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

Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Have you ever looked at someone who's wildly successful and thought, they just must've been born with something I'm never going to have? Or maybe you look at your own life, your job, your goals, your relationship, and you just keep asking yourself, why can't I stick with this? Why am I not consistent? Why do I not have willpower?

Mel Robbins: Well, if you've ever felt like that, first of all, you're not lazy. You're not broken. You're just missing one thing. See, talent doesn't make people great. Grit does. Hard work beats talent every time, especially when that work is driven by a purpose that won't let you quit. And that's what you and I are gonna talk about today.

Mel Robbins: We're gonna talk about the mindset of high achievers and the psychology of perseverance. And we're going to dig into the real science of success. You're going to learn it's not luck. It's not IQ. It's not being born with some rare gift. It's something way more powerful and way more honest. It's about grit. That mix of passion and perseverance for your long-term goals. The mental toughness to keep showing up when things suck. The self-belief to keep going when it's boring or hard or it's discouraging as hell.

Mel Robbins: And the best news, grit is not something you're born with. It's something you build. And today, you're going to get the tools from the woman who wrote the book, did the research, teaches the Ivy League course on the science of success and grit. It's not too late, but it is up to you.

Mel Robbins: So if you're sitting there telling yourself, I'm just not cut out for success, I don't have the discipline, or I've just failed too many times. I need you to listen anyway because you're wrong. And if you have someone in your life who feels that way, I want you to listen for them because by the time you and I are done, you're going to think differently about talent, about success, and most importantly, about yourself.

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Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're here. I'm excited for the conversation today. It is such an honor to be together. I love spending this time with you. And if you're a new listener or you're here because someone shared this episode with you, I just wanted to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family.

Mel Robbins: I cannot wait for you to meet Dr. Angela Duckworth and learn about the science and secrets of success. Dr. Angela Duckworth is a pioneering researcher, a bestselling author, and a total powerhouse in the field of human performance. She is a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit advancing the science of character development, and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, *Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance*.

Mel Robbins: This is a book that's been translated into over 40 languages. It has changed the way that millions of people think about success. Her TED Talk has been viewed over 30 million times. And here's what's really cool. Her research on grit, self-control, and high achievement is used everywhere, from West Point to the NBA to the NFL, Fortune 500 companies, public schools, and beyond.

Mel Robbins: So if you care about motivation, mental toughness, focus, or building something meaningful with your life, you are in the right place and you're going to love absolutely everything she is going to teach you and me today. So please help me welcome the extraordinary Dr. Angela Duckworth to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

Mel Robbins: Angela Duckworth, thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. I'm so excited to meet you.

Angela Duckworth: Mel, I think I might be more excited than you, actually.

Mel Robbins: No, I'm really thrilled. I feel like we have a similar mission, like a little bit of wisdom, make your life a lot better.

Angela Duckworth: Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Mel Robbins: Well, your research has had a huge impact on my life and your work has as well. So here's how I want to 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?

Angela Duckworth: 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: That's a big promise.

Angela Duckworth: It is.

Mel Robbins: You know, hunt the big game.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah, I really truly believe it. I think that when I first started as a psychologist, the question was, am I only going to study this tiny little sliver of the population who would self-identify as super ambitious? And I discovered very quickly that everybody is ambitious. I mean, who doesn't want to be as great as they can be? So I study, I think, everyone.

Mel Robbins: I love that answer. I love that answer because I choose to believe that everybody wants to do well. Everybody wants to thrive. So Dr. Duckworth, your research is so fascinating because you have discovered this thing that all high achievers have in common. What is it?

Angela Duckworth: 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: And how do you define grit?

Angela Duckworth: It's exactly that. It's these two parts. Passion for long-term goals, like loving something and staying in love with it, not kind of wandering off and doing something else and then something else again and then something else again. But having a kind of North Star, a devotion over years. That's the passion part. And then the perseverance part is, well, partly it's hard work. Partly it's practicing what you can't yet do. And partly it's resilience. So part of perseverance is, on the really bad days, do you get up again? So if you marry passion for long-term goals with perseverance for long-term goals, 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: So is this just something you're born with, or is this an actual trait that anybody can develop?

Angela Duckworth: I think that absolutely anything that any psychologist tells you is a good thing to have is partly under 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 everything, and grit included. But absolutely, how gritty we are is very much a function of what we know, who we're around, and the places we go.

Mel Robbins: I love that you already taught us something right out of the gate. I knew you would. There's going to be a bazillion takeaways, but just this sense that it's something that you actually really enjoy 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 going to learn today.

Mel Robbins: You know, also in your work, you talk a lot about, and I'm sure we're going to hear the term growth mindset. In case the person who's listening right now has never heard that term, or they're going to share this episode with somebody who's never heard that term, what is it and why does it matter?

Angela Duckworth: Growth mindset is a theory. It's a theory that you have. You don't have to be a philosopher or professor to have a theory because guess what? All of us have 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.

Angela Duckworth: 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. Then you avoid failure. You shove things under the rug and you live your whole life actually contracting rather than expanding.

Mel Robbins: Wow. So for the person listening, because 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 going to be terrible. I'm not a math person.

Angela Duckworth: Yes.

Mel Robbins: You know, hide me in the closet. I'm a terrible singer.

Angela Duckworth: Yes.

Mel Robbins: I'm not a natural athlete.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah.

Mel Robbins: I'm not a natural athlete. I'm unlucky in love.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah.

Mel Robbins: I have a slow metabolism.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah.

Mel Robbins: I have a hot temper. It's just who I am.

Angela Duckworth: Correct. Yeah.

Mel Robbins: 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 going to talk about today that you've discovered in your research. But first, 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 rearview 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 don't think I can change. It's too late.

Angela Duckworth: You can find the evidence that you look for. It's what psychologists call a 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 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're 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.

Angela Duckworth: 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, 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 an 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 remodeling.

Angela Duckworth: So 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 much a work in progress when you are in preschool and maybe a little bit in elementary school. And then things start to slow down after adolescence. Like now you are who you are, who you will always be. That is completely outdated. Now we teach students in neurobiology and neuroscience that plasticity is the name of the game. What makes human beings so special is not that we're born smart. It's just that we become smarter and smarter throughout our whole lives.

Mel Robbins: If you're intentional about it.

