Grit; Book review

Name of book: Grit; the power of passion and perseverance
Author: Angela Duck worth
Number of pages: 285
Published by: Scribner

“I wrote it because what we accomplish in the marathon of life depends on our grit-our passion and perseverance for long term goals. An obsession with talent distracts us from that simple truth”

Angela Duckworth

Almost 6 months a go, I discovered a book: Grit. Judged by its cover, it instantly secured a place in my To-be-read list. I had forgotten it until recent time ,after having my list revised, and listening to a ted talk on lack of perseverance and consistency, I struggled to resist my temptation and got my hands on it. I am glad I did.

Grit, as the writer puts it, means having the  passion to accomplish a a particular top-level goal and the perseverance to follow through. Unlike most self-help books that disappoint their readers with their impracticality, Grit comes off as raising a quite realistic problem and even more realistic solutions. Before we move on with what this book has to offer, We need to appreciate the context and the backdrop of events surrounding the author.

The author, a professor of psychology at the university of Pennsylvania grew up in a house-hold where being genius was on the top of hierarchy. Her father believed that you either are a genius, or you aren’t. Essentially, people are not in power of becoming one.

His daughter, according to himself, was one of them.

Hence, the main theme of the book revolves around the relationship between grit and talent, and how great people in the world have not slept their way through their achievements and goals. They have, instead put in years of effort, hard work, and toiled under failures until their passion, combined with their purpose, began to thrive. To be gritty is to fall down seven times, and rise eight, says the writer.

In order to set her claim right, she mentions a list of researches and studies, providing why people ,once known for their timidness, have achieved great things in life due to perseverance and patience. Adding on to this, which was undeniably the highlight of this book, she has interviewed several paragons of grit who, with their determination have reached to the top of their fields and are expanding their benefits beyond themselves. This personal interviewing also reflects the interpretative approach of the writer, taking in consideration the individuals’ experiences and their own meaning to it ,rather than agreeing upon mere quantitative data. Most paragons of grit reported to have worked harder and harder over their lives until they acclaimed their titles.

The book touched  a variety of concepts which were important for becoming a grittier person. For example, one of the reasons we tend to lose seriousness is because we fail to give any of our tasks their due time. In contrast to a motivational speaker’s talk, passion is not found the very day we get our selves started on a task. In fact, most of the times, you discover and recognize your passion after you have dedicated a fair share of attention and time towards it. Notwithstanding that case studies limit generalizability, I must, still admit that this was indeed true for my own passion of writing and later on, learning Arabic.

Similarly, a chapter dedicated to hope, was one of the best chapters I have come across. Such realistic and close to humanly- possible- steps- to- betterment ideas of hope are rare to find. For the gritty people, hope isn't believing in another day to come. That is, perhaps, a portion of it. Hope in its entirety is having the audacity to admit the shortcomings which prompted your failure and rising with the belief that you will resolve it. You will figure it out. You will try to take control of it.

The path to becoming a grit paragon yourself is hidden behind an inside-out and an inside-in paradigm. The inside-out paradigm means you stay focused and disciplined once you decide on a goal and make efforts on a daily-basis .The outside-in paradigm is that you take help from others and live in a grit-absorbed culture around you. Likewise, you offer that culture to others too like one of the grit paragons says: You don’t need to be a parent to make a difference in someone’s life. If you just care about them and get to know what's going on, you can make an impact

A very skillfully written concept of comparison between trauma with control and trauma without any control was mentioned. In between the lines, was a notion of ’fragile perfects’. Can you guess who those are? She means the high-achievers. In this topic she aimed to explain that high-achievers are at high risk of losing grit and hope, because of experiencing no trauma at all which keeps them blind from the idea of losing control and rising up again.

The book is written with a very friendly approach. Like the author describes it: this book has been my way of taking you out for a coffee and telling you what I know. She has maintained her presence while narrating any of those researches and interviews, making it more like an interaction than a write-up.

In plenty of places, you will see the writer confessing her lack of research or any ambiguity that she has on a particular subject, while she  steps out of the subject.

At the end are some answers to questions that will inevitably arrive in your head like they did in mine. They would satisfy you enough to not long for less grit, at-least, if not more.