WHAT DO CRIMINALS AND SPORTS STARS HAVE IN COMMON?

What do the worlds best known criminals and sports stars have in common? 

The answer is …….grit!

I’ve been steadily releasing articles, exploring the idea of grit, and how to cultivate this skill. However my research has taken me down a surprising dark turn. 

It’s easy to spot grit with our sporting stars. Grit keeps Usain Bolt coming back to the track, doing hours of training to run circa 9 second sprints. Grit stops Roger Federer from retiring just yet. Grit has made boxer Floyd Mayweather the highest paid athlete in the world. Clearly the sporting champions display grit. 

In his book ‘Tipping Point’, Malcolm Gladwell discussed the magical number of 10,000 hours. He cites that it takes on average 10,000 hours for someone to become world class at what they do. So why do some of us (not many of us) achieve the 10,000 hours of practice, whilst others don’t? 

GRIT…….grit is why some can achieve 10,000 hours of practice at a particular task. 

But grit shows up everywhere. It’s not necessary for the 10,000 hour tipping point to become the barometer for measuring grit. One can achieve their goals using grit in under 10,000 hours too. 

The level of grit needed, really depends upon the size of the goal in many respects. And it’s plausible to suggest that the longer-term goals require a level of endurance that grit can power. 

However some goals are shorter in nature, and still require grit. Think Usain Bolt running a 100 metre 9 second sprint. An intense burst of grit in action. 

We live in a world of polarity. Black and white, up and down, hot and cold, large and small etc. So the natural tendency is to to try and spot the positive success stories, and make meaningful examples on WHY grit is so critical. 

But what about the other side? the dark side? What about the successful crimes, and successful wars (in the eyes of the beholder). Why were they successful? And what role does grit play under these negatively-charged events?

It turns out that all the world’s best known heists, were carried out by gritty people. So at a surface level, it would seem that grit doesn’t discriminate between achieving goals that are ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ in nature.

In my previous articles I introduced the idea of grit consisting of 4 particular personas. I call them:

The Sage- Your inner mentor, your mindset, your inner blueprint. 

The Wizard- Your resourcefulness and creativity.

The Warrior- Your strength and resilience. 

The Robot- Your timekeeper, your persistence.

I have found that we need a healthy relationship with each of these 4 personas in order to cultivate grit to complete our goals. 

Whilst it’s easy to spot the sage, wizard, warrior, and robot in our sports stars. However, arguably the above 4 personas seem to be present with some of our ‘brightest’ criminal minds too.

In the early hours of the morning on 8th August 1963, a Royal Mail train left London to make it’s way to Glasgow on the West Coast Main Line. It was on this journey that one of the world’s most infamous heists was carried out. Talk about having a big hairy audacious goal !

The British Great Train Robbery was carried out by a team of 15 men, who robbed ￡2.6 million (equivalent to ￡53.5 million today) from the train. 

The plan took several months to mastermind, and was carried out with precision, each member playing their critical role meticulously…….. or so they thought.

I guess there were errors along the way (that’s life, human error is inevitable), as the majority of the robbers were found and arrested. As for the money, well the bulk of it disappeared and was never recovered.

So was the infamous heist successful? I guess that depends on what lens we use to assess it. Was the money stolen? YES. Did the gang manage to pull off an ambitious plan? YES. Was the money recovered? NO. So if the money wasn’t recovered, it’s plausible to suggest that the members profited from the heist. 

BUT…..

The majority of the members were arrested. So even if they did profit in some way, their freedom was taken away. So for those members in prison, could we assume they personally did not profit from the heist in the end? Or perhaps their portion of monies were distributed to their families? Or perhaps their portion of monies was retained by those who weren’t arrested or were later exonerated. Who knows.

So what has grit got to do with all of this? Well let’s go back to the 4 personas. The sage, the wizard, the warriors and the robot. Clearly the gang had all 4 personas showing up within the 15 man strong group. Some were dominant as sages, some as warriors, some as robots and some as wizards. We won’t know if all 15 gang members possessed all 4 personas individually. Although I’d take a gamble that many members of the gang had cultivated grit in pulling off such an ambitious goal.

So if grit doesn’t discriminate, does this mean grit can be used to push evil agendas as well as good ones? In short, yes it would certainly seem that way. 

Which is more of a reason for the ‘do-good’ population amongst us to push our grit levels. 

In the end the grittiest people win, overcome and succeed. So if we really want to clean up the planet, create equality, restore politics, save animals, adapt to disruption, and work with robots etc, we need to get gritty about it. 

My message is to commit to grit today. 

Written by Dee Allan- The Gritty Girl, International Speaker, Writer and Entrepreneur.

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