Who's Got
Grit?
“Talent,
it turns out, is overrated.”
Andrea
Downing Peck (“Grit” in September issue of Costco
Connection magazine, p.46)
Angela Duckworth, winner
of a MacArthur Genius Grant, researched what makes children fail or
succeed in school and in life. Rather than genius, or even unusual
talent, she found that “grit” was the true indicator. And, by
grit, she means perseverance, self-control, passion, purpose,
deliberate practice, and character. Who knew that so much could be
packed into that four-letter word.
I think immediately of great athletes, and how they practice for hours every single day, through
injuries and fatigue to gain even a slight edge in competition. When
you ask, they deny that they are trying to be better than everyone
else—it's always themselves they are competing against. “I want
to better my time,” they say.
Passion is an important
ingredient in mastering any skill. You have to love what you do
enough to get up at five o'clock in the morning to be at the pool, or
the gym, or the practice room, before school, or work. I remember a
young man who grew up with one of my sons. He played cello, and his
parents wanted more than anything for him to be the next Yo-Yo Ma. So
he went to lessons and practiced everyday whether he wanted to or
not, and he was very good. He received a scholarship to a prestigious
college and continued his work, but his heart was not in it. When he
graduated, he didn't go to a great symphony orchestra, or become a
soloist. Instead he joined a little-known blue-grass band and
traveled around the country in a bus doing shows in small venues.
Blue-grass was his passion. Orchestral music was not. After a while,
he went back to school and earned a business degree. Accomplishment
cannot be dictated by someone else's passion.
Right now, we are
watching horrifying scenes of people being rescued from flood waters
in North and South Carolina, in the Philippines, and in China. When
the path of Hurricane Florence was finally decided, the Cajun Navy
headed out from Louisiana to be in place for the aftermath. They are
not professionally trained in search and rescue, but they have become
experts at it because of the multiple natural disasters in which
they've assisted. They just get up and go. They love the work, they
persevere in the face of hardship, and they enjoy being together in
such a heroic effort. In short, they have grit. We saw it, too, in
the fire fighters in the devastating California fires this summer. To
jump out of an airplane into a massive fire zone requires true grit,
plus more than a little bit of crazy courage. These people succeed
because they don't give up. It's a lesson to us all.
You don't have to be a
genius to succeed in this life. You just have to know what you want, and then
pursue it with all you've got. Perseverance, courage, self-control,
character and passion; these are the ingredients. Why, you could even play in a blue-grass band if you set your mind
to it!
In the Spirit,
Jane
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