The Power of Grit
Nov 06, 2025
Books Referenced
Grit- Angela Duckworth
Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
So Good They Can’t Ignore You - Cal Newport
Outliers - Malcom Gladwell
Mindset - Carol Dweck
Have you ever been in a situation where you just wouldn’t quit?
Or have you ever had the regret of quitting something you shouldn’t have?
Why is it that sometimes we quit or give up early, and other times we feel unstoppable?
Well, according to Angela Duckworth, the answer resides two specific traits.
Back in 2016, Angela Duckworth published a book based on her research into the science of achievement.
She asked the question, “What makes highly successful people become so?”
Through her research, she found that people who had both passion and perseverance were the most likely to succeed.
The mix of these traits she called grit. More specifically, she defines grit as “the tendency to sustain interest in, and effort toward, very long-term goals.”
And guess what?
These are not traits we are born with. We can build them.
Today, we are learning how to build grit by developing our passion and perseverance.
With these two traits, you too can become unstoppable.
Let’s dig in.
Origins of Grit
Before “Grit” was coined and popularized by Duckworth, psychologists studied other topics in the field of achievement and high performance.
In the 70’s, Alfred Bandura shared his theory of self-efficacy.
At its core, self-efficacy is the belief in your own ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task.
He argued that it’s not our abilities themselves that determine whether we succeed.
It’s our belief in those abilities.
Bandura argued that self-efficacy was comprised of 4 components:
- Mastery experiences
- Vicarious experiences
- Social persuasion
- Emotional states
Regarding mastery experiences, he said that when you succeed at something, especially something hard, it builds the belief: “I can do this.”
He noted that each success strengthens confidence.
Also, each failure (if we reflect on it) offers data so we can adjust and try again.
With vicarious experiences, he noted that seeing someone similar to you succeed builds the sense that you can too.
If they can do it, maybe I can, too.
I remember having this experience in college. I was 20 and was getting into health and fitness, and I was working at a store selling clothes. One day a classmate came in to buy some jeans. We got to talking about her health and fitness journey and she shared with me she was already a certified trainer and yoga instructor.
I remember thinking, “Holy smokes, I can do that too. What am I waiting for?”
Other people’s achievements demonstrate what is possible for us, as well.
With social persuasion, encouragement and feedback from others shape what people believe is possible.
When someone credible says, “You’ve got what it takes, I believe in you.” it can shift a person’s internal narrative and beliefs.
And regarding our emotional states, he noted that how we interpret stress, anxiety, or our energy affects our sense of ability.
For example, the same physiological state of stress can be perceived as “excitement,” and not “fear.” High performers learn to reframe their body’s stress response as readiness, not panic.
Bandura’s Self-Efficacy model for achievement leads to a reinforcing loop:
- You act because you believe you can.
- You succeed because you act.
- You believe even more, and act again.
And if you fail, you reflect and learn, and get back into the game.
Bandura’s self-efficacy model is 50 years old, and it is still awesome.
Aside from Bandura, there are other theories about achievement. For example, you may have heard that it is all about practice.
Anders Ericsson wrote a paper in 1993 describing that high achieving people achieve mastery because they practiced for 10,000 hours over a 10-year period.
This concept was popularized by Malcom Gladwell in his book Outliers in 2008.
Ericsson said, “The differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.”
The best musicians, athletes, and skilled workers alike all mastered their craft through deliberate practice over the course of 10 years.
For the record, you do not have to practice 10,000 hours to get good at something. His argument was that the masters (the best in the world) all practiced that much.
Of course, practice is important, but Ericsson did not state what it took for these individuals to practice for such a duration.
Duckworth would say that they had Grit.
The study of achievement has also come from the work of positive psychology, learned industriousness, and other fields of psychology.
And let’s not forget about Napoleon Hill’s work with the high achievers of his age like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford, leading to his book Think and Grow Rich.
While all these models and discussions are valuable, Angela Duckworth created a method to quantify a person’s grittiness and track their success.
In one of her seminal papers, she was able to use the grit scale to better predict which students would drop out of West Point! This is one of the hardest institutions to get accepted to, and 1 in 5 cadets drop out in the first 2 months. Intelligence and previous achievement were not good predictors of success… But Duckworth’s Grit Scale was.
And her research not only covered students at West Point. She has also looked into Army Rangers, sales professionals, and more. All of which showed that grit predicted success.
Let’s talk more about what grit is and how we can build it.
What is Grit?
Duckworth asked the question, “What makes highly successful people become so?”
In her research, she found that grit was the best predictor of achievement.
But what is it? Well, it is the combination of passion and perseverance.
Passionate people chase an interest. They know what they want and can be obsessed with a topic.
Perseverance is all about driving to improve. It is about stamina and not intensity.
She even writes, “Enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare.”
