Building Grit: How to Cultivate a Growth Mindset & Join a Gritty Culture

This transcript was generated by AI Technology and has not been edited by a real live human for accuracy.  (#goals)

Hey, as we wrap up January, I thought it might be helpful to share one of the lessons from The Lovely Unbecoming, which is looking at the steps to building grit or perseverance from Angela Duckworth's book Grit the Power of Passion and Perseverance. So today's episode is actually a recording from a rehearsal room session, and I hope you enjoy it. If you are interested in joining The Lovely Unbecoming, stay tuned to the end of the episode and I'll give you all the information about that program. Or you can just email me at brie at the lovely unbecoming.com or check out the show notes. I decided that I really wanted to use today to look at a little bit of a lesson that I thought might help us as we are moving forward with creating our projects, working on something that's important to us.

00:01:01

Moving forward on whatever it is that we are really devoting ourselves to, whether that's a book or writing a talk or really working through a difficult problem or starting a new program in any way. And so I thought that I would turn to Angela Duckworth's book grit the Power of Passion and Perseverance. And there are a lot of things about the book that are not perfect. I think that there is a real overemphasis on the importance of tenacity in reaching any kind of success and an under emphasis on that sometimes it's not an equal playing field, right? That we are all coming with advantages and disadvantages.

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There are many different factors and we need to consider those factors as we are moving forward. That said, I just wanted to really be sure that I acknowledge that before I submit wholeheartedly to the approach. But there are also a lot of really great advantages to cultivating grit or perseverance or tenacity. And I wanted to take us through a few exercises that Angela suggests going through to help us grow our grit. The first thing is to clarify our goals.

00:02:35

We have to know what we're working toward. As long as we are trying to work towards six different things, we can't really focus on one. That's an issue with time management as well. So often we want to be generalists with expert outcomes. What do I mean by that?

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Like, if we are generalist, then we have our ham in a lot of different pots, right? Women are really known for being generalists. We are multitasking more than men. We're taking on more responsibilities in a multitude of ways. We are divided in our attention.

00:03:09

So really taking the time to clarify your goals helps you focus in and adhere to them a little more fully. Warren Buffett, who is an absolute genius, has a three step process to unifying your goals, and I'm going to walk you through them now. And what I would suggest is if you are watching this in the replay in Facebook, or if you're listening to this, that you just pause this at any given point to really follow through with the exercise right now. Because if you wait, it ain't going to happen. So clarifying your goal.

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Step number one, write down a list of 25 career goals that you have. Yeah. And if you don't have that many, keep writing them down until you do have 25. I'm focusing on career. It could also be creative goals.

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So if what you are working on is a career project, then it can be career goals. If it's a creative project, then creative goals. And I would also say if it's a personal or an interpersonal project, then make it interpersonal goals. But for right now, I'm going to focus on career. So take a moment now.

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Pause this video or sound and write down your 25 career goals. And now you're back and you've written down your goals. And now what I'd like you to do is just take a moment to circle the five highest priority goals and really take your time with this. Don't just blindly do it. I want you to really dig deep into your soul just to think of what are really your top five goals that mean the most to you.

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And if you need to pause this again to do that's, great. I'm going to stop telling you to pause. You'll know, when I tell you to do something, if you don't have time to do it, just stop and you'll know that I'll be here when you come back. Number three, I want you to look at the remaining 20 goals. So you have your top five.

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Look at the ones that are left, those 20 goals, which of those are actually in support of your highest five goals? Mark those. Maybe put a little arrow so that you know which one they go to. Okay? So all of the other goals, the ones that don't apply to your top five goals, I want you to completely avoid them, to know that they are distractions and they will take up a lot of mental space.

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We want them not to. So I want you to put them on a piece of paper and put them away. So that's step number one. You've clarified your goals. That's one way to clarify your goals.

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So you have your top five and you have all of the goals that are in support of those top fives. Now the next thing that I'd like you to do is to really take a look at your interests. And interest is really the source of your passion. And what we know is that when we are deeply interested in something, we give more energy to it. We want to really lean into our interests.

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We know that people are more satisfied when they do something professionally that fits their personal interests. But it sometimes takes a lot of time to discover what those interests are. So take a little time now and I'd like you to answer these questions number one. What were the things that you liked to do as a child, the things that you are really interested in? And maybe you're looking at five things that you were really interested in as a kid.

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So maybe that was that you really enjoyed reading mysteries, or you really enjoyed imaginative play with your friends outside, or you really liked to make a fort, and in the fort, you would create art projects. Maybe you were into Milnery. I was really obsessed with being a Milner when I was a kid. I really wanted to make hats. So write down five things that you were interested in as a young child.

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Now write five things that you were interested in when you were in high school. What were the things that you loved? What were the subjects that you really loved, or the social interactions that you really loved, the things that kept you super motivated. Maybe you were really interested in politics, maybe not. Whatever it was, write down the five things that you are most interested in in high school now, at the present moment, what do you like to think about the most?

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If you just have any time to just sit and think, what are the things that you're thinking about? But more than what are the things that you're thinking about? What are the things that you enjoy thinking about? The next one is what do you really care about? Sometimes what we think about that interests us isn't something that we care about so much.

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What do you really care about? What matters most to you? And once you have these this list, once you have these items of interests over the course of time, look for patterns. What patterns do you see that are emerging here? Just take a few minutes to really dig into this and see what you can discover.

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So, like, for instance, I really loved theater when I was a kid. I loved it, and I did theater as an adult. I did a lot of theater, but I realized that what I really loved about theater, the pattern that emerged over time, was that I really loved cultivating creative community, having a shared project where we came together and had a beginning, a middle, and an end. We had a multitude of voices working together toward a common goal, and it also served as a point of entertainment or transformation for an audience of some sort. But I was actually more interested in the transformation that happened within the theatrical community, within the group that was putting together the project than I cared about the performance of it.

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And recognizing that helped me to shape what went forward. So that's what I mean by a pattern. Let's look beyond the surface of the thing and get down below. What do you see? Great.

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And now looking at your goals and looking at your interests, what interplay do you see between those things? And just take a few moments to journal about that. Where are the points of interplay between your goals and your interests? Now, the third step in cultivating your grit is to practice deliberately. We know that people who have grit, who had perseverance simply spend more time on tasks, a lot of time, and they really put their focus on it, so they practice deliberately.

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So deliberate practice, according to Duckworth, is defined by, number one, a clearly defined stretch goal. So that's the long term stretch goal, right? And then full concentration and effort. So really giving it full energy, not just half heartedly doing it. If I want to learn Spanish, and I know that is my goal, to become fully conversational in Spanish, I might set smaller goals that are benchmarks along the way.

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And let's say I'm doing duolingo. Great. So I'm doing duolingo, and I commit to doing 15 minutes of duolingo every day. How much am I really attending to those 15 minutes a day? Am I really taking the time to focus, to sit down in a quiet place, to learn, to repeat things out loud, to really engage with it?

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Or am I just trying to do word matching while I'm in line at the grocery store? I mean, that's okay, but it's not going to get me as far as really giving it my full concentration and effort. We also know in neuroscience that the more attention and energy we give to learning, the more likely our brain is to change. And that's something that's for everyone. But especially if you're over the age of 25 when it takes a little more effort to get those neural pathways to rewire.

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So the third thing with practice, and this is really important, is to get immediate and informative feedback. This hurts sometimes. I don't know a single person who can honestly say to me that getting feedback doesn't bring up some feelings of discomfort. Even when we want it, even when we're very practiced at receiving feedback, it can be really challenging. That's okay.

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As Glenn and Doyle says, we can do hard things, and getting feedback is crucial to growth. I'm going to tell you something else, though. When you are trying to get feedback, it's really great to lean into what you need. If we just say, all right, give me feedback, we're actually probably not going to get what's really useful for us. So think about the questions that you have about getting feedback.

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What do you want to know? What are your specific concerns? What are some tasks that you can change, that you'd like to get constructive feedback on? If you set those parameters at the beginning of getting feedback, it will help you control the kind of feedback that you're getting, make it more manageable and sure that it's working toward the goal of improvement as you practice. I can talk more about that in a future training.

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And the last part of practicing deliberately is simply repetition with reflection and refinement. So again, repetition using our full concentration and effort, right? Working towards a clearly defined goal with moments of reflection. That's getting feedback from external sources and internal sources and refinement. That is taking the feedback.

00:14:40

Using discernment to figure out how to move forward with that feedback in mind and refining your process along the way. That is practice. The next part of cultivating grit is to know your purpose. We've talked about interests, we've talked about the goal. But let's really look at purpose.

00:15:04

Because when the poop hits the fan and you've hit a wall with getting feedback, or you've hit a wall because you're not interested today, or something else is distracting you because life happens, right? Then knowing your purpose can be super helpful in keeping you on the track or getting you back on the track. So if you know that you're passionate about something, that's a good start. And whatever your passion is, I want you to think about how it connects to other people, how it connects to the bigger picture, how it's an expression of your deepest value. Is your purpose just for you?

00:15:55

No. Think about how it can contribute to the well being of others. Tie it to other people. It can help you to keep from falling in the trap of navel gazing. And sometimes when we are working on something that feels very insular or very private or very one man showish, then it can be daunting to feel like we're doing something selfish.

00:16:20

We feel like we're doing something selfish and so we don't quite know how to keep going with it. Because when we hit a block, then we say what I'm doing is selfish anyway. It's not worthy, I'm not worthy. Blah. We don't want that to happen.

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So if you are already tying it to how it contributes to the well being of others, then you can never fall into that place of this isn't important because you know how absolutely important it is. Number five is for you to cultivate a growth mindset. People say about 300 to 1000 words of an internal talk every minute. So really make sure that those words are serving you. Now, that doesn't mean that they need to be all like RA.

00:17:14

I mean, sometimes, yes, but it means just be careful when you have a negative mindset, when you're saying negative things to yourself, when you're talking yourself down, then just be mindful of that and try to flip it around in some way. There are lots of ways to do that. That's definitely for a future training. There are also so many resources on practicing a growth mindset or on some cognitive behavioral work. If any of you have been in cognitive behavioral therapy, I know that you're aware of this.

00:17:48

And yeah, so really practice more optimistic self talk. And the 6th step in Cultivating a gritty mindset is to frankly join a gritty culture. So we know that when we are around people who are practicing and working hard and doing the thing, then we are lifted up by that. We become a part of that collective. We rise with that tide, right?

00:18:20

So join a culture, and you are doing that. That's one of the things that you're doing. By joining The Lovely Unbecoming, you are joining a gritty culture. So thank you for being a part of that culture, and kudos to you for doing it. So those are Angela Duckworth's tips for cultivating grit.

00:18:37

As you work on your next project, I'd like to pause for a moment to talk about a project that I'm super excited about, and that is The Lovely Unbecoming. The Lovely Unbecoming is an online open coaching membership, so people can join at any time and bring a project or something that you're working on. That could be Ted Talk. It could be a board presentation. It could be an audition piece.

00:19:09

It could be a one woman show. It could even be a difficult conversation that, you know you need to have with a loved one or an employee. And whatever it is, you can bring it to these weekly meetings. And in these meetings, I offer open hot seat coaching, and we also have a really supportive community, so you can get feedback if you want it from the whole community. The Lovely Unbecoming is designed to be affordable.

00:19:39

I wanted to offer something that could really fit any price point. So the membership starts at just $9 a month, and again, you can sign up at any time. So if you're interested in joining The Lovely Unbecoming and bringing a project to the table or just being a part of the community, then head over to the The Lovely Unbecoming click on The Lovely Unbecoming, fill out a quick application, and you'll be on your way to being a member. I'd love to get in The Lovely Unbecoming with you. If you enjoyed the topic of conversation here or some of the tips from Angela Duckworth's book, I encourage you to read the book, and I will put the links to it in the show notes.

00:20:23

And, you know, if this is content that you like, share it with someone. The number one thing that you can do to support a podcast is to share it with a friend. Stay curious, y'all.