Grit & Optimism with Shannon Huffman Polson - Pilot, Veteran, Author

In this first episode of 2021, Sylvia talks with Alaska native and speaker Shannon Huffman Polson about her journey as a thought leader on grit and resilience. She served as one of the first women to fly the Apache helicopter in the US Army and earned her MBA at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth before writing The Grit Factor: Courage, Resilience, and Leadership in the Most Male-Dominated Organization in the World and founding The Grit Institute where she coaches people on developing grit in careers and workplaces. We talk a lot about grit, what it is, how it is built and what its soft underbelly looks like.

We get under surface and talk about Shannon’s childhood in Alaska, the challenges and opportunities behind her military career, the tragic loss of her father and stepmother in the Arctic, parenting during COVID, books and much more.

"You train to do hard things by doing hard things." Shannon Huffman Polson

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Topics Include

• Resetting and refocusing; understanding what you truly want out of life

• Growing up in Alaska

• Mountain summits, literal and metaphorical

• Resilience in the face of adversity

• Grit: dogged determination in the face of adverse circumstances

• Grit as a character trait that can be developed

• Learning to fly helicopters

• Tuning out the noise; focusing on your core mission

• The grit triad: Commit, Learn, Launch

• Post-traumatic growth and grounded optimism

• Women in male-dominated industries

• Raising gritty kids

• Advice: not to listen to the naysayers

Resources Mentioned

• The Grit Institute

Books Mentioned

• The Grit Factor: Courage, Resilience, and Leadership in the Most Male-Dominated Organization in the World, 2020

• North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey, 2013

Connect with Shannon

• Shannon’s Website

• Instagram: @aborderlife

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