How To Overcome Your Fear Of Failure & Unlock Your Potential - Adam Grant - #885

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
What look like differences in natural ability are often differences in opportunity and motivation? What does that mean?

**Adam Grant** (0:07)
Well, I did write that, and I think I believe it. So if you look at the history of great talent, we tend to see people at their peak, and we assume that they were just naturals. Steph Curry could always drain three-pointers. Mozart was a natural musician.
And in some cases, if you trace back, these people were child prodigies. And Mozart, I think, was a great example. But for every Mozart, it turns out that there are multiple box and Beethovens who actually bloomed late and took a long time to improve. And I guess the study that really opened my eyes to this was Benjamin Bloom looked at world-class athletes, musicians, scientists, artists, and he went back to their childhoods and wanted to know, were they innately just brilliant at these skills from day one? And the consistent answer was no. That very often, their early teachers and coaches, even their own parents, had no idea how great they were gonna become. And when they did stand out, it wasn't for natural ability. It was because they were unusually passionate. They loved to learn. And they had early opportunities to get lots of practice in. And I think what that suggests to me is that sometimes we overestimate the importance of raw talent. And we underestimate the importance of creating opportunities that open doors for people and then giving them a chance to actually showcase their enthusiasm.

**Chris Williamson** (1:41)
What about motivation? What does that come from in this context?

**Adam Grant** (1:47)
I think in a lot of the cases, if you look at the Bloom study at least, the world-class performers tended to have an early teacher or coach who made learning fun. And I think that's not common for a lot of us, right? Like learning to do scales if you're a musician, doing drills if you're an athlete, it can be a slog. And the idea that this boring task that might just lose your interest or might exhaust you could actually be exciting, it draws you in and it makes you want to keep learning. And over time, that becomes self-reinforcing because after all, it's hard to like something that you just suck at, right?
As you gain skill and build up mastery, that's when your motivation begins to really soar.

**Chris Williamson** (2:29)
Yeah, when you turn any task into or any, I guess, activity into a task that needs to be ticked off, it sort of takes one step toward drudgery, which just doesn't sound fun.

**Adam Grant** (2:41)
Well put.

**Chris Williamson** (2:43)
I wonder whether people will be uncomfortable to think about motivation as something that's almost bestowed on them by the environment because highly agentic, meritocratic world, I can make my own way, I can do it, eh, yes. But as the other part of it, differences in opportunity and motivation, and it seems like motivation can quite often be brought about by the right opportunity too, it's very much out of our hands also.

**Adam Grant** (3:15)
I think that's bad news and good news. I think you're right. The bad news is it makes it feel like your motivation is a little bit out of your control. The good news is that motivation is malleable, and if you don't find it on day one from within, it can actually be sparked or stimulated from the outside. And I think what a great coach or teacher does is they help you find your own motivation. So I've lived this personally.
I loved sports when I was a kid. And unfortunately, I wasn't any good at all the ones that I became passionate about. I loved shooting hoops. I got caught from middle school basketball team in sixth grade, seventh grade and eighth grade. I was a big fan of playing soccer or what you probably call football. Did not make my ninth grade team. And basically the last sport that I thought to try was springboard diving. That summer, my mom dragged me to a local pool and there was a lifeguard who was an all-state diver. And he was doing flips and twists on his break. And I watched him and I was mesmerized. I wanted to learn how to do it. But diving did not come naturally to me. I actually was nicknamed by my first coach, Frankenstein, because I was so stiff that I couldn't even, I couldn't touch my toes without bending my knees. And I actually walked like Frankenstein.
And I didn't jump very high and I was not graceful at all. And I didn't have much explosive power. I'm going to do all the things that you want in diving. I go to my first tryout and the coach says, do you want the good news or the bad news? And I say, definitely the bad news. And he tells me that his grandmother and his grandfather can both outjump me, that I don't have the flexibility or explosive power or grace that you look for in a typical diver. I'm like, is there good news? And he says, yes, diving is a nerd sport. It attracted all the people who were too short for basketball and too slow for track and too weak for football. If you want to be good at this, if you pour yourself into this, then I think by the time you graduate from high school, you're going to be an all-state diver. And that just lit a fire in me, right? The idea that this coach who had actually trained an Olympian by that point saw more potential in me than I saw in myself. It made me want to get better. And every time I hit the water and Eric gave me, he'd be like, Adam, that was bad. How bad? And he'd say, I'd give that a 3, 3.5. We'd talk about, how can I get a 4? And how can I get a 4.5? And that just made me more and more excited to learn. And I ended up making the state finals, not my senior year, but my junior year. And by that point, when I graduated from high school, I couldn't believe it. I was a two-time Junior Olympic National Qualifier. And I made the All-American List, and I was being recruited to dive at the NCAA Division I level, which I had no business doing, but none of it would have ever happened if Eric Best didn't look at me and say, Adam, you're not any good today, but I believe you can be much better tomorrow.