“Here we go again,” I thought to myself.
I wrapped my hands, grabbed a skipping rope, and started skipping.
I was eight weeks into a 12-week kickboxing training camp. We had trained two times a day, six days a week, for a chance to fight in the ring.
My calves were really, REALLY sore. I didn’t feel like I was progressing fast enough. I was tired of being hit in the face every night. But I kept my eyes on the prize because I wanted to compete in my first amateur bout.
At the end of week 10, our coaches sat us down and told us they had narrowed down who was going to fight.
They went through a list of names. Mine wasn’t called.
When I turned up to training the next week, almost all of the people who weren’t selected had dropped out. I was one of only a handful that kept training until the 12 weeks were up, even if we didn’t get to fight at the end.
Sure, it was a bummer to not get picked. But I signed up for the camp with the goal of reaching the end, and I wanted to see it through. I knew that the skills I would get from training with the fighters would be valuable for when I eventually did make it in the ring. Even if I had to keep getting punched in the face.
Was I happy?
Not really.
But at that moment, it wasn’t about being happy.
It was about committing to a long-term goal, even when things didn’t go my way. It was about grit.
This experience sums up a feeling that most of us have become far too familiar with over the past few years. We’ve worked hard towards something, only to have it turn out completely different from the way we expected.
Goals of competing at state or nationals, only to have the game get canceled.
Goals of studying abroad, only to have borders closed.
Working hard to land your first job, only to do everything remotely.
The events from the past few years have forced us to put our lives on hold and punched us in the face again and again. It’s no wonder that young people are feeling more miserable.
The truth is, life is filled with moments like this.
Adversity is inevitable and we’re always going to encounter moments that test us and push us. And at times like these, what sets the most successful apart from the rest is the ability to persevere—despite when things don’t go as planned or when it feels like we’re making no progress at all.
It’s the people with grit that ultimately succeed and reach their goals.
What is grit and why does it matter?
Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance towards a meaningful long-term goal.
It’s about having the resilience, ambition, and self-control to chase after goals that may take months or years to achieve—regardless of the recognition you get along the way.
Getting into the college you want after late nights studying by yourself.
Going after your dream job, even if you get rejected the first time around.
Putting in the extra time to work on a technique, even when the coach isn’t there and your teammates have gone home.
All of these are examples of having grit.
Like most ideas, grit first caught on through a TED talk. In this case, the speaker was psychologist, educator, and author Angela Duckworth.
As a seventh-grade math teacher, Duckworth found the difference between her best-performing students and worst-performing ones wasn’t IQ. It was their ability to keep trying and work hard even if they didn’t get the concepts straight away.
This led her on a mission to figure out what sets successful people apart from the rest. She studied all kinds of challenging situations, from military training camps to teachers in rough neighborhoods and salespeople in private companies.
And she found that everyone that was successful shared the same trait: grit.
According to Duckworth, grit is one of the main elements that determine whether someone is going to be successful in life—whether it’s in school, work, relationships, or anything else.
In other words, if you want to live your best life, you have to know how to develop grit.
Why developing grit matters now more than ever
Grit is valuable at every stage of life, whether you’re a seventh-grader in Angela Duckworth’s math class or the leader of a Fortune 500 company.
But if there’s any time to develop grit, it’s right now.
You know—at this moment when life keeps throwing curveball after curveball and it feels like everything is NEVER going to go back to normal.
Unsurprisingly, gritty people fared much better during the pandemic.
One study of adults during the pandemic found that those with more grit were more active and had better dietary habits, which helped them lead a healthier lifestyle through the lockdowns, uncertainty, and stress.
It’s not just health either. The gritty people are the ones that managed to find a way to adapt to their circumstances, cope during the tough times, or try something new.
So here’s the biggest question…
How do you develop more grit?
After taking the grit test on Angela Duckworth’s website, it turns out I have a long way to go when it comes to developing grit
But here’s the good news…
It IS possible to increase your grit (phew).
In fact, there are four specific characteristics that all people who exemplify grit have in common. These are all things that we can proactively strive to build upon in order to develop more grit in the face of adversity.
1. Focus on things that you enjoy and are interested in
When I was in college, I took a class on Government and International Relations. I spent the entire semester playing Heroes of Might and Magic IV on my laptop. However, when it came to Film Studies, I would rewatch every week’s movie over and over again and do all of the extra recommended readings.
