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Imate li Petlju : Moć Strasti i Istrajnosti
Ako ne možemo da budemo genijalni kao Ajnštajn, vredi li studirati fiziku? Ako ne možemo da budemo brzi kao Bolt, da li da uopšte probamo da trčimo? Ima li smisla da pokušavamo da sviramo klavir ako ne možemo da budemo virtuozni kao Mocart?
Svi se suočavamo sa ograničenjima – ne samo u talentu nego i u prilikama. Pokušavamo, ne uspevamo i zaključujemo da smo stigli do granice svojih mogućnosti ili menjamo pravac posle samo nekoliko koraka. U oba slučaja, ne stignemo onoliko daleko koliko smo mogli. Zaboravljamo da ono što postignemo u maratonu života u velikoj meri zavisi od naše petlje – od strasti i istrajnosti u ostvarivanju dugoročnih ciljeva.
Imati petlju znači koračati dalje. Imati petlju znači držati se cilja koji ima svrhu. Imati petlju znači ulagati, iz dana u dan i iz godine u godinu, u napornu vežbu. Imati petlju znači pasti sedam puta i ustati i osmi put.
Svi se suočavamo sa ograničenjima – ne samo u talentu nego i u prilikama. Pokušavamo, ne uspevamo i zaključujemo da smo stigli do granice svojih mogućnosti ili menjamo pravac posle samo nekoliko koraka. U oba slučaja, ne stignemo onoliko daleko koliko smo mogli. Zaboravljamo da ono što postignemo u maratonu života u velikoj meri zavisi od naše petlje – od strasti i istrajnosti u ostvarivanju dugoročnih ciljeva.
Imati petlju znači koračati dalje. Imati petlju znači držati se cilja koji ima svrhu. Imati petlju znači ulagati, iz dana u dan i iz godine u godinu, u napornu vežbu. Imati petlju znači pasti sedam puta i ustati i osmi put.
296 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2017
24 people are currently reading
505 people want to read
About the author
Angela Duckworth
33 books2,760 followersAngela Duckworth, PhD, is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. An expert in non-I.Q. competencies, she has advised the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs. Prior to her career in research, she taught children math and science and was the founder of a summer school for low-income children that won the Better Government Award from the state of Massachusetts. She completed her BA in neurobiology at Harvard, her MSc in neuroscience at Oxford, and her PhD in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. More recently, she founded Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help kids thrive. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance is her first book.
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June 18, 2019Recommended by my daughter's elementary school.
March 20, 2020
“Whether you think you can, or think you can’t – you are right.” ... Henry Ford
“Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.” ... John Wooden
“Each of us is the author of our own life story.” ... Angela Duckworth
A whole positive encouraging book with lots of researches and stories about self-management. The grit, that used to be labeled as a character, now the author of this book claims a skill can be obtained.
It is a “very easy to understand, but quite hard to practice” kind of book. Overall, it was a good and fast read for me, and as it got some helpful concepts and interesting revelations along the way, it finished it in a week without needing much “grit”! 😜
My note:
Don’t just focus on “talent”!
Talent is the sum of a person’s abilities. The ability helps us quickly climb the learning curve.
But what we eventually accomplish may depend more on our passion and perseverance than our innate talent.
By shining a spotlight on talent, we risk leaving everything else in the shadows. We send a message that other factors - attitude, character, drive and grit - don’t matter as much as they really do. The focus in talent distracts us from something that is at least as important, and that is effort. As much as talent counts, effort counts twice.
If we think of genius is something magical, we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking... It means “here there is no need to compete”. In other words, mythologizing nature talent lets us all off the hook. It lets us relax into the status quo. By equating talent and achievement, we remove effort from further consideration.
Without ever your talent is nothing more than you are I’ll meet potential without effort your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t.
It was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had “grit”.
What is “grit”?
Grit is a “never-give-up” attitude, “hang-in-there” posture to our challenges. Constantly driven to improve; never satisfied. A kind of ferocious determination, resilience and hardworking. Grit is about sticking with a goal for the long term.
To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other; to be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal; to be gritty is to invest, day after week after year, in challenging practice.
Gritty people say:
I won’t just have a job; I will have a calling.
I would challenge myself everyday.
When I get knocked down, I will get back up.
I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge.
I finish whatever I begin.
Why is “grit” possible and powerful?
Grit helps people stick to their commitments. They not only had determination, they had direction. It’s the chase, as much as the capture, that’s gratifying. Passion is enduring. In the long run, grit matters more than talent.
Greatness is doable greatness is many many individual seats and each of them is doable. A high level of performance is, in fact, an accretion of mundane acts.
