You Gotta Have Grit: Here’s How to Get Some More! (Heroic +1 #1,801)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. Not too long ago we spent some time with one of my favorite people on the planet who wrote one of my all time favorite positive psychology books, Creating youg Best Life. Today we're going to spend a little more time with Caroline Adams Miller. Let's get straight to work. Caroline tells us, and I quote, it's apparent that grit is a quality that people from all walks of life possess. It takes as much grit to rise from homelessness to job stability as and home ownership as it does to be a concert level pianist. Being gritty is applicable to accomplishing many important goals in our life, particularly if we have long term ambitions for ourselves that will involve years of hard work, persistence, setbacks, lack of family support and other difficult conditions. We may even need grit to overcome an affluent childhood during which we were never criticized or asked to do something hard. Now that's from a chapter called you gotta have Grit. Before we get to the practical wisdom for today, I want to tell you a quick story. I can vividly remember when I was first introduced to Caroline and her work. It was a few days after the Thomas fire in California in December 2017. That fire forced us to evacuate our home in Ojai, California for a few weeks and it would have completely wiped out that great little town if it wasn't for the heroic efforts of the fire crews that stepped up to save the day. Emerson was five years old. Eleanor was almost two years old. I repeat, wow, how the time flies. So I saw Caroline's book Getting Grit on the stand in the spa at the hotel we were staying living at. I figured the time was right to get some grit. It always is. But that felt like an especially good time and I loved it. Check out the notes on that book for more. And of course, check out our notes on Angela Duckworth's great book Grit as well. And by the way, Angela Duckworth says, I don't know anybody who has thought more than Caroline Miller about how to apply the scientific research on grit and achievement to our own lives. For now, know that as Caroline says in this book, there are many ways you can build grit. Here are some of the best ideas from top researchers in the field. Don't be a quitter. Be around gritty people. Work on optimism. Read biographies or stories about gritty people. Pursue something with passion. Don't shrink from challenges and don't allow failure or criticism to define you. And that's today's plus one. What's one way you can build your grit today? Awesome. Get on that. Let's create the next best version of ourselves today. P.S. as I read that list of ways to boost our grit, I thought of a chat I had with Tol Ben Shahar in which he told me that he thinks biographies are the best self development books you can read. Have you read any lately? What's next up.