Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast. Today. I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: have Carolyn Adams Miller on the podcast. Carolyn is a
Speaker 1: certified professional coach, author, media personality and keynote speaker and educator.
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, she was named one of the ten
Speaker 1: Positive Psychology Coaches to Follow by Positive Psychology Program. Her
Speaker 1: latest book is called Getting Grit, The Evidence Based Approach
Speaker 1: to Cultivating Passion, perseverance, and Purpose. Thanks for being on
Speaker 1: the show today, Carolyn. Oh, I'm such a fan of yours.
Speaker 1: This is like a red letter day in my life. Oh,
Speaker 1: honor to hear that it's true. Well, I have a
Speaker 1: bunch of questions for you. You know, I can't prepare.
Speaker 1: That's good, great questions are great, But I want to
Speaker 1: start by asking you, like, what is a positive psychology coach.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can total listeners, because I don't think i've
Speaker 1: covered that yet on my podcast. That phrase, well, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting phrase. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: it started, and I'm not even sure what it means myself.
Speaker 1: I've been called that, but I think there is designation
Speaker 1: and training that exists in positive psychology coaching. I haven't
Speaker 1: done that, but I think if you're a coach, and
Speaker 1: especially one of the first coaches to get this master's
Speaker 1: and applied positive psychology, people put two and two together.
Speaker 1: But I do tell people, while I use the tools
Speaker 1: of positive psychology as a coach, particularly around goal setting
Speaker 1: and self efficacy and self determination and all that, it's
Speaker 1: not all I do or you. So I'm not exactly
Speaker 1: sure what the term means because I don't really use
Speaker 1: it on myself, but it's out there. It's out there. Well,
Speaker 1: you are a certified professional coach. You use that phrase.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me at least what that is? Oh?
Speaker 1: Good question. So I'm certified through the International Coach Federation,
Speaker 1: and many coaches choose to go through that particular credentialing program.
Speaker 1: I mean to have that particular credential because otherwise I
Speaker 1: think coaching gets sometimes an unfair knock about as lack
Speaker 1: of professionalism, and I think it's been an effort to
Speaker 1: have standards in our field. So there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of core competencies you get tested on every few years.
Speaker 1: I'm a PCC MICF certified coach. Oh that's great, well, congratulations,
Speaker 1: And how many clients do you have on average? Like
Speaker 1: do you see a week? A week? So I've worked
Speaker 1: mostly virtually. I think it's been as high as twenty
Speaker 1: four to thirty at times. And yeah, not obviously not
Speaker 1: every day and sometimes not every week. Because of the
Speaker 1: book launch and because of a pretty aggressive level of
Speaker 1: speeches I've been doing, I have really cut back. But
Speaker 1: I work with people in Hong Kong and Japan and
Speaker 1: Australia and you know, in the United States. But it
Speaker 1: tends to be people who want to play bigger and
Speaker 1: do bigger, and they really like the evidence based approach
Speaker 1: I set forward in not creating your best life. And
Speaker 1: now they're intrigued by grit obviously, Yeah, that's a good segue.
Speaker 1: Grit is a pretty hot term these days, right it is.
Speaker 1: It's a little controversial. Like everything else. Well, I think
Speaker 1: anything that becomes hot, then becomes immediately controversial, even if
Speaker 1: it wasn't controversial before. Great, no matter who you are,
Speaker 1: no matter how nice you are, no matter how awesome
Speaker 1: you are, like you become controversial if you're famous enough.
Speaker 1: I agree, So, yeah, I'd love to get your thoughts
Speaker 1: on why are you so interested in grit? First of all,
Speaker 1: you know what research inspired you? And how does your
Speaker 1: own model differ? Good questions? Questions, aren't they? Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: just try to take them in the order that makes
Speaker 1: sense to me. So, as you know, I was in
Speaker 1: the first class at Penn in the Masters of Applied
Speaker 1: Positive Psychology, So that was two thousand and five, and
Speaker 1: I was a certified coach to then, obviously, But I
Speaker 1: became intrigued by the fact that all this research that
Speaker 1: was being put in front of us, goal setting theory,
Speaker 1: self determination theory, self efficacy were all things that I'd
Speaker 1: never heard of, and I'd certainly never seen in coach training.
Speaker 1: Goal setting theory in particular fascinated me because one of
Speaker 1: the core competencies put forward by the ICF is that
Speaker 1: you have to manage goal progress and accountability with your clients.
