iF You FaLL 7 TiMeS, GeT uP 8

Is TALENT born or is it made?  

Thanks to the sales success of "Grit: The power of passion and perseverance", the Americans seem to have very clear answer: 

THE TALENT IS DONE.

At least, that is what the psychologist Angela Duckworth, author of the book that tells us about the power of passion and perseverance in order to achieve our goals, through a new method.

The main media of the US, specialized magazines and renowned personalities have been dismissed in praise, calling it "masterful", "persuasive" and "forced reading".

Duckworth has made fashionable the old word "GRIT", which could be translated as determination, strength of character, perseverance, persistence, tenacity ... or like none of them, because as the author has pointed out: 

"grit sounds better and has the connotations I was looking for"

As a curiosity, I wanted to mention something the word "Grit".  

This word, the origen, comes from the old Norwegian "grjot", which means rock, stone.  

From there it passed to the old Anglo as "greot": sand, gravel, earth. Always with the connotation of hardness, firmness.  

Another word from the same root is, in fact "to grind", whose best translation into Spanish would be "grind".

Angela Duckworth, being at the University of Pennsylvania, went to the prestigious military academy of West Point to conduct a study of more than a thousand new cadets.

These young people face in their first year those known as "Beast Barracks", which consists of a very hard seven-week training in which they work academically and physically for 17 straight hours without breaks; a test that serves as a filter and produces hundreds of premature dropouts.

Duckworth wanted to know what qualities newcomers should have to predict their success in the test once they were accepted by the school.  

 

Leaving aside the traditional system of evaluation of school grades, leadership skills and physical performance, the psychologist designed a survey that showed the willingness to persevere in the conquest of long-term goals, which she called grit.  

The degree of prediction was very high and the model became a benchmark.

"Talent + effort = Ability

⇓

Ability + effort = achievement "

That is, "the effort (or the will) is worth two". After doing seven-year math classes in schools in vulnerable areas, Lee Duckworth realized that supposedly smarter students were not necessarily the ones who did better.

If you want to know the levels of GRIT you have, the test is available on her website. Its implementation is very simple, we just have to assess the degree of identification with ten different statements, such as "new projects distract me from the previous ones", "I finish anything I start" and "my interests change year after year".Neither intelligence, nor education, nor the family situation, nor the economic level. For Duckworth, the key to success is character, the cultivation of our tenacity. 

In short, "determination is much more than just encouraging children to 'try harder' or not give up, it is also to help children find their passion." Duckworth says that the will that he tries so hard to spread is a mixture of passion and persistence, which includes: finishing what is started, remaining committed to the established objectives; work hard, even if you feel you have failed or feel like giving up and comply with a project or activity that lasts more than just a couple of weeks.

"It is trying the impossible as possible is realized" (Henri Barbusse) 

Angela Lee Duckworth’s TED talk