Angela Duckworth: If you're intentional, right. I mean, I think this kind of virtuous cycle where you wake up every day and you ask, how can I get smarter about this? Wouldn't that be an amazing thing? And if you pick your favorite achiever, and it depends on what you love, a three-star Michelin chef or a singer or a mathematician or a CEO, if you start to notice how they speak of themselves, they always talk about themselves as lifelong learners. They say, like Satya Nadella at Microsoft, "I'm not a know-it-all, I'm a learn-it-all." It's baked into the language and it's in the way they approach life, and it's accessible to all of us.

Mel Robbins: 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 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.

Mel Robbins: 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?

Angela Duckworth: 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, 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 outsized personality always and the kind of like, "Oh my gosh, I'm 11 out of 10. This is amazing." And even imagine an athlete. You go down to some aquatic center like Bob Bowman, the coach from Michael Phelps and more recently Leon Marchand. Two of the best swimmers who have ever lived. And if you ask a coach like Bob, what is special about a Michael Phelps or a Leon Marchand? Do they give you a 10 out of 10? "Oh my gosh, maybe they give you 11 out of 10 at practice. I want to watch." He has said, they don't give me a 10 out of 10. They give me eight out of 10. But if you rack up a lot of eight out of 10s, if you don't miss any eight out of 10s, if you come every day and you do your eight out of 10, you can become really special.

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

Mel Robbins: And when you use the word consistency, 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.

Angela Duckworth: Okay, so like Michael Phelps did actually 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. So I don't want to say that there's anything magic about 7 out of 7 or 365 out of 365. But most of us can look at the project that we're trying to do and tell ourselves, this is what consistency is. Maybe it's five days a week.

Angela Duckworth: Let's take physical therapy, something I do a lot of because I have scoliosis and I've got lots of orthopedic issues. So I get to experience behavior change, which is what I study as a scientist, through my own personal life. I have to do my physical therapy and there are different exercises that I have to do, but not all of them are seven days a week exercises. 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 what I mean by it not being intensity is it's not like, "I'm going to go do my physical therapy and I'm going to do 11 out of 10 on intensity. I'm going to kill it." No, just do your physical therapy the way your physical therapist said you should do it and then do it again the next day, and then do it again, and then do it again. That's consistency.

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

Angela Duckworth: Oh, I didn't know that. Wait, what? I have not heard that quote.

Mel Robbins: Yes. And I do really believe it's you against you. And you started talking about talent. And I want to 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?

Angela Duckworth: I'm going to define talent because it's this word. We use it in so many ways. And this is how I think we are really defining it, even if we don't 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.

Angela Duckworth: 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 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 ascended a learning curve relatively steeply. But I'm very, very untalented when it comes to history, when it comes to politics, current events. I am terrible. I mean, I teach at the Wharton School of Business, and every year I have to ask my students again, "Wait, remind me what a hedge fund is. Just one more time, tell me what, and how is it different from private equity? I'll write it down this time." And then the next year, I have to ask again. I'm not very good at learning some things, but I am very agile at learning others.

Angela Duckworth: And I think that's really the heart of what we mean when we say somebody's innately talented. That somebody's gifted at basketball or gifted at soccer or gifted at math or anything else. And that it's the rate you improve at something. I think that's the gist of what we really mean.

Mel Robbins: Well, that's a nice thing. Cause I normally would define it as something deficient in me. You know what I'm saying? I would see talent as somebody... Well, I don't know, like that somebody can step on a stage and sing a perfect tune and that in relation to me.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah, because you see somebody else and you're like, "Oh my God, I wasn't born that way."

Mel Robbins: Well, and of course I got better. What do you think your greatest talents are though?

Angela Duckworth: Me?

Mel Robbins: Yeah.

Angela Duckworth: I think my greatest talent is probably taking a massive amount of information and distilling it down into something super simple. And being able to communicate it too.

Mel Robbins: Yes. Right?

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

Mel Robbins: Yeah. I also am really talented at cooking. I'm talented at like arranging flour. But I realized I had a very limited definition of talent. And oftentimes I think that we look at other people 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. But I'm not. And I could never be. And therefore, I'm just not going to try."

Angela Duckworth: Yeah.

Mel Robbins: And so I love that there is a relationship in your definition between also working. Because you said it's about the rate of improving. 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. 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 going to stay on this treadmill.

Angela Duckworth: I mean, very appropriately, the Harvard University study, there's this longitudinal study. I know you've had Robert Waldinger on. It's broadly part of that work. They literally put their participants, they were all men, this was an old study, at the time they decided that only men were worthy of study, but they would literally put them on a treadmill. They call it the treadmill test. And they say, "Get off when you want to, but see how long you can stay on." And of course, they make it really fast. So 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."

Angela Duckworth: So I do think there is this separation that you don't have to have a PhD to understand between talent, the rate at which you get better at something when you try, and effort, which is, "Okay, how hard and how long are you going to try?"

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

Angela Duckworth: 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. So what are you going to do with your skill? You need effort to unlock your skill and turn it into actual achievement. And so when you write it all down, and if you want, there's math behind it. But to me, of course, talent figures into the equation. But effort counts twice because 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: Dr. Duckworth, you say that based on the research that there are four things that make up grit. And I want to take them one by one and really unpack them. And let's start with the first one, which is interest. What does that mean?

Angela Duckworth: 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 physicist. This is true of athletes. This is true of musicians, chefs, anybody who becomes great at what they do. There's curiosity. Their mind comes to this subject and wants to stay there. And when you look at children and you ask yourself, whatever age you are, you can see, where is this mind going? 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.

Angela Duckworth: So that is the first psychological asset. And it happens, usually we hope in childhood, 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. 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 viola. But when I would get the iPad after she had run off with it, all of the tabs were open to baking videos. Unicorn cookies and chocolate cupcakes. And on Monday, Lucy would be telling me what she was going to bake on Saturday. She would pull my cookbooks off the shelf and start reading them well before you usually do that kind of thing.

Angela Duckworth: One day I said to her, "Lucy, I think you're interested in cooking." And she looked at me like I was from planet Mars. She said, "What do you mean?" I said, "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 interest. And I genuinely believe that though we may not all be equal in IQ, though we may have different talents, 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 what we do.

Mel Robbins: And 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. And I want to 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.

Mel Robbins: [Reading] "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? I don't know what I'm interested in."

Mel Robbins: Dr. Duckworth, what do I do?

Angela Duckworth: I have collected data on tens of thousands, maybe a hundred thousand people. I can tell you, Mel, that when I study passion and perseverance for long-term goals, and I can give you a subscore on my questionnaire for passion, which is this consistency of interest over time, a really abiding kind of love, and perseverance, which is resilience, "I want to do the practice. I want to do the hard work." Reliably, people score higher in perseverance than they do for passion. I think discovering and developing interest is a lot harder than it sounds. It sounds like the hard part is the work. No, no, no. Figuring out the direction is for most people, including myself, the real torturous part.

Angela Duckworth: So one of the things that you should know about interest is that it is in some ways voluntary, but it is in some ways involuntary. You cannot force yourself to be interested in things. Anyone who's a parent knows you can't force it.

Mel Robbins: Well, anyone who's a human being has had a parent try to force them to do something you're not interested in. All those little kids playing piano and violin, how many of them are actually interested in it?

Angela Duckworth: It's true. Very few. It's really foolish.

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

Angela Duckworth: I want to say something really provocative. I think maybe instead of asking yourself another question, you should just go and do something. Like my Pilates teacher would say, "Don't think it, just do it." Stop writing in a journal. Stop asking yourself questions. Literally go out and do something. Interests are like food. You got to taste it to know whether you like it or not. And that to me is the number one mistake I see people making. They think about it and they think about it and then they want to talk to their friends about it. There's a limited amount of good that that does.

Angela Duckworth: But one of the things about interest is they really do emerge from experience. And you can't predict. I remember teaching these three triplets, these adorable boys, and they were all very fine students. And like so many young adults, they were 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, "I am going to go crazy. Why? Because I don't like sitting down this much." You probably can rule out the job that you just interned for. And now that person became a fitness instructor. 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.

Angela Duckworth: So in science, the science of interest, the science of motivation, we call this sampling. So before you specialize in being an author or podcast host or a psychologist like me, you have to sample broadly. So the paradox of specialization is that it's preceded by a breadth of sampling. So before you become a jack of one trade, to some extent you have to try a lot of trades.

Angela Duckworth: And so with children, what you see, you know, very wise 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 spin them out if they don't like them. My daughter Lucy, the one who I mentioned with great fondness, was not gritty when she was growing up. We cycled her through ballet, through pottery. She did track one year. She 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.

Angela Duckworth: So the first part was, well, it has to be something that requires your hard thing because 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 effort and feedback. Okay. So viola counted, right? But like that little studio down the street where you basically just ate goldfish crackers and hung out, that doesn't count because there are no goals, no effort, no feedback. That was rule part one.

Angela Duckworth: The second part was you were not allowed to quit in the middle. 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 want to 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 of a commitment. We're like, you are a Duckworth. We finish what we begin.

Angela Duckworth: 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, life is a multiple choice. 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 reality to the childhoods that they lived. But we really tried to let them sample as many things as possible. And I knew as a psychologist at the time, getting my PhD and so forth, that that was our only prayer for this girl to be gritty: that we absolutely had to find something that interested her.

Mel Robbins: 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 on how you internally figure out and lean into what you're actually authentically interested in? Because I always heard the word grit and immediately assumed suffering and grinding it out. Doing things that are hard and terrible. And instead, the first thing begins with things that you're actually interested in, because if you're interested in it, you're going to lean into it more.

Angela Duckworth: When I teach a class at University of Pennsylvania, a little Ivy League school in Philadelphia, the first section of this class, which is called Grit Lab, the whole class is called Grit Lab. The first section of the course is on the flow state, on interest, 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 want to think about. Choose the one that you're good at. Choose easy.

Angela Duckworth: And then the second part of the course is work hard. Sometimes I call it work smart. So choose easy is the entree. Yes, there is a second section where you have to work, but my goodness, you know this, Mel. People make this mistake all the time. They don't take into account what their interests and their energy and their being at a place where you are at your best. Start there.

Mel Robbins: Why do you think we stack the deck so hard against ourselves? You know what I'm saying? That is such a good question. Because I love that you're starting a course at UPenn on grit by teaching people to choose something that comes easy. Not intuitive, right? Not intuitive at all. But why is it intuitive is such a good question.

Angela Duckworth: And I think perhaps we have confused the two stages, right? So there is this stage in which you are in the middle of practice. I mean, you've written, I've written. Is there anything harder than writing? No. It's like, obviously you could just go and watch a cooking show on YouTube, right? Like that would be a lot more fun in the moment than really working on this paragraph or figuring out the structure of a chapter. So there is an element of hard work that is 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 work as hard as you can. But I think we just push them together. I think that to me is my best guess. I don't have any data on this, but it's just my intuition that we get a little confused because to us, it's all one thing when it's really two stages.

Mel Robbins: I agree. I actually agree. I think it's such an interesting—

Angela Duckworth: I have to figure out how we could study that.

Mel Robbins: Well, it's a really interesting insight because I think there's probably a lot of people that chose the wrong thing by mistake. And then spend decades—

Angela Duckworth: They chose suffering.

Mel Robbins: Yes.

Angela Duckworth: I got a call from a McKinsey consultant. I'll never forget this. This is, oh my gosh, Mel, at least 10 years ago, 15, could be 20. This McKinsey consultant from San Francisco calls me and I guess it was at a time where I wasn't getting that many calls. I just answered. He said, "I am very successful. I've been promoted. Everybody thinks I'm great. 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, 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. Work hard, but first choose easy."

Mel Robbins: 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 to do what their parents want them to do because conforming in the moment feels easier. And if that's all that you've ever done, then that becomes the default.

Angela Duckworth: Well, there is, I'm sure, many people have heard, and I know you know a lot about this intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation distinction, right? One of the things that has emerged is a really important research literature. It goes back at least 50 years. One of the stages in which our motivation evolves to be intrinsic is a stage where you are internalizing the motivations of others around you. So if you have parents who play a lot of tennis, you may start playing tennis and at some point it becomes internal to you and then you're 45 years old and you want to go play tennis. And that is actually a healthy thing. Many intrinsic motivations begin outside of us.

Angela Duckworth: But when they get stuck in between, it's called introjection. It's fancy 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. And you never really want to go to medical school. And it gets stuck at the "should" stage. It's like, "I should go to medical school. 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 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: I think that's where most people are. So if you're somebody who, the second you said "make the easier choice," you viscerally were like, "No." Or you're like, "How do you even do that?" Because I don't have that muscle. I'm constantly thinking about the choice that would please my parents or that would please my partner or that would look good for my friends. Is there anything that you would say about what does that even mean? Because I think that's a completely different way to go about life.

Angela Duckworth: I mean, if I can only share from my personal experience, because I found it a struggle of my own, and I don't know whether it's because I was raised by a wonderful mother, but a Chinese mother who herself was born and raised in China. And she was raised to submit all of her own desires and dreams to her husband's. 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." So what did I 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. 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.

Angela Duckworth: 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, so this is a constant journey, a constant 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 think whenever—" because I was telling her about a particular 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 wonder whether you can answer the question why you're doing that without the word 'should.'"

Angela Duckworth: So of course the academic in me comes out and I'm like, "Well, we have all these 'should' emotions like shame and embarrassment for a reason, Dee. Otherwise we wouldn't have morals and ethics. 'Should' is a good word."

Mel Robbins: You'd be a pain in the ass as a client.

Angela Duckworth: She thinks I think too much. I think she's like, "Oh, yeah, there you go again." 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, because I should do it, right? Because I should go to Pilates. Because I should go buy the groceries on the way home. Because I should have a conversation with this student." I just asked myself a different question. I said, "Can I talk about this without this word?" And to my amazement, words came out in almost every case. "I want to help this young person. I see myself in this young person. I can see a future that this person doesn't yet see." "I want to" is entirely different than "I should."

Angela Duckworth: And I wrote Dee an email not more than a few days ago, 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 desires in that way does anybody a service. That's not what scientists mean by beyond-the-self purpose, shouldering all of these burdens and adopting other people's goals in a way that feels inauthentic to ourselves. So yeah, let's see how many minutes or hours we can go in our next 24 hours without saying the word "should" even once.

Mel Robbins: I love that. Did you hear that? I want to make sure you heard the assignment from Dr. Douglas, classes in session. What you're saying is basically flipping everything I thought I knew about willpower and grit and motivation on its head. I am so glad that you're here. And I also think that this is the perfect time to take a quick pause because I want to give you a chance to really let what she's teaching you sink in. I also want you to hear from our sponsors. And while you're listening to our amazing sponsors, share Dr. Duckworth's wisdom with everybody that you care about. And don't go anywhere because we've got even more jaw-dropping research from Professor Duckworth on its way. So stay with us.

[Musical interlude / Commercial break]

Mel Robbins: Welcome back, it's your friend Mel. And today you and I have the absolute honor of sitting down and learning from world-renowned psychologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Angela Duckworth, who says grit is the most important determinant of success. And though some people are born with a little more grit than others, you and I, we can develop it at any age based on these four factors she's teaching us about today. Let's talk about the second part of grit, which is practice. 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 early adulthood, 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—you've heard of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.

Angela Duckworth: I have.

Mel Robbins: But for the person who's listening who doesn't know the 10,000 hour rule, just explain it back of the hand here.

Angela Duckworth: 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 chess masters, grand master chess players. He studied prima ballerinas. He studied World Cup soccer players. He was the world expert 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 something like 7,500 hours. 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 got to do 10,000 hours of practice if you want to become great at what you do.

Angela Duckworth: 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 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.

Angela Duckworth: That's the part that stings. That's the hard part, right? Because your ego is screaming. And then you do it over and over again. That's the high quality practice. When you look at the thousands of hours of practice that a lot of us do, including myself, when I met Anders, I was like, "Wait, I don't know if I believe this because I've been running. If I tabulate all the hours I had jogged in my life, I should be Usain Bolt." And he was like, "Well, do you have a goal?" And I was like, "Never." He was like, "Do you practice with complete effort and concentration?" I'm 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 like, "Are you kidding? Who would give me that?" So I was doing low quality practice.

Angela Duckworth: 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: 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 use, deliberate practice, that you're doing the thing with a goal in mind, that you are giving it your all, and that you get immediate feedback afterwards.

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

Mel Robbins: It sounds painful, honestly.

Angela Duckworth: It's painful. But there's no patent. You don't have to pay anybody. I mean, it's psychologically costly, but it's financially available to all of us.

Mel Robbins: Well, I love how honest you are when you basically said, "I've basically jogged for 10,000 hours. So why am I not winning the Olympics?" And you also admit, "Well, I don't really have a goal. I'm out there doing this thing. And maybe the goal is—"

Angela Duckworth: And I'm not trying that hard.

Mel Robbins: "And I'm not trying that hard."

Angela Duckworth: And then I don't take any feedback at all.

Mel Robbins: Yeah, none.

Angela Duckworth: Not from my watch.

Mel Robbins: Yeah, zero. Because I'm not wearing a watch.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah.

Mel Robbins: But if you really look at it, if you want to get better at something, there's the three formula. You've got to put in the hours. You've got to have a goal. You've got to 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 amazing at anything, that's what they're doing. In fact, when we were preparing for this episode, Professor Duckworth, as we were talking about the 10,000-hour rule and deliberate practice, we all kind of looked at each other and said, "That's kind of 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 is done, we all go into a room and we give each other feedback about what just happened.

Angela Duckworth: I spoke to Baudelaire on your team before we had this conversation. He said, "Oh, you know, I know you may prefer to be addressed as Angela or Angie. That's what my husband calls me. That's what my mom calls me. Like, we're going to call you Dr. Duckworth." I said, "Sure, you can call me anything you want." Why is that? He said, "Well, you know, we learn, right? And we have learned that we don't want to have that pattern where women are addressed by their first name, men are addressed by their salutation." 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. Got to have a goal. Got to try. And you got to learn from feedback.

Mel Robbins: I would love to talk a little bit about the importance of being able to do something that you're bad at. There's a lot of people that are very interested in starting a YouTube channel or writing a book or marketing their business online or they're interested in something that is going to require them to go through that really cringy period, the embarrassment 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 want to read to you from your mega bestseller, *Grit*. This is on page 141. It's in the section on practice and you're writing about these psychologists who devoted their careers to studying how children learn and agree that learning from mistakes is something that babies and toddlers don't mind at all.

Mel Robbins: "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." That's true, because you never see a toddler fall over and go, "Well, I'll just lay here for the rest of my life. I've failed." And they don't feel shame. It's pretty obvious they're not embarrassed.

Mel Robbins: But then something changes 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 kind of cringe, embarrassment, shame thing that we do to ourselves is something that we've been taught. Can you unpack that for us?

Angela Duckworth: Those two psychologists are two wonderful women, 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: Lev Vygotsky. 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 in play, right? They try things that they can't do. They pretend to do things like be a doctor or to be a mom or to 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, they break things.

Angela Duckworth: And I think this insight that this native desire to learn, this native desire to experiment, this complete lack of self-consciousness when it comes to screwing up, missing the mark, is in all of us because we were all babies. I mean, you were that young, innocent, hopeful child. And when you ask Elena and Deborah about this hypothesis that maybe when you're five and you start to go to school and you see the facial expressions of your teachers and the disappointment and, of course, your classmates and so forth, they will tell you that this is a little bit more of their speculation than mountains of hard data. But clearly, self-consciousness is something that you are not born with, but you acquire.

Angela Duckworth: So is it kindergarten? Is it something else that's happening around the same time? Whatever it is, I think the lesson for us is to try to recover something of that beginner's mind, it's sometimes called, right? The gift of just being a complete rookie and to be unselfconscious. And I speak as somebody who wishes she had that all the time. I think I've gotten better at it, but I remember going to a hip hop class. I was in my 20s. I was living in New York City. And it was the brief chapter in my life when I was a management consultant. And one of my co-workers, 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 oh my gosh, everybody there was from the Joffrey Ballet. I mean, the teacher would call out these moves, like 16 moves. She was like, "Go." And then you would all go individually from one corner of the room to the next. 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.

Angela Duckworth: And if I had really tried to channel the little kid that I used to be, like, "Who cares? Of course you don't know how to do hip hop. It's not something you've learned before. There's no embarrassment." So I do try to remember that. I try to model that, because I do think it is something that though acquired is now our second nature. Who among us wants to have the spinach in their teeth? We all want things to be great. And so that is an impediment to learning if we will not take those risks and not be awkward and not go through the cringe period.

Mel Robbins: You know, in our family, we talk a lot about putting in the reps, just going and showing up every day 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? Professor Duckworth, 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? You know what I'm saying? Like, how many of us really love the preparation work, like the buying the new journal, the getting ready to do the thing, the organizing ahead, the new pen, all that stuff, the new baskets. But now you're like day 179 and you're like, "I haven't written a word." Yes. So 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 10, a three in terms of the effort putting in. How do you have that honest conversation with yourself so that we can tap into this research around deliberate practice?

Angela Duckworth: 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 becoming a novelist, I really think if you put in anything, right? What happens to most people is that whatever their number is, they're putting in a 10, they're putting in an 8. Whatever their number is, it goes to zero. And that is the real problem, right? They're out of the game. And I really mean that.

Angela Duckworth: When Bob Bowman—I'm a little bit obsessed with Bob Bowman and his coaching.

Mel Robbins: Who's Bob Bowman?

Angela Duckworth: Bob Bowman was the coach of Michael Phelps and Leon Marchand. And when he talks to his swimmers, he says, "Every swim practice is like putting a deposit in the bank. 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. So that is one thing I would just say. 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 give yourself a break. If you're putting in a three, maybe you're tired.

Mel Robbins: Well, what's that famous quote that if all you can get, if all you have to give is 30%, you give 30% today, you just gave a hundred percent of what you had to give.

Angela Duckworth: Oh, I love that. I have not heard that quote, but now I have.

Mel Robbins: Okay.

Angela Duckworth: So first of all, I would give ourselves permission to say, "You know what, that's what I could do today." 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 what I mean. So much of the footage of high achievers, even when you look at them behind the scenes and 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 while you're concentrating and trying to achieve your goals.

Angela Duckworth: 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, "Are you on the wrong track? And maybe you're going in the wrong direction?" 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—" And I know you have spoken to the psychologist Ethan Cross, and he is one of my favorite humans and a very good friend. This idea of psychological distance, right? You are trying to have a little distance on your problem so you can think about it objectively. I mean, maybe you are in a rut, and maybe you should be doing something differently. Or maybe you're overtraining, 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 to myself in the mirror, "Angela, what do I think is going on right now? How can this problem be solved?"

Angela Duckworth: 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 dig deeper and they look inward. And almost always, you are much better off looking outward.

Mel Robbins: I love that. So that's the second assignment from Dr. Duckworth. There's a lot of homework. You should go talk to somebody. You know who you shouldn't talk to is your mother. Because when you're in that psychological state, no matter what your mother says, because even if she's right, even if it's the best thing you could hear, it's going to be annoying to you.

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

Mel Robbins: Yes. That works.

Angela Duckworth: Yes. As two moms, we know.

Mel Robbins: Yes. I've been told that, that everything I'm saying is extremely unhelpful.

Angela Duckworth: Yes, exactly.

Mel Robbins: I could listen to you all day. And I'm so grateful that you're here. But I need to take a quick break for a couple reasons. First of all, I've got to give our sponsors a chance to share a few words. But second, there is someone in your life that is struggling with motivation right now. This is the gift that they need. Send this episode to them. Let Dr. Duckworth teach them about the science of motivation, success, and these four pillars of grit. Do not go anywhere because she has so much more to teach you when we return. So stay with me.

[Break]

Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are getting to learn from world-renowned psychologist, professor, and expert on grit, Dr. Angela Duckworth. So let's get back into it. Dr. Duckworth, here's my next question. In your research, the third part of grit is purpose. How do you define purpose?

Angela Duckworth: 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 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. So that to me is something not only to remind ourselves of, but to 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. My husband said the other day, "Go get me a bag," like one of those little shopping bags, because he had five extra minutes and he just picked up the trash on our block. Was it great for the block? Sure. But it was even better for Jason Duckworth. So just these little things of, "I'm a small part. This is a big part. What can I do to be helpful?"

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

Angela Duckworth: Yeah, exactly.

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

Angela Duckworth: There is a research study that asked this question in the form of an intervention. It was run by David Yeager at UT Austin, who is actually a protege of his mentor, Carol Dweck. So it's all full circle. The question that he posed to teenagers in the study is, "What's something that really annoys you? What is a problem in the world that really makes you mad? Write about it." That was the treatment condition. And there was a control condition where you wrote about something else. It was a purpose intervention, because that is an opening question to a problem that maybe you want to work on, because we can't all work on everything. One person might really care about the environment. Another person might be really angry at the litter they see in their neighborhood. That would be my husband. Another person might think of how women are treated and they've experienced something in their own lives that really motivates them. I think everybody can answer that question. What is a thing that really irritates you, angers you, outrages you? Write about it. I think that is not the obvious entree into purpose, but I think it is a wonderful doorway into what is in your heart that hurts. What do you think ought to be different? It's the first step to saying, "Hey, maybe I can make that difference."

Mel Robbins: I want to give a quick example, and then I want to dig deeper into purpose in your job, because so many people don't feel connected to what they're doing. So many. But something that brings me a lot of energy and that I'm super interested in is gardening, flowers in particular.

Angela Duckworth: Oh, okay.

Mel Robbins: There are many beautiful flowers here, by the way.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah, well, I always have fresh flowers in the studio. I asked you if it was a special occasion, and you said no.

Mel Robbins: It is. You're here.

Angela Duckworth: Well, yes. You're here, Dr. Duckworth. Life. But it just naturally brings me alive. My kids tease me because we can walk through a city park and I can name every flower. I can talk about it. I'm just super interested in it.

Angela Duckworth: There we go.

Mel Robbins: And I heard about a woman in our community who had gotten very sick, and she's a flower farmer. And I organized a bunch of friends to go help her while she was in the hospital. And it gave me a deep sense of meaning and purpose. So that's an example, not in career, 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, it bothers me that there's trash on my walk."

Angela Duckworth: And I'm glad you shared that because the last time I walked the loop by my house, I noticed an uptick in trash. And I thought, I need— There's a lot of trash going on. But I immediately thought, this will probably make me look like a bad person. But I literally was like, "Why haven't they cleaned this up? Someone's really got to get on me." And now you're making me realize, "Well, wait a minute. Why don't I do it?"

Mel Robbins: But let me also give you permission to not take every problem in the world on your shoulders. One of the things, I don't want to generalize to all women, but I will speak as a woman. And I will just say as a confession that a lot of my life, I did a lot of public service. When I was in high school and especially in college, there was a point where I literally spent more hours doing public service than I was in the lecture hall or the lab because I was a neurobiology major. So many, many hours. And I will tell you that I think I had one thing very wrong. 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." There are so many problems in the world. Honestly, there are 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 to you? 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 world a better place that also allows you to enjoy this very serious hobby that you have? 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, this conversation is part of my purpose. I want to make the world a psychologically wiser place. 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 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. Whenever you come to this realization, you can begin that very day to look for the intersection.

Mel Robbins: I am so glad you said that because I believe that so many people feel that there are so many things going on that nothing's going to make a difference. Or that if you are spending your time volunteering in an area that interests you, that somehow that's not big enough. There is a story about purpose in your book related to bricklayers that I want to read to you. 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?

Angela Duckworth: There is actually a science of calling. So there are parables, but there's actually modern science. And it's true. Some people go to work and it's a job. It pays the bills. As soon as it's five o'clock, their brain shuts off from their work, and they get to do what they really want to do. Some people have a career. They see progression. By the way, it's like, "Oh, I can see that I'm getting ahead." There's some kind of fulfillment in that. Mel, we talked about the gratification of getting better at something, and that's 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. 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 roll the gurney down the hallway has a job. No. If you actually look at people's relationships with their work, it has nothing to do with the job title. It has more to do with how they feel 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. The last thing I'll say is that this word "calling" actually originally was not a term of modern psychology. It originally did have a religious connotation of being called by God, of being called to do something by a higher power. And I would say that what scientists who study calling today are actually returning in a way to that, because it's something in addition to, "Wow, this is interesting and this is very resonant with my values." When you are truly called, you do feel like there is a task that has been laid at your door that you are interested in and you do find important, but that it needs to be you, that you are needed. 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, to be truly useful, to be given a task and to feel like, again, if we can do that without the word "should," which I know seems counterintuitive, but to really feel that sense of being part of something bigger than your own personal concerns, I think that is 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, "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: Well, it's very clear that you have one.

Angela Duckworth: I do. I feel like it's a calling. I feel very blessed to have it. And I can't tell you, Mel, what if I hadn't been a psychologist? Could I feel that way about becoming a chef? You said you love food. I love food too. Maybe I could have been a chef. That's another road not taken. Maybe I could have been a pediatrician. I love children. But I feel like I have a calling. I feel like this is my way of making the world a better place.

Mel Robbins: For somebody who wants a calling, is there anything in the research that helps you 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?

Angela Duckworth: When I talk to leaders, and though I am not very good at finance and other things that they teach at the Wharton School of Business, I am a very passionate student of leadership, and I love studying world-class leaders the way I love studying world-class athletes. 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? Reminded of the greater purpose of the work?" You might think annually, because that's how often they have annual meetings or retreats. Or maybe you think quarterly, because that's how often a CEO has a town hall. Daily. Sometimes these CEOs are saying hourly, minutely. It's very easy to lose a sense of the big picture. I think if you ask the question, "Who benefits if I do my job well?" you naturally get the answer. 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 presence. I remember thinking to myself, "Wow, what an unusual person." My husband said, "Oh, I know that person. He used to coach track, and I guess now he's retired." I thought to myself, if he has a connection to every child that he crosses across that busy intersection, A, gets to school safely, B, starts the day with someone looking at them with genuine affection and fondness. "Hey, how you doing? Good to see you." What a beautiful thing. So I don't think you have to be a priest or a social worker to have a calling. You can ask yourself, "Who benefits when I do my job well?" And you have your answer.

Mel Robbins: That was beautiful. He's great. You've got to come and see me so that we can cross the street together.

Angela Duckworth: You've got to come on a weekday around like eight.

Mel Robbins: I would love to. 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." Hope is something that doesn't have a chapter because I think you need hope whether you're four or 104. We spoke about growth mindset, Mel. When you asked me, "What is hope really?" Hope is the belief that the future can be better than the past. And it is the belief that you can, in some way, make that come to pass. When you think about your life, your happiness, your health, your weight, your retirement savings, 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." At the core of hope, I think, is that belief of, "Why would I believe that?" 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 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 getting something done the next day as opposed to staying in bed.

Mel Robbins: 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?

Angela Duckworth: Sometimes scientists use the term "agency." And that, I think, makes the point that this is not wishful thinking. It's not just positive thinking in some generic sense. 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. Al Bandura, he no longer lives, but he was at Stanford University, and he identified four drivers of agency. He called it self-efficacy. But really, when you look at what he was talking about, if you look at the questionnaire that Al Bandura used, "I can do this if I try," that sense of agency. Four drivers of it. He said one is, and I think this is not very obvious to people, but I think it's very important. I know you've spoken a lot about physical health, like taking care of yourself. Al Bandura said that one of the drivers of agency is being in a physiological state of wellness. You can't have agency when you're exhausted. You can't have agency when you're sick. When you feel out of breath. So one thing is take care of your body so that you can have that sense of energy and agency. Second was what you call verbal persuasion, but I always think of as pep talks. You're kind of down. You're thinking, "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." Al Bandura didn't want to 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. He would run these studies where little girls and boys would watch an adult do something like play with a toy, and they would watch behind this plate glass divider. 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 grown-up did. We learn through modeling. When we're not confident that we can do something and we see a model who 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. I've heard that from my own students. They'll tell me, "You're an Asian female and I have found you to be an example for me." I say to them, "Wow, I don't even think about being an Asian female," but clearly they could see what was possible through that. But what I really want to 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. 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. What do they need? They need a small win. They need it in some way. They are trying to do something in practice and they did it in practice. They tried to adjust their elbow by a little, they did it. So I think that when we find a person in our lives, maybe ourselves, and there's a real lack of hope, the most important thing is to find something that can be that little victory that gives you hard evidence that you can do something if you try. That's what I try to remember but don't always enact with myself and, of course, with my children.

Mel Robbins: I'm so glad that we're talking about this because I've come to believe that the single biggest thing standing in people's way is not ability. It's a lack of hope. It's this sense of discouragement that no matter what I do, it's not going to work. It's not going to get better.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah.

Mel Robbins: So for the person that feels that sense of discouragement. "I'm too old. It's too far gone. There's no fixing this. I'm hopeless." What would you say to them, Dr. Duckworth?

Angela Duckworth: So I'm writing a book. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. Many, many tears, months and years of struggle, insomnia. I've been through all of it with this book. When I'm really discouraged, I take my pen and I get it out and I put a to-do list together that is so ridiculously simple, like "Open Google Doc." And then I open the Google Doc and I check it off. Small win. I could say to myself, "Spend five minutes looking at this paper that I printed out that I don't understand." Write it down, check it off. Small win. You can be your own Olympic coach if you break down these things that are feeling discouraging to you. When you feel that feeling of discouragement, you should just think to yourself, "Too big." That's what it is. Not impossible. Too big. You need to eat it in spoonfuls. You can't swallow too much. So be your own Olympic coach.

Mel Robbins: I love that. It's too big.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah.

Mel Robbins: Do a smaller thing. Can't do 10 minutes of physical therapy? Do one. Well, here's another thing I'm in love with. I love that quote where you say, "In order to be a great swimmer, you've got to join a great team." What does that mean?

Angela Duckworth: So many people are like, "I'm going to be great at this thing." And they have this little movie of themselves being great at that thing. And that movie really stars themselves. If you go out and try to start a company or build an organization or anything, honestly, you are so much better off with a team. Here's the picture that I love. At the last Olympics, I love these cheesy commercials. Honestly, I love the commercials as much as I love the events. Toyota had this commercial called "No Journey is Taken Alone." It opens with this female track athlete and she's on the blocks and the British announcer comes over and it's like, "Ready, set, go." And what happens is all these people rush onto the track, her parents and the coaches and her teammates and her friends, and they're all shouting and cheering her on. Then they go through different sports. The parable really is that no journey is taken alone. Understanding that, literally go out and join a team. For example, founders are less successful statistically on average than co-founders. The very best incubators who are looking for the next big OpenAI or whatever, they typically only fund teams. They're like, "Come back when you have somebody else." When you ask those venture capitalists, "Why would you only fund a co-founder? Why not take the solo founder?" They're like, "It's too hard. Who could do it?" So I think one of the lessons in life is, don't take the journey alone. If that means running and joining a running club, I recently discovered there's something like 30 running clubs in Philadelphia. When I look around, I notice them. I'm like, "Oh yeah, there are people who are running together." That's so much more fun and sustainable than getting your own sneakers on just for yourself on a Saturday morning.

Mel Robbins: Well, one of the other things that you've been doing a lot of research on right now is the power that our cell phones have over us.

Angela Duckworth: Yes.

Mel Robbins: That is an important part of the situation that didn't exist when I was growing up, but now does. So talk to me about what you're finding and what you think we need to know.

Angela Duckworth: I'm running this study. It's the first national study of school cell phone policies. Think of your local elementary school, your local middle school, or your local high school. Chances are they have a policy. How are students allowed to keep their phones? When are they allowed to use them? My collaborators, because I believe in teams, never do anything like this on my own, there's a big team of scientists including me. What we're doing is we're trying to get literally every teacher in the country to answer a five-minute survey. I know that sounds like a moonshot, Mel, and it is. But if a teacher goes to phonesandfocus.org, they will find a questionnaire written by and for teachers. It asks you, "What is your school's cell phone policy? Are you a bell-to-bell school? Are you a school that allows kids to use it during breaks? Tell us where students are allowed to use their phones. Do they have to keep them in their hallway locker? Do you use Yonder pouches? Do you do nothing?" Then we ask you just a few questions about, in your school, what do you see as an educator? How many kids from 0% to 100% are on their phone during class when they shouldn't be? The survey is very quick. We have over 20,000, I think maybe close to 30,000 teachers who have already taken it. What we find is that they hardly ever drop out of the survey. Once they start it, they want to tell us what is going on because the educators have been left out of the conversation on cell phones. If I could give you just a peek, Mel, at what the data are telling us: the stricter the policy, the happier the educator. The stricter the policy, the more on-task kids are academically. In particular, what I'm finding interesting is the farther the phone physically. Some schools allow kids to keep them in their pockets or in their backpacks. They might say, "You're not allowed to use it all day, but you can physically keep it wherever you want," even if it's directly on your person. Half of the schools in our sample are saying, "No show. Keep it wherever you want. I just don't want to see it. Don't ask, don't tell." Those schools don't do very well. The schools that say, "We want you to physically put this somewhere which is far from you," they're having better outcomes. As a psychologist who's been studying self-control and grit for 20-some years, the farther the phone, the higher the GPA in my research. That is because physical distance from temptation creates psychological distance from temptation. So if you are a parent or a teacher and you think there's a temptation in the life of a young person or yourself that's not doing you any good, literally keep it away. I appreciate being asked that question because I think this is one small way, we're just talking about purpose, this is one small way that any educator can actually make a huge difference in the life of children through policy. We are going to take those findings and we're going to take them to every governor and we're going to take them to every school district superintendent. Whatever happens in the data, which again, we're seeing an emerging picture, we're going to share that as widely as we can. I think this is a sea change in the life of young people that if we don't get this right, we're going to be in a lot of trouble. And I think we already are.

Mel Robbins: I would love to, you know, you talk also about how you can change your environment in order to protect your focus. What are the top things that you want us to be doing related to the phone?

Angela Duckworth: So I think if you want anything to be in your life more, if you want it to be top of mind, by the way, about half of the things that we don't do, it's simply because we forget. So the things that you want to be reminded of, literally put them front and center. I tell my students, "Put out your arms. See that? That's your personal space." That is how psychologists measure your personal space. It's about three feet in every direction. You can do it. Well, that's your personal space. I've got a big wingspan here. If it's here, it's within reach and it's within sight. So if I want to do something, it needs to be within my arm span.

Mel Robbins: Exactly.

Angela Duckworth: And if not, it's not happening. Farther away.

Mel Robbins: Especially with menopause.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah. I mean, exactly. How many times have I thought to myself, "Oh, I should go get that book or do it," and it's up the stairs? I mean, come on. Really? That would take five seconds to walk up the stairs? I can't be bothered. So what you want in your life, put it within your personal space. What you want out of your life, hide it. You could eliminate it altogether. I think physical distance equaling psychological distance is an enormously powerful tool. And you can literally exercise it immediately.

Mel Robbins: Yes. Speaking directly to the person who is with us right now, if they take just one action out of everything that you have poured into us today, what do you think the most important thing to do?

Angela Duckworth: I think if you could think of everything we talked about today, right? Because there was so much homework, really, honestly. I will tell you one more pro tip from the science of high achievement. When elite performers practice, they try to practice just one thing, actually not three things.

So you can pick your homework assignment. You know, you could say, "I want to do a curiosity conversation," or "I'm going to push something that I don't want out of my personal space," and "I'm going to put a reminder in my..." whatever you want. I mean, stop saying "should." You know, you could say, "I'm going to do the 'should' homework. I'm going to banish 'should' for 24 hours and see what happens." You could take the homework of joining a team. You can say, "Look, you know what? Running's fun, but I'll just try running club. I could always not go anymore if it's not my thing."

But I don't think you should try to do everything. I think you should try to do one thing, right? Because again, Mel, if there's one lesson from grit that really surprised me, it's the consistency. It's the, you know, try to have an 8 out of 10 like Michael Phelps. Try to have a 7 out of 10. Frankly, try to have a 10 out of 10. But if you are one out of 10 and then another one out of 10, and then maybe someday a two out of 10 and back to one out of 10 and then three out of 10, but it's never zero out of 10, then you will glimpse excellence in your own life. I truly believe that, Mel, no matter how talented you were born, no matter what it is that you want to do, if you want to glimpse your own potential, consistency is the way.

Mel Robbins: Dr. Duckworth, what are your parting words?

Angela Duckworth: My daughter Amanda was getting tucked into bed by her mother many years ago. I think she was in kindergarten and it was one of those days. And I did not want to swear. And I tucked her into bed after this very long day when she had been really a handful. And I said, "Amanda, you have been trying." And she looked at me with these big eyes and she said, "Mommy, we're all trying." And I nearly cried. And I thought to myself, she's right. I mean, we are all good inside. We are all ambitious. Every single one of us is trying. And I think if there's anything I can do to help us try more wisely, then it will be a life well lived.

Mel Robbins: Well, all I can say, Dr. Duckworth, is I am grateful that you are answering the call. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. Thank you for teaching us so much today. And it just makes the things that you're trying to teach us in terms of being wise or psychologically that much more accessible. And I just want to tell you, I am so happy to know you. Thank you for not only showing... So I feel like we're friends now.

Angela Duckworth: Well, we are friends. Let's do it. We are friends because, you know, I really have always admired your work, but I really admire you as a person now too. So thank you.

Mel Robbins: And you know what? You and I are friends too. And I also love the fact that when you hit play and you find the time and make the time to listen to this episode or watch it on YouTube, you're trying. You're trying to create a better life. And so here's what I want to tell you. I want to tell you, in case no one else tells you, that I love you as your friend, and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And there is no doubt in my mind that all of the research that Dr. Angela Duckworth just shared with you and me, all of the takeaways and the assignments that she gave us will absolutely help you do that.

I can't wait to hear how you use this in your life. Thank you for watching and listening all the way to the end. Thank you for being generous with this episode and sharing it with people that you care about. And I cannot wait to see you in the very next episode. I'll be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play. I'll see you there.

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Mel Robbins: So I'm really excited that you're here, and I'm super excited to dig into your research, but I'm also excited to get the coffee that Ben has.

Angela Duckworth: Yeah. The fourth one was, or the third was purpose. You're not only... I blew it. Okay, here we go. I can start it, and you have someone in your life. Okay.

Mel Robbins: A best-selling author, and a total powerhouse in the field of human performance. Oh my God, I've got dry mouth. Hold on. Let me go up to the top again. This is Dr. Angela Duckworth and you're... Oh wait, hold on. Hold on a second. She'll help me welcome, right? Yeah.

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Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write, and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.

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