What is Grit?
Talent and natural ability is not the path to success. The key to success is grit: the passion and perseverance to achieve. Grit is about the long term endeavor of achieving your goals. Through grit, you are able to overcome the obstacles and adversities that stand between you and your goal. Determination and persistence are what maintains the goal and what makes people successful.
Five Core Ideas
In the book Grit, Angela Duckworth explains that in order to maintain grit, one must find a top-level goal that matters to them. Your goal must be your number one priority and must be your ultimate concern. This goal will help guide your choices and other goals in order to reach your top-level goal. This goal is like a life philosophy and can help organize your life.
Duckworth also emphasizes the 4 key psychological assets of grit: interest, practice, purpose, and hope. All these attributes are essential to maintaining grit and achieving success. These 4 assets are fueled by passion. Your passion is what is important to you, what matters to you, what you think about, and what you care about. These 4 assets help direct and channel your passion to achieve your goals.
People who have grit also balance the experience of the flow of things and the deliberation in their practice. It’s important to live life and enjoy opportunities while focusing on your goal. Gritty people are optimistic and are connected to others and the world around them. Flow is the experience and deliberate practice is behavior. Duckworth explains to us that you can experience both at the same time.
The 4 psychological assets are extremely important to be gritty, because even with failures, setbacks, and disappointments, it’s all worth it to achieve your goals and be successful. The goals of gritty people work in the well-being of others and make the world a better place.
Grit is a part of your identity. The decisions you make are a big reflection of what you value, what’s important to you, and what your long term goals are. Grit is a culture and is in everyday life of those who want to be successful. It’s a lifestyle that you need to commit to, not something you can turn on and off. Grit is in all your choices.
It is easy to attribute the success of others to natural talents or luck. It’s easy to make excuses for ourselves with the challenges and obstacles that stand in the way of us and our goals. But these hardships are something all successful people must go through to meet their goals. With the special quality called grit that encapsulates motivation, determination, and perseverance. By adapting this gritty lifestyle, all your goals and success are well within reach.