How to Create a Successful Mindset: The Science of Passion and Perseverance

Mel Robbins 0:00 ... to the person who's listening right now. What could change about their life, or the life of somebody that they care about, if they take to heart everything that you're about to share with us today?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 0:08 If you take to heart what we have discovered, you will have one thing, which is the possibility of glimpsing excellence in your own life.

Mel Robbins 0:19 Today on The Mel Robbins Podcast, how to create a successful mindset with world-renowned researcher, Dr. Angela Duckworth. Dr. Angela Duckworth is a pioneering researcher, a best-selling author, and a total powerhouse in the field of human performance. Get ready to learn the science of grit, perseverance, and passion.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 0:39 Grit is passion and perseverance for long-term goals. It is correlated zero with any measure of innate talent. Grit is working hard at something that you love. Doing something that you love and doing it at your greatest effort every single day, that is what grit is.

Mel Robbins 1:01 If you're listening and there's an area of your life where you have basically said, "I've missed the window," or, "I'm too late," or, "I'm not capable of that," Professor Duckworth is gonna tell you you're wrong.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:10 It is the nature of human nature to grow. It is the nature of human nature to make mistakes, royally screw up, have a lot of regrets, and be smarter and stronger for the experience. Hope is the belief that the future can be better than the past, and it is the belief that you can h- in some way make that come to pass.

Mel Robbins 1:30 Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to The Mel Robbins Podcast. Hey, it's Mel. My team was showing me that 57% of you who watch here on YouTube are not subscribed yet. Could you do me a quick favor? Hit subscribe. It's free. And that way, you don't miss any of the episodes that I post here on YouTube. It also lets me know that you're enjoying the guests and you love the content that I'm bringing you, because I wanna make sure you don't miss anything. So thank you, thank you, thank you for hitting subscribe. All right, you ready? I bet you are. So let's dive in. Angela Duckworth. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. I'm so excited to meet you.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 2:15 Mel, I think I might be more excited than you actually. No, I'm, I'm really thrilled. I feel like we have a similar mission. Like, a little bit of wisdom, make your life a lot better.

Mel Robbins 2:25 Yes.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 2:25 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 2:26 Yes. Well, your research has had a huge impact on my life, and your work has as well. So here's how I wanna start. Could you speak directly to the person who's listening right now, who has found the time and made the time to spend it together with you and me today to learn from you? What could change about their life, or the life of somebody that they care about, if they take to heart everything that you're about to share with us today?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 2:50 If you take to heart what we have discovered as a science about motivation and achievement, you will have one thing, which is the possibility of glimpsing excellence in your own life, to achieve what you are capable of achieving.

Mel Robbins 3:11 That's a big promise.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 3:12 It is. You know, hunt the big game.

Mel Robbins 3:14 (laughs)

Dr. Angela Duckworth 3:15 (laughs) Like, yeah. I, I really truly believe it. I think that when I first started as a psychologist, the question was, "You know, am I only gonna study this, like, tiny little sliver of the population who would self-identify as super ambitious?"

Mel Robbins 3:28 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 3:29 And I discovered very quickly that everybody's ambitious. I mean, who doesn't want to be as great as they can be? So I study, I think, everyone.

Mel Robbins 3:40 I love that answer. I love that answer because I choose to believe that everybody wants to do well-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 3:48 I-

Mel Robbins 3:48 ... that everybody wants to thrive, you know? So Dr. Duckworth, your research is so fascinating because you have discovered this thing that all high achievers have in common. What is it?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 4:01 The common denominator of high achievers, no matter what they're achieving, is this special combination of passion and perseverance for really long-term goals, and in a word, it's grit.

Mel Robbins 4:15 And how do you define grit?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 4:17 It's exactly that. It's these two parts, right, passion for long-term goals, like loving something and staying in love with it, not kind of wandering off and doing, you know, something else, and then something else again, and then something else again, but having a, a kind of North Star, sort of, you know, a devotion over years. That's the passion part. And then the perseverance part is, well, partly it's hard work, right? Partly it's, you know, practicing what you can't yet do, and- and partly it's resilience. So part of perseverance is, you know, on the really bad days, do you, you know, do you get up again? So- so if you marry passion for long-term goals with perseverance for long-term goals, well, then you have this quality that I find to be the common denominator of elite achievers in every field that I've studied.

Mel Robbins 5:00 So is this just something you're born with, or is this an actual trait that anybody can develop?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 5:05 I think that absolutely anything that any psychologist tells you is a good thing to have is partly under your control. I am not saying there aren't genes that are at play, because every psychologist will tell you that that's also part of the story for- for everything, and grit included. But- but absolutely, you know, how gritty we are is very much a function of what we know, who we're around, and the places we go.

Mel Robbins 5:30 I love that you already taught us something right out of the gate. I knew you would.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 5:36 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 5:36 There's gonna be a bazillion takeaways, but just this sense that it's something that you actually really enjoy

Mel Robbins 5:43 doing, and that even that aspect of grit is something that you have a lot to teach us about, that even those of us that feel like we haven't found our thing, that we're not quite sure what we should be doing with our lives, that it is... there's very clear ways to figure it out, and that's part of the equation that we're gonna learn today. You know, also in your work, you talk a lot about, and I'm sure we're gonna hear the term growth mindset.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 6:07 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 6:08 You know, in case the person who's listening right now has never heard that term or they're gonna share this episode with somebody who's never heard that term, what is it and why does it matter?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 6:18 Growth mindset is a theory.

Mel Robbins 6:21 Okay.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 6:21 It's a, it's a theory that you have. You know, you don't have to be a philosopher or professor to have a theory, 'cause guess what? All of us have theories, you know? Theories about people. Growth mindset is a theory about human ability. If you have a growth mindset, your theory is that human ability fundamentally is changeable. If you have a fixed mindset, you have a different theory. It is a belief that fundamentally, human ability is fixed. It is something that you can't change with effort and experience. If you believe fundamentally that human ability can change and grow, you look at that failure, you look at that setback, and you say, "What can I learn here? How can I get smarter?" And then you move on. If you have a fixed mindset, fundamentally, you think that the nature of human nature is that you can't change or grow. Well, then you avoid failure, you, you know, shove things under the rug, and you live your whole life actually contracting rather than expanding.

Mel Robbins 7:20 Mm. Wow. So for the person listening, because I, I think when you hear growth mindset and you hear fixed mindset, so I either have this fixed belief that I am who I am and there's nothing I can do to change. If I'm terrible with money, I'm always gonna be terrible with money.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 7:33 I'm not a math person.

Mel Robbins 7:35 Yes.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 7:35 You know, you know, uh, like hide me in the closet, I'm a terrible-

Mel Robbins 7:38 Yes.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 7:38 ... singer.

Mel Robbins 7:39 Yes. Or I'm not lu-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 7:40 Yeah, I'm not a natural athlete.

Mel Robbins 7:41 Yeah, I'm not a natural athlete.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 7:41 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 7:42 I'm unlucky in love.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 7:43 Yeah. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 7:43 Like I, I have a slow metabolism.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 7:45 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 7:45 I have all these-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 7:46 I have a hot temper. It's just who I am.

Mel Robbins 7:47 Correct.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 7:48 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 7:48 When you say those kinds of blanket statements, it develops this fixed mindset that you're just stuck as you are, and what you're here to say is, no, no, no, no, no. That you are capable of changing, and a lot of what can help you change are the things that we're gonna talk about today that you've discovered in your research. But first, you, you have to entertain the possibility that change is possible for you even though you may have a lot of evidence when you look in the rear view mirror and say, "Well, based on my life history, that's not true for me." So what do you want to say to that person who's like, "Well, I'm not ... I, I, I don't think I can change. It's too late."?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 8:27 You can find the evidence that you look for. It's what psychologists call self-fulfilling prophecy, and mindsets are absolutely this sort of thing. If you are looking for evidence that you can't change, if you are looking for evidence that you're unlucky in love, that you, you know, will always be flying off the handle, trust me, you will find that evidence. But if you are looking for evidence that you can change, if you are looking for evidence that you can grow, sure enough, you will also find that evidence. And I think this idea that the mindset that you have is a self-fulfilling prophecy is the beginning of understanding how you might get out of one mindset and into another, and something that we share with ninth graders, but honestly, I think it's useful if you're in ninth grade or if you're 99. Um, when we are trying to open a mind to this idea that human nature is malleable, we show them evidence from neuroscience that the brain is growing. In fact, there's not a era in your life, doesn't matter how old you are, where you're not literally creating new brain cells, and even more importantly, the connections between your brain cells, between your neurons are, are remodeling, right?

Mel Robbins 9:37 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 9:37 So, um, when I was in college, I went to college from 1988 to 1992. My major was neurobiology. What I learned was that the brain is very, very, uh, much a work in progress when you are in preschool.

Mel Robbins 9:52 Okay.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 9:52 And maybe a little bit in elementary school. And then, you know, things start to slow down after adolescence. Like, now you are who you are, who you are, who you are, who y- you will always be. That is completely outdated. Now we teach students in neurobiology and neuroscience that plasticity is the name of the game. You know, what makes human beings so special is not that we're born smart, it's just that we, you know, become smarter and smarter for, you know, throughout our whole lives.

Mel Robbins 10:18 If you're intentional about it. (laughs) Right?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 10:20 If you're intentional, right? I mean, you know, I, I think this kind of virtuous cycle where, you know, you wake up every day and you ask like, "How can I get smarter about this?" Right? Like, wouldn't that be an amazing thing? And if you, if you sort of, um, you know, pick your favorite, um, y- achiever, right? And it depends on what you love, you know? A three-star Michelin chef or a singer or, you know, a mathematician or, you know, a CEO. If you start to notice how they speak of themselves-

Mel Robbins 10:45 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 10:45 ... they always talk about themselves as, as lifelong learners. They, they say, you know, like Satya Nadella at Microsoft, "I'm not a know-it-all, I'm a learn-it-all." I mean, it's, it's there. It's baked into the language, and it's, it's in the way they approach life. And it's accessible, it's really to all of us.

Mel Robbins 11:03 Well, I just want to take a minute as you're spending time with us and you're listening to Professor Duckworth right now and just compliment you for hitting play.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 11:13 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 11:13 Because the fact that you chose to find time and spend time listening to something that you know you can learn from and that might make your life a little bit better proves to me that you are a lifelong learner, proves to me that you have the capacity to tap into everything that we're about to talk about and leverage it to learn anything you want or to perform better or be happier, whatever it is that your goals are. So Professor Duckworth, in your research, you study elite performers. I mean, we're talking West Point candidates, spelling bee finalists, athletes. Was there anything about these high performers that surprised you?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 11:52 I think the thing that surprised me most was that when I began to dig into what it really meant to have passion and perseverance for long-term goals-

Mel Robbins 12:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 12:01 ... it wasn't the way I thought it would look. I thought it would look like intensity, and it turned out to be consistency. So instead of somebody who has the kind of, you know, outsized personality always and they're kind of like, "Oh my gosh, I'm 11 out of 10. This is amazing." And even imagine an athlete, right? Like y- you go down to, um...... you know, some aquatic center, like Bob Bowman, you know, the coach of Michael Phelps and more recently, Leon Marchand, right? So, two of the best swimmers who's, who have ever lived. And if you ask a coach like Bob, "What is special about a Michael Phelps or a Leon Marchand? D- do they give you a 10 out of 10? Oh, my gosh, maybe they give you 11 out of 10 at practice. I wanna watch," right? He has said, "They don't give me a 10 out of 10. They give me 8 out of 10. But if you rack up a lot of 8 out of 10s, if you don't miss any 8 out of 10s, if you come every day and you do your 8 out of 10, wow, you can become really special." So, when I began to study gritty individuals, and I expected them to be 11 out of 10 on enthusiasm or 11 out of 10 on effort at all times, that's not what I found. Like Bob Bowman, I found that they are consistent, they don't take days off, and they don't f- well, they do fall off the horse sometimes. And by the way, they do cry and they get disappointed and they doubt themselves, but they get back on.

Mel Robbins 13:21 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 13:21 And I think consistency is really the heart and soul of grit.

Mel Robbins 13:26 And when you use the word consistency, uh,

Mel Robbins 13:30 what I'm now hearing, based on what you just said, is that consistency is not doing it every day in a row. Consistency is doing it more days than not, or at least doing it the day after you didn't do it-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 13:42 So, you gotta figure out-

Mel Robbins 13:42 ... like what? Okay.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 13:43 Okay, so like, Michael Phelps did actually (laughs) spend apparently, like, 10 years with 365 days a year without taking a day off for Christmas, without taking a day off for his birthday or New Year's or New Year's Eve. That's unusual, and I think any athletic trainer would tell you that days off are a good thing.

Mel Robbins 14:03 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 14:03 So, I don't wanna say that there's anything magic about seven out of seven or-

Mel Robbins 14:06 Right.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 14:07 ... 365 out of 365. But most of us can look at the project that we're trying to do-

Mel Robbins 14:12 Uh-huh.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 14:13 ... and, and tell ourselves, like, "This is what consistency is." Maybe it's five days a week. I mean, let's take physical therapy, something I do a lot of, um, 'cause I (laughs) have scoliosis and I've got lots of orthopedic issues, so I get to experience, um, you know, behavior change, which is what I study as a scientist through my own just, like, personal life and trying to get... So, so I have to do my physical therapy, and there's, like, different exercises that I have to do, but not all of them are seven days a week exercises.

Mel Robbins 14:39 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 14:39 There is a routine. Whatever it is that you want to do, whatever consistency means to you, write it down and aim for that. And that's what the goal is. But, but what I mean by it not being intensity is, it's not like, "I'm gonna go do my physical therapy and I'm gonna do 11 out of 10 on intensity. Like, I'm gonna kill it," and like, no. Just do your physical therapy (laughs) the way your physical therapist said you should do it, and then do it again the next day as your physical therapist rec-, and then do it again, and then do it again. That's consistency.

Mel Robbins 15:12 Eh, y- this conversation reminds me a bit of that famous Jay-Z quote, "The genius thing we did is we didn't quit."

Dr. Angela Duckworth 15:17 Oh, I didn't know that. Wait-

Mel Robbins 15:18 And-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 15:18 ... what?

Mel Robbins 15:18 Yes.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 15:18 I have not heard that quote.

Mel Robbins 15:19 Yes. And I, I do really believe-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 15:23 I love that.

Mel Robbins 15:23 ... it's you against you.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 15:25 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 15:25 And that, you, you started talking about talent, and I wanna come back to talent because so many people believe that success comes down to talent, and your work really proves otherwise, that there's a different component that is really important. Can you unpack talent versus hard work?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 15:47 I'm gonna define talent, because it's this word-

Mel Robbins 15:49 Oh, good. What is it?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 15:49 ... we use it in so many ways, and this is how I think we are really defining it, even if we don't, you know, have a dictionary at our side. Talent is the rate at which you improve at something when you try. You're a really talented person, you improve a lot for every hour of practice. If you are a less talented person, you improve only a very little bit with every hour of practice. There is no shame or fear, I think, in acknowledging that we may be more talented at some things than others. I'm pretty talented at psychology. When I started my PhD at age 32, I was pregnant with my second daughter, I was still nursing the first, and when I would read a psychology article, I, you know, of course knew nothing, I didn't know the vocabulary, I didn't know where to start. But when I would read about motivation, about beliefs, about mindsets, about practice, I, I ascended a learning curve relatively steeply.

Mel Robbins 16:47 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 16:48 But I'm very, very untalented when it comes to history, when it comes to, um, politics, current events. Um, I, um, terrible ... Umm, I th- I teach at the Wharton School of Business, and every year, I have to ask my students again, I'm like, "Wait, remind me what a hedge fund is, just one more time, tell me what (laughs) ... And how's it different from private equity? Uh, write it down this time." And then the next year, I have to ask again. I'm not very good at learning some things,

Dr. Angela Duckworth 17:15 but I am very agile at learning others. And I think that's really the heart of what we mean when we say, like, somebody's innately talented-

Mel Robbins 17:22 Huh.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 17:22 ... right? That somebody's gifted at basketball or gifted at soccer or gifted at math or anything else.

Mel Robbins 17:27 And that it's the rate you improve at something.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 17:30 I think that's what it... Uh, to me, that's th- what th- that's, like, the, the, the gist of what we really mean.

Mel Robbins 17:35 Well, that's a nice thing, 'cause I normally, like, would define it as something deficient in me.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 17:40 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 17:40 You know what I'm saying? Like, I would see talent-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 17:42 Well, what are you talented at?

Mel Robbins 17:42 ... as somebody... Well, well, look, I don't know, like, you know, that, that, that somebody can step on a stage and sing a perfect tune-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 17:49 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 17:50 ... and that in relation to me, that somebody can shoot-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 17:52 Yeah, 'cause you see somebody else and you're like, "Oh, they're more talented."

Mel Robbins 17:53 But I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, I'm born that way." Well, and of course I got better.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 17:56 But, but what do you think your greatest talents are though?

Mel Robbins 17:57 Me?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 17:58 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 17:58 Um, I think my greatest talent is probably taking a massive amount of information and distilling it down (snaps fingers) like that into something-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 18:07 (sighs)

Mel Robbins 18:07 ... super simple.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 18:08 And, and being able to communicate it too-

Mel Robbins 18:09 Yes.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 18:10 ... right?

Mel Robbins 18:10 Right. Yes.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 18:10 And I bet when you started, you didn't know everything you know now, but my guess is that you learned fast.

Mel Robbins 18:17 Yeah. I also am really talented at cooking, I'm talented-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 18:20 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 18:20 ... at, like, arranging flowers, like-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 18:22 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 18:23 So I s- but I, I realized I had a very limited...... definition of talent.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 18:29 Yeah. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 18:29 And oftentimes, I think that we look at other people-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 18:34 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 18:34 ... that are wildly talented, whether it's in sports or it's in art or music or business, and we sort of shrug our shoulders and go, "Oh, well, they were born with that gift and-"

Dr. Angela Duckworth 18:46 Yeah, "But I'm not."

Mel Robbins 18:48 "... but I'm not-"

Dr. Angela Duckworth 18:48 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 18:49 "... and I could never be-"

Dr. Angela Duckworth 18:51 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 18:51 "... and therefore, I'm just not gonna try."

Dr. Angela Duckworth 18:54 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 18:54 And so, I love that there is a relationship in your definition between also working-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 19:00 Great 'cause say, say you-

Mel Robbins 19:00 ... because you said it's about the rate of improving.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 19:01 You can't say your rate is not what you would love it to be, but it's not that bad. You're like, "You know, I'm not the smartest kid in this room."

Mel Robbins 19:10 Yeah.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 19:10 "I'm not the fastest learner in this room," but you can say, as so many people that I have studied, so many women, so many men, "You will not outwork me." Like, "Give me a chance. I am gonna stay on this treadmill." I mean, you know, very, uh, appropriately, uh, the Harvard University study of... There's this longitudinal study. I know you've had Robert Waldinger on. It's, um... You know, broadly, it's part of that work. They, like, literally put their participants, they were all men, this was an old study, and at the time they decided that only men were worthy of study, but they would literally put them on a treadmill, they called it the treadmill test, and they, you know, "Get off when you want to, but see how long you can stay on." And, you know, of course they make it really fast and so it's really hard and it's really challenging. So there are a lot of people who are like, "Okay, I may not be the most talented, but put me on that treadmill and watch what I can do because I will not give up, because I will try harder." So, I do think there is this separation that w- that, you know, you don't have to have a PhD to understand between talent, you know, the rate at which you get better at something when you try, and effort, which is, okay, how hard and how long are you gonna try?

Mel Robbins 20:26 So, what do you think the mix is? So, when you look at somebody who's successful, who has both the talent, so there's a level to which they get better at something-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 20:33 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 20:33 ... or they were naturally predisposed to something, versus the effort and hard work put in, what do you think?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 20:41 So, I think effort counts twice. Sure, talent counts, but I think effort counts twice. To me, skill is kind of barren unless you apply it, right? So, what are you gonna do with your skill? Well, you need effort to sort of unlock your skill and turn it into actual achievement. And so, when you write this all down, and if you want, there's like math behind it, but to me, of course talent figures into the equation, but effort counts twice 'cause one, it unlocks that talent and turns it into skill, and two, it unlocks that skill and turns it into actual, tangible achievements.

Mel Robbins 21:11 Dr. Duckworth, you say that based on the research that there are four things that make up grit, and I wanna take 'em one by one and really unpack them, and let's start with the first one, which is interest. What does that mean?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 21:24 So, when you look at people who are great at what they do, and it actually doesn't have to be that they're a, you know, a physicist. This is true of athletes. This is true of, you know, musicians, chefs, you know, anybody who becomes great at what they do. There is curiosity, right? Their mind comes to this subject and wants to stay there, right? And when you look at children and you w- ask yourself, whatever age you are, w- you can see, like, where is this mind going, right? I mean, there are people who say, "Oh, I'm not intellectual. Oh, I'm not really smart." When you start talking about something that you really care about, you are a genius because that is where your mind lives.

Mel Robbins 22:01 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 22:01 So that is the first psychological asset, and it happens, you know, usually, well, we hope in- in childhood. Um, uh, meaning you do have to be exposed to things. I think great parenting, a lot of it is noticing what your young person is thinking about. Um, when my daughter, Lucy, was growing up, I will tell you that this child was not obviously a hard worker. She was easily discouraged. She really hated doing homework or practicing her, you know, viola, um, but when I would get the iPad after she, you know, had, you know, run off with it, all of the tabs were open to baking videos, right, like unicorn cookies and like chocolate chocolate cupcakes r- And on Monday, Lucy would be telling me what she was gonna bake on Saturday. She would pull my cookbooks off the shelf and start reading them, you know, well before you usually do that kind of thing. And one day I said to her, I was like, "Lucy, I think

Dr. Angela Duckworth 23:03 you're interested-"

Mel Robbins 23:04 Hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 23:04 "... in cooking." And she looked at me like I was, you know, from planet Mars. I was just like, "Oh, what do you mean?" (laughs) I was like, "What do you mean, what do I mean?" So, I will say, the first stage of grit is interest, and you don't always even know that you're interested in something until a passerby or a loved one says, "Hey, by the way, you spend a lot of time thinking about X, Y or Z." So that is the first psychological asset of grit. I don't believe that you can grow passion without the seed of, of interest.

Mel Robbins 23:33 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 23:33 And I, I genuinely believe that though we may not all be equal in IQ, though we may have different talents that, that when we begin to notice where our mind lives, when we begin to notice what attracts our attention spontaneously, that is the beginning of discovering the interests that can make us something of a genius about, about what we do.

Mel Robbins 23:57 I'm so glad we're starting with interest, because if you're listening right now and you're not really sure what you're interested in, which I think a lot of people have that experience. In fact, in your book, you address this. You write about a Reddit post.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 24:17 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 24:17 And I wanna read this because I personally think if you don't relate to this, what this person wrote on Reddit-You are related to somebody who is living this right now. "I'm in my early 30s, and I have no idea what to do with myself career-wise. All my life, I've been one of those people who has been told how smart I am, how much potential I have. I'm interested in so much stuff that I'm paralyzed to try anything. It seems like every job requires a specialized certificate or designation that requires long-term time and financial investment before you can even try the job, which is a bit of a drag. What do I do?"

Dr. Angela Duckworth 24:55 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 24:55 I don't know what I'm interested in. Dr. Duckworth, what do I do?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 24:59 I have collected data on, I don't know, tens of thousands, maybe 50,000, maybe 100,000 people. I can tell you, Mel, that when I study passion and perseverance for long-term goals, and I can give you a sub-score on my questionnaire for passion, which is, you know, this consistency of interest over time, but really an abiding kind of love, and perseverance, which is resilience, you know, "I wanna do the practice, I wanna do the hard work," reliably, people score higher in perseverance than they do for passion. I think discovering and developing interests is a lot harder than it sounds, right? It sounds like the hard part is the work. No, no, no. Figuring out the direction is, for most people, including myself, like the real torturous part. So, one of the things that you should know about interests is that, it is in some ways voluntary, but it is in some ways involuntary. Like, you cannot force yourself to be interested in things.

Mel Robbins 25:53 Well, anyone's who's a parent knows you can't force...

Dr. Angela Duckworth 25:56 (laughs) Yeah.

Mel Robbins 25:56 And, and, everyone...

Dr. Angela Duckworth 25:57 You might try, but yeah.

Mel Robbins 25:57 Well, anyone who's a human being has, has had a parent try to force them to-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 26:01 Absolutely.

Mel Robbins 26:01 ... do something they're not interested in.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 26:03 All those little kids playing piano and violin, like, how many of them are actually (laughs) interested in it?

Mel Robbins 26:07 It's true.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 26:07 Like, very few, right?

Mel Robbins 26:08 It's true. But-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 26:09 And it's really foolish.

Mel Robbins 26:11 But what questions should you ask yourself if you're not sure what you're interested in?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 26:18 I wanna say something really provocative. I think maybe instead of asking yourself another question, you should just go and do something, right? Like my Pilates teacher would say, like, "Don't think it, just do it. Don't think it, just do it." Stop writing in your journal. Stop asking yourself questions. Like, literally go out and do something. You know, interests are like food, you gotta taste it to know whether you like it or not, and that to me is the number one mistake I see people making. They, like, think about it and they think about it, and then they wanna talk to their friends about it, or... Okay, there's a limited amount of good that that does, but one of the things about interest is they, they really do emerge from experience, and you can't predict. I remember teaching these three triplets, these, um, you know, adorable, uh, boys, and they were all very fine students, and you know, like so many young adults, they were like, thinking about what they were wanting to do with their career. But all it took was one summer internship to be sitting behind a desk in a terminal and to realize, like, "I am going to go crazy. Why? Because I don't like sitting down this much." Well, (laughs) you probably can rule out the job that you just interned for, right? And now that person became, like, a fitness instructor, right? So how would he know that? No amount of journaling, no amount of reflecting, and no amount of conversing with friends is going to substitute for one hour of actual experience. So, in science, the science of interest, the science of, uh, motivation, we call this sampling.

Mel Robbins 27:47 Okay.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 27:47 So, before you specialize in being a- an author or a podcast host or a psychologist like me, you have to sample broadly. So, the paradox of, of specialization is that it's preceded by a breadth of sampling. So, before you become a, you know, jack of one trade, you know, to some extent, you have to try a lot of trades, right? And, and so with children, what you see, you know, very wise and, and certainly very privileged parents, right? Because it sometimes costs money to do this. You know, they're cycling their kids through a variety of pursuits so they can sample, so they can taste things and spit 'em out if they don't like them, you know? My daughter, Lucy, the one who I mentioned with great fondness, uh, uh, was not prodigiously gr- you know, gritty when she was growing up. We cycled her through, uh, ballet, through pottery. She did track one year. She, um, played the viola. I mean, one thing after the other. We had, in our family, the hard thing rule. Families have their rules. We, in the Duckworth family, raised our kids by the hard thing rule. It had three parts, and it was all really about the philosophy of interest and sampling. So, the first part was, well, it has to be something that requires your hard thing, 'cause everyone has to do the hard thing, right? So, you can choose a hard thing, but the hard thing has to have an element of deliberate practice. So, it has to have goals and, you know, effort and feedback, okay? So, viola counted, right? But, like, that little studio down the street where you basically just ate Goldfish crackers and, like, hung out, like, that, that doesn't count, 'cause there are no goals. (laughs) There's no effort. There's no feedback. Okay, that was rule, part one. The second part was you were not allowed to quit in the middle.

Mel Robbins 29:34 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 29:34 So, when Lucy came home from her very first track meet, she actually came up to the bleachers, and she was like, "Mom, I don't wanna run track anymore." And I was like, "Okay, you don't have to run track anymore. You only have eight more weeks to go." So, we did not let our kids quit in the middle...

