Drive is something that can be encouraged by a wonderful teacher, by a terrific classroom environment, by an awesome soccer team that you are on, and it can be squashed as well.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI 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.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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There are so many things that kids care about, where they excel, where they try hard, where they learn important life lessons, that are not picked up by test scores.
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It is important to realize that the process of ‘fostering’ a passion takes trial and error. It takes experience; you cannot do it all in your head. And it takes a long time.
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I didn’t tell my kids, ‘You have to play viola, and you have to play piano.’ They chose these things on their own, and I don’t think we have to give kids every choice, but we do have to give them some choice because that autonomy is crucial for fostering passion.
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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.
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Grittier soldiers are more likely to complete their training, and grittier salespeople are more likely to keep their jobs. The more challenging the domain, the more grit seems to matter.
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Nobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is.
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At various points, in big ways and small, we get knocked down. If we stay down, grit loses. If we get up, grit prevails.
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Some of the things we do are great, but they often have these iterations that are not great. We screw up sometimes. We get rejected.
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One of the challenges of commencement speeches is that you have this older, wiser person who is accomplished talking to young, not-yet-so-wise, not-yet-accomplished adults or, in high school or middle school, even younger.
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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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So when my daughter told me on the second track meet that she was done with it because she discovered she didn’t like competing, I made her finish the season.
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It’s also stamina in your direction, stamina in your interests. If you are working on different things but all of them very hard, you’re not really going to get anywhere. You’ll never become an expert.
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I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my genes because I can’t do anything about them.
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My dad was not super-intentional in his parenting. He was very self-absorbed. I won’t say mean or selfish per se, but very self-absorbed. I think he was just thinking out loud.
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I know a lot of CEOs who are looking for three- to four-year varsity athletes – not necessarily because these people are going to be doing pushups or spiking volleyballs in the workplace, but because they’re looking for that continuity, that person who was gritty about something.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH