In the book Grit, psychologist Angela Duckworth helps us to understand the fundamentals of success. During her career, Angela has tried to answer the question “Why do some people succeed?”. Focusing on the psychological reasons for achievement, Angela’s long-term research alongside other experts in her field brings to us a well-written book, that may change your world view, and your life, if you put in the work.
Firstly, she sheds light on common limiting beliefs people have and how to handle them. Most of us are prepositions to favor talent over hard work, that is for many reasons that we’ll discuss later. That belief is stopping us from putting in the necessary effort for our goals, we give up quickly, excusing ourselves by not being “talented enough”. They have what she defines as Grit.
Secondly, we get a practical guide on how to increase our grit (thus our chances for success). She condenses the ways to improve one’s grit into four titles: interest, practice, purpose, and hope. Afterward, we get a deep dive into each subject, stories about the importance of each one, and a conclusion that supports us in implementing it into our lives.
Lastly, we finish up the book with a section on helping others cultivate Grit. Either as parents, siblings, coaches, or just strangers, we can change the current state where talent is overshadowing the truth about success. Within us is the ability to bring up others and vice versa. We get comprehensive guidelines on how we should approach sparking passion in others, and which ways are the most supportive when bringing up others. All of those are a combination of Angela’s personal experience and thorough research of Grit.
Grit Over Talent
It’s not the potential you have, it’s what you do with it that counts.
In today’s culture, we tend to regard successful people as “talented”. Research has even shown that we have a preference for people whose talent got them to where they are, over those who’ve worked hard.
In Duckworth’s opinion, this tendency is harmful. When we put the spotlight on inherited skills and talents, we create a mindset that is either/or, either we have what it needs to be an author or we don’t, either we have the talent to be a singer or we don’t. Thinking in that manner completely ignores the (researched backed) reality, that effort and perseverance are the main drivers of achievement.
The main reason for this natural bias is that we rather look at ourselves and say we aren’t successful because we aren’t talented, instead of blaming ourselves for not working hard enough. In other words, we want to believe it’s not our fault.
Angela’s research in the field of the psychology of achievement has shed a light on this phenomenon and completely disproved it.
Great things are accomplished by those “people whose thinking is active in one direction, who employ everything as material, who always zealously observe their own inner life and that of others, who perceive everywhere models and incentives, who never tire of combining together the means available to them.”
Effort Counts Twice
Great people, which we call geniuses, are just craftsmen. They’ve found joy in learning and sharpening their skills continuously and that has made the big picture the result we see, of a masterpiece.
Before you might object, talent does have a place in one’s success, it’s just not as big as we think. Duckworth defined talent as the inherent ability to learn and grow in a specific skill. Thus, if someone has a talent for dancing, she will improve quicker than those less talented.
By combining her discoveries about grit and its relationship to success, Duckworth has created a formula that displayed how one becomes a master at something. It goes as following: talent (how fast you learn) x effort -> proficiency x effort -> output.
The repeatable effort, especially when facing challenges is what leads to proficiency.
Proficiency and repeatable effort lead to productivity, which in turn, leads to accomplishments.
From that equation, we can derive that Effort Counts Twice when achieving something great.
Those findings and reassuring results have led Duckworth to the discovery that what all great people share, is Grit. Which can be described as the combination of passion and perseverance.
How To Cultivate Grit In Our Lives
Grit is about keeping the same higher goal for a long period. To work tirelessly and passionately on something of great meaning for us.
Having the life philosophy that comes with having a higher goal is crucial since it decides the activities you will partake in while you are awake.
For example, a painter’s higher goal may be to “give people hope and relief by making them see the beauty in the simplest moments”. Having that higher goal, or that “Why”, is the guiding light, the fire within, that supplies constant support in the journey towards mastery and proficiency.
When starting with anything, we need to know that even the most proficient people have started as amateurs. There is no getting around it.
I hope that by now you want to increase your Grit, that’s great. Grit, like anything another skill is something that can be built and improved upon. This means we can take actions that will increase our Grit. Thus, our chances for success.
Duckworth has found four main drivers for Grit:
Interest
We want to do something that we are truly interested in. If you want to be a swimmer, but care not about how to improve, you will inevitably burn out and stop. We should try things out, and see what sparks something and what’s not.
Once you find something that piques your interest, seek to learn it, grow with it and develop your knowledge in it, and find a way to make it excite you, whether it’s through other people or sparking that interest again and again.
Learn to love learning and seeing new things. Then, deepen into that and find the new in the old, those subtle changes that will enrich your passion even further.
Practice
Once we moved from the starting phase where we are learning quickly and are excited by the discovery of the passion, it’s time to sharpen our skills and refine our knowledge. That required practice, and a lot of it.
But, it’s not enough to just practice, it needs to be deliberate practice. We need to be intentional, focused, and seek improvement when we do our practice, otherwise, we will get plateaued at a certain point.
Tips for better practice:
- Listen to what the science says: have a defined goal that requires effort, focus, immediate feedback, and repetition with the idea of improvement.
- Make it a habit, work at the same time or have the same ritual before working, so to put your mind in a targeted state.
- Change the way it feels, this is not a chore but a blessing to learn and improve, getting closer to your goals of excellence. Change your mindset around it.
Purpose
We want to find our journey and end goal to be of purpose and meaning. The purpose is an incredible motivator, that will be there to help you get back up on your hard moments and which will sharpen every bit of the journey. Purpose comes from helping others.
Duckworth tells the story of three builders. One says “I am just putting blocks on top of each other”. Another is “I am building a church”. And the last “I am building the house of God”. This goes to show what purpose is and how we see what we do, it’s subjective. We create our meaning.
Tips for improving sense of purpose
- Think about how your current job can have a positive influence on society.
- Think about changes you can make in your current job, little yet impactful, to enrich the connection for your core values.
- Find inspiration in a great character with a clear purpose.
Hope
Having hope is about believing that you can achieve a goal, that you can be of contribution, and that you have what it takes to get where you want to be. We must become more optimistic about our lives.
Research has shown that optimistic people are more successful, healthy, and deal better with adversity.
Optimists focus on the temporary reason for something bad (I.e. “I just didn’t learn enough”).
Pessimists tend to see situations as infinite (I.e. “I am a failure”, “I can go through that”).
Adapting a growth mindset is extremely important. Based on it, it says “my actions will lead to a change in the future”. This counteracts a fixed mindset that says “it is what is it”.
A growth mentality leads to positive inner talk which leads to perseverance during hardships. It’s about taking responsibility and understanding that you can influence your situation, and that nothing lasts forever.
Tips for cultivating hope:
- With each step, you take ask yourself “what could I’ve done better?”
- Update your beliefs about intelligence and talent. What you put effort into will improve, no matter where you are you can get very good at something just by deliberately doing it.
- Have positive self-talk. That is also something you can learn to do or practice. Understand that nothing is finite and hardships are there to be won over.
- Ask others for help, talking to others can be a great tool.
How Grit Can Change Your Life
I’ve found this book extremely helpful. Although the research and stories may seem as excessive for some, I’ve found them to spark hope and integrate the teachings of the book profoundly.
Like any other work of art, we may put the focus where we lack. Thus, I’ve found myself looking more into my limiting beliefs, about finding purpose and being more optimistic about growth in my life.
Reading it, different lessons will raise for you. This is what is so great about this book, it has something for each of us.
The biggest takeaway for me is that success is achievable for me. I’ve been facing a challenge, which I am sure many of you had, of thinking you are not good enough to get somewhere or to be someone. This book helped me to let go of my old beliefs, take down my defense (blaming it on talent or bad luck), and start to take action toward what I want and find meaningful.
Even though this book isn’t perfect by any means, if we let go of criticizing it and embed the message it throws to the world, we can get something great. We can all achieve great things, we can create a better world, we can live our life with passion and perseverance and let go of what doesn’t serve us.
I hope you got something from this post, I hope it lighted your interest in giving this book a read. And I hope that it made your life just a bit better.
Favorite Quotes
“Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”
“Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.”
“I won’t just have a job; I’ll have a calling. I’ll challenge myself every day. When I get knocked down, I’ll get back up. I may not be the smartest person in the room, but I’ll strive to be the grittiest.”
“When you keep searching for ways to change your situation for the better, you stand a chance of finding them. When you stop searching, assuming they can’t be found, you guarantee they won”
“Yes, but the main thing is that greatness is doable. Greatness is many, many individual feats, and each of them is doable.”