Have you ever wondered what makes a person successful? Is it intelligence? Is it skills? Or is it something entirely different? For a long time, researcher Angela Duckworth struggled with these questions and subsequently developed Grit! Grit is defined as a person's trait-level perseverance and passion for long term goals. In short, Grit is never giving up on your long term goal. Duckworth proposed two prerequisites for Grit: 1) Consistency of interests - You need to have a consistent interest instead of scattered efforts in diverse areas. 2) Perseverance of effort - You never give up in the face of adversities or setbacks.
A sound amount of research has proven grit to predict academic success, career success, military success as well as your income level. More than the success, it predicts the completion of a goal which ultimately leads to success in the area.
Want to be Gritty?
- Discover your passion and strive towards it. Find something that fascinates you. This doesn’t merely mean thinking about your passion on your couch but on the contrary, go out and try it all out! This is the best and full proof way to find your passion.
- Practice your interest and skills every single day. The learning should never stop. Get a little bit better every day. Interviews with many talented personalities concluded with the key finding that their skill was not inborn but rather cultivated through right exposure and years of training.
- Connect your passion to a higher purpose. Ask yourself how you are helping other people and yourself with your long term goal. This will ensure that you are motivated enough to keep pursuing your goal.
- Cultivate hope by tackling your inner critic. Remove your inaccurate, limiting beliefs. Maslow correctly said that most of us have Jonah complex (fear of success) because of past exposure, old habits or low sense of self-worth. So be more mindful of your negative thoughts and break the cycle.
- Your circle can make or break you. Surround yourself with likeminded gritty people. Create positive peer pressure. This will not only help you be on track but even magnify your creativity and optimism.
A Gritty movie to learn from?
The hero that is represented in this film would be Marlin and his quest to retrieve his son who had been taken by human scuba divers.
This film beautifully shows how marlin’s long term goal (finding his son) faced many adversities but he never gave up and eventually did achieve his goal. On another note, having a gritty friend like Dory certainly helped him stay positive and on track.
So do watch or re-watch the movie and this time learn about how to be successful with Marlin!
References:
Duckworth, A., Peterson, C., Matthews, M., & Kelly, D. (2020). Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Retrieved 19 June 2020, from https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Grit%3A-perseverance-and-passion-for-long-term-goals.-Duckworth Peterson/ea4d2acb497846e40bf48e8b629aeecfe833a13a
This is How to Grow Your Grit: 5 Secrets From Research. (2020). Retrieved 19 June 2020, from https://medium.com/better-humans/this-is-how-to-grow-your-grit-5-secrets-from-research-9c78c803093e
1 Comments
The post is interesting and informative.
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