Angela Duckworth

Nobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is. ”

If you're never able to tolerate a little bit of pain and discomfort, you'll never get better. ”

I think that is just a limitation of any questionnaire - that we apply a frame of reference or standard. It's a well-known finding in psychology that when people are total beginners at a skill, they tend to overrate their skill level. They don't know what they don't know. The more expert you are, the more critical you become. ”

I'm so much more gratified by my life now that I have an expertise. I wake up every day thinking about a fairly small set of scientific questions all related to the psychology of achievement, and I'll never get bored of those questions. That's something I couldn't say to you when I was 22 or 25 or probably even 31. ”

I didn't tell my kids, 'You have to play viola, and you have to play piano.' They chose these things on their own, and I don't think we have to give kids every choice, but we do have to give them some choice because that autonomy is crucial for fostering passion. ”

It is important to realize that the process of 'fostering' a passion takes trial and error. It takes experience; you cannot do it all in your head. And it takes a long time. ”

What we reliably find is that people's perseverance scores are actually higher than their passion scores, and I think it really does get to the fact that working hard is hard, but maybe finding your passion is even more difficult. ”

One thing that's true of gritty people is they love what they do, and they keep loving what they do. So they're not just in love for a day or a week. People who are really gritty - they're still interested. ”

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. ”

If you are a young person who is wanting to develop a passion, you cannot expect anyone else to tell you what that passion would be. ”