Of grit and deliberate practice

**warning** rambling ahead. Not like any of my other posts are particularly refined, but I think this one is particularly bad. Beware.

Bored out of my mind. Want to do some work but I can't connect to my work laptop for some reason. Want to go out and grab some coffee but no one to do it with. Want to visit a shopping mall but not a fan of the weekend crowd.

Ughhhhhh.

Anyway, was listening to some podcast during my commute to work about what it takes to become good at something. It talked about how people that are now experts in their field did not achieve such levels of success by just being born talented but rather have spent many, many, many hours trying to be better, which is very relevant to where I am right now.

I'm at the point where if I want to excel in the industry that I'm in right now, I should be putting in as much hours as I possibly could. My concern is that I don't have a history of being super gritty and resilient. Or have I?

So here's an attempt to think of all the things--whether small or big--of times where I've unknowingly exhibited resilience, as sort of a motivation to myself.

But before that, hold that thought.

** 10 mins later **

Right, much better. Now I'm sitting in a cafe by myself, typing away on my iPad like some insufferable hipster. Never mind, I have my coffee with me now.

Back to where I left off.

So I've had pretty decent results in the past, not without hard work at all, but not with super gritty hard work either. I've always found maths practice therapeutic, so working on homework wasn't much of an issue for me. As a result, my scores for maths subjects in primary school, secondary school and pre-university have been pretty good.

Then there's also the resilience that led to me shedding the amount of weight equivalent to another petite female person. Now if only I could channel that resilience to exercising ...

I guess having good results for my degree was a result of some form of resilience too, as well as for my CFA exams, so there's that.

I guess I've been pretty resilient at blogging too? Which I believe helped me become much more articulate than I otherwise wouldn't have been. Not that I'm no where near being a writer or anything, but I wouldn't say it was all for naught either.

A swimmer interviewed by researchers studying resilience among successful people was asked whether he enjoyed training. He said something along the lines of not enjoying the daily grind as it involved getting up at ungodly hours every day, pushing the limits of his physical capabilities every day, but what he enjoyed was the whole picture.

I don't think people find something to be passionate in before committing the grittiness and resilience required, which sort of is what I appear to be doing right now. But I hope this is something that the thing that would define me, I guess?

To be fair, the past three weeks have gone by pretty quick, which I guess is a good sign.