Grains of GRIT – How Does My GRIT Help Comfort Me Outside of My Comfort Zone?

An effervescent, happy-go-lucky foodie behaviourist who is a realist and tries to find the positive in every situation. I am continuously grateful for my partner in life, family, friends and all the blessings life brings.

GRIT = Go + Resourceful + Integrity + Trust…

My process was to list all the words per letter and pick the one that held more value to me when I imagined a perceived obstacle/challenge in my personal life and at work. I chose the word that applied to both situations. I find that my GRIT words could change depending on the situation.

In terms of changing my words, I readily identified and picked my G word. For the other ones, I changed my word at least 2 to 3 times. I completed the activity by myself and I didn’t want to overthink or overanalyze the process, so I went with the word that applied to both my personal and work life. Within 5 minutes, I had all 4 words. Although it didn’t take me too long, my struggle was to cut down my list to represent each letter.

Reflecting on the words I used, I think I’m resilient in the face of an obstacle or challenge. I stay true to myself, act accordingly and rely on my intuition and others to overcome the obstacle/challenge. My values played a huge role in my GRIT word choices as they all further define/characterize who I am. They are family, genuineness, gratitude, growth and integrity.

GROW – Truthfully, when it came to deciding which approach to take to grow my GRIT, I went with the letters in the order they were presented. In a true situation, I would start with ‘resourceful’ as I would want to get the information I need to deal with the situation and access the resources I need to manage the situation effectively. I feel like ‘go’ is the next part of the process for me with ‘integrity’ and ‘trust’ occurring throughout. I define growth as learning something new, gaining a new perspective, using a mastered skill and applying it to a new situation. Growing my GRIT requires me to build new experiences, learn from and reflect on those experiences. Sometimes it isn’t right away, but when I’m ready to do so and make mistakes as well as own up to those mistakes.

To say I only focus on one area of my life to grow my GRIT would be untrue. I feel that I’m constantly having to apply my GRIT in all areas (home, work, rest and play). My values remain with me and, as such, they constantly influence how I approach and manage different situations. In terms of my confidence for growing my GRIT, I would say 9 using a scale of 1 (not confident) to 10 (very confident) because learning is very important to me and if I stop learning then I stop growing. The reason I gave a 9 and not 10 is sometimes I just want to tune everything out and vegetate.

Excerpts from Know, Grow and Show Your GRIT! Self-Discovery Made Simple (pg. 113-115)

Meet this GRITizen and many more in the audio version on March 13th!