What is Grit, and can it help you in your career?

A perk of spending more time at home is that I’ve been able to do things that I don’t typically have time to do. One of these activities is reading. I recently finished a book called Grit by Angela Duckworth. She’s a noted psychologist who created a theory that grit is more important than talent, genius, or other qualities individuals can rarely control. To give an idea of what she writes in her book,

Dr. Duckworth states: “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day-in, day-out. Not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years. And working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.” Dr. Duckworth even has an assessment to measure an individual’s grit that you can take at the end of the book, and assess your personal score. Trust me this isn’t a book review, although I do highly recommend it!

My point in sharing this with you, is that I believe too many times people do not take any risk, and choose to stay comfortable. People get excited about a new job, or a passion project, or a goal, and then within a few weeks or months, they drop it. A widely seen example of this would be setting weigh loss goals on New Years. If you are a gym goer, I’m sure you’ve seen the uptick of new members arriving at the gym in January, and by February it has leveled out again (hey, I may have been one of those people one year!)

Excitement is something that is easily found in humans, but grit is not as easy. Grit is something that if the individual does not have it, must be worked on and given complete focus. Is my point in writing this to tell you that when setting your next goal, you need to work tireless for years, stay up until 4am practicing, or eat, sleep and breathe nothing but your goal? Absolutely not.

What I am asking you to do is to think about a goal you are looking to achieve, and really ask yourself why you haven’t achieved it yet. Is it really such a poor time to go back to school? Is it unrealistic to send out a handful of job applications every-night when you get home from work? Is there really something tangible holding you back? Or, is it just you holding you back?

The idea of grit gives me hope that even if a dream seems out of reach now, if you make a commitment to something you want, and work towards it continuously, that stamina will help you achieve greatness. If you need help channeling your grit to help you achieve greatness, let’s chat.