Negative feelings are typical of learning, and you shouldn’t feel like you’re stupid when you’re frustrated doing something. You might say to yourself, ‘I can’t do this,’ but you should say, ‘That’s great.’ That means you really have the potential to learn something there.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHTo me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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The focus on just thinking about standardized test scores as being synonymous with achievement for teenagers is ridiculous, right?
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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.
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To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it.
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I don’t think that every child in America is going to necessarily aspire to, you know, a four-year degree from a liberal arts college or a certain kind of life. I think that people should learn to be excellent in the thing that they choose to do.
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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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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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If you’re never able to tolerate a little bit of pain and discomfort, you’ll never get better.
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I do think that whatever ambition I may have had natively was amplified by my father’s clear valuing of it. I knew that was what my dad really cared about.
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We have found a direct correlation between grit and positive emotions, but the fact that I have no evidence that grit is bad for you doesn’t mean it’s not. It’s always a possibility that in the future researchers will discover a downside to grit.
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I would be surprised if my girls ended up as women without grit. I really would.
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I think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence.
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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 don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my genes because I can’t do anything about them.
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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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Maybe. But the reality is that our early interests are fragile, vaguely defined, and in need of energetic, years-long cultivation and refinement.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH