Why is it that when some people fail at something, they walk away from it like a closed chapter? They simply accept defeat and move on to something else.
The simple answer is that they lack grit, they’re not resilient enough, they’re short of perseverance or they simply don’t have the interest or passion it takes to give them the perseverance it takes. Let me show you what I mean.
A few years ago, a new student from the middle east was doing his foundation program for a degree in Business Management. In the first week of term 1, he consistently attended all his classes, but he didn’t engage in the activities, nor did he interact with his classmates. In the second week of the term, he didn’t attend as often and his attendance fluctuated week after week. At the end of the term, he sat his final exams and managed to pass but only by the skin of his teeth.
When he was pulled up on his lack of discipline, it turned out I had judged him far too harshly, because as it turned out, he was more disciplined than she’d thought. His parents had registered him for Business school straight after graduating from high school in his home country and for cultural and moral purposes, he didn’t want to disappoint his parents, so he went along with their decision. It was around four weeks into the program that he wasn’t getting anywhere with his studies because of his linguistic weaknesses. His English simply wasn’t good enough, or so he thought. He was anxious about failing the course but worse than that, he was afraid of disappointing his parents. In the meantime, the anxiety was making his studies even more challenging.
He then decides to meet with the student counsellor to discuss his trajectory and what his options might be. The solution back then was to take additional academic language classes to improve his academic language skills. But the classes would cost more money which he couldn’t afford so he decided to wait outside of the Academic Skills Development classroom twice a week and find an attendee to give him a run-down of the lesson. He would then review the lesson content, do the tasks and ask for peer feedback. He did this for the entire semester because he knew that in doing so, he would be able to overcome his challenges in his Business Foundation course. And may I say, my hat’s off to him.
A few meeting and discussions later, I realised that what this student did was admirable because he went ahead with one state of mind and two thoughts; his state of mind told him that failing was not an option. His first thought was that failure was not a permanent condition. He knew that he would have as many chances as he could give himself because to a large extent, that was within his control. And if his parents couldn’t afford a second chance, he was determined that he’d find a way out of it. But what was even more interesting was his willingness fail if it meant that he would grow. Isn’t that what every educator wants to hear?!
In hindsight, only a few things could have contributed to succeeding the course that semester; grit, perseverance, and self-discipline and he knew that very well.
You see, some people quit because they think that they lack the ability do something or to solve a problem and if they fail at it once, either they’re not built for it or they’re too ashamed to face what had defeated them. Alfred Adler calls this the ‘inferiority complex’ – whereby a person accepts defeat in something because they believe it can’t be achieved almost immediately. In other words, you see yourself inferior to the task.
What people with this complex don’t know is that it’s okay to fail, it’s okay to not understand, and it’s okay to make mistakes because you can teach yourself what you don’t know yet, you can be your own educator. Your teachers facilitate your learning. They are there to walk you through the process. But ultimately, you are, to some degree, your own teacher.
And as long as you have stamina, you can persevere. As long as you have resilience you can stand up after a fall, shake yourself off, and start again and you can do all of that without losing sight of your vision and mission.
Schools have really come to understand the importance of teaching grit and it appears that more and more schools are building it into their curriculum. They’ve come to realise its importance for their students’ growth that they’ve now started to teach lessons that help students with character strengths and development. For example, instead of loading students with information in whatever the area of study is, they are teaching them to be curious because curiosity will cultivate grit. They’ve started to praise hard work instead of good results.
The idea is to build the right attitude towards learning, developing, achieving goals and maintaining self-management skills for life. They say, “it takes ability to get you there, but it takes character to keep you there”.
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