How Gritty can You Be?
Angela Duckworth, the author of the New York best-seller, “ Grit “ espouses hard work and consistency in achieving life’s goals. She believes talent is not a predictor of success but hard work over the long term is what gets stuff done.
I came across Angela Duckworth’s “Grit'' in my local library and it made interesting reading. She told a fascinating story of one 13-year old Anurag Kashyap who pulled herself up by the foot strap to become a champion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee contest through sheer guts and hard work
So what is Grit?
In the author’s words, “ Grit is passion and perseverance for a very long term goal. Grit is having stamina and sticking with your future day in and day out, not for the week, not for the month but for years and working very hard to make the future a reality.”
So, that initial enthusiasm that dissipates when you hit your first or second bump along the journey of affiliate marketing will not cut it. Grit is endurance over the long haul. It is hanging in there and doubling down even when things are not looking up yet.
Gritty workers work on a schedule not just when they feel motivated and so they deliver on a more consistent basis.
They have a growth mindset. They believe that their ability to learn is not fixed. It can change according to their effort. The more effortful they are, the more prodigious their output.
The story she told of Bob Markoff, the cartoonist, encapsulates her theory of Grit. I can’t wait to relay it to find out if it resonates with you.
Grit Personified
As a child, Bob loved to draw. He attended La Guardia High School of Music and Art to improve his art but got intimidated by the amount of competition he faced. He then decided to study Philosophy and Psychology at Syracuse University
He came across Learning to Cartoon by Syel Hoff and it revived his interest in Cartooning. Armed with 27 cartoons, he walked from one magazine to the other trying to make a sale. He was summarily rejected and asked to try again with more cartoons. “ How could anyone do more than 27 cartoons?” He wondered.
Vietnam came calling and he simply re-purposed himself as a graduate student in experimental psychology to dodge the draft. Just before his doctorate, he decided research psychology was not his calling. He had two mid-level competing interests: stand-up comedy and Cartooning, he decided to stick to Cartooning.
After two years of submitting cartoons to magazines, he had enough rejection slips to wallpaper his bathroom! But even that did not deter him. How’s that for tenacity?
Instead, it fueled his passion to become the best Cartoonist there was. To qualify as the best cartoonist, he would have to be featured in the New Yorker, “ New Yorker was to cartoon what the New York Yankees were to Baseball- The Best Team.”
He went to the New York Public Library and immersed himself in extensive research. He looked up all the cartoons up to 1925 and convinced himself that he could draw cartoons equally well as any of the cartoonists. The only thing he was missing was his own distinctive style. He decided to introduce the unique dot style that he had earlier tried in High school.
Bob got rejected from the New Yorker another 2,000 times before one of his cartoons was accepted! The following year, he sold 13, then 25, and then 27!
Finally, he received a letter of a contract cartoonist offer from his coveted magazine.
What grit! What a journey of endurance! What sacrifice
Have you experienced goal conflict? How did you resolve it? Did you resolve your mid-level goals in favor of your highest goal of Affiliate Marketing as Bob did when he had to choose between stand-up comedy and Cartooning?
Have you decided how you can make yourself distinctive as a blogger? Readers get bored with sameness. Bob had to come up with his dot style of cartooning to make himself unique. In what way/s do you want to brand and set yourself apart?
Recent Comments
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Well, I must have a little grit as I've been here over 3 years.
I did go through a major change about a year ago, when I decided to drop my MMO website and concentrate on my entrepreneur's site. It was just too hard to do justice to either site with two of them to keep up.
My distinctive trick as a blogger is two-fold: I've create a character called Lucinda the literate cat, who writes part of my blog posts, including a column called "Letters to Lucinda: Cat Behavior Solutions." Here, she answers a letter from a person and a cat about the same problem. They are fun to write.
The other distinctive thing I've done is to open "Lucinda's Boutique," which is a jewelry boutique featured on theliteratecat.com's site. After all, female cats are called queens, and doesn't a queen need lots of jewelry? Anyway, I manage it for Lucinda. As I was in the jewelry business for 50+ years, I have lots of odds and ends of stock to feature.
Fran, thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment. I appreciate that. You have not only shown grit over the long haul but versatility and creativity in inventing Lucinda, the literate cat, and " Letters to Lucinda: Cat Behavior Solutions " It's sheer ingenuity!
Fkelso - thank for that reply. It caused me to think about my approach to my future website!
Thanks and continued good fortune!
Excellent example about finding a way to differentiate yourself from other sites on the same subject. That is so critical - otherwise your site is nothing more than a book report about what others know. Readers can spot that in an instant. Your content should come from your personal experience.
I love Bob's persistence. Never quit, never give up!
Jeanine, you are so right. If we want to be noticed, we need to brand ourselves and do something that will set us apart from one another.
Bob is grit personified! I wish I had his grit power!
Great story. Grit and determination always win through. When you are running on nothing else if you have that glimmer of grit , it will put you ahead of others.
And as you said, your own distinct style. I am me and write from my viewpoint. Others can agree or not, but at least there is involvement if I have done my job properly.
Thanks
Stephen
Yeah Stephen, it's good to have a distinctive style that sets one apart. Keep writing from your viewpoint and before you know it you will gather around you like-minded readers who agree with your perspective. That's your tribe, Stephen!
Thanks for sharing such an inspiring story Dadaz. It reminds me of when I graduated from art college some years ago. I was really keen on making money as an illustrator. This was in the days you had to lug a heavy portfolio of work around. Unfortunately, I gave up far to soon and changed career to hairdresser! Nowadays I fully understand the principle of persistence and never giving up!
Kathy, we have all made such mistakes when we were much younger. Now that we know the value of grit and perseverance, let's put such mistakes on the back burners of our minds. Let's go at our goals with our newfound grit and never stop until we realize them
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Dadaz123 - good thought-provoking article.
At first, I thought that I did not have that kind of grit.
However, I know when the doctors told me to live and just accept my "managed diseases" and to keep taking all the medicine they prescribed, I finally said "NO WAY".
Today, I am disease-free and take no medication. It took years for me to get here, but I guess it took some grit to go it alone without my doctors support.
Thanks for the article.