I listened to an educational program on public tv and learned the greatest indicator of future success is grit, the determination to see something through, planning and acting on goals set far in the future. IQ, emotional intelligence, and other obvious choices for success won’t do it. I got a little bored with the program and slept the afternoon away on the couch. After all, if we’re talking about goals that are years away, I have lots of future time to work on those kinds of things.
Kidding aside, I suspect the earnest public tv speaker is probably right, even though she didn’t have any suggestions how to drill some grit into people. I also took a few moments to consider the criticism I’ve received for having too much of it. “Stop and smell the flowers” and “live in the moment” advice from earnestly happy-seeming people started coming back to me.
I’m sure most of these people were well-meaning, but I couldn’t change my nature. I had an absolute need to paint pretty things, and most of my life frustrations centered around a lack of opportunities in my chosen field or the obstacles other people put in my way towards reaching my goals. The more people told me “No”, the more determined I was to show them wrong.
Sometimes I think back on my past selves and wonder how I had the strength to keep banging away at these things. Absolute focus takes an awful lot of energy to maintain over years, and I got tired, had meltdowns, and kept getting up and doing it again because I couldn’t/wouldn’t change my direction. Someday somebody’s going to say that stubborn is an integral part of grit.
“Success” is a word with a lot of meanings, and I figure the lady on tv only meant it as professional success. All those happy flower smellers probably achieved emotional successes that I didn’t spend my time achieving. I’m not sure if I regret that or if I feel pleased about it. I’ve had an interesting life, and I got paid to paint pretty things. I’ve even smelled a few flowers along the way.
I’ve been thinking about these things because of the unexpected turn my career has taken this year. I spend a lot of my time planning and number crunching, and that’s a long way from my happy time spent painting flowers. On the other hand, I have a fatalistic thought that somehow all this number crunching fits into the master plan even if I can’t see what the final goals are anymore. Or maybe all my past grit makes me good at what I’m doing now because I can think ahead to long term goals?
Anymore, I think my long term goal is to achieve a soft retirement. That’s a long ways away, but I can envision a time when I collect a pension, have money in the bank, and have unlimited time to paint pretty things. Pshaw to all those people who’ve criticized me for being too single-minded. I stop to smell the flowers every time I paint them.
This project is something I did for Mrs. Fields. If you want to buy it, you can go here, but I don’t get anything from it if you do. The cookies are always good though. The detail shows what the colors are supposed to look like. I’ll spare you my internal rant about Chinese printers interfering with my single-mindedness.
