Developing Grit Is One of the Most Important Things a Young Adult Can Do for Their Future
Grit is the single most important thing you can develop to drive your long term performance and personal development. It’s as important as intelligence in determining college and career performance; unlike intelligence, you can improve it through your entire life. Simply, if you lack grit, you will crack. Setbacks will get you down, and constructive feedback will make you whither. Rather than learning and growing, if you lack grit, these experiences will make it hard for you to get started, and your career will falter.
The brightest high school students understand that grit is required for any challenging pursuit, yet most traditional education systems don’t develop this trait for a couple of reasons:
The kind of experiences that develop grit don’t show up in high-school and college. Research shows that grit is improved through peer-supported, high-accountability pressure situations; these are lacking in college.
Just working hard does not develop grit, it requires it. So the tough essays and the hours of applications is really just a test of whether you are already gritty. It’s not helping you get better.
How To Improve Your Grit
You can find out where you are by testing your grit. We use Duckworth’s grit scale. This will give you an insight into your level of perseverance and areas you can strengthen.
Watch talks on grit to understand more about it, how to develop it and what having high grit looks like.
Experience doing something more difficult than you thought you could accomplish, in a team. Typically people achieve this with: shared goals, groups of people and an objective they care about striving towards. The best ways to do this as a student in high school could be:
Getting your own experience starting a business, iterating until you bank wins (such as sales, etc)
Joining a sports team, focusing on adopting the team’s culture of hard work, shared struggle, and bouncing back after losses
Joining organizations such as Scouting America, Junior ROTC, or other groups which intentionally put teams through challenging situations, with support
Joining a program designed to develop grit, taking you out of your comfort zone, in difficult scenarios and with groups.
You don’t really know if you have grit until you need it. Joining a group that cares about grit will not only help you develop it, but will help you find out how strong you are right now. The last thing you want is to find out in your junior year of college that you lack grit needed to succeed.
What To Look For In a Program
If you decide to join a program designed to practice and develop grit, you should be selective. The program should have a few key criteria:
Designed to be difficult
Put you out of your comfort zone
Set you up to win by having support in place
Have peers like you
Have a well-developed culture of embracing failures as teaching tools
How Futures Forge Develops Grit On The S4S Course
Students at Futures Forge rapidly develop grit by taking on peer-supported, high-accountability challenges. They push themselves to the boundaries of their abilities, discovering both their breaking points and areas of excellence. Through business-focused problem-solving, they gain valuable insights not only about the world but also about themselves.
Here’s what our students say about their development:
“The intense yet supportive environment pushed me to step out of my comfort zone and take responsibility for my own growth.”
“Futures Forge encouraged and pushed all of us to be the best we could be while also not being afraid of making mistakes and learning from our weak points.”
