Grit is a hot topic.

A sociologist responsible for bringing grit into focus, Angela Duckworth, received the MacArthur “genius” award. The book Duckworth wrote distilling the research into grit, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, is a best seller. The TED talk on the subject of grit has been widely viewed. Schools from across the United States are developing curricula and assessments centered on grit.

Grit has been defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals. The concept grew out of the efforts of psychologists to better understand and quantify personality traits, beyond cognitive ability, that indicate individual excellence and signal future success. Duckworth and colleagues explain, “Grit entails working toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.” They argue that grit is critical to individual excellence. Popular debate exists about whether grit is the most important element of excellence, and/or really all that different from other previously defined character-related personality traits. Critics also highlight the extent to which context and culture play a role in the development of grit. (Slate, New Yorker, and The Atlantic).

In thinking about wide-awakeness, several definitions have been offered to help us understand the nuances of the concept. Alfred Schutz explains wide-awakeness as, “a plane of consciousness of highest tension originating in an attitude of full attention to life and its requirements.” Camus states, “one day the ‘why’ arises … at the end of acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time inaugurates the impulse of consciousness.” In talking about wide-awakeness in schools, Maxine Greene reflects, “The challenge is to make the ground palpable and visible to our students, to make possible the interplay of multiple voices, of ‘not quite commensurable visions.’ … And yes it is to work for responsiveness to principles of equality, and principles of freedom, which can still be named within the contexts of caring and concern.”

5 things we can learn about wide-awakeness and grit

1.“Talent x effort = skill. Skill x effort = achievement.”

Duckworth and colleagues have created a basic formula for grit. In it, the concepts of talent and skill are woven into the fabric of effort and achievement. What skills are included within this formula? What skills must be considered gritty skills that we can practice and develop? Achievement can look like wide-awakeness when it is defined as living a meaningful existence driven by love. Grit needs to be applied to a broad definitions of achievement, to skill sets beyond the narrow perimeters of employability and profit, and to the big questions of our times that require excellence to be answered.

2. Perseverance and creativity are interrelated

Perseverance is central to grit. Artists know a little bit about perseverance. Rehearsal. Practice. Drafts. Blogger Mark Mason calls the moments between when the muse speaks, the heavens part, and lightening strikes the shit sandwich. The shit sandwich is what happens between shear joy and absolute desperation. Perseverance lives within and between and around the shit sandwich. Ultimately, creativity is the shit sandwich. Wide-awakeness is the shit sandwich. Artists’ grit allows them to thrive within the shit sandwich.

3. Grit and wide-awakeness involve work

Work in the context of wide-awakeness and grit can be understood as an existential project. An existential project is the work we are put on earth do. Some people call it calling. Some people call it our dharma code. Some people call it true purpose. When we are pursuing our existential project, passion and perseverance are as easy as breath. Grit simply is. When we are pursuing our existential project, we are wide-awake.

4. Passion is key to both grit and wide-awakeness

Passion is the driving force behind both grit and wide-awakeness. Without passion, a person is not gritty enough to complete a long-term project. Without passion, a person is not wide-awake enough achieve the goals of presence, gratitude, work, care, and love. What drives passion is a unique and individual question. The closer we get to understanding and living our passions, the grittier and more wide-awake we are, and the better off our world is.

5. Grit and wide-awakeness are hopeful, positive, and forward thinking ideas

Both grit and wide-awakeness speak to creating our better selves. Achieving a goal. Building a dream. Finding strength in challenging times. Whether we are born with the capacities of grit and wide-awakeness, can practice and build them, or life becomes a dance of both grit and wide-awakeness the better we will be when we set our sights on excellence and compassion, and put collective effort toward meeting the world’s needs.