Shownotes:
After nearly a year in the making, this convo with Angela Duckworth was well worth the wait. We dive deep into the nuances of achievement, discussing why grit alone doesn’t always guarantee success and how our situations can profoundly shape our resilience. Angela shares surprising insights, practical strategies, and stories that will make you rethink the power of your environment. Tune in for an inspiring and thought-provoking discussion full of wisdom and actionable takeaways.
Thrive Global Article:
Situation[Ally]: Angela Duckworth on Turning Grit and Circumstance into Success
About Our Guest:
Angela Duckworth is the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative. Her TED Talk is among the most viewed of all time, and her book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, is a #1 New York Times bestseller.
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
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Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: Did you ever see the Will Ferrell movie, Elf?
Angela Duckworth: Love it. Yes. Okay.
Lainie Rowell: So I have to tell you,
Angela Duckworth: I don't haven't memorized, but
Lainie Rowell: okay. I'm not going to ask you to quote lines or anything, but
Angela Duckworth: I hope not.
Lainie Rowell: There's a part of the movie where the publishing house has this famous author on the phone.
And one of the characters is like, it's, it's just so amazing to be talking to you on our speaker phone. And I was like, That's kind of how I feel about talking to Angela Duckworth today. So this is like, so exciting to me. I'm happy to be doing with you.
Angela Duckworth: Oh, you're so kind. Well, that that's really nice of you to say, and I'm equally excited and I love being not in charge.
I love that you are going to be like our guide. I'm going to be like the chatty passenger in a car. So yeah, no, this is going to be fun.
Lainie Rowell: I love a chatty passenger in a car.
Since your 2013 TED Talk that was so popular, like 34 million views, I think, last time I checked, like that's
Angela Duckworth: Oh my god, I haven't, I don't check.
Lainie Rowell: I know you're not, refreshing your screen every day.
Angela Duckworth: I hope not.
Lainie Rowell: But I'm here to tell you, you're at over 34 million views for that. And then you follow up with the instant New York Times bestseller in 2016, Grit. And this It seems to be a concept that really strikes a chord with people, and I just wondered if, over the years of sharing the importance of this character trait, has anything evolved for you, or are there any like, misconceptions that you're like, hey, I need to clear this up, because I think people might not understand still be hearing this.
Angela Duckworth: Well, just this morning, I met somebody who had read Grit. Her name is Alexandra and she's lovely. And she rushed over and introduced herself. I was like standing in an office and she had a copy of her book and I, you know, signed it and we hugged. And I said to her in so many words, I mean, I wouldn't change a word actually in Grit.
I don't feel like anything that I've learned in the last eight years now has contradicted for me what the main message of that book is. And the main message is simply that if you really stick to something, and if you really embrace the idea that you can practice and get better and that with feedback and mistakes and even setbacks that you can progress, you will go much farther than you might think, given whatever you imagine your initial level of talent is.
So for me, you know, the antagonist in the book, if you will, is talent, innate talent in particular, because I think that word is used in different ways, but just this idea that, you know, Oh, how gifted am I? And I have, if anything, become more convinced that people who become truly excellent at what they do it's more that they love it.
It's more that they think about it all the time. It's more that they are willing to put in the tonnage as Jerry Seinfeld, I think sometimes refers to writing, right? It's a game of tonnage. And it's not grim. Like, grit is a word that might sound grim to people. Like, oh, you have to force yourself.
But what these extraordinary people do is like they wake up, you know, in some deep way, like wanting to think about a certain thing again and again, wanting to work on their craft. And that's just very different from talent. And it's not correlated. Grit's not correlated positively with measures of talent.
So that's the message of grit. I said to Alexandra this morning, Lainie, I said,, I am glad that you found something in this book. I'm here to tell you in person that I believe in that message. I believe in the science behind it. But as we've, spoken about before, Lainie, I am actually now thinking about what was incomplete about that book.
So if you think about the story of success, and grit's a big part of it, and maybe a bigger part than people think what else is there? And that's where my mind is now and we may get to this in this conversation, but I'm now thinking and I am supposed to be writing a book about this, but it's it's turned out to be a lot harder to write than the first one.
I am thinking about the situations that we move in and out of in our lives that really bring out our best, because you can put a really gritty person in a really not great situation, a company that's not aligned with their values, a mentor who's not a great mentor, a culture that's not a fit, or even physically, you know, the surroundings that we, have our phones or whatever, and that person's , grit will not have an opportunity to shine.
So I'm thinking about completing the story of success. But I haven't yet written the second book as, as I think I told you.
Lainie Rowell: Which is fine. We're all excited for it. I know, I know I speak for many other people when I say we anticipate with great delight, the next Angela Duckworth book, but we also want you to not feel that pressure because I do really.
Angela Duckworth: That's just encouragement.
Lainie Rowell: I mean, yeah, it's, it's encouragement. Hopefully you feel the love and the support, but not the pressure. I mean, writing books are hard,
Angela Duckworth: like so hard.
Lainie Rowell: I think it's especially hard I'm just imagining that, you know, you write an instant New York Times bestseller and you have more to say, but it's like, well, now I want to make sure it's as good as it can be.
I don't know. I'm just.
Angela Duckworth: No, you are a good psychologist. A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, just being like honest, absolutely. I think there's a lot of self imposed pressure, maybe some pressure from without also like some expectations and, and so forth. I find in addition to all of that, Lainie, I think that the reason why this book is so important is the same reason why it's been really hard to write, which is, I think that if you think about, you know, personal qualities, you know, character strengths , like grit, it's just a really eye catching thing.
Like, you know, you tell a story about a really gritty individual and it's where our attention and our eye wants to go. The situation is almost by definition, the backdrop. Like, where was this person? What are their outside influences? Where are the places we can be that we are at our best?
But then you end up trying to write a book and tell stories about places and settings. And it's just not as charismatic in some ways. I feel like that's the very reason I need to write this book because.
I'll tell you one story. There's this guy named Roger Barker. Even somebody who's trained in psychology, you know, you and I might not have ever heard of Roger Barker.
And that is because he was very famous for a short amount of time and then slipped into complete obscurity, I think, because what he studied was the power of the situation. So, so Roger Barker was originally at Stanford, you know, and he was he had a girlfriend and she was a zoologist, not a psychologist.
And so she would go to these tide pools and crouch down in her boots and, like, take out the clipboard and the stopwatch and just, like, make observations of, like, I don't know, tadpoles or whatever you look at in marshes. And he, thought this was so interesting because it's not how he was trained.
And he had the idea at some point early Or maybe even midway in his career, that maybe if we really studied human behavior with a stopwatch and a clipboard and really just observe in as objective way as possible, like how people go through their whole days. So if we do these, like things called day studies, where he would follow someone around and like with a stopwatch, kind of like, oh, at 2:02, tied shoes. 2:04, you know, coughed. I mean, it was just like a little record as if you were observing an animal in the wild. And very soon after he started these, he realized that when you really observe human behavior in this kind of objective way, you see how people's behavior is so powerfully shaped by their situation.
Like he put it this way. He'd be like, when you're in the supermarket, you behave supermarket. When you are at church, you behave church. You know, when you are at a supper, you behave supper. Like you shape your behavior unconsciously to your situations. And I think the fact that he was at one point very well known, but then slipped into obscurity is partly because we're not used to training our eye on where we are and how it may be in invisible ways, influencing how we feel, what we think, what we say, and the choices we make.
Lainie Rowell: Absolutely. The third teacher, have you heard that phrase before?
Angela Duckworth: No. What's that?
Lainie Rowell: It's to do with the classroom in an education setting, the classroom being the third teacher. I don't know why it's the third teacher and not the second.
Angela Duckworth: Who's the second teacher?
Lainie Rowell: But it is about the space design. Now I'll have to, if I find something on it, I'll put it in the show notes for anyone listening.
But it is kind of that, like you call it the backdrop. It's like this invisible, but it plays a bigger role than we realize because we're a little distracted with everything else going on. So the third teacher, the collective experiences throughout the day as a part of the space, the people, and how it's interacted with.
