Toying with the idea of ‘grit’- responding to Dr. Rose’s blog

I have been toying with some of the positive psychology concepts (part of my search for concepts that are worth explaining ‘what keeps us going despite adversities and brings out the best we can, at that point of time and space?’) and I stumbled upon the concept of ‘grit’ and an interesting blog (http://mappalicious.com/2013/08/26/grit-the-key-for-long-term-success/).  Since, I found this word ‘grit’ emerge in my mind like a relentless yoyo! So  I will borrow a description of ‘grit’ by the researcher Angela Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania,and then through reflection argue on the key concepts proffered in the above mentioned blog…

Duckworth in her 2007 article wrote, “Grit is described as perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” On this key concept the blogger Dr. Rose elaborates (see his blog) that some people are gritty and some may not be gritty at all (that is separate from intelligence and may be present or absent irrespective of having or not having intelligence). First I would argue that I cannot imagine some sort of emotional intelligence not being at play when persevering long-term life goals notwithstanding misfortunes; I come from the cognitive school of understanding human actions in which we must consciously or unconsciously perceive our life situations, make meaning and decide and ‘will’ to persevere! Grit is an action tendency, argued to be an emotion-cognitive attribute..therefore not free of one’s sensibilities, I contend, and that are influenced by one’s way of interpreting life situations. Second, and as important as the first point, I believe all human-beings have the potential for ‘grit’ ; some may have developed that innate ability – either, temperamentally they have been ‘gritty’ from the wake of life, or through life’s developmental stages and associated untoward experiences they have had a spiritual growth on ‘grit; or they may well have modelled significant personalities – ‘real-life’ or from ‘reading’ biographies and autobiographies of successful personalities, like Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, to name a few. Finally, grit has to be supported by other virtues, like patience, tolerance, resilience, optimism a hope, would my reader agree? It is not an attribute that can function on its own!