Every child comes into the world carrying two sets of luggage. No, you can’t see the luggage, but every parent of young children will tell you it’s there all the same. In one set of luggage is a sense of determination, wonder, and a zest for exploration.
Open the other set of luggage and you’ll find the exact opposite: a desire to be spoiled, a tendency to take things for granted, and a desire to ‘play it safe.’
Over the course of a child’s first dozen years, he or she will learn to depend more and more on one set of luggage or the other. Life experiences will encourage either more narcissism, self-absorption and fear, or more grit, curiosity and fearlessness.
Young children are naturally curious and determined. You see this when they are learning to talk, feed themselves, dress themselves or learning to walk. Let’s take the last skill as an example. Research shows that the average toddler takes about 1,400 steps a day and falls 100 times day.
That means over the course of one month the toddler has fallen about 3,000 times while learning to walk. Just in one month! Toddlers are a very determined group of tiny humans.
Now fast forward two or three decades. How many adults would continue to try and master a skill that they had failed to complete 3000 times during the first month of practice? Not many.
Somewhere between toddlerhood and adulthood most of us learn to dial back our determination to persist when faced with failure. We become complacent and settle for too little in life. We set aside dreams after failing to reach our goals after the first, second or third attempt. Many of us let the fear of failure keep us from experiencing what life holds for us.
But this, of course, is not true of everybody. There are exceptions. One of the best basketball players to ever run down the court was Michael Jordan. The talent he displayed during his professional career, however, was not so obvious when he was a teen and did not make the cut for his high school basketball team.
Had he given in to complacency, and a fear of failure, his life would have been very different. Not so much because he would have lacked fame and money (although that may well be true), but because he would have been robbed of the joy that comes from testing oneself, from overcoming obstacles, and fully engaging one’s dreams and God given talents.
Another example is H. D. Sanders. To say that he had a bad start in life is an understatement. Growing up in a poor southern family, raised by a single mother after his father died, H.D. dropped out of school in the 7th grade. As a young man he bounced from job to job before eventually finding the means to buy a small gas station. H. D. got married only to have his wife leave him.
Later in life, when he was in his 60’s, the gas station that he relied upon began to financially flounder. He sold the business and lived off the meager proceeds from the sale of his business, in addition to a government check of 100.00 dollars a month.
That could have been the end of the story. He was in his 60’s. He had tried his luck at business and was rewarded with mediocre results. At this point he might have decided his first wife had been wise to leave.
But H. D. was not the quitting type. Being in his sixth decade might be old, but it wasn’t the same as being dead. So he kept thinking of ways his lot in life might be improved, and he recalled how much people enjoyed his gas station special… fried chicken. I know, gas stations and fried chicken. Who knew?
The wheels in his head kept turning and brought him to the conclusion that there just might be a chance that some local restaurants would be like to know his secret recipe. For a price, of course.
It turned out that he was 100 percent wrong. Not a single local restaurant had the least interest in his offer. Zero response. Nada.
Did that stop H.D.? Not at all. He simply packed his bags, threw them in the back of his beat-up sedan, and hit the road. From one city to another he drove to peddle his recipe. But again, he found little interest. A tuxedo salesman at a nudist colony would have received a warmer welcome.
No matter, H.D. kept going, certain that brighter days lay ahead.
Eventually, after visiting several hundred restaurants (yes, several hundred) word finally caught on that this guy really did know something about fried chicken. Some business minded people up north, people with serious money, got in touch with H. D. - a deal was struck, and Kentucky Fried Chicken became a household name.
That’s the sort of determination and grit that pushes fear of failure to the sidelines and grabs hold of success.
The takeaway from these stories is twofold. One, tenacity is essential for success in life. Two, anyone can develop this quality, and in so doing improve how far they will go in reaching their dreams.
But how can someone develop such persistence? What are the steps need for nurturing this type of grit? Is it simply something one is born with, or can it be learned? Research shows that it is mainly something that is learned.
It is a skill, and like most skills it can be acquired by practicing certain habits. In the following sections I describe five steps you can take to strengthen your tenacity.
These are neither difficult nor complicated. To be successful simply requires that you start with small steps, consistently apply the lessons you’ve learned, and gradually use that growing sense of tenacity to achieve larger and tougher goals.
Let’s take a look.
One: Take some time to recount the important victories in your life
Recall the satisfaction you felt at that time and the benefits that may have followed from each achievement. Write each victory down on one side of a piece of paper. Next to each achievement write down the obstacles that stood in the way.
Think about what was required of you to overcome these challenges, the effort and persistence that was needed. Now scan back to the other side of the page and focus on the victory you won, the goal you reached. Good stuff, right?
