Channel 4 recently showed a ravishing documentary called, The Secret Life of 4Year Olds. Basically, 10 4-year olds were left to get on with it in a nursery/reception rigged with cameras and their behavior was analysed by child psychologists.



The traits on display included:

• Dominant
• Less dominant
• Aggressive
• Team-player
• And most interesting to me, having grit – a trait that is believed to be more important in determining life success than IQ and most other traits.
  

Half the 4-year olds were male, half female, mostly white – there were two mixed race kids (one black+white, Skyla, and the other white+oriental, Jayda), there was one black person, a boy called Christian – he was the one who was said by the psychologists to have grit in “ample supply”.

The children were split into two teams, dominant and less dominant, and asked to build a den; this task involved team-work, a very hard ask at that age.

The less dominant personalities were able to work together and build the den within the required amount of time; unable to reach agreement, the dominant children failed to work together, lost interest and their den wasn’t build.

The teachers awarded the less dominant team the “winners” and asked the dominant kids how they felt about that. They obviously weren’t happy but got over it and went on to play. Christian (in the dominant team) admitted that he was “sad” about the loss, however, instead of just giving up he asked Chaim another dominant kid (and a bit of a bully) to help him finish the dominant team’s den. Chaim refused so Christian went on to do it himself and finished although, by his own admission, it was very hard to do on his own. 

He didn’t do it for any award, he knew the other team had already won but he went on to do it anyway to overcome his sadness and perhaps feel a sense of completion. I’m not going to lie, I was super impressed: he was exactly the sort of child everyone hopes to have, very methodical, he played well with others but it’s his grit that I will focus on.

What is Grit?

Grit is stamina and sticking to your goals with passion and perseverance for long periods of time, no matter what. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon not a sprint.

According to Wikipedia, “Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's passion for a particular long-term goal or endstate, coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective. This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie within a gritty individual’s path to accomplishment, and serves as a driving force in achievement realization.”

Grit has been studied very widely by psychologists and studies suggest that people with grit are more successful because they’re unfazed by stumbling blocks. For lack of a better phrase they just get sh*t done come hell or high water.

Watch this TED talk on Grit:

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You’ve heard it said a million times before, everyone has ideas but only a tiny percentage of people actually do something about them. 

Usually, people blame it on fear that leads to inaction or the lack of resources required to make their idea a reality. However, the truth is not everyone is cut out for the realities of taking the risk to run a business. No, they are not lazy, it has a lot more to do with the stories they have told themselves and the unshakeable habits they have formed over a lifetime.

If you are in this situation before you can even contemplate starting a business you need a huge mindset shift and that may sometimes not be possible for you because you don’t want it. Rather than talking in riddles, I am going to give three very specific traits that I have noticed in friends that would hate the realities of entrepreneurship.

1: No Guilt When Not Productive

In my personal world, when I wake up, I have to be productive as soon as possible otherwise an overwhelming guilt will sweep over me. My productivity is normally set by a to-do list rather than the number of hours that I work.

Once I have achieved the goals of the day or at least the ones I realize were realistic then I can relax without feeling guilty.

On the other hand, I have observed some people don’t see things in the same way and don’t carry this productivity guilt at all. They will wake up, watch some TV or YouTube videos, read a newspaper, play video games and before you know it, two or three hours have passed. They then have a shower and get ready and then lo-and-behold it’s lunch time and they haven’t done a thing.

Importantly, they don’t feel guilty about it at all. It’s almost enviable the way they can relax like that. They don’t see that passage of time as a lack of productivity but simply as them carrying out rituals they enjoy before they get on to doing some work.

2: A Different Attitude About The Need For Relaxation

Outside of scheduled holidays many believe you need to pace yourself and incorporate relaxation into your schedule. Nowadays many are raised with rituals like taking the weekend off or having a lie-in at the weekend but many entrepreneurs don’t see it like that.

The typical entrepreneur normally wakes up to work on a project unrelated to his day-job in his relaxation times – her business is her hobby. So, if you have an employer then you see your free time as the time to work on the business that you’d like to make a reality. You see it as fun, not as work at all.

Ultimately, if and when you do manage to transition out of a regular job this habit of using free time to work on pet projects does not go away. If anything it comes on with a vengeance, taking time to just chill is a struggle.

My grandfather who died when I was less than three summed it up beautifully, he said to my dad, holidays are not an opportunity to do nothing, they are an opportunity to work on things you don’t normally get a chance to work on. 

These are my TV watching habits – what are yours? I found some interesting stats on TV watching in America. By ethnic groups, Nielsen finds that:

• African Americans watch an average of 218 hours of television a month (that’s over 7 hours a day!)
• Whites watch 155.3 hours (5 hours per day) 
• Hispanics an average of 123.2 hours (4 hours per day) and 
• Asian Americans an average of 92.3 hours (3 hours per day).

I don’t even know what to make of these numbers. Personally I think poverty and not race has more to do with these numbers. Asian Americans are on average wealthier than white Americans who in turn have higher incomes than African Americans. As TV is a very cheap form of entertainment, the lower one’s income level the more of it you do.

However, does this then lead to a culture of TV watching? It’s also generally accepted that Asian parents push their kids harder to excel in school leading to the myth that Asians are the smartest when in fact hard work has more to do with it.

Although correlation does not imply causation I personally find these TV watching stats worrying because reading is just as cheap if not cheaper than TV. I bought 22 Walt Disney Classics for Little Zeusy just before he was born for £0.29 (44 cents) each at a local charity shop. All of them were almost brand new. I could not believe it – 22 books for less than it costs for a pack of cigarettes.

I then decided to look at smoking stats by income level. Interestingly:

• In the US, 27.9% of adults who are below the poverty level smoke, compared to 17% of adults who are at or above the poverty level (source: CDC)
• 24.7% of adults who do not graduate from high school smoke, compared to just 9.1% of those with a college education and 5.9% of those with a graduate degree
• The stats are similar in the UK, roughly 20% of the population smokes; smoking rates are highest among the unemployed, blue-collar workers and the less educated.

Smoking is a cripplingly expensive habit. An article on thinkprogress.org states that smokers in New York who earn less than $30,000 a year spent on average almost a quarter (23.6%) of their annual income on cigarettes, while the state’s wealthier smokers — defined as those earning over $60,000 a year — spent an average of just 2.2% of their earnings to support their smoking habit. 

So clearly, there might be a lack of knowledge regarding “good habits” at lower income levels. However, I also found evidence online that tobacco companies target more of their marketing at low-income groups because the stresses of their lives make them more likely to take up the habit. And because the habit is so common amongst lower income groups it is more accepted and much harder to give up than is the case amongst the more affluent.

Anyhow, the links here are complex. I aim only to make one point. If you choose to break away from something that most people do the impact can be dramatic. Shun TV and substitute that time with listening to audiobooks or actually reading quality books and you will gain a lot of useful knowledge. Substitute smoking for going to the gym and the health benefits can and will translate into wealth benefits too.

Anything lots of people do is probably NOT good for you. How will you be different?

Want to Build a 6-Figure Beauty Business from the comfort of your sofa? Then my course is designed for YOU! 

"Beauty" includes a WIDE range of products from the not so obvious non-perishable foods and crafts to the more obvious hair, makeup, fashion, health & fitness.