5MR#5: Grit – The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Grit: Duckworth explains the term “Grit” in terms of perseverance. She believes perseverance will lead to high achievement. High achievers never believe they will reach their goals, they always strive for more and keep putting in the effort day in and day out.

“Perpetual Beta” is a metaphor referred by my mentor @Sukumar Rajagopal for such behaviors in the parlance of high performance. Someone with true grit has enduring passion, they push through pain and frustration and giving up is simply not an option for them.

Talent: She explains that society emphasizes a lot on “Talent – a natural ability” and challenges that “Talent” is not the only reason we ever have good results. According to her “Effort” is equally important when it comes to success. You don’t try, you don’t fail, you don’t learn, you don’t improve and eventually you don’t success. With the intense preoccupation with “Talent”, “Effort” seems to be forgotten.

Effort: Duckworth explains that a lot of emphasis is given to talent to make us believe that high achievers are doing something we cannot achieve. That an Olympic swimmer has a natural born talent to swim is completely ignoring the thousands and thousands of hours he/she might have spent training every single day year after year for years before getting there. Persistent, passion towards the goal with unflinching effort with consistent practice can get us to where we want.

“It seems that when anyone accomplishes a feat worth writing about, we rush to anoint that individual as extraordinarily “talented.” If we overemphasize talent, we underemphasize everything else.”

Duckworth’s Talent Formula = How rapidly your skills develop when you spend time and effort. Per her Effort counts twice in building a skill as compared to Talent. Effort builds skills at the very same time effort makes us productive too.

Exercises and fitness is a prime example in her talent/effort theories. People purchase exercise equipment, treadmill or even running shoes with the best intention of physical fitness in mind. But on average over 40% use the same equipment much less than they intended. She explains that it is easy to quit and a majority of the people quit too early.

A person with a true grit is the one who will put in maximum effort on one day, and that’s not important, the critical component in being gritty is waking up day after day to put the maximum effort without excuse.

Strivers:

Duckworth explains that someone who is a striver will continually improve their skill, and simultaneously make use of their skill, they will practice it regularly. If a striver works harder than someone with a natural born skill, they will ultimately achieve a higher standard in their field. And that’s because of their effort, they never stop.

With effort talent becomes skill and at the very same time the effort makes the skill productive.

Grit Goals

A component of grit is to have a top-level goal for a long period of time. This goal becomes so critical to your life that it essentially controls all other things you do in your life. Duckworth describes a gritty person as someone who has one top-level goal, and all goals below that are related to the top goal. They are all designed to help you reach the destination. Someone without grit may have a bunch of un-related goals with no clear connections.

Are we born with grit? We are partly born with it. Duckworth explains a part of it is genetics and rest of it is result of experience we get over a period.

Characteristics of Grit: Duckworth explains four key characteristics of gritty person –

1) A person must have interest and passion. They need to enjoy what they do and be committed to their passions. To dedicate time to their interests every single day. Also, a gritty person will understand that interests do not appear overnight, sometimes you need to be patient and wait for your interests to develop and mature.

2) The second characteristic is the ability to practice. Someone with grit will dedicate themselves to practicing every day, and always striving to be better than the day before.

3) The driver behind passion is having a purpose. Someone with grit will understand their purpose and why they do the things that they do.

4) A gritty person must have hope, it’s a critical element of perseverance.

How to grow Grit:

To succeed in life, a child requires love, limits, and latitude. A child who has constant support is respected and is held to high standards is given the ability to reach their full potential. Parents who know this, are doing what Duckworth calls authoritative parenting or wise parenting. Rather than relying on their power as a parent, they call upon their own knowledge and wisdom when it comes to parenting, with the hope that their child will emulate them and go on to succeed.

Duckworth acknowledges that children specially young children imitate their parents blindly. We learn how they talk, treat, react as we simply don’t have anything to look upto. However she points out that emulation differs with imitation greatly. In her time studying grit, she came across countless successful gritty people who dedicate their success to their parents. These gritty people looked up to their parents as role models and in some cases also had aligned passions with their parents. She justifies with such examples that emulating parents and their work is always better than imitating.

Parents with Grit:

As a parent if you want to raise gritty children, you have to first identify your passion, goals and ability to persevere. You can’t teach something that you don’t do.

She explains the difference between Hard and Interesting. For some kids school can be hard and uninteresting. However, they may find playing with friends in the break interesting or a ballet class that can be hard and interesting. Such activities can pay off long term for the kids in finding their passion for perseverance. Duckworth explains that research clearly identifies children who are involved in activities outside of their regular schooling do better overall. It can greatly benefit their marks in school, their confidence, commitment, and their abilities.

Duckworth’s Hard Thing Rule:

If you are a parent who wants to raise gritty children, Duckworth recommends implementing the hard thing rule. It’s about committing 100% to something for a specific period and giving it your all.

“On your own, you can cultivate your own grit from the inside out. You can cultivate interests, develop and habit of daily practice and work on a purpose beyond yourself. You can also grow your grit “from the outside in.” Parents, coaches, teachers, bosses, mentors, friends—developing your personal grit depends critically on other people.”

Conclusion:

Grit is combination of passion and perseverance. Effort plays an equal role in being successful complementing talent. Quitting is easy but a gritty person will consistently day after day put in same effort for achieving the long-term goals for years. And hey yes, gritty parents raise gritty kids.

Curious to know what your grit score is ?? Check it out - Angela Duckworth

TED Talk by Angela Duckworth for those interested:

Angela Lee Duckworth: Grit: The power of passion and perseverance | TED Talk

Good Day! Thanks for your time. Stay safe.