Be the person that finishes what you start. Are you the type of person that sticks with something until you accomplish what you set out to accomplish, or do you quit when things get tough?

Mastery of anything requires hours and hours of deliberate practice. It’s not sexy. It’s work. In her book Grit, author Angela Duckworth describes grit as having the passion to accomplish your top-level goals and the perseverance to follow through until they are accomplished. A person maintains grit by aligning their top-level goals with their overall mission.

How do you get good at persevering through tough situations to reach a top level goal? By practicing grit in other areas of your life. By being the type of person that follows through and does what you say you are going to do. Be the type of person that finishes something once you start it. Don’t quit. When you start reading a book, keep reading daily until you finish the book. Want to learn how to play the guitar? Don’t quit – power through the difficult seasons of practice until you can play the guitar.

Looking to reach financial freedom and retire early by investing in real estate? Keep working, learning, and growing until you have mastered the art of real estate investing. Don’t quit when you “fail.” Because you will fail. And you will fail again. Success is built on a big pile of failures.

As the legendary Wizard of Westwood UCLA basketball coach John Wooden said, “success is never final, and failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.” The road to success is littered with failure. The important thing is to continue to press on. The cool thing is that grit builds on grit. For example, if you show grit in one area of your life, you are training yourself to practice grit in other areas. If you stuck with the obstacles of playing high school football – powering through the heat, the endless conditioning, healthy communication with your teammates – then you are much more likely to be grittier in other areas of your life. You have a better idea of what it takes to win. Winning requires self-control, delayed gratification, and the ability to work well with others.

The art of grit can apply to any area of your life. Grit builds on grit. What do you want to accomplish? Start with something smaller like learning how to drive a manual-shift car or learning how to draw. Write it down, review it daily. What is required in order for you to get there? Go do it, don’t quit. Practice grit during the difficult times until you get it. Then go apply that same grit to something bigger consistent with your life mission statement. Get after it.