You may have heard the Greek legend of Sisyphus, who is condemned by the gods for eternity to repeatedly roll a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down again once he got it to the top. It’s used often as a metaphor for the individual’s persistent struggle against the essential absurdity of life. Yet there’s another way to look at this story. There’s an opportunity that comes from consistently and persistently doing something hard in order to develop grit. I share this because I’ve been hearing the need for grit in our society a lot lately.
Getting gritty
What is grit?
According to Angela Duckworth who wrote in her book Grit, “Grit is a perseverance and passion for long term goals. She sees it as “sticking with your future, day in and day out, and not just for the week, not just for the month, but years.” The problem that a lot of people face is that they seek shortcuts to success. They want to work less while still achieving more. Unfortunately, that’s not how success works. Makes sense, right? So why is grit important?
You’ve likely heard the expression ‘nothing of value in life without cost’. How about this one? ‘Success is never a coincidence.’ They both speak to the same thing, the need for hard work to achieve results of value. We know this intuitively with our work in the gym, but how about in life? Research indicates that the ability to be gritty — to stick with things that are important to you and bounce back from failure — is an essential component of success.
How does this apply to coaching and training?
How does this apply to what I do?
We need to see in ourselves, and transfer this reality to our athletes, that you can have all the talent in the world, but you will never achieve your goals without effort. This is why grit is the foundation of success. Here’s the problem I see increasingly as a coach and pastor: our world is seemingly obsessed with highlighting accomplishments and less about effort. However, I think gritty people worry less about accomplishments because they feel most alive when they are working on something big or something challenging. Think about the last time you did something that pushed you to the edge of your abilities and outside your comfort zone.
Do you find yourself saying things like: “I don’t want to reach a point in my life where I don’t want to push anymore.”
How about this? “The relentless cycle of day-to-day challenges, they aren’t maddening to me. They don’t frustrate me. They inspire me.” That’s grit.
My hope is to help people be inspired by challenges, not defeated by them, to develop much-needed grit. That’s why I coach. That’s also why I’m a pastor. I want people to see challenges as the way to move forward, not as things to detour around or avoid.
Dan Campbell, the head coach of the NFL’s Detroit Lions recently said, “Grit means we will go a little longer, work a little harder, think a little deeper, and a little sharper. It makes us unbreakable.”
Push the rock
I think “pushing the rock” is attacking challenges and difficulties. Grit, then, is teaching ourselves to go a little longer, a little harder, and thinking a little smarter.
I want to encourage you to practice being gritty as a coach or trainer and teach this also to your athletes by choosing to push the rock as often as possible. The more you teach yourself to push the rock, the more unbreakable you will be. That transforms you, your athletes, and by default the world around you. Push!
