Got Grit? You Need It to Live Life to the Fullest & to Achieve Your Dreams

The most important factors for living the life you were meant to live

There are a few things that in my opinion are the key factors for your success and happiness in life. Be thankful. You have to learn to be grateful and thankful for what you have, have accomplished or what you have been given. If you learn to live with unhappiness and ungratefulness, you will never be happy for what you will accomplish and what you have. Your life will become a race for always getting more, and nothing will ever be enough. But the key here is: be grateful for what you have, but don’t let it prevent you from dreaming bigger and working for the goals you have in life. Be grateful, celebrate the small victories, see your progress in small steps. But do not lose sight of the larger goals and dreams. You will have to have grit. While you have to learn to be grateful for what you have, do not let that dim your dreams and make you work less for the true dreams and goals you have. Being thankful is different than being content. When you have grit, you will have persistence to work for the bigger goals in your life, even when they take years to accomplish.

Grit is the most important factor for your success

Good news: you can learn to develop grit. Bad news: grit has nothing to do with quick fixes. Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, 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 doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence and grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent. You can build grit with a “growth mindset” – trust that your ability to learn is not fixed, but YOU can change with your effort. Find out this TED Talk, in which Angela Lee Duckworth explains that grit is a better indicator of personal success than IQ, family income and other factors. And take the test of grit and see what you got!

10 Must-Haves for Greater Grit

Dennis Charney of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and Steven Southwick of the Yale School of Medicine identified 10 factors that are needed for better grit and for the ability to keep on going, even when things get tough. They are: 1. Ability to face fear. 2. Having a moral compass. 3. Having faith. 4. Using social support. 5. Having good role models. 6. Being physically fit. 7. Keeping your brain challenged. 8. Having “cognitive and emotional flexibility.” 9. Having “meaning, purpose, and growth” in life. 10. “Realistic” optimism. References: You can train yourself to have more grit Personal Grit as Key to Success by Dr. Angela Lee Duckworth

Post by Katja Presnal

“My mission is to inspire you to live life to the fullest and find your own “skimbaco,” how you enjoy life where ever you are in the moment. For ideas for travel, home, food and fashion, subscribe to weekly Skimbaco Lifestyle feed on Mondays and I hope you get my newsletter that I send out sometimes on Fridays.” Katja Presnal, editor-in-chief and the owner of Skimbaco Lifestyle. Let’s connect! Visit Skimbaco Lifestyle (Skimbacolifestyle.com)’s profile on Pinterest.