Angela Duckworth: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it was Aristotle who said we are social animals.
I mean, we are we're also cultural animals, right? And by the way, we're also physical animals. And I think like all animals, just like Roger Barker and his girlfriend, if you want to know her name was Louise that, that this idea that we are very adaptive to the habitat in which we are living.
And I think the one thing that makes human beings a kind of fascinating exception to the rule , for the other animals on the planet is that we shape our habitats. Of course, We often screw up our habitats, right?
But I think the idea that if you recognize, and this is what Roger Barker tried to say, he actually had slipped into obscurity in his own lifetime.
So it's very interesting because he, you know, at one point was at the very height of fame and quite literally, political leaders and journalists would like beat the path to his door and, you know, And then he sank into obscurity in his own lifetime. And what he said at the very end of his career and his life was, you know, the message I was trying to deliver is that once you understand the power of the habitat or the situation you're in, you can then shape it.
Right. He was like, this might be the most important thing anybody could do. That if you, for example, want to act more gritty, right? You, of course, you could work on internal things, like your mindsets, and your habits, and I, you know, already written about that. But also, you can put yourself in cultures with people and things around you that are going to basically support your grit, right? , And encourage you to develop your grit. I think it's kind of poignant actually. I mean, he wrote about how hard it was to deliver this message to the world. And I will tell you as somebody who's trying to write a book about the power of the situation and what we can do with it, like, Oh my gosh, I wish I could resurrect Roger Barker and, you know, cry on his shoulder because I think he's right.
Lainie Rowell: And when I hear you share your work, there's always a through line of agency, right?
Angela Duckworth: I know, I think some people don't like that, but I'm, I'm always looking for the agency. People think it's very blame the victim. Some people, not, not everyone.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, that's it. That's a dark approach on it for the people who are taking that. I mean, do they need a hug?
I don't know. That's,
Angela Duckworth: well, well, agency is though. Yeah, you're, you're right. And I think if working on this book, which I have been for, you know, the last now coming on like three years. So my PhD advisor, as you may or may not know, was Marty Seligman, and he is now a colleague and, you know, he will always be, as I call him, my second father and agency is actually the title of his maybe, he says, like his last book.
It's not yet published. So Marty reflected on his long career as a clinical psychologist, as the inventor of the term, learned helplessness and then learned optimism, positive psychology. That he would describe his entire career as working on agency in one form or another. And his belief is that agency is the driver of human progress.
That if you look across the span of human history going all the way back to its very beginnings, and if you ask the question like, where does progress come from? How do we get the wheel and farming and, now technology and so forth. He would say that it was always driven by a sense of, I can do this.
I can do this in the future. I can imagine possibilities. These are forms of agency for Marty. And for me, what this book is about is yes, I mean, you're not wrong. I'm always looking for agency. I think if the first book, Grit, was about agency over your beliefs and your attitude you know, the things that people often say, like control the controllables, right?
Like how you show up. I think there's also agency that we have over our situations. So there's situational agency, like circumstances are not just given, sometimes you can't change things. But there's often this paraphrasing of Viktor Frankl. I mean, I'm sure many people listening to your conversations are familiar with Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, and Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist, wrote that when imprisoned in Auschwitz which he survived but of course, many, many didn't.
And in that book, there is this idea that sometimes you cannot change your circumstances. And when you cannot change your circumstances, you still have agency over how you react to them. But I would like to add a PS that sometimes you can change your circumstances, and then you should act on them.
And I think somebody like Viktor Frankl would never have said , Oh, well, just, accept that the Nazis are taking over Europe and imprisoning Jews. Like, I think he would have said, wait, let's change that situation. So I think situational agency is it's a hard idea to write about. It's not as charismatic in a way as writing about personal character strengths like grit.
But when I really ask myself, like, who do I know who is truly successful and happy, you know, these are people who do have situational agency. They don't just say, well, this is the town I'm born in. This is my job, that's my boss. They make intentional changes to their situations in very strategic ways.
