This Week's Focus:
"Grit: Key to Long-Term Success! Do You Have It?"
"Grit is tough because you don't get the psychic payoffs that come with an exciting discovery or a shift in direction. You rarely get big wins to celebrate. … (But) that slow, inch-by-inch progress? It's called winning."
— Chip and Dan Heath
I'm enjoying a lovely August here on the south tip of Vancouver Island. Lots of sun, not too much heart and the beach just a block away from me, in case I need to cool down.
I'm using the slight summer slow-down to grind away at the rewrite of my ebook.
Thriving In Challenging Times, as it's now called, it almost done and ready to be formatted for e-readers and as a PDf. It's been a long slog since I first conceived this idea, but I think the new version is more readable and will be more engaging and useful to readers. I'm happy to have inched along—poco a poco— toward what I hope will be a win/win for me, and for you!
Grit: The Key to Creating Long Term Results and Success
Each summer, the U.S. Army puts recruits through a brutal training program. It's so arduous, it used to be called "The Beast Barracks." Many don't survive the grueling physical, emotional and psychological test. Exhausted, dispirited and out of gas, they quit.
Before and after the training, the Army conducts a mountain of tests designed to predict who will stick it out—and who will achieve long-term success. They assess I.Q., E.Q., GPA, SAT, Optimism, Tenacity, etc…. One factor out-predicts all the others combined.
Grit, defined as, "perseverance and passion for long term goals," not only accurately predicts who will do well in the Army. It also predicts who'll excel at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, who'll top UPenn's psychology grad program, and who'll stick with U.S. Special Forces' training.
Grit is key because it's not an inborn personality trait. It is a character trait. You can develop it, and apply it to creating results that matter.
Grit will help you follow through to success in your career. It'll help you complete that book you've been working on. It'll help start and succeed in the business you'd love to create. It'll help you finish that stalled home reno you'd love to complete. But to do create any of these results, you'll have to work hard, persist in the face of set-backs and sustain a deep, abiding passion for your result.
Grit In Real Life
A classic example of grit is summed up in Thomas Edison's reply to critics who asked him what it was like to fail so many times. "I didn't fail," he said. "I learned 100 ways not to make a light bulb."
Sports are full of stories of grit. Since watching the 1980 "Miracle On Ice," Tim Thomas wanted to be a pro hockey goalie. Drafted in 1994, he couldn't make the National Hockey League. He bounced around minor and European leagues until 2006. Then, the Boston Bruins, beleaguered by injured goalies, gave Tim a chance. At 31, he became a starter. In 2009, he won the Vezina trophy for best NHL goalie, and in 2011 he won a Stanley Cup ring.
Where most players would have quit, Thomas kept his eyes on the prize he so passionately desired, played wherever could and, when he got his chance, followed through to success.
The arts are also full of stories of grittiness. Among his many accomplishments, Michelangelo laboured on The Pope's Tomb for 40 years! It took him four years to paint the frescos in the Sistine Chapel. The Medici family funerary chapel in the Basilica of San Lorenzo occupied him for much of the 1520s and 1530s.
J.K. Rowling toiled at The Philosopher's Stone between 1990 to 1996, in spite of job changes, moving, marriage, a baby and difficult bouts of self-doubting. But, passionate about it, she persisted, writing whenever she could find a few free moments. The rest is history!
To write about Medieval cathedral builders, Ken Follet spent vacations in Europe for nearly 20 years, studying the great cathedrals and developing a "vocabulary of architecture." Published in 1989, Pillars of the Earth was an instant best seller, staying on the New York Times best seller list for over 18 months, and on the German list for six years. Follet still sells 100,000 copies a year!
So What Makes Gritty Folks Gritty?
Milan Raonic is a young Canadian tennis phenom who dreams of, someday, becoming number one in the world. His coach says he's seen players with Milan's talent, but none who put in the practice time he does. In a recent TV interview, when was asked how he got so good so fast, Milan said that, for years, everyday before high school and university classes, he hit 600 tennis shots.
Many years before Milan was born, when Babe Didrikson Zaharias won the British woman's golf championship, people assumed she was a natural athlete. But for thirteen years, she'd hit 1,000 balls a day, getting feedback about her stance, swing and other skills.
