The Importance of Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance for Personal and Professional Growth!

Good Morning Ladies & Gents! Welcome Back To The Official HOME of the BLACK SHEEP! We hope that all of you are safe and well! I know things are kind of crazy right now with the virus-not-to-be-named and some of you may be feeling like the world sits on your shoulders, but I wanted to assure you that you are not alone. Your fellow Black Sheep are here to help. Now, with that I wanted to continue on our last post of 8 Habits of Succesful People with something synonyms to these habits. So, today, we bring you The Importance of Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance for Personal and Professional Growth!

Vision, creativity, passion, and hustle are among the many words you hear leaders and successful people use when speaking of qualities that have helped them achieve success. However, there are certain equally important traits that you don’t hear enough. These include grit, tenacity, and perseverance. Having these qualities is in fact an important key to success. This article looks at these specific qualities that are essential to an individual’s personal and professional growth.

What is Grit Exactly?

Grit is basically the perseverance and passion for long-term goals. It is the ability to persevere in something that you feel passionate about and persist when faced with obstacles. A person with qualities like grit, tenacity, and perseverance is the one that can stay committed to the task even if it may be boring or difficult and even after experiencing failure, perseverance allows such a person to stick with the objective.

One thing you should keep in mind is that grit is not something like short bursts of intense energy. For example, it is not grit if you are able to finish a project over the weekend. Even if you worked for hours and hours and the end result was amazing, it is not the same as grit. Grit strives to delay gratification until you have achieved your goals. It is a focus, mindset on consistent effort in the long-run perfecting your craft. It is the willingness to embrace the challenges and the grind to achieve your ultimate goals.

Why Are Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance Important?

These qualities are important because they are the drivers of success and achievement, independent of and beyond what intelligence and talent contribute. Being naturally talented and smart is great, but to truly thrive and do well, you need grit, tenacity, and perseverance. Without them, talent may be nothing more than just a hollow potential. It is with these qualities that talent transforms into a skill that forges a path to success.

When it comes to developing these traits, there are two primary benefits that come to mind. The first thing that stands out is that these qualities prepare and condition you for long-term success. The second natural benefit is that these traits help overcome talent deficiencies.

How to Develop and Embrace Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance?

Here are five tips that will help you develop and embrace grit, tenacity, and perseverance:

Develop Focus and Perseverance

As mentioned before, grit is the perseverance and passion for long-term goals. It is about working with something and staying committed till the end. Often one of the biggest obstacles to success is lack of constant multitasking and focus. Finding grit as a professional not only requires effort, but also commitment and focus to make progress toward your desired goals no matter the obstacles.

Embrace Your Time in the Trenches

Spending time learning and working ‘in the trenches’ is one of the defining characteristics of people with grit. To succeed as an entrepreneur, you not only have to lead by example, but also inspire others. By managing challenges directly with your clients or customers and spending time executing alongside your team, you can build strength and resilience to tackle any difficulties.

Learn from Your Mistakes

Instead of seeking comfort when they fail, leaders and successful people who have grit find ways to learn from their mistakes so that they can avoid them in the future. People with such qualities use failure as a stepping stone and opportunity to stretch further. So, believe in yourself and your ideas. You have to know what you are striving for and that staying committed to it will ultimately produce the results you want.

Identify and Avoid a Fear-Based Culture

Nothing kills chutzpah (cojones, confidence, drive….etc) and grit faster than letting the fear of failure impact and define your culture. People with fear-based culture are unable to learn from their mistakes. They admit that they have failed and they are unwilling to take risks. To achieve success, you need to develop grit, tenacity, and perseverance by recognizing when you are operating from a place of fear and then overcoming it. Push yourself and know that you believe in your idea. Learn from your mistakes and improve, and you will build momentum and confidence to meet your goals.

Don’t Believe Me

In 2007, the University of Pennsylvania,from the Department of Psychology, researched US Military Academy Cadets and Ivy League Students and found that the non-cognitive trait: grit, was one of the common predictors of success beyond IQ. Along with the 2018 study from the School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan, found that of the 130 students in the graduating class, those who performed and tested higher for the trait of grit were not only top performers, but overall did well in many activities.

In Conclusion, The Importance of Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance for Personal and Professional Growth!

Your grit or your ability to focus your passion and perseverance for long-term goals might be a better predictor of your future success than your talent or intelligence. And while you cannot develop these qualities naturally, you can develop them through deliberate practice and learning from failure. In times like these were success and failures are so easily and subjectively measured, lets take a step back and realize that all Black Sheep have their own path, their own rate of growth, and their own personal development journey, but what we can all take from this is the importance of persevering, the importance of grit! We hope you enjoyed, The Importance of Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance for Personal and Professional Growth, and are keen to hear from y’all on anything else you would like to hear about.