Why is grit important? Grit helps you achieve beyond hopes and assumptions, and even calculations. Kristin Armstrong knows and understands it.
Why Is Grit Important?
Grit is a combination of passion and perseverance in an effort to achieve long-term goals. It is a hallmark of success and is considered by some experts to be the single most important personality trait that all high achievers share.
Here are some reasons why grit is important:
- Grit helps people persist in the face of adversity: Grit gives people a mental toughness that enables them to persist and even succeed in the face of obstacles and setbacks.
- Grit helps people achieve long-term goals: No one achieves success overnight, and achieving long-term goals requires patience and perseverance.
- Grit helps people avoid burnout: Without passion, perseverance leads to burnout, and without perseverance, people simply give up. Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance that helps people avoid burnout and stay committed to their goals.
- Grit is a combination of talent and effort: While talent is important, it doesn’t automatically lead to achievement. Human skill is a combination of talent and effort, and achievement is a combination of skill and effort.
Grit is not just something that people are born with; it is something that can be learned and developed over time.
To develop grit, people need to define what grit means to them and find ways to cultivate their passion and perseverance for their long-term goals.
Surrounding oneself with gritty people can also help develop more grit.
Grit is “perseverance and passion for long-term goals,” as Angela Duckworth defines it. It has two facets — perseverance of effort and consistency of interest. Kristin has both in more than ample amounts.
We may break down GRIT into:
- G – Goals: should be long-term, with many sub-goals spread out over time.
- R – Resilience: about bouncing back and flexing your mind around tough times.
- I – Integrity: a deliberate discipline towards your goals.
- T – Tenacity: is at the heart of grit. It is determination, intensity, and perseverance.
Grit means to be relentless in pursuing your goals. It is not about being more talented or smarter than others. Grit is not only about successes; people with grit accept their failures and then make active plans to grow beyond them.
Grit has a background of courage.
Olympic Gold Medalist Shows Superhuman Grit
On August 11, 2016, Kristin Armstrong turned 43. The evening before, she became the only cyclist ever to win three consecutive Olympic golds in the same event. The only cyclist ever with 3 back-to-back Golds, male or female, across any sports discipline.
“Les” Brown, one of America’s top five speakers and author of Live Your Dreams, said once, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” Kristin Armstrong proves it. She is the oldest female cycling medalist of all time.
At 42 years and 364 days old, Kristin beamed as she showed her gold medal to her 5-year-old son Lucas. Gold again in the women’s time trial event, after 2008 in Beijing and 2012 in London.
She told NPR on her third gold, “I think that for so long we’ve been told that we should be finished at a certain age. And I think that there’s a lot of athletes out there that are actually showing that that’s not true.”
She retired twice — once in 2010 and then again in 2013; but came out each time. This time, the USA Cycling Selection Committee came under heavy criticism for taking her in.
The reporters in Rio de Janeiro asked her why she came out of her retirement at this age. And why does she still want to compete at an elite level despite her age and several hip surgeries? She wished she had a clever answer for the occasion, but then added:
Because I can.
Road To GOAT
She was not even a full-time cyclist until 2001. That year, her doctors told her she has an early-stage osteoarthritis in her hips. She could no more run as a triathlete at elite levels.
Triathlons are three non-stop serial events of high endurance – running, swimming, and cycling. On hearing the diagnosis, Kristin gave up triathlon and re-focused her sports goals into cycling. Thus began her story of becoming one of the Greatest of All Time (GOAT).
On her second comeback in 2015, after three hip surgeries, she went through a grueling training schedule. After being off the bike for three years, she could not train like others. After each excruciating training session, her recovery took longer. Also, she could not enter herself into all the big cycling events throughout the year.
On Wednesday, Kristin completed the 29.8-kilometer course in 44 minutes and 26.42 seconds. On her first 10 km, as she bolted through the rain, her nose started bleeding. But Kristin kept on through the hilly course. And, she was 5½ seconds sooner to finish than her nearest competitor Olga Zabelinskaya.
Beneath The Legend
Outside the cycling arena, Kristin Armstrong is someone just about as normal as anyone else. She was born in the USA but somehow came to attend her high school in Japan. Kristin has an undergraduate degree in Sports Science from the University of Idaho.
She is a mom, too. And she has to answer the curious questions of her 5-year-old son. After her win, when she hugged him, he asked, “Mama, why are you crying? You won.” Kristin replied, like any other mom in the world, “That’s what we do, we cry when we’re happy.”
By the way, she has a regular job like the rest of us. She is the director of community health at St. Luke’s Hospital in Boise, Idaho. It was her dream job, and she went back to it a few days after the Olympics. Kristin makes it a point to express her gratitude to her employers, who gave her a 12-week break for this event.
Kristin’s Grit
The exceptionally gritty people like Kristin dare to embrace failures on their way to success.
If anything defines her from behind her achievements, it is her grit. Kristin can take hurt, unlike the rest of us. She has this unrivaled ability to battle through pain in incredible ways.
Forced time-off from the field because of physical strains can become the loneliest time for an athlete. Only the ones with true grit make a comeback from that point of desperation. It begins with self-belief and sustains with grit. Kristin has shown it time and again.
These words by Theodore Roosevelt define grit most poetically:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strived valiantly; who errs, who comes again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.
Grit, as Duckworth says, is a quality we can learn and put into performance for extraordinary long-term achievements.
In her New York Times bestseller, pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth shows anyone striving to succeed that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a special blend of passion and persistence she calls “grit.”
Daniel Gilbert, the author of Stumbling on Happiness, says about the book: “Psychologists have spent decades searching for the secret of success, but Angela Duckworth is the one who found it. In this smart and lively book, she not only tells us what it is, but also how to get it.”
And Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers – The Story of Success, says: “Grit is a persuasive and fascinating response to the cult of IQ fundamentalism. Duckworth reminds us that it is character and perseverance that set the successful apart.”
Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall, and how that—not talent or luck—makes all the difference. Grit’s most valuable insight: Grit is something we can all learn to build into ourselves, regardless of I.Q. or circumstances.
Final Words
NBC’s Olympic Cycling Reporter Steve Porino was there when Kristin made the final push for the gold. He said everyone at the finish line in Rio stood by in awe of Kristin’s tenacity and grit in those final seconds.
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Author Bio: Researched and reviewed by Dr. Sandip Roy. His expertise is in mental well-being, positive psychology, narcissism, and Stoic philosophy.
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