Grit and Courage was the topic for a speech I gave to a group of grade 7 & 8 students and their parents last night at a Catholic school in a small town in Ontario.
Joe, the headmaster had become concerned that students were unprepared for the harsh realities of jobs, survival and life in a changing world.
I was invited to tell my story of a different life to that of most people living in the first world.
A life of adversity, failure, some success, heartbreak, exhilaration, career changes, travels to places few people would know about.
I gave the short version of my story for about 15 minutes. Then I spoke about some of the lessons I had learned during my life. I explained that I had written a book 5 Steps to Thriving on Adversity which had much to do with grit.
In the book, I set out the key values or characteristics that I felt had enabled me and others to not only overcome adversity but to thrive on it.
Grit is an unstated ingredient in all 5 steps
Choice
Determination
Gratitude and Acceptance
Think – Don’t panic
Perseverance
I explained that there are really 7 steps because I had combined Gratitude and Acceptance and had not treated Faith as a separate step because I believed it was like an umbrella over all the others, part of each step.
Those were my selections from my experiences and my observations over a lifetime of how others chose to survive and thrive. And those who just gave up, did not overcome obstacles and chose to remain victims.
I used stories from each section of the book to illustrate how the steps had helped me get through a difficult period of my life. Some of the stories related special moments or “Diamonds” that I still cherish 40 years later. Especially this one about the encounter with the warthog. The bit about the warthog starts halfway down the page.
As an example of the importance of Thinking and not blindly reacting, I told the story of how I did not shoot a man I thought was trying to attack me because I thought about what I was seeing and something did not fit the picture. It’s in this post How I Found Out What I was made of
The consequences of blindly reacting and pulling the trigger could have been fatal.
Grit in a Changing World
If we look around us, we can see that the world is changing rapidly. Types of jobs, whole industries have disappeared. An increasing number of people are working two or more jobs to survive. The number of freelance and contract workers is increasing. Industries, living and commuting arrangements, working patterns are disrupted.
That creates stress and hardship.
We are doing our school students a huge disservice if we do not teach them that courage and grit are vitally important for survival and success in the years ahead.
It is wonderful that most people under 60 living in North America, Europe and much of Asia have not been caught up in major conflicts, experienced a severe economic meltdown, natural disasters or huge epidemics of dread diseases. Unlike the experiences of those earlier generations who were already adults in the first half of the 20th century.
The downside to that is that life has been relatively safe and non-threatening for most people.
They have not been tested.
Just as resistance to disease can be built up by exposure to a mild form of the disease by vaccination, so can grit by being exposed to adverse conditions, tests of physical and mental endurance.
The political correctness movement has made it difficult for children and in many cases, adults to get the exposure to difficult situations and danger they need to develop grit and courage.
Society has become too bland.
That problem is being recognised by schools in England making their playgrounds riskier as I wrote about in this post. And headmasters like Joe with common sense and a desire to prepare children for the real world, not the wishy-washy one misguided societal engineers are trying to enforce.
Here is a video of a TED presentation by Angela Lee Duckworth on Grit. It’s only 6 minutes and shows why Grit is so important.
bsp;
What do you think? Leave a comment.
Runner photo courtesy pixabay