GRIT
Angela Duckworth is an academic, psychologist and popular science author, but she began her career teaching in the public schools’ systems. While working with students from disadvantaged backgrounds she noticed that the students who excelled and rose above their circumstances weren’t necessarily the smartest or most talented.
Fascinated by this, Duckworth left teaching to pursue a PhD in psychology to un-package the true drivers of achievement. Her research found the trait which consistently linked to success in sports, workforce, academia and business was “grit.”
Many readers mistakenly saw grit as a fixed trait- something you either possess or you don’t.
But grit is far from that, grit is the ability to stick to a long-term goal, despite setbacks, competing interests, or the lack of visible progress. Grit is a ‘dynamic interaction between a person and their top-level goal.’ Or as Duckworth says “It’s about being tenacious at the top level of your goal hierarchy. And then, being flexible and able to shift or give up easily on lower-level things.”
This idea from Duckworth on being ‘tenacious’ with your top goal is similar to the idea from author Ryan Holiday on being disciplined.
In his book ‘Discipline is Destiny’, Holiday notes a lot of success is having a clear sense of the path that you are on, not being distracted by the paths that crisscross yours, especially the footprints of those that are hopelessly lost.
A large part of having ‘grit’ is knowing what is most important to you and continually working towards that thing, as comparing your road to someone else’s is the thief of all joy.
Gritty competitors have found a way to handle adversity better than their opposition. They suffer like everyone but they are resilient and resilience is suffering strategically managed.
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