Speaker 1: And yet I wasn't aware of anybody who knew there
Speaker 1: was a science to goal setting. So I told Marty
Speaker 1: I was going to link the science of well being
Speaker 1: with the science of goal setting. And I think, I
Speaker 1: know I'm the first person to do that, and so
Speaker 1: Creating Your Best Life is my fifth book. So in
Speaker 1: it I became fascinated by not just goal setting and
Speaker 1: goal setting theory, but also the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: the harder the goals, the happier you are. So there's
Speaker 1: some good research in my book. Bruce Hetty is one
Speaker 1: of the people whose studies I worked with that the
Speaker 1: happiest people do wake up every day to clear cut,
Speaker 1: hard goals that aren't just about SERVI themselves, but they
Speaker 1: tend to involve other people and serve others. And at
Speaker 1: that time I saw Angela Duckworth running in and out
Speaker 1: of the classrooms at PEN. None of us knew who
Speaker 1: she was. She was pretty new, I think, to working
Speaker 1: with Marty. At that point, we didn't have her as
Speaker 1: an instructor. But as I was working out in my
Speaker 1: capstone that year was the book Proposal for Creating Your
Speaker 1: Best Life, which then got picked up and published in
Speaker 1: early two thousand and nine, I realized that if I
Speaker 1: was going to talk about goal setting, I needed to
Speaker 1: address this issue of grit, which she was just starting
Speaker 1: to get results around. So I think that was a
Speaker 1: piece of what fascinated me about grit. But I also
Speaker 1: had this weird experience in the MAP program of replaying
Speaker 1: my life and my other books in my head and
Speaker 1: realizing there was a reason why I was alive, and
Speaker 1: that was because in hindsight, what I put together was
Speaker 1: that I had had talent and success when I was
Speaker 1: younger in life, but I hadn't had grit. And I
Speaker 1: think that's something that comes up in my coaching practice
Speaker 1: that's so fascinating. I mean, I can work with very
Speaker 1: successful people and when we talk about what's the hardest
Speaker 1: thing you've ever done, they'll sheepishly admit that they really
Speaker 1: haven't done hard things. They've simply picked areas where they
Speaker 1: knew they'd succeed. So that speaks to Carol dwax work,
Speaker 1: of course, fixed in growth mindset. But what I realized
Speaker 1: was I had had to cultivate grit in my twenties
Speaker 1: to overcome boliema, and that if I could cultivate it,
Speaker 1: I realized that it probably had a cultivatable quality to it,
Speaker 1: which then I you know, I followed Angela for a
Speaker 1: few years, well actually all these years I have, and
Speaker 1: she put forward the idea that you can cultivate grit,
Speaker 1: and so I masked a lot of studies around that
Speaker 1: and other components of grit, and that's why I wrote
Speaker 1: Getting Grit. I really felt it was important that people
Speaker 1: understand that it's not a quality that's reserved for special others.
Speaker 1: And then I think it has an incredibly important role
Speaker 1: to play in society. Is that my three kids have
Speaker 1: grown up in the last twenty eight years, I've been
Speaker 1: stunned at the dumbing down of standards in their lives.
Speaker 1: I mean completely stunned. I could just war you with
Speaker 1: anecdote after anecdote. But I wrote the book as a mom,
Speaker 1: as a as a coach, which is a consultant, just
Speaker 1: because I felt that, you know, I was seeing grit
Speaker 1: disappearing and it concerned me. So that's how I got
Speaker 1: into it, and that's why I'm so passionate about it. Well,
Speaker 1: grit is I don't think grit is disappearing right now,
Speaker 1: do you think it is? I think that the millennial
Speaker 1: generation from the research I looked at from the studies
Speaker 1: that include in the book. I don't think it's set,
Speaker 1: it's missing completely. But I do think that it's harder
Speaker 1: for people to be in situations where they are rewarded
Speaker 1: for doing hard things. I think there's too many winners.
Speaker 1: Everyone's a winner approach, and I saw this in my
Speaker 1: kid's lives, the trophies, the ceremonies, the Color Run, it's
Speaker 1: the most popular run in the country. There's no times,
Speaker 1: a lot of throwing colors at people. So I think
Speaker 1: the situations have changed where it is easier for high, hard,
Speaker 1: transparent standards to exist for people. I do see, I
Speaker 1: see what you're saying. I see you're saying. I guess
Speaker 1: the concept itself is not disappearing, but the actual amount
Speaker 1: of people that are enacting it might still be need. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear you. Yeah yeah. And I want to be
Speaker 1: careful to say because I've been attacked for saying that
Speaker 1: all millennials are not gritty and that's not the case
Speaker 1: at all. And this is something that came up at
Speaker 1: the MAP Alumni summit last October, and even Marty said, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what she's saying. She's saying that it's the
Speaker 1: proportion of young adults who seem to not be as
Speaker 1: resilient as previous generations. And there's a lot of reasons why,
Speaker 1: which I cover in my book. Can you give me
Speaker 1: one reason, I can give you a lot. You talk
Speaker 1: about great inflation. You know, the average grade in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties was the sea and now just my alma mater,
Speaker 1: you know, at Harvard, the average grade is in a minus.
Speaker 1: I look at the math made easy, phonics made easy,
Speaker 1: kind of approached education where students begin to think that
Speaker 1: it's got to be easy in order for you to
Speaker 1: do well in that. I look at the dumbing down
Speaker 1: of playgrounds. I really cover that, where kids just don't
Speaker 1: get hurt anymore. Consequently, you've got these woodships and these
Speaker 1: really ridiculous plastic contraptions. They've taken away all these metal
Speaker 1: slides because I guess they're too dangerous, so they get
Speaker 1: hot or whatever it is. So you've got the playgrounds,
Speaker 1: You've got this whole industry around babyproofing the house so
Speaker 1: people won't get hurt. You get into the comfort animals,
Speaker 1: you know, on the college campuses, and it's a good
Speaker 1: idea gone too far. I mean, colleges are overrun with
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I've got stories around kangaroos and
Speaker 1: ferrets and turkeys and pigs just all showing up on
Speaker 1: campuses and students saying they simply cannot get through the
Speaker 1: day without this comfort animal. And then you go into
Speaker 1: the fact that we have a whole new profession called
Speaker 1: cuddlers in this country. I mean, have you ever heard
Speaker 1: of that? No, I've actually never heard of that professional.
Speaker 1: It's a profession with a certification. You can hire somebody
Speaker 1: to hold you for a dollar a minute. They'll even
Speaker 1: spend the night with you. But it's a real profession,
Speaker 1: and it's being seen as an extension of you know,
Speaker 1: a generation that does not have the ability to self
Speaker 1: soothe because they've had so many things instantly given to them,
Speaker 1: instant gratification. There's a real lack of solf regulation in
Speaker 1: this group. I mean, apparently our attention spent is one
Speaker 1: second less than a goldfish. You know, goldfish can focus
Speaker 1: for eight, humans for seven. So it builds on all
Speaker 1: of these things, the technology, the instant gratification, the lowering
Speaker 1: of standards, the self esteem, parenting movement, trophies for all
Speaker 1: great inflation saram. I saw my kids getting retests in
Speaker 1: high school. I mean, are you kidding me? Why bother
Speaker 1: to do your best for the first test if the
Speaker 1: teacher has this ability to just give you a retest.
Speaker 1: I've got stories of students not able to wear their
Speaker 1: National Honor Society regalia because it'll hurt other students' feelings
Speaker 1: at graduation. I mean, there's one school system in Columbus,
Speaker 1: Ohio that named two hundred and twenty two students valedictorians.
Speaker 1: I mean, what does this do to the pursuit of
Speaker 1: excellence when everyone is excellent and told they're awesome, but
Speaker 1: they haven't really done anything. Yeah. What I'm trying to
Speaker 1: understand is how some of those examples relate to grit
Speaker 1: In particular. I've heard of cuddle parties, by the way,
Speaker 1: in New York City they have cuttle parties. The thing
Speaker 1: about the lugging profession is really interesting to me because
Speaker 1: it speaks to me as well about the unacceptable rates
Speaker 1: of loneliness we have in this world and on campus
Speaker 1: and among people. I see that less the reflection of
Speaker 1: lack of grit, but more that there just really is
Speaker 1: such disconnection among people and the basic need for intimacy
Speaker 1: and when it's really severely thwarted, I mean seeking out
Speaker 1: a cuddle partner is makes sense, I think evolutionarily least well,
Speaker 1: I get that, but I also see it another way.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's either or I think it's both,
Speaker 1: because I think the inability to self soothe also leads
Speaker 1: to this inability to not be impulsive. And so what
Speaker 1: you see is people unable to sit with sadness, and
Speaker 1: therefore they can act on discomfort or not be able
Speaker 1: to deal with something being hard. I've talked to many
Speaker 1: sports coaches who say that this is a generation that
Speaker 1: the minute you know it's too hot outside, they're immediately saying,
Speaker 1: we can't go on anymore. Just kind of this proportion
Speaker 1: of kids who don't have a resilient mindset. And so
Speaker 1: it's not that these things are all bad. But when
Speaker 1: I put together this whole chain of stories and research
Speaker 1: and people I interviewed, what I saw was this increasing
Speaker 1: inability to sit with discomfort of any kind and be
Speaker 1: able to self soothe and or change the channel in
Speaker 1: your brain, which I find that people who are gritty
Speaker 1: are able to do to persist to a finish line,
Speaker 1: and the finish line can be changing professions and hanging
Speaker 1: in there through the learning curve of you know, learning
Speaker 1: a whole new set of knowledge. It can also be
Speaker 1: something physical. I mean, I'm a competitive swimmer. You know,
Speaker 1: there is in a single day, I wake up and
Speaker 1: I want to go to swim practice at five in
Speaker 1: the morning. I think you have to have the ability
Speaker 1: to be uncomfortable and be okay with it. Maybe be
Speaker 1: helpful to step back a second ask what is your
Speaker 1: definition of grit? Okay? Well, so I think we all
Speaker 1: are familiar with Angela's definition, which is passion and perseverance.
Speaker 1: By the way, I think everyone knows immediately who angel is.
Speaker 1: See I'm assuming the whole world does who she is.
Speaker 1: But you're right. So it's her research that I have cited,
Speaker 1: particularly in the beginning of the book when I explained
Speaker 1: how I became interested in grit. But what I realized
Speaker 1: is that it was a definition that stopped short of
Speaker 1: helping people understand that grit can be both good and bad.
Speaker 1: And my definition of grit is something I call authentic grit.
Speaker 1: So my definition is the passionate pursuit. Okay, so it's
Speaker 1: still the passionate pursuit of hard goals. But I believe
Speaker 1: it has to all and inspire other people to become better,
Speaker 1: to become better, to flourish emotionally, to take positive risks
Speaker 1: and live their best lives. So, for me, grit is
Speaker 1: good when it elevates the collective and when other people
Speaker 1: are actually better for being in the presence of people
Speaker 1: with this kind of grit. And so I have good
Speaker 1: grit and bad grit in the book, and I divide
Speaker 1: it into categories. And I've had a huge number of
Speaker 1: people say it grit made sense to them. They could
Speaker 1: buy into it once they understood that it's not about
Speaker 1: just stupid grit, you know, seeing something through to the
Speaker 1: finish line. I mean it's like I'm at fever and mountaineering,
Speaker 1: are in scuba diving like the rapture of the deep,
Speaker 1: or you know, you see people who won't listen in
Speaker 1: corporate settings. They get this idea and they've got to
Speaker 1: get it to the finish line, and they won't take
Speaker 1: advice from anybody else. They have a lack of humility,
Speaker 1: you know, you see selfie grit. You know, people who
Speaker 1: do hard things, but they have to brag about it
Speaker 1: all the time, and that doesn't inspire and elevate anybody either.
Speaker 1: And I've listened to your podcast interviews with people who
Speaker 1: talk about AWE, and I think the research on AWE
Speaker 1: is particularly fascinating because people say, we live in an
Speaker 1: AWE deprived society. We don't see greatness, we're not inspired
Speaker 1: to give standing ovations because a lot of times what
Speaker 1: we're being told is awesome is actually kind of mediocre.
Speaker 1: It's not you know, innovative and new and completely different
Speaker 1: and out of your comfort zone. And so I think
Speaker 1: it has to awe people and to make them ask themselves,
Speaker 1: what if I, you know, played a little bit bigger?
Speaker 1: What if I went out of my comfort zone and
Speaker 1: had this big dream that I pursued? Because I think
Speaker 1: we all know that this number one regret of people
Speaker 1: in hospice care is that they live someone else. I know,
Speaker 1: they didn't live the life they felt they should have lived.