You should keep this list, add to it as other memories come to mind, and review it from time to time. It is a part of your history of building a store house of tenacity. Moreover, by spending time recalling these memories you will very likely get the secondary benefit of improving your sense of happiness.
Two: Use Mental Imagery
Painting a mental picture of something, or some activity, can be a powerful means of helping to forward toward a goal.
Usually this involves carefully and repeatedly visualizing each aspect of some type of performance one wishes to improve upon. It could be a musical recital, a speech, surgery or athletic competition.
The famous Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, for example, spent numerous hours visualizing how he would walk up to the starting blocks, what the platform would feel like under his feet, the sense of the water gliding over his arms and legs as he swam each race.
Visualizing can also be helpful in building a stronger sense of tenacity.
You can to this by picturing the quality of psychological grit as an energy source within your brain, a small bundle of neurons that glow bright every time you tap into that resource.
Now imagine that each time you persevere a little longer at a task that the neuronal bundle grows a little bigger, glowing a little brighter. Like a muscle, the more you exercise grit the stronger it becomes.
Some find it helpful to elaborate on the imagery by eventually imagining the energy from grit flowing into their heart or expanding to fill their entire body. Employ this mental imagery frequently.
Three: Find Some Heroes
It is a natural to be inspired by those who have accomplished great deeds when faced with overwhelming odds. Not only natural, but healthy.
We imagine ourselves in their situation and wonder “Would I have had the tenacity to see things through as they did?” Could I have mustered the courage and stamina to climb Mt. Everest, to face the angry taunts of the mob, to persist in working on making a flying machine despite the initial failures?
These musings are like seeds that take root in our imagination. Nurtured by our aspirations and struggles, they sometimes prompt us to muster the same sort of grit and determination we have admired in others.
To help this process along you should read widely about a variety of people who have dared greatly, risked much, and persisted in their pursuing their objectives.
But to have this exerice be most helpful you need to actively engage the material you read. Deeply consider how this inspirational figure might have felt during those difficult times, and in what ways his or her life might have turned out differently had they not persisted.
To take this another step further you can keep a collection of photos in your den, study, or bedroom of people you admire who demonstrated remarkable persistence.
Everyone needs role models. Select yours wisely, be inspired by them, and then emulate the qualities they used to overcome the challenges they faced.
Four: practice Persistence
If you felt like the 98-pound weakling on the beach, it would make sense to get yourself to the gym (or better yet the Judo dojo). When you first went in to work out you would not feel strong. But by acting as strong as possible, you would gradually increase your strength.
That is, by trying to get your first set of ten chin ups you would eventually reach that goal.
The same is true for persistence. When faced with setbacks, you may not at first feel capable of picking yourself up one more time and giving it the old college try (perhaps for the third, fourth and fifth time).
Your weaker self might cry that it’s time to call it a day, sit back in your Barcalounger and suck down a brewsky.
Pay no attention. You’re made of sterner stuff.
By pushing yourself further, especially in the face of such challenges, your capacity to persist will grow.
When things get tough, when thoughts of giving up begin their seductive whispering, remind yourself that this is the very moment you’ve sought out. You are not facing an unfortunate hardship, but an opportunity to grow stronger.
Seize the moment by pushing yourself to go a little further, to adapt in whatever way is necessary, and above all else keep moving forward.
Five: Be deliberate and purposeful
Search out opportunities to test yourself. These should include challenges that are meaningful to you. That might be in the realm of achieving a new personal best in some physical realm (e.g., running a half marathon), learning a musical instrument, or giving a speech at a civics club.
Just make sure that your choice involves something that is important to you. Then plan, prepare and execute. When you have reached that goal take some time to focus on the persistence you demonstrated. Savor the victory, and set your sights on the next target.
Deliberately focusing on practical ways to strengthen tenacity will result in more rapid gains than haphazardly applying yourself when random challenges arise. That means your effort to develop grit will be more effective if you take the initiative. Look for opportunities to push yourself, to test your mettle.
Conclusion
Tenacity, or grit, is essential for making the very most of life. The ability, and willingness, to persevere in the face of failure, hardship, and discouragement is often what divides success and failure.
Everyone is born with a wealth of tenacity. This is shown to be true by virtue of the sheer persistence required in order to learn to walk, read, and speak one’s native language. Acquiring each of these skills demanded a huge amount of tenacity in the face of multiple failures.
What most adults are then faced with is simply a matter of resurrecting the sort of grit that they had, early in life, employed many times over. We are not attempting to discover or develop some new quality that has been missing in our lives. Instead we are dusting off a huge engine of success that, for many, has lay dormant far too long.
Follow the suggestions given above and you will be pleasantly surprised at how much your life begins to change.
If you would like to dive more deeply into this topic I suggest reading Angela Duckworth’s book Grit: The Power and Passion of Perseverance.
