Grit, Resilience, Motivation, & Growth Mindset
Grit
Grit is “stick-to-it-tiveness,” or the ability to persevere toward a goal despite being confronted by obstacles and distractions. Those who possess grit are able to self-regulate and postpone their need for positive reinforcement while working diligently on a task.
Angela Duckworth has been researching the characteristic and practice of grit with interesting results. The following video reviews her findings.
This video offers Angela Duckworth herself, telling the back story of her research into the characteristic of grit.
Assess your own level of grit with Duckworth’s Grit Scale.
Then read the following two articles:
- 4 Signs You Have Grit
- “Student Grit as an Important Ingredient for Academic and Personal Success,” from the journal Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning
Consider the outcome of the grit scale and the information in the articles. Which of the four signs do you think apply to you? How might you work to develop grit in your academic journey?
Resilience
Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from setbacks or difficulties. Think of resilience as a ball that bounces back, or a GPS system that recalculates your route to find another way to get to the same goal.
Resilience depends on a number of factors, ranging from mindset to physical well-being to support from others.
This video provides a definition and ideas to develop resilience.
This video offers university students’ definitions of and strategies for building resilience.
Try a resilience self-assessment:
- Psychology Today‘s Resilience Test
- University of Denver’s Resiliency Self-Assessment
- Williams College What is Your Resiliency Score
How did you do? If you want to develop your resilience, read the Summary of Resilience created by ChatGPT on resilience, which further elaborates the aspects of resilience to build and gives specific tips especially for university students.
Key Takeaway – Grit + Resilience –> Motivation
Grit and resilience work hand in hand and feed into motivation.
Grit fuels motivation.
Resilience helps you maintain motivation as you get back to focusing on and working toward your goals.
Although employers may or may not articulate the need for grit and resilience, they value the results in workers who persist, produce, take initiative, and don’t give up. More importantly, these are valuable life skills, as they enable you to develop other skills; they could be characterized as meta-competencies.
Motivation
Motivation can be internal or external.
Read the short article “Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation: What’s the Difference?”
This video provides further definition of internal and external motivation along with some psychological background about motivation.
Do the self-assessment available in the Academic Motivation Scale, an instrument that was developed in the early 1990s in France and validated in different cultures and with different groups in many, many studies worldwide.
For strategies that foster motivation in an academic setting, read the article on Motivation from the Learning Center at UNC Chapel Hill.
For strategies that foster motivation at work, read the blog post 20 Tips for How to Stay Motivated at Work. and the Harvard Business Review article on How to Keep Working when you’re Just Not Feeling It.
Growth Mindset
“Greatness isn’t born, it’s made.” Do you believe this? Or do you believe that some people are just destined for greatness?
Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, presents the idea that personal success comes down to a central belief about ourselves, which falls into two mindsets:
Those with a fixed mindset believe that we all have inherent traits, abilities and skills. These individuals try to prove their talents by being successful, and avoid situations that will highlight their shortcomings. “I’m just not good at math.” “She’s a natural-born leader.” “I’ve never been musically inclined.”
Those with a growth mindset believe that, while we are all endowed with different qualities, our abilities can be cultivated through concentrated effort. Individuals with this mindset are focused on developing and improving their inherent skills and talents.
While the fixed mindset avoids failure and seeks out success, the growth mindset embraces failure as a necessary means to achieving success. Dweck advocates for the latter mindset because it drives us towards self-improvement, rather than restricting us to our natural abilities. In other words, success is about learning versus simply proving that you are smart. Read more fully about fixed vs. growth mindsets in the article “How Your Beliefs Can Sabotage Your Behavior,” by James Clear.
Adapting a growth mindset means recognizing that success is not about avoiding failures, but rather about embracing them, taking on challenges, and not giving up. As author and art historian Sarah Lewis observes, “We thrive not when we have done it all but when we still have more to do.” In other words, it is our shortcomings that can drive us to be better. If everything comes easy, or if you are constantly reaffirming what you already know or are capable of, then you are also limiting your opportunities for personal progress and growth.
Watch Carol Dweck’s presentation on growth mindset below.
What kind of a mindset do you think you have? One quick way to analyze your mindset is to consider how you would react in the following scenario: You find out that you did really poorly on a research paper and, when you come out of work that same day, you find a ticket on your car. You send a text about the rough day you’re having to your friend who responds, but kind of brushes you off. What would your reaction be?
- “I feel like a reject, a total failure. I never seem to get anything right. The world is out to get me.”
- “I really need to try harder in class, maybe join that study group. Next time I’ll pay better attention to where I park. I wonder why my friend has been so distant; I should probably check in more often.”
Option 1 is an example of a fixed mindset: “I’m having a really bad day and there’s nothing to be done about it.” Option 2 is an example of a growth mindset: “I can work to make this better.” (Dweck 7-8)
For a fuller understanding of your mindset, there are a number of mindset self-assessments available, based on Dweck’s work.
- Growth Mindset Test from Psychology Today
- Mindset Quiz from University of North Carolina
- Carol Dweck’s Growth vs. Fixed Mindset Assessment from Sportsengine
- Growth Mindset Test IDRlabs.com
Key Takeaway – It’s all Linked
A growth mindset is inextricably linked to grit, resilience, and motivation. According to the University of Notre Dame’s page on Enhancing Growth Mindset,
“Growth Mindset leads to a desire to learn and therefore a tendency to
- Embrace challenges
- Persist in the face of setbacks (obstacles)
- See effort as the path to mastery
- Listen to and learn from negative feedback (criticism)
- Find lessons and inspiration in the success of others” [1]
Yes, it’s all in your mind – a couple of interesting examples
If you’re at all skeptical about the importance of mindset, you might want to read very brief synopses that present the results of Ellen Langer’s research into the mind’s effect on the body.
Counterclockwise Study: The Science Behind Mindset and Ageing talks about an experiment making older people feel young
Hotel Maids Challenge the Placebo Effect talks about mindset and weight loss in a group of hotel maids.
If you are intrigued, you may want to listen to a podcast of an interview with Ellen Langer on “The Science of Mindlessness and Mindfulness” from the radio show On Being. Langer focuses a lot on language and how a more conscious use of language can create mindfulness and a growth mindset.
Learning Activity for Grit, Resilience, Motivation, and Growth Mindset
Introductory Level
Consider a situation you were involved in implementing at work, a situation that did not go as you planned. It may be a situation that had some success but could have gone better, or a situation that failed outright. Examples of situations might be a work project, meeting, presentation, or event.
Write a short (3-4 page) performance analysis of the situation, responding to the following points:
- Identify at least 4 decisions, actions, or conversations that in retrospect you feel affected the situation negatively.
- For each decision, action, or conversation, explain how you might have affected the situation differently if you had applied a growth mindset.
- Analyze the situation as a whole in terms of grit and resilience. How hard did you try to get the situation back on track? How did you respond after the situation? How did you deal with critical comments? What actions did you take to show resilience?
- What did you learn that you will apply the next time, when confronted with a similar task? How will you motivate yourself?
Learning Activity for Grit, Resilience, Motivation, & Growth Mindset
Advanced Level
A competency called “reframing,” or considering an experience from a different, more positive perspective, is related to grit, resilience, motivation, and growth mindset.
Read the article “A Practical Guide to Reframing Your Thoughts and Making Yourself Happier”
Write a brief essay using the following scenario:
You are a project manager for a fundraiser for a non-profit organization. The venue calls to confirm logistics for the event. During the conversation, you discover that you have been using last year’s menu to plan the meals. The prices for the food items have increased and not all of the items you selected are still available. As a result, if the venue follows the current order, you will be over budget and there will be a number of attendees who will not have the food accommodations they have selected. The venue says that there is still time to adjust the order, but that any changes need to be received by the end of the day. Otherwise, the order will be prepared using this year’s menu, with the venue’s discretion at substituting items, and you will be charged the new rates for what has been ordered.
At the same time that you’re dealing with the venue about food, your monthly program report on the fundraiser progress is due. You receive an email reminder from your director to that effect; the email also states that she needs the projected fundraiser costs for a meeting the next morning. How do you balance working with the venue and completing the report?
Apply what you have learned about grit, resilience, motivation, and growth mindset/reframing to identify at least 3-4 possible actions you can take to resolve both the challenge with the venue and with your director’s request.
Submit: a short (4-5 page) essay discussing your possible actions, making sure to reference reasons for the possible actions in terms of the competencies of grit, resilience, understanding motivation, and growth mindset/reframing.
- Enhancing Growth Mindset, University of Notre Dame, https://learning.nd.edu/resource-library/enhancing-growth-mindset/#:~:text=Growth%20Mindset%20leads%20to%20a,al.%2C%202019) ↵
