“Grit is a distinct combination of passion, resilience, determination, and focus that allows a person to maintain the discipline and optimism to persevere in their goals even in the face of discomfort, rejection, and a lack of visible progress for years, or even decades.”
There are many articles out there that have identified that the one trait that almost guarantees success is ‘Grit’ or some call it ‘Mental Toughness’. Unfortunately, ‘grit’ is not gifted through nature, but rather through nurture. Such as no one is born neither hardworking nor lazy. Neither are we born organised or messy. It is something gained through character development over a long period of time.
You can be born into circumstances that pave or hinder the way to your goals, or have certain behaviours ingrained in your genetic makeup. But ‘Grit’ is something else altogether.
Through my own experience and after having spoken to many entrepreneurs and successful individuals who have had their own fair share of failures and success, I’ve come to conclude the 4 simple steps you need to incorporate in your everyday life to nurture ‘Grit’ . Free of charge of course.
1. Tell ‘Procrastination’ to f**k off
You can’t be the biggest procrastinator in the world and expect to have ‘Grit’. ‘Grit’ is pushing on no matter what happens, even if you fail. But if you don’t even have the strength of character to start on something, you won’t get a chance to push yourself, and hence the seed of ‘Grit’ will never be imbued in you.
‘Procrastination’ takes you steps behind having ‘Grit’.
2. Start small
You don’t have to put your life savings into a project and watch it fail or struggle to showcase or get ‘Grit’. You can start small in everyday tasks that you do. When you’re training for a 10km run but are about to give up at the 9km mark. Push yourself to keep going. When you have 1 more basket of laundry to go and are tempted to leave them for next week, don’t. Make it a habit to not give up in every little thing that you do because it accumulates into big things, and it becomes part of you to persevere.
3 Talk to yourself
Yes you can go for talks, read some books, or get a life coach to sort you out. But it all boils down to you. You have no better coach than yourself. When you keep talking yourself out of giving up, to stay focused and to keep pushing on on a daily basis, that will be the only positive voice you hear. Good thing is, by then even when someone else tries to talk you down, that little voice in you would have become a powerhouse.
4. Give failure some credit
Some people work hard because they don’t want/are scared to fail, not because they want to succeed. The fear of failure VS the want to succeed; BIG difference. They say ‘Failure is the Mother of all Success’. But it would be more accurate to say that ‘Failure is the Mother of all Grit’.
You don’t necessarily need to fail to succeed (for some lucky people), but you definitely don’t develop ‘grit’ from success. So next time you fail at something, feel free to whinge about it for 5 mins then get back up.
The Confluence Of Life 