Ben Connelly - Grit: A Practical Guide to Developing Physical and Mental Toughness

W hy You Should Read This Book:

If you feel overwhelmed in life, or if you find routine tasks and chores beyond you, or if you imagine other people have everything together, but you could never do the same for you own life, then this book is for you. I wrote it for people who feel vulnerable or incapable.

I also wrote this book for people who do have their lives generally together, but wish they had more willpower. Whether you have trouble sticking to diets, or you want to become physically active but feel a little intimidated, this book is for you.

Its also for anyone who wants self-improvement, but lacks the energy. Its for anyone who wants to develop discipline, but is unsure of how to do so. It is for athletes who want to improve their performance. And its for anyone else who wants to become tougher, both in mind and body. Or even anyone whos simply curious about grit and hopes to learn something.

This is not a book filled with meaningless mantras or hacks and tricks. I offer actionable advice, which you can use today to make a positive difference in your own life. At the end of each chapter, you will find examples of challenges that will both test you and increase your willpower. Throughout the book, you will find examples from my life, and from the lives of others, which illustrate various lessons and techniques with the goal of showing you how you might apply those lessons in your life.

You may not benefit from every chapter of this book. Everyone will find that some sections prove more useful to them than others. Take it as you will.

Finally, I wrote this book for adults. I assume that every reader has reached the age of majority and can legally make decisions for himself or herself. Some of the suggestions contained within this book involve physical and mental risk. Please use your own judgment to determine your readiness to take these risks. If you think it prudent, please consult with a friend, family member, or physician before undertaking any of the physical challenges. I am not liable for any action you take based on reading this book.

Why Should You Listen to Me?

By now, you may wonder who I am. Why should you listen to anything I have to say about physical and mental toughness? I am not special. I am not a Navy SEAL, nor a Green Beret. Neither am I a professional athlete, nor a successful CEO. I am not even a researcher who has studied the science of willpower. Im just an average person.

Most books about grit are written by former SEALs, former football players or coaches, or Fortune 500 executives. These books can feel inaccessible or inapplicable to many people outside of sports, the military, or the C-suite. Some of these books are highly specific: focused entirely on professional sports or C-level business.

While most people can certainly learn something valuable from these books, not all of what they teach will be directly useful in everyday life.

My goal with this book is to give you real techniques, action steps, and challenges that you can begin implementing today. Crucially, Ive tried to include a wide variety that will be applicable to people from all walks of life. You can evaluate for yourself each of the techniques and strategies I provide and test them out starting today. Instead of motivational mantras, I will focus on concrete methods that will be easy to understand, easy to implement, and easy to evaluate.

This book is a practical guidebook to developing grit rather than a theoretical or psychological treatise on the subject. But I will draw on psychology. And I will discuss the theory behind practical concepts. At times, I will even draw on philosophy and literature.

But back to the question of why you should listen to me. You should listen to me because I hope to use my life as an example of what is possible for you.

I will use personal anecdotes, in addition to other relevant examples, to illustrate key concepts. I hope you will find these useful. In using examples from my own life, Im not trying to celebrate my accomplishments. Like most of you, I find self-indulgent authors irritating. I will try to avoid focusing too much on myself. I will only use examples from my life when I believe they will be relevant and useful to you. I will use my personal experience both to show you what I have found that has worked and to help you avoid mistakes I have made in the past.

Who I Am:

Of course, immediately after I say I will avoid focusing on myself, I find it necessary to talk about myself to prove to you that what I have to say is worth your while. I will try to keep this short.

I was not born with discipline, determination, and grit. Over time, I have developed all three through trial and error and by learning from those who have gone before. Like many people, I have experienced my share of situations in which I felt weak and inadequate. If you currently feel that way, I will attempt to show you that you can overcome those feelings.

I was a nerd as a kid (before it was cool). In elementary school, I wasnt athletic or popular. In middle school, I was awkward, undisciplined, and even cowardly. One year, all of the fourth-graders had to run the mile as part of a fitness test. I was one of the slowest students in the grade. If I remember correctly, only one or two kids ran slower than me. And they walked most of it. Today I am a serious distance runner with two sub-three-hour marathons, hundreds of shorter races, and tens of thousands of miles under my belt.

When I was in seventh grade, my boy scout troop went on a wilderness survival camping trip in November. We backpacked a short distance to a campsite where we built shelters out of sticks and leaves to sleep in and cooked our meals in a campfire. That night, I was the only kid to back out. I was too scared to sleep in the shelter. I made the scoutmaster call my parents and walk me out to where they waited to pick me up and take me home to sleep in my own bed.

Since then, I have not only slept in a shelter I built myself (on another cold, November night), I have gone on a number of solo backpacking trips along the Appalachian Trail. Sometimes I shared a campfire or a campsite with people I met along the way. Other times I slept alone in the middle of the woods. Ive spent more hours alone in the snow or the rain or the heat or the sleet than I can count.

If you need more convincing: I take cold showers every day, routinely fast for close to twenty-four hours (while continuing to run and lift weights), and run in all weather (sleet, subzero temperatures, extreme heat, etc.).

The point of these examples is not to talk myself up, but rather to demonstrate that not only can grit be developed, but that anybody can do it. If I can develop grit, you can. All it takes is the desire to develop it and a willingness to work at it. Genuine desire to develop grit will give you the motivation to pick yourself up when you fail, and to continue seeking self-improvement until you actually achieve it.

In Summary:

This book will not teach you how to be extraordinary. You will not see herculean results overnight. This book is not written for the top one percent of performers. It is a book written by an ordinary man for ordinary men and women. Elite goals require elite training and elite living. For the vast majority of individuals, the principles and non-elite strategies included in this book will prove far more achievable in daily life.