Grit
Ok, we have another excellent recommendation for you all! Grit, by Angela Duckworth, so thoroughly and comprehensively outlines and characterizes what true grit looks like. Through many studies, discussions, polls, and analyses, Duckworth had compiled a really powerful document in this book that covers the character trait of grit so well.
Angela Duckworth is a pioneering psychologist who has experience with teaching, business consulting and neuroscience, and as the daughter of a scientist herself, has led many published studies over the years. Through her groundbreaking work, she even earned the coveted MacArthur genius award. To explain and emphasize her theories on grit being a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance, she discusses how she learned from teachers in some of the toughest schools, cadets new to West Point, National Spelling Bee contestants, and established high achievers, such as Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll.
“To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal. To be gritty is to invest day after week after year in challenging practice. To be gritty is to fall down seven times and rise eight.”
Check out our full discussion in the podcast below, including more of our favorite quotes and how we’ve adapted the advice into our own trading journeys and lives.
This is definitely a topic that we can relate so much to with our own journeys! For example, one quote from Angela is: “It’s not looking backwards with dissatisfaction. It’s looking forward and wanting to grow.” Gosh does that just fit completely with the experience of learning to be a consistently profitable trader! Learning trading involves losses that feel like a punch to the gut, knife to the heart, and a huge blow to our ego. That’s just the reality and there’s no way around it. Forget about taking it out on Miss Market, because you will not overpower her!
We really like where Duckworth talked about the power of deliberate practice. At one point, she was describing some of the most successful among us and how those people ‘Love the burn.’ It’s the people that actually thrive on the pressures and challenges of pushing up to higher and harder levels and never relenting. When you can actually enjoy deliberate practice and painstaking effort towards your dreams, those people are more successful by her studies. One specific example she offered is on spelling bee contestants, with this excerpt: “The most important finding was that the type of practice mattered tremendously. Deliberate practice predicted advancing to further rounds in advanced competition far better than any other kind of preparation.”
And this concept makes sense, right? When you are mindlessly re-reading the same chapter of a book and trying to stay engaged - 3 hours putting forth that energy is nowhere near in comparison to 3 hours with the same chapter reading and highlighting key points as you go, handwriting notes for later review, and practicing the concepts immediately after. The outcome of those hours of time seemingly both dedicated to the same cause will create wildly different outcomes because of the actual impact made in your mind to your cause. Whether it be studying for a spelling contest, or learning from a mentor and then back-testing key setups you are working to master in your trading career. When we do something with truly focused attention and dedication - that is deliberate practice and it really does make sense as a metric for how you can delineate the high achievers from the half-assers. And, as the old saying goes, you get out of a thing what you put in!
Something that really speaks to us is this quote from Angela about a characteristic of grit being that it truly does put us in the driver’s seat! Check out this passage: “Grit rests upon the expectation that our own efforts will improve our future. I have a feeling tomorrow will be better is different than I resolve to make tomorrow better. The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting back up again.” Hell. Yes. This is total Market Mama trading vibes. We are not hoping to be successful traders. Hope is a beautiful and lovely expression but that’s exactly what it is, a feeling, that HAS to be matched with action. We are putting in the work day after day, night after night to earn our goals! When we fall into failure and the occasional weak defeatist mindset, we accept it’s part of the game, but it’s a choice to stay there or claw our way back up and out. We study, take notes, backtest strategies, confer with our close friends from our locker room. Then like the sun rises and sets, we ride at dawn, bruised up, blisters and all. There’s no other option we allow at this point.
This next part we really love. “Most gritty people see their ultimate aims as deeply connected to the world beyond themselves. For most people, purpose is a tremendously powerful source of motivation.” This is so true for us with our trading but on a larger scale with our community with Market Mamas even more so! It’s a major why for us that we could be of positive influence to developing traders that are in the heart of their struggle months and years. We are greatly motivated by the idea that us coming to you all week after week with our most authentic selves to offer up our learning opportunities as an example of this journey and what tips and tricks could help us all! Having a purpose driving our efforts with composing topics and discussions that are valuable to us and hence may be for you too - that purpose absolutely provides strength to keep putting in the late nights and early mornings. We really love the opportunity to help bring up as many early traders with us to our biggest successes together!
This constant hustling that we are all about - that isn’t really the norm though in our society. Angela said this in her book: “We all face limits, not just in talent or opportunity, but more often than we think, our limits are self imposed. We try, fail and conclude we’ve bumped our heads against the ceiling of possibility. Or maybe after taking just a few steps we change direction. In either case, we never venture as far as we might have.” I think that is the human element. The path of least resistance is easier, safer, calmer. Human nature is self-preservation and survival. But we’ve evolved a pretty significant amount since the primitive years and so, our pursuits now can have so many more opportunities! It is appealing in many ways to a lot of people to quit when the road gets too bumpy and unknown. To revert to the security and comforts of the known instead of pushing to the nerve-wracking unknown. But, then, we never really know how great we could have been! We stop before we reach the vein of gold in our mine or the breakthrough in our trading consistency. But, to Angela’s point in her book, those among us with the highest levels of grit live for the push, the hustle, the see what’s around the next switchback if I just keep climbing!
We know gaining confidence in our roles didn’t just happen overnight. The way we are developing as people, it’s also an evolution. Angela also said: “No one wants to show you the hours and hours of becoming, everyone wants to show you the highlight of what they’ve become.” This is so true, right? And this is actually one of the greatest reasons why we created Market Mamas at this point in our trading careers. We do not want to come to you all only after the fact as another success story sharing what we learned years ago that helped us reach our millions. Nope, we are here to embrace the struggle of the now and live in and out fully in these moments. Our value-add is in the now!
This authenticity with the difficulties of this journey is what actually makes it very cool and such a worthwhile pursuit. It’s the real time, hard-earned lessons that we are sharing, talking about, and surviving through essentially with you guys as we keep at it. These are the hours of our grit showing up and taking us through, giving us the raw material our podcasts and blog episodes are created from. We’re double dipping, cross-utilizing, maxing out our productivity, basically using every last piece of animal that gave us its life. We’re not wasting any of this you guys, not a moment, a day, or a year. This is what winning looks like!
We really like a major point of the discussion around grit - it’s a choice. Angela wrote: “When you keep searching for ways to change your situation for the better, you stand a chance of finding them. When you stop searching, assuming they can’t be found, you guarantee they won’t.” That is such a clear statement! If you are determined to do better, figure out what is holding you back, find another way through - then you really can figure things out and find a way! There are mentors, courses, practice opportunities, and friends to study with - there are always ways to keep working at a mission. If you truly, deeply want the end goal.
This podcast episode is full of these and many more great reminders for us all, so please check it out in it’s entirety. The topic of Grit is truly timeless and will speak directly to the heart of all our high achievers out there!
Grit has a 4.7 star rating on audible, with over 26,000 ratings!
To listen to this book for yourself through our favorite resource for audiobooks & podcasts, go to: https://www.audible.com/pd/Grit-Audiobook/B01D3AC5BA?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp
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