EE 012: Get Gritty With It
Grit is the unique quality that makes you willing and ready to commit yourself to your long-term goals and pursue them despite any adversity you may face. It is defined as having a firm character and an indomitable spirit. This means that gritty people have a resolute attitude and stay firm on the decisions they make.
Renowned American psychologist, Angela Duckworth, has thoroughly researched the subject and made many discoveries on grit. She states that if you have grit, you have the passion for the goals that you pursue and the perseverance to go after it in spite of the challenges and setbacks you experience. She also discovered that those people who lack grit fail to reach and fulfill their potential, even when they are incredibly talented.
While the exact essence of grit is still elusive, there are some significant characteristics of grit that you must possess in order to be genuinely determined and tenacious as you hunt down EXECUpreneurial success.
Elements of Grit
To fulfill every goal you set, in turn finding EXECUpreneurial success, you must possess the following essential elements of grit.
Bravery and Courage
Courage is a tough element to measure, but it is directly related to grit. The braver you are, the grittier you become. Being brave and courageous means that you can mitigate your fear of failing. You aren’t afraid to move forward despite the hardships that you experience.
The super-gritty people aren’t scared to tank. Instead, they embrace their fears as an inevitable part of the process.
People who possess grit understand that to accomplish their goals; they need to go through defeat and experience failure at some point in their life. They understand that they can learn valuable lessons from their past failures and mistakes. Remember the “fail faster” principle introduced in Part 1 of this 4 Part eBook series?
Here’s where that concept takes root. Gritty people know that the susceptibility of persistence is a prerequisite for high accomplishment. Having the nerve to face your fears is a prerequisite for being gritty.
Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness is the trait that is most closely linked with grit. There are two types of conscientious people: the achievement and goal-oriented ones, and the self-controlling ones. If you are a goal and achievement-oriented individual, you will stick with your mission until you accomplish all your goals. However, if you are the more self-controlling type, you likely don’t possess the drive to move forward and achieve your goals. You are more prone to offer excuses why you were unable to succeed and look to the outside environment to lay blame, versus looking within to tease out your part in the failed attempt. To truly cultivate grit, you have to be conscientious to the extent that you chase your goals until you accomplish them.
Resilience
On the long journey to accomplishment and success, it is inevitable that you will stumble and fall. If you have grit, you will be able to pull yourself back up and eventually achieve the goals that you have set for yourself. This is known as resilience. Resilience is described as the capacity to maintain and stick to your core purpose as well as maintain your integrity when you encounter unwelcome surprises.
Resilience is a unique combination of confidence, creativity, and optimism. When combined, these three qualities give you the power to reevaluate various situations and regulate your emotions. Your confidence in your abilities gives you the belief that you can influence your surroundings and the outcome of different events. Your creativity is what helps you identify your meaningful purpose, and your optimism helps you understand that both the negative and positive experiences in life help you to continue to grow and learn.
Endurance and Setting Long-Term Goals
Another prominent characteristic that those who have grit possess is endurance. When you are following the path of successful EXECUpreneurs, you have to have the ability to endure all the roadblocks and challenges that you experience while staying committed to achieving your long-term goals. Along with having endurance and perseverance, being gritty requires you to set long-term goals and following them through to completion.
To achieve success in life, you need long-term goals, and you must chase them to the very end. All too often people quit right before the payoff.
You have to be willing to invest long hours in your work and practice what you do best until you master it. This will allow you to eliminate all the obstacles in your path to eventually achieve your goals.
SIDE NOTE: Work one goal until you see it across the finish line. Then rally back around to pick up the next goal and move it across the finish line. Multi-tasking is for chumps. Don’t be a chump.
It is necessary that your practice has some purpose, or you will end up spending your time engaging in activities for no reason, in essence spinning your wheels. When you don’t have a purpose or aim in life, you won’t welcome success. To succeed at something, you have to have an ultimate goal that you want to reach.
In other words if you don’t have a destination, how will you know when or even if you get there?
Your lifelong objectives provide you with the framework and context you need to find the value and meaning in your long-term efforts. In turn helping you cultivate sustainability, drive, stamina, passion, courage, and grit.
Curiosity
When you are deeply curious about something, you become committed to pursuing answers to whatever lay at hand. Curiosity is another significant element of grit. For you to become entirely dedicated to achieving your goals, you need to be infinitely curious about them. This is because curiosity is what gives you the drive and compelling force to pursue even the most challenging of tasks.
In contrast to passion which is what motivates you to continue pursuing your goals, curiosity keeps you going through the challenges and setbacks while keeping you devoted to accomplishing your goals even in worst-case scenarios. Being profoundly curious about something is essential to cultivating grit.