Guess which one I got the higher marks in.
Here’s the thing: grit doesn’t and shouldn’t apply to everything. None of us have enough energy to persevere in every single thing in our lives with full force and commitment.
I can’t make it my goal to be CEO of a company AND an Olympic athlete AND run a charity AND win a Nobel prize all at the same time.
The very nature of being gritty means you’re committing your focus and energy to one objective at the expense of other things.
The people who are gritty are the ones who are passionate about what they’re doing because they have an end game—a goal that they’re so motivated by and invested in that they’re willing to pay the price for success.
Grit is about having what some researchers call an ‘ultimate concern’—a goal you care about so much that it organizes and gives meaning to almost everything you do. And grit is holding steadfast to that goal. Even when you fall down. Even when you screw up. Even when progress toward that goal is halting or slow.
2. Try to improve every day, even if you feel you’re going nowhere
Of course, it’s not just enough to have a goal. You have to keep deliberately working towards that goal, no matter how small or insignificant your progress might seem.
When I was younger, I practiced karate at my local dojo. I was always so impressed by the black belts because they seemed to be true masters of the martial art…until my sensei told me that getting a black belt only meant that someone had mastered the basics.
Apparently once a student gets their black belt, that’s when the training REALLY starts.
After four-plus years of training every day and doing every technique more than 10,000 times, these black belts were only at the beginning of their journey. They were still trying to improve on the smallest of details and perfect their craft, even if it meant correcting their hand a fraction of an inch or moving a split-second faster.
That pretty much sums up the second characteristic of grit: perseverance. To deliberately and purposefully keep going towards a goal over time, even when it feels like you’re not getting anywhere at all.
3. Find the deeper purpose in what you’re trying to achieve
We’ve all jumped into a new hobby or diet with full enthusiasm, only to have that energy wane over time. The difference between this and something that sticks is the sense of purpose you have behind your actions.
Gritty people understand that reaching their goals is about playing the long game.
In some cases, it might be months, years, or even decades before you reach your ultimate goal. If you don’t believe that what you’re doing matters, it’s going to be tough to keep that spark burning during difficult times (which are unfortunately unavoidable).
Get clear on the meaning and value behind your long-term efforts. When you reframe your goals and start with why, it’ll be easier to keep going, even when things get rough.
Here are some related articles that might help in this effort:
4. Have faith in your ability to overcome adversity
The final piece of grit is resilience—the deep belief that you can handle whatever gets thrown your way. This doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine when it’s not. It means trusting that you have the capacity to figure things out, even when the path forward isn’t clear.
When you hit a wall, instead of seeing it as proof you should quit, you see it as information about what needs to change. This shift in perspective is what separates people who give up from those who find a way through.
If you have faith that you’re capable of overcoming challenges, you’ll be more resilient to the inevitable setbacks along the way. People with grit understand that failure doesn’t last forever, and that it’s okay to fall as long as you get back up.
Of course, this is easier said than done—especially when you’ve gone through multiple setbacks over the years. But this growth mindset makes all the difference when it comes to achieving long-term success.
via @sylviaduckworth
The next time something doesn’t work out and you catch yourself giving up mental real estate to the past, flip your thoughts.
Ask: what can I do now? Concentrate on the next step to fix the problem, or improve for next time. After you’ve done that, think about the next step. And so on, and so on.
Here is some further reading to check out:
How to demonstrate grit in your career
One of the biggest challenges with grit is that it’s hard to prove you have it until you’re actually tested by adversity. You can’t exactly walk into a job interview and say “Trust me, I’m really gritty” and expect anyone to believe you.
So how does one demonstrate grit?
The key is collecting concrete examples from your past where you’ve shown persistence through difficult circumstances, then learning how to present those stories effectively to potential employers.
To help you get started, check out this article about tracking your work achievements, which includes a handy template that you’ll want on hand as you read the rest of my advice.
Collecting your “grit stories”
Start by mining your experiences for moments when you didn’t give up, even when things got tough. These don’t have to be dramatic life-or-death situations—they can be academic challenges, work projects that went sideways, or personal goals you pursued despite obstacles.
Look for stories where you faced a significant setback, had to adapt your approach, and ultimately achieved your goal through persistence rather than luck or natural talent. Maybe you had to balance working full time while in school—that alone takes grit. Or you launched a project that initially flopped, but you gathered feedback and improved until it succeeded.
The best grit stories have clear stakes, show your thought process during difficult moments, and demonstrate measurable outcomes that resulted from your persistence. Write down your best examples, and start committing those stories to memory.
Showing grit during an interview
When an interviewer asks about challenges you’ve overcome, resist the urge to downplay the difficulty or skip to the happy ending. Walk them through your mindset during the tough parts—how you stayed motivated, what strategies you used to keep going, and how you adapted when your first approach didn’t work.
Related: Interview Question Guide: “What Motivates You?”
Use specific details and timelines to make your story concrete. Instead of saying “I worked really hard on this project,” explain that you spent three months redesigning the system after the initial version failed user testing, or that you reached out to 47 potential mentors before finding someone willing to guide you.
The goal is to help the interviewer understand not just what you accomplished, but how you think and behave when things get difficult.
Here are other articles that can help you prepare for an interview:
Showing grit on your resume and profiles
Showing grit on resumes is harder, because you don’t have a lot of text to provide context and storytelling. The best bet is to translate your grit into numbers and outcomes that can live on your resume.
“Increased sales by 30% after initial six-month period of declining performance” tells a story of persistence.
“Completed degree while working 25 hours per week” demonstrates your ability to juggle competing priorities over time.
Use your LinkedIn posts and portfolio to share case studies of projects where persistence paid off. Write about the obstacles you encountered, the lessons you learned from failures, and how you ultimately achieved your goals. These stories become searchable proof of your grit that recruiters and hiring managers can discover on their own.
Some additional content to help with your resume and portfolio:
How to develop grit a little bit every day
You don’t have to wait around for a big catastrophe before you can start developing grit. There are opportunities to develop grit every day.
Start a new physical fitness routine
A change to your physical fitness routine is a surefire way to start developing grit right away. You read all about how my pursuit in the ring led to my own development of grit—it can work for you too (even if boxing isn’t your thing).
Whether you’re working on strength, speed, or flexibility, you’ll have to push through adversity and overcome obstacles to achieve your goals. Choosing to come back to the gym or mat or field, session after session, is grit-building in action.
You don’t need to commit to running the New York Marathon or joining your local kickball league—unless you’d enjoy those things. You can develop grit simply by picking something outside your comfort zone. Set a goal to run for an extra 10 minutes, swim five more laps, play one game of pickle ball a week. If it’s outside your comfort zone even a little, you’ll need grit to reach your goal.
Pick up a new skill or hobby
In a similar vein, learning a new skill or taking up a new hobby will require some grit at the start.
Even if the task is ultimately enjoyable, learning how to do something new requires persistence and confidence. For example, you may thoroughly enjoy learning the piano—but there will be moments when you want to give up because you are frustrated and cringing at your slow progress. Pushing through that is the only way to get better, and that’s building grit.
We have lots of content about developing new skills:
Explore new social situations
Another way to develop grit is to work on safe but unfamiliar social situations.
Introducing yourself to new people with different backgrounds and ideas requires you to think on your feet, adapt quickly, and risk rejection—all things that we now know help you develop grit.
If you’re in college, it should be easy to find on-campus groups or events that will help you meet new people. Visit the student union, check the college website or network, or just look around for fliers if you’re on campus.
Non-students can still find new social groups through community centers, libraries, cafes, and book stores, or sites like MeetUp and EventBrite, local subreddits and NextDoor groups.
If you want to develop grit and your career at the same time, then sign up for some networking events. You’re guaranteed to develop some grit when networking, and you might even walk away with a new job opportunity.
And once again, we’ve got great resources to check out before you dive into these new social situations:
Grit is a muscle. Work it, and it will grow.
Everyone has the power within them to develop grit.
Don’t get me wrong—it’s not easy. It takes time to reframe your thinking and to become more intentional with your goals. But over time, you’ll find that grit becomes a part of how you approach challenges and overcome them to become successful in whatever you choose to do.
We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we’ve been successful, and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned.
—Angela Duckworth
As for me, I finished the 12-week camp. And you can bet I’m still training to (one day) make my amateur fighting debut.
