Do not let temporary setbacks become permanent excuses.
To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal. To be gritty is to invest, day after week after year, in challenging practice. To be gritty is to fall down seven times, and rise eight.
In the most general sense, talent is the sum of a person’s abilities – his or her intrinsic gifts, skills, knowledge, experience, intelligence, judgment, attitude, character, and drive. It also includes his or her ability to learn and grow.” That.
The award goes to her because she has discovered that what we eventually accomplish may depend more on our passion and perseverance than on our innate talent.
Since novelty is what your brain craves, you’ll be tempted to move on to something new, and that could be what makes the most sense. However, if you want to stay engaged for more than a few years in any endeavor, you’ll need to find a way to enjoy the nuances that only a true aficionado can appreciate. “The old in the new is what claims the attention,” said William James. “The old with a slightly new turn.
Stay positive,” Cody said. “Go past those negative beliefs in what’s possible and impossible and just give it a try.
Staying on the treadmill is one thing, and I do think it’s related to staying true to our commitments even when we’re not comfortable. But getting back on the treadmill the next day, eager to try again, is in my view even more reflective of grit.
There have been so many times in my career when I wanted to pack it in, when I wanted to give up and do something easier,” Rhonda told me. “But there was always someone who, in one way or another, told me to keep going. I think everyone needs somebody like that. Don’t you?
In fact, he can’t remember a single case in which the development of purpose unfolded without the earlier observation of a purposeful role model. “Ideally,” he said, “the child really gets to see how difficult a life of purpose is – all the frustrations and the obstacles – but also how gratifying, ultimately, it can be.
It was a really winding road that took me to all kinds of places. And it was difficult, and discouraging, and demoralizing, and scary, and all the rest. But eventually, I got here. I got exactly where I wanted to be.
Failure is not a permanent condition.
Consistency of effort over the long run is everything.
With everything perfect,” Nietzsche wrote, “we do not ask how it came to be.” Instead, “we rejoice in the present fact as though it came out of the ground by magic.
Grit depends on a different kind of hope. It rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future. I have a feeling tomorrow will be better is different from I resolve to make tomorrow better. The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again.
Interest is one source of passion. Purpose – the intention to contribute to the well-being of others – is another. The mature passions of gritty people depend on both.
Over time, we learn life lessons we don’t forget, and we adapt in response to the growing demands of our circumstances. Eventually, new ways of thinking and acting become habitual. There comes a day when we can hardly remember our immature former selves. We’ve adapted, those adaptations have become durable, and, finally, our identity – the sort of person we see ourselves to be – has evolved. We’ve matured.
What ripens passion is the conviction that your work matters. For most people, interest without purpose is nearly impossible to sustain for a lifetime.
There are no shortcuts to excellence.
A vivid – if somewhat melodramatic – firsthand description of what deliberate practice can feel like comes from dancer Martha Graham: ‘Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to the paradise of that achievement is not easier than any other. There is fatigue so great that the body cries even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration. There are daily small deaths.
You can’t simply will yourself to like things, either. As Jeff Bezos has observed, ‘One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves.