4 Ways To Develop More ‘Grit’

If you have not been paying attention to me banging on repeatedly about it you may not have heard, Dr Angela Duckworth wrote a book titled ‘Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance‘.  It sits high up in my recommended reading list.

Her formula is very simple: if you have buckets of passion and you persere, chasing that passion over a long time, you will have loads of success. Of course, if you read the book, from cover to cover and pay attention, you will realise it is a little more complicated than that.

If you are new to personal development, you will really get a lot out of the book. If you are not as new to personal development, you will recognise certain themes.  Duckworth gives credit to persons like her idol Dr Carol Dweck who developed Growth Mindset theory. 

Themes like knowing what you want and working towards it for a very long time is a big part of the formulae, however there is a lot of misunderstandings about this theory. Grit is not the only thing you need to have success. Grit is something that you are being, you are doing, but beyond just grit you have to have a lot of influence with other persons.

The world’s most successful people, Titans if you will, have tremendous influence on other people. They have powers of persuasion.  They have social intelligence and their ability to influence others to support them in their cause or dream. If they could not communicate well and persuade others to support them or believe in them or buy from them, they would not be as successful as they are.

Grit does not usual take into account the concepts of influence, so It is not the end all and be all, but it is a very important concept that we all need to develop. Duckworth’s research states that Grit is passion and perseverance. This could be referred to as tenacity. It’s about knowing what you want and going for it! Having that hunger inside, and matching it with hard work over a long term, to continuously improve, to continuously commit, to continuously get better and deliver and serve.

Let me share with you Brendan Burchard, author of recent book ‘High Performance Habits‘, believes are the four best ways that will help you get grittier.

1. Get clarity

If Grit begins with passion, you need to know what you are interested in. What do you love? You need to be clear on what you want now!

One of the major reasons lots of persons don’t feel successful is because they do not know exactly what they are really pursuing. What they are working towards each day. They do not feel like that are engaged in meaningful endeavours so the passion is not there.

If the passion is not there, the commitment and ‘stick-to-it-ness’ is absent as well so they are not hanging onto what is important to them. They do not stick wit it.

What do you really want now?

You have lived your life to this point. You’ve been through some stuff. You’ve fount and you’ve struggled and probably give up some things, made some sacrifices, and stuck to some things. What do you want now?

Maybe now the kids have gone. They’ve moved out of the house and/or off to university.

Maybe now you’ve lost your job. Or you’ve got a new job offer. Or you started a new business. Or you are about to take your business to the next level.

What do you want now? What do you want for the next phase of your life? Chapter 2. Scene 2. Phase 2. Whatever you call it.

You have to have some level of clarity about what you want. That clarity is the ambition, the goal, the dream, the desire, the thing that becomes a passion because you have that deep commitment and attachment to moving towards something.

So, number one, work out what you want now. In all areas of your life. What do you want in your health now? What do you want in your relationships now? What do you want in your career and your contribution to the world now? What are your real dreams, right now?

2. Prime enthusiasm each day

Burchard believes the master emotion of life is enthusiasm. If you have enthusiasm towards something, you are engaged with it. If you are enthusiastic about something, you feel energised. If you are enthusiastic about something, you look forward to waking up in the morning and going for it. You buy in.

Therefore, you should prime that feeling every day. Maybe when having you morning shower or coffee think, ‘What could I be excited about today? What can I have enthusiasm about today?’

I write a gratitude diary every night on which I list three things that I am grateful for that day. At the bottom of the page, I write down something that I am looking forward to the next day. Something that I am enthusiastic about the next day.

If you can not think of anything by looking at your schedule, think about what you could do that day that would be fun and make you look forward to the day. Make time for to create something that is fun. Maybe it is share a joke with a friend. Maybe it is doing something that you really enjoy. It does not have to be time consuming. It can be ten to thirty minutes doing a passion project you are interested in.

What ever it is, prime enthusiasm, because if you have that feeling of enthusiasm that is what is going to keep you passionate long term.

You need to prime your enthusiasm everyday. That is why I write it in my daily journal.

A lot of persons are very passionate people but they are not living passionate lives because every day they are not engaging with what it is that they want (look out for a future entire post I am writing on this subject).

Very soon, people will be setting a big goal at New Years but by April they will have forgotten it. Why is every one excited in January? They are priming enthusiasm. The big ball dropping or the donging of Big Ben makes them look at their goals. They are having an emotional connection, attachment and commitment to that, and that excites them for the year ahead.

So, what you need to do is look at your goals everyday. Write them on a card or piece of paper and carry them round with you. Read them aloud. Or write them out again on a piece of paper every day. Get excited about doing it, implementing it, experiencing it, and go for it!

3. Put time aside every day

If you do not schedule a time for practice, schedule time for training, schedule time to implement, schedule time to get your work done, you will not get it done. Libraries of books have been written on this subject. ‘Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity‘ by David Allen is one example, with a cultish devotion.

If you don’t schedule, you will be pulled in all these different directions, all these different areas, so now you are just reacting to the world all the time. Reaction. Reaction. Reaction. Distraction. Distraction. Distraction. Then you do not have any grit to stick to something, because you do not stick to that which is not scheduled. If it is not in your diary, you become so passionate about it for a week or two but then the world comes back in, with its requests, obligations and responsibilities and suddenly the very thing for which you had so much passion and enthusiasm has gone away. We’ve all done it, started a diet or exercise programme or learning a language and then lose track of it.

The world’s highest level of performers – Olympians, Fortune 50 CEOs, billionaires, people who have a long track record of success – they work at something every single day. It is part of their repertoire. Tim Ferriss on his podcast interviews many of these persons and asks them about their daily routines. He published many of Routines in his book ‘Tools of Titans’. .
Hardly any of them take a complete day off. They work on their life’s work every day. But they also put time aside to meditate, exercise and spend time with their families. They schedule it all and get things done. They have routines. They have rituals. Things that are scheduled every day. This does not mean that they do not have the occasional days off. Or even months at a time. But they have work on their passion projects scheduled on their calendars. Olympic swimmers have swim practice here, here, here, here and here. It is constant. It never goes away. They have grit because it is scheduled.

If it is not scheduled, it is a passing interest. I have gym scheduled in my diary every weekday. Not always when I do it. But my phone reminds me to do it every day. Often after I’m already done. But if I did skip that day, or I am dragging my heals a bit, it serves to remind me to get it done or that I have missed it that day and I need to get back on it. It never passes me by.

When it is scheduled, it becomes a clear commitment.

Block out some time. If I show up at your house, we pull up your calendar, we looked at it, and nowhere in your calendar are any of your passions, no where in your calendar are the tasks you are performing to achieve your goals, your implementation plans, what you want to create, then what you are is reactionary. You are following the whim of the world. You are, over a period of time, losing that passion and genuine desire.

Passion is something that you have to be on top. Like muscle, memory or a basketball, it’s use it or lose it.

Please, block out time to work on things you care about.

4. Get help

Enlist a team. As Arnold Schwarzenegger writes in the forward to ‘Tools of Titans’:

I am not a self-made man. I got a lot of help…
My life was built on a foundation of parents, coaches, and teachers; of kind souls…; of mentors…; of idols… my mother… my father…
You can admit that you can’t do it alone. I certainly can’t. No one can.

Everyone needs help along the way. No man is an island.

As I touched on earlier, the highest level performers are great at structuring a support team around them. Great athlete like Andy Murray have their team around them wherever they are in the world. CEOS who move from one company to the next often take their team with them. They have persons around them that support them in their desires. They’ve got coaches, mentors, trainers, supportive parents, partners and friends; an amazing team supporting them.

It was not that they were lucky to be born into those families. Real people with real success habits, not just conceptually, not just from some psychological study. People who are on the ground, you know what they do? They are influencers. As I mentioned above, they are amazing talented as influencing other people to believe in them, to invest in them, to follow them, to train them, to coach them, to support them along the journey. There is a very common saying, it is not what you know, it is whom you know. It is also whom you can influence to help you along your way. I do not mean in a manipulative way. Often these people are successful, as Adam Grant argues, because they are the most willing to help other people, so they get help in return.

They are not just showing up as the brilliant superstar genius. As much as we would all like to believe that these people succeed because they are so lucky and/or have a gift, that successful persons are just lone wolfs or geniuses, the reality is that environment matters and you have to set up a positive environment around you to enable you to pursue your passion. To empower you to persist when it gets hard. A few brilliant books have been written on this subject including The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. by Daniel Coyle and Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice by Matthew Syed.

Those are the people who can pick you up when you fall down. You become more resilient them better the social support you set up around you.

You can not do that unless you become someone who is sharing your true thought, feelings, desires and dreams with other people. You need to speak your truth. You need to ask for help. You need to learn from your mistakes. You need to enlist other persons around you. You need to prime their enthusiasm to support you. Because without a support team around you, you are always going to plateau.

It is just my role as a personal trainer. My clients thought that they could only go so far, they thought that they were done, but it was my job to get them to keep going. “Give me five more!” And they could.

That is life too for the long haul. We all need our life coaches. We all need that as a success habit. Ask for help. Enlist a team.

I hope these ideas helped you get more gritty. More passion and perseverance. More excited to get out there and grinding, hustling and crushing it.

These are all basic concepts. But common sense is not always common practice. That is why so many persons with potential fail to reach that level.

Stay gritty. No that it takes a lot of hard work to maintain a long term level of success. The Obstacle is the Way.

Follow the four ideas presented above and you will start to see a little more success in your life.

Enjoy!
Scott

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