Be More Gritty

 Be More Gritty

    In this Ted Talk, Angela Lee Duckworth argues that "grit," or "passion and perseverance for extremely long-term goals," is an essential predictor of success. This trait is more crucial for success than talent or intelligence (IQ) among school-aged pupils, military cadets, salespeople, teachers working in complex regions, and other circumstances. Angela Lee Duckworth realized that "IQ was not the sole difference between the best and the worst children" after quitting a high-powered position to work as a public school teacher in the New York City Public Schools. "After many years, I came to the opinion that what we need in education is a far greater knowledge of pupils and learning from a motivational perspective, from a psychological standpoint," Angela says. What if your ability to succeed in school and in life depends on far more than your capacity to learn quickly and easily? she posed as her first query. These inquiries brought her to graduate school, where she specialized as a psychologist. She examined children and adults in a wide range of difficult situations to ascertain who succeeded and why. One feature "emerged as a significant predictor of success" across these varied circumstances. This quality was grit rather than "social intelligence, excellent beauty, physical health, or IQ."

    Angela defines grit as “having stamina” and focusing on pursuing your future goals and sticking with those beyond a few weeks or months. Instead, gritty people stick with their goals for years, “working really hard to make that future happen.” They see life “as a marathon, not a sprint.” How do we keep students motivated? is one of the questions Angela hears the most. Unfortunately, the solution is still a mystery, although it is clear that bright kids are not usually hard workers. In fact, she claims that there are "many talented kids who just don't keep their promises. According to our statistics, assessments of talent and grit are either unrelated or indirectly correlated.

    What I really liked about the Ted Talk is that she ends the speech with advice to help us become more gritty. Angela states, " So growth mindset Is a great idea for building grit. But we need more. And that's where I'm going to end my remarks because that's where we are. That's the work that stands before us. We need to take our best ideas and our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we've been successful, and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, and to start over again with lessons learned." Lastly, she ends the talk with a great sentence. Angela quotes, "we need to be gritty about getting our kids grittier." This is a piece of great advice that will help all parents raising their children to become the best they can be.