Motivation & Grit

What is grit?

Our society causes us to believe that talent leads to great performances. We tend to marvel at the natural talent of others and overlook the importance of effort. Surveys show that people commend effort, but don’t actually believe it can compete with natural talent. So what does that mean for you as a student? In the first reading of this College 101 guide, you learned about having a growth mindset about your abilities, obstacles and experience can contribute positively to your success. But what about persevering? How do you keep on going when things get tough?  Getting a college degree is more like a marathon, and not a sprint.  Developing your "grit" can help.

How to grow your grit?[1]

What research has concluded about grit, is that it is the best predictor of success that researchers have found so far. It helps students do better in school, get higher grades, graduate, succeed at work and stay in marriages.[2]

Despite what your long-term goals may be, you will most definitely need grit to get there. And the good news is that you can actually grow your grit.

5 Top Strategies: 

1. Pursue Your Interests - If you are attempting to pursue something that doesn't fascinate, intrigue or at least interest you, it will become very difficult to stick to it. Angela Duckworth says that it is more efficient to get out here and try different things until you find something that you are passionate about.

2. Practice, Practice, Practice - Hard work, and effort lead to competence, being good at something peaks our interests and therefore provides motivation for continuing to build that skill. This "cycle" of practice, getting better, and persisting is what builds your grit.

3. Connect to a Higher Purpose - Having strong interests in something isn't enough. Being able to connect what you do (and want to do) with a higher purpose tend to be grittier. Taking a step back and understanding how what you do contributes to the greater good or the well-being of others will not increase your grit, but make the task more fulfilling.

4. Cultivate Hope - Part of reaching your goals is first believing that your goals are actually possible. It may seem like a no-brainer, but really dig deep and reflect on whether or now you think you are actually capable of fulfilling this goal. Truly knowing, understanding and believing that your brain is malleable and can be reshaped by effort and experience, thus leaving your capabilities endless is a critical step. If upon reflection, you realize you have a lot of self-doubt about reaching your goals, I'd encourage you to drill down and try and figure out where that is coming from. Is it a self-talk issue? Do you hear a fixed-mindset voice? Or is there something deeper going on. If so, it is really important that you reach out to your instructors, advisor or personal counselor for assistance.

5. Surround Yourself with Gritty People - Your social network is very important.  But it's not quantity, but quality that is important. People you surround yourself with have a huge influence on your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. When you spend a significant amount of time with groups of people, you will develop similar mannerisms, actions and ways of doing things. Eventually, these become the norms of the groups and lead to strong habits. So one important way to build grit is to surround yourself with positive peer pressure.

How can our negative bias impact our motivation to learn? What can you do?

Negative bias was first introduced in 1.1 Character Strengths. it is the psychological trait of focusing on the negative aspects of a situation rather than the positive. An example of this in a learning environment would be earning a 95 percent score on an assignment but obsessing over the 5 percent of the points that were missed. Another example would be worrying and thinking negative thoughts about yourself over a handful of courses where you did not do as well as in others—so much so that you begin to doubt your abilities altogether.

Unfortunately, this is a human tendency that can often overwhelm a student. As a pure survival mechanism it does have its usefulness in that it reminds us to be wary of behaviors that can result in undesirable outcomes. Imagine that as a child playing outside, you have seen dozens if not hundreds of bees over the years. But once, out of all those other times, you were stung by a single bee. Now, every time you see a bee you recall the sting, and you now have a negative bias toward bees in general. Whenever possible you avoid bees altogether.

It is easy to see how this psychological system could be beneficial in those types of situations, but it can be a hindrance in learning since a large part of the learning process often involves failure on early attempts. Recognizing this is a key to overcoming negative bias. Another way to combat negative bias is to purposefully focus on successes and to acknowledge earlier attempts that fail as just a part of the learning.

What follows are a few methods for overcoming negative bias and negative self-talk. Each focuses on being aware of any negative attitude or emphasizing the positive aspects in a situation.

• Be aware of any negative bias. Keep an eye out for any time you find yourself focusing on some negative aspect, whether toward your own abilities or on some specific situation. Whenever you recognize that you are exhibiting a negative bias toward something, stop and look for the positive parts of the experience. Think back to what you have learned about grit, how any lack of success is only temporary, and what you have learned that gets you closer to your goal.

• Focus on the positive before you begin. While reversing the impact of negative bias on your learning is helpful, it can be even more useful to prevent it in the first place. One way to do this is to look for the positives before you begin a task. An example of this would be receiving early feedback for an assignment you are working on. To accomplish this, you can often ask your instructor or one of your classmates to look over your work and provide some informal comments. If the feedback is positive then you know you are on the right track. That is useful information. If the feedback seems to indicate that you need to make a number of corrections and adjustments, then that is even more valuable information, and you can use it to greatly improve the assignment for a much better final grade. In either case, accurate feedback is what you really want most, and both outcomes are positive for you.

• Keep a gratitude and accomplishment journal. Again, the tendency to recall and overemphasize the negative instances while ignoring or forgetting about the positive outcomes is the nature of negative bias. Sometimes we need a little help remembering the positives, and we can prompt our memories by keeping a journal. Just as in a diary, the idea is to keep a flowing record of the positive things that happen, the lessons you learned from instances that were “less than successful,” and all accomplishments you make toward learning. In your journal you can write or paste anything that you appreciated or that has positive outcomes. Whenever you are not feeling up to a challenge or when negative bias is starting to wear on you, you can look over your journal to remind yourself of previous accomplishments in the face of adversity.