Passion, Perseverance, Purpose, and Growth

A refreshed and expanded version inspired by the original Cook Health Alliance article at Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance – Cook Health Alliance

What Is Grit?

Why do some people keep moving forward when the road becomes difficult? Why do some students continue working when the material is frustrating, while others decide they simply cannot do it? Why do some people turn a failure into a lesson while others allow that same failure to become an excuse to quit?

I believe one answer is grit. Grit is not simply being tough. It is the combination of caring deeply about a worthwhile goal and being willing to keep working toward that goal when progress is slow, difficult, or uncomfortable.

Angela Duckworth helped bring the idea of grit into the public conversation through her work studying achievement and perseverance. One of the lessons I took from her work is that natural ability matters, but effort matters tremendously. Talent can give us a starting point. Effort is what turns that starting point into skill, and continued effort is what turns skill into achievement.

That idea is important because we often compare ourselves with people who appear naturally talented. We see someone who understands mathematics quickly, writes beautiful software, excels at sports, or seems comfortable speaking in front of a group. We see the result, but we do not always see the hours of practice, mistakes, frustration, and persistence behind it.

Effort Changes the Equation

One of the simplest ways I think about achievement is:

Talent × Effort = Skill
Skill × Effort = Achievement

Notice what happens to effort. It appears twice. Talent may help us begin, but effort is what develops the talent into a usable skill and then carries that skill toward achievement. This does not mean talent is unimportant. It means that talent without sustained effort has a very limited destination.

The encouraging part is that effort is something we can influence. We may not choose our starting point, but we can choose what we do next.

Four Practices That Build Grit

1. Develop a Fascination

Learning becomes much more powerful when curiosity takes over. Do not be satisfied with learning only what you are required to learn. Ask another question. Try another example. Find out what happens when you change something. Explore.

I have seen this happen with students in computer science. Give a student a simple HTML, CSS, or JavaScript assignment and sometimes the student will do exactly what was requested. But another student becomes curious. They add something new. They investigate a problem. They discover a feature that was never mentioned in the assignment. That student is no longer simply completing schoolwork. That student is learning how to learn.

Fascination creates momentum. When you become genuinely interested in something, effort feels less like punishment and more like discovery.

2. Improve a Little Every Day

The question I like to ask is simple: How am I better today than I was yesterday?

The improvement does not have to be dramatic. Read one more page. Solve one more problem. Practice one more skill. Write one more line of code. Make one better decision. Explain something you learned to another person.

Small improvements compound. A person who consistently improves may not look extraordinary on any particular day. Give that person a year, however, and the difference can be remarkable.

Do not wait for the perfect opportunity to become better. Start with the next small opportunity in front of you.

3. Find the Greater Purpose

We work harder when we understand why the work matters. A task can be exhausting when it feels meaningless, yet the same task can become worthwhile when it is connected to a purpose that is larger than ourselves.

Consider the difference between laying bricks and helping build a lasting place where people will worship, learn, gather, or serve one another. The physical task may be identical. The meaning is not.

Purpose changes how we see obstacles. It gives us a reason to continue when comfort tells us to stop. A student who understands why education matters to the life he or she wants to build has a different reason to persevere than a student who sees every assignment as merely something to finish.

Ask yourself: Why does this matter? Who will benefit if I succeed? What kind of person am I becoming while I do this work? Those questions can turn ordinary effort into meaningful effort.

4. Choose a Growth Mindset

A growth mindset begins with the belief that we are not finished products. We can learn. We can change. We can improve. We can become capable of things that are currently beyond our ability.

I love learning because it keeps me curious. No one knows everything. Human knowledge has expanded enormously over the last century, and much of what we now take for granted would have seemed impossible to earlier generations.

The question is not whether you know enough today. The better question is whether you are willing to learn what you need tomorrow.

Our greatest obstacle is sometimes not the difficulty of the challenge. It is the limitation we place on ourselves before we even begin. When we say, “I cannot do that,” we may be describing our current skill rather than our future potential.

Failure Is Part of the Process

One of the hardest lessons to learn is that failure is not the opposite of success. Failure is often part of the path to success.

I learned this through basketball. I tried out for my high school team and did not make it as a freshman. The next year I worked to improve. As a sophomore, I was one of the last players cut. That was progress, even though it was not yet the result I wanted.

Later, while teaching high school on Guam, I played basketball regularly. A coach noticed me and invited me to become an assistant coach and coach the junior varsity team. I accepted the opportunity. During my second year coaching, our team lost only one game and tied for the league championship.

That one loss taught me something important. I knew exactly what we needed to change. We did not lose another game for the rest of that season, and the improvement came because we were willing to examine the failure instead of simply feeling bad about it.

A loss hurts. A mistake can be embarrassing. Failure can make us question ourselves. But if we study what happened, we can turn the experience into information. There are plenty of mistakes available to make in life. We do not need to keep repeating the same ones.

The goal is not to avoid failure. The goal is to learn from it quickly and keep moving.

Teach What You Learn

There is another powerful part of grit: helping someone else grow. When you explain an idea to another person, you discover whether you truly understand it. Teaching forces us to organize our thinking, answer questions, and sometimes discover gaps in our own knowledge.

This is one reason I value education so highly. Learning is not finished when we understand something. It becomes even more valuable when we can use what we learned to help someone else.

If you want to strengthen your own learning, teach someone. If you want to strengthen your own purpose, serve someone. If you want to strengthen your own grit, keep going when the work becomes difficult.

Grit Can Be Developed

Grit is not a mysterious quality that only a few people are born with. It can be developed through repeated choices.

Start small. Choose one area where you want to improve. Decide what you can do today. Then do it. Tomorrow, improve again.

Develop your curiosity. Improve every day. Remember your greater purpose. Keep a growth mindset. When you fail, learn. When you learn, share. Then begin again.

The most important part is action. Thinking about change is not the same as changing. Planning is important, but eventually the plan has to become a behavior.

As I have said before, there is a simple phrase that captures the idea for me: Do It! Do It Right! Do It Right Now!

A Simple Grit Challenge

If you want to put these ideas into practice, try this four-part challenge for the next week.

Daily Improvement: Write one sentence answering: “How am I better today than I was yesterday?”

Learning: Write down one thing you discovered that you did not know before.

Purpose: Write down why what you are learning or doing matters to your future.

Growth: Identify one obstacle, mistake, or uncomfortable moment and write what it taught you.

At the end of the week, read your answers. Look for evidence of movement. You may discover that the biggest change was not in what you accomplished, but in how you approached the work.

Keep Moving Forward

We each have limitations. We each have setbacks. We each have days when we would rather quit. That is part of being human.

What matters is what we do next.

When something does not work, learn. When the goal seems far away, take another step. When you discover a weakness, work on it. When someone else needs help, share what you know. When you are tempted to say, “I cannot,” ask yourself what you could learn that would make it possible.

Grit is not about pretending everything is easy. It is about deciding that difficulty does not get the final word.

Be curious. Improve. Find your purpose. Keep growing. Learn from failure. Help others. Then take the next step.

Your future is built one effort at a time.

Source note: This document is a newly written, expanded adaptation based on the themes and ideas in Wayne Cook’s original 2018 Cook Health Alliance article, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.” The original article was published March 13, 2018.