How to Develop Grit (and what is Grit?)

How do you develop more grit? If you haven't heard lately, grit is supposed to be the secret to all of success in life. We'll talk about that in a moment, but it's a good conversation to have today about how do you develop the ability to have grit so you succeed over the long term? If you haven't heard, Angela Duckworth wrote a book called Grit and her formula was very simple. If you have lots of passion and you persevere, chasing that passion over a long time, you will have success. Now, of course, a little more complicated than that. And that's why she wrote a book on it a couple hundred pages long, and a fantastic book I highly recommend to you, especially if you're brand new to personal development. If you're not new to personal development or to science, you will not be all that surprised by the findings, which is basically the ideas of knowing what you want and working really hard towards it over a really long time is a big part of that formula. But there's a lot of misunderstandings too. In my own perspective, grit is not enough to have success, because grit is something that you are being something that you are doing. But I also think that beyond just grit, you have to have a lot of influence with people. The world's most successful people that I've met are phenomenal in their level of social intelligence and their ability to influence others, to support them in their cause or dream. If they couldn't communicate well and influence others to support them or believe in them or buy from them, then they wouldn't succeed at the levels they did. So grit usually doesn't take into account the concepts of influence. So I would say it's not the end all, be all, but it is a very important concept that we all need to develop again. Angela Duckworth's research basically says that grit is passionate and perseverance. If you studied my work for a long time, you've heard me just use the phrase or the term tenacity. It's about knowing what you want and going for it. You know, having that hunger inside and matching it with hard work over the long term to continuously improve, to continuously commit, to continuously get better and deliver and serve. But let me share with you today four big ideas that might help you develop a little bit more of this fancy stuff called grit. Number one, get clarity. If grit begins with passion, you need to know what you're interested in and more importantly, what you love. And you need to be clear about what you want. Now, one of the major reasons a lot of people don't feel successful is that they might not know exactly what they are really wanting and working towards that each day. They don't feel like they're engaged in meaningful endeavors. So. So the passion isn't there. And because the passion isn't there, the stick to itiveness isn't there either. And so they're not hanging on to what's important to them. They're not sticking with something. And so let me ask you this. What do you really want now? You know, you've been through enough. You've been through many years of your life. You've fought and you struggled, and I bet you've given up some things and you've stuck to some things. But what do you want now? Because, you know, now maybe the kids are gone, they're out of the house and off to college, or maybe now you've been laid off, or you've got that new job opportunity, or you started your own business, or you're about to scale to that next level. What do you want now? What do you want for this next phase of your life? Chapter two, Stage two, Phase two, whatever you call it, you got to have some kind of level of clarity about what you want, because that clarity is, is that ambition, that goal, that dream, that desire, that thing that becomes a passion because you have that deep commitment and attachment to moving towards something. So, one, figure out what you want now, and I invite you to do this in all areas of your life. What do you want in your health now? What do you want in your relationships now? What do you want for your career and your contributions now? What are your real dreams now? Number two big idea is to prime enthusiasm each day. I believe the master emotion of all life is enthusiasm. If you're enthusiastic about something, you're engaged with it. If you're enthusiastic about something, you feel energized for it. If you're enthusiastic about something, you look forward to waking up tomorrow and going for it. So prime that feeling every day, the way that I do that is every morning in the shower when I'm getting ready, I think, what could I be excited about for today? What could I have enthusiasm for today? And if I can't come up with anything off the top of my head or by looking at my schedule, I create it. I say, okay, what could I do today that would be fun and make me look forward to the day? Maybe it's prank a friend. Maybe it's do something good for somebody. Maybe it's something I'm going to do that I just really enjoy that won't be. I won't spend a lot of time during the day, but I'm going to give myself 30 minutes doing a passion, small little project I'm interested in, whatever it is, prime enthusiasm. Because if you have that feeling of enthusiasm, that's what's going to keep you passionate over the long term. And please listen, you need to prime your enthusiasms every day. See, a lot of people are very passionate people, but they're not living passionately because every day they're not engaging with what they want. You know, they set the big goal at New Year's, but then February and April rolls around, they've forgotten about it. But the reason they were so excited in January, at the New Year. Why is everyone excited? They're priming enthusiasm, they're looking at their goals, they're having an emotional connection and commitment to that and that excites them for the year. So what you need to do is look at your goals every day. What you need to do is every day write the things down that are important to it, get excited about doing that, implementing that, experiencing it, and go for it. Number three, most important in my belief for grit, the concept of block time. If you studied High Performance Academy with us over the last decade or so, you know, this is central to everything I teach, block time. If you don't schedule time for practice, schedule