Speaker 1: And I interviewed Gary Latham, the co founder of goal
Speaker 1: setting theory. So, you know, Caroline, at the end of
Speaker 1: people's lives, you know, eighty percent of them or coded
Speaker 1: what a should have you know, they just they didn't
Speaker 1: go for it. They were afraid and it's not a
Speaker 1: fear of success, it's fear of everything. And as a coach,
Speaker 1: I see this and I see it every single day.
Speaker 1: So that's my definition of grit. And to me, it's
Speaker 1: a fundamental different characterization that makes it relevant and alive
Speaker 1: for me. Oh for sure. I love the concept of
Speaker 1: authentic grit. I wrote an article which I'll send you
Speaker 1: later called Authenticity and Grit, talking about a research that
Speaker 1: was conducted that I really do think supports this idea
Speaker 1: that when you combine you know, there's an authenticity scale,
Speaker 1: Like there's actually an authenticity scale you could take and
Speaker 1: measure how much are you self alienated? How much are
Speaker 1: you do you speak up about how you really feel
Speaker 1: and stuff. The extent to which you scored higher in authenticity,
Speaker 1: the more grit was associated with well being in your life. Ah,
Speaker 1: I'd love to see that. That sounds fascinating. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I just love this idea. So the idea you know
Speaker 1: of authentic grid is that you are persevering and passionate
Speaker 1: in so there's like a continuity in who you are,
Speaker 1: Like standing up for yourself is that part of it.
Speaker 1: This is why I love your podcast. That's brilliant. You
Speaker 1: just kind of tweaked it in a way that made
Speaker 1: it shinier. So yeah, you're becoming more of who you
Speaker 1: really are, which makes sense because people who have this
Speaker 1: kind of grit are not pursuing other people's goals, and
Speaker 1: you can't do that because goals that require grit have
Speaker 1: i think baked into them the fact that it's not
Speaker 1: going to be easy. You're going to be alone at times,
Speaker 1: you're going to be discouraged, you may have nothing but
Speaker 1: setbacks for a while, and so you have to have
Speaker 1: passion to keep going. And that means it better be
Speaker 1: your own goal, because people don't get fired up about
Speaker 1: other people's goals. And I think I've even seen something
Speaker 1: I call Sygaronnic grit because I think it has to
Speaker 1: pull you forward, just like the Zygarnic effect. You know,
Speaker 1: things that are unfinished that pull you forward. I think
Speaker 1: this kind of grit has a Zygarnt quality to it,
Speaker 1: where you just keep going because you know your goal,
Speaker 1: you're invested in it, and you want In some ways,
Speaker 1: you see it as you know, individuating you or leaving
Speaker 1: you without the regrets you're sure you'll have if you
Speaker 1: don't go in that direction. So I love the spin
Speaker 1: you just put on it around becoming more authentic by
Speaker 1: having this kind of grit. Yeah. I just really influenced
Speaker 1: by the humanistic psychologists and the idea. You know. Rogers
Speaker 1: talked a lot about the importance of not alienating yourself
Speaker 1: from yourself, not becoming a stranger to yourself, and Karen
Speaker 1: Horney talked a lot about self alienation. And these are
Speaker 1: really core ideas about what it means to be a human,
Speaker 1: what it means from a next you know, there's an
Speaker 1: existential perspective to a lot of this that you don't
Speaker 1: really talk about a lot in positive psychology. So this
Speaker 1: is a needed concept and I support this idea. You
Speaker 1: said earlier, you said, like grit is a little bit
Speaker 1: controversial these days. Could you unpack what is controversial about it?
Speaker 1: Do you personally have any criticisms at all? Do you
Speaker 1: agree with any of the criticisms, Like I don't love
Speaker 1: to just to hear your thoughts. Well, I think this
Speaker 1: could probably be a full hour in and of itself,
Speaker 1: But as I was going into the editing stage and
Speaker 1: the final edits, Marcus creates criticism of Angela Duckworth's work
Speaker 1: being more about conscientiousness than about anything new called grit.
Speaker 1: I mean, I looked at all of it, I read it,
Speaker 1: and what I keep coming back to is conscientiousness is
Speaker 1: not this quality that I see people develop. And I
Speaker 1: think what we're talking about here, which really does involve
Speaker 1: this passion, I think you can be diligent and persevering
Speaker 1: and conscientious without having that extra secret sauce of it's
Speaker 1: my goal. I'm passionate about it. I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: hanging in there. I think conscientious people can also pursue
Speaker 1: the goal of being admired or fitting into a community
Speaker 1: without necessarily being authentic. So I took a look at
Speaker 1: all the conscientiousness research, and then when I was in
Speaker 1: New Zealand and Australia, I met with Peggy Kern in
Speaker 1: a variety of other academics at the University of Mail
Speaker 1: and we talked about Yeah. Well, she was the one
Speaker 1: who said, Caroline, this is great what you've done, because
Speaker 1: this fits into systems theory. Because the way you're defining
Speaker 1: grit and the way you break it out into good
Speaker 1: grit and bad grit and that has to on and
Speaker 1: inspire other people fits right in with systems theory, which
Speaker 1: she's working on right now. So she said, I can
Speaker 1: see how I can use your work. And I'm not
Speaker 1: an academic. I come in here as a competitive athlete
Speaker 1: and a journalist and a historian and a coach, and
Speaker 1: I take, you know, I have one of those disruptive
Speaker 1: brains that looks at it really differently. But to have
Speaker 1: her kind of give me that seal of approval that
Speaker 1: academics could really buy into this was really helpful to me.
