Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #230| How Grit Beats Talent for Lasting Success
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: Your potential for success doesn't have as much to do with talent as we might have thought.
- 0:08Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:16Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:21Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences.
- 0:26Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
- 0:33Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend.
- 0:36Michelle Gauthier: Today we are going to be talking about the book Grit by Angela Duckworth.
- 0:42Michelle Gauthier: This made the list of my top 10 favorite self-help books ever.
- 0:45Michelle Gauthier: And I'm going to share the key takeaways so that you can decide if you want to read the whole book or if you just want to take these little takeaways, these little nuggets from today and apply them to your life.
- 0:55Michelle Gauthier: When you listen today, you'll learn what grit really is and why it matters, why effort over time beats intensity.
- 1:03Michelle Gauthier: And this is what I think was the most hopeful part of the book is that grit can be built.
- 1:08Michelle Gauthier: So it's not something that you just come with.
- 1:10Michelle Gauthier: You can also build your grit and how passion kind of ties into this whole equation.
- 1:16Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so let's talk about what grit is and why it matters.
- 1:20Michelle Gauthier: I thought this was such an interesting study that Angela Duckworth did.
- 1:23Michelle Gauthier: So over time, back from the 50s and probably still today, there have been many psychologists who have studied at West Point, the cadets who are able to get into West Point, which is a very small group of people.
- 1:35Michelle Gauthier: It starts off being thousands and it ends up being 1,200 people who get in.
- 1:39Michelle Gauthier: In order to get in, you have to have an amazing GPA, you have to be super physically fit, you have to have a recommendation from someone in Congress, not just good at athletics, but the captain of the team.
- 1:49Michelle Gauthier: You have to have leadership opportunities, you have to have all these amazing things in order to get in.
- 1:52Michelle Gauthier: So they narrow it down to these 1,200 cadets who end up getting in.
- 1:56Michelle Gauthier: They come for the first summer and they have a seven-week thing called the beast, where they go through all of this training, physical, mental, how to be a soldier, etc.
- 2:05Michelle Gauthier: And about one in five of the people of those 1,200 ends up dropping out.
- 2:10Michelle Gauthier: So it's interesting if you think how much it takes to get into that group of 1200 that one in five would end up dropping out.
- 2:17Michelle Gauthier: That was the question that she wanted to study.
- 2:20Michelle Gauthier: And what she found was that the predictor of who was going to drop out was not smarts or talent or athletic prowess or physical fitness.
- 2:31Michelle Gauthier: It was grit.
- 2:32Michelle Gauthier: The people who had the most grit were the people who stayed.
- 2:35Michelle Gauthier: And she's found that grit is a predictor of who wins the national spelling B, how professional athletes perform, which authors are more successful, which salespeople in average jobs end up sticking with it and being successful or quitting.
- 2:50Michelle Gauthier: But what really is grit?
- 2:52Michelle Gauthier: The thing I love is that the author does agree that talent can give you a leg up.
- 2:56Michelle Gauthier: So if you're just naturally good at something, if you're just a natural athlete or naturally great at spelling or sales or whatever it is, that does give you a leg up.
- 3:05Michelle Gauthier: But the amount of effort that you put towards that gives you your skill in that area.
- 3:11Michelle Gauthier: And she gives many examples of professional athletes who weren't the best basketball player on their team, or when she was previously a teacher, students who didn't score as well on the aptitude test but did great in her class because they put in a ton of effort.
- 3:27Michelle Gauthier: So if you take the skill that you get from practicing the thing for which you have or don't have natural talent, over time, if you continue to put effort towards that, you get achievement.
- 3:37Michelle Gauthier: The way she says it is that effort counts twice.
- 3:40Michelle Gauthier: You take your natural talent and you times that by the effort that you put into it, and that gives you your skill.
- 3:45Michelle Gauthier: And then you take the skill and you put more effort into that skill and that gives you the level of achievement.
- 3:51Michelle Gauthier: What I love is that effort really counts twice as much as natural talent.
- 3:56Michelle Gauthier: Something that we talk about a lot on this podcast is effort and the amount of effort and time we put into things.
- 4:02Michelle Gauthier: And you might be thinking, oh great, she's saying, I just need to try harder, put more effort into things.
- 4:07Michelle Gauthier: No, that is not what I'm saying.
- 4:09Michelle Gauthier: What I am saying and what she says is that effort over time beats intensity.
- 4:14Michelle Gauthier: So steady effort over time, where you are deliberately practicing something, focusing and getting feedback on your weaknesses in that area and showing up even when you don't feel like it is where the real growth happens.
- 4:29Michelle Gauthier: Let's think about this in terms of trying to improve your achievement in the area of time management or people pleasing.
- 4:36Michelle Gauthier: If you think about the effort that you put towards that, it might look like deliberately planning your week, practicing that and seeing where your weaknesses are.
- 4:46Michelle Gauthier: So you've planned it.
- 4:47Michelle Gauthier: How do you do?
- 4:48Michelle Gauthier: Where did you do well?
- 4:48Michelle Gauthier: Where did you not do well?
- 4:50Michelle Gauthier: And then focusing on those areas where you didn't do well and trying to improve that.
- 4:54Michelle Gauthier: Maybe you really nailed the time management in your free time and your family time, but you didn't do as well at work.
- 5:00Michelle Gauthier: So you continue to work on that.
- 5:02Michelle Gauthier: And then continuing to do that, even when you don't feel like it, not because we're just putting effort towards anything, but because you really want to change your skills in this area.
- 5:12Michelle Gauthier: Maybe you don't feel like planning your week or you don't feel like telling someone no so that your calendar can be clear, but you do it.
- 5:19Michelle Gauthier: That is what we're talking about.
- 5:20Michelle Gauthier: Putting effort towards the things that you really care about where you want to improve your skills is grit.
- 5:27Michelle Gauthier: Something else that I love about the book, and my third and final point that I want to share with you about the book is that grit can be built.
- 5:33Michelle Gauthier: Maybe you have a natural talent for spelling or math or athleticism or whatever it is.
- 5:38Michelle Gauthier: Her point is that maybe life has given you the opportunity to be gritty and you're already good at being gritty.
- 5:43Michelle Gauthier: But if you're not, or if your kids aren't, there is always an opportunity to build grit.
- 5:49Michelle Gauthier: And the way that we build grit is by practicing things that are hard for us and learning to tolerate the discomfort.
- 5:55Michelle Gauthier: Back to my example of people pleasing.
- 5:58Michelle Gauthier: When I teach my one-on-one clients how to stop people pleasing, one of the very first things that I tell them is this will feel uncomfortable.
- 6:05Michelle Gauthier: You're not gonna die, nobody's gonna die, but this is going to feel uncomfortable.
- 6:09Michelle Gauthier: If you want to build your grit for saying no to people and becoming a person who does not people please, you have to practice it.
- 6:18Michelle Gauthier: You have to do it, you have to say no and not people please.
- 6:21Michelle Gauthier: And then you have to understand and tolerate the discomfort that comes with that.
- 6:25Michelle Gauthier: And eventually over time, it gets better and it's not very hard and it doesn't feel very uncomfortable.
- 6:29Michelle Gauthier: But to have the grit to stick with that is what it really takes to make that kind of change.
- 6:34Michelle Gauthier: So I love this book.
- 6:36Michelle Gauthier: I think my personal key takeaways from it, and the reason why I loved it so much is number one, after reading this book, I just felt so hopeful that if you choose an area that you're passionate about, and that's another big thing she talks about in the book, because you don't want to put effort and practice towards everything.
- 6:52Michelle Gauthier: You want to choose the things that you're passionate about where you can have sustained effort over time.
- 6:58Michelle Gauthier: But it made me very hopeful that if there's something that you want to accomplish, that if you apply grit to it, there's really nothing that you can't do.
- 7:05Michelle Gauthier: My other key takeaway was I really want my kids to be gritty.
- 7:08Michelle Gauthier: If I could give them one trait, grit would be it.
- 7:12Michelle Gauthier: But in order for them to have that, they have to go through some hard things and they have to have effort over time in order to overcome that thing, which as a parent feels very uncomfortable.
- 7:21Michelle Gauthier: I think it's human nature as a parent to want your children to not suffer, like to not have a hard time at school or to not have a hard time with friendships or athletics or whatever it is that they want to do.
- 7:31Michelle Gauthier: But it really made me see how sometimes challenges that we have from not having that natural talent in that area gives us an opportunity to build grit that can be helpful for the rest of our lives.
- 7:42Michelle Gauthier: I think a great takeaway for anybody who's listening today is to think of a place in your life where you have really applied a lot of grit and a place where maybe you want to apply more.
- 7:51Michelle Gauthier: And maybe you think about buying this book, or maybe you just start thinking about how you can start taking sustained effort over time, sitting through the discomfort of making those changes, trying to improve in the areas where you have weaknesses, and then eventually becoming successful in that area.
- 8:07Michelle Gauthier: That's it for today.
- 8:08Michelle Gauthier: Tell you what, it took me a lot of grit to get through this podcast because this book is so good and it's very hard to give a short review.
- 8:15Michelle Gauthier: So I'll pat myself on the back for that one.
- 8:17Michelle Gauthier: Okay, have a great week.
- 8:19Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 8:26Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com.
- 8:32Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.