What Grit Really Teaches Us About Happiness with Professor Angela Duckworth | A Bit of Optimism

We’re often told that the secret to success is grit - more discipline, more perseverance, more individual effort. And grit does matter. But what if it’s only half the story? In today’s world, we’ve become experts at tracking achievement, yet novices at nurturing belonging - and the cost of that imbalance is showing up everywhere from burnout to loneliness. Few people are better equipped to help me make sense of that tension than today’s guest, Angela Duckworth. Angela is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, a MacArthur “Genius” Award winner, and the bestselling author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Angela is one of those people I could talk to for hours and we cover a lot of ground, but our conversation isn’t just about grit or performance. It’s about something deeper: why belonging gives achievement meaning and why human beings are actually wired to thrive together. In this episode, Angela and I explore how a culture obsessed with individual success quietly erodes teamwork, trust, and wellbeing. We talk about the loneliness epidemic among young people, why grit is so often misunderstood, and why character isn’t just about what you do for yourself, but what you do for others. Along the way, we unpack why the smartest people don’t always make the best teammates, how incentives shape behavior in ways we rarely notice, and why purpose and people—not willpower—are what sustain us over time. If you’ve ever felt burned out, disconnected, or wondered why success doesn’t feel as satisfying as you thought it would, this conversation is a reminder that meaning doesn’t come from standing alone at the top—it comes from being part of something bigger than yourself. This is… A Bit of Optimism. --------------------------- To buy Angela’s book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, head to: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Grit/Angela-Duckworth/9781501111112 + + + Simon is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and The Infinite Game. + + + Website: http://simonsinek.com/ Live Online Classes: https://simonsinek.com/classes/ Podcast: http://apple.co/simonsinek Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/ Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinek Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek Simon’s books: The Infinite Game: https://simonsinek.com/books/the-infinite-game/ Start With Why: https://simonsinek.com/books/start-with-why/ Find Your Why: https://simonsinek.com/books/find-your-why/ Leaders Eat Last: https://simonsinek.com/books/leaders-eat-last/ Together is Better: https://simonsinek.com/books/together-is-better/ + + + #SimonSinek Chapters 00:00 – Intro 01:40 – What Our Language Says About Individualism 03:30 – Rugged Individualism vs. Human Nature 05:45 – What Actually Makes Someone a Great Team Player 11:30 – Pay, Power, and the Social Contract of Leadership 18:50 – Why We Get Angry at Leaders 24:30 – Why Communal Relationships Matter at Work 29:00 – What Gen Z Is Really Struggling With 36:10 – Why We’re Desperate to Belong to Something Bigger 39:30 – Being “For” Something, Not Just Against Something 44:20 – The Biggest Misunderstanding About Grit

Angela DuckworthguestSimon Sinekhost

Feb 3, 202656mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

60 min read · 11,923 words

0:00 – 1:40
Intro
1. ADAngela Duckworth
  Do you think that society is, is moving toward the direction of, like, selflessness, of belonging, of community?
2. SSSimon Sinek
  I have empirical evidence. You and I have careers. You and I should not have careers. There should be no demand for our work. We talk about trust, we talk about cooperation, and there should be no demand for our work. But the fact that people are interested in the things that we're putting in the world, that are some of the guidance that we can help offer towards getting to that ideal that we imagine, proves that people are hungry for this.
3. ADAngela Duckworth
  Five years from now, we'll revisit the conversation. We'll see how, when, and in the meanwhile, we'll try to, like, you know, tilt the odds in, in the direction we want.
4. SSSimon Sinek
  I promise to have you back on the old pod in five years. Every now and then, I have a guest where we talk about everything, and everything seems to be really, really interesting. Angela Duckworth is one of those guests. She's a professor of psychology at UPenn, a MacArthur Genius Award winner, and probably the reason most of us know her, the bestselling author of the book Grit. We talked about the problem of living in a world that pushes us to stand out as individuals when, as human beings, we're actually hardwired to thrive together. We went deep into the loneliness epidemic, particularly as it affects young people. And we talked about something that both of our work delves into, the reason achievement means very little without belonging. So pull up a chair, sit back, and enjoy. This is A Bit of Optimism. [upbeat music]
1:40 – 3:30
What Our Language Says About Individualism
1. SSSimon Sinek
  Now, the thing that I-
2. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
3. SSSimon Sinek
  ... love about language, it is a living, breathing thing. It is, it changes. Pronunciations change, grammars change, words get added and taken away, and it is a reflection of the times we live in. And there's one word that I find really funny that I- my ear catches every time somebody says it of a completely new way of people speaking. Very rarely do people use the word me anymore. They use myself.
4. ADAngela Duckworth
  Oh.
5. SSSimon Sinek
  So, "Angela and myself went to the beach," as opposed to, "Angela and me went to the beach."
6. ADAngela Duckworth
  Ah.
7. SSSimon Sinek
  It is amazing-
8. ADAngela Duckworth
  Swirling
9. SSSimon Sinek
  ... how many people say the word myself.
10. ADAngela Duckworth
  What, what does that reflect? Like, what is the-
11. SSSimon Sinek
  I do not know, but it is a clear pattern how many people say myself.
12. ADAngela Duckworth
  Do they think it's, like, more proper? But that would not be... You know, language is getting more informal.
13. SSSimon Sinek
  I don't think it's a properness. If I had to make a wild-ass guess, I would say that it is a reflection of the fact that our nation over-indexed on rugged individualism and individualism in general, and that so much of our society has become, "Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me," you know?
14. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
15. SSSimon Sinek
  And, and-
16. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
17. SSSimon Sinek
  ... I'm the hero-
18. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
19. SSSimon Sinek
  ... and I want the promotion, and, like, the concept of team and togetherness and we're all in this-
20. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
21. SSSimon Sinek
  ... has kind of taken a backseat for, for this overemphasis on individual performance. And I think-
22. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
23. SSSimon Sinek
  ... changing the word from me to myself-
24. ADAngela Duckworth
  To myself
25. SSSimon Sinek
  ... is just-
26. ADAngela Duckworth
  First of all, you get two syllables. You get twice the airtime.
27. SSSimon Sinek
  And it's a more emphatic me, isn't it?
28. ADAngela Duckworth
  It's more ema- emphatic, right. It's sort of like a slightly larger font.
29. SSSimon Sinek
  It's a slightly larger font. It's exactly what it is.
30. ADAngela Duckworth
  That's good.
3:30 – 5:45
Rugged Individualism vs. Human Nature
1. SSSimon Sinek
  become to your point that the young people lead the language.
2. ADAngela Duckworth
  And by the way, I completely agree about rugged individualism. I guess it was Aristotle, right? Like, man is a social animal. But just, like, forgetting that you are part of an organism, like, it's not like the universe extends to just, like, your fingers and toes, right? Like, you are part of an organism called society.
3. SSSimon Sinek
  Mm-hmm.
4. ADAngela Duckworth
  But, like, yeah. I mean, my parents are Chinese, so I think I was brought up with both American and Chinese, like, sensibilities, and I think the rugged individualism that is distinctly of the United States [laughs] is not good.
5. SSSimon Sinek
  You go inside companies, and you look at incentive structures, and almost all incentive structures inside most companies today are based on individual performance. If you hit this number, you will get a bonus, right? You know, incentives don't incentivize performance outcomes, they incentivize behavior.
6. ADAngela Duckworth
  Hmm.
7. SSSimon Sinek
  And so you can't incentivize an outcome. You can only incentivize a behavior.
8. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
9. SSSimon Sinek
  And the goal is to align the incentive to the behavior you want, hopefully to get the outcomes that you want. And so when you emphasize individual performance, what you get is hoarding information, can't share it, right?
10. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
11. SSSimon Sinek
  What you get is me before we. What you get is my performance is more important than your performance.
12. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
13. SSSimon Sinek
  You know? What you get is, "That's what my boss wants. That's what I'm gonna do," as opposed to, "What's the right thing to do here?"
14. ADAngela Duckworth
  Right. So, like, your annual performance review, like, paradoxically, like, disincentivizes, like, what you can do for the coming... You know what we should do? We should figure out a better grading system, right? Because, you know, all of us went to elementary school, all of us went to middle school, most of us went to high school-
15. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah
16. ADAngela Duckworth
  ... a lot of us went to college.
17. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah.
18. ADAngela Duckworth
  And at no point in the academic journey are you ever incentivized to do things for other people.
19. SSSimon Sinek
  Nope.
20. ADAngela Duckworth
  Right?
21. SSSimon Sinek
  Nope.
22. ADAngela Duckworth
  Like, how would I, as a professor, for example, change the grades in my class so that when you are part of the tide that lifts the other boats, like, you-
23. SSSimon Sinek
  Yep
24. ADAngela Duckworth
  ... you know, whatever. You can get marked for it, right? Yeah.
25. SSSimon Sinek
  When I used to teach, I did the final project. So they got individual grades for all their tests leading up to the final, and the final was gr- a group project, and what I told them was, "The
5:45 – 11:30
What Actually Makes Someone a Great Team Player
1. SSSimon Sinek
  group grade is gonna be your grade."
2. ADAngela Duckworth
  Hmm. Yeah.
3. SSSimon Sinek
  And the people who, like, like, literally filed complaints with the university about, about that-
4. ADAngela Duckworth
  [laughs]
5. SSSimon Sinek
  ... were my high performers because-
6. ADAngela Duckworth
  Oh, interesting
7. SSSimon Sinek
  ... they-
8. ADAngela Duckworth
  Because they, they felt like they were gonna, um, suffer for the-
9. SSSimon Sinek
  That, that the group would, would-
10. ADAngela Duckworth
  ... slackers on their team?
11. SSSimon Sinek
  ... the group would pull them down.
12. ADAngela Duckworth
  So what did you say to them? You m- must have had a rebuttal to that.
13. SSSimon Sinek
  Oh, I didn't care.
14. ADAngela Duckworth
  Oh, you just let them complain.
15. SSSimon Sinek
  What it reveals is just that, which is there's a, there's a flaw here that they're missing.
16. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
17. SSSimon Sinek
  When, the first time I did group projects in a classroom, I did what I thought was fair. I took my highest performers and evenly distribute them. I took my lowest performers and evenly distributed them, and I took my average players and evenly distributed them so that I had four or five teams that were-
18. ADAngela Duckworth
  Like fairly matched
19. SSSimon Sinek
  ... similar profiles. And the university gave me advice. They said, "Absolutely do not do that."
20. ADAngela Duckworth
  Many of the high performers are gonna be unhappy, right?
21. SSSimon Sinek
  Based on the university's advice, I remade the groups, um, and I put my highest performers on one group, and then sort of evenly distributed everybody else, right?
22. ADAngela Duckworth
  And then what happened?
23. SSSimon Sinek
  When I announced the teams to the class, literally, 'cause they o- they know who the high performers are, right?
24. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah. [laughs] The students will.
25. SSSimon Sinek
  I announced that all my top performers are gonna be in one team, and literally the classroom goes, "Come on!" Right?
26. ADAngela Duckworth
  God. [laughs]
27. SSSimon Sinek
  Not one year ever did my high performers get the best grade. Never.
28. ADAngela Duckworth
  Really?
29. SSSimon Sinek
  And the reason is, is because the high performers are predominantly motivated by individual performance. And s- and they would-
30. ADAngela Duckworth
  Oh, interesting
11:30 – 18:50
Pay, Power, and the Social Contract of Leadership
1. ADAngela Duckworth
  wow. Like holy smokes, and I think it's related to what we're talking about.
2. SSSimon Sinek
  And I, I'm very happy to hear about this experiment because it basically validates my work, which is the difference between high performing teams and low performing teams is not the IQ, it's how good a leader are you. And the good leader-
3. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
4. SSSimon Sinek
  ... is checking in. The good leader's concerned about the, the wellbeing of their people.
5. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
6. SSSimon Sinek
  And I guess I go back to what I said before, 'cause I'm thinking about some remarkable leaders I know who are brilliantly smart, but they care so much about their people first. And where I talked about the sort of more average, you know, w- they're not worried about are you bringing down my grade.
7. ADAngela Duckworth
  So what is your prescriptive recommendation, then, for, like, the rehaul of, you know, traditional incentives and structures inLet's say corporate America for starters, right?
8. SSSimon Sinek
  So I need, I, there is a rebalancing that's required. It's not that individual performance isn't important, it's that we need a rebalancing, right? So for example, one of the theories that I've heard from business, and one of my favorite companies, and I think it's proprietary so I'm gonna leave out their name.
9. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
10. SSSimon Sinek
  But they, they don't do individual performance, they do group performance. And it's not usually, the, it's not money based. It's like, "What are the things we have to do to succeed?" And, and the, the analogy they use is sports, right? Which is-
11. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
12. SSSimon Sinek
  ... in sports, nobody practices winning. You don't practice-
13. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
14. SSSimon Sinek
  ... winning in sports. You practice plays. And then you go out on the field, and if you play the plays to perfection, you're more likely to win.
15. ADAngela Duckworth
  As a team.
16. SSSimon Sinek
  But nobody practices winning. And so he took that logic and they applied it to their company. I guess I can say what it is. Trek Bicycles. They're amazing. John Burke, who's their CEO.
17. ADAngela Duckworth
  Oh, I have a Trek bicycle. [laughs]
18. SSSimon Sinek
  John Burke, who's the CEO, was inspired by the sports idea, you know, of playing the play to perfection. And so what he does is say, "What are the plays?" So if, if you're in marketing, if you're in product development, if you're in sales, what are the plays versus, versus what is the score?
19. ADAngela Duckworth
  Right. Right.
20. SSSimon Sinek
  And so what are the plays that if we do these plays to perfection, we're more likely to succeed?
21. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
22. SSSimon Sinek
  Now, I'm, we're gonna score ourselves, we're gonna do scorecards, and we're gonna score how well we're playing the play.
23. ADAngela Duckworth
  On the plays.
24. SSSimon Sinek
  On the plays. And so the, there's no individual incentive at all put into these.
25. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
26. SSSimon Sinek
  It's all team oriented. The incentives come later, which is if the corporation hits certain goals, then the l- then those in leadership position will, will get a financial benefit.
27. ADAngela Duckworth
  Don't you think some people listening to you say that will be like, "Wow, I didn't know Simon Sinek was a communist"? I mean, it sounds a little bit like, "Hey, if we all work together, then, like, the harvest will be better, and, you know, we'll all be fed," right?
28. SSSimon Sinek
  Uh...
29. ADAngela Duckworth
  I think what people worry about is that without creating a local, like, individual incentive structure, then there's the, you know, sort of the, the slacking off phenomenon, right?
30. SSSimon Sinek
  No, no, but, but, but it's, it's not... Communism says, um, everything's equal and everybody, and everything's distributed, right?
18:50 – 24:30
Why We Get Angry at Leaders
1. SSSimon Sinek
  lay off their people-
2. ADAngela Duckworth
  Right
3. SSSimon Sinek
  ... to protect their bonuses.
4. ADAngela Duckworth
  Or they will like, um, you know, decrease their own, right, performance bonus.
5. SSSimon Sinek
  And that's why we get angry. It's not the disparity, it's that they have failed their deep-seated social contract.
6. ADAngela Duckworth
  They, um, abrogated the contract, right? Like-
7. SSSimon Sinek
  Exactly. That's where we get morally offended.
8. ADAngela Duckworth
  I think when you ask people what they think the ideal thing is, and they're like, "Oh, you know, it's different from what the actual is." But when you show them the actual, they're not like, "Oh, wow, let's, like, do something about it." [laughs] Maybe you can move them a little bit. Like, "Hey, should we have this policy? Should we have that policy?" But, but maybe what you're saying is like that's not really people's central concern. I don't care that you make 500 times what I make. What I care about is that you have an obligation as our leader to protect and to serve, and therefore, if I'm threatened, you have to go do your job, right?
9. SSSimon Sinek
  Correct.
10. ADAngela Duckworth
  Like, that was the one job I gave you.
11. SSSimon Sinek
  The one job I gave you-
12. ADAngela Duckworth
  Well, that was kind of... Yeah
13. SSSimon Sinek
  ... was to protect the tribe.
14. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
15. SSSimon Sinek
  And it goes right back to where we started, which is teamwork, which is, "Hey, how you doing? You okay?" Like, "Do you even care about me?"
16. ADAngela Duckworth
  Right.
17. SSSimon Sinek
  Because if you do care about me, I will work my brains out to see that your company does really, really well because I'm grateful that I feel protected in this tribe-
18. ADAngela Duckworth
  Right
19. SSSimon Sinek
  ... called my job.
20. ADAngela Duckworth
  Right.
21. SSSimon Sinek
  Called the company.
22. ADAngela Duckworth
  Well, let me ask you this business, um, question because, you know, I am a professor at a business school slash, you know, I don't have, you know, decades of experience myself as a leader or, um, [smacks lips] so let me just ask you this. If you have a large company-
23. SSSimon Sinek
  Mm-hmm
24. ADAngela Duckworth
  ... and you are at the head or, um, in the, you know, executive leadership, how does this work, right? Because you're taking us back to the time where there were, like, 150 people living in a group. It's more clear to me what I do to show you in word and in deed that I do care about you even though you are a lower ranking person in the hierarchy. So what does this mean when you have, like, a global conglomerate of, like-
25. SSSimon Sinek
  Mm-hmm
26. ADAngela Duckworth
  ... 5,000 or 10,000 people or more?
27. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah. So super simple. We see it all the time, unfortunately, at the end of every financial year, especially in the public markets, but not exclusively. We're seeing it in the private markets, too, because the amount of VC in business today basically is making lots of private companies operate like public companies, which is they care more about-
28. ADAngela Duckworth
  Hmm
29. SSSimon Sinek
  ... their investors and their shareholders than they do about their employees or their customers, right?
30. ADAngela Duckworth
  And their quarterly, quarterly performance [laughs] than their long-term success. Yeah.
24:30 – 29:00
Why Communal Relationships Matter at Work
1. ADAngela Duckworth
  do you know this, uh, anthropologist, since you like anthropology, um, named Alan Fisk at UCLA?Like, this is very Simon Sinek. I, I think you'll appreciate this, um, [smacks lips] theory that he developed for understanding human relationships. So he said, you know, "We have different kinds of relationships with other people, um, and they're categorically different, and they have, like, different math to it, like different logic."
2. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah.
3. ADAngela Duckworth
  So one kind you already mentioned, which is hierarchy, right? We are a primate species, and so I know what it means to be a follower. I know what it means to be a leader. I know what it means to be a manager. I know what it means to be a subordinate. And, um, those have roles, you know? Like, um, for example, when the manager says to do something, the employee tends to do it. There's another kind of relationship which is, like, a contractual relationship or a matching relationship.
4. SSSimon Sinek
  Mm-hmm.
5. ADAngela Duckworth
  So it's like, "I agree by the rules of the society to give you $10 for the stated price of this pizza."
6. SSSimon Sinek
  Mm-hmm.
7. ADAngela Duckworth
  "And you are going to give me a pizza in return."
8. SSSimon Sinek
  Mm-hmm.
9. ADAngela Duckworth
  And it's tit for tat, and, you know, we agree on prices and, you know, that's it.
10. SSSimon Sinek
  Mm-hmm.
11. ADAngela Duckworth
  And then the third kind of relationship is a communal relationship, where you're, you're sort of part of the same organism. So now instead of, like, taking orders from you because you are my manager or because, um, you know, you paid me a certain amount and in return I promised you a certain service in return, a communal relationship would... It, it's almost like, you know, the elbow to the wrist to the hand to the for- Like, you're part of an organism.
12. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah.
13. ADAngela Duckworth
  And the analogy I think he has used is, like, if you come down in the morning to the kitchen and you open the refrigerator and you pour a glass of milk, you're not recording on a little pad that you, like, took eight ounces of milk and you owe the family eight ounces, and you'll try not to drink too much milk in the next week to balance it out. Nobody thinks about that, right? Because you're in a family.
