Steps to develop Grit

1: Invest in Pain

The first step to develop the grit, therefore, is to reverse the natural desire of seeking pleasure and accept pain as the tool to achieve goodness in your life.

2: Avoid Instant Gratification

There are many things like tasty food or sex that provides instant gratification and thus consumes your energy. They are like nectar in beginning, but become poison later. Learn to avoid them as much as you can.

3: Develop a Purpose of Life

Most of us don’t know what we wish to achieve in life. When you don’t know where to go, you are likely to waste your time roaming around and reaching nowhere.

You must develop a purpose of your life. Your purpose should be worthy of pursuit as it is not carved for your own benefit, but for the benefit of society as well.

Once you know where to go, you have already done half of the task.

4: Develop Perseverance

All things that are good takes time to bear fruit just like a mango seed takes years to become a tree and bear fruits.

You can’t eat the mango in your own orchard unless you are willing to invest considerable time, money and resources for it.

You must be ready to work hard for long time to achieve the results because there is no shortcut to achieve long term goals.

5: Learn from Failure

It is never easy to accept failure. However, failures are inevitable if you are planing to achieve a worthwhile goal. Be mentally prepared to accept failure as part of life. You must learn your lessons from the failures and become wiser rather than cursing yourself or others for failing.

6: Ignore Popular Opinion

The world is never encouraging to people who strive for greater things in life since most people don’t have the courage to take challenges in life and prefer to lead a risk-free life.

They even secretly hope that you would fail and they will not feel their own smallness and meanness.

You must learn to avoid popular opinion since what is popular is rarely good or worthwhile to follow.

7: Never Lose Hope

When you fail repeatedly, you tend to lose faith in yourself, God and even in the world. You want to avoid challenge and live a normal life like other people.

You must not lose faith in yourself and hope for the future.

Only by keeping your hope alive, you can achieve your long term goals and achieve true happiness in life.

The American author Angela Duckworth said wisely, “Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.”

-Awdhesh Singh Ex-IRS, IITian