Resilience: Grit

I am reading a book on grit right now and it is eye-opening.  In all the ways we talk about success, so often we attribute that success to someone’s natural ability, their talent, some innate quality in them that perhaps is inaccessible to the rest of us.  But the thesis of this book is that at the end of the day, effort counts twice as much as talent.  Talent applied with effort develops skill, and skill applied with effort develops into success.  That effort is the grit- the resilience of sticking to something, applying perseverance, and spending the thousands of hours getting better.  Grit is what forms when we hit obstacles, and challenges and have to go through them.

Working in healthcare right now, requires grit. A determination to keep showing up, keep masking and unmasking, caring when it feels like you are drowning under a mountain of patients’ needs that you can never get on top of.

For all you healthcare workers and business owners and all of you struggling to keep going, we need grit more than ever.

I think of this part of our collective journey through the pandemic.  We’re past the point of being “in this together” cheering on healthcare workers and making signs in windows.  We’re past the point of laying painted rocks along paths, we are at the end of our own strength and humour.  This is the part of the marathon where there are few cheerleaders.  They were there at the beginning, and surely they will be there at the end, but this is the middle part.  The middle part where it’s just feet on pavement, heavy breathing, arms swinging, one foot in front of the other, lonely, tiresome, beating the air, running.  This is where grit comes in.

I think about in my own life, and let’s be honest, I struggle with grit, with resilience. 

Our family needs to exercise grit right now as we move back to Malawi.  I have to dust off my Chichewa language books, and though I felt defeated and frustrated in learning another language, I need to apply some grit.  I need to get out there and try again and fail and embarrass myself and keep working at it.  In homeschooling, I need to find new ways of doing the schooling we’ve done so far to make it work better for our kids, I need to keep pushing the kids and me in the areas we want to give up, to go a little longer. In writing, I need to keep putting myself out there, and not give up.

Where do you need to develop grit?  What is that project, that skill, that character trait, that you need strength to push forward on?  Don’t give up.  You’re developing grit-muscles that are getting stronger.

Highly recommend this read