Personal Narrative: Team Failure

Angela Lee Duckworth defines grit as “passion and perseverance to pursue long term goals” (Duckworth and Winkler, True Grit). Grit is putting your mind towards a goal and not to give up, no matter what obstacle that stands in front of you. By becoming a gritty individual, a person gains courage within their self. Having courage, people manage fear of failure and being true within oneself to aim for things they would have never thought they could achieve. Grit is to aspire and succeed in ones future goals in college. Grit is to help maintain effort and interest over time, also to stay committed in spite of adversity. In Duckworth’s studies she showed how gritty people are more likely to become successful than talented people. In a study conducted

Grit, what is this? Is it success, is it failure, or is it talent? As Angela Duckworth said “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day-in and day-out. Not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years. And working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.” Grit is a combination of strength, persistence, focus, and dedication that helps a person to maintain the optimism and discipline needed to persevere in their goals even if they are head to head with failure. Grit does not depend on talent, IQ, or success. Grit is the ability to fail and learn from your mistake, in order to come back next

Duckworth proposes that there are two ways of developing grit: from the inside-out (alone) and from the outside-in (with help). For developing grit from the inside-out, she addresses the subjects of interest, practice, purpose, and hope (91-2). For interest, she stresses that passion isn’t developed quickly, but over a long period of time through the processes of discovery, development, and a lifetime of deepening (102-4, 153). For practice, she emphasizes the importance of consistent deliberate practice, emphasizing quality of time spent practicing over quantity of time, which includes setting “stretch goals” slightly beyond current abilities (118, 121-3, 126). For purpose, Duckworth again defines and stresses the importance of purposeful top-level goals (143-4, 147-8, 160). She defines hope as a combination of relentless perseverance and optimism -- always continuing after failure and believing in oneself (169, 173, 175, 178, 180, 193-5). For developing grit from the outside-in, she stresses the importance of parenting, extracurriculars and culture. For parenting, she notes that all grit paragons have someone in their lives who challenged them to achieve beyond their limits while providing support (212, 220). For extracurriculars, she noted a direct relationship between perseverance in an activity and grittiness later in life, arguing that these activities both require and build grit (223-6, 228-241). For culture, she noted that people conform culture, so joining a gritty culture makes it easy to develop grit (244, 247, 263). The concept of culture in Grit connects to the concepts of social capital, and the multiplier effect because the relationships made between individuals within a gritty culture can mutually spur development of grit. The perseverance and hard work required by daily deliberate practice connects to the long, arduous hours worked by managers every day. Deliberate

As much as I wished to live through uninterrupted success, I’ve come to accept with a much more open mind that the best way to face challenges is to do so with

I believe that of these three characteristics that I am strongest in the category of having grit. I have already defined what I believe grit to be and I think that sometimes it can be substituted for ones will to succeed. Grit has been a characteristic I have used to describe myself almost all of my life. I embrace grit because it is not a God given characteristic, and not everyone has it. I usually apply grit into my life once I set a goal for myself, I know that I set a goal for a reason and that I need to do everything in my power to achieve it and not let myself down. Grit has been portrayed in my life for instance my freshman year of high school. I played for my freshman football and the practice before our second game, I got tackled and broke my left collarbone. I had never broken a bone in my body up to that point in my life so I was not exactly sure how it felt to experience such a thing. I tried to finish practice the best I could incase the injury was not that serious so I could play in our game the next day. Once, I had found out that I officially broke my collarbone I still showed up to practice and lifting sessions every day to be with my team. I was told I would be out the remainder of the season but ten short weeks later due to my grit and determination, I was practicing with our varsity team preparing for

Today, I eat lunch with friends, I find comfort in my clubs, and sometimes, I fail. When I lived in Florida, I never had to cope with failure, as everything came to me easily. What I know now is that failure is an unavoidable aspect of life, and I know I’ll encounter it wherever I end up. When I moved up the East Coast, I learned how to face failure head on and accept that there are days when I can’t be perfect. But I am now able to learn from my failures and keep them in mind when moving