Speaker 1: And so we talked about this whole issue around is
Speaker 1: it resilience because someone came up and criticized me after
Speaker 1: I gave the opening keynote at Positive Education conference in Australia,
Speaker 1: and she said, look, that was lovely, dear, but you know,
Speaker 1: you don't know the difference between grit and resilience, but
Speaker 1: you got the audience quite excited. And I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: that's not fair, because I don't think it is simple resilience.
Speaker 1: And of course I thought through all of that, you
Speaker 1: resilience as a shorter term component of grit. So I
Speaker 1: see and understand that criticism as well, but I don't
Speaker 1: believe that they're the same thing, and I talk about
Speaker 1: that in the book. I also agree with Angela that
Speaker 1: you don't want to introduce the idea of grit at
Speaker 1: all costs in situations such as some of the underprivileged
Speaker 1: school systems where kids are just fighting to be in
Speaker 1: a classroom and have food and be there and be
Speaker 1: ready to learn, who come from environments where there's domestic
Speaker 1: violence and so on and so forth. So I don't
Speaker 1: think grit is the secret to success for everyone. My
Speaker 1: point is that as I've raised my children over the
Speaker 1: last thirty years, and what I've seen in sports, and
Speaker 1: what I've seen in societies, and what I've seen in
Speaker 1: clients when I go into corporations and the HR managers
Speaker 1: are tearing their hair out that they can't give performance
Speaker 1: reviews without people crying and saying they're hurting their feelings.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is that this definition of grit, this
Speaker 1: opportunity for us to take a look at do we
Speaker 1: have high transparent standards and high support for actually pursuing
Speaker 1: hard goals, and do we recognize the people who actually
Speaker 1: achieved those standards. I think that's the piece where I
Speaker 1: want to make the biggest difference. I don't think grit
Speaker 1: is useful in every conversation, but I think it's useful
Speaker 1: in the conversations. I've mentioned in one of the stories
Speaker 1: I told my ted X talk and that I tell
Speaker 1: in the book that you know, really struck me as
Speaker 1: a mom was my kids. We all joined this little
Speaker 1: summer swim team outside of Washington, d C. It was
Speaker 1: a parent that our oldest son in particular was you know,
Speaker 1: really really good swimmer. So we joined and we heard,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, you know these three men they used
Speaker 1: to swim here, their Olympic gold medalists and NCAA champions.
Speaker 1: And my husband and I said, well, where's the record board?
Speaker 1: Can we see how fast they were when they were younger?
Speaker 1: And this mother looked at us dead on, you know,
Speaker 1: didn't miss a beat, and said, we hid the record board.
Speaker 1: We were afraid it was going to hurt the kid's
Speaker 1: feelings and they would be you know, too discouraged to
Speaker 1: pursue it. So I actually went and commissioned the largest
Speaker 1: record board ever made for summer swimming. And what I
Speaker 1: found was that the kids were magnetized by it, and
Speaker 1: they were inspired by a record board, and so records
Speaker 1: started to get broken. It was actually really exciting to
Speaker 1: see what happens when you embed excellence and transparent standards.
Speaker 1: And then I brought all three men back. I found
Speaker 1: that it was a level of excitement that I hadn't
Speaker 1: seen in the team before. Because when everyone is the
Speaker 1: same and we can't celebrate excellence and there is no
Speaker 1: record board, what does that mean? How does anyone know
Speaker 1: if they're achieving? So I talk about the law of hunt,
Speaker 1: I talk about the tall Poppy syndrome. I talk about
Speaker 1: communities where we've actually or people have actually taken out
Speaker 1: the celebration of people really being excellent in Scandinavian countries
Speaker 1: and other situations where the tall Poppy syndrome exists. So
Speaker 1: I really took a look at this from a cultural
Speaker 1: perspective as well. Wow, you've said a lot of things
Speaker 1: just then that I could respond to, like ten things
Speaker 1: I could respond to. One of the first things you
Speaker 1: addressed was the meta analysis paper of measures of conscientiousness
Speaker 1: and GRIT and IQ predicting academic achievement, and the researchers
Speaker 1: it wasn't an argument they're making, it was data they're presenting.
Speaker 1: They found that when you do the genetic analysis, you
Speaker 1: find that the measure of grit, as it's currently measured
Speaker 1: doesn't add predictive value above and beyond measures of conscientiousness.
Speaker 1: But that's a measurement issue, and I think you know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. You clearly define grit. Let's put
Speaker 1: it this way. The way you define grit is clearly
Speaker 1: not well captured on a twelve item grit scale that
Speaker 1: Angela developed. I mean, there would be many kinds of
Speaker 1: like if you were creating your own grit scale, it
Speaker 1: would be different, which you probably are, would be different,
Speaker 1: And then therefore it's an open question scientifically whether your
Speaker 1: scale adds additional predictive value above and beyond existing measures
Speaker 1: of conscientiousness. And you may not even be interested in
Speaker 1: that question. You know, there's different things for different purposes.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're working as a coach and you're
Speaker 1: trying to help one on one someone, a certain language
Speaker 1: might be more motivating to that person. It might be
Speaker 1: more votivating to that person to say, Wow, I love
Speaker 1: the grit you've done, as opposed to I love your conscientiousness.
Speaker 1: So there's just all these complex issues. I don't think
Speaker 1: that their analysis was incorrect because it was a very
Speaker 1: well rigorous analysis. You're right, but they're about measure but
Speaker 1: it was about the scale, right, and it was about
Speaker 1: the measurement. I should have made that clear. What I
Speaker 1: should have clarified was that I was talking about the
Speaker 1: criticism of conscientiousness, which I've heard above and beyond his
Speaker 1: paper and what they presented, because I think even Angela
Speaker 1: said that even the way you look at the conscientiousness
Speaker 1: and the GRIT scale in the West Point Cadet research,
Speaker 1: that it was a very very small difference that it
Speaker 1: made above and beyond what they showed. So it was
Speaker 1: generally though, what I hear is people criticizing the definition
Speaker 1: and the measurement of conscientiousness as opposed to what are
Speaker 1: you really trying to capture with grit? So I think
Speaker 1: maybe her grid scale could be tweaked if she wanted
Speaker 1: to go about really further refining what good grit is.
Speaker 1: And she actually likes my book very very much because
Speaker 1: I did that, and she's been incredibly generous with her
Speaker 1: praise for what I did because one of the things
Speaker 1: that separates us is that she studies it and I
Speaker 1: help people cultivate it. So I think there's so much
Speaker 1: good work in academia that really needs to be brought
Speaker 1: out into the world and applied to real people. You know,
Speaker 1: what can you do with these findings? And what I
Speaker 1: tried to do was take what she had done and
Speaker 1: mix it in with what I know works with the
Speaker 1: human beings I know who want to get more not
Speaker 1: just more resilient, but they want to have something that
Speaker 1: is a passion of theirs that they will not regret
Speaker 1: not pursuing when they get older. So that's hark, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear you. One could argue that it'd be better
Speaker 1: instead of combining lots of seemingly separate things like passion,
Speaker 1: persevereance and resist that into a single word, that we
Speaker 1: should be treating these things separately from each other and
Speaker 1: then try to develop those things separately. That by reducing
Speaker 1: it all into a single construct, we lose the nuances
Speaker 1: of each individual thing. Now, how would you respond to that?
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, I interviewed Bob valorand about
Speaker 1: passion and his passion scale, and I've looked at doctor
Speaker 1: Keltner and aw and I mean, I've really looked at
Speaker 1: all of these things ensure you can unpack it to
Speaker 1: the point where it's granular. But I didn't see a
Speaker 1: lot of value in that when it came to real
Speaker 1: world people wanting to capture the kind of quality that
Speaker 1: I think makes the biggest difference. And I talk about
Speaker 1: baking the grit cake because there are books out there
Speaker 1: on passion, there are books out there on grit, and
Speaker 1: they're books out there on resilience, and they're books out
Speaker 1: there on awe. But I feel like you're going to
Speaker 1: be buying a million books to try to figure out
Speaker 1: how to pull together what I keep seeing makes the
Speaker 1: biggest difference. And what I'm really fascinated by is what
Speaker 1: I call ordinary grit, and it's people just doing extraordinary
Speaker 1: things in ordinary settings, and they have this requisite quality
Speaker 1: of humility. They're not selfie grit bragging about themselves. But
Speaker 1: what I found was that these were the people who
Speaker 1: I guess who would also fit the Positive Energizer research
Speaker 1: by Kim Cameron, who elevated the environment simply by virtue
Speaker 1: of being there and being role models of simply not
Speaker 1: being a whiner and you know, finishing the job and
Speaker 1: not requiring a lot of special attention from other people.
Speaker 1: So I have this great story of this guy, Heavin
Speaker 1: Downs at Harpeth High School in Tennessee, who lost his limbs.
Speaker 1: You know, he was in a horrible ied accident in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five overseas, and when he came back,
Speaker 1: he had been a three sport athlete in high school
Speaker 1: and he just wanted to have a purpose again. He
Speaker 1: wanted to feel useful, so he asked if he could
Speaker 1: cut the grass on the football field where he used
Speaker 1: to play football. And the most interesting thing happened, and
Speaker 1: ESBN covered this, which is how I found out about it.
Speaker 1: But boy did it make me think. The coach said
Speaker 1: that this fascinating thing happened when the players saw Kevin
Speaker 1: Downs just cutting the grass silently, back and forth with these,
Speaker 1: you know, prosthetic arms and legs, And he said, the
Speaker 1: kids stopped whining. They stopped whining about the heat, the
Speaker 1: two a days, how difficult it was, how much their
Speaker 1: bodies hurt. And it made me start to think about
Speaker 1: what if, you know, what if there was a real
Speaker 1: effort to find and embed people like that in a
Speaker 1: variety of settings, corporations, classrooms, just about anywhere where we
Speaker 1: need to elevate the quality of play in the sense
Speaker 1: of the quality of being exceptional, Because I really do
Speaker 1: think we've gotten away from that. And I do think
Speaker 1: there's just been far too much of an effort of
Speaker 1: trying to make everybody feel better without necessarily calling out
Speaker 1: and saluting the people who are exceptional in this way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's totally fair. What is selfie grit? Though? Selfie grit
Speaker 1: is one of the forms of bad grit that I
Speaker 1: identified that it's about people who actually do hard things,
Speaker 1: but they want everybody to notice them, they want everybody
Speaker 1: to pay attention to them, and they just brag. They
Speaker 1: relentlessly brag. So I've got, you know, stories in my
Speaker 1: book about people who just feel the need to overshadow
Speaker 1: other people's achievements by talking about themselves. And interesting because
Speaker 1: when you look at Jim Collins' book Good to Great
Speaker 1: about the best CEOs, what you find are the ones
Speaker 1: you know with the best results and you know turned
Speaker 1: around companies. They have this humility. So you find that
Speaker 1: selfie grit is not present when you have people who
Speaker 1: need to talk about themselves. And I find this it's
Speaker 1: really kind of interesting. I mean, I do think this
Speaker 1: whole selfie culture where people have to or feel compelled
Speaker 1: to put their relationships status or document everything they see
Speaker 1: or do and just want likes, I sell my kids
Speaker 1: being impacted by this. I do think it takes away
Speaker 1: the whole idea of noticing other people's accomplishments and celebrating
Speaker 1: other people, so you get away from this active, constructive
Speaker 1: responding when it's all about me all the time. So
Speaker 1: people lose the opportunity to just be that person. And
Speaker 1: then this faux grit. I mean, you see this in academia.
Speaker 1: The case is of people faking their research to get
Speaker 1: their PhD. I mean, I found all these interesting studies
Speaker 1: and articles about you know, this fake research and people
Speaker 1: being caught for it. But one of the most egregious
Speaker 1: examples of faux grit. Really, I can't believe people do this,
Speaker 1: But they are people men who go to flea markets
Speaker 1: and on eBay and they buy the Medal of Honor,
Speaker 1: which is our country's highest military honor. In credible. They
Speaker 1: don't just buy the medal, they freaking wear it in
Speaker 1: parades and they put it on their resume. There's an
Speaker 1: entire commission in our government to track these people down.
Speaker 1: When I wrote the book, I think there were only
Speaker 1: seventy eight currently living Medal of Honor winners. And the
Speaker 1: fact that people would want others to think that of
Speaker 1: them is just so disgusting to me. But now we
Speaker 1: have a president who actually said that he felt like
Speaker 1: he had actually gone to war and been under fire,
Speaker 1: and that he didn't need to actually be in a
Speaker 1: war because he'd gone to military school. Therefore he knew
Speaker 1: exactly what it was like to have courage under fire.
Speaker 1: So when you have that as your commander in chief,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can imagine how hard it is for
Speaker 1: people to think it's wrong to do that. Well, I
Speaker 1: just want to know this medal of honor I'm wearing
Speaker 1: around my neck right now, it's real. This is real. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can you see mine in my hair? Yeah? I see it?
Speaker 1: Ours is real? Okay, Yeah, but screw those fakers. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's fall. There's fall. Who pho like the Korean food?
Speaker 1: Like the Korean food? No? No, not like the creative food. Okay.
Speaker 1: So here's another controversial question, when to grit and when
Speaker 1: to quit? That's become like everyone's saying to asking that
Speaker 1: question these days. It feels like, yeah, I mean, so
Speaker 1: I address this and creating your best life before I
Speaker 1: dug too deep into grit, Because I think there is
Speaker 1: a fine line between quetting and being gritty, and I
Speaker 1: think this requires knowing the difference between when you're hurting
Speaker 1: yourself or hurting other people. And so there is research
Speaker 1: that I have in creating your best life. I can't
Speaker 1: remember if I slipped it into getting grit, but you know,
Speaker 1: when you continue to pursue goals that no longer are
Speaker 1: relevant to who you are, and the situation is such
Speaker 1: that it's like someone who wants to be an Olympic gymnast,
Speaker 1: but suddenly they become five to eleven. I read some
Speaker 1: research showing that you actually compromise your immune system by
Speaker 1: continuing to do something that simply doesn't fit your life
Speaker 1: any longer. And one of the things I find again
Speaker 1: I keep going back to humility, is that the people
Speaker 1: who know the difference are the ones who actually have
Speaker 1: like a peanut gallery around them or a board of advisors,
Speaker 1: and they listen, they listen to their feedback, and they ask,
Speaker 1: you know, is this something I should reconsider. You see
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs who have stupid grit, who keep throwing good money
Speaker 1: after bad and they don't know when to disengage from
Speaker 1: their product. And yet you know, you see Google X
Speaker 1: now paying people to stop you know, the projects that
Speaker 1: they say have no longer they don't appear to be viable,
Speaker 1: or they'll be too expensive. So I think Google x
Speaker 1: has found a really interesting way to have the moonshot
Speaker 1: dreams and pursue these huge goals. But they've also found
Speaker 1: a way to cut their losses and reward people for
Speaker 1: knowing the difference between pursuing something and then saying, you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to quit now because it's just not the
Speaker 1: right time and it's causing more damage than actually being good.
Speaker 1: You know. I have a great quote in the book
Speaker 1: from the tennis player Serena Williams, who has, you know,
Speaker 1: seen this in herself. And of course a lot of athletes,
Speaker 1: top athletes are really driven. Got some great stories about
Speaker 1: good and bad Gritten in the book. But Serena Williams
Speaker 1: has recognized this inability in herself to know when to
Speaker 1: quit and when to push, and so she has told
Speaker 1: the people around her, whom she knows believe in her,
Speaker 1: support her and have her best interests at heart, that
Speaker 1: they need to tell her when it's time to get
Speaker 1: off the tennis quarter. She'll play through injury. And the
Speaker 1: great quote I have is she said, there's no control
Speaker 1: all delete button in my brain. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to stop, so I have to trust other people. So
Speaker 1: it's very interesting. You know, people with this authentic grit,
Speaker 1: they have two kinds of humility. They have social humility
Speaker 1: and intellectual humility, and so they seek out people who actually,
Speaker 1: you know, have the information or the knowledge or the
Speaker 1: foresight that they lack about themselves. So I think it's
Speaker 1: a variety of things you have to look at. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think we air more on the side
Speaker 1: of quitting than we do and persisting. And I'm particularly
Speaker 1: interested in people learning how to be a little bit
Speaker 1: more resilient and gritty then learning how to disengage. Although
Speaker 1: that's certainly a problem that is out there. I definitely
Speaker 1: hear that as a common thread across a lot of
Speaker 1: this interview is your frustration at that, So I totally
Speaker 1: I hear it. It's a lot and clear. So I
Speaker 1: want to leave you know, my audience they love practical
Speaker 1: and you're what a great opportunity you're are a certified
Speaker 1: professional coach. Could you leave our listeners a little bit
Speaker 1: with what they can start doing today to grow their grit?
