Grit refers to the combination of passion and perseverance that gives you the ability to work hard and consistently toward your long-term goals despite setbacks and difficult challenges. Below you will find details on both of these qualities and how to develop them.

Passion

Passion is the deep-seated interest and long-term commitment to a goal, combined with a sense of purpose. It's not just a fleeting interest, but a sustained energy and excitement that gives meaning to your work and helps you stay motivated through setbacks. Passion involves having a clear vision and a conviction that your work matters. The key components of passion are provided to the right.

1. Purpose and Motivation

Motivation is the reason for doing something, while purpose is the deeper sense of meaning that helps you stay committed through challenges and setbacks. Finding purpose and motivation requires some in-depth sole-searching. Two key features to keep in mind during this search:

Intrinsic -- Motivation and purpose must be intrinsic, not generated from the promise of some external reward.
Aligned -- To have purpose and motivation your goals must align with your interests and beliefs -- who you are as a person.

2. Long-Term Commitment

Long-term commitment comes from:

orienting day-to-day activities and routines around the long term goal,
maintaining focus on the goal rather than immediate distractions and obstacles, and
rewarding progress toward the ultimate goal.

3. Buffers Against Discouragement

Discouragement is the enemy. Waivering when times get tough can be minimized through the following.

Support Networks: Maintaining connections with family and friends provides encouragement, fresh perspectives, and a system to lean on during difficult times.
Self-Care and Breaks: Engaging in self-care activities (exercise, proper nutrition, adequate sleep) and taking regular mental breaks are essential for recharging energy and maintaining mental clarity and an optimistic outlook.
Learning from Setbacks: Rather than dwelling on mistakes, people with grit analyze failures objectively to identify lessons learned and adjust their approach. This proactive approach prevents discouragement from becoming a permanent state.
Setting Achievable Goals: While the overall goal is long-term, setting smaller, short-term "wins" provides a sense of accomplishment and helps maintain momentum and hope along the way.
Positive Self-Talk: Re-evaluating negative self-talk and practicing self-compassion helps manage expectations and maintain a balance between personal needs and external demands.

Perseverance

To have the best chance of success in your efforts to change, you need a plan that is concrete and detailed. It should include:

small, manageable steps,
monitoring of progress,
rewards for success, and
a support network.

1. Small Steps

Make large and intimidating changes manageable by:

setting concrete, achievable milestones, and
breaking down larger steps into smaller steps.

When setting milestones, ask yourself two questions.

Will I be able to tell when I have achieved this?
How will I know when I have achieved this?

If a step still seems intimidating, it probably needs to be broken down further.

2. Monitor Progress

Below are some techniques for monitoring progress.

Recording in a journal each day your thoughts, actions, feelings, and challenges.
In a notebook record each day any instances of new thoughts, feelings, or actions that indicate progress.
Seek feedback from others.

3. Reward Success

When rewarding yourself, consider both intrinsic rewards, such as pride in your accomplishment, and extrinsic rewards, such as treats or other prizes.

Acknowledge your hard work with feelings of pride and satisfaction.
Set up small rewards for milestones, such as taking a longer break or getting a nice coffee after a productive week.
Work toward a bigger, more significant reward for achieving a major goal, like a weekend getaway or a new electronic gadget.
Reward yourself with time for relaxation, like taking a nap, or going for a walk.
Choose rewards that support your goal; for example, if you're trying to exercise more, buy new workout clothes instead of food.
Make it a shared experience: If appropriate, share your reward with someone, like going to a play or concert with a friend.

4. Build Support

Even the best of plans can benefit from a little help from your friends. Here's a few considerations for maximizing the value of your support network.

Identify the steps in your plan where you are most likely to need help, then identify family members, friends, or coworkers most likely to be helpful -- they have the right skills or are just good at nagging you to get you to do what you need to do.
Cover those gaps by expanding your network to include communities or organizations that overlap your needs, either in person or online.
Seek out mentors from among those you identify as having achieved the goals you are attemtping to achieve.

