What can go a long way? The most common answer you will get is “Smile”. Though it is correct, I think there are two other traits not talked about often that also go a long way - Kindness and Grit.
One of life’s great paradoxes is the things that matter most are largely immeasurable or hard to measure. Kindness matters a lot, yet we have to rely mostly upon intuition to get a sense of it in others. Similarly, the effectiveness of grit as a predictor of success may vary depending on the context and how it's measured.
If you say that “something goes a long way toward doing a particular thing”, you mean it is an important factor in achieving it. In this case, kindness and grit go a long way toward making you the person you wished you were in your prime while lying on the bed at 90. We become old too soon and wise too late.
Grit
Michael Jordan is considered the best basketball player in the game's history, but did you know he’s also one of the most famous failures in the NBA? He has missed more than 9,000 shots in his career. He has also lost almost 300 games, 26 of which resulted from missing the winning shot. And who can forget that he failed to make his high school basketball team? But for Jordan, failure is the recipe for his success: “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
J.K. Rowling worked hard even when she didn’t feel like it. The author of Harry Potter suffered bouts of depression when she found herself divorced and jobless with a child to support. But she managed to write the Harry Potter series during this time. When she finished, all 12 major publishers rejected the Harry Potter script. One year later, a small publishing house called Bloomsbury, accepted it. Since then, Rowling has sold more than 400 million copies of her books and is considered one of the most successful authors.
What do Michael Jordan and J.K. Rowling have in common? Both have exemplified GRIT through their resilience and determination in the face of failure.
The term “Grit” was coined by Angela Duckworth, a psychologist and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. She defines grit as a combination of passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals. It involves having a strong desire to achieve a top-level goal and the consistency to work towards that goal over time.
In Duckworth’s view, assigning an individual success solely to talent overshadows the importance of other factors like effort, perseverance, etc. Talent which is how fast we improve in skill does matter. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive. Talent counts, but effort counts twice.
Talent x effort = skill
Skill x effort = achievement
Tennis legend Roger Federer during his commencement address at Dartmouth College in 2024 shared three tennis lessons. One of them was “Effortless is a myth”.
“People would say my play was effortless,” said Roger. And even though it looked that way to fans around the globe, he explained, "I didn't get where I got on pure talent alone. I got there by trying to outwork my opponents. I believed in myself, but belief in yourself has to be earned."
"There are days when you just feel broken [and] your back hurts, your knee hurts. Maybe you're a little sick or scared, but you still find a way to win. And those are the victories we can be most proud of, because they prove that you can win, not just when you're at your best, but especially when you aren't," he explained.
Federer acknowledged, "Yes, talent matters. I am not going to stand here and tell you it doesn't. But talent has a broad definition. Most of the time, it's not about having a gift, it's about having grit," he stated.
How to grow your Grit? - Grit can be developed through these four factors:
Interest: Finding something that fascinates you
Practice: Putting in a deliberate, focused effort to improve
Purpose: Believing your work matters to others
Hope: Believing you can improve and overcome setbacks
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 seven times, and rise eight.
Learning to stick to something is a life skill that we all have to develop.
Kindness
Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois delivered a memorable commencement speech at Northwestern University in 2023. The central theme of his speech was that kindness is a sign of intelligence and strength, not weakness.
“The best way to spot an idiot? Look for the person who is cruel. When we see someone who doesn’t look like us, or sound like us, or act like us, or love like us, or live like us — the first thought that crosses almost everyone’s brain is rooted in either fear or judgment or both. That’s evolution. We survived as a species by being suspicious of things we weren’t familiar with. In order to be kind, we have to shut down that animal instinct and force our brain to travel a different pathway.
Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being. They require the mental capacity to step past our most primal urges. I’m here to tell you that when someone’s path through this world is marked with acts of cruelty, they have failed the first test of an advanced society. They never forced their animal brain to evolve past its first instinct. They never forged new mental pathways to overcome their own instinctual fears. And so, their thinking and problem-solving will lack the imagination and creativity that the kindest people have in spades.
Over my many years in politics and business, I have found one thing to be universally true: the kindest person in the room is often the smartest.”
Every person we meet is fighting a battle we know nothing about. So be kind. Before you are quick to criticize someone, call that one a jerk, write this person off, sometimes you just have to give people the benefit of the doubt. Kindness is not something that demands hard work. It is the easiest thing in the world to execute.
Kindness and empathy are our most powerful weapons in this shared struggle called life. Acts of kindness that may feel small to us can have a big impact on others. Research has shown that kids and adults underestimate how tiny acts of generosity lift others' moods.
On May 30, 2010, at Princeton University, Jeff Bezos, founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, shared a personal anecdote from his childhood where his grandfather taught him that "it's harder to be kind than clever". This lesson stayed with Bezos throughout his life, highlighting that kindness is a choice while cleverness is a gift.
You do not always need to be the hero of every story. Sometimes, being a kind supporting character in someone else’s journey is just as fulfilling. Your small act of kindness might be the plot twist in someone else’s life. Being kind barely costs a thing. You’ll hardly remember you did it, but the other person may never forget that you did.
Compliment others more. Every act of kindness creates a ripple effect that spreads from person to person with no end in sight.
“In a world where you can be anything, be kind” - Unknown
-Sid
Sid very nice article.
Really appreciate.
Thanks
Well written, Sid! On a mathematical side note, if a persons passion is to help others, being kind; then grit x kindness = infinity, can achieve anything, haha!