Dr. Angela Duckworth

And then the perseverance part is, well, partly it's hard work, right?

Partly it's, you know, practicing what you can't yet do.

And partly it's resilience.

So part of perseverance is, you know, on the really bad days, do you, you know, do you get up again?

So, so if you marry passion for long-term goals with perseverance for long-term goals, well, then you have this quality that I find to be the common denominator of elite achievers in every field that I've studied.

So is this just something you're born with or is this an actual trait that anybody can develop?

I think that absolutely anything that any psychologist tells you is a good thing to have is partly under control.

I am not saying there aren't genes that are at play because every psychologist will tell you that that's also part of the story for everything and grit included.

But absolutely, you know, how gritty we are is very much a function of what we know, who we're around and the places we go.

Growth mindset is a

theory.

It's a theory that you have.

You know, you don't have to be a philosopher or professor to have a theory because guess what?

All of us have theories, you know, theories about people.

Growth mindset is a theory about human ability.

If you have a growth mindset, your theory is that human ability fundamentally is changeable.

If you have a fixed mindset, you have a different theory.

It is a belief that fundamentally human ability is fixed.

It is something that you can't change with effort and experience.

If you believe fundamentally that human ability can change and grow, you look at that failure, you look at that setback, and you say, what can I learn here?