Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

by Lulu Miller

She wanted to figure out what it was that the achievers had. A few years later, she unearthed a trait she named “grit” that seemed to be the magic ingredient. Grit. A catchier word for persistence. Grit. The robotic plunging at “extremely long-term objectives” without “positive feedback.” Grit. The ability to bang one’s head repeatedly against a wall. She’d seen it in West Point cadets and CEOs and people at the top of their game in every profession. Musicians. Athletes. Chefs. Forget talent, creativity, kindness, IQ. Pure grit seemed to be the thing that would get you ahead. And what cognitive glitch helps you achieve grit? Positive illusions. Other studies showed that if you had positive illusions, you were less likely to experience discouragement after setbacks. And while grit is a cocktail of many traits, one of its most important ones is just that: an ability to keep going after setbacks, to keep going in the face of no evidence that what you are striving for will ever work, or, as Duckworth puts it, “maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.”

Disability