Grit (27 page)

The scientific research is very clear that experiencing trauma without control can be debilitating. But I also worry about people who cruise through life, friction-free, for a long, long time before encountering their first real failure. They have so little practice falling and getting up again. They have so many reasons to stick with a fixed mindset.

I see a lot of invisibly vulnerable high-achievers stumble in young adulthood and struggle to get up again. I call them the “fragile perfects.” Sometimes I meet fragile perfects in my office after a midterm or a final. Very quickly, it becomes clear that these bright and wonderful people know how to succeed but not how to fail.

Last year, I kept in touch with a freshman at Penn named Kayvon Asemani. Kayvon has the sort of résumé that might make you worry he’s a fragile perfect: valedictorian of his high school class, student body president, star athlete . . . the list goes on.

But I assure you that Kayvon is the very embodiment of growth mindset and optimism. We met when he was a senior at the
Milton Hershey School, a tuition-free boarding school originally established by chocolatier Milton Hershey for orphan boys and, to this day, a haven for children from severely disadvantaged backgrounds. Kayvon and his siblings ended up at Hershey just before Kayvon entered the fifth grade—one year after his father nearly strangled his mother to death, leaving her in a permanent coma.

At Hershey, Kayvon thrived. He discovered a passion for music,
playing the trombone in two school bands. And he discovered leadership, giving speeches to state politicians, creating a student-run school news website, chairing committees that raised tens of thousands of dollars for charity, and in his senior year, serving as student body president.

In January, Kayvon emailed to let me know how his first semester had gone. “I finished the first semester with a 3.5,” he wrote. “Three A’s and one C. I’m not completely satisfied with it. I know what I did right to get the A’s and I know what I did wrong to get the C.”

As for his poorest grade? “That C in Economics caught up to me because I was in a hole from my conflicted thoughts about this place and whether I fit in. . . . I can definitely do better than a 3.5, and a 4.0 is not out of the question. My first semester mentality was that I have a lot to learn from these kids. My new mentality is that I have a lot to teach them.”

The spring semester wasn’t exactly smooth sailing, either. Kayvon earned a bunch of A’s but didn’t do nearly as well as he’d hoped in his two quantitative courses. We talked, briefly, about the option of transferring out of Wharton, Penn’s highly competitive business school, and I pointed out that there was no shame in switching into a different major. Kayvon was having none of it.

Here’s an excerpt from his email to me in June: “Numbers and executing quantitative concepts have always been difficult for me. But I embrace the challenge, and I’m going to apply all the grit I have to improving myself and making myself better, even if it means graduating with a GPA less than what I would have earned if I just majored in something that didn’t require me to manipulate numbers.”

I have no doubt that Kayvon will keep getting up, time and again,
always learning and growing.

Collectively, the evidence I’ve presented tells the following story: A fixed mindset about ability leads to pessimistic explanations of
adversity, and that, in turn, leads to both giving up on challenges and avoiding them in the first place. In contrast, a growth mindset leads to optimistic ways of explaining adversity, and that, in turn, leads to perseverance and seeking out new challenges that will ultimately make you even stronger.

My recommendation for teaching yourself hope is to take each step in the sequence above and ask,
What can I do to boost this one?

My first suggestion in that regard is to
update your beliefs about intelligence and talent
.

When Carol and her collaborators try to convince people that intelligence, or any other talent, can improve with effort, she starts by explaining the brain. For instance, she recounts a study published in the top scientific journal
Nature
that tracked adolescent brain development. Many of the adolescents in this study
increased their IQ scores from age fourteen, when the study started, to age eighteen, when it concluded. This fact—that IQ scores are not entirely fixed over a person’s life span—usually comes as a surprise. What’s more, Carol continues, these same adolescents showed sizable changes in brain structure: “Those who got better at math skills strengthened the areas of the brain related to math, and the same was true for English skills.”

Carol also explains that the brain is remarkably adaptive. Like a muscle that gets stronger with use, the brain changes itself when you struggle to master a new challenge. In fact, there’s never a time in life when the brain is completely “fixed.” Instead, all our lives, our neurons retain the potential to grow new connections with one another and to
strengthen the ones we already have. What’s more, throughout adulthood, we maintain the
ability to grow myelin, a sort of insulating sheath that protects neurons and speeds signals traveling between them.

My next suggestion is to
practice optimistic self-talk
.

The link between cognitive behavioral therapy and learned helplessness led to the development of “
resilience training.” In essence, this interactive curriculum is a preventative dose of
cognitive behavioral therapy. In one study, children who completed this training showed lower levels of pessimism and developed fewer symptoms of depression over the next two years. In a similar study, pessimistic college students demonstrated less anxiety over the subsequent two years and less depression over three years.

If, reading this chapter, you recognize yourself as an extreme pessimist, my advice is to find a cognitive behavioral therapist. I know how unsatisfying this recommendation might sound. Many years ago, as a teenager, I wrote to Dear Abby about a problem I was having. “Go see a therapist,” she wrote back. I recall tearing up her letter, angry she didn’t propose a neater, faster, more straightforward solution. Nevertheless, suggesting that reading twenty pages about the science of hope is enough to remove an ingrained pessimistic bias would be naive. There’s much more to say about cognitive behavioral therapy and resilience training than I can summarize here.

The point is that you can, in fact, modify your self-talk, and you can learn to not let it interfere with you moving toward your goals. With practice and guidance, you can change the way you think, feel, and, most important, act when the going gets rough.

As a transition to the final section of this book, “Growing Grit from the Outside In,” let me offer one final suggestion for teaching yourself hope:
Ask for a helping hand
.

A few years ago, I met a retired mathematician named Rhonda Hughes. Nobody in Rhonda’s family had gone to college, but as a girl,
she liked math a whole lot more than stenography. Rhonda eventually earned a PhD in mathematics and, after seventy-nine of her eighty applications for a faculty position were rejected, she took a job at the single university that made her an offer.

One reason Rhonda got in touch was to tell me that she had an issue with an item on the Grit Scale. “I don’t like that item that says, ‘Setbacks don’t discourage me.’ That makes no sense. I mean, who doesn’t get discouraged by setbacks? I certainly do. I think it should say, ‘Setbacks don’t discourage me
for long. I get back on my feet
.’ ”

Of course, Rhonda was right, and in so many words, I changed the item accordingly.

But the most important thing about Rhonda’s story is that she almost never got back up all by herself. Instead, she figured out that asking for help was a good way to hold on to hope.

Here’s just one of the stories she told me: “I had this mentor who knew, even before I did, that I was going to be a mathematician. It all started when I’d done very poorly on one of his tests, and I went to his office and cried. All of a sudden, he jumped up out of his chair and, without a word, ran out of the room. When, finally, he came back he said, ‘Young lady, you should go to graduate school in mathematics. But you’re taking all of the wrong courses.’ And he had all of the courses I
should
have been taking mapped out, and the personal promises of other faculty that they’d help.”

About twenty years ago, Rhonda cofounded the EDGE Program with Sylvia Bozeman, a fellow mathematician. EDGE stands for Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education, and its mission is to support women and minority students pursuing doctoral training in mathematics. “People assume you have to have some special talent to do mathematics,” Sylvia has said. “They think you’re either born with it, or you’re not. But Rhonda and I keep saying, ‘You actually
develop
the ability to do mathematics.
Don’t give up
!’ ”

“There have been so many times in my career when I wanted to pack it in, when I wanted to give up and do something easier,” Rhonda told me. “But there was always someone who, in one way or another, told me to keep going. I think everyone needs somebody like that. Don’t you?”

I
. There’s an expression in sports: “Race your strengths and train your weaknesses.” I agree with the wisdom of this adage, but I also think it’s important that people recognize that skills improve with practice.

Part III

GROWING GRIT FROM THE OUTSIDE IN

Chapter 10

PARENTING FOR GRIT

What can I do to encourage grit in the people I care for?

I’m asked this question at least once a day.

Sometimes it’s a coach who asks; sometimes it’s an entrepreneur or a CEO. Last week, it was a fourth-grade teacher, and the week before, a math professor at a community college. I’ve had army generals and navy admirals toss me this question, too, but most often it’s a mother or father who worries that their child isn’t close to realizing their potential.

All the people quizzing me are thinking as parents would, of course—even if they’re
not
parents. The word
parenting
derives from Latin and means “to bring forth.” You’re acting in a parentlike way if you’re asking for guidance on how to best bring forth interest, practice, purpose, and hope in the people you care for.

When I turn the tables and ask people for their own intuitions on how to “parent for grit,” I get different answers.

Some believe grit is forged in the crucible of adversity. Others are quick to paraphrase Nietzsche: “What doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger.”
I
Such invocations conjure an image of scowling mothers and fathers dispensing endless criticism on the sidelines of games that had better be victories, or chaining their children to the piano bench or violin stand, or grounding them for the sin of an A–.

This perspective assumes that offering loving support and demanding high standards are two ends of a continuum, with the authoritarian parents of the gritty far to the right of center.