Why Are you Not Successful?

Jun 21 (edited) in Self Improvement & Motivation

When we see those high achievers – the Usain Bolts, the Hollywood A-listers, the Bill Gateses of the world and we think, “They’ve got that talent thing. That special something I just don’t have.” It’s easy to believe their success comes down to some innate, magical talent. Something we can’t replicate. The secret sauce, right?

But what if it’s not really about talent at all? What if their success comes from traits and skills we can develop? That’s the million-dollar question we’re answering today and it’s all about a little book called “Grit” by Angela Duckworth.

Now, who’s Angela Duckworth? She’s not just some random author. She’s a psychologist at UPenn and she’s spent the last decade studying this idea of grit. She’s looked at examples from all over: the US military, sports, business, education, you name it. And she’s combined all that with evidence from psychology and neuroscience.

Her big idea was, that we’re putting way too much emphasis on talent and not nearly enough on passion and perseverance. These two things, she argues, are the key components of what she calls “grit.”

We all have this talent bias. Angela quotes the great German philosopher with the awesome mustache, Friedrich Nietzsche. He said, “Our vanity, our self-love, promotes the cult of the genius. For if we think of genius as something magical, we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking.”

In other words, we all buy into this talent myth because it’s an easy out. If we can just blame someone’s success on “talent,” we don’t have to do the work ourselves. It’s like, “Well, I’m not a genius, so I guess I’ll just Netflix and chill instead of putting in the effort.”

She introduces two equations that’ll change everything:

1. Talent × Effort = Skill

2. Skill × Effort = Achievement

Now, if we do some algebra, we can combine these equations to get:

Achievement = Talent × Effort^2

So effort counts twice as much as talent when it comes to achievement. Actually, it probably counts even more than twice because when you square something, it gets multiplied by itself.

This leads us to the main idea of the book, grit. Angela’s done tons of research in all sorts of fields and she’s found that no matter what domain we’re looking at, the most successful people have two things in common:

1. They’re unusually resilient and hardworking.

2. They have a deep sense of purpose.

As she says in the book, “These paragons of grit not only had determination, they had direction as well.” It’s this combo of perseverance and passion that leads to sustained, long-term effort. And that is what she calls grit (PASSION + PERSEVERANCE = GRIT).

So now we know what grit is and that effort counts twice as much as talent, how can we develop our own gritty mindset? Well, Angela says grit isn’t a fixed quality. We can all develop grit in different ways and she argues that there are four components of grit that we can all work on:

1. Interest

2. Practice

3. Purpose

4. Hope

1. Interest

Passion is the first component of the grit equation, but to develop a passion we first need to be interested in and enjoy what we do. As Jeff Bezos said, “Whatever it is that you want to do, you’ll find in life that if you’re not passionate about what it is you’re working on, you won’t be able to stick with it.”

There’s another great quote from the book: “Passion for your work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening.” This is good stuff. This is the answer for all those people out there who are like, “Well, my passion is sitting at home playing PlayStation or reading comics or whatever.” You’re not going to find your passion by sitting at home like a lemon. You’re going to find it by trying new things, stepping outside your comfort zone.

2. Practice

More specifically daily deliberate practice, which builds the foundation of perseverance. Angela says every gritty person she’s interviewed has the Japanese concept of Kaizen which literally translates to “continuous improvement”.

But it’s not just about putting in the hours of practice. It’s also how we practice. Angela references research by psychologist Anders Ericsson who has studied peak performers and loads of successful people. He found they do this thing called deliberate practice which is made up of four components:

1. A clear stretch goal

2. Full concentration and effort

3. Immediate and informative feedback

4. Repetition with reflection and refinement

By doing this form of deliberate practice we can live out this idea of Kaizen.

3. Purpose

You see three painters working on a mural. You ask them, “What are you working on?” The first painter says “I’m painting a wall.” The second says “I’m creating a picture.” The third replies “I’m crafting a masterpiece that will be seen by generations.”

When things get tough which of those three do you think is gonna have the most grit, the most passion, and perseverance? Obviously it’s gonna be the guy who’s got a higher purpose behind what he’s doing.

Angela’s team surveyed 16,000 American adults to find out if pleasure or purpose contributed more to grit. They found that everyone, no matter their level of grit, had the same level of pleasure in what they were doing. But the people with higher grit had more purpose…(Graph on that linked to the post)

So if we can convince ourselves what we’re doing has some sort of higher purpose we’ll be more gritty. Angela says there are three ways we can do this:

1. Reflect on how what we’re already doing is making a positive impact on the world.

2. Think about how we can change what we’re doing now to make it more connected to our core values.

3. Find a purposeful role model.

4. Hope

Underlying all three of the above is the fourth key component: hope. Grit requires a hope that is based on the idea that our own efforts can get better over time and that we can get better in the future.

To develop grit we need to forget the idea that our abilities are fixed. Instead, we can develop what Carol Dweck called the growth mindset. Angela says that a fixed mindset leads to pessimistic explanations of adversity, and a growth mindset leads to perseverance and seeking out new challenges that will make you stronger.

This is so important. Everything; every skill, everything, can be learned and we can all get better at whatever we want, however we want. I think having that attitude has served me well over the last 2 years of high school.

So there you have it. We can grow our grit from the inside by increasing our interests, practicing hard, connecting our work to a bigger purpose beyond just being rich and famous, and learning to hope and cope with adversity by having a growth mindset.

It’s not about some mythical talent. It’s about grit: passion and perseverance we can all develop. So go out there, find your interests, practice deliberately, connect to a bigger purpose and never stop believing you can get better. That’s the secret.

I read this book 2 years ago and thought it would be useful to share some important things I learned with this amazing community from the book. I was thinking of making a post on the book Atomic Habits, but I was wondering if you guys already read that book. Lmk if you guys would want a post on that and I'm open to any suggestions!! Have a great day!!

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