Angela Duckworth on Grit, Passion & Perseverance
Angela Duckworth is the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a non-profit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive. She is also the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang…
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Angela Duckworth is the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a non-profit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive. She is also the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang…
What 161 conversations with the world's leading thinkers reveal about resilience and mental strength
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You shouldn't think of yourself as the person you are now – you are constantly changing – this is often called a growth mindset. When you think about human nature, you think of it as malleable, as something constantly growing and in-flux rather than something fixed.
— Angela DuckworthPsychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Dogs, chipmunks, squirrels, fish and dolphins do not have a meta-cognitive understanding of themselves. A dog can feel sad (we think) but cannot have a meta-cognitive understanding of the fact they feel sad and what to therefore do about.
— Angela DuckworthPsychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
People who learn fast and who have some level of 'natural' talent may go home from practice early because they don't have to work as hard as others to get to their target level of achievement, but when you study super-achievers, you find that instead of going home early, they work late, and really pull-away from the crowd.
— Angela DuckworthPsychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
If you think of a candle- it's bright, but the light goes out in all directions, like a sphere. If you think of a laser beam- the light is concentrated in one direction, and it can be much more powerful than a candle. Goals focus our energy in the same way.
— Angela DuckworthPsychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Most people we have worked with who have accomplished great things have an other-centred purpose, and that's never just 'make a lot of money…' – it could be to make women's lives easier, to close the inequality gap, to change the world, it's something which isn't strictly personal and selfish.
— Angela DuckworthPsychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
The human mind can shape itself – the human mind can take itself as an object and change – no other living creature on the planet can do that, and it gives me tremendous optimism.
— Angela DuckworthPsychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
I genuinely believe that anyone can build grit or- indeed- any other trait such as kindness, empathy, curiosity, energy or cheerfulness. I don't want to say that we can all end-up being the exact same-person, but we can be different tomorrow to the person we are today.
— Angela DuckworthPsychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
People who learn fast and who have some level of 'natural' talent may go home from practice early because they don't have to work as hard as others to get to their target level of achievement, but when you study super-achievers, you find that instead of going home early, they work late, and really pull-away from the crowd.
— Angela DuckworthPsychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Most people we have worked with who have accomplished great things have an other-centred purpose, and that's never just 'make a lot of money…' – it could be to make women's lives easier, to close the inequality gap, to change the world, it's something which isn't strictly personal and selfish.
— Angela DuckworthPsychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
The idea of grit is being able to sustain effort and commitment to goals that take a really long time. That's the part of the equation that sometimes gets overlooked.
— Angela DuckworthPsychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance