Top 71 Quotes & Sayings by Angela Duckworth - Page 2

Some of the things we do are great, but they often have these iterations that are not great. We screw up sometimes. We get rejected.

As our knees and hips and eyesight deteriorate, we become more dependable, less impulsive, kinder, and less moody. Psychologists call this the maturity principle. My own life experience fits this principle to a T.

Gritty people train at the edge of their comfort zone. They zero in on one narrow aspect of their performance and set a stretch goal to improve it.

Negative feelings are typical of learning, and you shouldn't feel like you're stupid when you're frustrated doing something. You might say to yourself, 'I can't do this,' but you should say, 'That's great.' That means you really have the potential to learn something there.

There's something about taking the path of least resistance that makes a lot of sense. But at the same time, we have to figure out which things in life are worth struggling through.

The most important thing parents can do, although it's not the only thing they should do, is model the behavior they want from their kids.

I don't think that every child in America is going to necessarily aspire to, you know, a four-year degree from a liberal arts college or a certain kind of life. I think that people should learn to be excellent in the thing that they choose to do.

If the quality and quantity of continuous effort toward goals matters as much as I think it does, we may actually get more productive, not less, as we get older - even if we can't pull all-nighters like we used to.

I think the questions on the grit scale about not letting setbacks disappoint you, finishing what you begin, doing things with focus, I think that those are things I would aspire to or hope for for all our children.

Is it 'a drag' that passions don't come to us all at once, as epiphanies, without the need to actively develop them? Maybe. But the reality is that our early interests are fragile, vaguely defined, and in need of energetic, years-long cultivation and refinement.

Many, many individuals will report starting to form their lifelong interests around adolescence. Why that is, researchers don't fully know. But if you can take a trip down memory lane and see what interested you, that's at least a clue as to where your interest may begin to develop.