What is Grit?

           My favorite Olympic race of all-time, which also happens to be widely considered the biggest upset in Olympic history embodies grit to the extreme. Billy Mills, a Lakota Indian from South Dakota, would never have won the 10,000 meters if he had listened to others who doubted him. Nobody thought he had a chance to get a gold medal other than him. Let's start by looking at a video of the actual race:

            What's so amazing about this race other than the dramatic finish is that Mills ran 46 seconds faster than his best ever time that day and was, therefore, not considered a threat to win. Although he was a very good runner in both high school and college at the University of Kansas, he had never won any significant races in his career prior to the 1964 Olympics. Mills was a complete unknown, so that's why the announcer was so exuberant at the end!

            What's even more amazing about Mills is his background. He came from one of the poorest Indian tribes in the country and was orphaned at age 12. The probability of becoming the best in the world at anything from that tribe was minuscule. Most men from his tribe were going nowhere with their lives and with an unfortunate high rate of suicide. All of this took a toll on Billy along with some heavy discrimination he faced at KU that lead him to consider committing suicide. He also quit the KU track team his senior year. In parting, the coach told him that he'd never amount to anything.   

            It was right after he almost committed suicide that he wrote down the goal of winning the gold medal at 10,000 meters. The goal was impossible to reach at that stage! He would need to decrease his PR by 3 minutes to have a chance. He was in the deepest valley of his life and somehow managed to find hope by attempting to climb the highest mountain. 

         He eventually graduated from college and joined the military where he went from running 40 miles per week to 100, which helped him get much faster. A movie was eventually made about his life called the Running Brave. Here's another video of interest well worth your time:

            

           One of the lessons we learn from Billy Mills is that we don't have to be perfect in our resolution to reach our goals. He almost gave up and there will be times that we will too. Nonetheless, if we keep our eyes on the big picture with passion and determination it will lead us to things that even we might not have thought was possible at the beginning of our own journeys.

         The Billy Mills story reminded me of an excellent TED talk by Angela Duckworth, although her observations were more in the realm of academics than athletics. What she found in her experience as a 7th grade teacher is that there isn't a direct correlation between intelligence and which students ended up getting the best grades. Some of the most intelligent students had poor grades, whereas a few of the less intelligent students were at the top of the class. What she concluded to be the determining factor in academic success was that the top students all had a high amount of 'grit'. 

   

 

        Grit is having the perseverance and passion for a long-term goal and entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years, despite failure, adversity, plateaus in progress, and negative feedback. The talent of someone with grit is that they persevere through circumstances where the majority would have given up. The gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his or her advantage is stamina. Billy Mills had all those things.

          It's not always easy to stick with things when we give it a shot and don't show natural aptitude right away. My parents put me in violin lessons as a kid at 5 or 6 years old. I wasn't naturally inclined based on the first lesson and as it turns out my instructor quit in frustration. From that one experience, I always assumed that music wasn't my thing and never tried again.  

           How often do we write ourselves off based on a nominal effort and initial negative feedback? This is a huge mistake in most cases. We really can't know how good we could be without becoming fully invested in trying to reach our potential. You often don't improve until becoming fully immersed. It's easier to label ourselves as deficient and quit trying. 

         I learned German fluently at age 19, but I didn't turn the corner until I was living in Germany for 6 months after having taken 5 years of classes beforehand. It would have been easy for me to conclude that I didn't have the aptitude to learn a language before ever reaching Germany. After all, I was below average for someone who spent 5 years learning German in a classroom. After finishing my two years in Germany, I can definitely conclude that my initial assessment of learning a new language was way off!    

           How often do we give up because we value the opinion of one person over our own? My high school counselor didn't think I was college material. She was right that I needed to work on my study habits, but she was wrong in assessing my capacity and determination. It's a good thing I didn't listen to her or anybody else in my life who was skeptical of my ability to reach my goals.

         This is very good advice by Steve Jobs:

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition ... Stay hungry, Stay foolish.

         That's probably a good place to end this week's post. We all are driven to succeed in various realms in life. Forget what everybody else is saying about your probability of success and roll up your sleeves and go to work. It's the day by day and year after year progression that eventually gets us to the peak of the mountaintop.