Passion and Perseverance -The driving force of success

After facing so many failures in my life, one thing was sure that I was not going to give up. Giving up was never a choice for someone like me as failure was nothing new to me. After thinking a lot, I decided to learn about the failures of highly successful people and the first logical step was to read the books. Searching for a book to start, I came across a blog post suggesting some really great books about life’s purpose and passion. Attracted by the title, “Grit: The power of passion and perseverance” by “Angela Duckworth”, I decided to search for some reviews and it took me to a TED talk by the author herself. At the end of her 19min talk I was sure that this is not a book I was going to miss.

After reading the book almost twice, I thought about writing a review cum summary of the book to present the great ideas in a more concise way. 

Starting with events from her own childhood, where she was habitual of hearing words like genius and talent from her father, she never knew that one day she would end up trying to find the meaning of those words in lives of some of the most successful people. First a school teacher and later as a psychologist, trying to search for commonalities among successful people, she noticed that these people had exceptionally ferocious determination, a very deep sense of what they wanted and a lot of hard work. To simply put in the words of the author “they had GRIT”.

What is Grit and why does it matter?

The term “grytte,” an Old English version of grit is defined in an 1897 yearbook as “firmness, courage, determination. Angela gave several arguments that grit matters more than talent. In many ways, showing up and keep trying for a goal matters a lot.

As Woody Allen says that “Eighty percent of success in life is showing up”. Most of the time people are distracted by talent or by definition of talent that society feeds us. It’s a fact that aptitude does not guarantee achievement. We usually consider talent being some intrinsic God given gift that some people have and some simply don’t. In other words, we are distracted by the notion of talent.

“By shining our spotlight on talent,

we risk leaving everything else in the shadows”

Angela Duckworth

Efforts Counts Twice

“Our vanity, our self-love, promotes the cult of the genius,”

Nietzsche said.

Focusing more on the significance of effort, Angela comes up with a simple but highly valuable equation backed by huge experimental data to show the role of efforts in achievements. Our society is adapted to overemphasize on talent that results in undervaluing everything else, even the things that count a lot in achieving some goal.

So, finally Angela gives the definition of talent as “the ability to learn new skills”. It means that every person has talent, some learn new skills quickly than others but by increasing efforts that difference can be eliminated.

Is grit genetic?

After many experiments and observation about the grit and its development throughout the lives of thousands, Angela in the book comes up with maturity principle.

“Over time, we learn life lessons we don’t forget, and we adapt

in response to the growing demands of our circumstances.

Eventually, new ways of thinking and acting become habitual”

Angela Duckworth

From the data it could be concluded that grit, like any other skill, can be developed. High achievers often talk about a certain commitment that rather than intensity focus more on the idea of consistency over time. So, grit is basically that “you care about that same ultimate goal in an abiding, loyal, steady way” Angela. A person’s ultimate goal/aim can be divided into small mid-level goals which further comprise of lower level goals.

Low level goals change with strategy but not the top level goal. Grit is about holding the same top-level goal for a very long time.

How to develop grit?

According to “Angela Duckworth” Grit is the additive outcome of four main assets; interest, practice, purpose and hope.

Interest

The word interest comes from the Latin interesse, which means “to differ”. To be interesting is, literally, to be different. We often hear about the phrase “follow your passion”, which is true in many ways. Research shows that people are enormously more satisfied with their jobs when they do something that fits their personal interests.

“One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try

 to force an interest on themselves“

Jeff Bezos

A man’s interest has to follow two steps; discovery and development. Reality is that our early interests are fragile, vaguely defined, and in need of energetic, years long cultivation and refinement. So, first one has to find their interests and then they have to develop them over a longer period.

Practice

“Kaizen” is Japanese for resisting the plateau of arrested development. Its literal translation is: “continuous improvement.” It’s a fact that experience doesn’t always lead to excellence – Deliberate practice is necessary. For anyone to achieve a top level goal deliberate and goal oriented practice is required that is done following four major steps.

1. A clearly defined stretch goal

2. Full concentration and effort

3. Immediate and informative feedback

4. Repetition with reflection and refinement

Gritty people tends to do more deliberate practice and achieve more.

Purpose

Purpose—the intention to contribute to the well-being of others is one of the most important factor. Work that connects the individual to something far greater than the self is what motivates you and allows you to get up from bed at 5am in the morning.

Hope

Hope is what motivates you to keep trying. But hope can be of two types; Tomorrow will be better than today or rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future. The later is more likely to develop grit.

Fall seven, rise eight!

Japanese saying

From experiments mentioned in book it is concluded that it isn’t suffering that leads to the feeling of hopelessness but its suffering you think you can’t control. We can generally learn to observe our negative self-talk and change our maladaptive behaviors into more optimistic behavior. When you keep searching for ways to change your situation for the better, you stand a chance of finding them.

This is a book with life changing insights. Living in a society where everyone praise talent more than the efforts and put every achievement or failure on abundance or lack of talent diminishes the ability to persevere. I myself founded an organization to support the talent by the name of “Youth Talent Helping Society (YTHS)” in 2015, which in the beginning did really well, until i decided to leave it to my partners thinking that something was just not working. I felt it that time, that no matter how many skills one has, if he is not willing to make relentless effort then no success can be gained.  The insight that grit is more important factor for success, proving it through huge pile of experimental data and providing tools for the development of grit makes this book a great asset.

#Talent #Grit #Passion #TED #Perseverance