Growing up, I always believed anything could be accomplished through “sheer will.” Most childhood challenges for me fortunately related mostly to school work so it was easy to see the linear relationship between time spent and output. As I grew older, I began to wonder if “sheer will” was enough, especially as I entered into more and more competitive academic environments where my peers were smarter at certain subjects than I was or at least knew better ways of doing things. 

I started to wonder if there were just simply shortcuts I didn’t know about or if I should do something with a more obvious proportional or exponential outcome from effort. Thankfully, that belief in “sheer will” persisted, and I’ve come to realize that anything worth doing in life is hard and many people just give up, which means it’s a whole lot easier to win for people who are just persistent. Often times, this has been why I succeeded when I probably shouldn’t have.

I’ve always struggled to find the right term for this characteristic since “sheer will” somewhat ignores the external pressures and challenges and focuses on your own drive. Recently, I’ve stumbled on a worthy contender — it’s “grit.” It captures well the hardships you need to go against to succeed. A recent Fast Company article does a good job defining someone with grit as possessing:

• A clear goal
• Determination despite others’ doubts
• Self-confidence about figuring it out
• Humility about knowing it doesn’t come easy
• Persistence despite fear
• Patience to handle the small obstacles that obscure the path
• A code of ethics to live by
• Flexibility in the face of roadblocks
• A capacity for human connection and collaboration
• A recognition that accepting help does not equate to weakness
• A focus and appreciation of each step in the journey
• An appreciation of other people’s grit
• A loyalty that never sacrifices connections along the way
• An inner strength to help propel you to your goal

Apparently, having grit is the top predictor of success according to a University of Pennsylvania study, which makes me feel a lot better for having relied on this characteristic so much to get through life. You can actually quantify this characteristic by taking a grit test devised by the study. Try it! If you don’t do well, I’m sure that can change over time through enough effort and persistence ;-)