Lainie Rowell: I think it's so easy, especially we live in an era of soundbites, to get into these false dichotomies, like if the individual matters, the situation doesn't.
Angela Duckworth: Yes, yes,
Lainie Rowell: But there's so much nuance. And I almost wonder would you say that there are through lines between grit and self control and situational agency, if you will.
But what's the nuance? Help us think through, like, I know from you, grit is passion and perseverance. And self control is actually something you've written about even more than grit in your work. So, help us think through, what are the nuances?
Angela Duckworth: Well, okay, first I'm going to give you a metaphor, you know, for the person and situation.
I think, and I've thought about metaphors a lot and, you know, no metaphor is perfect, but the one that is capturing it for me personally lately is that the person, the situation come together in like a chemical reaction and they produce your response. And what do I mean by that? It means that There is an interaction like, you know, if you ever made one of those little volcanoes and it's like baking soda and vinegar and a little food color in there and like all of a sudden you've got, fake lava coming up, but, the baking soda alone does not create bubbles.
The vinegar alone doesn't create bubbles. So we want to think about the person situation is coming together and kind of chemical reaction. And that's why when you look at successful people I think we should ask what personal qualities, what strengths of character like grit or self control do they have? But I think we should also ask, and what were the situations they were in?
Because it's always both. I mean, it can't be that it's only their situation or only the person. So I think that metaphor for me is, is working that the person's situation or like two chemicals in a chemical reaction, they come together and you need to find as a person, the situations that bring out the best, you know, like what, is the situation that will make you happy?
What is the situation that will make you gritty or curious, et cetera? So that's one thing. It's a metaphor for how I think situations interact with grit, with self control, with anything else about you as a person. And. And then you asked about self control and grit because they sound the same, actually, to a lot of people.
Just one sounds just like more than the other. But, I'll say what I think which is that grit is pursuing a very long term goal, maybe over years, maybe longer, with passion and with perseverance. And it is the hallmark of very high achievers. They have a kind of obsessive, relentless quality to them, but they're not pursuing goals over like days and, and weeks.
I mean, they really are trying to do something very, very hard that might even take a lifetime or even more. There are people who, you know, feel like the life that they will lead will not even be enough to pursue some standard of excellence or some project. So that's what grit is. And I think you got it exactly right, at least the way I would define it.
Self control is a little bit more of an everyday capacity. So when you exert self control, you choose something, like for example to drink water instead of drinking, you know, whatever it is that you don't think you should be drinking as much, like, I don't know, Diet Coke or whatever it is, you're making some everyday choice.
It's true that the, the act of self control means you're choosing something that is better for you in the quote unquote long run than immediately, but we're really literally talking about, like moments later, you're going to feel good about yourself, not necessarily like years later.
So I think self control is on a different timescale. I think it's very elemental to just like everyday living, not just world class excellence. Like you need self control to floss your teeth. You need self control to go to bed at a reasonable hour and do all the other things that we're supposed to do for sleep hygiene.
You need self control to, like, manage your temper if somebody cuts you off in traffic or runs a red light. And, you know, you need self control all the time because we're always faced with these choices where, you know, where one would feel better like telling the person exactly what you think or alternatively something which is going to be better in the long run, but not years and decades, right?
So, so that's how I think they are related because they're both about achieving goals and that's how they're not related, right? That's how they're at least, right? So I do study both. You're kind to know that, but I think they're not like, oh, self control's, you know, this, and grit is just 10x this.
That's, that's not what I think is going on.
Lainie Rowell: I actually think grit is very important. It's something I value. I hope people see that in me.
Angela Duckworth: I think you're very gritty.
Lainie Rowell: Why, thank you. I appreciate that. I'm going to take that to the bank right now.
Angela Duckworth: Yes, you can.
Lainie Rowell: I think the harder thing in the human condition is the in the moment to make that choice.
Like, I think of it as like, I have my aspirational self and then my actual self. So my aspirational self wants to go run 10 miles. The actual, Self might choose to go eat Ben and Jerry's. And you know, like how do I kind of hack the system in a way? Like how do I make sure that yes, I have the grit, but in the moment I've got this self.
Angela Duckworth: But in the moment you're like, , and in the moment you probably have some conscious awareness, first of all that you've been in this choice point before. And that feeling, by the way, I hate this feeling, you have this, like, internal tension. Some thinkers about this, and I say thinkers because, you know, some psychologists, also some economists have said it's like having a war inside yourself where your aspirational self and your lazy self are like, at war with each other.
And Jerry Seinfeld has this great bit on this. He's like, it's like morning guy and night guy and night guy wants to party and have fun and morning guy needs to go to work. And you know, you're at war in yourself, right? You have two selves. So I think that when you come back to like the power of the situation, I think that what most people do is they basically say, it's like, I need more willpower.
They're like, well, I should just get off this couch. I mean, the whole Nike you know, just do it, right? Just, just do it. And when we talk to teenagers about not going on social media or not staying up till two in the morning, scrolling, you know, they recognize this dilemma.
They feel this internal war, but they'll often say things like, well, just don't, you know, don't be a baby. Just do it. Like just force yourself, but there's another way to enact self control, that is totally different, and it is to use your situation. I mean, for example, right, I've done this study with teenagers.
I've done it in a large school district, but I also recently collected data from a Gallup poll. So it's a representative sample of teenagers. And we simply asked them, if you had to study for a big test, where would you keep your phone? And they have a number of options that range from right next to me face up with my notifications on so I don't miss anything and then kind of like oh we'll face down it's muted and then like okay you know arms reach or like what you know like you know across the room in another room and the farther the phone The higher the GPA.
Right. And I think that is an alternative to willpower. Yeah. You know, like if you're gonna keep your phone right there and just will yourself not to look at it, well that's gonna be harder. You know, going back to your example of like going out for a long run versus. You know, well, you don't even have to eat Ben and Jerry's.
You just be like not going out for a long run, right? What could you do in your situation that would get your situation to kind of do the work for you? So I think a lot of people find it useful to get dressed into their workout clothes, right? Like if they get dressed into their workout clothes, that's not a lot of energy.
But like once you're in your workout clothes and you literally put on your sneakers and, by the way, you can also change your situation by teeing up like a favorite podcast or, you know, you said you were listening to music before we were talking, like that has a technical term, it's called temptation bundling, which I'm sure many of your listeners and you know about, but these are all ways that you can not rely on internal willpower, but get your situation to be set up in an optimal way that it pushes you out the door for your run.
And then. You're off, right? And I think many of us know that like, when you take like the first three steps, those are the hardest. But in psychology, what we would call this is situational self control.
Lainie Rowell: Well, and to be clear, 10 miles is never happening. That is beyond aspirational.
Angela Duckworth: Maybe once I ran 10 miles.
Lainie Rowell: No, 10 miles is definitely not happening. Going back to the example of the phone, I feel like I'm someone with pretty decent self control, but me against that device that has been engineered to grab my attention and hold on to my attention as long as possible, I don't like my odds.
And so I have to make, I have to make it harder.
Angela Duckworth: What do you do?
Like, yeah, tell me about like, what do you, what do you find tempting? Like, which apps do you find tempting, and tell me, what you're doing, how it's going. I find this really interesting
Lainie Rowell: so I don't bring my phone into my bedroom, but no halo here.
I do have an iPad in the bedroom. I actually turn on time management. What is it called? Downtime? Just on my device, I actually have it set for screen time to be turned off until 8. 30 in the morning.
Angela Duckworth: Oh, is that something you can set in the settings?
Lainie Rowell: Yes, it is. Now, it's kind of along the lines of parental controls.
But since I'm the adult, I can overwrite it. But the thing that happens is because I have it, this like notification that it's like screen time. no time left or something like that. It reminds me like, okay, you're not supposed to be doing this right now. You have told yourself, don't do this. So are you going to override the, the one who knows better?
And so that's been really helpful for me.
Angela Duckworth: Has it worked? I mean, has it, I'm sure it's not a hundred percent, but has it been helpful?
Lainie Rowell: I would say it's 90%.
Angela Duckworth: Wow, that's really good.
Lainie Rowell: It's pretty unusual. I mean, life happens, you know, if I'm on the road speaking I'm probably going to get into it because I might need to check something before I go out and do whatever.
Angela Duckworth: But it gives you that moment of intentionality, right? So that you're not You know, I think by the way you know, this, this little war that we're fighting, you know, our present self, our future self, you know, the aspirational self and the more impulsive self. I think that is exactly what one of the great thinkers on this was this Nobel laureate now passed named Thomas Schelling, and his Nobel prize was for game theory, for figuring out how enemies outstrategized and he was a chain smoker and he had to use game theory and like, okay, if you have two enemies or and he had the Thomas who wanted to smoke and he had the Thomas who wanted to live and so he basically said, you know what, the Thomas who wants to live has to figure out how to set up their physical situation and the social situation to like, tell your friends that you're quitting, you know, get the cigarettes out of the house.
And for us, you know, in our generation, since there are fewer smokers, it would be like, figure out the settings on your phone that are going to help you. Like, don't plug in your phone by your bed. I think for my own daughters who are 23 and 21 you know, I'll tell you like the day that one of them said they were deleting Instagram, I did a little jig of joy, like, she was like, I'm gonna change my situation.
She wasn't gonna use willpower to not go on it. And then, more recently, Lucy, who's the younger, she's 21, she has gotten what's called a light phone, and I hadn't even heard about this, right, but it's like a 1995 style, whatever, like, it doesn't have a screen. I mean, it's basically an old fashioned phone, and she put her SIM card in there, and she's not using willpower.
This is what I mean by situational agency, right? Like, when you understand that you have situational agency, that you can use situational self control, not willpower, that you can, in a way, externalize behavior change. I mean, to me that's the real secret.
Or I'll just say that when you use willpower, it feels terrible. And eventually it doesn't work. Not because it's a muscle. I don't actually think willpower is a muscle, but just because, it's like always pushing a boulder up a mountain, right? Like eventually a boulder rolls down again.
So I'm a big fan of situational self control as a form of situational agency. And, I use a different technique. I have this app called OneSec and OneSec is very similar to what you're saying, but basically when you go on, for me, I know this is so nerdy, but the thing that I was using my phone compulsively to, and by the way, this painting of myself on my phone in the background was my.
89 year old mother, like, apparently took this picture of me and she painted this because she was like, Oh, cause you're always on your phone checking my email. And so I was like, Oh my gosh. So I got this app and all it does is that it creates a little delay. So when you want to go on your tempting app, you have to wait a few seconds.
It makes you breathe. It's like the screen turns different color and it's like, breathe in, breathe out. And then it asks you. Do you really want to go on this? And of course you can say yes and go, but like you, I have found that that moment of like just waking up and being intentional, it's like, and this is the friction, it's like, who wants to wait a few seconds?
It's really changed my behavior.
Lainie Rowell: I'm a huge fan of speed bumps that are gonna keep me from going down the road I don't want to go down because it's
Angela Duckworth: Right!
Lainie Rowell: Wait, wait, why am I even going here? So I love speed bumps, I love that Lucy has more than a speed bump, she put up a barricade, like, good for her.
Angela Duckworth: Yeah, she did, she Yeah, so she wants to use her phone, she has to, like, literally take the SIM card out and put it in the other phone, yeah.
Lainie Rowell: Amazing, good for her. Lucy, mad respect. Well, okay, I know I have to let you go soon, but I do just want to give you an opportunity to share.
Is there anything that you can't share enough or that you haven't really shared but you think people need to know?
Angela Duckworth: Well, when we talk about situational agency and how grit alone is not enough, right? There is something that we haven't talked about, which is, I think, a part of your situation, I think is really important, I think, especially young people, but all of us, like, if we had some awareness, and that is mentors.
I think mentors are, you know, a factor that is not Inside you, right? It's not your mindset or your internal attitude. It's something outside you. And if I could point out, you know, one you know, thing in my life that has really made the biggest difference is that I have had a series of mentors who taught me what I know who have encouraged me when I lacked confidence.
You know, I already mentioned Marty Seligman. I will say that I also have been mentored by, you know, you've heard the 10, 000 hour rule and like that 10, 000 hours of practice. So that scientist is named Anders Ericsson and he was a very important mentor to me. He's now passed.
But I feel like. Anybody who becomes successful, and I think it was Oprah Winfrey who said this anybody who really becomes successful has mentors. And, and one form of situational agency is you know, changing your settings on your phone. Another form of situational agency is, getting into your workout clothes or teeing up your podcast in the right way.
But another form of situational agency is going out and very proactively asking, how do I. Learn from other people who are a little older than me, usually, and definitely farther down the path, right? Because that's all a mentor is, is somebody who knows something that you don't. And just a couple days ago in my undergraduate class, we had Jason Kyler, who is the former CEO of Hulu, and a very interesting person.
you know important person in media and technology. And he was giving advice to the undergraduates in my class. And he said, you know, I think of mentorship much more broadly than most people do. A mentor is anyone who has something to teach you. And then we had this conversation about how one of the barriers to creating these relationships is young people often think like it's a lifelong thing, you know, that has to be some really kind of like epic really, no, a mentor is anybody who has something to teach you, you know, somebody who's a little farther down the path.
And once you understand that you can proactively make mentors, mentors for a reason, mentors for a season, yes, occasionally mentors for life. I think that's a game changer. And I think it, to me, it highlights how, you know, Grit is great, and I believe in it, but a gritty person needs, among other things, a mentor.
Lainie Rowell: I really appreciate that. I appreciate you highlighting mentorship and also Jason saying it's a broader view of mentorship. It doesn't have to be like a forever.
Angela Duckworth: Yeah. And by the way, sending an email to ask somebody to be your lifelong mentor is kind of off putting, right?
But if you just ask somebody for advice on one very specific thing where they can be helpful in five minutes, like That's great. And if it's just that five minutes, that's a mentoring moment and maybe you'll end up working on a project. Okay, great. Well, then you'll, you know, have a mentor for a season and then, you know, maybe if the chemistry is right and, you know if things work out, yeah, maybe, maybe it'll end up being a mentorship , for life, but I really truly believe that that is the best advice anybody could give a young person, but maybe, you know, maybe any of us.
Lainie Rowell: I love that. Okay, I know I have to let you go. I just want to say thank you. I really admire and respect. your confident humility, if you will. Like, I know your credentials. I know you have so many reasons to be confident, but the humble is really helpful. And I find that when I see people out there with that confident humility, it makes me trust them even more.
And so I have this deep trust. Like, I believe Angela will tell me the things that she truly believes are important and she's not going to do it in a way like she knows absolutely everything in the world. She's going to tell me the things that she thinks are important.
Angela Duckworth: So, well, I have appreciated that in this conversation I've been able to be you know, candid because, you know, Lainie, when I say that, oh, you know, the second book is, it's just a whole lot harder and I'm, you know, in my own way struggling, I will say thank you for telling me that I am You know, confident and thank you for, you know, saying that I'm humble, but wow, I will tell you that I am human.
And if anybody out there is wondering, like, well, if you're really gritty, do you ever doubt yourself? Like, do you have like a bad day or two or three strung together? Do you ever really have like a crisis of confidence? Like I do. I mean, I really do. So thank you for letting me. You know, share just a little bit of that.
And, you know, hopefully, if things work out the way I hope they do, that we'll have another conversation when this book, which doesn't even have a title, Lainie, like, when it's all, you know, to press.
Lainie Rowell: Well, I would love any conversations with you. And if you ever need just a pep talk, I am here for you.
I will give you my mobile.
Angela Duckworth: I will be there.
Lainie Rowell: I will, because I'm such a huge fan and excited to see whatever come next. No pressure.
Angela Duckworth: Thank you. Okay. To be continued.
Lainie Rowell: To be continued. All right. Thank you, my friends, for listening.