Grit + Tenacity + Proactivism: Pulling the Bull by the Horns

By Antonio Evaristo Morales-Pita, PhD

The purpose of this book is to testify how the combination of grit plus tenacity plus being proactive has allowed the author of this book to be successful in fighting against procrastination in the battlegrounds of primary school, learning English in Cuba in two years, going through secondary education, high school, bachelor's, master’s and PhD degrees, in Cuban, Scottish, Ukrainian universities and academy of sciences, being a professor in Cuban, Mexican, and American universities, mastering four foreign languages, escaping from communism in Cuba, working as a translator from English and Russian to Spanish, being married, living in different homes during three years, prioritizing fatherhood while being engulfed in conflicts between a revengeful first wife and an extraordinary second wife, being a merry widower while loving his special late wife, to systematically maintaining cardiovascular fitness exercising his entire body for at least three decades after turning 59 and having a heart attack, being able to reduce fifty pounds of weight (slowly in small but systematic decreases) over twenty three years, enjoying travelling around the world with his wife or alone for more than six decades with a reasonable level of expenditures.

What is one of the author’s important ways to achieve a proactive lifestyle and consequently defeating procrastination? How does he stand up after a fall or even the menace or threat of achieving goals, as well as believing in himself? Read to find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638297376

Antonio Evaristo Morales-Pita, PhD

Antonio Evaristo Morales-Pita, PhD has worked as a university professor for fifty-six years in Cuba, Mexico, and the USA, where he has been the recipient of numerous national awards. He has written and published sixteen books. In the US, he self-published Havana-Merida-Chicago (A Journey to Freedom), 2500 sold copies, and Gladys, My Unforgettable Love. Austin Macauley has published: Is It Possible to Inspire Anyone? Is It Always Fun to Travel Abroad? Grit + Tenacity + Proactiveness: Pulling the Bull by the Horns, Havana-Merida-Chicago 2nd edition, Are You Ready to Improve Habits, May Empathy Lead to Sense of Purpose through Tenacity?, May Anyone Become a Better Human Being by Adopting the Hero Code? and Tenacity + Passion + Patience +Self-Rejection to Failure. Antonio is an inspirational speaker, promoting his books in colleges, universities, factories, and business firms. He has been an official contributor to newspapers, and journals. Antonio can speak, write, and read in Spanish, English, Russian, Italian and French.

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About the Author

Antonio Evaristo Morales-Pita has worked as a university professor for 56 years in Cuba, Mexico and the USA, where he has been recipient of numerous national awards. He has written and published eight books. In the US, he self-published Havana-Merida-Chicago (A Journey to Freedom) and sold 2,500 copies. He also published Gladys, My Unforgettable Love, of which 1,200 copies were sold, on his own resources. He is an inspirational speaker, promoting his books in colleges, universities, factories, and business firms. He has been official contributor in newspapers and journals, and can speak, write and read in Spanish, English, Russian, Italian and French.

Dedication

In memoriam to my mother, Siria, who is my role model in education, tenacity, and iron will.

In memoriam to my wife, whose main incredible achievement is to have transformed me into an empathetic and better human being.

In recognition to my children, Rosita and Tonito, whose lives justify my fatherhood.

Copyright Information ©

Antonio Evaristo Morales-Pita, PhD 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Morales-Pita, PhD, Antonio Evaristo

Grit + Tenacity + Proactivism

ISBN 9781638297369 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781638297376 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022915018

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

Professor Miles Harvey, a modest successful best seller, and one of my best friends.

Austin Macauley Publishers for being the first publisher who recognized my destiny of becoming a best seller.

Preliminary Remarks

A Proposal of Key to Success

The purpose of this book is to testify how the combination of grit plus tenacity plus being proactive has allowed the author of this book to be successful fighting against procrastination in the battlegrounds of primary school, learning English in Cuba in two years, going through secondary education, high school, bachelor, master’s and Ph degrees, in Cuban, Scottish, Ukrainian universities and academy of sciences, being professor in Cuban, Mexican, and American universities, mastering four foreign languages, escaping from communism in Cuba, working as a translator from English and Russian to Spanish, being married with a wife living in different homes during five years, prioritizing fatherhood engulfed in conflicts between a revengeful first wife and an extraordinary second wife, being a merry widower while loving his special late wife, to systematically maintain cardiovascular fitness exercising his entire body for at least three decades after turning 59 and having a heart attack, being able to reduce weight in fifty pounds slowly in small but systematic decreases during twenty three years, enjoying traveling around the world with his wife or alone for more than six decades with a reasonable level of expenditures. Which is one of the author’s important ways to achieve pro-activism and consequently to defeat procrastination?

Talent is usually defined as a natural aptitude or ability to successfully perform activities, such as scientific, artistic, cultural, pedagogic, and so on. Skill is frequently identified as dexterity, mastery to create something, or to do a special contribution to society. Trait is often recognized as an important characteristic of someone’s personality or appearance.

In this author’s opinion, grit, tenacity, and anticipation can be categorized as talents, skills, or traits. This book will refer to them as important abilities to defeat procrastination, whose antonym can be defined as anticipation or being proactive. In english stackexchange.com/ question/what-is-the opposite-of-procrastination-in-one-word, the reader can find many possible antonyms of procrastination, such as anticipation, prioritization, and many others.

During his eight decades living in Cuba, Great Britain, Ukraine, Mexico, and the United States, he has encountered many opportunities to be systematically able to face procrastination being proactive by means of tenacity, and courage. The main purpose of writing this book is to show how his mother’s behavior and attitude – to stand up after a fall or even the menace or threat of achieving goals – influenced his performance even after her decease, at 88 years old.

After an analysis of her personal traits which were transmitted to him during different stages that is to say: childhood, adulthood, middle age, and the senior years, in quora.com this author could find an interesting comment submitted by Mr. Caled Freese, relative to the evaluating which stage is more important for a human being – which contains an analysis between good habits in contraposition with procrastination. Here it goes in its entirety:

"Although every stage of life is important, I’d say that one of the most important stages is your teen to young adult years. This is when the decisions you make can really impact your life, negatively or positively. Any habits that you develop during this time will fester and multiply later in your life.

Develop a habit of procrastination, and you set a habit of procrastination for the rest of your life. Spend half of your time drinking alcohol or doing drugs, you develop an addiction to these that can harm you for the rest of your life. Develop a strong work ethic, and you set a habit of working hard that will set you above many people for the rest of your life.

All I’m trying to say is that the habits you develop during your teen to young adult years will stay with you for the rest of your life, so it is important that you develop good habits. As time goes on, your bad habits will become worse, and your good habits will become even greater.

Side note: it is possible to escape bad habits, but it is very difficult. Trying to stop something – once you have been doing it for a long time – is a lot harder than it seems. An example of this for me is chewing my nails. I’ve been trying to stop for about six months, but whenever I’m not thinking, I just go back to my old habit. This is because it is ingrained in my mind. Something ingrained in your mind is very difficult to get rid of."

Introduction

List of Authors Whose Books

Can Relate to Procrastination

I never lose. Either I win or I Learn

—Nelson Mandela

Angela Duckworth – GRIT the Power of Passion and Perseverance #1 New York Times Bestseller

The Main content of the book is to show that the secret to outstanding achievement is a special combination of passion, courage, and persistence, which she calls grit.

It deals with the meaning of grit, as a combination of courage and persistency in opposition as talent or intelligence for succeeding in whatever purpose the individual is chasing. She doesn’t mention the word procrastination inside the book, not even in the index.

On page 275 of Angela Duckworth’s GRIT The Power of Passion and Perseverance, she wrote:

To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal. To be gritty is to invest day after week after year, in challenging practice. To be gritty is to fall seven times and rise eight. Along the book, Dr. Duckworth proves the necessary introduction of grit to demonstrate that intelligence is less related than courage and tenacity to successful performers regardless of whatever their fields or environments can be. In my opinion, her conclusions are correct and eye-opening in her readers. My suggestion is that she does not mention an important factor that would be an obstacle to achieving success, like procrastination.

