Posted April 4th, 2011 on the Aristotle Group blog
“I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” Christopher Reeves
In May of 1995, Christopher Reeve’s life changed dramatically when a severe spinal cord injury left him paralyzed. As he fought to walk again, he led an international movement to help others living with spinal cord injuries and created the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation which has reshaped spinal repair research.
How did Christopher Reeves accomplish so much after a life changing spinal cord injury? He was driven by the conviction that “nothing is impossible” providing an inspiring example of the virtue of persistence, perseverance, and industriousness. As one of the 24 character strengths in the Values In Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS), persistence is defined as voluntary continuance of goal directed action despite obstacles, difficulties, or discouragement. While perseverance does not guarantee success; in many cases it is not possible without it.
Angela Duckworth a Psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, studies a form of tenacity termed grit. Grit is perseverance and passion for long term goals. It entails the determination to accomplish ambitious long-term goals despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress. Across numerous studies of accomplished individuals, persistence is a key driver of accomplishment.
Grit has a number of positive benefits. First, persistence increases the probability of achieving difficult goals. Rarely are significant goals accomplished with ease. Setbacks, challenges, and periods of discouragement are often part of the journey. Persistence is the vehicle that allows progress when the journey gets tough. A second benefit of persistence is that it can enhance enjoyment and satisfaction once the goal is attained. Grit can help expand one’s skills and resourcefulness. As challenges are faced, innovation, enhanced skills and new abilities emerge. Finally, persistence generates confidence that our effort results in desired outcomes, an important concept termed self-mastery.
From middle school participants in the National Spelling Bee to West Point cadets; from real estate agents to Wharton business school graduates, grit has been identified as a key ingredient to successful goal attainment.
Here is the great news! Grit is valuable for people at all levels of ability and is something that can be cultivated and strengthened. We have the ability to expand our capacity for persistence!
Duckworth and colleagues have created “The Grit Survey,” an indicator of your personal level of grit. The survey takes just a few minutes to complete, is free of charge, and available at www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu . The results provide insight into your current level of grit.
So how do you go about growing and strengthening grit?
1. Have passion for your goals. Passion fuels perseverance. In a powerful cyclical way, persistence also fuels passion. As you immerse yourself in pursuit of a complex goal your understanding increases and you become enlivened by it. So start by picking goals that you are passionate about. Christopher Reeves was passionate about walking again and helping others with spinal cord injuries.
2. Establish aggressive long term and attainable short term goals. Gritty people set challenging long term goals. With the longer term goal in mind, the next critical step is to set shorter term goals with moderate difficulty. These goals should be not so difficult that you are easily discouraged, yet not so easy that you do not have to put forth significant effort. Peak performance occurs along the edge of our skills. Setting smaller, more manageable goals helps to build confidence and fosters commitment to the task at hand. With each successful attainment your capacity increases as you move closer to your ultimate objective. Make sure to savor and celebrate each goal attainment, generating energy for the next phase of the journey.
3. Identify a role model. Pick an inspiring role model of perseverance and determination. Awe has been identified as a powerful method of personal change and growth. Leveraging a sense of awe in others accomplishments motivates perseverance in achieving difficult goals.
4. Adopt a growth mindset. Psychologist Carol Dweck identifies mindset as key to achieving our full potential. A growth mindset is the belief that your unique qualities can be cultivated through effort and compared to a fixed mindset looks like this:
| BELIEF | Fixed Mindset – Intelligence is static | Growth Mindset –Intelligence can be developed |
| Challenges | Avoid | Embrace |
| Obstacles | Give Up Early | Persist in spite of difficulties |
| Effort | Effort is fruitless | Effort is the path to mastery |
| Criticism | Ignore negative feedback | Learn from criticism |
| Success of Others | Threatened | Inspire |
| RESULT | Plateau Early | Reach Higher Levels of Achievement |
5. Practice. Just as marathon runners build their capacity through many shorter runs; you can build your capacity for grit. Kaizen is the Japanese term for continuous improvement. Businesses have found great success in practicing kaizen, a form of continuous improvement. With its focus on incremental (and often tiny) changes; kaizen transforms incremental change into monumental results.
Can you have too much of a good thing? In some cases, yes. Examples of business and military failures demonstrate that persistence is not uniformly beneficial. There are times when it is best to abandon a course of action. The key is knowing when to persist and when to quit. For many of us though, increasing our ability to persevere provides a greater opportunity for development than developing the ability to abandon a goal.
Prior to his accident Christopher Reeve was best known for his role as Superman, a fictional superhero. His life after the spinal cord injury is a real life example of a superhero. However, when asked about his life after the injury, he responded: “What I do is based on powers we all have inside us: the ability to endure; the ability to love, to carry on, to make the best of what we have – and you don’t have to be a ‘Superman’ to do it.
When I work with clients on making change and achieving goals we often find that a tangible reminder supports continued progress toward the desired outcome. If you want to concentrate on expanding your own level of grit, consider purchasing a set of “Superman Tags.” Not only will they remind you to “go forward” but the $10 purchase goes, in full, directly to the Christopher and Dana Reeves Foundation via the Warner Brothers (Warner Brothers fills the order). To order the tags visit Superman Tags. For more information about the Christopher and Dana Reeves Foundation, www.christopherreeve.org