Allow ourselves time for things. Take more pleasure in making the little secondary sings well, than in the effect of a dazzling whole.
How to think about “talent” and “grit”? (nature vs. nurture)
Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive.
80% of success in life is showing up (instead of dropping-out). Stay true to our commitments even when we are not comfortable. There are no shortcuts to excellence. Enthusiasm is common; endurance is rare.
Passion is how steadily you hold to goals over time, the sustained enduring devotion. It is a compass (the top level goal), that thing that takes you some time to build, tinker with, and finally get right, and that then guides you on your long and winding road to where, ultimately you want to be.
Grit is about holding the same top level goal for a very long time. A lack of grit can come from having less coherent goal structures. Giving up on lower level goes is not only forgivable, it’s sometimes absolutely necessary.
Can we grow “grit”?
Grit is more plastic than you think. But it has to grow inside out.
Grit grows as we figure out our life philosophy, learn to dust ourselves off after rejection and disappointment, and learn to tell the difference between low level goals that should be abandoned quickly and higher level goals that demand more tenacity.
4 things in grit growing:
1. interest (enjoying what you do);
2. practice (discipline of trying to do things better and better);
3. Purpose (the motivation to serve others);
4. hope (keep doing even when things are difficult and when we have doubts)
How to grow “interest”?
To grow an interest is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lots of development (much lengthier and increasingly proactive period; requires discipline and sacrifice) and then a lifetime of deepening.
During the early discovery and development period, breadth of experience helps, encouragement is crucial and a degree of autonomy is also important, so one can figure out what he/she enjoys and make a commitment.
How to “practice”?
Learn to enjoy working hard! Simply put more time on task as well as better quality time on task for continuous improvement. Gritty people typically stick with their commitments longer than others.
Grit is not looking backward with dissatisfaction. It is looking forward and wanting to grow. Feel trill of getting better. Make it a habit.
When practice, pick a specific aspect of your task that you want to improve. Set a stretching goal, strive to improve a specific weakness. Keep track in a systematic way. Then, with undivided attention and great affect, strive to reach the stretching goal. This is called “deliberate practice”.
Deliberate practice makes conscious incompetence into unconscious competence and makes a struggle before fluent and flawless now. Hours of effortful deliberate practice leads to moments of effortless flow. Deliberate practice is for preparation and flow is for performance.
How to cultivate “purposes”?
“Purpose” means the intention to contribute to the well-being of others. It is a final answer to the question “Why are you doing this?”.
Reflect on how the work you are already doing can make a positive contribution to society. Think about how, in small but meaningful ways, you can change your current work to enhance its contribution to your core value. Find inspiration in a purposeful role model. Discover a problem in the world that needs solving. It requires a revelation and conviction to say, “I personally can make a difference.” This intention sets the purpose and leads to actions.
What do we “hope” for?
Hope is an expectation that tomorrow will be better than today; that our own efforts can improve our future. The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again.
It isn’t suffering that leads to hopelessness; it’s the suffering that you think you can not control. Suffering without control reliably produces symptoms of clinical depression.
Optimists habitually search for temporary and specific causes of their suffering, whereas pessimist assume permanent and pervasive causes are to blame, so it seem logical to give up. It is those interpretation, rather than the objective events themselves, that can give rise to our feelings and our behaviors.
We can learn to observe our negative self-talk (give names to these inner fixed-minded characters) and change our maladaptive behaviors. Recognize that people get better at things. As with any other skill, we can practice interpreting what happens to us and responding as an optimist would. This is called “learned optimism”.
Learn to interpret failure as a cue to try harder, rather than as confirmation that they lacked the ability to succeed. Learn to practice optimistic self-talk. Have an attitude of “okay, What’s there to learn?” toward mistakes. This is called “growth mindset”. With a growth mindset, you believe you can learn to do better and what happens in life is largely under your control. There is always tomorrow. Growth mindset, learned optimism and grit go together.
How to grow kids’ grit?
Offer Loving support and demanding high standards.
Children are, by their nature, challenge seeking creatures whose innate desire for competence needs only our unconditional love and affection to reveal itself. Like a plant, if they are fed and watered in the right way, they will grow up beautiful and strong. It’s just a question of creating the right environment - a soil that is nurturing, that is listening and responsive to their needs. Children carry within them the seeds of their own future. Their own interests will emerge if we trust them.
Parents are children’s most admired and influential role models. Ask how much passion and perseverance you have for your own life goals. Then ask how likely it is that your approach to parenting encourages your child to emulate you.
At the right time and in the right way, encourage the kid to aim high and provide needed confidence and support. Care about them and get to know what’s going on, you can make an impact.
What about “extra curricular activities”?
Structured, skill-focused, and adult/guided activities are the playing fields of grit. These activities always have an adult in charge, who is not the parent. And the pursues are designed to cultivate interest and practice.
Arrange to let the kids spend at least some part of their week doing hard things that interest them. They need to be both challenged and having fun. Follow through the extracurricular activity, encourage them to accomplish and distinguish, and to commit to certain types of activities (rather than sporadic efforts in diverse areas).
Following through on the commitments require grit and at the same time builds it. All the energy, drive and commitment - all that grit - developed through the activities can almost always be transferred to something else in life. It develops character.
Live by the “hard thing rules”: you can pick your own “hard thing”; finish whatever you begin; and can’t quit on a bad day.
Conclusion?
Grit is our passion and perseverance for long-term goals. You can grow your grit from the inside out. You can cultivate your interests. You can develop a habit of daily challenge-exceeding-skill practice. You can connect your work to a purpose beyond yourself. And you can learn to hop when all seems lost,
You can also help other to have grit as parents, coaches, teachers, bosses, mentors or friends.
“Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.” ... John Wooden
“Each of us is the author of our own life story.” ... Angela Duckworth
A whole positive encouraging book with lots of researches and stories about self-management. The grit, that used to be labeled as a character, now the author of this book claims a skill can be obtained.
It is a “very easy to understand, but quite hard to practice” kind of book. Overall, it was a good and fast read for me, and as it got some helpful concepts and interesting revelations along the way, it finished it in a week without needing much “grit”! 😜
My note:
Don’t just focus on “talent”!
Talent is the sum of a person’s abilities. The ability helps us quickly climb the learning curve.
But what we eventually accomplish may depend more on our passion and perseverance than our innate talent.
By shining a spotlight on talent, we risk leaving everything else in the shadows. We send a message that other factors - attitude, character, drive and grit - don’t matter as much as they really do. The focus in talent distracts us from something that is at least as important, and that is effort. As much as talent counts, effort counts twice.
If we think of genius is something magical, we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking... It means “here there is no need to compete”. In other words, mythologizing nature talent lets us all off the hook. It lets us relax into the status quo. By equating talent and achievement, we remove effort from further consideration.
Without ever your talent is nothing more than you are I’ll meet potential without effort your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t.
It was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had “grit”.
What is “grit”?
Grit is a “never-give-up” attitude, “hang-in-there” posture to our challenges. Constantly driven to improve; never satisfied. A kind of ferocious determination, resilience and hardworking. Grit is about sticking with a goal for the long term.
To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other; to be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal; to be gritty is to invest, day after week after year, in challenging practice.
Gritty people say:
I won’t just have a job; I will have a calling.
I would challenge myself everyday.
When I get knocked down, I will get back up.
I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge.
I finish whatever I begin.
Why is “grit” possible and powerful?
Grit helps people stick to their commitments. They not only had determination, they had direction. It’s the chase, as much as the capture, that’s gratifying. Passion is enduring. In the long run, grit matters more than talent.
Greatness is doable greatness is many many individual seats and each of them is doable. A high level of performance is, in fact, an accretion of mundane acts.
Allow ourselves time for things. Take more pleasure in making the little secondary sings well, than in the effect of a dazzling whole.
How to think about “talent” and “grit”? (nature vs. nurture)
Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive.
80% of success in life is showing up (instead of dropping-out). Stay true to our commitments even when we are not comfortable. There are no shortcuts to excellence. Enthusiasm is common; endurance is rare.
Passion is how steadily you hold to goals over time, the sustained enduring devotion. It is a compass (the top level goal), that thing that takes you some time to build, tinker with, and finally get right, and that then guides you on your long and winding road to where, ultimately you want to be.
Grit is about holding the same top level goal for a very long time. A lack of grit can come from having less coherent goal structures. Giving up on lower level goes is not only forgivable, it’s sometimes absolutely necessary.
Can we grow “grit”?
Grit is more plastic than you think. But it has to grow inside out.
Grit grows as we figure out our life philosophy, learn to dust ourselves off after rejection and disappointment, and learn to tell the difference between low level goals that should be abandoned quickly and higher level goals that demand more tenacity.
4 things in grit growing:
1. interest (enjoying what you do);
2. practice (discipline of trying to do things better and better);
3. Purpose (the motivation to serve others);
4. hope (keep doing even when things are difficult and when we have doubts)
How to grow “interest”?
To grow an interest is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lots of development (much lengthier and increasingly proactive period; requires discipline and sacrifice) and then a lifetime of deepening.
During the early discovery and development period, breadth of experience helps, encouragement is crucial and a degree of autonomy is also important, so one can figure out what he/she enjoys and make a commitment.
How to “practice”?
