Resilience and Grit Importance for Success 

Resilience and Grit Importance for Success 
Amal Zeidan 

Success looks different for everyone. Some may see success as following their dreams while others see success as making an impact on the lives of others. However, there are some components and traits that are similar in all the different ways that individuals classify success for themselves. The traits include the habits that are developed daily to get to the success that individuals are at today, the hard work they put in, but also having grit. 

Angela Duckworth who is the leading expert on the concept of grit, classifies grit as the passion and sustained persistence applied toward long-term achievement, with no particular concern for rewards or recognition along the way (Fessler, 2018). Grit is an important trait to have since there will be obstacles, setbacks and problems that come up that a lot of individuals overcome to reach success. Usually on the journey to success there is not a lot of support or recognition of the success achieved, which makes it harder to reach success through hard times. That is why grit is a super important trait to have. However, grit is only one of the many traits that has been seen by many who have been successful. 
Resilience is another trait that is needed to be successful since there will be hard times on the journey to success that will need to be overcome to get to success. Hard work and the habits that are developed such as having a structured day, practicing self care like exercising and other skills such as time management that can be helpful to reach success. 

The challenges that individuals have are very different from one another. However, they all have resilience such as being able to keep working hard even when it is difficult to do so. There are ways that individuals have resilience through hardship which are building a circle of trust, reframing how they view stressful situations, taking action, having a positive attitude, accepting change, keeping perspective,building self confidence and finding everyday joy (Patel, n.d.). 

Having a circle of individuals you can trust and support you during a difficult time is needed to help keep an individual resilient and push through hard times. Studies have shown having a supportive relationship with others that include family and other support circles is the primary factor in resilience (Patel, n.d.). A supportive group of people help an individual refocus and also they help push them to keep going since they would like to see them succeed and achieve their goals. When an individual thinking of quitting having a supportive group will ensure that they are feeling supported through the hard times that even though they feel like quitting they push through to achieve their goals. Since achieving success is not easy. 

Reframing how an individual views stressful situations will help them cope with stress better and during harder times and stressful times can push through it knowing the right techniques needed for that. Since a situation can be perceived as more or less stressful which is known as cognitive framing, which is the ability to look at a situation creates less stress and promotes a greater sense of control (Patel, n.d.). That would help reduce a lot of stress that will help being resilient in hard times easier. Having a mindshift can help change your physical responses to stress since the body’s stress response is triggered by perceived stress (Patel, n.d.). That means that if you always feel stress the body will react as if that is true and your flight or flight response will kick in (Patel,n.d.). 
Taking action is another trait that helps individuals be resilient since it reduces over thinking and worrying. Taking action even if it is something very small helps an individual gain confidence that they can gain confidence to take bigger steps (Patel, n.d.). Being able to take action changes the feelings individuals have from feeling helpless to being empowered for the decisions and actions they can take in a situation (Patel, n.d.). 
Having a positive attitude can change how an individual deals with and sees an issue. That maintaining a hopeful and optimistic outlook will help an individual see beyond the current predicament you find yourself in (Patel, n.d.). That would also reduce stress and then become more resilient in the long term. 

Being able to adapt to change is also needed to be able to be resilient since there will be a lot of change on the journey to success. Successful people focus on being prepared for change and they learn to adapt and adjust when change is imminent (Patel,n.d.). They see change as a necessary component of revising the old way and embracing innovation (Patel, n.d.). That the ability not to just embrace change but learn from it helps individuals become very successful. 

Being able to see perspective can also help shift how individuals view problems and issues that will help during hard times to stay grounded. While also helping staying resilient when understanding that the issue at hand might not be as big as it is being perceived. 
While resilience and grit are very similar they are both needed to reach success. There are main characteristics that people who have grit have which are courage, Conscientiousness: Achievement Oriented vs. Dependable, Long-Term Goals and Endurance: Follow Through, and excellence versus perfection (Perlis 2013). 
Courage is one of the traits of grit since the most gritting people are not afraid to fail but rather they take it as an opportunity to learn. They understand that there are valuable lessons in defeat and that the vulnerability of perseverance is requisite for high achievement (Perlis 2013). To be able to be courageous an individual will need to try things that cause them to get out of their comfort zone and that way can achieve their goals and dreams or learn from their failures. 

Conscientiousness is another characteristic that's important for grit and most closely associated with grit. There is believed to be two conscientiousness which are dependable and achievement-oriented individuals, which achievement-oriented individuals were chosen to achieve more than the dependable individual (Perlis, 2013). Since they work really hard, they try to do a good job to get the task done. 
Long term goals and endurance helps an individual continue to keep going and achieve success through perseverance. However, Duckworth explains that to be able to achieve, you will need to practice with a long term goal in mind which gives context and framework in which to find the meaning and value of your long-term efforts, which helps cultivate drive, sustainability, passion, courage, stamina and grit (Perlis,2013). 
Striving for perfection does not exist and trying to reach that goal will cause stress and push an individual away from their goals through the guilt of not achieving perfection. While excellence is far more forgiving, allowing and embracing failure and vulnerability on the ongoing quest for improvement (Perlis, 2013). It allows for disappointment, and prioritizes progress over perfection (Perlis, 2013). 
All these traits and characteristics of resilience and grit are seen in many of the very successful people we hear about and love like J K Rowling, Steve Jobs, and many more. Their drive and determination to succeed outweighed their fear of failure. They rather failed so many times till they reached success. As Einstein has said, “Success is Failure in Progress”. The more an individual fails and learns from it the more that they can reach success.