Mindsets
The Importance of Grit
.. and why anti-fragility is important
What do you think the high achievers of the world have in common today? Are they just naturally talented? Are they good at visualizing and planning out their goals? Do they just surround themselves with people who can help reinforce their shortcomings? While these are useful and important practices, there is one thing that practically all high achievers have in common. And that’s having grit. I recently read a book called Grit by Angela Duckworth, and I wanted to summarize why having grit is so important if you want to make it to the top.
What is Grit?
Grit is the attitude of never giving up when it comes to the work you are doing and the goals you want to achieve, no matter what. As Angela defines it, it is the combination of passion and perseverance. Despite its simplicity (or perhaps because of it), grit is consistently a decisive factor when it comes to overcoming challenges.
If you think about it, it becomes intuitive. Not letting failures keep you down will always allow you to continue making progress because the point at which you stop making progress is when you give up. I’m sure many people reading this can recall something they abandoned because it was too hard or because they decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
Angela herself devised a “grit scale”, which is a 5.0-point measure designed to quantify how much grit a person has. It has only 10 questions which all have 5 answers ranging between “not like me” and “very much like me”. Through the 15 years that she has been studying grit, she has applied the scale across a variety of fields, from the top military academies to companies, from schools to universities, and many more. And every time, the deciding factor, when it came to who stayed and who quit, was grit. Not their talent, organization, or knowledge, but their tenacity and determination to keep moving forward.
How can I build grit?
Grit is something that builds on itself. The more gritty you get, the easier it is to build even more grit. Building grit is the same as being mentally tough, and once you reach that state, it becomes much easier to put your mind to something and pull it off. The most important thing is to follow through with commitments.
To build grit, it’s important to first have a simple goal. Define what the next level of grittiness looks like for you, whether you are already tough or you are just starting. As long as you are focusing on something that you can make an active effort to move towards, and you keep a consistent schedule, you can build grit.
More importantly, you need to have a growth mindset. This is a term coined to describe the ability of a person to shrug off failures and to keep moving forward. Don’t let failures demotivate you and stop you from moving ahead in life. A growth mindset means you can take your losses and learn something from them. If you screwed up on a test, instead of sulking for yourself, analyze what went wrong, and take steps towards fixing it.
I think the biggest step for a lot of people is the first one. It’s harder to get your feet off the ground and running than it is to keep the speed you have when you are in a full-blown sprint. Develop determination and willpower when starting to build grit. Building better habits will follow, making you even grittier.
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Key Takeaways:
- Grit is a combination of passion and perseverance, and is a big factor when it comes to finishing projects and reaching one’s goals
- Grit is consistently a decisive factor in predicting which individuals in a group will succeed, and which will give up.
- Angela Duckworth devised a scale to measure grit, which goes from 0.0 to 5.0 and is measured with a series of 10 multiple-choice questions.
- Grit can build on itself, meaning that the more grit you have, the easier it is to develop even more of it.
- To build grit, you need to practice the habit of setting clear goals, following through with them, and not being demotivated by failures.
- A growth mindset is important, representing an attitude toward failure where you embrace it, learn, and move on.
P.S: Special thanks to nishant. for introducing me to this amazing read! Your thoughtful gift is greatly appreciated.
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