Building grit

I stumbled upon this article on “What if the Secret to Success is Failure?” at random as I was doing some desk research for work.

It is a bloody lengthy article, all 9 pages of it and it took me more than 20 minutes to read every word and digest them all.

The content of the article resonates well with me, and I applaud the guy for introducing such curriculum to the education system. There is so much truth in what is being said that success and happiness may indeed depend less on perfect performance than on learning to deal with failure.

One particular sentence which jumped out to me is this:

“The struggle to pull yourself through a crisis, to come to terms to a deep level with you own shortcomings and to labour to overcome them – is exactly what is missing for many students at academically excellent school”.

Given how spoilt kids can be these days, this could not be further from the truth as their behavior reflects well into their work ethics (or the lack of it).

If there is such curriculum here in Asia, I will be one of the first to shove my child there to be a part of such education system.

In no uncertain terms, however, am I suggesting that the schools should be the one solely responsible for teaching our kids such values on behalf of the parents, but I do believe that such curriculum will further reinforce the values we live by, since we should already be instilling them at home.

After all, we all could do with the existence of better humans all around. There seem to be a lack of them these days.

I am not one who would glorify status, the privileged or the academically inclined arrogant twat, but I have a lot of respect for people who rough it out, get their hands dirty and go all out of their way to get things done. They are genuinely hungry, selfless and will do whatever it takes to succeed without kissing asses or sleeping around or trample other beneath their feet on their way up the ladder, and really do KNOW what hard work really is to get to where they are in life. They are not evil, but honest.

One thing for sure, to be able to handle all the rough things which life throws at you and emerged (somewhat) unscathed when you don’t have a safety net, one really does need to be “hungry” and have some grit in life.

I believe in tough love leashed out within reasons when the need arises. Sure, I may bitch, whinge and moan sometimes when the going gets tough, but truly, I am a firm believer of whatever does not kill you, makes you stronger.

OK. So I have babbled. Going back to the article, I thought it is something worth sharing.

Just a word of caution: Make sure you have at least 20 extra minutes to spare if you want an uninterrupted read!