Life-changing music: Is there such a thing as true grit?

When it came to toughness, John Wayne had nothing on my dad. Stories about enduring hard times and pain amazed me as a child, and now that I'm an adult, many of them amaze me more.

My father began living on his own when he was only 16, working 60 hours a week at the local filling station. He once pulled a 24-hour shift there pumping gas to earn extra overtime ("Staying awake isn't hard if you keep moving.") He never missed a day during his stint as a milkman even when he could barely walk on two badly sprained ankles ("You just have to wrap those Ace bandages REALLY tight.") After becoming an avid cyclist in his early fifties, he was struck and nearly killed by a speeding Lincoln Continental. He spent weeks in the hospital after a life-saving helicopter flight, followed by months in a wheelchair before being able to walk again. ("No whining!")

After a full recovery, my dad's accomplishments included conquering the Mount Mitchell Challenge, averaging nearly 100 miles a day on four cross country bike trips and finishing a Mount Everest Base Camp trek. No surprise that barring a near-death experience or a terminal diagnosis, sympathy was hard to come by in our house.

The Duckworth Lab at The University of Pennsylvania has made a science of studying grit — defined as the quality that enables individuals to work hard and stick to their long-term passions and goals. In a study at West Point Academy, the short questionnaire or "grit test" developed by Angela Duckworth and her team was a better predictor of which cadets would survive the grueling first year than the True Cadet Score that the Army had been using for years.

Is grit one of those inherent qualities, and you either "got it or you don't?" Most researchers agree that we can actually help instill this quality in our children, and improve our grittiness as adults. One key: adopting a growth mindset rather than a fixed one. In a nutshell, the growth mindset embraces challenges, sees failure as an opportunity for growth and learning, and accepts responsibility for mistakes. The way they see it, if you're afraid to try, you've already failed.

I'm not sure if any of the members of The Devil Makes Three has ever taken the online grit test (check the Duckworth Lab website), but I'd guess they had an amazingly high grit score. The trio, made up of guitarist Pete Bernhard, upright bassist Lucia Turino, and guitarist and tenor banjo player Cooper McBean, began playing together in Santa Cruz back in 2002. In an interview from 2010, Turino talks about the band's humble beginnings. "When we started here, we were lucky to get five people to come out who didn't actually know us personally…. you really just got to keep plugging. We started playing house shows in Santa Cruz, and the first time we went on tour in the West Coast, no one came…but we just kept doing it and eventually people started catching on."

The band is known for their amazing live shows, and their sound is hard to fit into any single genre: it's a mix of ragtime, bluegrass, and folk, all delivered with punk/country outlaw sensibility. They released "I'm a Stranger Here" in the fall of 2013 under the New West Record label, produced by country music legend Buddy Miller. They just headlined the Three Sisters Music Festival in Chattanooga, and they've been opening for Willie Nelson and Alison Krauss on their latest tours.

Don't expect success to spoil them. From their song "For Good Again:"

It was a low level existence that's what you proper people'd say,

But I wrote songs in that attic that I now get paid to play.

So if you don't like people who live in attics now might be the time to say,

'cause everybody who is anybody, in my opinion, at one time lived in somebody's hallway.

The change: Don't let fear of failure keep you from living the life you want.

The opener: If you like bands like The Head and the Heart of Edward Sharpe, check out Seattle's The Cave Singers.

Drive-home discussion: Consider what's keeping you from achieving what you want. How would someone you admire overcome the obstacles you face?