We’re about two weeks into the New Year; and if you’re like me, you may have already broken one of your resolutions and have considered giving up. Resist the urge to abandon ship.

I want to remind you that the ability to achieve your goals is all about having GRIT.

Trying to stick to and hold onto our ambitious New Year’s resolutions is a great way to cultivate our grit.

Grit is not formed in the calm and serene waters of Lake Placid. It is formed in the turbulent, rushing, white water of northern rivers--places where you feel it’s all you can do to stay above the water. At any moment, you are about to be swamped, so you are holding on for dear life. After you’ve tumbled your way down, and you’re back afloat, you may feel a little bruised and weary. But, much to your surprise, you are still whole.

In that moment, you know: You can do just about anything.

That's the secret of GRIT.

When pursing excellence or novel tasks, we can be deterred at the first experience of adversity. If we quit, we don’t give our grit a chance to develop and flex. Sometimes, we quit because we are used to things coming easily. Maybe it was easy for us to get A’s in school. Maybe we made our sports’ teams because we were the biggest kid in our small town, or maybe teachers loved us because, without exception, we followed the rules. It’s not uncommon for folks who have trouble achieving grit as young adults and professionals to have had unwavering adoration and have been naturally great at everything they tried at a young age. Then, all of sudden, things change, and we find ourselves in a novel environment where there are lots of high performers. When we are no longer top of the class, it can be embarrassing, if not downright shameful. “Woah! What do you mean? I’m not number one! What do you mean this submission isn’t perfect? Why am I receiving critical feedback?” We’re tempted to run away and pursue something else—something more familiar or something that doesn’t require us to bear down. This is the opposite of trying to build your grit.   

Stay the course.

Weathering the turbulent times is how we develop grit that leads to expanding our potential and becoming high performers.

Four Tips to Help You Build Grit:

Begin Again. If you have missed the goal, reset and begin again. Remember, failure is full of teachable moments. What are you here to learn? Reflect after failure. Analyze your behavior. Break the task down into small wins. If you’ve broken your New Year’s resolution to lose weight, ask yourself, ‘Where did I go wrong?’ At first you might focus on the time your wife bought a bag of gummies that you couldn’t resist. Instead, focus on: Did you last ten days before you fell off your goal? Celebrate the win of the 10 days, and begin again with the goal of 11. Just because we fell short, doesn’t mean we’re done for. It’s not enough to begin again without the reflection on the teachable moments. Make adjustments based on the lessons learned, so you can get a different outcome. You'll surpass your last try with a new strategy to avoid temptations.

Praise the process. Recognize that an ambitious goal has many, many steps to achieve. When we break an ambitious goal down into micro actions, we have an opportunity to achieve micro goals. Motivation persists because we can see progress and hold onto that buzz through the defeats. I’ve set a goal of trying to beat my squash pro. I’m woefully out of shape, and I think the scores have been 11-6, 11-4 . . . well, you get the idea. It’s all I can do to not have a heart attack on the court, but I can see myself making progress because I’ve set micro goals each game: 1) Let me put the ball in the corners for longer rallies. 2) I need to work on a high serve that he can’t return at least three times in a match. 3) I’ve got to get to the tee. It’s been two weeks, and I can already see and feel the difference; even though, the outcome hasn’t changed much, yet. Yet is the key word of gritty people.

You are the company you keep. Find the community that tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Sometimes when high achievers find themselves challenged with a change mandate or hearing critical feedback, it’s so new that they experience it as an attack and put up their defences. You might initially feel protected by blaming others or criticizing the goal that was set. Notice when this natural reaction is coming up for you, and resist being that voice in the room. Don’t ally yourself with the group that is defensive and attacking. This is the time to acknowledge that voice is fear. Shake your head. Repeat your affirmation, and move towards the folks in the room who are asking for help and encouraging others while also pushing you and making you a little uncomfortable. This is where the growth happens. No one expects you to get it right all of the time, especially when trying something novel.   

Fail early. We don’t have to be perfect; and in fact, we want to experience a little bit of failure along the way in things that aren’t that big of a deal, so we learn the necessary coping skills to recover. That way, when it really matters to us, we are able to pull ourselves through with confidence. This also means as a leader, we can’t be too quick to solve our people’s problems. Let them fail (with some safety rails around them), and provide your team with mentoring tools to be able to accurately self-assess and diagnose.

Grit is the skill that separates high performers from others—you have to want to be better, more than you want to be right or perfect.

If everything is always smooth and easy, you’re staying in your safe zone and not nearly approaching your potential. The next time you’re sitting in a project that’s not going your way, take a moment to ask yourself: ‘What are you here to learn?’ The year is still new, Folks. Don’t give up! Let 2024 be your chance to grow grit.