Old School Grit

Angela Duckworth is the leading researcher in the field of grit.

As you know if you’ve been following along, she literally wrote the book on the subject.

Check out our Notes on Grit for more on the origin story of her research, the fact that EFFORT counts twice, and practical ideas on how to grow your grit.

For now, know that Angela tells us this:“Why were the highly accomplished so dogged in their pursuits? For most, there was no realistic expectation of ever catching up to their ambitions. In their own eyes, they were never good enough. They were the opposite of complacent. And yet, in a very real sense, they were satisfied with being unsatisfied. Each was chasing something of unparalleled interest and importance, and it was the chase—as much as the capture—that was gratifying. Even if some of the things they had to do were boring, or frustrating, or even painful, they wouldn’t dream of giving up. Their passion was enduring.

In sum, no matter the domain, the highly successful had a kind of ferocious determination that played out in two ways. First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, they had direction.

It was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had grit.”

We feature another book on how to APPLY the science of grit called Getting Grit.

In that book, Caroline Adams Miller tells us: “Positive psychology’s Chris Peterson was fond of saying that thriving people are good at ‘struggling well.’ As we all know, life is full of challenges, particularly if we choose to set grand goals, but what separates people who don’t have grit from people who do is often this issue of working hard and overcoming difficulties without losing focus, equanimity, or passion—that is, struggling well. So, if you want to cultivate grit but you don’t have a constructive relationship with discomfort, failure, and delayed gratification, it’s imperative to find ways to make your peace with these conditions.

One of the most intriguing findings in Angela Duckworth’s research on grit is that high-grit people hate hard work as much as those who don’t have grit. High-grit people simply accept hard work as the price they must pay to get where they want to go, and so they find ways to do it. As the late boxer and humanitarian Muhammad Ali put it, ‘I hated every minute of training but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’”

That’s from the first letter Coach Flanagan writes to his grandchildren.

Here are the fifteen rules he walks them (and us!) through in the book along with the inspirational quote that kicked off the chapter on each rule:

Rule No. 1: Don’t Accept Your Fate, Create Your Destiny.

“You were not born a winner and you were not born a loser. You are what you make yourself to be.”— Lou Holtz

Rule No. 2:You’ll Only Achieve What You Believe You Can Achieve.

“I don’t think anything is unrealistic if you think you can do it.”— Mike Ditka

Rule No. 3:Embrace the Pressure.

“The ability to handle pressure is all in how you look at it. I look at being put under pressure as an opportunity to show how strong and capable you and your team really are.”— Coach Krzyzewski

Rule No. 4:Finish Strong.

“The measure of who we are is how we react to something that doesn’t go our way.”— Gregg Popovich

Rule No. 5: Find Something You Love to Do and Stick with It.

“It is imperative that we all make every effort to do what we love. My job is definitely a challenge, but I like what I do so much that it rarely seems like work to me.”— Nick Saban

Rule No. 6:Keep Moving Forward.

“The second you think you’ve arrived, someone passes you by. You have to always be in pursuit.”— Joe Torre

Rule No. 7:Put the Needs of Others Above Your Own.

“Mental toughness is doing the right thing for the team when it’s not the best thing for you.” — Bill Belichick

Rule No. 8:Live for a Purpose Greater than Yourself.

“A person does not become whole until he or she becomes a part of something bigger than himself or herself.” — Jim Valvano

Rule No. 9:Eliminate Negative Influences.

“The attitude a person develops is the most important ingredient in determining the level of success.” — Pat Riley

Rule No. 10:Effort Trumps Talent.

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.” — Vince Lombardi

Rule No. 11:Focus on Only the Things You Can Control.

“Being disciplined in your approach to each day of your life and accomplishing the things you dream of starts by disciplining your thoughts.”— Tony Dungy

Rule No. 12:Don’t Waste a Day.

“Champions do not become champions when they win an event, but in the hours, weeks, months, and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely a demonstration of their championship character.”— Michael Jordan

Rule No. 13:Life Is a Series of Wins and Lessons.

“I’ve learned that something constructive comes from every defeat.”— Tom Landry

Rule No. 14:Don’t Put Off Pursuing Your Dreams.

“Live every day as if it’s your last because someday you’re going to be right.” — Muhammad Ali

Rule No. 15:Don’t Quit. Don’t Ever Quit.

“You’re never a loser until you quit trying.” — Mike Ditka

I thought of a number of things when I read that passage on finishing strong in Rule #4.

I thought of one of my most influential mentors when I was running my first business. I thought of the Sanskrit word for being a hero in the beginning. And, I thought of Napoleon Hill and his parallel wisdom on success coming RIGHT after we almost give up. Let’s discuss each now.

First, my mentor. As we’ve discussed, way back in the day when I had more hair and less gray whiskers, I was a 25-year-old Founder/CEO running my first company. It was the 1999/2000 dot-com boom era. Our business was called eteamz.

We won the business plan competition at UCLA’s business school. We had raised $5M. We were a pretty exciting start-up that blended sports and technology. Dartboard in my office. Ping pong table in the boardroom. The full deal. :)

We were blessed to hire the CEO of Adidas to replace me as the young CEO. Then the market crashed. Rather than going out and raising our next big round, we had to deal with some HUGE obstacles to survive—which is precisely when he told me what Coach Flanagan told his players as they were getting ready for a March Madness NCAA game.

He told me: “It’s easy to START something. It’s alot harder to FINISH it strong.”

I’m proud of how our team responded to those challenges as I earned my first batch of gray whiskers. We endured the tough times and wound up creating a positive return for our investors while ultimately serving millions of families involved in youth sports with our platform.

As we discuss in Passage Meditation (and The Art of Taking Action), Eknath Easwaran tells us that this idea of starting something strong and then tip-toeing out the back door when things get hard has been so common for so long that, THOUSANDS of years ago, the sages of India came up with a word for it. In Sanskrit, they call it “arambhashura.” To be a hero in the beginning.

Not what we’re looking for. Heroes finish strong.

Then there’s Napoleon Hill. In Think and Grow Rich, he tells us: “Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of men do. More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known told the author their greatest success came just one step *beyond* the point at which defeat had overtaken them.”

Ryan Holiday echoes that wisdom in Discipline Is Destiny.

He tells us: “Consistency is a superpower. Day-to-day willpower is incredibly rare. ... You don’t have to always be amazing. You do always have to show up. What matters is sticking around for the next at bat. The ability to do that ... is the first step to greatness. Literally. You cannot be great without the self-discipline to do that. One thing a day adds up. Each day adds up. But the numbers are only interesting if they accumulate in large quantities.”

I repeat: TODAY’S THE DAY, Hero!

Don’t waste a day. Give us all you got.

TODAY.

Those are the final words of the book—which are the final words of the last letter from Coach Flanagan to his grandchildren.

That passage reminds me of Professor Duckworth again.

In Grit, she tells us: “There’s an old Japanese saying: ‘Fall seven, rise eight.’ If I were ever to get a tattoo, I’d get these four simple words indelibly inked.”

It also reminds me of Harvey Dorfman and his wisdom from Coaching the Mental Game.

He tells us: “As Lombardi was fond of saying, it’s not about how many times a person falls; it’s about how many times he gets up.”Then he shares one of my all-time favorite Latin phrases: Percussus resurgo which means: “Struck down. I rise again.”

Struck down? Perfect. RISE AGAIN. Finish strong.

Don’t complain. Don’t blame. Don’t EVER quit on your dreams.

That’s what it means to be gritty. And that’s what it means to be successful.

Day 1. Here’s to cultivating our antifragile, old-school grit, Hero.

LET’S GO!!!