Steven Kotler breaks down grit into eight separate components that must be trained independently, not just perseverance. He argues that grit plus a strong learning strategy predicts success, and that challenges never get easier, you just get better at handling them.
Chapters
The world's top performers, they're looking around and they're going, holy shit, look what I've done. There's a formula underneath. Holy shit, look what I've done. And that's what the Habit of Ferocity is about. First of all, most people don't even know what grit is. They think it's just perseverance. And there are seven other components to grit. They all got to be trained independently, first of all. Second of all, if you look at statistics on success, if you look at studies of success, grit, especially coupled to a strong learning strategy, which you're also going to get in the habit of ferocity. Those two components have been shown to be the number one predictor of success in the world. Why do you think grit is so, so important? I think grit is so important because it doesn't get easier. We have this idea in our head that at some point we're going to achieve some level of success and we can coast. It's going to get easy. Oh, I got to. I got the wife I was chasing. I got the job I wanted. I wrote this book. And the truth of the matter is, it keeps getting harder. The challenges keep coming. They don't stop. And if you really want a life of meaning, you got to learn how to blow through those challenges. You got to learn how to turn those challenges, these things that are hard and difficult into things that are incredibly exciting and incredibly pleasurable. And if you haven't automated grit, if you haven't stacked up the eight different components of grit into a kind of a perfectly tight stack, and you're using all of them, you don't have your biology working for you. It's gonna work against you. Grit is what's gonna bridge the gap between your inferior self and the person you really wanna be. It's the doorway. It's the gateway. And without it, you're never, ever gonna get that life you've been dreaming. Sa.
