Why Grit Isn’t Always Enough with Angela Duckworth

What if grit isn’t the whole story behind success? Psychologist and author Angela Duckworth joins Brené Brown and Adam Grant to talk about her new book, Situated, and how the situations around us influence our behavior, motivation, creativity, and success. They unpack situational awareness, the paradox of self-control, and why willpower can be an unreliable tool for change. Angela also shares practical ways to shape your environment, reduce friction around your goals, and decide whether to keep going versus change course. Together, they explore how becoming more intentional about our surroundings, relationships, and support systems is often more powerful than simply trying harder. Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best - Angela Duckworth, 2026, Scribner (author's book page) Situated Preface (excerpt) - Angela Duckworth, 2026, web excerpt with audiobook sample, angeladuckworth.com Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance - Angela Duckworth, 2016, Scribner Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals - Angela Duckworth, Christopher Peterson, Michael Matthews & Dennis Kelly, 2007, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Too Much of a Good Thing: The Challenge and Opportunity of the Inverted U - Adam Grant & Barry Schwartz, 2011, Perspectives on Psychological Science Situational Strategies for Self-Control - Angela Duckworth, Tamar Szabó Gendler & James Gross, 2016, Perspectives on Psychological Science Beyond Willpower: Strategies for Reducing Failures of Self-Control - Angela Duckworth, Katherine Milkman & David Laibson, 2018, Psychological Science in the Public Interest Oxford Essential Quotations (George Bernard Shaw entry) - Susan Ratcliffe (ed.), 2018, reference-work entry, Oxford Reference / Oxford University Press Maxims for Revolutionists - George Bernard Shaw, 1903; Project Gutenberg edition 2008, public-domain e-text, Project Gutenberg Figure This: Deciding What's Figure, What's Ground - Adelson, 2002, Monitor on Psychology (American Psychological Association) LinkedIn post on situations - Angela Duckworth, 2025, social-media post, LinkedIn The Four Essential Elements of Successful Situations - Duckworth, 2026, book excerpt (online article), Knowledge at Wharton Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit - Brené Brown, 2025, Random House Angela Duckworth on Her New Book, ‘Grit’ Controversy, and Parenting in a Digital Age - Fiorillo, 2026, Philadelphia Magazine Rethinking Rumination - Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Blair Wisco & Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2008, Perspectives on Psychological Science Self-Focused Attention and Negative Affect: A Meta-Analysis - Nilly Mor & Jennifer Winquist, 2002, Psychological Bulletin Situated Scorecard - Angela Duckworth, 2026, interactive self-assessment (web page), angeladuckworth.com Situated Scorecard Handout - Angela Duckworth, 2026, PDF handout, angeladuckworth.com Self-Control and SAT Outcomes: Evidence from Two National Field Studies - Chayce Baldwin, Kyla Haimovitz, Priya Shankar, Robert Gallop, David Yeager, James Gross & Angela Duckworth, 2022, PLOS ONE Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert Cialdini, 2021; first published 1984, Harper Business (author's organization site) As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7 - William Shakespeare, c. 1599, Folger Shakespeare Library More Than Resisting Temptation: Beneficial Habits Mediate the Relationship Between Self-Control and Positive Life Outcomes - Brian Galla & Angela Duckworth, 2015, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Wendy Wood – Publications - Wendy Wood, faculty web page, USC Dornsife Habits in Everyday Life: Thought, Emotion, and Action - Wendy Wood, Jeffrey Quinn & Deborah Kashy, 2002, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Asaf Mazar - Asaf Mazar, personal website Alistair Brownlee | The Greatest to Ever Do It - World Triathlon, 2024, video, YouTube The Paradox of a Pair of Clocks. The Magic of Chronos and Kairos or Why I Wear Two Watches! - Brené Brown, 2026, social-media post (from an AMA), LinkedIn / The Curiosity Shop Quote Origin: Between Stimulus and Response There Is a Space. In That Space Is Our Power To Choose Our Response - O'Toole, 2018, Quote Investigator The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment - Eckhart Tolle, 1997, Namaste Publishing / New World Library (author site) 32% of Americans Have a Tattoo, Including 22% Who Have More Than One - Schaeffer & Dinesh, 2023, short-read survey report, Pew Research Center Prepared Environment - Association Montessori Internationale, glossary entry, AMI glossary Understanding the Three-Year Cycle in Montessori - Maria Rodriguez, web article, The Montessori Foundation Piagetian Theory - American Psychological Association, dictionary entry, APA Dictionary of Psychology For the Fun of It: Harnessing Immediate Rewards to Increase Persistence in Long-Term Goals - Kaitlin Woolley & Ayelet Fishbach, 2016, Journal of Consumer Research Mask-Wearing Needs to Be Easy, Understood and Expected - Duckworth, Ungar & Emanuel, 2020, op-ed reprint, Penn Almanac (original in The New York Times) Everyday Temptations: An Experience Sampling Study of Desire, Conflict, and Self-Control - Wilhelm Hofmann, Roy Baumeister, Georg Förster & Kathleen Vohs, 2012, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Trait Self-Control and the Avoidance of Temptation - Michael Ent, Roy Baumeister & Dianne Tice, 2015, Personality and Individual Differences More Than Resisting Temptation: Beneficial Habits Mediate the Relationship Between Self-Control and Positive Life Outcomes - Brian Galla & Angela Duckworth, 2015, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology The Myth of Self-Control - Resnick, 2016, Vox The Power of Vulnerability - Brené Brown, 2010, TED Talk (video), TEDxHouston / TED Beyond Grit: The Science of Creativity, Purpose, and Motivation - Grant & Duckworth, 2016, published conversation, Next Big Idea Club Magazine Knee-Deep in the Big Muddy: A Study of Escalating Commitment to a Chosen Course of Action - Barry Staw, 1976, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance Hope (Psychology) - EBSCO, encyclopedia-style research overview, EBSCO Research Starters 'Grit' and Circumstance: Bestselling Author Angela Duckworth Brings Her Wisdom to BYU - Walch, 2023, Deseret News The Four Essential Elements of Successful Situations - Duckworth, 2026, book excerpt (online article), Knowledge at Wharton Workspace Disorder Does Not Influence Creativity and Executive Functions - Alberto Manzi, Yana Durmysheva, Shannon Pinegar, Andrew Rogers & Justine Ramos, 2019, Frontiers in Psychology A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder - Eric Abrahamson & David Freedman, 2007, Little, Brown (Goodreads listing) Physical Order Produces Healthy Choices, Generosity, and Conventionality, Whereas Disorder Produces Creativity - Kathleen Vohs, Joseph Redden & Ryan Rahinel, 2013, Psychological Science Documenting Anne Lamott - SFGate / San Francisco Chronicle (no byline), SFGate Genius of the AND - Jim Collins, concept page (with excerpts from Built to Last), JimCollins.com Self-Control and Grit: Related but Separable Determinants of Success - Angela Duckworth & James Gross, 2014, Current Directions in Psychological Science A Psychometric Evaluation of the Short Grit Scale - Oscar Gonzalez, Jessica Canning, Heather Smyth & David MacKinnon, 2020, European Journal of Psychological Assessment In 'Situated,' Angela Duckworth, the Author of 'Grit,' Does an About-Face - O'Gieblyn, 2026, The New Yorker How Willpower Wasn't: The Truth About Ego Depletion - Danvers, 2020, blog post ('How Do You Know?'), Psychology Today A Multisite Preregistered Paradigmatic Test of the Ego-Depletion Effect - Kathleen Vohs and colleagues, 2021, Psychological Science The Impact of Sleep Interventions on Athletic Performance: A Systematic Review - Lúcio Cunha and colleagues, 2023, Sports Medicine – Open The Attentional Cost of Receiving a Cell Phone Notification - Cary Stothart, Ainsley Mitchum & Courtney Yehnert, 2015, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance Wear Eye Protection When Playing Pickleball - Reena Mukamal, patient-education web article, American Academy of Ophthalmology Breaking Up with Perfectionism - Adam Grant with Eric Best, 2022, podcast episode, WorkLife with Adam Grant / TED Audio Collective Adam Grant on How to Reach New Heights - Wharton Magazine (no byline), 2023, Wharton Magazine Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things - Adam Grant, 2023, Viking (Penguin Random House page) Learn more about your ad choices. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:16Brené Brown?

