Angela Duckworth deserves the credit for bringing the topic of grit mainstream with her best-selling book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, and her psychological research contributing to it. However, grit has been studied in the behavioral sciences for much longer as a proven skill tied to high performance, achievement, and leadership success. When you listen to interviews with leaders you will hear a narrative with prominent themes of persistence towards long-term goals. One of my favorite books that narrates the psychological endurance, mindset, and visceral challenge, part and parcel, of grit is Open by Andre Agassi. The movie Free Solo featuring Alex Honnold visually illustrates the pinnacle of grit. What we can extract from examples like these are the mindset, daily habits and routines, and spirit of stretching one’s limits towards an enormous challenge. We have an abundance of research demonstrating the solid connection between exercise, well-being, and optimal brain performance. I have found for myself, and those that I have coached, that building in an exercise regimen tied to a long-term goal can optimize your gritty achievement goal. Examples include: swimming, biking, ultra-running, yoga, weight lifting, rock climbing gym work, and cross-fit. The point is to enjoin challenging physical activity into your regimen in support of a long-term goal, bench-marking your mental and physical achievement.

 

The Exercise:

You can’t build grit without a goal. So the first step is identifying your long term goal. It should be really tough. Here’s some of my coaching clients examples: Getting into Columbia’s MBA Program, scaling a start-up from break even to 10M, achieving tenure, getting a C-suite promotion, being an expert consultant on ‘the next big thing’ in investment, being a featured DJ at Coachella. The list goes on, but you get the picture. These goals take time, a strategy, and acquired milestones along the way that are derived from having the right mindset and routines.

 

My Long Term Goal Is:

 

My Long Term Exercise Goal is:

My Daily Mindset Practice is: (Journaling, Meditation, Visualization, Spirituality):

My Exercise Routines will be: Write out the milestones to achieve your goals: