Angela Duckworth: Grit: Listener Favorite
EPISODE 198
Angela Duckworth is the world’s leading academic in the study of grit: something she defines as passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Is success all talent? What do successful people have that allows them to achieve their goals?
The book Grit (buy on Amazon), teaches us that success is not all talent. To have talent is an essential factor and it will give you the edge over others who don't, but more importantly, you need the grit to see things through.
"Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint." - Angela Duckworth
INTRO
Angela tells us what Grit means, and the book’s connection to Growth Mindset
Life is a marathon, not a sprint (3m07)
RE-DEFINING GRIT
OPTIMIZE with Brian Johnson breaks down Angela’s research into the psychology of Achievement
The Grit Score (2m14)
Angela and whether effort and perseverance are more important than talent
Effort is undervalued (1m04)
BEHAVIOURS WE CAN EMULATE
Productivity Game helps us understand the 4 Grit Structures (Develop a fascination, Daily Improvements, Greater Purpose, Growth Mindset)
How to grow your Grit (3m27)
OUTRO
OPTIMIZE with Brian Johnson and how Angela’s belief in the idea of genius
Excellence is genius (1m01)
READING:
If you would prefer a short summary of the book you can find it here on Blinkist.
TRANSCRIPT
And welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 146. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always, I'm joined by the man who is gritty and resilient. Mr. Mark, Pearson Freeland. Good morning, Matt. Good morning, Mike. This is mark gritty person, Freeland putting on his grittiest voice ever. How are you doing it is today.
Hey, good morning, Mike. I got to tell you, Mike, I am excited to dig back into this particular show. No, you can't be excited. You've got to be stoic.
Oh, you have to be resilient. You have to go deep and find that gritty long lasting perseverance. Mark. Come on. We've got a job they're doing here. Yes. I should really put on that sightly, more powerful, passionate pers perseverance face today. Listeners, we're digging back into Angela Duckworth's grit, the power of passion and perseverance.
Mike. This was a big topic for us on the moonshot show. Isn't it?
It has come up so frequently. Whether we talk about your Rogan, you're willing so many [00:01:00] people Carol Dweck growth mindset. Talk about the need for us to stay the course when the going gets tough and we're all so tempted to abandon, but you know what Angela did this study.
She went deep. She studied the path of over 11,000 west point cadets west being a famous military school in the U S and she found that it had very little to do with inherent talent and all about a key word. Didn't you mean?
And that key word, Mike, it was great, powerful, stoic, a word that can inspire as well as frightened all of us.
I know measures. I know. And this idea is that she came up with is totally validated. She really studied the path of a lot of people, so she can categorically say it is the power of passion and perseverance and staying the course, when the going gets rough, it's a marathon. It's not a sprint, all of those thoughts, but she has the science and the numbers behind it.
It is gritty. Indeed. I'm doing well. Are you ready for what promises to be a brand new show, a brand new series and something we know our audience is going to love. This is jokes aside, Mike, I'm putting down my pen and my paper, my funny voice. This one is such a huge series today. You and I are kicking off a brand new series on resilience.
And today we're going to dig into Angela Duckworth's book, grit, the power of passion and perseverance (buy on Amazon). And like you just said, Mike, this. A pretty big milestone moment for [00:01:00] the moonshot show. Not only is resilience, a topic that comes up in quite a significant amount of the moonshot is that you and I have learned from the past, but we've also just come off the back of Carol Dweck's growth mindset (buy on Amazon), last week.
We're learning, reminding ourselves about the difference of growth first traditional mindsets and the power of staying on track and persevering. But also Mike, we know from our listeners how popular people like David Gawkins have been for us in the past. I mean his story and his resilience just keeps on impressing us.
It really does. We know it was a huge hit for you, our listeners. So we are doing a absolute blitz on grit, on resilience in this show and Angela Duckworth. I love the fact that she has broken it down. She's defined it. She tells us how to do it. She even gives us a nice little test that you, as listeners can all do so we can see where [00:02:00] we stand on a grit score.
And what's really great is I think you can leave this show, knowing exactly what it takes to succeed. She's going to challenge even some of our pre premeditated thoughts around genius. There's a lot here. There's a lot of intersections with other people that we've studied, whether it's Goggins, whether it's Sinek, Carol Dweck.
So if you've loved any of those shows and in particular, your loved David Goggins, this show is for you, right? Yeah, that's totally right. And Angela's history and her past experiences from an academic perspective, Mike. So there's a real note on how our mindsets are naturally incurred to certain directions through internal, external environments, but today's show Mike is really about practicalities.
It's about understanding the difference between talent and perseverance, grit, [00:03:00] hard work. It's all about understanding from Angela, what the idea of grit really is and how it can affect you and I, and Mike, to kick off the show where better to start than Angela Duckworth herself, telling us what grit is and connecting us again to Carol and her work on growth mindset.
So why don't we hear from Angela right now telling us and introducing us into what grit really means. We studied rookie teachers working in really tough neighborhoods, asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching by the end of the school year. And of those who would be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students.
We partnered with private companies asking which of these salespeople is going to keep their jobs and who's going to earn the most money in all those very different contexts. One characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success and it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks [00:04:00] physical health and it wasn't IQ.
It was grit. Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years and working really hard to make that future a reality grit is living life. Like it's a marathon, not a sprint.
A few years ago, I started studying grit in the Chicago public schools. I asked thousands of high school juniors to take brick questionnaires and then waited around more than a year to see who would graduate. It turns out that grittier kids were significantly more likely to graduate. Even when I matched them on every characteristic, I could measure things like family income, standardized achievement, test scores, even how [00:05:00] safe kids felt when they were at school.
So it's not just at west point or the national spelling bee that grit. It's also in school, especially for kids at risk for dropping out to me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know how little science knows about building it every day, parents and teachers ask me, how do I build grit in kids?
What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run? The honest answer is I don't know. What I do know is that talent doesn't make you gritty our data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments.
In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of. So far the best idea I've heard about building grit and kids [00:06:00] is something called growth mindset. This is an idea developed at Stanford university by Carol Dweck. And it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with your effort.
Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere when they fail, because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition. Failure is not a permanent condition. Mark that clip, you just dropped on.
Us had so many ideas in there. I'm a little overwhelmed as to where I'm going to start in deconstructing that, but here's a go. What I found very interesting is that what Angela Duckworth does through her work in the book, grit is she is basically challenging the [00:07:00] relationship between resilience and talent and that they are almost sheer suggesting diametrically opposed.
I found that very interesting that she's basically saying if you're talented, you got a huge problem because often those people don't have grit and this is a really important tension and topic for us to explore. Did you find that a little disruptive mode? Yeah, I think the usual. Attitude towards talent would be you're naturally successful and you are very intelligent perhaps, and you can apply yourself and maybe you've got a, I went to school with a guy who had a photographic memory and he could look at something once go to an exam and he'd be completely fine, but that was a different experience to somebody like me or my friends who had to sit there and learn [00:08:00] ourselves and put in that time.
And I wonder, and I think what Angela is really breaking down here is the people who went on to graduate from that school and go on beyond that were the ones that put in that most effort. So I think you're right. The idea of. Putting in the time, putting the efforts really crafting your attitude and your focus around a particular subject is perhaps more impressive, important, and valuable in life than just something that off the top of your head, the talent aspect.
I think it's naturally against perhaps what we grew up. Assuming we all think that talent is this glorious thing that we should all have innately. And when we don't have it, we get depressed. And we question why we don't have it. Maybe we blame our parents or our own bringings and so on, but really it's all about as Angela saying your attitude, your conscious decision to put more effort into a certain situation, project or pieces of.[00:09:00]
Yeah, I got to admit that I probably one of my greatest struggles as a teenager was resilience. I found myself for the first half of my life, I think skating through on a, just a little bit of talent and just staying out of trouble. I think what was really interesting is it wasn't until the second half of my life, until I really made the decision to work hard on my career and work out on myself that then I discovered I was just no good at resilience.
Like at the first sign of troubled I was out of there, because, oh my gosh, I might fail. You can look at my teenage years. Oh, my gosh, Mike, how many chances do you want to blow in a short matter of years? Like the patients that my high school showed with [00:10:00] me as I continued to show perhaps a little bit of potential in 1, 2, 3, probably about six or seven different things of which I delivered zero in the end, absolutely zero, because I had no grit, no resilience.
So this is why. It's so great for me to return to this because to me, this has been one of the single biggest changes for me in my life. And that's why I'm so excited to get into Angela's work and to reinforce what happens to me after just a a whole bunch of time where I just didn't do the work.
I didn't persevere. I didn't stick with it. If it came a little natural, I'd do a little bit but did not stick at anything until I had a huge breakthrough at 20 years of age. And let's hope that today, mark, we can make this show a big breakthrough for our listeners. Let's whether it's reminding them of some of the [00:11:00] finer points of grit or whether it's for those of you that are trying to be the best version of yourselves, you've tried a couple of different things and nothing's really worked out yet.
I think the answer lies in this show D in this show, don't you. Yeah, like Allie, like Angela caught out in that first clip failure, isn't permanent. And you can go through a number of failures in order to get to your final destination. And you'll find a moment. And as Angela calls out, life's a marathon.
I love this metaphor, Mick. We don't, as we'll explore in today's show, we don't get overnight successes that much. And the ones who do perhaps aren't as Bennett, they don't benefit as much as the ones who actually put in all of that time. So today's all about setting ourselves with this mindset of, okay, it's going to take time, but I love it.
I wanted to take. Totally mark. And I'll tell you who else is up for the moonshot marathon and that's all of our members. [00:12:00] It is so exciting to see new people joining up to be a member of the show. Who do we need to welcome to the show today? Big shout out to Tom Osmund and DMR bow. Thank you so much for joining us over the last couple of days.
We are growing Mike, our little family of moonshots members. It's so exciting to see that. Group of us all. Like-minded individuals trying to learn and become the best version of ourselves growing week by week, day by day. It's truly great. And Mike, if you are considering becoming a member of the moonshots podcast, what's in it for people.
Why on earth would they do such crazy? I'm glad you asked Mike because it is a full repository of information and a comprehensive guide for all of our members who join us via www.moonshots.io and click on the member button. You can get access to all of the work that we put in to our master [00:13:00] series.
And Mike, it's been a pretty busy couple of months on the master series. Hasn't it? It has a memory of done shows on motivation, first principles teamwork and they are incredibly deep master classes that you can access if you become a member and only if you become a member. So if you are interested in becoming a member head of it@moonshots.io, we will welcome you with.
Open arms. And I think you get, what did we say? Luna powered. Good luck. If you become Gamba by a thing, right? Exactly. You can get access to reading lists, to video clips, to frameworks, all via the master series on moonshots, and you can become a member and join us. Like you say, Mike, you can get a lunar power dose of information driving to become the best version of ourselves.
And I tell you who is well on the way to being the best version of himself as one of our [00:14:00] favorites, Brian Johnson, from the optimized channel on YouTube, he's got a full breakdown on Angela Duckworth's work in her book, grit, and he even introduces the key tool, the grit score beast. What is that? That is short for beast barracks.
Angela Duckworth started her research on grit at west point. So west point is an extraordinarily difficult place to get into right. And the top students from around the country spend literally like two years prepping to get in. You have to have a Congressman or a Senator or a vice-president writes you a letter of recommendation to get into west point extraordinarily prestigious, hard to get into.
Yet, once you get in 20% of the class, that starts will drop out by the end. And most of those dropout during the first seven weeks of orientation in something called beast barracks, and for decades, military scientists were trying to figure out [00:15:00] how to decide and how to predict who's going to drop out.
And who's not, they have something called a whole candidate score, which looked at the GPA, the sat through athletic and leadership experience, stuff like that, whole candidate score. It didn't predict who made it through beast barracks, incomes. Angela. She creates a survey. A grit survey score is generated from this little survey, right?
That measures your level of. She asked very simple questions on passion and perseverance, which we're going to come back to a lot today, which are the two facets of grit. Things like do you tend to move through setbacks, tough things happen and you move through it is that you are not like you, are you passionate about stuff, but then get excited and then drop it after a while, right?
Is that you are not like you, depending on your answers to these questions and the test that she has in the book, there's only 10 questions, but it will create a grit score. And that [00:16:00] grit score that these west point cadets took predicted who would make it through the beast barracks with crazy astounding levels of predictive value, nothing else they had done in the decades before would predict the way that her grid scale would predict.
It turns out that grit predicts a lot of the things that we want to see in our lives. It is. The secret sauce of creating a great life and achieving our potential grit is the secret source. Mike that's what we should have opened the show with telling our listeners that this is the secret sauce for life, but I think isn't that Brian's touch.
Isn't it? I just want to say isn't it crazy though? What he just said, like grit was the best determinant of success. There's a huge idea in that. Isn't it? I think what Angela's score. Goes on to prove is that this science, there's a science that exists around again, mindset [00:17:00] and attitude, which is a fascinating idea to me, Mike, I never really prior to digging into grit and Angela's work.
And the scale that we'll dig into together in a second, I never really assumed that there would be a science or a level of research around this idea of attitude and behavior or resilience, or I thought, okay resilience is something you demonstrate, but I didn't know that there were scientific boundaries and barriers and placements around it that defined how gritty you were until we're getting into this.
And I found it very exciting. Yes. I think the reveal here for all of us is that one. Grit and resilience is a big part of success. And that's a theme we've seen in the moonshots podcasts many times, isn't it. Mike, we heard from Einstein, we heard from Goggins in so many people, the [00:18:00] capacity to keep on going when they weren't getting all the rewards and recognition, but they could keep going.
Despite every challenge that was in front of them, they kept going somewhere at the other side of that. Keep ongoing don't give up is fulfillment, satisfaction and success. Isn't it. That's been a huge theme in our show over 140 plus shows. The idea of not getting the reward straight away is a real challenge.
Isn't it? You assume going back to Angela's opening club, life being a marathon, not a a sprint, you'll get a reward within, let's say a couple of minutes, let's say, whereas a marathon, it takes a few hours and an hour. I haven't even run a marathon mic, but I know it takes a long time. And I think it's actually to your point, and you've just said this idea of no reward apart from how you feel about yourself, how you can be proud of [00:19:00] yourself, you can demonstrate your own passion and perseverance internally.
You've really got to change your mindset away from a physical reward, such as a car or success or whatever in order to be comfortable with that. And I think that is quite quite a challenge unless you've really done it. Yeah. Later in the show we'll actually break down the things that you can do in our habits part.
So that's all ahead of us. So we're going to, don't worry listeners. We are going to get there. What we're doing right now though, is just oh my gosh, this grit thing really matters. There, there is a science to it there. Angela's study, she studied 16,000 individuals to write this book. That's how scientific she got.
And for me, what was so interesting is that you can go and do this grit score test right now. In fact, mark, you've done it. So why don't you explain to our listeners, how can [00:20:00] we all go and get our own grit score and work out where we are on the resilience to. Like you say, Angela's gone and created this grit score based on interviewing tens of thousands of individuals.
And as Brian from optimized broke down there, she really started working on it at the west point with west point students in order to determine how resilient and how many of them would get through beyond past that whole card score. And it's really interesting little piece of research. Mike, it's not too dissimilar from personality tests, from NFP tests and so on, but it's all about trying to be honest with yourself as to how you respond to challenges in your.
So imagine a personality school, all orientated around saying, Hey Mike, do you find this difficult? How do you respond in this situation? And just to give you a very small sense, Mike, I'll read you out a couple of questions. And then, like I say, I'd invite yourself and [00:21:00] all of our listeners to go out and complete this.
And in fact, Mike, I think it'll be really fun to hear from the listeners as to how some of them got on and what sort of levels they found themselves with regards to that grid, but some of the ideas. So how did you find it doing, was it a bit confronting or uncomfortable or revealing? How was it for me?
So some of the questions that I would struggle with. Ones that I don't want to admit to myself are a challenge. You and I with our work, as well as on the moonshot show we try to actively practice ways of being little bit more resilient and trying to put in time to get the best result out of the project.
And sometimes that's all about mindset, isn't it? So actually, as I went through some of these questions in the scale, such as new ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones and I'd have to scale whether this is like me, not really like me, somewhat like me very much [00:22:00] like me or all the way like me I would think I mustn't admit to myself that I do get distracted because I don't want to be distracted.
So yeah, it is. It's a little bit of a challenge when you try and sit down and go through it in order to be honest with yourself. Which question was the most challenging for you? I think the hardest one for me to really be honest with myself is I am diligent. I never give up, which is number eight.
I think in the school I'm diligent. I never give up how much is this like me or not like me. And to be honest, Mike, although I believe I'll stick at a problem, I'll go out during my career and try my best. I'll be working really hard. There are times when I will want to give up and there will be times where I'll try and get distracted.
Maybe I'll resent the. The situation may be [00:23:00] those around me. And I think that's a demonstration or a behavior that's intrinsic with trying to give up. Isn't it. You're trying to push everything away. Here's the secret mark. We all have thoughts of giving up if it feels any, any better for you.
And in fact I was talking to a friend of mine that runs triathlons and he he just competed in the world champs on the weekend, came a hundred and sixth in the world. Totally amazing. And we were talking about when you're running long distances and he still has thoughts of stopping or slowing down we all know.
But it's a question of how you deal with that thought and isn't it good though that something like the grit scale from Angela Duckworth challenges you and provokes you to think about it and hopefully what we're doing together in this show gives you the capacity to say, yeah. Okay. I know I'm having these thoughts, but you know what?
It must be good to have these thoughts because it means I'm pushing [00:24:00] myself, stretching myself. I think that's a whole part of unlocking resilience. Isn't it saying? Oh, it's hurting now. Okay. That's good. And do you remember Joe Rogan said get comfortable being uncomfortable, just get used to it. Yep.
And likewise with Jaco Willink, is it good? Is it hard? Good problems. Good. Exactly. Yeah. So that's the mindset here. It's okay. No problem. Start to discover a little bit how you stand with the grit score. Oh, by the way you can actually get this grit score@angeladuckworth.com forward slash grit dash scale.
We'll have obviously a link in our show notes, mark. And where do we hide those show notes that available for all of our fans, listeners over www.moonshots.io, where you can access 145 other shows prior to Angela Duckworth's grit, as well [00:25:00] as all of our show notes, transcripts links to our videos. You've got access to a plethora of information that all is designed to help you and I, and every listener be the best version of themselves.
And I tell you what. When you're really pushing yourself, stretching to do something that's maybe a little uncomfortable do not fall for the trap of thinking. It's all about talent. In fact, what Angela's work has uncovered what her talking to 16,000 people studying the candidates and the students at west point, she has discovered that we're all in the wrong head space.
In fact, we're all thinking it's about talent and who you know, and what you know, and she's got a very big idea right here. And that is that. It's under valued. Let me start off by saying that in our research studies for many outcomes, like finishing [00:26:00] west point, grit actually is more predictive than IQ or sat scores.
But I think the real question is not, oh, which is more important or more predictive. What it really is important to do is to highlight the undervalued role of effort. I feel like we live in a culture where we talk about talent all the time. In fact, I once was asked to do a media presentation and they actually even refer to people as talent as in, how has the talent showed up?
Did talent show up to makeup? Yet talent has to be on in five minutes. So this kind of obsession we have with whether we are or are not gifted and talented, whether we do or do not make some talent threshold is misplaced. And if anything, I would hope that my. Doesn't necessarily undermine talent because I think talent exists.
I'm not a particularly talented driver, for example. But we vastly underestimate how much effort, practice time on task, really determines ultimate performance [00:27:00] practice and time on task. Those are my two key call-outs from that clip mic, because I think Angela is really demonstrating here is put in the time practice in order to get a little bit more knowledgeable about something a little bit more confident.
It just takes a little bit of time. It really does. And I think what's important here is I listened to Angela Duckworth talk. There is nothing in our modern day, feels like a natural companion to taking time. To running the marathon it's feels like it's inverse. Everything is about the sprint food delivered to your door, your groceries your shopping to your door in an instant video, in an instant search information in an instant, we live in a world of real time and instant results and true success.
Fulfillment and [00:28:00] satisfaction is the complete inverse. And the key ingredient as Angela would have us think it's perseverance, it's grit, it's resilience. It's the capacity to continually do things over time, making small, consistent improvements in your day in your person. I think this is the great challenge that we all have with grit with resilience.
The fact that it is not an instant reward, but it only reveals itself sometimes months or years later. Doesn't it? I think this is a huge. Revelation for me. Because I've been guilty in my past Mike of feeling disheartened. If the success hasn't been made to present when you haven't necessarily seen the reward after working on a project really hard, it may be spending months on it, or maybe even years.
And then [00:29:00] maybe it goes live, or maybe it goes to the public, or maybe you just stopped working on it because you're working on something else and you've delegated to another team or whatever it is the assumption that you should get something from it, at least for me is really, it really exists.
I'm always expecting something I think. And actually it's, I'm doing a disservice to not only those around me, but also myself by expecting that let's call it a real. For a conclusion because you're right. That comes much later in the form of practicing perseverance in the form of being that little bit gritty and maybe being more experienced for the next project or the next team that you work with or the next situation.
I think for me, Mike, it's been a real challenge probably throughout my career, in fact, where I naturally assume I can great. There'll be some kind of [00:30:00] reward at the end. Where's the carrot on the stick, as opposed to thinking, oh, I've done a really good job. I'm really proud of myself. Have you ever experienced anything like that?
I'm going to go as far as saying that transition that I alluded to earlier in the show was a massive multi-year project for me to realize after literally all these great opportunities I had in life, which are. As a young kid, I totally blew them because I didn't have the capacity to be gritty and resilient.
This, making this transition to celebrating the daily ritual that, you know, for sure that over weeks, months, and years will result in something good. Not hoping for the quick fix the catapult moment, but just being truly comfortable with [00:31:00] a long-term perseverance and resilience to achieve something.
This was a massive transition for me. It was really not something I had. If I had taken the grit score when I was 15, I think I would have got the world's a lowest, I would've got the lowest score in history. So I gradually pulled myself out of that. I would say to build on your question. Having the capacity to know that, for example, waking up in the morning and doing my journal is part of me being a better person, getting better results, celebrating that rather than being disappointed that I haven't had this massive transformation in 24 hours.
That turn has been huge for me. I think I'm still working through that, but I know for sure that I have already appreciated [00:32:00] outcomes that have resulted in the decision to work hard and consistently over time. And the great challenge is always when you're not getting the results and you're like, what the hell am I doing?
This is crazy, but you have to train yourself and inform yourself. That's okay. Keep going. Because not everything. True success and satisfaction do not come instantly at all. And in a strange way that the longer you wait, the better it is. That's right. That's right. The longer you wait, the better it is.
Mike we're at halfway point of the Angela Duckworth grit episode, and already I'm inspired with Angela's work. I feel already a little bit more comfortable in my own mind around this idea of reward as well as this perseverance and time that it takes. [00:33:00] If anything, I feel a little bit relieved to hear your stories, as well as some of the research and the work the Angela's put in.
I feel a little bit more reassured that way. It's okay. I feel as though there should be a reward because I'm maybe I'm naturally drawn to it. And in fact, this idea of resilience and practicing it is available for all of us. Yeah. So imagine if you and I were to break it down into those moments, that really matter what I would say mark is when you can say that when I wake up every morning, I'm going to journal when you can truly build the inner conviction that that is the best way for you to start your day.
If and celebrate. Every single day. And if you can be prepared to [00:34:00] accept that it will just take time and it will come when it's meant to come a sense of peace or insight that you're looking for through your journaling. If you can continue to hold onto that steadfast that I know I'm doing the right thing.
I may not be getting the results in the rods today, but I know for sure it's the best thing I can do in my mornings. If you can hold onto those moments and have strength in those moments, it's okay to know that you will have thoughts of, oh, I don't want to journal this morning. Same thing with working out.
Oh, I'm a bit tired. If you stick to your guns, if you become steadfast and rev resolute that the things you are doing now, if you become gritty and resilient and hold onto the good things that you do and don't sacrifice them. At some point you can just let go of when's the reward, when's the recognition.
And you can just start to enjoy the [00:35:00] moment. Wow. I woke up this morning and like for you, mark, here's my checklist this morning, I woke up cold shower, journal, exercise, meditated, breath work. Then did the show. I am already having a great day. I did all these things that are essential to my operation, and this is how I started to try and build resilience and grit into my day.
So what's something you could do to reinforce your resilience with something that might sometimes bring you to moments where you're like, oh, I'm not getting the results. I want something. Is it like working out or something to do with work? Is there something in your life that it's the right thing to do, but you sometimes face this sort of should I persevere.
Yeah, I think the biggest thing run now will be work orientated. It's probably been my focus for a long time. I try and actually get [00:36:00] a little bit better the way that I work, but there are many moments throughout my career over the last 10 or so years where I thought this is this worth all that work or hassle and what I've started to do more recently over the last couple of years through the act of journaling and through the act of talking about a loud with others.
And in fact, Mike, you and I, and our listeners on the moonshot podcast, as I realize it, and as I write it down, what I'm able to do is notice my behavior patterns. And when things get a bit tough. So for example, if I am struggling with a difficult decision or maybe it's a project, or maybe it's something related, let's say it's all related to work.
Let's use that as a easy comparison for a second. The behavior that one might fall into is when you start looking for other jobs or you start looking [00:37:00] for the way out, or as I sometimes fall into, I look at things that I can buy that then would make me inverter commerce happier. So what I mean by that, Mick I'll get into I'll be thinking this work is pretty heavy.
I should really get a new bike. Yeah. Bike that'll make me feel good. That'll make me sure. Happy I can use the bike. I can go on the weekends. And so what ends up happening is used then started for me, at least I started attaching that, that happiness with a physical. Physical element that costs money.
You need a really neat, natural, very knowledgeable. And I think instead what I can do through the act of journaling and talking about it out loud is start to recognize those patterns and think, okay that's okay. It's all right. If the mind strays into that area, but the most important thing much like when you're being mindful and meditating is to bring yourself back, to bring yourself back to the challenge instead of [00:38:00] thinking, oh, you want to spend your time researching a bike, or why not spend the time researching how to do the job a little bit more efficiently or brainstorming a new skill that might help you in the long run.
And instead, trying to persevere in this resilience and try and get it that little bit better at the job instead of being distracted. That's what I've, that's what I've started to really try and work on over the last few years when there's been so many distractions in the big wide world. Yeah. So let's break that down.
If we use Angela Duckworth's grit thinking, and just some basics that I've learned is I would always say, oh, I'm getting a little bit uncomfortable in my job. This means that I am pushing myself, stretching myself, because you can think about it this way. If work was really uneventful and caused you very little concern or challenge, then [00:39:00] just imagine what that would be.
Just imagine how boring and what it is a proxy for Marquis. Wouldn't be, you wouldn't be growing as an individual, would you? No, it's actually, and I've had times again, as we all have careers where things do get a little bit easy or maybe a little bit boy and the same behavior happens.
And then start looking for other things but here's how you stop. So you first say, oh, it's okay that I've got a problem. Yakka Willington said problems. Good. What you need to remind yourself? And this worked very well for me. Okay. I'm really experiencing some challenge or concern about something in my work, but I have to remind myself that is me growing because the opposite situation, if there's no events, I would be not challenging myself.
If I'm not challenging myself, I'm not growing and I want to grow. I don't want to be a fixed person. [00:40:00] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And this is the growth mindset element. Isn't it. Once you understand the traditional versus growth mindsets and Angela was talking about it in our first clip, and I think it really perhaps inspired her for this book of hers with grit.
I think it's such a valuable mental model, Mike. And when you, and I touched upon that both in last week's episode and previous episodes, it's such a huge. Topic. And I think growth mindset is really the stem of this idea of resilience and grit. And I'm sure we'll come back to it. Not only in the rest of today's show and also in the rest of our resilience series.
And what you can see is what Jaco and David Goggins all do is use challenge and hardship as the vehicle of growth. So their success should be a reminder to you, me and all of our listeners that by saying good, I'm getting uncomfortable and challenging myself. I'm pushing my boundaries.
This is a vehicle for me to [00:41:00] grow. So if you embrace life, if you're a yes to life and you're yes to growth, if you're yes to growth and in getting the most out of life, It becomes a natural consequences. Say it won't all be roses. There's going to be bumps on the road and don't for a minute. Let those bumps get you off.
Course, travel the road, keep going persevere because that's how you can grow. So to me, the greatest moment of really unlogged ingredient resilience has been to say, oh, excellent. Just like in a workout. When you go a little harder heavier weights or you run faster and it hurts. I'm pushing myself. I'm growing it's okay.
So you don't have to worry if you're a runner or you running your personal best that the success and the satisfaction, the fulfillment is in the fact that I'm getting uncomfortable, getting comfortable with discomfort in your life and knowing that this unlocks your potential. [00:42:00] This is for me, the very heart of what Angela Duckworth is bringing us in her book.
Grit. It is hard when you're tired to get up and still work out. It is hard to get up and journal. It is hard, but that's okay. Hard equals good equals growth. If you look at these ancient practices let's take the blue zones. People who live forever. There's many documentaries on these areas around the world called blue zones.
And there are really interesting characteristics to people who are resilient and gritty, and they are like hardcore. They like growing and so forth, they do not go into this kind of very fixed. I'm going to just sit in an old people's home. You'll see your Ariens people that are a hundred years plus old, still actively getting out there, gardening, talking, participating in their community.
Let me pitch you this mark [00:43:00] in Okinawa, which is the blue zone in Japan, where people live unusually long lives. There was a great documentary and it was following the life of a, guy's 103, still cooking and zipping about town and all this kind of good stuff. When he goes to wait for it. He's karate courses, at a hundred. Okay. One of the things that he would do. Is, they have a muscle and body hardening practice where they get these kinds of weighted hammers and they bash their legs in the same way that how they there's the karate practice of hitting concrete and bricks and stuff like that.
Have you seen them out of karate I've seen that. I've seen that. So that's all about hardening the hands, right? So what they do for the legs is they get these kinds of hammers and that it's not violent, but did they give their legs a [00:44:00] good whack? And he's sitting there at a hundred plus still whacking his legs in his karate outfit.
Because what he explained is that he has to keep challenging his muscles if he wants to keep the use of his limbs. Wow. So he's there and he's still bashing away at his legs and giving them a good whack, right? And he's not causing bruising, but he's building strength in the bones and the muscles and the ligaments.
And this to me, Matt, this is our opportunity to embrace grit as the secret sauce, you can have talent and good ideas, but the thing that will change everything is putting in the work consistently over time. Isn't that a powerful idea from Angela Duckworth? That's such a powerful idea and connecting life as a marathon.
To Aachen our way you're getting a little bit of a [00:45:00] a beating, so to speak on your legs in order to strengthen that muscle. I see the total connection there and what's more attractive, Mike then digging in to grit and resilience in order to live a healthier, longer life. I'm totally inspired to learn more about that.
Yeah. And here's the thing the last argument I'll give you on life. When we face these moments where we're considering giving up, do we really think, let's say you're working on a project and it's not going well. And you're like, oh, I just want to give up. It's too hard. Do you really think by just quitting the project and leaving everyone in the lurch, they're going to a new product.
Do you really think you solve the underlying situation? Do you really think that the next project won't have its challenges? So what's going to happen if we give up on the first one, we go to the second project, have some challenges. What [00:46:00] do we give up and move on. Exactly. In the end, the way to thrive is to accept that hardship as a chance for you to grow Zahara, who did, who we did.
And mark, we did a show on her. It was really earlier. I'm not sure if you can guess what number her show was, but we did a show on Zahara had, did who is Lebanese born woman, trying to become an architect in post-war Britain. And she said, every obstacle I have overcome to be successful. Every obstacle made me stronger.
Made me stronger. And you know what, here we are. Angela Duckworth studied 16,000 students at west point and she got the same outcome. If challenges make you stronger, you will succeed over time. How powerful is that? Mike turn that weakness [00:47:00] into a strength that was a big clip and mental model from that Zahar headed episode, wasn't it.
And listeners, if you want to hear more about the Zoho headed episode is episode number 50, which you can access via moonshots.io, as well as your podcasting app of choice. And what else? I'm just totally inspired, Mike. Wow. It's huge. And you can hear why I'm so fired up because it's been such a huge learning curve for me.
But mark, I wanted to ask you if everyone who's listening, if they're getting fired up, what else can they do@moonshots.io? Other than listening to our back catalog? There's something else they can do. Something that's a little bit easier than turning a potential weakness into a strength and practicing for a few years in order to become that a little bit more resilient and gritty.
It takes not more than a couple of minutes, Mike, and that's good news, isn't it. You can pop home and become a member. A moonshots member could pop [00:48:00] along to moonshots.io, become a member for as little as a dollar a week and get access to our comprehensive guides on teamwork or leadership, or first principles as well as many more to come.
You can access reading lists, video clips and archive of episodes, and just really immerse yourself in this moonshots way of thinking and learning out loud with myself and Mike and the team is what we're trying to bring to all of our moonshots members. So pop along to moon.io and joining. Absolutely. So now let's jump into getting grit and resilience done, and we are about to hit you with the masterpiece of a four-part plan for you to grow your.
But being gritty is hard. Resisting, endless temptations to quit or experiencing failure is extremely difficult to deal with. But Angela says we all have the ability to grow our [00:49:00] grit. If we direct our focus in four specific ways, first develop a fascination with what you're trying to do. Second strive to improve each day.
Third, remind yourself of the greater purpose and fourth adopt a growth mindset. Charles Darwin admitted to not having great quickness of apprehension to discover the mysteries of natural science without possessing supernatural intelligence, Darwin developed an obsessive fascination and was said to keep questions alive in the back of his mind, the questions that related to what he was observing that drove him to discover the connection between all living.
His deep interest in the natural sciences and constant questioning led him to the breakthrough that we now know as the theory of evolution. So what questions are most intriguing to you find the questions that fascinate you and you'll find the capacity to stay gritty while trying to achieve something great.
Next aim to improve yourself every single day, [00:50:00] compete with who you were yesterday. Olympic gold medal swimmer rowdy Gaines once said at every. I would try to beat myself. If my coach gave me 10, 100 meter swims one day and asked me to hold it to a minute and 15 seconds, the next day he would give me 10, 100 meters swims, and I would try to hold it to a minute and 14 seconds.
Angela says that the refrain of all paragons of grit is that whatever it takes, I want to improve. It doesn't matter how excellent they already are. So how can you carve out time each day to push your abilities and see constant and never ending improvement? The third way to grow our grit is to remind yourselves of the greater purpose.
Angela conducted a survey of 16,000 adult Americans to determine what was the bigger contributor of grit, obtaining a feeling of pleasure or feeling a greater sense of purpose. She found that people on the upper half of her grid scale experienced a similar level of pleasure and what they were doing, but she found that higher levels of purpose directly correlated to [00:51:00] higher levels of grief.
Angela says the most gritty people see their ultimate aims as deeply connected to the world beyond themselves. You could be a brick layer, simply laying the bricks for a cathedral, or you could be a brick layer building the house of God. It's largely up to you to determine what purpose or greater meaning your work has.
Whatever you come up with has the capacity to raise your level of grit. The last way to grow your. It's to develop a growth mindset. Bill McNabb, the past CEO of Vanguard, the world's largest provider of mutual funds interviewed leaders within the organization to see who are successful and who weren't.
He found that long-term success was dependent on a core belief. Those who believe that I can't learn anymore. I am what I am. This is how I do things. Routinely failed to move up to a senior level, to be gritty. You need to scrap the theory that your abilities are fixed because it's simply not true.
Neuroscience has shown that we have an enormous capacity to change our brains and learn new [00:52:00] skills. As we get older, the brain is plastic and you can mold it through sustained effort and experience reflect on a time when you started something new that you were scared, you couldn't learn, but you actually did use the memory of that experience to disrupt any beliefs that your abilities are.
What this is, this challenge is your other clip, which had like about 10 big ideas. And this one's the same, isn't it? I think we're both semi speeches after that. And look starting backwards. I think. The growth mindset model. Just every time I hear it, Mike, it just reminds me how much ownership I can take over my ability to challenge myself each day.
My brain and abilities aren't fixed. I can go out and work on these four structures every single day. And we'll break these down in a second, but it just, it's a great reminder straight off the bat that we will have the ability to change. Basically [00:53:00] brains and mindsets in order to be a little bit more resilient and gritty.
Oh yeah. It's so true. Isn't it now run us through, there was four big ideas in how to get, create. Let's make sure we grab each and every one of those, what each and every one of them is so key to really understanding empowering ourselves in being a little bit more gritty each day. And the first one that productivity games calling out is this idea on fascination.
And he's got a great story about Charles Darwin, who places a question in the, essentially in the back of his head, Mike. So he might not see the world as it is, and just say, okay, cool. Yep. That's a bird up there flying. Instead, he might've said, okay how is that bird any different to that other bird?
And he'll keep it in the back of his mind. And he'll mull it over much like a behavior, in fact, mental model that you and I have spoken about in the past, but more importantly, this question of. Always coming back to the question, constantly looking around and questioning everything in [00:54:00] life. Being an original thinker and being fascinated with the world is so key at essentially driving what I think Angela refers to as purpose and passion, unless you're really fascinated with things around you, in the work, as well as the world, you might get bored of it and you might not be as focused and resilient as you probably could be.
So that's number one, develop a fascination, a curiosity and interest. Okay, got it. Then what's next one. It's classic Jordan Peterson with the daily behavior. Don't compare yourself to other people, compare yourself to who you were yesterday and being yourself as you were yesterday, by making an improvement upon yourself today, make sure to really adopt a mindset about improvement every single day, whether it's journaling or meditating, or just reflecting on how you are thinking.
Okay this is how I could be a little bit better or more patient today. That's such a huge, significant way of [00:55:00] again, practicing and aligning yourself in this bigger picture. Yeah. And that's what we were talking about before you get a real kick out of going, you know what? I'd done, all the things I need to have the best day possible on the way.
So that's great. That's reinforcing that. So that's one and two, a done number three. And number three is all about purpose, rather than pleasure being the thing that you should arm yourself with, as you think about your general aims in the world, but the career as well as lifestyle, because that purpose is essentially what drives or is in fact connected to your passion.
And without purpose, you can be stray. You can be like a kite in the wind, or you can fly away, but by having a purpose that you're conscious of, and you're aligned with, you can actually work in any job and still maintain. What makes you happy and what gives you purpose and what you feel passionate about?
Again, it's all about [00:56:00] taking ownership and having a mindset or a belief in what you're doing really matters to you and your family, perhaps, and then being comfortable with the hand. And if you continually remind yourself of your purpose, if you celebrate your purpose, it will be easier to stick with the daily improvements because you'll know the things you're doing are contributing to the purpose.
So you'll feel that you're on track, right? That's right. If you can maintain that habit again is connected to that second structure that we called out the daily improvements. If you're reflecting on yourself and you're referring back to your purpose, your passion, and coming back to it each day, then you're going to be able to compare yourself and therefore improve.
And you're going to make sure that if you are feeling a little bit lost or you're exacerbating your mindset and becoming a little bit stressed out or anxious about it and seeing if you can bring it back down, slow it down, look at your [00:57:00] purpose. Then you're going to be hopefully that a little bit more comfortable.
And my, the fourth one, the productivity was calling out for us. There was again, growth mindset connecting back to Carol Dweck and her great book that we covered last week. And Angela touches upon in the first clip of today's show, having that core belief in the fact that I can go out today and love. My abilities, my concepts, my thoughts aren't fixed.
In fact, I think the clip actually says my brain is plastic and it can be molded, I think is I think it's a really important thing for us all to remember as we go into our day, because look, how many times have you had the perfect day? There's always going to be a little bit of a surprise. Maybe the cue or the supermarket's too long or your coffee's cold or whatever it might be.
It's all things that you have to roll with. And I think having this growth mindset and the ability to roll with the days and be a little bit more flexible [00:58:00] is such an important consideration as you wake up and get up and go out into your day every day. It certainly is. Now as we just process through.
We have covered a lot of ground and understanding like life's a marathon you can get a baseline on where you're at with grit and resilience by doing the grit score test, don't forget effort and resilience is the thing that can really change the grain. We've got our four pillars of achieving it.
Just when you thought Angela Duckworth's book grit had no more to give. It was all tapped out. Mark, we have one more idea. And this is actually Brian from optimize. He's going to go to the very challenging concept to wrap up this show. We're going to look at redefining what we think genius really is bringing forth as teachers and coaches and leaders, our genius within and Angela talks [00:59:00] throughout the book.
She starts the book and she ends the book and then brings it up throughout about the fact that her father, when she was a young girl used to say to her, you're not a genius. You're no gene. And she says at the end of the book, that her father was right when he said that she wasn't a genius. If he defines genius as someone who can achieve great things with no effort.
In that case, she wasn't a genius and he wasn't a genius. But if you define genius as someone who's willing to show up with passion and perseverance on a goal that matters to them over the long run and to structure their lives and do their best to show up with excellence and to really create something of value in the world we'll then her father was a genius who did extraordinary things, right?
And she was a genius. And most importantly, we each can be geniuses. We can bring forth the latent potential within us and actually give our gifts and greatest service to them. That's a great way of reframing this concept of [01:00:00] genius, Mike, isn't it. Achievement without effort is not necessarily genius.
Instead. It's all about staying the course, working really hard, having that perseverance to get through it and show up with passion. I feel as though it's Tate, I'm certainly not necessarily Mike somebody that you would call a genius and I must've met effort definitely can take a little bit of encouragement sometimes as we've discussed in the show, but the glory or the good feeling, once you achieve something through perseverance is just pretty amazing.
Isn't it? How good? Just knowing that you stuck at something through thick and thin, it feels pretty good. Doesn't it? Yeah, it does. There's probably few things as Angela calls out in our show today and in her book, grit, if you can be resilient and you can really focus on changing your mindset, finding [01:01:00] that purpose and passion, I think you're going to find your own reward along the way.
Yeah, totally. And I hope for you might, but you found a reward in this show. What, what has stuck out for you in this very gritty show? Quite a lot, actually. It's been a pretty meaty, deep dive into grit and resilience. And it's a great way I think to kick off the series for me, I think the grit score is actually going to be something I come back.
And what I think, cause I've learned a lot about how to grow my grid as well as the concepts around life being a marathon. But actually I want to challenge myself, Mike, I want to see if I can track a change in my grit over time. And I think having a practical scorecard and scale that I can refer to in times of challenge will help me ground [01:02:00] myself and think, okay this is where I was.
This is where I'm getting to. I think that might be a nice milestone and marker for me to use. What have you, what really stuck out for you with our work into Angela Duckworth's grit? I think just the idea that effort is undervalued, it's underappreciated in the world like it's just really misunderstood how important it is.
And I think that's why we've seen two other shows that we've done apart from David Goggins. Who's the ultimate gritty character. I think mindset by Carol Dweck and James Clear's atomic habits have really struck people because I think it speaks to the truth that you have to work hard. You have to persevere for the longterm on things that matter in order to bring around the greatest riches of satisfaction and fulfillment.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Mark, thank you. Thank you for joining me on this very gritty show. And I'm [01:03:00] so glad that the grit score has worked for you. And I hope it also worked for our listeners. So thank you to you. Our listeners today, we started a brand new series with Angela Duckworth's book, grit, the power of passion and perseverance, and it started with the idea of understanding that life is a marathon and ain't no sprint.
If you want to. Were you stopped with that grit score, a powerful tool to unlock resilience and know that resilience and effort is vastly undervalued in the world. So go out there and actually give it a good go because it's going to turn the tide way more than talent. And as you apply yourself to the world of being gritty and resilience, there's four key aspects, develop a curiosity of fascination, improve daily, remind yourself of your purpose and go out with an open growth mindset, do all of these things, and you will achieve your own excellence.[01:04:00]
You will define your own genius. And that is what we're here to do on the moonshots podcast. That's a wrap.