When you think about these two things, where would you say your passion lies? How willing are you to persevere?
Well, if you are like me and like most people who are interested in this topic, you probably struggle with both.
Let’s shift into how we can build both passion and perseverance so we can become more gritty!
Is Passion Discovered or Created?
Here’s a big question:
Do we discover our passion or do we create it?
I was taught (through the aether) that our passion is something we discover. It is something we find. Something we must search for.
But now I know (well, I believe) that is BS.
We hear it all the time at commencement speeches and from successful people: “Find your passion and you will never work a day in your life. Life is short, so find your passion and work on it.”
This advice comes from individuals who NOW have a feeling of passion. But who is to say they had that passion from the start?
The idea that you can “find” your passion assumes that it is out there just waiting to be discovered.
Cal Newport argues for the opposite perspective.
He writes in his book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, “The vast majority of people aren’t born with preā€‘existing passions waiting to be discovered.”
Instead, our passion is something we create by building skills and getting good at something.
We do work. Build a skill. Get better at that skill. Realize what is possible with that skill. And THEN we are passionate about it.
I had this experience with my first passion of fitness.
I was fascinated by how the body worked and the complexity of physiology.
This curiosity led me to dive into learning more.
I got my bachelors in kinesiology, and then my masters in exercise science. I read a ton of books and watched a ton of educational videos. And I experimented on myself.
Then I got into personal training, and I sucked at first. I didn’t know how to train others.
But I loved working with people and learning how to help them achieve more… but I was not yet passionate.
Over time, I built more skills and more knowledge and then one day found I had a passion for fitness.
It started as an interest. Then I developed skills. Then I became passionate.
Doing some napkin math, I’ve probably put in about 8,000 hours of deliberate practice in the space of personal training. Not enough to be a “master” but enough to be dangerous… and surely enough to develop a passion.
Since then, my work has evolved into leadership development where I have put in at least 5,000 hours (and looking forward to the next 5,000).
This mirrors how Angela Duckworth writes about growing a passion.
She notes that passion does not arrive overnight. We must build passion through steps.
We must first find an interest. Second, we develop that interest. Then third, we discover the passion.
Let’s put the ball in your court.
Consider where you are at with your passions.
Have you already created a passion?
Or maybe you are in the interest phase.
If you are struggling to find your passion, there are two places we can begin.
First is in your current skills.
What are you good at?
What are you learning to be good at?
If you are showing up to work and learning things, where are you building your skills?
Your skills are the first place to look for a brewing potential passion.
Aside from the skills you are learning, what are you curious about?
What are the things that you can’t stop learning about?
Your interests are also a place to find your brewing passions.
If you have identified the skills you are developing and / or the things you are curious about, how can you continue to develop those skills and interests?
Can you keep learning? Can you keep practicing.
You know, this reminds me of John C. Maxwell. He is an industry leading leadership expert.
When he was building his skills in leadership development, he was reading and learning and committed to giving his learning journey at least 2 years of study.
After a year, he stopped asking himself how much he could learn and started asking himself, “how far can I go?”
That is what happens when you commit to an interest, lean in, and continue to learn and grow.
Once you get good at something, AND that thing is aligned with your interests, it is a short step to having a passion.
Remember, passion is only half of the equation. We also must consider perseverance.
Perseverance: Never Stop Never-Stopping
Perseverance is the decision to keep moving forward.
In Grit, Duckworth lists some traits of people who persevere.
- They are driven to improve
- They have no expectations of catching up to their ambition
- They feel as if they are never good enough
- They are satisfied being unsatisfied
- They also have a clear sense of where they are going and where they want to be.
She notes that passion serves as a compass, pointing you in the right direction.
But friends, perseverance keeps you going. And… it can only take hold if you know where you are going.
When you know where you are going, you have a north star guiding you.
Robin Sharma said something memorable about clarity.
He said, “clarity precedes mastery… the more clear you can get on what you want to create in life, the more focused you will be in your daily behaviors.”
With clarity comes direction and focus.
With focus comes intentional effort.
Intentional effort repeated over time leads to achieving your goals.
So how do you create clarity?
You choose what you want in your life.
Choose what you want in your personal life, your family life, and your working life.
What do you want to do? Who do you want to be? What do you want to experience? How do you want to grow?
All of these questions are worth asking.
And there is one more question we must ask if we are really to create clarity:
Why?
Our why is our purpose and it can serve as a fire of motivation, and it can serve as the motive of discipline.
Duckworth states that “purpose is what we do that matters to people other than ourselves.“
I love this.
It is an acknowledgement that purpose is not self-serving. If we have a purpose, it is (or should be) in some shape or form about impacting other people.
Given we are social animals, most people have a desire to have a positive impact on others.
Nietzsche famously said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
Purpose gives us patience, courage, energy, and hope.
What is your why?