According to Wikipedia: Grit is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual’s perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a particular long-term goal or end state.

The word procrastination is not directly mentioned in her book.

2.

Christian Moore – The Resilience Break-through.

Resilience: is neither a synonym nor an opposite of procrastination. The book is dedicated in full detail to different types of resilience. Just to cite one of the types of resilience.

Self-grace, combined with our best effort to recommit to a task or situation, is what long-term resilience looks like.

Relational Resilience relational resilience involves movement toward mutually empowering, growth-fostering connections in the face of adverse conditions, traumatic experiences, and alienating social-cultural pressures. It is the ability to connect, reconnect, and/or resist disconnection.

Resilience takes place in the striving, not the accomplishing.

Resilience – the ability to recover strength, spirits, etc. quickly page 1210.

Procrastinate – to put off something (unpleasant or burdensome) until a future time; to postpone (such actions) habitually page 1133 Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language.

In this author’s opinion, resilience can be in a certain way related to procrastinate to recover from a fall, but from the moment to come back to procrastinate can be a very serious obstacle.

My book is about the positive results obtained in the author’s life by not being procrastinator. On the same token, I am a resilient author because of being able to stand up after a fall and has kept working and succeeding against inconveniences and obstacles.

3.

Brian Tracy, who authored the book Eat that Frog. 21 Great ways to Stop Procrastinating.

The main content of this International Best Seller can be summarized as follows: a) It challenges working practices, explains the self-discipline needed to succeed, gets to the root cause of why people procrastinate; b) It is a concise and valuable collection of tactics to try. It attracts many different avenues of procrastination; c) It contains a plan from setting a plan to avoid procrastination until overcoming that negative attitude. Finally, the book includes an interesting and useful plan to avoid procrastination.

My book deals about the consequences of not being procrastinator in different stages of my life as a student of primary, secondary, and tertiary educations, as a professor, and as a learner of five languages.

4.

Lyn Christian Founder and Coach of Soul Salt. The book title is What Causes Procrastination (and 7 Real Solutions).

The content of the book deals with seven causes of procrastination and their solutions which are included in series of talks face-to-face with prospective readers. I have built a table relating the causes to the solution. My book deals with all the causes, perfectionism, avoidance, self-esteem, waiting until the last minute, trouble focusing, decision fatigue, and resisting challenges.

My book – which is based on my own personal experiences – focuses on explaining a wide range of problematic situations. In this way, it is easier to make the readers readily identified through examples in several societal environments. Therefore, my book doesn’t require to be lectured about its content, which is explained in full detail and only requires to be purchased in bookstores.

5.

Stephen R. Covey’s bestselling book the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Mr. Covey’s book relates to Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, Put Things First, Think Win-Win, Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood, Synergize, and Sharpen the Saw. It appears to be geared specifically toward inspirational speakers, who appear to be motivated to make people successful in their business, not so much to the population in general.

This book is meant to reach and arouse interest in people needing help in fighting against procrastinating behaviors in any pursuit.

Chapter I

Siria Pita’s Main Traits

and Talents

Use what talents you possess the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

—Henry Van Dyke

My mother was an exceptional woman, who loved life, work, and being actively useful. She was a very energetic person, as can be deducted from the wide range of her diverse activities. She was a nice person, completely dedicated to her home, and to her four children. From her, I inherited quite several of my talents. Let’s analyze from which of them, she experienced a more noticeable development.

Siria Pita’s most outstanding merit is that despite being illiterate – because she was born into a poor family whose income did not allow her to attend school – she felt an insatiable need to learn, and to understand the world around her. She loved to study, to grow in her children a passion for studying, for reading, demanding her offspring study in libraries during school vacations. She frequently visited our school, constantly urged us to do our homework – although she couldn’t answer any of the questions related to the courses her children were taking. When she was 51 years old, she started learning how to read and write; by the time she had completed her 82nd birthday – she was finished with pre-college education. My mother became an example to everybody, to members and nonmembers of the family alike. She encouraged young people not to waste time and to continue their education. Siria enjoyed learning and sharing