What is Grit and How Can You Develop It?

The Man in the Arena

“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 them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short 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, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

28 Years as a
United States Navy SEAL

Life’s journey is funny at times. I don’t mean the kind of funny that makes you laugh, but the kind of funny that causes you to look deep inside yourself and ask, “How did I ever get through all that?”

I look back at my almost twenty-eight years as a Navy SEAL and wonder about all the challenges I faced.

• I look at persevering in Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, where the attrition rate was close to 80 percent.
• I look at the 180 I made to become the husband and father my wife and daughter deserve.
• I reflect on how I went through multiple neck surgeries that included titanium implants, fusions, missing vertebrae, and a mild stroke that forced an earlier-than-expected retirement.

I see my transition from a high point in life, where I was once on top of the world as an elite warrior, to being a lost, dark soul barely able to pick up thirty pounds without my back going out.

I was fighting to regain a sense of purpose greater than myself. Using the available time to press a four-year doctoral program into three years.

So back to the question: “How did I ever get through all that?”

The answer is found in an internal resolve, strength of will, moral fiber… more commonly known as grit!

3 Strategies for Developing Grit

Embracing the hardship, creating a vivid picture of the future, and developing and maintaining a genuine reality are three ways to reach a higher degree of grit in the challenges that life will present to you.

01. Embrace the Hardship

Grit is inherently about being uncomfortable.

Many people have assumed that my time in the SEAL Team Community conditioned me to the harshness of cold. Absolutely not!

What I learned from being on the team was to suffer in silence and not whine about it, in addition to pursuing a way to get warm. You have to be willing to pursue what it takes to be successful, even in the most difficult of times.

02. Create a Vivid Picture of the Future

Creating a vivid picture of the future provides the needed focus for visualization while enduring the stressors that come with being forged by the fires of experience and the hammer of time.

A vivid picture of the future has a high amount of preciseness and detail to promote goal development.

I pursued each level of my education (undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral program) with a vivid picture of completing the requirements with the highest grades possible, while maintaining life balance as a husband, a father, and a professional at work.

Without a vivid picture of where I was headed, I would have been lost.

03. Develop and Maintain a Genuine Reality

Grit is not grounded in a fairy tale. An inaccurate or false sense of where you are is a disaster waiting to happen.

Imagine, if you will, a ship leaving port. The crew begins the journey from a known point and assesses their situation along the way until they reach their destination. The ship’s crew constantly gathers information to develop a true reality of where they are on the chart.

Assumptions won’t work. Assumptions increase the cone of error and the probability of missing their destination. The only way to minimize that cone of error is to be guided by truth.

Truth is not always easy to hear, but it’s necessary if we are to have a genuine self-awareness of our abilities, competencies, and skills.

“True grit is making a decision and standing by it, doing what must be done. No moral man can have peace of mind if he leaves undone what he knows he should have done.”

– John Wayne

Be Intentional and Invest Your Time

Grit is forged in the fires of experience and the hammer of time. This requires intentionality and personal investment.

No one—I mean no one— develops grit from the couch. Is it worth the gamble to live life like you’re not going to die? What do you want to model for those who mean the most to you? What do others see in you: a couch potato or grit?

Take a long hard look in the mirror! What do you want to see?

See Grit in Action!

Watch Team Avaya’s Story →