time for training, schedule time to implement, schedule time to get your work done, you don't get it done. And now you're just pulled into all these different areas. So now you're just reacting to the world all the time. Reaction, reaction, reaction, distraction, distraction, distraction. And now you don't have any grit to stick to something because you don't stick to that which is not scheduled. So if it's not scheduled, you don't stick to it. Right. It just becomes something you're so passionate about for a week or two. But then the world comes back in with its requests and its obligations, your responsibilities, and suddenly the very thing that you were so passionate and enthusiastic about, it goes away. See? See, the world's highest level of performers that I'm blessed to work with. Olympians, Fortune 50, CEOs, billionaires, people who have a real track record of long term success. They worked at something every single day. I mean, it's just part of their repertoire. It was a routine, a ritual, something that was scheduled every day they were working towards. It doesn't mean they didn't have days off, I guess I should say, but they had it as part of a consistent part of their life. And it was scheduled. There was a block of time on their calendar. It was like world, you know, highest level athletes as a swimmer. It's like swim practice. Here, here, here, here, here, here, here. It's constant. It never went away. They had grit because it was scheduled. If it's not scheduled, it becomes a passing interest. When it is scheduled, it. It becomes a clear commitment. So block down the time if you don't have. If I show up at your house and we pulled up your calendar and we looked at it, and nowhere in your calendar are any of your passions. Nowhere in your calendar are your goals, your implementation plans, what you want to create. Then what you're doing is just reacting, just following the whim of the world. And over a period of time, you'll lose that passion and genuine desire. Because, you know, passion is something you got to be on top of it. It's like lose it or use it or lose it kind of thing. So please block time to work on things that you really care about. And then last piece that I think is missing in a lot of the conversations around grit these days is enlist a team. The highest level of performers I've ever worked with in my life. They are great at structuring a support team. They've got people around them to support them in their desires. They've got coaches, mentors, trainers, supportive parents, an amazing team supporting them. And it wasn't like they were lucky to be born into that family. Real people with real success habits, not just conceptually, not just some from psychological study. The people I work with on the ground in real life, you know what they do, they are influencers. As I talked about the top of this conversation, they are amazingly talented at influencing other people to believe in them, to invest in them, to follow them, to train them, to coach them, to support them along the journey. They're not just showing up as the singular, brilliant, superstar genius. That's what we all like to believe, that these people are so lucky, that successful people are just these lone wolves who are geniuses. The reality is, environment matters. And you have to set up a positive environment around you to enable you to pursue your passions, to enable you to persist when it gets hard so that people can pick you up when you fall down. You become more resilient, the better social support you set up around you. And guess what? You can't do that unless you become somebody who is sharing your true thoughts, feelings, desires and dreams with other people. You need to speak your truth. You need to ask for help. You need to Enlist other people around you. You need to prime their enthusiasm to support you. Because without a support team around you, you're always going to plateau. You know, it's just like if you ever had a personal trainer at the gym, right? You thought you could only go so far and you're like, I'm done. And they're like, give me five more. You're like, okay. And you do it. That's life too, for the long haul. And that's why you need that as a success habit. Enlist a team. I hope these ideas helped you get a little more gritty, get you more excited about going out there and crushing it. They're all basic concepts. But you know what? Common sense is not always common practice. And that's why so many potentially great people fail to reach their potential. So stay gritty. Know that it takes a lot of hard work to maintain a long term level of success. Follow the four ideas in this episode and you'll start to see and experience a little bit more what we call the Charge Life. Hey, my friend, it's Brendan. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Do me two favors. Number one, subscribe to this channel so that you continue to get updates every time I release new training for you. And number two, if you would like to get ahead a little faster in life, what I'd like to do is give you my 10 steps to achieving anything 10 times faster. So if you have a big goal, a big dream, a big mission in life and you just like to achieve it faster, what would you need to do? You know, this is exactly what I keep next to my computer or next to my bed. And every time I have a big dream, a big goal, I open it up and I kind of use this as my checklist to get ahead faster. Because you and I both know if you're going to be more effective or more productive or you are going to achieve your goals and your dreams faster, you're going to have to switch your perspective a little bit on achievement itself. You have to adopt new thinking patterns and habits. You're going to have to have new daily rituals and habits and your entire approach to learning and skill development must be better. So in order to help you do that, just go ahead and click the link in this post or go to brenden.com 10x that's Brendan B R E N D O n.com 10x and you can download this guide for free. Just tell me your name and email. I'm happy to email that to you for free. The same guide I use to achieve any goal or dream faster. Thanks for tuning in. Until I see you next time, go out there every single single day of your life. Live fully, love openly and make your difference today.