Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetimes and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts how far contestants at the Scripps National Spelling Bee will go.

The good news is that if you aren’t particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit, more often than not, believe that they just don’t have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking, well, there’s no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

We are all impressed by demonstrations of ability. Pro athletes, computer whizzes, math geniuses, bold entrepreneurs, accomplished musicians, gifted writers—these people are widely admired because we appreciate their extraordinary aptitudes. And we envy them a little, too. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t wish that he were a little smarter, a little more creative, a bit better at communicating, or perhaps more socially skilled.

Research by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck reveals that people subscribe to one of two theories about the nature of ability. Entity theorists believe that their abilities are fixed and, more often than not, innate. They expect their performance to be relatively stable. In other words, you have just so much intelligence (or creativity, or charm), and there isn’t anything you can do about it. (They are, incidentally, wrong. Ability doesn’t work that way.)

Incremental theorists, on the other hand, believe that ability is malleable—that it can and does change with effort and experience. And according to the evidence, they are perfectly right. You can get more ability if you want more. All you need is grit.

Grit, in the sense that psychologists use the term, is persistence and commitment to long-term goals. Study after study of successful people—whether they are athletes, musicians, mathematicians, or inventors—shows that the key to success and enhanced ability is deliberate practice, thousands and thousands of hours spent mastering the necessary skills and knowledge. That kind of practice doesn’t happen without grit.

Grit is all about not giving up in the face of difficulty, even when you’re tired or discouraged or just plain bored. And the best predictor of not giving up is how we explain that difficulty in the first place. When you’re having a hard time, what do you blame?

Entity theorists, who are convinced that ability is fixed, tend to blame setbacks on a lack of ability. If this is hard for me, I must not be good at it. As a result, they lack grit; they give up on themselves way too soon, inadvertently reinforcing their (mistaken) belief that they can’t improve.

Incremental theorists, on the other hand, tend to blame setbacks on more controllable factors—insufficient effort, using the wrong strategy, poor planning. When faced with difficulty, they try harder, armed with the belief that improvement is always possible. This gritty attitude pays off in a big way, leading to far greater long-term accomplishments.

Interestingly, recent research suggests that entity theorists not only lack the grit needed to improve, but actually find improvement to be, often unconsciously, anxiety provoking because they believe it shouldn’t be possible.

In studies conducted by University of Toronto psychologists Jason Plaks and Kristin Stecher, college students were given difficult reasoning problems. After the first round, everyone received feedback that he or she performed at the sixty-first percentile. Next, all of the students were given a lesson on how to approach solving the problems, including tips and strategies. After a second round of problems, some students were told that their performance had not changed, while others were told that it had improved to the ninety-first percentile.

Not surprisingly, everyone who improved was happy to have done so, but entity theorists, believing that they really shouldn’t have improved, also reported significant increases in anxiety. The more anxiety they felt, the worse they performed on a third set of problems that followed. (In fact, entity theorists who were told that they didn’t improve did better on the third set than those who were told that they did!)

So when we don’t expect to improve, does this mean we actually prefer not to improve? I wouldn’t go that far. Everyone welcomes improvement, but only for entity theorists does that improvement come with anxiety. That anxiety, in turn, undermines future performance, eroding our confidence that improvement was ever actually real.

Looking back, these studies have given me some insight into some episodes in my own life. For instance, take my experience with billiards. I freely admit that I am a terrible pool player. I played a few times in college and it was a sorry sight. I wrote the game off quickly, believing that I just didn’t have the hand-eye coordination to ever be any good at it. (I should mention that I had a long track record of lacking hand-eye coordination. When my brother tried to teach me to catch a ball in our backyard when I was ten, I caught it with my face and broke my nose.)

Years ago I dated an avid pool player, who convinced me one night at our neighborhood bar to give the game another chance. Before beginning, he gave me a brief lesson—how to hold the cue, how to line up a shot, and so on. We played, and something totally unexpected happened—I played well. In fact, I came awfully close to beating him. And I remember feeling both elated that I had improved, and completely freaked out. Did I really improve? How was that possible? I’m not good at this sort of thing. Maybe it was a fluke.

A few days later we played again, and I approached the table with a nervousness I hadn’t felt before, even when I thought I’d play terribly. What would happen? I had no idea. And that nervousness wreaked havoc on my ability to play. I couldn’t sink a ball to save my life. I knew it was a fluke, I thought. I’m definitely not good at this sort of thing.

Granted, we’re talking about playing pool here, and I realize that it’s not a skill that usually has life-altering consequences. But what if it was? What if instead of writing off my pool-playing ability, I had written off my ability to do math, learn to use complex computer programs, write well, take on leadership roles, be creative, embrace risk, give compelling presentations, or become more socially skilled? What if I believed that I couldn’t improve when it came to something that really mattered?

The bottom line is, no matter what kind of learning opportunities you are given, you probably aren’t going to see lasting improvement if, deep down, you don’t believe improvement is possible. You just won’t have the grit for it. If improvement isn’t possible, it makes no sense to try, especially when the going is tough. Believing that your ability is fixed becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the self-doubt it creates will sabotage you in the end.

To be successful and truly make the most of your potential, it’s critical to examine your beliefs, and when necessary, challenge them. Change really is always possible, and the science here is crystal clear. There is no ability that can’t be developed with experience. The next time you find yourself thinking, “But I’m just not good at this,” remember: you’re just not good at it yet.

Putting It into Practice: Get Grit

1. Are there aspects of your job that you feel you aren’t good at it? Take a moment to think about that. Be honest.
2. Now, deep down, do you believe you can become good at them, or do you think you are stuck just as you are? If it’s the latter, your belief has been doing you a great injustice, because it’s wrong. Remember that improvement is always possible.
3. Challenge that entity thinking whenever you catch yourself succumbing to it! When you focus on improving and developing your skills, you naturally become grittier in pursuit of your goals.