703: Angela Duckworth - Why Grit Isn't Enough, Situation Over Willpower, How Belief Gets Borrowed, John Wooden's Socks, and How the Right People and Places Bring Out Your Best

**Ryan Hawk** (0:00)
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Welcome to The Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Angela Duckworth is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her first book, Grit, is one of the best selling books of all time. And her TED Talk remains among the most viewed TED Talks ever. Her new book is called Situated. Find the People and Places that Bring Out Your Best. During our conversation, we discuss your environment is quietly voting for or against your goals every single day. You're going to learn a simple way to audit whether the room you're in right now is your ally or your enemy. Really good. And then you'll learn why the belief someone else has in you can carry you a lot further than your own and where to find it if nobody's offering. Then Angela has mentored under some of the greatest psychologists who ever lived. She shares what she wants the next chapter of her own career to look like. And it might change how you think about yours. This is one of my favorite conversations I've had in years.
Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my talk with the great Angela Duckworth.
I love reading about your mom. You wrote, when I am my best self, I am my mother's daughter. Very cool dedication. Tell me more about why you chose that specific phrase to dedicate this book to.

**Angela Duckworth** (3:13)
I've only written two books, as you know. And the first one, I think in some ways was an ode to my father, very influenced by his obsession with achievement, maybe in an improbable way in some ways, because you talk a lot about talent. I wrote a book about grit, which is not talent, not natural talent anyway. The second book is about the outside game, if you will, of achieving your potential, all the things that you need around you, including and especially the people. When I wrote this book, I dedicated it to my mother in part because I don't think she was situated in the way that I hope, for example, my daughters are situated to be their best. And so it's a belated in a way acknowledgement that my mother in some ways deserved a better situation than she had. She's now 91 and I actually think that her situation, she's an artist, has improved a lot in the last 10 years. And now I'm seeing all this great painting and ceramics and watercolors coming out of my 91-year-old mother.

**Ryan Hawk** (4:17)
The story that you opened with was scary.
I don't know another way to phrase it. I was envisioning being out in the ocean with my mom doing that thinking how would I have reacted. Can you take us to that moment where you're going to go try to look at some cool stuff in the ocean and the guy's like, sure, just jump right in. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. Angela, take your mom. She's 87

**Angela Duckworth** (4:40)
No big deal.

**Ryan Hawk** (4:42)
Yeah. Can you take me to that moment?

**Angela Duckworth** (4:44)
I will tell you the story of my poor judgment of going on a snorkeling expedition with my not very young mother who also had never snorkeled before and probably hadn't swum in decades and the captain outfits us with our snorkeling gear and we plop into the water and I follow my mom. So it was only after my mom was in the Atlantic Ocean miles off the coast that I realized how tragic this decision really was. I mean, it happened in a split second. I was like, I'm trying not to swear, Ryan, but words crossed my mind that are one syllable. I mean, I've never in my life been that afraid. I also can say confidently, I've never had that much adrenaline in my veins, that in that moment when I realized that my mom was going to drown, which is essentially what happened. She aspirated water into both lungs. She was unconscious. So this tiny little like 107 pound wet person who would have struggled, even if she were awake, was now just a floating body.