318 Part III Humanistic/Existential Theories
Setting goals and finding the motivation to pursue them are both important
aspects of the organismic valuing process (OVP), but unless we can find a way to
maintain our goal pursuits in spite of adversity and often over long periods of time,
we are likely to burn out or give up. Grit is conceived of as the disposition to
pursue goals in a determined way for years or sometimes even decades, and to
passionately maintain that perseverance despite inevitable setbacks (Duckworth,
Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007). Grit has been shown to predict a number of
positive outcomes in people’s lives, including higher academic achievement,
remaining married, and sticking with challenging military training or a New Year’s
resolution to exercise more (Duckworth et al., 2007; Eskreis-Winkler, Shulman,
Beal, & Duckworth, 2014). But are gritty people happier people? Researchers Mia
Vainio and Daiva Daukantaitė (2015) proposed that Rogers’ organismic valuing
process provides a theoretical framework for predicting that they ought to be.
For Rogers and other humanists, the good life is not about the pursuit of
pleasure, but rather the pursuit of what the Greek philosophers such as Aristotle
called “eudaimonia,” or flourishing. This kind of happiness does not come from
without (e.g., obtaining goods and services), but from within—from pursuing excel-
lence, growth, meaning, and authenticity (Huta & Waterman, 2013).
Vainio and Daukantaitė (2015) conducted a study exploring whether grit is
positively related to well-being and whether this relationship is mediated by two of
Rogers’ features of the OVP: authenticity and sense of coherence in the self (Rogers,
1961, 1964). Over 600 individuals in Sweden—200 students at Lund University,
and over 400 non-students via online sources—were sampled.
Participants completed a battery of questionnaires investigating their grit (items
include “I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge”), psychologi-
cal well-being (items include “For me, life has been a continuous process of learning,
changing, and growth”), satisfaction with life (e.g., “In most ways my life is close to
my ideal”), authenticity (e.g., “I live in accordance with my values and beliefs”), and
sense of coherence (e.g., “Do you have the feeling that you are being treated
unfairly?”—this item would be reverse coded, and “Do you have the feeling that you
don’t really care about what goes on around you?” would also be reverse coded) as
well as socio-demographic variables such as age, gender, and educational attainment.
Vainio and Daukantaitė found that grit was, as predicted, highly positively
related to both well-being and life satisfaction. Grittier individuals had higher levels
of psychological well-being as well as greater satisfaction with their lives overall.
Further analyses showed some interesting and more complex findings. For example,
the relationship between satisfaction with life and grit became statistically insignifi-
cant when authenticity and sense of coherence were added to the model. This sug-
gests that simply being gritty is not enough to give us a feeling of satisfaction with
our lives. Instead, a sense of coherence within ourselves and an authentic connection
between our goal pursuits and our core self are needed in order for grit to bring us
life satisfaction. In other words, the pursuit of our goals must be meaningful to us—
the pursuit must be connected to our true and authentic motives for us to feel satis-
fied with it. It’s no use grittily pursuing goals that have no or low self-relevance.
These results suggest that grit may be something particularly strongly con-
nected to the self. Authenticity and sense of coherence provide a connection to who
we really are, and this may provide a “compass” for gritty individuals in pursuing