Speaker 1: Thank you for asking me that. I believe a lot
Speaker 1: in the best Possible Future Self exercise. I've seen Jordan
Speaker 1: Peterson's work with Maps of Meaning. Are you familiar with
Speaker 1: his work his little online profile. I actually love that book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh okay, great, so you know about that? So you know,
Speaker 1: I think he's done this fascinating mixture of goal setting
Speaker 1: and identifying obstacles and fixed and growth, mindset and strengths
Speaker 1: and all the rest of it. But I think at
Speaker 1: the heart is who do you want to be? Not
Speaker 1: what do you want to do? Who do you want
Speaker 1: to become? And so I'm a big believer in just
Speaker 1: asking people to take some time and think about what's
Speaker 1: my best possible future self? Who do I want to
Speaker 1: be in five or ten years. So I have that
Speaker 1: available as a free download on my site, Caroline Miller
Speaker 1: dot com, just because I think everyone should have it.
Speaker 1: I also believe that people need to take a look
Speaker 1: at who's around them, who's taking the oxygen in the
Speaker 1: rooms where they are, because women in particular don't identify
Speaker 1: quickly enough the black holes in their lives. And so
Speaker 1: there's this great research showing that eighty four percent of
Speaker 1: women admit to having frenemies, you know, friends who are
Speaker 1: enemies who are passive aggressive or active destructive or whatever
Speaker 1: you want to say, but they're not supportive of their goals.
Speaker 1: So you need to have goals shielding. And that's a
Speaker 1: great part of the goal setting research. You have to
Speaker 1: shield your goals from people who are going to diminish
Speaker 1: you or make fun of you. So I think you
Speaker 1: have to take a look at who are the people
Speaker 1: around you and how supportive are they, and how do
Speaker 1: you know they're supportive. So I love the active constructive
Speaker 1: or they're curious and enthusiastic or not. I also encourage
Speaker 1: people to play a little bit biggers. That's lock and
Speaker 1: lath them. You know, set hard goals, not just you know,
Speaker 1: low goals or goals you're sure you'll accomplish, but take
Speaker 1: those kinds of risks with those big goals because people
Speaker 1: just feel better. The University of San Francisco has this
Speaker 1: great research at the end of every day, people scan
Speaker 1: their days for what they're proud of. And the things
Speaker 1: we're proud of are the things we did outside of
Speaker 1: our comfort zone. And I followed Jessica Tracy's research around
Speaker 1: authentic self esteem, and I think that you have to
Speaker 1: go out of your comfort zone on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: I've spoken at colleges where I talk about this, and
Speaker 1: I'll ask the audience call it, you know, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: twenty two year old, how many of you did something
Speaker 1: hard today? Nobody raises their hand. Nobody, And when I
Speaker 1: dig in, they say, we don't have to do hard.
Speaker 1: We pick our courses based on how late we can sleep,
Speaker 1: you know, the gray we find somebody who's an easy greater.
Speaker 1: So I think it's more easy than I thought it
Speaker 1: was to actually go through your day without doing something hard.
Speaker 1: So do something hard. But I also think you should
Speaker 1: have fun in the process. I mean, my license plate
Speaker 1: is we have fun, because I will remind myself constantly.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need to be this, you know, slog through
Speaker 1: the desert where you're miserable all the time. But I
Speaker 1: believe that you have to also give to others because
Speaker 1: in my twelve step group where I overcame my eating
Speaker 1: disorder and also gave up alcohol, I kept hearing you
Speaker 1: can't keep what you don't give away. And I think
Speaker 1: people who come up or come together with this you know,
Speaker 1: mixture of grit and optimism and the rest of it
Speaker 1: turn around helps somebody else. I don't get dragged down
Speaker 1: by other people who don't want it, but make sure
Speaker 1: that you're reaching your hand out to somebody else and
Speaker 1: making a difference in someone else's life. I love that.
Speaker 1: And you know, being next door to Angela Duckworth's lab,
Speaker 1: I hear her talk a lot about grit. For a
Speaker 1: lot of people may not know this, but she often
Speaker 1: used it in the same phrases pro social purpose. A
Speaker 1: lot of people don't realize, like that's really what she's
Speaker 1: focused on a lot I know. So look, I want
Speaker 1: to thank you today for your fresh take on GRIT.
Speaker 1: I think Angel's proud of you for a reason. It's
Speaker 1: you're not just creating her theory and putting out a book.
Speaker 1: This is how science, this is how the world works.
Speaker 1: People extend things, they move it in other directions, different populations,
Speaker 1: et cetera. It's your book adds a lot of value
Speaker 1: and I wish it well. Thank you. We'll Live Happy
Speaker 1: magazine said it it's one of the ten books that'll
Speaker 1: change your life in twenty seventeen, and I thought that
Speaker 1: was just one of the kindest things that could have said.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate your time because I say, I'm a
Speaker 1: huge fan. You have brilliant people on I just I
Speaker 1: still can't get over the podcast I listened to where
Speaker 1: you talked about Adoppelganger. You know the goal of that
Speaker 1: particular kabalistic religion was to create a doppelganger in the
Speaker 1: twelfth century that you would ask about your future. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you remember that, but I was driving
Speaker 1: to pitt and I just remember going what out loud
Speaker 1: to myself and I rewound. I was like, you got
Speaker 1: you have the most interesting interviews and guests. I have
Speaker 1: to say, so honored to be on this now. Now
Speaker 1: you're in that, you're in that group. I'm in the
Speaker 1: circle of the circle most interesting parents, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for listening
Speaker 1: to The Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I
Speaker 1: hope you found this episode just as thought provoking as
Speaker 1: I did. If something you heard today stimulated you in
Speaker 1: some way, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 1: at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast
Speaker 1: dot com.