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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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Gritty people train at the edge of their comfort zone. They zero in on one narrow aspect of their performance and set a stretch goal to improve it.
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I worked hard when I was a consultant. I worked hard when I was in graduate school looking at neuroscience.
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It’s a very good thing to teach kids to finish what they started in the sense of fulfilling their commitments.
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I worked hard as a teacher. But those are completely different career paths. And the lack of direction is why I didn’t get far enough in any of those things.
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Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
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When people think of the word ‘drive,’ they often think you have it or you don’t, and that’s where we’re wrong.
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When people tell me I can’t do something, I have a visceral reflex to say, ‘Yes, I can.’
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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.
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Boredom is a very self-conscious emotion by definition. Interest is not. So you can actually be completely absorbed in something and, at certain points in your development, not even realize that you’re into it.
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The most important thing parents can do, although it’s not the only thing they should do, is model the behavior they want from their kids.
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If you are a young person who is wanting to develop a passion, you cannot expect anyone else to tell you what that passion would be.
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There is a fluency and an ease with which true mastery and expertise always expresses itself, whether it be in writing, whether it be in a mathematical proof, whether it be in a dance that you see on stage, really in every domain. But I think the question is, you know, where does that fluency and mastery come from?
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Is it ‘a drag’ that passions don’t come to us all at once, as epiphanies, without the need to actively develop them?
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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.
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Psychologists call this the maturity principle. My own life experience fits this principle to a T.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH