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“I’m still waiting to hear back from…”, “I don’t have time to…”, “I just need to wait until I…”, “What if I…”  Excuses. We all make them.  They make us feel good.  They enable us to let ourselves off the hook when we lose momentum, motivation or interest in a goal. But excuses don’t get us what we want.

The number one factor missing in most women’s life goals is GRIT. 

GUTS

RESILIENCE

INITIATIVE

TENACITY

Let’s take a look at GRIT. Firstly, it takes Guts; the willingness to experiment, to take risks and to step outside the comfort zone.  Fear of change is one of the biggest blockers when it comes to upgrading our lives. It takes guts to get up off the couch and run 5kms, to leave a job to start a new career or to take an honest look at a personal debt situation. Having guts means you accept that the change is going to be scary or confronting, but you chose to do it anyway. Women with guts back themselves and take calculated risks.

Resilience is a set of psychological skills and resources that enable us to overcome obstacles and bounce back from disappointment. Creating change in our lives can lead us down a rocky road, sometimes we take one step forward only to then take another two back. Resilient women see the bigger picture, they understand that stress may be a natural part of change and they put strategies in place to manage. For example, imagine you are working toward the goal of running a 10km fun run and during your training, you sprain your ankle. A resilient response might be to swap the running training for swimming and rowing while your ankle heels, thus continuing your training whilst taking care of your body. Resilient women are creative in the face of adversity.

Initiative is all about being a self-starter, having the forward momentum to move from ideas to action. Sometimes all it takes is one step toward a goal to start the momentum, yet other times, it’s a struggle to get things happening. Having initiative means we are independent in our motivation, we rely on our own internal and external resources to make things happen. It’s about taking accountability for our own success and set-backs, owning our progress and driving ourselves through the stages of goal attainment. Initiative makes it hard to blame others because it’s up to us! The woman with initiative lives by the motto ‘If it is to be, it’s up to me’.

Tenacity is the capacity to keep going, maintaining the guts, resilience and initiative throughout the duration of the goal journey. Tenacious women have a stubborn determination about getting what they want, they don’t allow distractions or temptations to stand in their way, they have goals to achieve! 

The GRIT Formula

Our levels of GRIT can be accelerated or inhibited by two factors;

1. Mindset – our attitudes and expectations about the world (external focus)
2. Self Belief – our level of confidence in our own capacity to be successful (internal focus)

When our mindset is positive and our self belief, strong, our capacity to achieve our goals becomes magnified. Imagine you want to start an online business. You have rated well on the GRIT factors, you pay attention to the other success stories of women who have started online businesses and you believe anything is possible (positive mindset), AND you have faith in your own ability to make things happen, based on your history of fulfilled goals (strong self belief). This will lead to exciting possibilities.

However, when our mindset is negative and our self belief, weak, our capacity to achieve our goals is inhibited.  Even if you rated well on the GRIT factors, you may hold doubts about the efficacy of online businesses and believe that other successful online businesswomen were probably ‘lucky’ (negative mindset), AND you might focus on your past failures and doubt you could pull off something like this (weak self belief), then you are not likely to be popping the champagne at your online business launch any time soon.

When mindset and self belief are positive and strong, the GRIT Formula looks like this:

GRIT X (+M) X (+SB) = ACCELERATED RESULTS

That is, GRIT multiplied by positive mindset and strong self belief leads to accelerated results.

When mindset and self belief are negative and weak, it looks more like this:

GRIT X (–M) X (–SB) = MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

You can apply the GRIT formula to your goals to predict your likelihood of success.  Give yourself a rating between 1 - 10 for each GRIT factor: guts, resilience, initiative and tenacity. Next, give yourself a rating on mindset and self belief on a scale from 1 - 10. Enter the scores into your equation and see what comes out.

In the online business example, the first approach would look something like this:

G(6) + R(7) + I(4) + T(5) X M(7) X SB(8) = 1,232

And the second approach, more like this:

G(3) + R(4) + I(5) + T(4) X M(2) X SB(3) = 96

To gain a more objective view of your GRIT, take the Grit Survey. This was developed by Martin Seligman’s research team at the University of Pennsylvania, the home of Positive psychology.

So let go of your old excuses and start taking control of your future. Visualise the life you want, put some SMART goals in place and activate your GRIT. Gritty women get results!

Melanie is a Premium member of Business CHicks, request her online business card and connect with her here.

Melanie Schilling is a psychologist and coach who works with women to create and drive positive change in their lives.  Melanie founded the popular Lifeography group coaching program for women.  See www.betalented.com.au  and www.lifeography4women.com