“It’s a very good thing to teach kids to finish what they started in the sense of fulfilling their commitments.”

There are no shortcuts to true excellence.

I know that instructional time is a zero-sum game, but if we want kids to do well academically, it’s hard to imagine that happening if they don’t have some control over their attention.

Psychologists call this the maturity principle. My own life experience fits this principle to a T.

I believe kids should choose what they want to do, because it’s their life, but they have to choose something, and they can’t quit in the middle unless there’s a really good reason.

During all my undergrad years and in high school, I was involved in tutoring and public service. At Harvard, I spent over 35 hours a week doing service. I was a Big Sister, I worked for the homeless, the elderly; it was the epicenter of my focus.

There’s this really awesome theory of human motivation – that human beings all want three things. One is to be competent, one is to belong, and one is be free, as in to have choice: to not be told what to do but to choose what to do.

When people think of the word ‘drive,’ they often think you have it or you don’t, and that’s where we’re wrong.

I do feel it’s hard to be modest and humble and egoless when people are telling you you are so great and wanting to give you prizes and energy. I’m trying hard not to be an awful, narcissistic human being.

One thing that’s true of gritty people is they love what they do, and they keep loving what they do. So they’re not just in love for a day or a week.

Most teachers, when surveyed, say that it is part of their job to help students develop things like grit. This is especially true at the elementary and middle school levels. They feel it’s part of their vocation to teach other things that are not formally academic content.

I will say that if my wildest dreams come true, I will, like, wake up one day, and I will be Carol Dweck, right? Because she is like everything I want to be.

I define talent as the rate at which you get better at something when you try. To be very talented means you get better faster and more easily than other people or other things that you try.

Grit may carry risk because it’s about putting all your eggs in one basket, to some extent.

The parenting style that is good for grit is also the parenting style good for most other things: Be really, really demanding, and be very, very supportive.

Maybe. But the reality is that our early interests are fragile, vaguely defined, and in need of energetic, years-long cultivation and refinement.

At various points, in big ways and small, we get knocked down. If we stay down, grit loses. If we get up, grit prevails.

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O Lord, endures forever – do not abandon the works of your hands.

Fulfill your potential. That’s the way to happiness.

The physicality of a real relationship – one that encompasses mind, body and soul – ultimately makes it more fulfilling and powerful than any virtual relationship ever could be.

Today give up false mental attachments and beliefs! Free yourself from the delusion that anything external can fulfill the hunger of your soul for God-Consciousness.

When our desires are fulfilled, and we still feel unhappy – this is the moment we begin the process of letting go.

I am very fulfilled in my home life, and what films do for me is to create an ironclad structure that, in my life as a mom, does not exist. It is a shapeless blob of happy chaos.

I just didn’t know where I fit in – I didn’t seem to fit in my parent’s generation. I didn’t seem to fit in my own generation. Little by little, this took me into a spiritual search for understanding; a search for meaning and fulfillment.

Compassion brings fulfillment to the heart. Selfish desires simply agitate the heart.