short summary
Learn what Grit is, and why it’s so immensely important to be gritty if you want to succeed in your area of interest/passion/job.
Intro
Grit – why passion and resilience are the secrets to success, is a psychological examination of the concept of Grit, written in 2017 by Angela Duckworth.
Duckworth takes us through an in-depth discussion about the psychology of talent, effort, and achievement.
In life, we all start with a certain set of talent, something we are naturally good at, but as this book tries to explain, talent isn’t everything, its important, but you need something else to excel, and you need a double dose of it: effort. Effort is applied with talent to create a skill, more effort is applied to further create achievements, the more effort put in the more and better achievements will be created, but to keep on applying effort, even on tough days, you need to be a gritty person!
What is a grit
Grit is the willpower to continue something you started and stick to your goal, to keep going when things get tough, and invest day after week after year. Meet huge obstacles that will take you down, but you stand up and try again, and again, you place one foot in front of the other and just keep on going and going, and that’s grit.
But Grit is not either you have it, or you don’t, it’s a scale, where someone can score high and others low, it’s different levels of grit, but it’s not binary.
Where can I find grit?
Genetics does play a role, and some grit can be related back to it, but your genes for grit are not as decisive as for your height, so you can absolutely do something about it.
From the outside, you can develop more grit from having a good mentor, a teacher that’s inspiring, a group of friends that will back you up, or you can join a gritty culture.
By being part of a gritty culture, and being around gritty people, you are going to be more gritty, and when you grit develops with the group, you will begin to feel a sense of belonging, it will become a part of your identity. It’s as easy as, I am a part of this group, the group culture is to be gritty, therefore I must be gritty to be a part of this group.
From the inside, you can grow your grit, by learning the association between working hard and reward. in practice, this is done by setting a goal within your area of interest, invest enough quality time on the task (deliberate practice) to reach the goal. When the goal is reached you will feel the satisfaction of accomplishment, and then you set a new goal, for each goal reach, you become a bit grittier.
What’s my passion?
Many have an unrealistic expectation about what their passion is and should be, they think their passion will come riding in on a white horse and seduce them, and they will fall in love and they will live happily ever after.
To find your passion is a little bit of discovery! You should try different activities, be open, try to understand yourself and how you work, what are your strength, weaknesses, and talent. Ask yourself some basic questions like: what do I like to think about? Where does my mind wander? what do I really care about? How do I enjoy spending my time?
Like, if you enjoy interacting with people, your passions are most likely not the kind of your job where your work alone on a computer all day, if you hate people, on the other hand, that might be a good job where you can find, develop and deepen your interests for it.
It might take time to find your interest, and when you find your passion, it won’t always be sunny days, because nobody is perfect, not even your passion, it will come days when it’s just a pain in the ass, you want to quit, do something else, but those days, it’s very important to be gritty, set goals, and do deliberate practice, keep pushing, setting one-foot in front of the other, and you will succeed.
Deliberate practice
Investing a lot of time is required to excel, but the quality devoted to your interest matter tremendously, you can’t just do a hell of a lot of quantity practice, the quality of the time spent is essential.
Deliberate practice is where you do your work in solitary, are concentrating one hundred percent on the task, and work toward a defined stretch goal set before the practice session started.
Deliberate practice is the key to success and to master your field.
Conclusion
All successful people in their field are full of grit, they never give up, they don’t whine, they don’t complain, and have no excuses, they just keep on going, even when they do mistakes, fail miserably, they stand up and push forward, cause they know failures are going to happen, it’s how they deal with it that counts, they use mistakes as opportunities to get better.
It’s not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt