Grit & Rock
By Masha Gordon, Founder of GRIT & ROCK.
Masha will be speaking at the SCHOOLS NorthEast Summit on Thursday 13 October.
I remember age 11 standing in front of a gym horse in absolute stupor, seeing it as a Mount Everest of my life, insurmountable and in that, highly embarrassing.
Age 21, then a college student at a school where PE was a part of the core curriculum, I figured out how not to lower my otherwise perfect Grade Point Average and opted for a PE class aimed at people with impaired physical abilities.
By 31 I was a successful banker and a human unable to run 5k.
Aged 41, I found myself on a journey to set an endurance world record in Explorers Grand Slam. 7 months and 19 days later, having climbed the highest peak on every continent – including Everest, and having skied some 70 miles to both the North and the South poles, I became a two times Guinness Record holder.
Behind these summits and the record stood over 100 nights spent in a tent, skiing in -40C temperature for 3 weeks to reach both of the poles, going for weeks without taking a shower, getting frost bite on my face and losing both my toe nails. Because of the climbing seasons, I ended up skiing to the North Pole and summiting Everest within a month. To my knowledge, this has never been accomplished by a woman before.
The bravest thing I have done however was not standing on the polar bear patrol on thin Arctic ice, nor walking in the death zone on Everest, nor sleeping in a portalege on a near-vertical ridge in Denali but rather getting on this journey being a woman and a mother of two.
To my knowledge, I was the only mother at the Everest base camp and as such the amount of social curiosity was enormous. When anyone would enter the expedition dining tent, they would turn to me with a question: ‘What does your husband think of this? Aren’t you scared climbing this mountain being a mother of 2. What if?’
I was lucky to have had confidence to not be constrained by my gender or age appropriate expectations. But could I have done it aged 13? Could I have aimed at something really big if I were to be questioned about my abilities given social cognitive biases?
This story, however, is not about me. Here is why this matters. According to the National Citizens Bureau survey conducted in 2016, some 40% of British girls aged 13-16 said that they were unable or afraid of taking risk vs. just 27% of boys. A quarter of British girls said they did not see themselves as brave or adventurous while the same was true for just 13% of boys.
This gender self-confidence gap is a PROBLEM. It is at the core of variety of gaps later on in life.
It is less socially acceptable for girls to display courage, assertiveness or risk taking. This social conditioning entrenches expectation of perfection and takes away ability and willingness to take on new experiences, trying out new things, getting experience of trial and error, rather than failure.
We have been taught to play it safe and play to our strengths or natural talent. Boys – and here I am dipping into social cliches – are taught to swing high and get rewarded for taking risk. In other words, as society, we are raising our girls to be perfect and our boys to be brave.
This ‘BRAVERY DEFICIT’ explains why we have only 7 female chief executives in FTSE100. Studies show women would apply for a promotion only if they feel they meet 100% of the qualification whereas the same number for men is 60%. Girls are socialised to aspire to perfection and as a result become overly cautious.
As parents we also harness the vision of fragility in our girls. The American Journal of Paediatric Psychology found that parents of girls are 4x more likely to tell girls than boys to be more careful after the mishaps that are non-life threatening but involve a visit to the ER. It is cute to be scared.
As a parent of a 9-year-old daughter (and 7-year-old son), I realise just how important it is to lay those little bricks of grit and bravery and a resolve to approach risks and challenges at a young age – particularly in girls.
My husband and I have actively encouraged both of our children to grow up loving speed and adventure, relishing and experiencing the unknown and just going for it.
Returning back to my journey what I did not tell you that behind my record there was not just bravery there was a method and hard work. Clearly miracles do not happen and one does not go from being extremely unfit to summiting Everest.
My story is that at the age 35 following the birth of my son, I was persuaded to try climbing. I was uncertain at first but then found to my surprise that I did enjoy the pace and the feeling of exertion. I fell in love with a notion of adventure – waking up at 2am in a crowded alpine refuge, turning on a headlamp and walking onto a glacier to meet a sunrise on a mountain ridge. Gradually I became stronger and the rest is histore. I became passionate and in the following 7 years I did my requisite 10,000 hours of climbing and backcountry skiing focused with the same precision and focus on becoming better. I accepted criticism, sought advice, focused on technique. That process powered by passion and perseverance brought me to a point of setting a world record in a discipline that I was by all accounts not born for.
Combination of passion and perseverance defines grit. Not giving up with setbacks and staying at it, not losing interest in an issue or getting distracted. Grit is sticking with your goals day and day out for a very long period of time.
As I was walking to the South Pole, hauling a sled that weighed my body weight, my mind searched for an answer to the question: ‘Why am I able to do this?’ In retrospect, I had that ability honed in my professional journey, an my mind instinctively reached for it when confronted with alpinism.
I also wondered, if outdoors reward these qualities, can one reverse engineer the process and use the outdoors for developing grit?’ Long days develop stamina, awe moments ignite passion. That experience forms a habit and becomes behavioural intuition in other – professional and personal journeys.
I did further research and found studies that pointed out that the exposure to intermittent stress conditions our bodies to release less cortisol next time we are confronted with an unexpected, a challenge that could be physical or emotional.