A recent study found that 92 percent of people that set New Year's goals never actually achieve them. But why do the 8 percent succeed and accomplish their goals? I think it is because this small group practiced effective goal setting, persevered, had the resilience to overcome setbacks, possessed the courage to deal with the fear of failure, and maintained their drive to succeed. In a word, they had grit.

Grit is an intangible trait that helps people accomplish extraordinary goals. Grit is that thing that gets us to study for one more test, swim one more lap in the pool, or rake leaves one more time. Grit can help take your leadership, fitness, relationships, education, and teams to the next level. Successful students, parents, leaders, entrepreneurs, and athletes are using grit right now to achieve their long-term goals.

Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, brought grit to the forefront through her TED Talk, numerous articles, and the 2016 book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Angela, through years of research defines grit as “combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special.” Duckworth further breaks individual grit down as a combination of interest, or enjoyment; practice, or a persistent desire to do better; purpose, or their why; and hope, or the ability to bounce back.

Grit has been compared to the Big Five personality traits, which are a group of five broad dimensions used to describe the human personality and psyche. The Big Five are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Grit is most associated with conscientiousness, which is the tendency to be responsible, organized, hard-working, goal-directed, and to adhere to norms and rules. However, conscientiousness lacks the long-term aspect of grit. Since Duckworth’s book was published psychologists have argued whether grit exists, how much different it is from conscientiousness, and how different it is from perseverance.

I find Duckworth’s book compelling. She does a phenomenal job describing what grit is and how you can determine your level of grit. Like Duckworth, I believe grit exists and it can be grown. Nevertheless, I think that she falls short when providing practical ways to grow your grit or your organization’s grit. I also diverge from Duckworth since I don’t believe that grit requires passion. There are some things that I do daily that are gritty but aren’t fueled by a particular passion. For instance, I walk Samantha, my dog, several times a day. I don’t have a particular passion for dog walking. Instead, I know it is the right thing to do for Samantha.

Grit Redux

I’m not a psychologist like Angela and her peers. Rather, I am a practitioner of grit. From becoming an Eagle Scout, to graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point, to earning the Ranger Tab from the US Army’s Ranger School, to completing multiple combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, to training and competing in triathlons, and to standing up a business in the midst of the pandemic, I have participated in a series of gritty journeys where I both succeeded and failed. These crucibles have forged my grit. And I continue to find value in finding gritty journeys to pursue to help me grow and develop.

I find that grit is better defined as “the will to persevere to achieve long term goals.” A person’s grit is built upon five components: a goal, their perseverance, their resilience, their courage to deal with the fear of failure, and their drive. To further break down the components of grit:

• Goal is a desired outcome in the future

• Perseverance is persistence in doing something difficult

• Resilience is the capacity to recover from difficulties or toughness

• Courage is the management of the fear of failure

• Drive is the internal or external fuel that feeds the grit fire.

Bringing these five elements together creates grit. And grit helps people accomplish extraordinary tasks.

Just like excellence, grit is built upon the mundane – hundreds and hundreds of incremental improvements across the five components. Incremental improvements in your goal setting, perseverance, resilience, courage to deal with the fear of failure, and drive over the course of years grow your grit. Doing a series of little things right, day-in and day-out, is the key to growing your grit. Today, successful students, parents, leaders, entrepreneurs, and athletes are using grit right now to achieve their long-term goals.

Grit is not bestowed upon a person at birth. Lucky for us gritty people are made. Grit is acquired through experiences, self-development, training, observation, and exposure to other gritty people. This article and more that are coming over the next several months will help you enhance your grit by getting your to think about ways to improve your five components. You have to do the hard work and actually put them into practice.

Fortunately, grit is trainable and transferable. Developing grit in one area can carry over to another. For example, walking 10,000 steps every day for a month may give you enough grit to tackle a particularly challenging long-term project at work. Or finally finish that lingering project in your yard.

Gritty Journey

It may help increase your understanding of grit by taking you through a gritty journey I did this year. Zwift is a game that enables you to link your smart power trainer or treadmill up to your computer, enabling you to ride with other cyclists or run with other runners in a virtual environment. In addition, the virtual environment enables you to earn badges, compete against other users, or follow specific training sessions designed by professional coaches. More importantly, Zwift helps to relieve some of the boredom associated with indoor riding or running through its gamification and social aspects.

For the cyclist, Zwift awards badges every time you complete a new route or a significant accomplishment. Late this summer a friend casually asked me how many badges I had since he had just been awarded his 100th badge. I have been using Zwift for the past four years but hadn’t paid attention to the badges. I checked and discovered that I only had 59 badges. Darn! It was time to get gritty.

So, I developed my gritty goal – earn 100 badges before January 1, 2021. To help my perseverance, I broke the goal down by listing all the routes and accomplishments available to me to get the 41 I needed. I eliminated some, like the London’s PRL Full Badge, a ride that would take seven plus hours on the bike to ride its 107 virtual miles. Instead, I focused on 41 badges that I could achieve with my daily workout. I built my resilience by talking to a cycling friend regularly about the gritty journey. I enhanced my courage by accepting that during some workouts I would run out of time to earn the badge, but I could always go back and try again. I fueled my internal drive by checking the scoreboard after every workout. Finally, I fueled my external drive by telling others about the journey and talking trash to the friend with 100 badges. Even with all that, the gritty journey to get 100 badges took me until December 24th when I received my 100th badge for doing the “Serpentine 8” route.

In summary, grit is intangible and incredibly powerful. Personal grit is built upon your goal, your perseverance, your resilience to deal with setbacks, your courage to deal with the fear of failure, and your drive. Over the next three months I’m going to cover each of these aspects in detail, as well as organizational grit. I hope you find the discussion thoughtful and energizing.

Go on the offensive in 2021 and build your grit. Develop a gritty goal and then build your perseverance, resilience, courage, and drive to accomplish it.

If you’d like to talk more about growing your personal grit, overcoming obstacles, and accomplishing more of your goals contact us here to start the discussion.

Pullup photo from https://muscleandbrawn.com/