Research shows that Achievement = Skill/Talent X Effort!
Practice doesn't just add to your skill, it multiplies it! But it must be focused!
In fields as diverse as chess, sports, music and visual arts, K. Anders Ericsson, a professor at Florida State University found that what separated the great from the good was a minimum of 10,000 hours of "deliberate" practice.
Or, as guitarist Dave Navarro put it, "It takes 20 years of practice to become an overnight sensation."
So persistent, deliberate practice is a component of grit.
As is "task commitment"—the capacity to commit to your goal (choosing not only your result, but choosing also to do what it takes to achieve that result).
And passion! Passion helps keep you focused and willing to put in the long hours needed to create long-term results.
Passion, persistence, and practice, practice, practice are the keys to grit.
Grit Doesn't Mean Forcing Yourself
Don't get the idea that develop grit and creating big results means you have to clench your jaw and force yourself to practice. It doesn't. Successful creators consciously (or intuitively) set up an organizing framework that generates three powerful sources of energy.
By holding a clear, compelling vision of a highly desired result, they create motivation. Motivation is launch energy. It gets you moving. But it's fickle, often disappearing when the going gets tough.
So, by holding a vision of a result in mind, together with a sense of its current state, creators set up "creative tension." The workhorse energy of creative tension arises out of the gap between vision and reality. It empowers creators to act, even when they don't feel motivated!
Finally, creators learn by doing. Starting small, taking doable actions, creating multiple little successes, they build the competence and confidence that leads to momentum. Momentum is the energy inherent in movement, and increases at an accelerating pace. It's the energy creators use to follow through to completion.
By integrating motivation, creative tension and momentum in a creating framework, creators set up a path of least resistance — an energy streambed — along which energy and action flows from where they are to where they want to be. The framework empowers them to generate and maintain the energy needed to hold their vision, deal with adversity and to persist and practice over long periods, until their vision becomes reality.
This grit-developing creating framework is what some might call the "hidden scaffolding" of greatness.
The good news is, you, too, can learn to set up your creating framework, and work within it to create the results you most deeply want.
How's your grit? Would you like more? Want to get serious about creating results that matter?
Yes? Let me know. Maybe I can help!
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Next Time: "How To Build Grit and Get Creating!"
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COACHING INFO PACKAGE AND F.REE COACHING CHAT
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Want to develop the grit and passion for results that leads to success?
I have space for 2 new clients in September. And 2 for Sept/Oct. I'm interviewing for Oct/Nov, and fall is filling fast. It's a great time to start coaching. Why wait 'till New Year's?
If you'd like more info, send an e-mail with "Coaching Results Package" in the subject.
I'll send you my fr.ee 7-page info package. No obligation! No pressure!
Here's what another happy client had to say about working with me:
"Coaching with Bruce means doing practice, and being accountable to yourself. It's tough sometimes, but it sure as heck was worth it for me. I just finished my book proposal and got word from my agent that two (2!) publishers are interested. A year ago, I just dreamt about a book and told myself, "It's too hard!"
Bruce's coaching helped get beyond that, down to work and making progress."
– D.S. Sprecher, Vancouver, BC
And you? What's your dream?
If not now, when?
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VIDEO: WHAT'S YOUR GRIT SCORE?
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Caroline Adams Miller, author of Create Your Best Life talks about "grit," how to get it and how to measure it. And how to create authentic self-esteem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tn-DgQbNSI
You can check out your "grit score" at :
http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/questionnaires.aspx
It's simple and quick and fun!
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QUOTABLE QUOTES
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"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity."
– Louis Pasteur
"I don't know what keeps me going. Sometimes I wonder... I think it's just pure perseverance and wanting to succeed and having that burning desire to always have success."
– Tanya Tucker
"A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success."
– Elbert Hubbard
"You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence."
– Octavia Butler
"The real issue is not talent as an independent element, but talent in relationship to will, desire, and persistence. Talent without these things vanishes and even modest talent with those characteristics grows."
– Milton Glaser
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For more on the topic of Creating What Matters Most and Simplicity and Success, check out my books and ebooks at:
http://www.bruceelkin.com/simplicity.html
Have a rich, flourishing and gritty week!
Cheers!
Bruce
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