I’ve posted before about grit and why some have it, and others don’t. Currently, it is a pretty hot topic thanks to the #MeToo movement. When I see or even meet those that these stories are about, in some, there is no heartache or hurt. Everyone has met someone that is somehow still living their best life despite sorrow of varying degrees, how do they do it? Is it a magical formula? Is it hours upon hours spent in therapy? At what point does the bad outweigh the good and why is it that for some, it only takes a minimal amount of good to tip the scale?
There are many anecdotes about how people can endure seemingly unscathed. One of my favorites is an old Cherokee tale about The Two Wolves. Briefly, the story goes that we each have two wolves living inside of us. One wolf is evil and represents anger, envy, sorrow, self-pity, resentment, superiority, ego, etc.. The other wolf is good; this wolf represents love, happiness, hope, benevolence, serenity, empathy, and faith. The wolf that wins is the wolf that you “feed.” Another favorite quote, one I have used professionally and personally, is by Charles Swindoll. He says, “The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church....a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitudes.” Many anecdotes out there essentially teach the same lesson, there are aspects of our lives that we can control, such as our attitude, and there are aspects of our life that are entirely out of our control. For students, you can control how much you study, how present you are during lecture, asking for help when you need it but most importantly you control your attitude. A bad attitude is a prescription for failure and food for the evil wolf. Every morning when you wake up the choice of which wolf to feed is yours. You can choose to be mad and upset and blame this or that for one bad thing or another; or you can smile, think of everything you have and everything you are grateful for and feed the good wolf. There is a reason daily affirmations work; it is similar to the phenomena of a stranger smiling at you across the room making a bad day good. Everything is your choice of which wolf to feed. You choose to persevere; no one can decide it for you and dwelling on past mistakes and circumstances that are out of your control do nothing more than feed the evil wolf. Make a choice every day to feed the good wolf and watch yourself find that grit it takes to achieve your goals throughout life.
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We all know those people that seem to just be better, those that are sickeningly successful. Perhaps now we are getting a bit of insight into what makes them successful. As Angela explains, the key to being successful is not linked to IQ, but more connected to an individual's ability to persevere, or as Angela puts it, a person's grit. Now the question is, what gives a person grit? Grit doesn't come from surviving tough experiences, there are plenty of people that survive difficult experiences but are sort of broken afterward while others survive and are stronger. So what gives a person grit? How do you teach someone to persevere?
Fascinating research and Ted talk by Angela Lee Duckworth. |