Photo by Ammar ElAmir on Unsplash

Have your ever watched “Our Planet”series on Netflix? Yes, the one with David Attenborough’s amazing narration.

Those of you who have not, I strongly recommend and those who have watched it, I would like to ask you something.

What is it that appealed you?

If you ask me,

It was the Crew.

What made the crew to go out there and shoot such episodes?

In my opinion, three possible reasons that made those people go out there and do this –

The Passion (in other words the love for what they do)

Perseverance  (no matter what, they would find the right spot, the lighting and the works)

Willingness to put effort (waiting for 75 days in a box to capture Siberian tiger in their camera)

The list goes on.

If there is one word that will describe all of this-

It is “GRIT”. 

Yes, that is what causes them to go out there so daringly , risking their lives, so that we get to watch them at the comfort of our living room!

I happened to watch the Behind the Scenes as that would reveal what does it take to shoot such a spectacular series.

I was awed by those spectacular gadgets, the cameras with some special fittings and the best part being the crew.

The crew had these amazing people who were willing to live in a small box that would barely accommodate one person, in such extreme weather conditions,

just to capture some images of the Siberian tiger!

I began to wonder, what made these people different from the rest of us.

Is it the ability to take more risk ?

Is it the courage to face danger (such as swimming among sharks)?

It also meant that they were ok to step out of their comfort zone anytime and live in their zone of discomfort.

Rather they were in most part of their live living in their discomfort zone, hence accomplishing such feats.

While Passion gives them the enthusiasm to do it, Perseverance helps that to be at it, else living in a box of 75 days is no joke!

Actually it is a combination of Perseverance and Passion.

And this is what is termed as Grit, a term that I got introduced to through this author Angela Duckworth , who wrote a book  on the same topic, that went on to become a Best Seller.

While the book is worth reading multiple times. Here is what I learnt from that book –

There is a Formula that she talks about, that looks like this –

Talent Times Effort is Skill

And

Skill Times Effort is Achievement

If you notice, Effort comes twice, once to develop the skill and the other to Achieve.

In other words, Achievement does need twice the effort!

Here is what I inferred from this that if one wants to achieve any goals then one has to be ready to put in twice the effort.

Angela Duckworth has her own way of explaining Gritty Passion. She compares gritty passion with Compass (vs Fireworks) . She says passion has to be like compass guiding you every moment of your life, and not like Fireworks which is momentary.

Four things that the author suggests we need to work on in order to develop grit.

Interest – According to her, in order to have a gritty passion, you should pursue what interests you. So spend some effort to find what is it that you like and what are you actually interested in.

Practice and More Practice – This cant be emphasised enough. To get better at anything, one has to be relentless at it.

Purpose – This is all to do with answering the why. The underlying cause that will keep you motivated and inspired to take action!

Hope – This does its magic at every stage of achieving the goal with grit. Always keep your hopes up so that it helps you with progressing towards what you want to achieve.

Last but not the least, the author also has an online test to check where you stand on the Grid Scale. 

I took it and my grit score was 2.2 out of 5. It isn’t all that great, but I plan to work on it and make it better.

Do you resonate with this article? I would like to know your opinion about Grit. Please leave a comment below.

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