Who are you trying to impact?
What is a better version of your world, or THE world, that you are striving to build?
Practicing Grit
Now we know that passion and perseverance lead to grit.
When we develop a passion, create a clear vision, and articulate a “why,” we have a recipe for grit.
But we still need to execute.
For this, we need to talk about 2 things:
Goal hierarchies and mindsets.
Yes… MindSETS… Plural.
There is not just one mindset.
And we often shift mindsets depending on our environment.
For example, you may have an abundance mindset in your approach to your career (as opposed to the scarcity mindset). You may believe that the world’s opportunities are unlimited! The world is your oyster!
But you may also NOT bring an abundance mindset to your relationships. You may believe that dating opportunities are scarce, or that love is scarce.
You might have a growth mindset in your relationships but a fixed mindset at work.
There is not just one mindset, and not one that follows you everywhere in every situation.
But, to practice grit, a growth mindset is necessary for perseverance.
The growth mindset was popularized by Carol Dweck in her book Mindset.
In the book, she summarizes her research and findings on how our thoughts and beliefs impact our effort.
She discovered that there are essentially two kinds of people: Fixed mindset folks, and growth mindset folks.
The fixed mindset folks believed that their abilities were static. They could not get better or smarter over time. They were born with what they have. They also saw failures as threats to their identity. So they were more likely to quit, cheat, and make excuses.
The growth mindset folks, on the other hand, believed that they could improve over time. They saw failures as opportunities to learn.
While walking the gritty path, we are going to run into challenges, obstacles, and failures.
Those who persevere and learn from the experience have a growth mindset. They are able to learn and adjust their actions to better align with what they want.
Those who do NOT learn from setbacks are suffering from a fixed mindset. These are the stubborn folks who keep pushing on the door when the sign reads “pull.”
And of course, there are those who quit. But they do not have grit.
A growth mindset ensures we learn and adapt from failure. It helps us EXPECT that failure is going to happen and that each experience is an opportunity to grow.
Personally, I strive for a growth mindset, even when it’s tough.
Whenever I fail, I ask myself, “what can I learn and what can I do differently?”
Mind you, it still sucks to fail, and sometimes I can get emotional about it.
But overall, I see losses as opportunities to learn.
Another mindset to leverage for more grit is optimism.
Duckworth’s mentor is actually Marty Seligman, the father of positive psychology.
She has a lot to say about the impact of positivity and positive self-talk on perseverance.
In summary: optimism is better than pessimism.
I’ll do a longer talk on mindsets in the future. That will be a big topic.
Aside from mindsets, when practicing grit, we need to be clear on goal hierarchies.
A quick note on these: I love setting goals, but I have not toyed with leveraging goal hierarchies. After reading Grit, I think this is something I’d like to experiment with.
Goal hierarchies are composed of high-level goals, mid-level goals, and low-level goals organized in a hierarchy… like a pyramid.
High-level goals are the BIG goals that you are shooting for.
They are ends unto themselves… ultimate concerns.
For example, one of my high-level goals is to enable and empower people to achieve more.
All of my other goals align to achieve that end.
If you were to ask, “but what does achieving that goal lead to? What is it for? What’s the larger goal?”
I’d say, “no… that’s it. That is the end.”
My mid-level goals would be the big things underneath the big goal that contribute to the high-end goal.
For example, I want to build an audience on YouTube and with a podcast. I want to stay up to date on the latest research on leadership, human performance, and productivity.
Lower-level goals are things on our to-do list, but they still ladder up to the mid-level goal.
For me, this would include:
- Write a script
- Read an article
- Film a video
You get the picture.
These low-level goals are concrete and specific.
What is important here, is to recognize that goals have differing layers of scope.
Small goals lead to bigger goals, which lead to bigger goals, which eventually all lead to one big singular goal.
And of course, not ALL your low-level goals will be aligned to a single high-level goal. You may have a few high-level goals with a lot of low-level goals in each arena.
There is a risk of having a ton of high-level goals. The more high-level goals, the more low-level goals are required at the base of your hierarchy. The more low-level goals on your to do list, the less time you have to spend on each goal.
You won’t have enough time in the day if you have to accomplish 30 crucial low-level goals.
You must prioritize.
This is a hard fact for me to be reminded of.
I love thinking that I can do it all…
All I need to do is have more grit.
Alas, everything is a tradeoff.
We cannot do everything.
So, what are your top high-level goals?
What are your mid and low-level goals?
What are you passionate about?
What is the vision you are shooting for and why is it important?
The Wrap Up
Of course, Grit is not the only book which talks about achieving more.
But what Duckworth did was to create a system to predict whether a person is going to quit or succeed.
That system is comprised of two big components: passion and perseverance.
And these are two things we can create, develop, and choose!
Thanks for reading, friends.
Keep crushing it.
Clark