Mel Robbins 29:50 I love that rule.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 29:50 ... of a commitment.

Mel Robbins 29:51 I love that rule.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 29:51 We were like, "You are Duckworth. We finish what we begin." But the third part was all about sampling. The third part said that nobody gets to choose your hard thing but you, and we never chose any of the hard things for our two daughters. Jason and I said, you know, "Life is a multiple choice. It's not quite film." She, she wanted to do horseback riding, and we were like, "We are not that rich, and we don't live near horses." So, there was some, you know, reality to the childhoods that they lived, but they, we really tried to let them sample as many things as possible. And you know, I knew as a psychologist at the time, you know, getting my PhD and so forth, I knew that that was our only prayer for this girl (laughs) to be gritty, is that we absolutely had to find something that interested her.

Mel Robbins 30:33 If you're an adult listening to this, and you're recognizing that you've spent decades of your life grinding away at things that you're not interested in, is there advice that you have, Dr. Duckworth, on how you internally figure out and, and lean into what you're actually, authentically interested in? Because I always heard the word grit and immediately assumed suffering and-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 30:57 Suffering.

Mel Robbins 30:58 ... grinding it out.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 30:58 Doing things that are hard and terrible.

Mel Robbins 31:00 Yes.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 31:01 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 31:01 And instead, the first thing begins with things that you're actually interested in because if you're interested in it, you're gonna lean into it more.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 31:08 When I teach a cl- I teach a class at, um, at University of Pennsylvania. It's a little, uh, Ivy League school in Philadelphia. And the first section of this class, which is called Grit Lab, the whole class is called Grit Lab. The first section of the course, it's on the flow state, it's on interests, it's on values. It's called Choose Easy. And I tell my students, "You will never be great in life at something where it is the hardest thing of all the things in the life menu that you could pick. Choose the easiest one, choose the one that you wanna think about, choose the one that you're good at. Like, ch- choose easy." And then, the second part of the course is work hard, sometimes I call it work smart. So fine, choose easy is the entree. Yes, there is a second section where you have to work, but my goodness, you're never n- you know this, Mel, like people make this mistake all the time. They don't take into account what their interests and their energy and their, you know, be at a place where you are at your best. Start there.

Mel Robbins 32:12 Why do you think we stack the deck so hard against ourselves? You know what I'm saying? Like, 'cause, 'cause-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 32:16 That is such a good question, yeah.

Mel Robbins 32:17 Well, 'cause I love that you're starting a course at UPenn on grit.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 32:23 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 32:23 By teaching people to choose something that comes easy.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 32:26 Yeah. Not intuitive, right?

Mel Robbins 32:27 Not intuitive at all.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 32:28 But like, but why isn't it intuitive is your, is your, is your, it's such a good question. I, I think perhaps we have confused, you know, the two stages. Right? So, you know, um, there is this stage in which you are in the middle of practice.

Mel Robbins 32:42 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 32:42 I mean, you've written, I've written, is there anything harder than writing? No. It's like, you know, obviously you could just, you know, go and, like, watch a cooking show on YouTube, right? Like, that would be, to me, a lot more fun in the moment than, like, really working on this paragraph or figuring out the structure of a, of a chapter. So, there is an element of hard work that is, you know, part and parcel of excellence, but I think we get confused because we're like, "Oh, I guess that's the whole thing." No, no, no. The first thing to do is choose easy, then, you know, work as hard as you can. But, but I think we, we just push them together. I think that, to me, is my best guess. I, I mean, don't have any data on this, but it's just my, my instinct that we, or my intuition, that we, we, we get a little confused 'cause to, you know, to us, it's all one thing, um, when it's really two stages.

Mel Robbins 33:33 I agree. I actually agree. I-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 33:36 We should study that.

Mel Robbins 33:36 I think it's such an interest-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 33:37 I have to figure out how we can study that. Yeah, yeah.

Mel Robbins 33:37 Well, it's a really interesting insight because I think b- there's probably a lot of people that, that chose the wrong thing by mistake.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 33:45 Yes.

Mel Robbins 33:45 And then spend decades-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 33:46 They chose suffering.

Mel Robbins 33:47 Yes.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 33:48 I got a call from a McKinsey consultant, and I'll never forget this. This is, oh my gosh, Mel, go- at least 10 years ago, 15, could be 20. This McKinsey consultant from San Francisco calls me, and I guess it was, you know, at a time where I wasn't getting that many calls-

Mel Robbins 34:01 (laughs)

Dr. Angela Duckworth 34:01 ... so I just answered, you know? Like, uh, he said, "I am very successful. I've been promoted. Everybody thinks I'm great. I, I don't know what to do next." And we get into this conversation, and it's very clear to me, as he basically summarizes later in the conversation, that he has never made a decision in his life based on what was easy for him, what was enjoyable for him-

Mel Robbins 34:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 34:28 ... what gave him energy, what made him feel alive. He said, "I had a rule, more suffering, better. Harder, better." Right? And so, I did tell him the same thing that I tell to my students. I'm like, "Oh, two stages. Yeah, work hard, but first, choose easy."

Mel Robbins 34:44 I think if you were to dig into this as a research project, you would probably trace it back to the pressure that kids feel-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 34:51 Mm.

Mel Robbins 34:51 ... to do what their parents want them to do.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 34:54 Mm.

Mel Robbins 34:54 Because conforming in the moment feels easier. And if that's all that you've ever done-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 34:59 Mm.

Mel Robbins 34:59 ... then that becomes the default.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 35:01 Well, there is, I'm sure, um, uh, you know, many people have heard, and I know you know a lot about this, intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation-

Mel Robbins 35:09 Yep.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 35:09 ... um, distinction, right?

Mel Robbins 35:11 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 35:11 And one of the things that, you know, has emerged is a really, um, I think it's a very important research literature, it goes back at least 50 years. One of the stages in which our motivation evolves to be intrinsic is, is, is a stage where you are internalizing the motivations of others around you.

Mel Robbins 35:30 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 35:30 Right? So, if you have parents who play a lot of tennis, you know, you may start playing tennis. And at some point, it becomes internal to you, and then you're 45 years old and you wanna go play (laughs) tennis. And, and that is actually a healthy thing, that many intrinsic motivations begin outside of us.

Mel Robbins 35:46 Yes.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 35:46 But when they get stuck in between, it's called introjection, it's a fancy little, you know, whatever, it's just jargon. But when it gets stuck, it's like your parents want you to go to medical school, but it doesn't become fully internalized-

Mel Robbins 36:01 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 36:01 ... and you never really want to go to medical school, and it gets stuck at the should stage.

Mel Robbins 36:06 Yes.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 36:06 It's like, "I should go to medical school."

Mel Robbins 36:08 Yes.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 36:08 "I should take organic chemistry. I should go for a run. I should lose five pounds. I should eat a salad." That is not a good stage because it's kind of got one foot in intrinsic, one foot in extrinsic, and we're driven forward in a way that is extremely exhausting and feels untrue to our authentic selves.

Mel Robbins 36:28 I think that's where most, most people are.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 36:30 (sighs) Yeah.

Mel Robbins 36:30 So if you're somebody who-... the second you said make the easier choice.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 36:36 Yeah. You viscerally were like, "No." (laughs)

Mel Robbins 36:38 Or you're like, "How do you even do that?"

Dr. Angela Duckworth 36:40 (laughs) Yeah. I don't have that muscle.

Mel Robbins 36:41 Because I'm constantly thinking about the choice that would please my parents-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 36:45 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 36:45 ... or that would please my partner-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 36:46 My part- my partner's gonna say my-

Mel Robbins 36:47 ... or that would look good for my friends.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 36:49 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 36:49 Like, is there anything that you would say about what does that even mean? 'Cause I think that's a completely different way to go about life.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 36:58 I mean, if I can only share from my personal experience, 'cause I found it a struggle of my own, and I- I don't know whether it's because, you know, I was raised by a wonderful mother, but a- but a Chinese mother, who herself was born and raised in China.

Mel Robbins 37:11 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 37:12 And she was raised to, um, submit all of her own desires and dreams to her husbands. Um, her mother laid her hands on her shoulders one day and said, "You are ready to be a wife." And when I graduated from Harvard, the day of my graduation, my mother laid her hands on my shoulders, and she said, "I'm so proud of you. You are ready to be a wife."

Mel Robbins 37:35 (laughs)

Dr. Angela Duckworth 37:36 So what did I, you know, then progress to do? Well, by the way, I have a growth mindset, and so does my mom, and that was now 33 years ago, and we have both grown a lot.

Mel Robbins 37:46 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 37:47 Um, I have developed into a woman who believes that if I only do things for other people, I will never do things well enough for those people.

Mel Robbins 37:59 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 38:01 I took so long to learn this. I have a therapist named Dee, and in a conversation that is not older than seven days, Mel (laughs) , so this is, you know, a constant journey, or it's a, you know, constant, um, practice of mine to just try to remind myself, because it goes so deep with me. She said, "Angela, I think we should ban the word should." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "I- I think whenever..." 'Cause I was telling her about a particular, you know, task that I was about to shoulder, and I was using the word should. I was like, "I should take care of this problem." And she said, "I- I wonder whether you can answer the question why you're doing that without the word should." So of course, the academic in me comes out, and I'm like, "Well, you know, we have all these should emotions like shame and embarrassment for a reason, Dee, you know? Otherwise, we wouldn't have morals and ethics. Like, should is a good word."

Mel Robbins 38:52 You'd be a pain in the ass as a client for a therapist, then.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 38:54 She thinks I think too much.

Mel Robbins 38:55 (laughs)

Dr. Angela Duckworth 38:55 I think she's like, "Oh, there you go again." And- and when I came to think about it over the next few days, after that conversation with Dee, I tried to answer every question where I was about to say, "Well, 'cause I should do it, right? Because I should go to Pilates, you know?"

Mel Robbins 39:09 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 39:09 "'Cause I should go buy the groceries on the way home," (laughs) "'cause I should have a conversation with this student," I just asked myself a different question. I said, "Can I- Can I- Can I talk about this without this word?"

Mel Robbins 39:21 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 39:21 And, you know, to my amazement, words came out in almost every case. "I want to help this young person. I see myself in this young person."

Mel Robbins 39:32 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 39:32 "I can see a future that this person doesn't yet see." "I want to" is entirely different than "I should." And I wrote Dee an email not more than a few day- I think three days ago. I said, "Dee, I just wanted to let you know, I think you're right about the word should." I don't think living our lives in service to other people's, um, desires in that way does anybody a service. That's not, by the way, what scientists mean by beyond the self purpose, like shouldering all of these, you know, burdens and adopting other people's goals in a way that feels inauthentic-

Mel Robbins 40:10 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 40:10 ... to ourselves. So yeah, let's see how many minutes or hours we can go in our, you know, next 24 hours without saying the word should even once.

Mel Robbins 40:20 I love that. Did you hear that? I wanna make sure you heard the assignment from Dr. Duckworth.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 40:25 Yeah. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 40:25 Class is in session. Let's talk about the second part of grit, which is practice.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 40:30 Now, you're interested, of course, but you have a second motivation on top of that, and that is the desire to improve. So it's usually not until you are in adolescence, sometimes late adolescence and sometimes, um, early adulthood, uh, that you want to get better at something in a skill-development kind of way. And so, that's when you need usually a coach. That's when you need to do... Have you've heard- you've heard of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice and you've heard of the-

Mel Robbins 40:56 I have, but yeah, for the person who's listening who doesn't know the 10,000-hour rule, just explain it-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 41:01 I-

Mel Robbins 41:01 ... back of the hand here.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 41:02 ... I cannot tell you how excited I am to tell you about deliberate practice, the 10,000-hour rule, because I think so many people have heard it. Very few people have heard it correctly. So, what is the 10,000-hour rule? Anders Ericsson was a truly great cognitive scientist. He studied sudoku players who were at the top of their game. He studied, um, chess masters, grand, uh, master chess players. He studied prima ballerinas. He studied World Cup soccer players. He was the world expert-

Mel Robbins 41:32 Wow.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 41:32 ... on world experts. And in one of his early studies, he found that the very best violinists at a music academy in Germany had about 10,000 hours of a certain high-quality practice that he later called deliberate practice. The next group at this music academy, they weren't as good. They had, like, something like, you know, 7,500 hours o- right, and then maybe the next group was, like, 5,000 hours. There were differences in the quantity of practice, and it became this very popular term that you gotta do 10,000 hours of practice if you wanna become great at what you do. But Anders, who passed away five years ago, to his dying day wanted the world to know that it's not just the quantity of practice, it was the quality of what those musicians were doing. Not just quantity, but quality. So, when I talk about this second stage in the evolution of paragon of grit, and by the way, Anders and I did a lot of research together. What we found was that this kind of high-quality practice where you have a goal, usually something that you're...... weak at. You completely concentrate on trying to get better at it. You have, like, a mental picture of what you want to do, but you can't do it yet, and then you try really hard, mentally or physically, depending on what you are trying to do. And then you get feedback on what you did well, maybe what you didn't do quite as well as you need to.

Mel Robbins 42:54 I hate that part.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 42:55 That's the, that's the-

Mel Robbins 42:55 (laughs) I hate that part.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 42:56 That's the, that's the part that stings?

Mel Robbins 42:57 Yeah. (laughs)

Dr. Angela Duckworth 42:57 That's the hard part, right? You know?

Mel Robbins 42:59 Yes.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 42:59 Like, the really hard... 'cause your ego is-

Mel Robbins 43:01 (laughs)

Dr. Angela Duckworth 43:01 ... you know, screaming. And then you do it over and over again. That's the high-quality practice. When, when you look at the thousands of hours of practice that a lot of us do, including myself, like, when I met Anders, I was like, "Wait, I don't know if I believe this," because I've been running, like, you

Dr. Angela Duckworth 43:15 know, if I tabulate all the hours I had jogged in my life, I was like, "I should be Usain Bolt." And he was like, "Well, do you have a goal?" And I was like, "Never." (laughs) He was like, "Do you practice with complete effort and concentration," like, um, like, when I'm running? "No, I'm listening to podcasts." And then he said, "Do you get immediate feedback on things that you could improve before you go out for your next run?" And I was (laughs) like, "Are you kidding? Who would give me that?" So, I was doing low-quality practice. So, the 10,000-hour rule is this: If you want to become great at what you do, you have to do thousands of hours, maybe not the exact number, 10,000, but yes, thousands of hours, of the highest-quality practice that you can do. And what Anders and I found together is that when you are really passionate and persevering about a long-term goal, you are the sort of person who puts in more of those high-quality hours.

Mel Robbins 44:11 And in listening to you, it also sounds like there are three things that determine what makes up high-quality hours. And in the words, you used the words "deliberate practice," that you're doing the thing with a goal in mind-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 44:25 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 44:25 ... that you are giving it your all, and that you get immediate feedback afterwards.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 44:30 Exactly right. I mean, it's so simple, isn't it? Like Mel, it's free.

Mel Robbins 44:34 It sounds painful, honestly.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 44:35 Okay, it's painful.

Mel Robbins 44:36 (laughs)

Dr. Angela Duckworth 44:36 It's painful, but there's no patent. Like, you don't have to pay anybody, right? I mean, you know?

Mel Robbins 44:41 I'm joking, but I-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 44:42 It's psychologically costly, but you know, it's financially available to all of us.

Mel Robbins 44:46 Well, I love how honest you are when you basically said, "I've, I, I've basically jogged for 10,000 hours-"

Dr. Angela Duckworth 44:53 Yeah. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 44:53 "... so why am I not winning the Olympics?"

Dr. Angela Duckworth 44:55 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 44:55 And you also admitted, "Well, I don't really have a goal."

Dr. Angela Duckworth 44:58 Right.

Mel Robbins 44:58 "I'm out there doing this thing."

Dr. Angela Duckworth 44:59 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 45:00 And maybe the goal is-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 45:00 "And I'm not trying that hard."

Mel Robbins 45:01 "And I'm not trying that hard, and then I don't really take any feedback at all."

Dr. Angela Duckworth 45:05 Yeah, none.

Mel Robbins 45:05 "Not for my watch."

Dr. Angela Duckworth 45:06 Zero.

Mel Robbins 45:06 "Not," yeah, "zero-"

Dr. Angela Duckworth 45:07 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 45:07 "... 'cause I'm not wearing a watch."

Dr. Angela Duckworth 45:08 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 45:08 But if you really look at it, if you want to get better at somebo- som- something, there's the three-part formula.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 45:14 I mean, one, two, three-

Mel Robbins 45:14 You gotta put in the hours, you gotta have a goal, you gotta put in the effort, and then ask for feedback. And if you do that, you're now applying the research. And if you look at anybody that's, that's amazing at anything, that's what they're doing. In fact, when we were preparing for this episode, uh, Professor Duckworth, as we were talking about the 10,000-hour r- rule and deliberate practice, we all kinda looked at each other and said, "That's kinda how we approach this podcast," because we're constantly asking ourselves, "How do we make this better? How do we make this better?" As soon as this interview's done, we all go into a room and we give each other feedback-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 45:47 I mean, I-

Mel Robbins 45:47 ... about what just happened.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 45:49 ... I spoke to Baudelaire on your team before we had this conversation. He said, "Oh, you know, I, I know you may prefer to be addressed as Angela or Angie. That's, you know, what my husband calls me, that's what my mom called..." I'm like, "We're gonna call you Dr. Duckworth." I said, "Sure, you can call me anything you want. Why, why is that?" He said, "Well, you know, we learn, right? And we have learned that, you know, it, w- we don't wanna have that pattern where women are addressed by their first name, men are addressed by their salutation."

Mel Robbins 46:20 Yeah.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 46:20 I was like, "Amazing." So, exactly right. I think this three-part formula is true if you're an individual, but it's also true if you're an organization, right? Gotta have a goal.

Mel Robbins 46:29 Yep.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 46:29 Gotta try.

Mel Robbins 46:30 Yeah.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 46:30 And you gotta learn from feedback.

Mel Robbins 46:32 I would love to talk a little bit about the importance of being able to do something that you're bad at. You know, you may be, there's a lot of people that are very interested in starting a YouTube channel or writing a book or, you know, marketing their business online or they're interested in, you know, something that is gonna require them to go through that really cringey period.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 46:59 (laughs) Yeah.

Mel Robbins 46:59 You know, and the embarrassment-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 47:00 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 47:00 ... and the shame, and I'd love to have you share a little bit about how we can learn how to do that, and I wanna read to you from your mega bestseller, Grit. It's on page, uh, 141. It's in the section on practice, and you're writing about these psychologists who devoted their careers to studying how children learn agg- and agree that learning from mistakes is something that babies and toddlers don't mind at all. You watch a baby struggle to sit up or a toddler learn to walk, you'll see one error after another, failure after failure, a lot of challenge exceeding skill, a lot of concentration, a lot of feedback, a lot of learning, emotionally. Well, they're too young to ask. It's true, 'cause you never see a toddler fall over and go, "Well, I'll just lay here for the rest of my life."

Dr. Angela Duckworth 47:44 Yeah. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 47:44 "I've failed."

Dr. Angela Duckworth 47:45 And they don't feel shame.

Mel Robbins 47:46 Right.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 47:46 You know? It's pretty obvious they're not embarrassed.

Mel Robbins 47:48 Right. But then something changes-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 47:51 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 47:52 ... around the time children enter kindergarten. They begin to notice that their mistakes inspire certain reactions in grownups. What do we do? We frown. Our cheeks flush a bit. We rush over to our little ones to point out that they've done something wrong. And what's the lesson we're teaching? Embarrassment, fear, and shame. What I got from this section of the book is that we're actually wired to try and to learn and to grow and not judge ourselves, but this kinda cringe, embarrassment, shame thing that we do to ourselves is something that we've been taught. Can you unpack that for us?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 48:31 Those two psychologists are, um, two wonderful women, um, Elena and Deborah, and they were disciples of a psychologist that I don't think a lot of people have heard of, but it's a real shame. Uh, Lev Vygotsky. Uh, he was a Russian psychologist and one of the great developmental psychologists in history. And Lev spent a lot of time observing young children.And he found that, for example, young children learn and play.

Mel Robbins 48:58 Hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 48:58 Right? They try things that they can't do. They pretend to do things, like be a doctor or, you know, to be a mom or to, you know, do things that they are not and then they, of course, can't do them, and they do them very awkwardly and clumsily, and they fall down, they spill things, and they break things. And I think this insight that this native desire to learn, this native desire to experiment, this complete, um, you know, lack of self-consciousness when it comes to screwing up, um, missing the mark, is it isn't in all of us because we were all babies. I mean, you were that young, innocent, hopeful child. And, you know, when you ask Elena and Deborah about this hypothesis that, like, maybe when you're five and you start to, you know, go to school and you see the facial expressions of your teachers and the disappointment and, of course, your classmates and so forth, you know, they will tell you that this is a little bit more of their speculation than, you know, mountains of hard data. But clearly, self-consciousness is something that you are not born with, but you acquire. So, is it kindergarten? Is it, you know, something else that's happening around the same time? Um, whatever it is, I think the lesson for us is to try to recover something of that, you know, um, you know, the, this, the beginner's mind it's sometimes called, right? It's like the gift of just being a complete rookie and, and to be un-self-conscious. And I speak as somebody who, like, wishes she had that all the time. Um, I think I've gotten better at it. But I remember going to a hip-hop class, Mel. I was, um, uh, I was in my 20s. I was living in New York City, and I was... It was, like, the brief chapter of my life when I was a management consultant. And, uh, one of my coworkers, Linda, said, "Let's go to this hip-hop class after work." And I was like, "Sure, what's that?" And so, we show up, and maybe this is a New York thing, but like, oh my gosh, everybody there was, like, from the Joffrey Ballet.

Mel Robbins 51:02 (laughs)

Dr. Angela Duckworth 51:02 I mean, like, the teacher would call out these moves, like 16 moves. She was like, "Da-da-da-da-da-da, go." And then you would, like, all go individually from one corner (laughs) to the r- of the room to the ne- And I was like, "What is happening?" I felt so self-conscious, so embarrassed, so awkward, so clumsy, and I never went to another hip-hop class. And if I had really, um, you know, tried to, I guess, you know, channel the little kid that I used to be, like, who cares? Like, of course you don't know how to do hip-hop. It's not something you (laughs) have learned before. There's no embarrassment. So, I, I do try to remember that. I try to model that, you know, um, because I do think it is something that, though acquired, is, is now our second nature.

Mel Robbins 51:46 Hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 51:47 Right?

Mel Robbins 51:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 51:47 Like, who among us wants to, like, have this spinach in their teeth, right? Like, y- you know, we all want things to be great. And so, that is an impediment to, to learning if we will not take those risks, and, and not be awkward, and not go through the cringe period.

Mel Robbins 52:01 You know, in our family, we talk a lot about putting in the reps. Um, just going and showing up every day-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 52:08 Yeah. Yeah, consistently.

Mel Robbins 52:08 ... and doing the boring, grueling stuff and giving up your timeline. But we've talked about deliberate practice. Is there some tough love you can give yourself if you're doing the reps, stuff's not progressing, you're starting to get frustrated, you have been consistent, but by God, this isn't working.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 52:31 Mm.

Mel Robbins 52:31 Professor Duckworth. Like, how do I have an honest conversation with myself and potentially call myself out? Because there's that work that is the work that's easy.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 52:41 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:41 You know what I'm saying?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 52:41 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:42 Like, you know, how many of us really love the preparation work, like, buying the new journal-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 52:47 (laughs) Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:47 ... and getting ready to do the thing-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 52:49 Right. The new pen.

Mel Robbins 52:50 ... the organizing ahead, the new pen.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 52:52 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:52 All that stuff, the new baskets.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 52:54 Yeah. But now you're like day 179 and you're like, "Uh..."

Mel Robbins 52:58 I haven't written a word.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 52:59 (laughs) Yeah, yeah.

Mel Robbins 53:00 Yes. So, how, like w- how do you call yourself out? Because I do think that there's a lot of people, myself included, that show up that are zero to ten, a three, in terms of the effort putting in.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 53:14 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 53:15 How do you have that honest conversation with yourself so that we can tap into this research around deliberate practice?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 53:19 Well, first of all, three is not as much of a problem as zero. I really do think... I mean, if it's physical therapy, if it's, you know, um, you know, becoming a novelist or... I really think if you put in anything, right? Like, the... What happens to most people is that whatever their number is, they're putting in a 10, they're putting in an eight or... Whatever their number is, it goes to zero, and that is the real problem, right? They, they're out of the game.

Mel Robbins 53:41 Yep.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 53:41 And I, and I really mean that. When Bob Bowman... I'm a little bit obsessed with Bob Bowman and his, um, coaching.

Mel Robbins 53:47 Who's Bob Bowman for the person who's listening?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 53:48 He was the coach of, uh... Bob Bowman was the coach of Michael Phelps and, um, Léon Marchand. You know, when, when he, when he talks to his swimmers, he says like, "You know, every swim practice is like putting a deposit in the bank."

Mel Robbins 53:59 Hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 53:59 Sometimes you get to put in a dollar, sometimes you get to put in 10, maybe rarely you get $100. Sometimes it's 10 cents. But guess what? Every deposit you make, you get to withdraw when it comes to competition. And I do think that, Mel, even if you're like, "Well, I only put in a three today," all right, but it wasn't a zero, right? Like, truly. So, that is one thing I will just say, that people have this misunderstanding that it has to be a 10, it has to be a... Look, if Michael Phelps is putting in an eight and he is Michael Phelps, then like, give yourself a break. If you're putting in a three, maybe you're tired. Like, may-

Mel Robbins 54:30 Yes. Well, the... What's that famous quote that if all you can gi- if all you have to give is 30% and you give 30% today, you just gave 100% of what you had to give?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 54:37 Oh, I love that. I have not heard that quote, but now I have. Okay, so first of all, I would give ourselves permission to say like, "You know what? That's what I could do today." Um, the second thing I would say is rather than having a conversation with yourself, I would have a conversation with another person, and I really mean that. Here's, here's what I mean. So much of the sort of footage of, you know, high-achievers and, and even when you look at them behind the scenes and you like, you know, "Oh, the hours that they practice," they look like they're doing it on their own, and to some extent, that's true. In fact, when you do that high-quality deliberate practice, it is more typically done alone than it is in the presence of another person, including a coach. It's not like your coach stands there the whole time where you're concentrating and trying to achieve your goals. But what I mean by talk to another person is this, whether it is a teammate or...... a mentor or a coach. Rather than having the conversation with yourself about your plateau and your lack of motivation, and are you on the wrong track, and maybe you're going in the wrong dir- Have the conversation with another human being. A teammate can say to you, "Well, what I've noticed is..." A mentor or a coach can say, "In my experience, what I've found is..." It is something that, and I know you, um, have spoken to the psychologist Ethan Kross-

Mel Robbins 55:48 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 55:48 ... and he is one of my favorite humans, and a, a very good friend, um, this idea of psychological distance, right? You are trying to have a little distance on your problems so you can think about it objectively. I mean, maybe you are in a rut, and maybe (laughs) you should be doing something differently, or maybe you're over-training, or maybe there's something you could try that you haven't tried. If you try to create some psychological distance yourself, you can partially succeed. You can say, "Mel, what's the problem" to yourself in the mirror. I can say it to myself in the mirror, "Angela, what do, what do I think is going on right now? How can this problem be solved?" But wouldn't it be better if I went to my husband, Jason, or my colleague, Katie, or my friend, Ethan, or my mentor, Carol, because they have actual psychological distance because they are not me. So, I think one of the mistakes people make when they are feeling exhausted, when they are on the verge of burnout, is they, they dig deeper and they look inward, and almost always, you are much better off looking outward.

