Almost no one would deny that perseverance is one of the keys to success. Edison, Stephen King, Sima Qian… tireless effort is the common thread running through every success story. The road to success is bound to have its obstacles, and grit (Grit) is the capacity that lets us keep going whether things are going our way or against us. In our studies and at work, others remind us constantly to persevere — yet what exactly is this perseverance, this grit, all about?
What is grit?
Psychologist Angela Duckworth published Grit：The Power of Passion and Perseverance in 2016. In it she explains that grit is made up of perseverance (Perseverance) and passion (Passion). When we think about what grit means, we very often focus only on perseverance — asking whether we or others can keep to a plan when obstacles arise — while overlooking the role that passion plays in any activity or goal. In a conversation with another psychologist, Duckworth notes that although most people want to know how to keep at a goal until it is finished, most cannot find where their passion lies. Passion is something a person has to go out and seek; the process may take a good deal of time, but it is an indispensable part of grit. Without passion, work is merely a hardship, even a form of torment. Grit is not about how a person can grind on through miserable work; it is about how one holds fast to a conviction over a long stretch of time, struggling on towards a goal.
4 key elements for building grit
Grit is not an innately fixed trait. Duckworth argues that natural talent can only give a person an edge at the starting line; the factor that truly decides whether someone succeeds is the grit cultivated afterwards. In her book she sets out 4 directions to help readers understand how grit can be cultivated：interest (Interest), practice (Practice), purpose (Purpose) and hope (Hope).
Anyone with grit must first develop an interest in the activity. We need to be interested in a goal before we will pour our time and energy into it. This, too, is a process of searching and exploring. If you have no activity that feels worth a large investment of your time, you can try out more new things from a curious, open-minded angle, or look for directions in your current work that you find engaging — and from there develop your passion and your grit.
Practice does not just mean practising some skill; it means practising stepping out of your comfort zone (Comfort Zone). Duckworth puts forward the idea of deliberate practice (Deliberate Practice): the notion that a person should deliberately challenge themselves, get used to sitting with the feeling of unease, and work on their weak points. Deliberate practice is what allows a person to face the unfamiliar with courage, to stay composed even in adversity, to refine their skills further, and to break past their previous limits with a positive attitude.
Purpose, like interest, is part of passion, but interest is usually only one of grit's earliest motivations, whereas purpose is the fuel that keeps a person going. Purpose lets a person make sense of adversity in a positive light, seeing obstacles as chances to refine themselves on the road to success, and refusing to give up lightly just because things get hard.
Hope gives us the courage to face failure. We never know how many failures it will take, or when, before we will succeed. Edison failed 1,000 times and still did not give up; J. K. Rowling kept writing after being rejected again and again — and the reason was that they still had hope. However far we may be from success, and however little we know it, hope lets us believe that our efforts will, in time, bring a fitting reward.
Growth mindset and grit
Beyond the elements above, we can also train our grit by building a growth mindset (Growth Mindset). People who hold a growth mindset believe that abilities and achievements are outcomes that can be developed through later effort; they treat the failures in life as chances for their own growth, and do not decide, after a single failure, that they will never succeed. People with a fixed mindset (Fixed Mindset), on the other hand, believe that a person's innate gifts determine everything about their future; they do not recognise the value of effort, and when they meet difficulty or challenge they tend to choose to give up, concluding that they cannot succeed. A growth mindset is not blind optimism; it is a form of self-affirmation and conviction. To have the grit to face difficulty, we all need a growth mindset to go with it — turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones to success, keeping up our perseverance along the way, and finally arriving at the joy of success.
The road to success is not crowded, because few people persevere. Whatever goal we are reaching for, we all need unparalleled grit to refine our abilities and carry out our plans. We hope everyone can hold fast to their convictions, break through obstacles, surpass themselves in the challenges to come, and live a life of meaning.
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