Grit is the father archetype - the trait responsible for the development of the other three. It's a powerful somatic personality trait - the driver of achievement, and the workhorse of ambition. But it does require counterbalance from the other archetypes for it to be wielded as an asset, and not a liability.
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When Your Grit Personality Traits are Assets
You are a fearless warrior. Your strength, encapsulated by a steady intensity, is both powerful and peaceful at the same time. You are someone who takes a stand, stays with their decision once it’s made, and leads others with a sense of direction most have a hard time finding for themselves.
You take great pride in your achievements — always striving for the few things that matter.
Focused, confident and assertive, you command the room with singularity and purpose. Others rely on you because when you set out to a task, no obstacle is too difficult to overcome in your dedication to reach your destination.
Your fortitude and fearlessness compound to develop both an outer and an inner strength, one that can weather chaos and unpredictable situations. Knowing you may need to strike at any time, you conserve your energy when you can, still working diligently on the long game.
When Being Gritty is a Liability
Your formidable drive begins to turn aggressive or impatient. As someone unafraid to take leaps into the unknown, you are now bulldozing and steamrolling others on your path to win: be it being right, finishing first, or getting the gold. Perhaps all of the above for the megalomaniacs.
Your intensity is impossible to be around as anyone who tries to calm or slow you down is met with impulsivity, anger or undeserved backlash. As if on speed, you are maniacal in reaching your goals and use the momentum of stress to propel you to the finish line.
You become selfish, obsessive, and righteous — perhaps even antagonizing or belittling those who get in your way. If rather evil, you’ll take advantage of others as minions in your grand scheme, ensuring all the glory points to your name. Like a raging bull, you are charging towards the future without consequence, consciousness or care.
Related Traits
Activity
Achievement
Assertiveness
Directness
Striving
Momentum
Decisiveness
Intensity
Corresponding Pillar of Mind Body Training:
Strength Training
Cultivating Grit
As someone who's grit dominant, it's important to recognize that you can have a high or low level of capacity (of development) in that archetype. As odd as it might seem, you can be grit dominant, but not be very gritty. Think of the tough guy poser persona that crumbles when someone bigger, stronger, or merely more self assured enters the room. Grit may still be your authentic default, but it may not be serving you without further cultivation. So how do we do that?
Regardless if grit is your somatic default or not, it's cultivated in the same way for all of us - through the application of stress, and organizing structural integration, stability and tension to combat it. This can happen in palatable doses like pushups and bodyweight squats for beginners, or limit-strength deadlifting for those more advanced.
The critical factor is activating the structural and tensional forces needed to resist (and overcome) obstacles in your environment.
This can certainly be achieved in a variety of ways, but nothing tops weight/resistance training within the Weightlessness model of mind-body development.
Training Grit Personality Types to Become Balanced and Centered
In the Weightlessness Somatic Coaching Model, Grit lies on the will-flow axis - it's antithetical archetype being Fluid. This will be glaringly obvious both to anyone with a modicum of mind-body training experience, and to those who have tried to coach stubborn, headstrong individuals at some point in their career.
If Grit is cultivated via the application of will to overcome resistances, both internal and external, through the application of systemic tension, then it shouldn't come as a shock that the liabilities stemming from Grit traits manifest from a lack of letting go - or holding on too tight - of fixed notions, ideals, and wants.
The first step in balancing this incredible archetype is to cultivate its antithesis - relaxation.
Looking at the inner workings of a muscle, movement (and force) is produced when myofibers contract, producing tension. When we relax (and "stretch"), those same fibers literally move apart. Grit and Fluidity signify structural balance, and their cultivation results in a powerful, but flexible personality.
Therefore, the archetypes of Sensate and Fluid are critical for containing this incredible personality type, through development of the meditation and flexibility pillars of Weightlessness, respectively.
Coaching Grit Personality Types
Weightlessness Training provides the foundational skills and capacities that cultivate and balance one's dominant and non dominant archetypes without - and this is incredibly important - the need for conscious "buy in" from a trainee. Meaning a gritty personality can become more balanced via mind-body training (flexibility training in particular) without trying to be less stubborn and more fluid. Training is the outside -> in approach.
But for those in the somatic coaching domain who may not have the expertise in mind-body training, one might apply conscious, reflexive inquiry to their coaching sessions (or for the individual trainee, merely quiet moments of introspection).
The inside -> out approach of coaching still requires awareness of, and access to, other somatic options in real time. Exploring cognitive attachments, physical structure (posture), locaton and depth of breath, and residual, unconscious tension will allow this personality type to understand the mind-body manifestation of their Grit archetype in real time, as well as give them conscious access to the other three qualities / modes of being - Cerebral, Sensate & Fluid - in the here and now.
This is an incredibly powerful approach for someone who falls victim to tension and stress, and finds themselves fighting before they realize their entire system has organized a fight (or flight or freeze) response to a situation.
Learn more about the Somatic Coaching Model of the Weightlessness Method, and the other mind-body personality traits.
Learn how to master your somatic archetype with 3 Months of Mind-Body Performance Coaching via The Weightlessness Process.