Mel Robbins 56:54 I love that. So, that's the second assignment from Dr. Duckworth-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 56:58 (laughs) Yeah, there's a lot of homework here.

Mel Robbins 56:59 ... that you should go talk to somebody. You know who you shouldn't talk to is your mother.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 57:02 (laughs) Yeah.

Mel Robbins 57:02 Because when you're in that psychological state, no matter what your mother says, even if she's right-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 57:10 It's not gonna be helpful.

Mel Robbins 57:11 ... even if it's the best thing you could hear, it's going to be annoying to you.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 57:14 You can talk to somebody else's mother.

Mel Robbins 57:15 Yes. (laughs)

Dr. Angela Duckworth 57:16 Yeah, yeah, that, that works.

Mel Robbins 57:17 Yes, as two moms, we know that-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 57:20 (laughs) Yes, I've been, I've been told that, that-

Mel Robbins 57:22 Yes, by my, by our children.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 57:22 ... that everything I'm saying is extremely unhelpful.

Mel Robbins 57:24 Yes, exactly. In your research, the third part of grit is purpose. How do you define purpose?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 57:31 When we say that, we mean that you feel like you are part of and in service to something that is larger than yourself. I think all of us want to be helpful. I think we would rather help than be helped, honestly. We have lost, you know, our connection and our responsibility to others, and I think that's what's happening today. I think we want to, but it's not obvious to us. And so, that, to me, is, you know, something not only to remind ourselves of, but to, um, you know, try to get some traction on, because I don't think people need preaching. I think they just need to find little things that they can do to get started. Um, you know, my husband said the other day, like, "Go get me a, a bag," you know, like one of those, like, little shopping bags, um, 'cause he had five extra minutes, and he just, like, picked up the trash on our block. I mean, that was just, you know, is it great for the block? Sure, but it was even better for Jason Duckworth, right? So, just, like, these little, little things of, you know, I, I am a small part, this is a big part, what can I do to be helpful?

Mel Robbins 58:36 So, if purpose is having this sense of responsibility and the acting with the intention of helping others, right?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 58:44 Yeah, yeah.

Mel Robbins 58:45 Um-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 58:46 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 58:47 ... what's one question that someone can ask themselves to help them start to see a sense of purpose? 'Cause this is one of the pillars of being somebody with grit.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 58:58 There is a research study that asks this question, um, in the form of an intervention, and it was run by David Yeager, who, David Yeager at UT Austin is actually a protege of his mentor, Carol Dweck, so it's all, you know, full circle. And, um, the, the question that he posed to teenagers in the study is like, "What's something that really annoys you?" Like, "What is a problem in the world that really makes you mad? Um, write about it." Right? And that was the treatment condition, and there was a control condition where you wrote about something else. And it was a purpose intervention, because that is an opening question to a problem that maybe you wanna work on, because we can't all work on everything, right? So, one person might really care about the environment. Another person might be, um, really angry at the litter they see in their neighborhood.

Mel Robbins 59:49 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 59:49 That would be my husband. Um, uh, another person might think of, you know, um, uh, you know, they don't like the way women are treated, and they've experienced something, you know, in their own lives that really motivates them. I think everybody can answer that question. You know, what is a thing that really irritates you, angers you, outrages you? Write about it. I think that is not the obvious entrée into purpose, but I think it is a wonderful doorway into, what is in your heart that hurts, you know? What, what do you think ought to be different? It's the first step to saying, "Hey, maybe I can make that difference."

Mel Robbins 1:00:30 You know, I wanna give a quick example, and then I wanna dig deeper into purpose in your job, because so many people don't feel connected to what they're doing-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:00:37 Yeah, so many.

Mel Robbins 1:00:38 ... but something that brings me a lot of energy and that I'm super interested in is gardening, flowers in particular.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:00:45 Oh, okay.

Mel Robbins 1:00:45 And I had heard-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:00:46 There are many beautiful flowers here, by the way.

Mel Robbins 1:00:48 Yeah.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:00:49 Is that not a coincidence? (laughs)

Mel Robbins 1:00:49 Well, I always have fresh flo- fresh flowers in the studio.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:00:51 I asked you if it was a special occasion, and you said no.

Mel Robbins 1:00:54 You're here.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:00:54 (laughs) Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:00:55 It is. You're here.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:00:56 Well, yes (laughs) .

Mel Robbins 1:00:56 You're here, Dr. Duckworth.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:00:58 Life.

Mel Robbins 1:00:58 But, so it just naturally brings me alive.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:01 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:01:01 My kids tease me 'cause we can walk through a city park. I can name every flower. I can talk about it.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:06 (laughs) .

Mel Robbins 1:01:06 I'm just super interested in it. There we go, right?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:08 Yeah, there you go.

Mel Robbins 1:01:09 And I heard about a woman in our community who had gotten very sick, and she's a, a flower farmer.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:17 Mm.

Mel Robbins 1:01:18 And I organized a bunch of friends to go help her while she was in the hospital.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:23 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:01:24 And it gave me a deep sense-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:26 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:01:26 ... of meaning and purpose.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:27 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:01:28 And so, that's an example-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:29 Yes.

Mel Robbins 1:01:29 ... not in career-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:30 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:01:30 ... of how you can infuse day-to-day life with things that you're interested in, and then also find ways to make it part of...... purposeful living, just like your husband, who's like, "Wait a minute. I, it bothers me-"

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:44 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:01:44 "... that there's trash on my walk." And I'm glad you shared that because the last time I walked the loop by my house-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:49 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 1:01:49 ... I noticed an uptick in trash, and I thought, "I need-"

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:51 There's a lot of trash going on.

Mel Robbins 1:01:52 But I w- but I-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:52 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:01:53 ... I immediately thought, "This will give you..."

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:55 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:01:55 "This will probably make me look like a bad person."

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:01:57 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 1:01:58 But I literally was like, "Why haven't they cleaned this up?"

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:02:00 (laughs) Someone's really gotta get on that.

Mel Robbins 1:02:02 And then now, you're making me realize-

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:02:04 Well, okay-

Mel Robbins 1:02:04 ... "Wait a minute. Wait a minute, why don't I do it?"

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:02:07 Why don't you do i- But, let me also give you permission to not take every wor- problem in the world on your shoulders.

Mel Robbins 1:02:14 Fair.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:02:14 And one of the things, you know, I don't wanna generalize to all women, but I will speak as a woman. Um, and, um, I, I will just say, as a confession, that, you know, a lot of my life, I did a lot of public service, right? So when I was in high school and especially in college, I mean, there was a point in college that I literally spent more hours doing public service than I was in the lecture hall, um, or the lab 'cause I was a neurobiology major. So many, many, many hours. And I will tell you that I think I had one thing very wrong.

Mel Robbins 1:02:42 Hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:02:43 I felt like the more tired you were, the better. The more ought and should drove your motivation, the better. In some ways, the less happy you were, the better the act, the more virtuous. Now, in my 50s, I can say, "No, no, no, no, no. Why don't you... There's so many problems in the world." Honestly, there's so many problems in the world. You don't have to solve all of them. You can't solve all of them. Why don't you focus on the subset that is interesting (laughs) to you, right?

Mel Robbins 1:03:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:03:13 So that you're not only fulfilling a sense of personal purpose and doing the right thing, but my goodness, if you love flowers, can't you find a way to make the better, the world a better place that also allows you to enjoy this, you know, very serious hobby that you have? Like, why do you have to always go in the direction that is against the grain? And I will tell you, Mel, it took me a long time to fully internalize that. Now, to me, I mean, this conversation, to me, is part of my purpose, right? Like, I want to make the world a psychologically wiser place.

Mel Robbins 1:03:53 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:03:53 And if I can do that with one person, then I will have lived a good life. But I did not choose history. I did not choose current events. I would be a terrible elected politician. I can barely name all 50 states in the union. But psychology is interesting to me, so, so why not marry my purpose to my interests? When you have that marriage, that, to me, creates passion. And so, I hope people listening are able to say, "It's not too late," you know? Whenever you come to this realization, you can begin that very day to look for the intersection.

Mel Robbins 1:04:31 I am so glad you said that because I believe that so many people feel that there's so many things going on that nothing's gonna make a difference.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:04:42 Right.

Mel Robbins 1:04:42 Or, that if you are spending your time volunteering in an area that interests you, that somehow that's not big enough.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:04:52 Right.

Mel Robbins 1:04:53 There is a story about purpose in your book related to bricklayers that I wanna read to you.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:05:00 Mm.

Mel Robbins 1:05:00 This is on page 149 of your blockbuster bestseller Grit, in the section on purpose. "Fortunate indeed are those who have a top-level goal so consequential to the world that it imbues everything they do, no matter how small or tedious, with significance. Consider the parable of the bricklayers. Three bricklayers are asked, 'What are you doing?' The first says, 'I'm laying bricks.' The second says, 'I'm building a church.' And the third says, 'I'm building the house of God.' The first bricklayer has a job, the second has a career, the third has a calling." How can we apply that to our lives, to our marriage, to our career?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:05:45 There is actually a science of calling, so there are parables, but there's actually modern science, and it's true. Some people, they go to work, and it's a job. It pays the bills. As soon as it's five o'clock, they, our brain shuts off from their work, and they get to do what they really wanna do. Some people have a career. They see progression, right? So this is better, right, by the way? It's like, "Oh, I can see that I'm getting ahead." There's some kind of fulfillment in that. Um, Mel, we talked about the gratification of getting better at something, and that's, you know, built into human DNA, so that's a wonderful thing to have a career compared to a job. But a calling, I think, is something that marries our intrinsic interests with our deepest personal values.

Mel Robbins 1:06:29 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:06:29 And the science of this shows that when you have a calling, absolutely you're happier and you are a better performer. I think one of the things that is surprising about this research is that it's not like physicians have a calling and nurses have a career and the guy who has to, you know, roll the gurney down the hallway, well, he has a job. No, if you actually look at people's, you know, relationships with their work, it has nothing to do with the job title. It has more to do with how they feel-

Mel Robbins 1:07:01 Hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:07:01 ... about their work, how they see it, and how they feel it. So, you don't have to switch your job necessarily to have a relationship with it which is qualitatively different. And last thing I'll say is that this word calling actually, you know, you read from the Bible essentially, and, um, it actually originally was not a term of modern psychology. It originally did have a religious connotation of being called by God-

Mel Robbins 1:07:27 Hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:07:27 ... of being, um, called to do something by a higher power. And I would say that what scientists who study calling today, you know, like the real contemporary science of it, is actually, um, returning in a way to that because it's, it's something in addition perhaps to, like, "Wow, this is interesting," and, "Whoa, this is very resonant with my values." When you are truly called, you do feel like there is, um, a task that has been laid at your door that you are interested in and you do find important, but, but, but that it needs to be you, like, that you are needed. And one of the things that I think is true for young people today, but really all of us, is that I think this deep need to be needed-

Mel Robbins 1:08:10 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:08:10 ... to be truly useful, um, to be given a task, um, and to feel like, um...... you know, I n- and again, if we can do that without the word should, which I know that seems like counterintuitive, but to really feel that sense of, um, kind of being part of something, uh, bigger than your own personal concerns, I, I think that is, uh, you know, what so many of us are looking for. And I think we should be encouraged because the research also shows that if you say to yourself, "Ooh, I'm the first bricklayer," or even, "I'm the second bricklayer," it doesn't mean that you can't be the third bricklayer. Absolutely, callings evolve.

Mel Robbins 1:08:51 Well, it's very clear that you have one.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:08:53 Y- I do. I feel like it's a calling. I feel, of course, very blessed to have it, and I can't tell you, Mel, like, "Well, what if you hadn't been a psychologist? Like, could you feel that way about becoming a, a..." You said you love food. I love food too. Like, maybe I could've been maybe a chef, you know? Like, that's another road not taken. Maybe. Maybe I could've been a pediatrician. I love children. Or... But I feel like I have a calling. I feel like this is, um, you know, my way of making the world a better place.

Mel Robbins 1:09:20 For somebody who wants a calling, is there anything in the research that helps you kinda dig deeper into this pillar of purpose to really start to think about how to anchor what you're doing and why you're doing it into something that's bigger than you?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:09:35 You know, when I talk to leaders and, um, though I am not very good at finance and other things that they teach at the Wharton School of Business, I mean, I am, um, a very passionate student of leadership, and I love studying world-class leaders the way I love studying world-class athletes. And when you ask a world-class leader, "How often does a typical person, even a very high-ranking executive in your organization, need to be reminded of the big picture?"

Mel Robbins 1:10:00 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:10:00 Right? Like, reminded of the greater purpose of the work. You know, when you ask that question, you might think annually, 'cause that's how often they have annual meetings, like, you know, like the retreats, or maybe you think quarterly because that's often how, you know, frequently a CEO has a town hall or something. Daily. Sometimes these CEOs are saying, like, hourly, minutely. Like, just it's, it's very easy to lose a sense of the big picture, and I think if you ask the question, "Who benefits if I do my job well?"

Mel Robbins 1:10:31 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:10:31 Um, you, you, you, you naturally get the answer. I, I live a half block from an elementary school, and there is a crossing guard there who lights up the world with his smile and his, you know, his presence. And I remember thinking to myself, like, "Wow, like, um, what an unusual person." And my husband said, "Oh, I know that person," right? Like, he actually used to, you know, uh, uh, coach track and... and I guess now he's retired. He just... And I thought to myself, you know, if he has a connection to, like, every child that he crosses across that busy intersection, A, gets to school safely, B, starts the day with someone looking at them with, like, genuine affection and fondness, like, "Hey, how you doing? Good to see you," like, what a beautiful thing. So I don't think you have to be a, a priest or a, um, a social worker, you know, to have a calling. I mean, you can ask yourself, "Who benefits when I do my job well?" And you have your answer.

Mel Robbins 1:11:39 That was beautiful.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:11:41 He's great. You gotta come and see me-

Mel Robbins 1:11:43 You're great.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:11:43 ... so that we can cross (laughs) the street together.

Mel Robbins 1:11:45 You're great.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:11:45 You gotta come on a weekday around, like, 8:00. (laughs) Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:11:47 I think you're great. I would love to.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:11:49 Yeah. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 1:11:49 I would love to.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:11:50 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:11:50 Let's hit the final one, hope. So you say that grit depends on a different kind of hope. It rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future. "I have a feeling tomorrow will be better" is different from, "I resolve to make tomorrow better."

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:12:09 Hope is something that doesn't have a chapter because I think you need hope whether you're 4 or 104, and, you know, we spoke about growth mindset, Mel, and when you asked me, "What is hope really?" You know, hope is the belief that the future can be better than the past-

Mel Robbins 1:12:27 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:12:27 ... and it is the belief that you can, in some way, make that come to pass. When you think about your life, when you think about your happiness, when you think about your health, when you think about your weight, when you think about your retirement savings, when you think about your children and what you can do in their lives, a hopeful person says, "I think the future can be better than the past, and I think there's something, even a small thing, that I can do to make it so." And at the core of hope, I think, is that belief of, "Well, well, why, why would I believe that?" Well, because it is the nature of human nature to grow. It is the nature of human nature to make mistakes, royally screw up, have a lot of regrets, and be smarter and stronger for the experience. So when I see people who are gritty at any age, they have this, you know, durable sense that because they are learners, because it is in their nature to develop and not to stagnate, that is what drives their optimism and their hope for, for, you know, getting something done the next day as opposed to staying in bed.

Mel Robbins 1:13:38 I love that definition. I love that you unpacked that. Can you just share with us the research around believing in your capacity to improve your life or the life of somebody else?

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:13:53 Sometimes scientists use the term agency-

Mel Robbins 1:13:56 Hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:13:56 ... um, and that, I think, maybe makes the point that this is not wishful thinking, right? It's not just positive thinking in some generic sense. But feeling agency is a sense of control over your future, not the naive sense that you can determine everything about the future, which you obviously cannot. Uh, Al Bandura, he, um, no longer alive, but he was, um, at Stanford University, and he identified four...... drivers of agency. He called it self-efficacy, but really, um, when you look at what he was talking about, like if you look at the questionnaire that Al Bandura used, "I can do this if I try," right?

Mel Robbins 1:14:36 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:14:36 That sense of agency. "I can do this if I try." Four drivers of it. He said, "Well, one is..." And I think this is not very obvious to people, but I think it's very important. I know, y- you know, y- you, you've spoken a lot about, you know, physical health, like taking care of yourself. Al Bandura said that one of the drivers of agency is being in a physiological state of, of wellness. You can't have agency when you're exhausted.

Mel Robbins 1:15:00 True.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:15:00 You can't have agency when you're sick. Like you, when you feel out of breath or... So, so one thing is take care of your body, so that you can have that sense of energy and agency. Second was what he called verbal persuasion, but I always

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:15:17 think like pep talks, right? You know, you're kinda down, you're thinking like, "Oh, I don't think I can do this," and someone comes along, maybe somebody who cares about you, and says, "No. You can do it. I've seen you do it before." And Al Bandura didn't wanna dismiss that. He said that is a very powerful source of agency, but not as good as a third thing, which is that a person comes along and they don't give you a pep talk, they give you a model. They show you what's possible by example.

Mel Robbins 1:15:46 Mm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:15:46 So, he would run these studies and l- little girls and boys would watch an adult do something, like play with a toy, and they would watch behind this like plate glass, um, divider. And then when you let them into the room, and they could do whatever they want, they just did exactly the same thing with the toy as the grownup did. We learn through modeling, and when we're not confident that we can do something and we see a model who-

Mel Robbins 1:16:10 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:16:10 ... maybe looks like us, maybe doesn't look like us, but we vibe with, in some other way, we identify with them, that creates agency in us. And I've heard that from my own students. They'll tell me like, "Oh, you know, you're an Asian female and I have found y- you to be an example for me." And I say to them like, "Wow, I don't even think about (laughs) being Asian female." But, but clearly they could see what was possible through that. But what I really wanna dwell on is the fourth thing. The fourth thing was the most important thing. More important than your physiological state, more important than pep talks, and even more important than having a model, and that was what he called a mastery experience. I call it a small win. You want someone to have agency? They need a small win. Every Olympic coach knows this. You have an athlete that loses a race, and then another race, and all of a sudden they're in a rut, you know what they need? They need a small win. They, they need it in some way, like they are trying to do something in practice and they did it in practice. They tried to adjust their elbow by a little, they, they did it. So, I think that when we find a person in our lives, maybe ourselves (laughs) , you know, where there's a real lack of hope-

Mel Robbins 1:17:20 Mm.

Dr. Angela Duckworth 1:17:22 ... to me, the most important