GRIT

Inspired by Angela Lee Duckworth’s GRIT: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

GRIT – when you’re ready to grind your teeth and do whatever’s necessary to accomplish your goals, even on the days you really don’t want to, even if what’s needed is repetition after repetition after repetition, day after day after day. 

“I thought it was all hard work and passion, maybe there is a role for talent after all.”

It’s the passion a person possesses and is willing to devote to some pursuit that enables one’s ability for hard work and perseverance to shine forth. Without a compelling vision, a light at the end of the tunnel so to speak, you’ll quickly lose sight as to the reason why you do the things you do – the reason why you’re putting in all that hard work, the reason why you’re sticking things out when things get shitty. 

“Isolate what you don’t know, identify your own weaknesses, and then work on those.”

There’s just so much you don’t know, and so much you don’t know that you don’t know. It’s up to you to take it into your own hands to constantly seek out opportunities to learn new things; to sit down and reflect on what you could do to make yourself slightly better tomorrow. If you humble yourself enough to genuinely ask yourself what could be better, in any aspect of your  life, if you think hard and long enough, if you show your grit in pursuing an answer, one will come – and then you work at it. 

“Being in a very uncomfortable place, working extremely hard during the day, and then doing it the next day, and again and again.”

The most growth comes from placing yourself in the most uncomfortable positions. One of the most uncomfortable positions you can find yourself in is having to admit to yourself that you fell short, that you missed the mark, that you failed, that perhaps the way you viewed yourself, those around you and the environment around you was wrong. What’s really interesting is that it’s often the case that once you can admit you’ve messed up, very quickly thereafter things start to turn around in your favor – if you’re willing to admit it and then work hard to correct it.