As college students, we start thinking about our future - what kind of job do I want to get? what kind of job can I get? Will I be successful? The pressure of going into the real world and having to "adult" is really daunting, as you approach your last year of college. We look around and often find ourselves comparing ourselves to other people. Did they do better at papers than me? Did they get better grades at exams than me? Did they get an A? It's because, at the end of the day, your grades will be the biggest, and one of the most important reflections of yourself as a student, and as a viable future employee.
*Success is a subjective term that does not have a universal definition. For the purpose of this article, I treat success as material success.*
Often times, I find myself comparing myself to my friends, and keep thinking to myself that I am not smart enough, and that I am not talented. I get scared that I won't be successful in the future. I get scared that I will end up with a boring life with no achievements. I get scared that everyone else is so much better than me that I am nothing. Since I was a kid, my family compared me a lot to my sister. She was the president of the student council, as well as a valedictorian of her class, and she always won either the first or the second place no matter what kind of contests she participated in - from swimming to painting to writing. She was talented in so many different ways, and on top of that, she was smart. I barely ever got any awards, maybe besides a few participation medals. I was never jealous of my sister, but always happy for her and proud of her. But, deep down in me, I always had this thought eating at me, that I will never be successful because I was talentless.
This one psychologist has devoted her life to prove that one can achieve success without talents. She spent 10 years studying what brings success. Everyone around her thought that she was wasting her time away. But when she turned 43, she won the MacArthur Fellowship. Only 20 people in the entire world have won this prestigious award. She proved that one can indeed be successful without having brilliant talents.
She took this example of the Treadmill experiment carried out by Harvard. The researchers had 130 participants run on the treadmills at the maximum speed. Then, the researchers had studied these participants for the next 40 years. The researchers found the drastic differences between these participants in their career, annual income, and their satisfaction level.
A lot of assumptions were made. "It must have been because of their innate talent," "their IQ (intelligence level) must be very high." However, there was this one characteristic that those who scored high in all three categories had in common: their GRIT score. (GRIT, in psychology, is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's passion for a particular long-term goal or end state, coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective)
The researchers scored each participant's GRIT score, based on how many more steps the participant took when he or she reached the limit of his or her physical strength. Essentially, those who still took one more step, even when they felt like they reached their limit, were the ones that were living the "successful" life. It was not talent that essentially conditioned success; it was GRIT that really influenced the achievement of success.
You need to be born with talent. But, you can develop and grow GRIT. Do not be despaired by the mere thought that you are not smart enough, that you do not have talent. Do not think that your life will be mediocre and you won't achieve much in your life, based on that thought. Often times, we give up midway because we define our own limits and give up when we believe we reached those limits. We often tell ourselves, "this is it. I tried my best. I gave it all." Often times, we don't actually really face our limits. We face our own assumptions of capabilities, not our true capabilities. So keep pushing yourself forward. Do not deceive yourself.
