"I showed up for my workouts and got my butt kicked every day," she says. But she didn't give up, despite the fact that even Kenneth Baum, the sports performance consultant she had hired, pointed out how difficult it would be for her to reach her ambitious goal. "Her times were so slow; she was far off the national mark," admits Baum, author of The Mental Edge, who none-the less stuck by his client."At one point I was thinking, You're kiddrng-th/s isn't going tohappen. And then she blew everybody's mind."
And everyone out of the water. In October 2007, Burden managed to beat 24 superior athletes to win the U.S. Open Water World Championship Trials in Fort Myers, Florida. How'd she pullit off? Baum chalks it up to grit. Researchers today are homing in on thispreviously neglected mental trait and uncovering its colossal influence on success. Turns out, grit explains why your college roommate is a business wunderkind, and how Molly-down-the-street became
a black belt in tae kwon do after popping out four kids. It's not that they have more brains, athletic prowess, or talent than you do. They just may have a better-developed ability to gut it out-that is, to set a far-reaching goal and drive relentlessly toward it.
"Micha Burden is living testimony that great things can happen when you dream big and follow through:' says Baum. "She had a real fire inside her to perform her best. She lived it every single
day, That is grit. Athletic ability shuts down when there's adversity. Grit doesn't."
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