In real estate and life, grit is a key ingredient to success. It’s what allows us to push through the tough times and emerge victorious on the other side.
Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled. In her talk, Duckworth defines grit as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” She argues that grit is more important than IQ or natural talent in predicting success because grit allows us to overcome obstacles and continue working towards our goals even when the going gets tough.
Here, she explains her theory of “grit” as a predictor of success.
Grit is not something you are born with, you don’t learn it in a classroom, you don’t inherit it, and a lot of times you don’t even learn it from your parents. You earn it by experiencing and doing hard things, sticking with it even when you want to quit, and pushing through to the other side to experience personal growth. Have you ever had your most challenging moment right before your greatest victory? That is what we call a ‘grit building moment.’
Grit is what allows us to push through the tough times and emerge victorious on the other side. grit allows us to overcome obstacles and continue working towards our goals even when the going gets tough.
So how do we develop grit? Well, research suggests that it’s not something that can be learned overnight. Rather, it’s a skill that must be developed
Having a growth mindset builds grit, as those who practice a growth mindset tend not to view failure as a permanent condition. Duckworth goes on to say that we need to take our best ideas and strongest intuitions and test them, measure our success, be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over with lessons learned.
Grit is a habit of mind that requires practice. But if we can learn to embrace grit, we can achieve our biggest goals and reach our highest potential.