Grit: The Competitive Advantage of High Pain Tolerance
Second Level Thinking · Issue 24
Why your ability to endure discomfort determines your ceiling. A guide to leveraging grit to achieve your goals and minimising life's "what-ifs."
Each of us have goals and dreams and start each day with good intentions to move towards the outcomes we desire most. The harsh reality being, it’s difficult to stay focused for long periods of time, as life has a way of pushing and pulling us in many directions and on any given day or week, we have a multitude of things attempting to capture our attention, taking us away from the actual thing.
I am guilty of this. I start my day with motivation and intent to focus on a specific project and then as the day evolves and multiple things take my attention; email bobs-up, phone calls are taken, ad-hoc meetings are scheduled, errands are tended to - life just gets in the way to a point that I have stopped and started multiple times and my energy has waned, with no meaningful progress made.
The deeper problem being it’s less the exception and more the rule, and if countermeasures are not taken, the cumulative effect is failure to obtain our larger goals. For many of us, myself included, we dig-in and feel if we can just will ourselves, or try harder things will miraculously change, just through sheer effort. But we should not fool ourselves; motivation is fickle and willpower comes and goes. And don’t start beating yourself up over a lack of talent, as it isn’t enough either. So what is it? Other than luck, what sets those high-achievers apart? Grit.
Grit is the perseverance and passion to achieve long-term goals.
Grit is defined as the perseverance and passion to achieve long-term goals and is often referred to as mental toughness or resilience. Angela Duckworth, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania helped popularise the term in her book: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance and has provided extensive research on the topic. For those interested, here is Duckworth’s accompanying TED talk.
Her research uncovered that:
West Point cadets who scored highest on the Grit Test were 60% more likely to succeed than their peers.
Ivy League undergraduate students who had more grit also had higher GPAs than their peers — even though they had lower SAT scores and weren’t as “smart.”
When comparing two people who are the same age but have different levels of education, grit (and not intelligence) more accurately predicts which one will be better educated.
Competitors in the National Spelling Bee outperform their peers not because of IQ, but because of their grit and commitment to more consistent practice.
Duckworth’s research was not specific to individuals and we know that at a company level, there are entities that embody and promote grit more than others. This is also evident in countries as well.
In Finland, they have this word “sisu”, which roughly translates to grit and people talk about building their “sisu”. Young children in Finland talk about, when you do a hard thing, you need to use “sisu”. If I do a really hard thing, my “sisu” will get stronger. There are companies who try to have this very self aware identity at an organisational level, pursuing things with focus, not getting too hung up on any given obstacle and being flexible about this. If I can’t get that this way, I’ll try it that way. With the vision, and mission that organises the company holding true.
Is Mental Toughness Toxic?
Mental toughness is generally seen as a positive trait and implies resilience, perseverance, and the ability to handle adversity as we have just stated. It can also carry negative connotations in certain contexts. Some of these criticisms are tied to perceptions of toxic masculinity, particularly when mental toughness is framed as emotional suppression or an unwillingness to seek help.
For example:
Emotional Suppression: some interpret mental toughness as discouraging emotional expression, leading to stress, anxiety, or burnout.
Toxic Resilience: over-glorifying toughness can result in people pushing through pain (physical or emotional) when rest, reflection, or vulnerability would be healthier.
Hyper-Competitiveness: in some cases, mental toughness is associated with an aggressive, win-at-all-costs mentality that disregards ethics or wellbeing.
Lack of Compassion: if toughness is seen as the only virtue, it can lead to dismissiveness toward those who struggle, reinforcing stigmas around mental health.
Perpetuation of Gender Norms: in male-dominated spaces (sports, finance, military, etc.), toughness is sometimes used to shame those who don’t conform to traditional masculine ideals. This ties into critiques of toxic masculinity, where emotions like vulnerability or empathy are labeled as weakness.
Does mental toughness = toxic masculinity? No. True resilience includes self-awareness, adaptability, and emotional intelligence, like Duckworth describes in her book. The issue arises when toughness is narrowly defined as never showing weakness, disregarding emotions, or refusing help—traits that align with outdated notions of masculinity that some still politicise.
Cultivating Grit
For the individual or company, start by defining what grit means relative to your goals. You will generally know where effort lacks, integrity isn’t present, or progress has stalled on something important. If not, ask your partner or discuss with your team at work. Can you feel an undercurrent, or mild anxiety beneath the surface? This is what we want to target immediately.
Break it down into smaller, executional chunks of work and realise how you can make progress quickly. If the task feels too daunting, keep reducing it in stature until it can be achieved in the next hour or so. Build on this, have time scheduled and form better habits through repeated action. This will compound.
In summary:
Define what grit means for you.
Build grit with small mental and physical wins.
Build strong habits and stop relying on motivation.
Mentally tough people don’t have to be more courageous, more talented, or more intelligent — just more consistent. Mentally tough people develop systems that help them focus on the important stuff regardless of how many obstacles life puts in front of them. It’s their habits that form the foundation of their mental beliefs and ultimately set them apart.
Like we continually say around here: you fall to the level of your systems, not rise to the level of your goals. I have avoided rehashing old ground and these previous issues will support you in this effort:
Regarding children, Duckworth says to focus on cultivating Carol Dweck’s growth mindset, which we discussed at length in issue #14. It is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed and that it can change with your effort. Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenges, they’re much more likely to persevere when they fail because they don’t believe that failure is a permanent condition.
Essentially, anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. But what about when you’re bored? What about when the work isn’t easy? What about when it feels like nobody is paying attention or you’re not getting the results you want? It’s the ability to work through silence and when things are difficult that makes the difference. Let’s cultivate some more grit in our lives and take action now.
Parting Shot
Psychologist Phil Stutz has a tool called "Reversal of Desire," and it is basically for people who can't get out of their own way, which is practically all of us. It goes something like this: there is something you want, but you will have to go through a lot of pain to get it. Since most people avoid pain, you instead choose to spend time within your comfort zone, which sounds fine, except if you spend your entire life within your comfort zone, you won't have accomplished anything, and you will have crippling regret. Again, this will resonate with many of us.
Stutz says that the solution to this is to run headfirst into the pain. He actually suggests you say to yourself, "I love pain," and then go do the hard thing. So you run headfirst into the pain, without a helmet, you do the hard thing, and a whole new world opens up to you. It will not come as a surprise to you that I like Stutz and I like this idea of getting outside your comfort zone, and I also like this idea of running headfirst into pain.
I have this funny mental image where I replace a Mel Robbins virtual high-five to myself with a blank ‘I love pain’ gaze in the mirror. Stop taking yourself so seriously and give it a try.
