Dr. Angela Duckworth

I would love to.

Hope is something that doesn't have a chapter because I think you need hope whether you're four or 104.

And we spoke about growth mindset, Mel.

And when you asked me, what is hope really?

Hope is the belief that the future can be better than the past.

And it is the belief that you can, in some way,

make that come to pass.

When you think about your life, when you think about your happiness, when you think about your health, when you think about your weight, when you think about your retirement savings, when you think about your children and what you can do in their lives, a hopeful person says, I think the future can be better than the past.

And I think there's something, even a small thing, that I can do to make it so.

And at the core of hope, I think, is that belief of, well, why would I believe that?

Well, because it is the nature of human nature to grow.

It is the nature of human nature to make mistakes, royally screw up, have a lot of regrets, and be smarter and stronger for the experience.

So when I see people who are gritty at any age, they have this durable sense that because they are learners—

Because it is in their nature to develop and not to stagnate, that is what drives their optimism and their hope for, you know, getting something done the next day as opposed to staying in bed.

I love that definition.

Sometimes scientists use the term agency and that

I think maybe makes the point that this is not wishful thinking, right?

It's not just positive thinking in some generic sense, but feeling agency is a sense of control over your future.

Not the naive sense that you can determine everything about the future, which you obviously cannot.

Al Bandura, he no longer lied, but he was at Stanford University and he identified four