Resilience and mental strength are highly valuable assets to master in today’s fast-paced world. But when it comes to expanding their power into your life, you should also know how to answer the question: “What is grit?”
Why? Because this may be the key concept to unlocking the inner resources you’ve always needed to succeed and create the life of your dreams.
“Dare to live your precious days on earth to their fullest, true to yourself, with an open heart and thoughtful mind, and with the courage to change what doesn’t work and accept the consequences,” encourages Vishen, the founder of Mindvalley. “You may find that you can fly farther than you ever imagined.”
What Is Grit?
Grit means the ability to be perseverant about something you’re passionate about, even in the face of obstacles.
In a sitdown with Vishen on The Mindvalley Show (previously called The Mindvalley Podcast), professional ski racer and Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn shares that strength of character is a blend of passion and perseverance for a singularly important goal.
Listen to the full episode here:
What does grit stand for?
Interestingly, the acronyms spell out guts, resilience, initiative, and tenacity–all components that contribute to mental toughness and the ability to persist in the face of adversity.
Researcher Angela Duckworth explains that the concept of grit includes the following characteristics:
- Courage. Think about taking risks and chances when others won’t, following your dreams and vision, or sticking to your values and principles when things get tough.
- Conscientiousness. As a personality trait of grit, being conscientious means showing care vigilance, and seriosity.
- Perseverance. This refers to the ability to persist through any challenges and difficulties that may arise along the way. Perseverance means consistency and showing up, even when you don’t feel like doing so.
- Resilience. Showing resilience is about how fast you can recover from the moments of falling down on your way to meeting your goals.
- Passion. Being passionate is like the fire that keeps you motivated and driven to take action and keep going. Passion fuels your ability to take the next step, and the next, and the next……
As Lindsey explains in her interview, “[Grit] is not about having it all, but about getting really clear on the things that you do want so you can make the right choices.”
Why Is Grit Important?
Grit is important because it teaches you that anything you’re passionate about is more about progress and evolution, rather than success. Studies have shown that the quality of grit is essential when you have the desire to achieve anything. It’s one of the highest predictors of success.
Be it incorporating a new habit, dismantling a toxic emotional pattern, or challenging your body to push its limits, the ability to persevere consistently represents the most valuable thing that will reap results.
Once it’s true that for some people, certain qualities and talents may come more naturally. However, without the openness to fail and learn from it, achievements aren’t always just going to flow to you.
Examples of Grit
It can take different forms for different people, depending on who they are and what they want to achieve. Here are a few examples of grit and its meaning.
- Athletes. For high performers, grit means the habit of training every day, pushing with awareness of the body’s limits, and making healthy lifestyle choices even when everyone is doing otherwise.
- Artists. It can be a misconception that artists are always inspired and ready to create. However, it usually doesn’t happen like this for most of them. The best artists are those who developed the discipline to sit down and create, even when they don’t feel inspired. They keep showing up for their art, no matter what.
- Leaders. The most successful leaders are those who are gritty because they are not afraid to do the hard work. They make it a habit to take risks and expand their comfort zone, and always strive to improve themselves.
As mentioned before, the capacity to be resilient and keep going can be useful in any kind of life context. It’s an important asset to have because change requires consistency, and as the saying goes, change is the only constant in life.
What’s the Relationship Between Grit and Leadership?
Having great leadership skills also includes the ability to increase your mental toughness. According to Monty Moran, former co-CEO of Chipotle and trainer of Mindvalley’s The Transformational Leader Quest, “Leadership is far superior to management. It’s about igniting something in an individual that’s theirs.”
To be able to do so, you need to have a mix of qualities such as:
- Decisiveness,
- Compassion,
- Creativity,
- Integrity,
- Adaptability, and
- The ability to mentor others.
Being a leader is not easy, but for sure, it’s rewarding. You can nurture the abilities you need by acquiring the mental strength to push you into your transformational leadership mode.
How to Develop Your Grit: Tips From Mindvalley Experts
Mindvalley is a great place to look for examples of grit in all categories of life you can think of. With top-leading experts in fields such as psychology, fitness, nutrition, business, or mindfulness to gain insights from, here are a few key concepts that help you develop this strength of character and move towards your goals.
1. Focus on your peace of mind | Vishen
Nurturing a peaceful mind sets the foundation for mental toughness because you’re less likely to be overwhelmed by thoughts or powerful emotions. Vishen encourages you to start your day with meditation practice.
However, unlike the most popular forms of meditation, The 6 Phase Meditation Method incorporates a special process. It takes you through deeper levels of awareness so you can access altered states of consciousness.
From this place within, you’ll be able to invite more flow, creativity, mental strength, productivity, and resilience into your daily life. And of course, you’ll develop the capacity to overcome challenges and connect deeper with your inner guidance and wisdom.
Listen to the guided 6 Phase Meditation by Vishen on YouTube:
2. Meet your dragons | Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani
Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani, co-founder of Mindvalley and trainer of the Live by Your Own Rules Quest, emphasizes the importance of getting to know the sides of yourself that you run away from. How is that connected to becoming grittier?
Because most people are afraid of what would come up if they tried pursuing their goals and then failed. They’re afraid of feeling ashamed, defeated, hopeless, and abandoned. So ask yourself:
- Am I afraid of failure or success?
- What’s my procrastination/fear of taking risks/lack of motivation trying to protect me from feeling?
- What would I do first if I never felt these fears?
But once you get to know those parts of yourself that carry those heavy burdens, you may feel more motivated to go out there and make your dreams come true.
Here are some shadow work journaling prompts to help you in this process.
3. Understand that you’re enough | Marisa Peer
Marisa Peer, trainer of Mindvalley’s Rapid Transformational Hypnotherapy for Abundance Quest, highlights the importance of believing you are enough today. According to her, knowing that you are enough doesn’t make you do less, but it makes you realize you are worth more.
And having this in mind, how would you live every day to make it at least a tiny bit better? What would you learn about? Read about? Do more of?
If you make it a habit to become a tiny bit better every single day, your neural connections will change, and so will your levels of motivation, perseverance, resilience, and overall mental toughness.
Because you are slowly creating the habit of being consistent with your personal growth, everything else in your life will be impacted.
Great Change Starts Everyday
As grit is the concept of resilience and consistency, the greatest change in your life happens with the smallest steps you can follow every single day for your transformation.
And if you need some guidance along the way, Mindvalley can step in for you. With insightful wisdom from transformational Quests, you can create your daily habit of personal development. And it might not even take more than 20 minutes each day.
Explore more about the power of your mind to create success, leadership, and self-love with these powerful programs:
- The Silva Ultramind System with Vishen
- Live By Your Own Rules with Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani
- Rapid Transformational Hypnotherapy for Abundance with Marisa Peer
- Transformational Leader with Monty Moran
By claiming your free access today, you can sample classes from every Quest and see what works best for you. And the best part of it all is that you don’t have to be alone on your journey. You can join a community of people who can keep you accountable for your practice of developing grit.
Welcome in.
