Just Thinking About Grit
How do we discover who we really are?
I’m thinking about this in particular today because of sports and teams and awards and championship runs and wins and losses…. Do “results” reveal who we really are? Winners are winners, and losers are losers? This line of thinking (side note) reminds me of the time when a man who never went to war to fight for his country called POWs who marched into harm’s way for the sake of country…losers. “I like winners,” he said. Hm.
There aren’t always clear cut definitions are there…for winners and losers.
It takes a certain courage to put your heart (and life) on the line, no matter what your hands have found to do. Maybe it is that ultimate willingness to serve one’s country…willing to go to war in and of itself is remarkable to me. Maybe it’s showing up at work or for your family or for your friends, every day…and letting yourself really care about what you are doing and who you are being—also remarkable. It seems to me that doing anything with your whole heart takes deep courage. Not giving up, day after day, grinding or under bright lights, whatever the endeavor, whatever the outcome, is so challenging. It’s the classic Theodore Roosevelt quote, right?
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
The man or the woman, of course. If you are a coach or executive leader and you are all in for your team(s), showing up with all of your heart, you are for sure daring greatly. Developing a team can be joy filled, and it can also be heart wrenching and frustrating. Winning and losing can tend to define you, way more than the affirmation of your courage for actually just being in the arena. Coaches want wins, executives want positive results, and when we don’t get them, well that can be…difficult. If you are an athlete, any level, any sport, and you are putting yourself out there really competing, you are also daring greatly. As an athlete, playing time and performance can define you. And of course winning or losing can become how you evaluate your worth, and your work. Maybe we really do need to take a step back and examine how we define winning. And then, too, how we define “failure.”
Defining failure may be even more important than defining winning. Winning can be fun…losing can be gut wrenching. Losing the game, losing the job, losing the relationship…. If either failure or winning (as in “outcomes”) are going to be my basis for determining my worth, my identity and sufficiency or insufficiency…who I really am, then I may be in trouble. OK, yes actually, I really am in trouble. I may win and not play or coach well…I may lose and play at the very height of my potential, have developed and taught an outstanding game plan. I may have actually done a great job. My team may be performing well while also filled with fear and hesitant to make decisions…if I am a leader who lacks awareness and empathy. I may be settling for way less than I can be…or ripping myself without mercy for how I am not winning. I may be leading in ways that are not loving, missing the opportunity to care for people as people.
As I’ve been thinking through all of this, the ups and downs and the challenges of working and competing, I keep coming back to the character quality of grit. Even figuring out how to define winning and losing well requires grit. The teams that continue to regroup and work after hard seasons (and even after amazing seasons), I think they all have grit. Really great teachers have grit. And really great coaches and leaders are really great teachers.
Angela Duckworth, a renowned psychologist, professor, and author, is famous for her research on grit, perseverance, and resilience. She is best known for her pioneering work on "grit," which she defines as the combination of passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Her in-depth research has shown that grit is actually a better predictor of success than talent, intelligence, or any other factor.
Duckworth's research on grit has had a significant impact on the fields of psychology, education, and business. Her work has challenged the more traditional notions of success and highlighted the importance of perseverance and resilience in achieving long-term goals. Grit is not just about working hard, she explains, but also about working smart and maintaining a growth mindset.
Coach Wooden would say, “Failure isn’t fatal, but failing to change could be.” I think Dr. Duckworth and Coach Wooden would have had fascinating conversations. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone less defined by the critic, or by what others would call success, than Coach Wooden. He was mostly unconcerned with national championships, even while winning them over and over again. Reaching and teaching others how to reach full potential was always his aim. This was at the core of his definition of success.
The peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.
He was about BECOMING. Any seeming setback simply revealed what needed to change, or improve. He taught his teams GRIT through determined and carefully planned practices (with unwavering love for his players, I might add). He planned literally every minute of practice based on what his student athletes needed, based on their points of growth. He taught growth mindset and working smart through every drill.
It’s also almost impossible to think about growth mindset without adding Dr. Carol Dweck to the discussion. She wrote the book Mindset (highly recommend!) and gave us definitions for “fixed mindset" vs. “growth mindset.”
I wish I knew about growth mindset when I was an athlete. I walked on to the UCLA women’s basketball team that won the national championship in 1978. I tried out and made the team and received a partial scholarship once I did. We had an amazing team! I was just so happy to be ON the team and so my mindset was something along the lines of: work really, really hard and try not to embarrass yourself. As the season went on we got better and better…and I got better and better too. I was welcomed in by our senior captain Ann Meyers which helped so much. Both her acceptance and my teammates encouragement sustained me through a very challenging freshman year. Unfortunately, though, I was operating under a much more fixed than growth mindset. I felt like my performances revealed who I really was. So if I played really well, I felt good, like I belonged and could bring value to the team. I felt less like an imposter. If I had an off day, I felt worse and feared that I was not and would never be good enough. Missing shots and struggling to understand game plans revealed my limits and my limited potential.
If I had known what it means to have a growth mindset then, it would have really helped me. A growth mindset is one that sees every challenge as an opportunity to learn how to grow. A rough day, or poor performance, reveals areas to focus on for improvement. With a growth mindset, the outcome of our efforts doesn’t measure our talent or intelligence or capacity, it gives light to exactly what is needed to keep growing. Embracing a growth mindset presses pause on critical evaluations that lead to losing confidence. Instead the drive to grow through leveraging “failure” is marked with determination and resilience. That drive could also be called grit. It seems to me that living with a growth mindset and demonstrating grit go hand in hand.
I think I had a lot of grit and drive as a young athlete, but so much of it was based on trying to prove myself. There’s a big difference between fear of not being enough, and joy in the process of becoming all you can be.
“Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.”
― Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
The answer to my initial question is not a simple one for sure. Maybe one encouragement could be: Never stop in the quest to discover who you really are. And maybe who we really are isn’t a fixed place to be revealed through trial and error, wins and losses or our more than or less than status. Maybe the discovering is much more about a beautiful (and sometimes very painful) unfolding of God’s handiwork (you and me) as we risk and work and grow and fall and get up and live our lives with grit and resilience. It’s you and me in the arena daring greatly, and chasing becoming all of who we are. Coach Wooden says that’s the place we find peace of mind and self satisfaction….
I say yes to all of that…how about you?