Learn to enjoy working hard! Simply put more time on task as well as better quality time on task for continuous improvement. Gritty people typically stick with their commitments longer than others.
Grit is not looking backward with dissatisfaction. It is looking forward and wanting to grow. Feel trill of getting better. Make it a habit.
When practice, pick a specific aspect of your task that you want to improve. Set a stretching goal, strive to improve a specific weakness. Keep track in a systematic way. Then, with undivided attention and great affect, strive to reach the stretching goal. This is called “deliberate practice”.
Deliberate practice makes conscious incompetence into unconscious competence and makes a struggle before fluent and flawless now. Hours of effortful deliberate practice leads to moments of effortless flow. Deliberate practice is for preparation and flow is for performance.
How to cultivate “purposes”?
“Purpose” means the intention to contribute to the well-being of others. It is a final answer to the question “Why are you doing this?”.
Reflect on how the work you are already doing can make a positive contribution to society. Think about how, in small but meaningful ways, you can change your current work to enhance its contribution to your core value. Find inspiration in a purposeful role model. Discover a problem in the world that needs solving. It requires a revelation and conviction to say, “I personally can make a difference.” This intention sets the purpose and leads to actions.
What do we “hope” for?
Hope is an expectation that tomorrow will be better than today; that our own efforts can improve our future. The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again.
It isn’t suffering that leads to hopelessness; it’s the suffering that you think you can not control. Suffering without control reliably produces symptoms of clinical depression.
Optimists habitually search for temporary and specific causes of their suffering, whereas pessimist assume permanent and pervasive causes are to blame, so it seem logical to give up. It is those interpretation, rather than the objective events themselves, that can give rise to our feelings and our behaviors.
We can learn to observe our negative self-talk (give names to these inner fixed-minded characters) and change our maladaptive behaviors. Recognize that people get better at things. As with any other skill, we can practice interpreting what happens to us and responding as an optimist would. This is called “learned optimism”.
Learn to interpret failure as a cue to try harder, rather than as confirmation that they lacked the ability to succeed. Learn to practice optimistic self-talk. Have an attitude of “okay, What’s there to learn?” toward mistakes. This is called “growth mindset”. With a growth mindset, you believe you can learn to do better and what happens in life is largely under your control. There is always tomorrow. Growth mindset, learned optimism and grit go together.
How to grow kids’ grit?
Offer Loving support and demanding high standards.
Children are, by their nature, challenge seeking creatures whose innate desire for competence needs only our unconditional love and affection to reveal itself. Like a plant, if they are fed and watered in the right way, they will grow up beautiful and strong. It’s just a question of creating the right environment - a soil that is nurturing, that is listening and responsive to their needs. Children carry within them the seeds of their own future. Their own interests will emerge if we trust them.
Parents are children’s most admired and influential role models. Ask how much passion and perseverance you have for your own life goals. Then ask how likely it is that your approach to parenting encourages your child to emulate you.
At the right time and in the right way, encourage the kid to aim high and provide needed confidence and support. Care about them and get to know what’s going on, you can make an impact.
What about “extra curricular activities”?
Structured, skill-focused, and adult/guided activities are the playing fields of grit. These activities always have an adult in charge, who is not the parent. And the pursues are designed to cultivate interest and practice.
Arrange to let the kids spend at least some part of their week doing hard things that interest them. They need to be both challenged and having fun. Follow through the extracurricular activity, encourage them to accomplish and distinguish, and to commit to certain types of activities (rather than sporadic efforts in diverse areas).
Following through on the commitments require grit and at the same time builds it. All the energy, drive and commitment - all that grit - developed through the activities can almost always be transferred to something else in life. It develops character.
Live by the “hard thing rules”: you can pick your own “hard thing”; finish whatever you begin; and can’t quit on a bad day.
Conclusion?
Grit is our passion and perseverance for long-term goals. You can grow your grit from the inside out. You can cultivate your interests. You can develop a habit of daily challenge-exceeding-skill practice. You can connect your work to a purpose beyond yourself. And you can learn to hop when all seems lost,
You can also help other to have grit as parents, coaches, teachers, bosses, mentors or friends.
January 31, 2021
Avoir la niaque revient à continuer envers et contre tout de mettre un pied devant l'autre. Cela implique de s'en tenir à un objectif utile aux autres et important pour soi et de se démener pour se surpasser par la pratique réflexive. C'est tomber sept fois, et se relever huit. (page 349)
April 4, 2020
Very motivating book. Clearly states a plan to help one focus and achieve what you want to achieve!
October 9, 2020
одлична, психологија личности...
October 2, 2023
Very helpful book not only for young people but also for adults who are seeking a better understanding of their own life and career.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews