Take This Key To Success

        A few years ago, a 6-minute TED Talk video on Facebook caught my attention. It was a video of a Psychologist, Angela Lee Duckworth, talking about “grit.” Based on her studies, she found out that gritty people are becoming more successful than the smartest people in the room. Psychology Today states that “Grit is a construct that is said to summon both passion and perseverance in service of a long-term goal. It's a marathon, not a sprint, as they say. In other words, gritty people put in sustained effort over time to achieve a high level of success in their chosen domain.” This video came to my mind while thinking about how I would share the importance of consistency in the journey to success.

     About a month ago, I decided to start making changes in life. There has been a lot of decision-making, trying to put my best foot forward every step in this new journey. In my first week into it, I was overflowing with excitement. That excitement when you’re finally getting off from your last day at work for a month of vacation to your dream destination! I was that excited. I’ll tell you more about it next time. What I want to share right now is what I’ve learned so far in this journey, which I believe, is my key to success.

 

    Whether it’s becoming the top student in class, getting your dream job, traveling the world, or finally getting some peace of mind, we all have a dream we want to achieve. But we all know that not everyone succeeds in achieving their dreams. At one point in life, all of us have failed. Even the wealthiest and most successful people in the world experienced failure in life. But there's another thing we all have; the decision to try again.

CONSISTENT

: not changing in behaviour, attitudes, or qualities

    Let’s talk about Consistency. Macmillan Dictionary defines the word “consistent” as not changing in behaviour, attitudes, or qualities. If you have decided to do something to achieve your goal, and then you fail, giving up should not be your next option. In fact, it should not even be part of your options. Let’s have a practical example. If you fail to catch the last bus to get home, are you just gonna stay where you are and sleep in the street? Of course not. The first thing you will do is look for other options. Maybe you will take a taxi, or call a friend to give you a ride, or maybe you can sleep over somewhere near and go home the next day. Staying in a state of loss will not be your option. You will continue to do something until you get your desired result.

 

    We just assessed that when you badly want to achieve something, you will keep looking for ways to get it. That’s what you need to apply when aiming for success. You need to ”badly want” your goals. It needs to be something that will fuel you to continue doing what you're doing every single day, whether it’s a 10% effort or a 101%. Because however big your desires are, or however unique your ideas are, you will fail to succeed without a continuous action in place. 

-- Because however big your desires are, or however unique your ideas are, you will fail to succeed without a continuous action in place. --

    Going back to the TED Talk video, Duckworth mentioned an idea developed in Stratford University stating that, “ability to learn is not fixed, ..it can change with your effort. ..So growth mindset is a great idea for building grit.”  We learn a thing or two every day. I bet that if you have a written life journal from five years ago and read it, you will see how your perspective in life changed and how your perception of a lot of things widened. You are more knowledgeable today than yesterday. Meaning, you are stronger, smarter, and can be more creative tomorrow but you need to start something today. 

    And my last quotation from Duckworth is this “We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we've been successful, and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned.” Writing is my freedom and joy. I want to get a career in this field, so I am committing to write a blog post every week to practice and be better at it. How about you? What do you want to start today to be better tomorrow?

 

P.S. Do not forget to enjoy the process!