Now, true grit is something you don’t see everyday. I actually happen to know someone very well who has shown grit recently… The person I know better than anyone I’ve ever met… Myself! Actually, I showed grit at the latest soccer game, on the eve of August 27. We had a soccer game the day earlier that closely followed a 7:02 mile. Not to mention Band, which has given me, probably the weakest member of it, the heaviest drums. And if that wasn’t enough, Endurance tests was our entire P.E.. So, by the end of the day, you would suppose that my legs would be killing me… and they were! I felt as though I pulled something, which I probably did. My legs did carry me as I followed the ball across the field, although I felt like a burning spike was

Now, true grit is something you don’t see everyday. I actually happen to know someone very well who has shown grit recently… The person I know better than anyone I’ve ever met… Myself! Actually, I showed grit at the latest soccer game, on the eve of August 27. We had a soccer game the day earlier that closely followed a 7:02 mile. Not to mention Band, which has given me, probably the weakest member of band, the heaviest drums. And if that wasn’t enough, Endurance tests were our entire P.E.. So, by the end of the day, you would suppose that my legs would be killing me… and they were! I felt as though I pulled something, which I probably did. My legs did carry me as I followed the ball across the field, although I felt like a burning spike

My sophomore year of highschool I was not very good at baseball. Honestly, the team as a whole was not very good. We were a young and immature team; we did not have very much success throughout the year. We actually had a losing record that year at sixteen and twenty-four, and that is embarrassing if you ask me. The entire season was honestly a disappointment because we knew that we were much better than that, and the next year we would prove that theory true. The next year the team made a complete 180 degree turn. Although, at the beginning of the season we started with three straight losses; The season turned for the better quickly.

Now, true grit is something you don’t see everyday. I actually happen to know someone quite well who has shown grit recently… Myself! Actually, I showed grit at the latest soccer game, on the eve of August 27. The previous soccer game that quickly followed my mile run was tiring enough.. And Band, don’t even get me started on band! They gave me, the shrimp of the band, the Quads... the large 35 pound mess of drums. And if that wasn’t enough, our recent workouts in PE were all difficult and lasting! So, by the end of the day, my knees felt weak. Literally and figuratively! Then the whistle blew, signalling the start of the soccer game. Oh, I dreaded it. I ran as fast as the stilts I call my legs could carry me. My legs did carry me as I

My life success, is dependent upon using grit, which requires perseverance, passion, and not giving up. First, I use perseverance to be successful in sports. Firstly, in my weights class, perseverance was a valuable trait. For example, I doubled my max for the bench press. When I first began

Have you ever set a long-term goal and were so determined to meet that goal no matter what happened? Angela Duckworth states, “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in and day out. Not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years and working really hard to make that future a reality”. Sticking with a long-term goal, when you seem to have hit every bump in the road possible means that you contain grit. In class, we discussed how talent is inversely related to grit. Angela Duckworth did a study and made high school students take her grit test. In this test, she realized that the more grit that the student possessed, the higher chance that student would graduate.

It was four months ago that I first interviewed for and received an internship with the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. At the time, I had not had any office experience and had no idea what was in store for me. I learned everything that people could possibly learn in the first few weeks at their first job and probably even more. My experience as a legislative intern showed me many things that I will carry into my future internships and jobs. I learned to work on assignments according to the organization’s needs, to balance and prioritize certain assignments, to manage office relationships, to ask questions about aspects that may confuse me, and to actively listen. Ms. Danica Key, GLBC Executive Director, stressed to me, four

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives many different definitions defining the word “grit”. A definition that caught my attention was “unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger” .It gave me a personal reference as to reaching a goal, you have to be faced with challenges that you’ll need to conquer with grit being included. In Angela Lee Duckworth’s TED Talk, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” she claims that having students being pushed to the max is the only way to see the full extent of grit, and I agree with Duckworth. I was able to demonstrate grit on becoming a better basketball play after not making the team my sophomore year of high school. Ever since I was disappointed in my results of not making the team, I had told myself this wasn’t going to mean I was done playing basketball .I gave myself perseverance in knowing I could make it next year with motivation.

Grit: “Perseverance and passion for long-term goals” (p. 207). What have you done to infuse perseverance in your people? What will you do in the future?