14. SSSimon Sinek
  Right.
15. ADAngela Duckworth
  And the milk, when it's gone, somebody has to go buy the milk, but that's pretty much it. And I think that that bears on, like, what we're talking about because, yes, we are hierarchical and we're, you know, primates.
16. SSSimon Sinek
  Yep.
17. ADAngela Duckworth
  But I think the best leaders, you know, understand, at least at some tacit level, that in some ways you're in all three relationships with the people who work for you, right?
18. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah, of course.
19. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yes, you're the boss. Also, you have made contractual obligations that you will honor, um, and are explicit. But thirdly, I do think that that's the best feeling in the world, to feel that you are, you know, part of a, an organism, and you're gonna do your part, and then other people are gonna-
20. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah
21. ADAngela Duckworth
  ... do other parts, but you're not really individuals, like, first and foremost.
22. SSSimon Sinek
  Look, you've had contracts with people, and everybody knows that the best contracts are when you sign it and then you never refer back to it.
23. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah. [laughs] You probably don't even know what it says-
24. SSSimon Sinek
  And everybody just-
25. ADAngela Duckworth
  ... 'cause you're like, "What?"
26. SSSimon Sinek
  ... everybody just gets the work done, and nobody's actually checking-
27. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
28. SSSimon Sinek
  ... if you're doing more or less, and nobody's actually worried because it's working fine.
29. ADAngela Duckworth
  Like, I don't know what my contract says with my employer, right? Like, University of Pennsylvania, did I even sign one?
30. SSSimon Sinek
  A relationship has gone sour when you pull out the contract and you start referring-
29:00 – 36:10
What Gen Z Is Really Struggling With
1. SSSimon Sinek
  and we're not counting all the things, but, like-
2. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
3. SSSimon Sinek
  ... let's just get the work done, you know?
4. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
5. SSSimon Sinek
  And there's the expectation that the kids will support, and you know the data better, better than I do, which is kids who are raised with, um, chores, uh, tend to be happier as adults.
6. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah, I totally wanted to do a chores random assignment study. Like, when my daughters, who are now 24 and 22, like, we looked up when is it legal to work in Philadelphia and the State of Pennsylvania, and my husband and I were like, "The day you get your working papers, like, you're getting a job."
7. SSSimon Sinek
  You're getting a job. Yeah.
8. ADAngela Duckworth
  We were, like, of mixed success in get- Yes, they had chores. I think we were, you know, not as... But we knew that having a boss was, like, a good thing. But I wonder if, you know, the malaise/ennui of Gen Z, which, which is really documented. I mean, again-
9. SSSimon Sinek
  Okay, you used two French words there in the same sentence
10. ADAngela Duckworth
  ... you know, 'cause it's the language of feeling. [laughs] Like, um, um-
11. SSSimon Sinek
  I, I love-
12. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah, so I, I did pull out my, um-
13. SSSimon Sinek
  I love the word ennui.
14. ADAngela Duckworth
  But those are, like, uh, English too.
15. SSSimon Sinek
  Just let's be clear, just so that people who know what we're talking about, like, because I... Ennui, and I always forget-
16. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
17. SSSimon Sinek
  ... the definition, but ennui is kind of like, "Eh, meh."
18. ADAngela Duckworth
  Okay, I think ennui has a sort of, like, existential, um, vibe, and I recently did a Google Scholar search because, you know, in addition to Google, I use Google Scholar to look up anything, and there are, you know, remarkably few articles written on the psychology, uh, or any other aspect of ennui. But I think it's a great word. Again, no direct English, but it's-
19. SSSimon Sinek
  No English translation
20. ADAngela Duckworth
  ... kind of like spiritually restless. You're feeling a little empty. I mean, I think Viktor Frankl actually-
21. SSSimon Sinek
  Like, what's it all for?
22. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah, what's it all for, and what am I doing, you know, um-
23. SSSimon Sinek
  From a philosophical, like, existential standpoint, not, not life.
24. ADAngela Duckworth
  All of the above, I think. All of the above. I think it's also something that, you know, people feel about themselves. Like, it's not necessarily just a comment on the state of the world.
25. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah.
26. ADAngela Duckworth
  And, you know, as you can tell from this description, it's not something that people like feeling.
27. SSSimon Sinek
  No.
28. ADAngela Duckworth
  And I've been thinking about these like, say, you know, 18 to 28-year-olds, which is, um, as you know, the, the, uh, lower and upper bound of being a Gen Z adult. Um, and when I look at the data on how unhappy they are, it is really, I mean, I have to say as a social scientist, it is rare to be shocked by data.
29. SSSimon Sinek
  Mm-hmm.
30. ADAngela Duckworth
  When you look at the data on Gen Z adults and how they're feeling, how lonely they are, how depressed they are, how anxious they are, the number of days out of the last 30 where they would say, like, every day was a bad day-
36:10 – 39:30
Why We’re Desperate to Belong to Something Bigger
1. SSSimon Sinek
  to give us a sense of-
2. ADAngela Duckworth
  Of unity. Of unity and belonging
3. SSSimon Sinek
  ... and that only contributes-
4. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
5. SSSimon Sinek
  ... to, well, if I, if I can't get it at a national level, and I'm not getting it-
6. ADAngela Duckworth
  At, at, at my work
7. SSSimon Sinek
  ... I'm not getting it at my work, and I'm not getting it from my church-
8. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
9. SSSimon Sinek
  ... and I'm not getting... By the way, w- amongst young people, we're seeing a rise of... uh, of church membership
10. ADAngela Duckworth
  Like religious, I, I just heard that
11. SSSimon Sinek
  Rel- yeah
12. ADAngela Duckworth
  I just heard that, like very recently, right?
13. SSSimon Sinek
  Rel-
14. ADAngela Duckworth
  Because it's been going like-
15. SSSimon Sinek
  College students are attending church and worshiping. They're becoming more religious and God-fearing, and you can see it. A- and if you look on the left or the right side of the aisle, you can see people desperate, especially young people, desperately looking for anything that will help them feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves. So on the left-
16. ADAngela Duckworth
  Mm-hmm
17. SSSimon Sinek
  ... it might be Palestine, Israel, that kind of, that thing.
18. ADAngela Duckworth
  Right.
19. SSSimon Sinek
  On the right, it might be, uh, vax or masks or whatever it was, you know. And-
20. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
21. SSSimon Sinek
  ... those things have all of the feelings of movement and a part of something bigger, and I'm contributing, and it has the community, it has all of it, but for the fact that all of those things are reactive and temporary, and they aren't something that you would commit your entire life to, and then your kids will pick up the torch where you left off.
22. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
23. SSSimon Sinek
  And you can see one thing will phase out, and something else will phase in. But what's interesting to me is not what they're latching onto, it's that they're, that everybody's trying to latch onto something. How do you rally a people to come together around a common cause without waiting for fear to galvanize us?
24. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
25. SSSimon Sinek
  And the, this is, this is what distinguishes the reactive cause finding that we see, uh, versus real cause.
26. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
27. SSSimon Sinek
  You still need, unfortunately, you still need a threat. And I, I'm very uncomfortable with this point of view, and I've struggled with it for over a decade, which is it, it is much easier to know what you stand for when you can see the thing that stands in the way of what you stand for, right? Because standing for something is ethereal. It lives in our imagination.
28. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
29. SSSimon Sinek
  Where the thing that is against is real and tangible.
30. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
39:30 – 44:20
Being “For” Something, Not Just Against Something
1. SSSimon Sinek
  still have something to believe in.
2. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah. Right. Right.
3. SSSimon Sinek
  And so it's not that I'm just anti-corporate. That's too convenient. That's not true.
4. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
5. SSSimon Sinek
  But I'm driven by the vision of where to go to. So, like, you can take a look at both the left and the right, and you can play the mental exercise, the, the, the... which is, okay, what if you achieve what you're looking for, then what? There's no, there's no answer. There's no answer because it's not, it's against something. It's not for something.
6. ADAngela Duckworth
  Ah, but not for something. Do you think that's true? Do you think... I mean, obviously you think it's true. You just said that. I don't know if they would agree that, that it's true.
7. SSSimon Sinek
  Ask for any of them to articulate the vision and explain what this is standing in the way of because they talk about the obstacle-
8. ADAngela Duckworth
  Interesting
9. SSSimon Sinek
  ... more than they talk about where they're going.
10. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah. Yeah.
11. SSSimon Sinek
  And at the end of the day, at the end of the day, true cause, true vision is not-
12. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
13. SSSimon Sinek
  ... is not-
14. ADAngela Duckworth
  It's not the negation
15. SSSimon Sinek
  ... exclusively about standing against.
16. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah. Yeah, it's not about negation of X. It's about the affirmation of Y.
17. SSSimon Sinek
  It is a service to building something, and the question is, what i- what are you in service to building?
18. ADAngela Duckworth
  Who's your favorite leader? Like, who are your favorite leader? Who are the, um, leaders that you think, well, like, okay, let me give you a counterexample to what I just described.
19. SSSimon Sinek
  I mean-
20. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
21. SSSimon Sinek
  ... it's the greatest hits, you know?
22. ADAngela Duckworth
  G- give it to me.
23. SSSimon Sinek
  You know, I think Winston Churchill was pretty great.
24. ADAngela Duckworth
  Mm-hmm.
25. SSSimon Sinek
  I think Marshall was in-
26. ADAngela Duckworth
  George Marshall?
27. SSSimon Sinek
  George Marshall.
28. ADAngela Duckworth
  Like the Marshall Plan?
29. SSSimon Sinek
  Marshall Plan.
30. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
44:20 – 56:04
The Biggest Misunderstanding About Grit
1. ADAngela Duckworth
  Hmm
2. SSSimon Sinek
  ... and/or is outdated?
3. ADAngela Duckworth
  Oh, right, like what have I changed my mind about, or what is a misconception, right? Um-
4. SSSimon Sinek
  Because, because grit is one of those very dangerous things. I, I'll tell you where the root of the question comes from, right?
5. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah.
6. SSSimon Sinek
  I see people who are unhappy. I see people who are grinding.
7. ADAngela Duckworth
  And they're like, "I have to grit it out."
8. SSSimon Sinek
  "I gotta grit it out." And like, the, like-
9. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
10. SSSimon Sinek
  ... it is either used to force myself to do something I don't wanna do and I've lost any joy, or-
11. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah
12. SSSimon Sinek
  ... it is used as a, uh, feedback. Like, "You need more grit," you know?
13. ADAngela Duckworth
  Yeah, yeah.
14. SSSimon Sinek
  And nothing-
15. ADAngela Duckworth
  Well, you're hitting on what I think the misconception is.
16. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah.
17. ADAngela Duckworth
  Right? So, so I'm gonna answer both these questions.
18. SSSimon Sinek
  Okay.
19. ADAngela Duckworth
  The first is, I, I mean, I recently reread Grit. I give it to my undergraduates to read, and I wouldn't give them anything to read that I don't read the same time they do.
20. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah.
21. ADAngela Duckworth
  I agree with my past self, Simon, and yeah, growth mindset, check, deliberate practice, check. Like, you know, getting to the flow state and being interested in what you do, check. Like, I, I, I stand by what I said. Um, n- now to answer your other question, I think it's a huge misconception to think that what gritty people really are are people who have iron willpower.
22. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah.
23. ADAngela Duckworth
  There's something about the monosyllabic word, grit, that makes you think that it's, you know, they're, like, white-knuckling their way to excellence. But as you know better than most-
24. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah
25. ADAngela Duckworth
  ... and I think myself included, not just because of what we study for a living, but also because who we are, that nobody becomes great at what they do because they're forcing themselves against their, against their will. I mean, there are four things that I think run through the mind of a person who has grit. This is interesting. This is important. I can do this.
26. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah.
27. ADAngela Duckworth
  I know what to try next.
28. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah.
29. ADAngela Duckworth
  When you have those four sentences, like, nobody has to, like, shove you out of bed in the morning, you know, force you to stay late. You want to.
30. SSSimon Sinek
  Yeah.

Episode duration: 56:05

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