Am I gritty enough?: exploring persistence

Energy and persistence conquer all things.
~Benjamin Franklin

The Nov/Dec edition of The Intelligent Optimist magazine’s lead story was about the power of persistence.

Persistence is defined as “firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition”.

Do I have persistence where it matters most?

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” ~Winston Churchill

I can think of many times I have given up on things I really wanted to do: theater in college because auditions were too hard; guitar lessons; tennis after taking lessons as an adult and my game became atrocious....

In some cases it was wise to give up as I realized my heart was not in it, or it was an ego pursuit, not something that really mattered. There were some times I did persist despite obstacles, such as creating a women’s leadership program and staying married.

Psychologists have rolled persistence and perseverance into a test: the “grit scale”. It is available online. A score of 5 means you are extremely “gritty”. I got a 3.6. I’m not sure what that means other than I have some.

There is a positive benefit to grit. Happiness is a by-product of pursuits of interest and “grit” sustains these pursuits. There is no correlation between grit and IQ but there is between grit and success. A medium IQ/high grit person will often out-perform the high IQ/low grit person. Grit is a key element of success.

Researchers have located the part of the brain responsible for persistence and believe it can be strengthened over time.

It has been shown that we can prime ourselves to have grit. In a study at the U of MA one of the control groups read about an Olympic gold medalist saying things like, “Strangely enough you can do more than you think.” Those students performed better on a handgrip test, enduring more pain. This was done unconsciously, so just think what we can do to prime ourselves consciously.

One note of caution: it helps to have a bit of discernment here. Why am I persisting? Is it because I hate losing? Because I worry about what people will think? If you find yourself failing and giving up, think: “Does this really matter? Do I care? Is it mine to create? Or am I driven by my mini- me on this one" Persistence in everything is not a virture, discernment combined with persistence is.

What is worth my persistence?

“I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed: and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I fail and keep trying.”
~Tom Hopkins