You’ve probably heard people talking about how being gritty helped them get through a difficult situation and you may be asking yourself, what is grit?
Why is it important and what happens if I don’t have it?
In today’s episode of the Live Diet-Free Podcast, I’m reviewing Angela Duckworkth’s book Grit and I’ll be answering those questions and more.
You can listen here or by clicking the link below.
If you’d prefer, continue reading to learn exactly what grit is and how to cultivate more of it in your life to help you be more successful at reaching any goal.
What is Grit?
What’s your go-to response when the going gets tough?
Do you persevere to get to the other side or throw in the towel at the first sign of inconvenience?
Most of us give up on our goals too early and too often.
We say we want to accomplish certain things but when push comes to shove, we lack the grit to follow through.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though.
This is where having grit comes into play.
Grit is defined as the combination of perseverance and passion.
Each of us has a varying degree of grit and, unlike having the natural talent, is something you can work towards developing and enhancing.
The Four Components of Grit
- Interest: overall enjoyment
- Capacity to Practice: resist complacency and zero in on weaknesses
- Purpose: belief that the thing matters and likely connected to wellbeing of others
- Hope: ability to keep going even when hard, have doubts, not staying down
Finding Your Passion
Now that we’ve answered the question “what is grit,” we need to talk about making grit work for you.
To do this, you need to determine if the thing you’re trying to do is something you are passionate about or simply something that sounds exciting for right now.
So what is passion?
A passion is something like a compass that guides you to where you want to be and being passionate means having sustained, enduring devotion to a certain thing.
It’s easy to be enthusiastic about something new, but do you have the endurance to continue pursuing it once the enthusiasm wears off?
The things that you choose to continue pursuing are where you’ll find your passions.
Setting Goals
When most people think about setting goals, they immediately jump to this top-level goal that would be amazing and spend a lot of time positively fantasizing about reaching that goal.
Unfortunately when that happens, the lower-level goals that are holding that goal up are rarely fully developed and likely not unified, if they’re even considered at all.
As you work towards setting sustainable goals, you need to make sure that each of those lower-level goals are supporting your top-level goal.
For example, if your top-level goal is to lose 50 lbs, but your lower-level goals are focused on areas that have no ties to that goal, it’s unlikely that you’ll reach that goal in the timeframe you’ve set for yourself.
So instead of having lower-level goals that simply help you check boxes each day, create those goals in a way that allow you to check those daily boxes while also reaching for that top-level goal.
Developing a Growth Mindset
Having a growth mindset means you believe that you and other people can change and that setbacks are opportunities.
It is likely that we all have both an inner fixed mindset pessimist telling them that things are just the way that they are and can never get better and a growth mindset optimist encouraging them to keep going.
Unfortunately, most people have gotten really good at listening to and believing that inner pessimist and completely dismissing the optimistic side.
One of the things you can do to focus more on the growth mindset and the positive is to just not overreact.
When you experience setbacks, take a step back, assess them, and remain optimistic.
Consider what you can learn from the setback and know that you’ll be better equipped moving forward.
As you work towards giving your inner optimist more control over your thoughts, you’ll find that you’ll want to surround yourself with others who are doing the same.
Finding a community of individuals who have developed the level of grit that you desire will push you to become more like them. You’ll start finding ways to develop those same characteristics in yourself.
Our EA Coaching community is full of women (and coaches) who have developed confidence, commitment, and consistency and we’d love to share that with you. Check out our programs at www.estheravant.com/coaching.
