GRIT AND YOU- How to start becoming grittier.
Did you know you can’t have grit unless you have a healthy relationship with yourself? Meaning grit can’t thrive where you aren’t practicing self-love and self-care. Or where you don’t have control over your inner voice. I call this your inner sage.
I have found that 4 particular personas make up grit, the sage, wizard, warrior and robot. And our inner sage is the boss of our grit hit-team.
Grit researcher Angela Duckworth found that those who are passionate and persevere demonstrate grit. Her research suggested that grit was a significant indicator of success over talent.
This would make sense, since so many of us have talents yet for some reason we just don’t realise them. This begs the question WHY.
WHY?
Throughout my 19 year recruitment career, and entrepreneurial journey, I have been exposed to tens of thousands of jobseekers. And I have found it fascinating to discover the shocking amount of people, who do a job that isn’t really what they want to do. We are literally wasting years of our lives in situations we don’t like, and we can’t get those years back.
Some people fell into a particular industry/job, others were influenced by their parents or peers. Some have been desperate to just work for money, others thought getting a ‘sensible’ job was better than exploring their artistic talents. There are a plethora of reasons as to why humans end up working a job that doesn’t resonate.
I can relate to this. Although I began my entrepreneurial journey circa 15 years, I have gone through the love/hate cycle with my own work. And this has led me on a self-exploration path, to assess my contribution to society, and ask deeper questions around my purpose.
I have become obsessed with the idea of cultivating a gritty mindset, as I can clearly see the results of projects where I have displayed grit V’s the ones where I wasn’t gritty enough. It’s also clear to see that those who possess grit (sports personalities are an easy reference here), are clearly applying a specific skill, that allows them to stick to their goals and endure over the long run.
After combing through research around big themes such as resilience, persistence, resourcefulness, productivity, habits, decision making, passion and mindfulness, I’ve come to the conclusion, that grit has layers.
But the great news is that grit can be cultivated and therefore learned and taught.
GRIT AND THE FUTURE
Learning to become more gritty is critical, if we are to thrive and survive in an AI and ‘robots are coming’ era. Grit will give us solutions to our planet’s distress. Someone gritty will create solutions to address human-trafficking. Gritty teams will make it possible for humans to live on Mars and Jupiter. Grit makes things happen.
The opposite is also true. Gritty dictators will continue to oppress their people, gritty politicians (think China) will position themselves steps ahead of the rest of the world, other gritty madmen can press the nuclear button any time. Grit doesn’t discriminate between positive or negative pursuits. It simply means those who possess grit can direct it towards completing their goals.
GRIT AND CHILDREN
As a mother of two young children, I can already see how cultivating grit within our kids needs to become a must-teach subject area for our schools. Our school system will fail future generations if we don’t challenge our kids to flex their grit.
Ironically, one may argue that kids do display grit, but parents, society, school, their environment and belief systems can knock grit out of them, when they don’t conform to the set ideals.
The reverse is also true, if a child is born in poverty or experiences hardship they may be forced to develop grit to survive their environment.
There is no surprise that parents are uber-stressed as their little darlings are growing up to be entitled and anti-social in a world. Real conversations are taking place within rectangular little screens, instead of face to face. Kids are struggling to communicate, socialise, negotiate, interact and regulate their emotions.
It’s tough, I get it I’m a parent too. My 8 year old daughter has already begun badgering me for a phone (an iphone 11 specifically, which I don’t even own). She will throw a teenage-sized tantrum when I gently suggest we do a jigsaw puzzle instead. Then she turns to planning entrepreneurial pursuits like making keyrings and cakes to sell, so she can raise the money to buy her own phone. Grit? not quite, but we are working on it.
It’s tough with kids as we have no reference point, since today’s environment is so different to our own, and previous generations. Even the shift of economic power from West to East is worth noting. How will our kids be positioned? I for sure hope they are learning to speak Mandarin.
The road ahead will be fascinating. Hence my obsession with continuously cultivating grit for myself, and modelling it for my children.
Grit will become the ultimate survival skill to master for our next generation.
GRIT AND SELF SABOTAGE
So many of us are unaware of our self sabotaging ways. My meditation teacher described life’s negative external situations as a ‘snake bite V’s the poison’. She said that you won’t die from the bite itself, but it’s the poison that will run through your veins and kill you.
Meaning the negative event itself won’t kill you (for example divorce), but the way we continue to repeat the incident in our minds, relive that moment, and repeat the negative stories to others, we create more and more stress (poison) internally. This is not healthy for us at a cellular level.
Grit can’t thrive, if you don’t have a healthy relationship with your inner sage. Where will you get your passion from? Passion is an internal ignition that lights you up. Your inner sage can give you clarity around your dreams and goals, this in turn can ignite you or not.
For those who have negative self-talk, grit cannot thrive. Think about it, how can you train yourself to be gritty, when you are also telling yourself you are not good enough? These are two opposing forces.
“I’m beautiful”
“No you’re not”
“I’m good enough”
“No you’re not”
So if we accept that the starting point to cultivating grit, is to look at our relationship with ourselves (our inner sage), the next question is ‘How do I do that’? We will explore this in more detail in upcoming articles, so stay tuned and feel free to contribute ideas in the comments.
My next article, shall focus on grit and the wizard persona. Do connect with me so you can follow and comment.
If you enjoyed this thought-piece, please do like/comment/share so we can help spread the message of grit. Along with love, grit will will become the force to save the planet and humanity :)