Example

Scenario

I'm a young adult, with a high school diploma and a two-year business associate degree from the local community college. Since getting my degree I have been working as an office manager at a local construction company. The job isn't bad, but I feel I can do so much better if I could just polish up my math and computer skills. As it is, I feel unchallenged, and unfulfilled. As a result, I'm cranky all the time and have trouble getting along with and working with my fellow workers. I really want to do better, ideally become a business analyst, but so far my efforts at change have failed. I'm definitely ready to try this new approach. So, let's get started.

After a number of internet searches, and some discussion with some of teachers at the community college, I've come up with the following categories of characteristics for the ideal business analyst me.

Knowledge
Interpersonal skills
Communications
Critical thinking/problem solving
Commitment
Self-confidence

Ideal-Self

For my future ideal self, my research and feedback from others identified the following characteristics for the catgegories I had previously identified.

Knowledge
- Possesses a solid knowledge of the business analyst job skills, including math and computer skills such as database queries and spreadsheets.
Interpersonal skills
- Treats others with respect, good at working with others, good at conflict resolution.
Communications
- Good writing and reading skills, adequate speaking skills.
Critical thinking/problem solving
- Strong ability to analyze information and reach sound conclusions.
Commitment
- Strong ability to overcome challenges and remain committed when the going is tough.
Self-confidence
- Strong trust in own abilities, judgment, and skills.

Self-Image

Correcting my own perceptions of who I am with feedback from friends and family, I have come up with the following self-image.

Knowledge
- Some basic knowledge of spreadsheets. Weak math skills.
Interpersonal skills
- Weak social skills, poor at conflict resolution.
Communications
- Good speaking and reading skills, weak writing skills.
Critical thinking/problem solving
- Strong ability to analyze information and reach sound conclusions.
Commitment
- Average ability to overcome challenges and remain committed when the going is tough.
Self-confidence
- Weak trust in own abilities, judgment, and skills.

Gaps

Comparing my ideal self with my self-image gives me the following gaps.

Knowledge
- Need better spreadsheet skills
- Need to acquire database skills
- Need to improve math skills
Interpersonal skills
- Need to improve social skills, especially teamwork and respect
- Need to acquire conflict resolution skills
Communications
- Need to improve writing skills
Critical thinking/problem solving
- No gaps
Commitment
- Need to strengthen commitment and determination
Self-confidence
- Need to improve self trust

Priorities

The number of improvements needed is a bit high, and they can't all be done at once. More importantly, some of them require that I first address some of the others. For example, I need to improve my self-confidence and commitment before I take on any of the others or I am likely to give up. Also, some of these changes seem more important than others relative to the time and effort required.

Based on these considerations, here are my priorities in order of importance.

Knowledge
Commitment
Self-confidence
Interpersonal skills
Communications

For all of these priorities costs include both a commitment of time, as well as the potential for needing to spend money for training/education. The benefits of improvement are clear and significant for all of the gaps.

Knowledge was assigned the highest priority because it has the greatest risk of failure, that I might not be able to do it.

Steps

Among the achievable milestones I identified for acquiring the job skills to be a business analyst are the following.

Identify the specific math and computer skills required to be a business analyst.
Determine the methods for acquiring the needed skills, as well as any required resources and their likely costs.
If there are formal educational and/or training requirements for becoming a business analyst, identify providers and the methods/costs for enrollment.
Identify and recruit individuals for my support network.
Acquire all necessary resources and enrollments and begin the learning process.

The timeline I have established for accomplishing these steps calls for the first two to be accomplished within a week, and the third and fourth within a month. The final step deadline will be determined based on what is actually required.

Monitoring

To monitor progress, I intend to maintain a journal in which I will enter:

weekly the progress I've made on each step in my plan,
my feelings about the progress I've made,
any changes in how I feel about, or my commitment to, achieving my goal, and
any feedback provided by my support network.

Rewards

To help maintain my motivation, I plan on

Help

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