  Hi there, Adam.

• 1:17Adam Grant?

  Hey, Brene.

• 1:18Brené Brown?

  Just have to ask you, did you, as a Michigan fan, did you catch the UT OSU game?

• 1:26Adam Grant?

  I have never rooted so hard for UT, ever.

• 1:30Brené Brown?

  Let's go. Talking about grit, which we are talking about today, and talking about the situation of 100,000 fans in DKR Stadium. What a game.

• 1:41Adam Grant?

  I felt much better about that, actually, than the Michigan victory squeaked out in an extra second that I'm not sure we deserved.

• 1:48Brené Brown?

  Oh, God. Let me just tell you this. I thought of you when, at the UT game, they panned to a guy who had your Michigan hat on. I think the one that's probably you wear sometimes. And then he just had a T-shirt that said, "I'm not a Longhorn, I'm just here to hate-watch OSU." And I was like, wow, that's a commitment to hating OSU, man.

• 2:12Adam Grant?

  I'm getting that shirt.

• 2:13Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 2:14Adam Grant?

  My uncle had a bumper sticker on his car growing up. He's a huge Wolverine fan. And it said something like, "Drive south until you smell it, and then east until you step in it."

• 2:28Brené Brown?

  What is that? What's that? I guess it's like the UT A&M or OU hate. It's just so deep. Okay, I am very excited for Angela Duckworth today. And we're talking about her new book, Situated. I'm stoked. This was a hard book for me.

• 2:44Adam Grant?

  I think it's a really important book. And I read a whole bunch of early drafts. Angela's been one of my closest colleagues and friends for two decades now. And I think she makes everyone around her better. It's such a privilege to have her at my school, in my life. And we could go inside baseball very quickly.

• 3:05Brené Brown?

  Oh, I bet y'all could nerd out.

• 3:06Adam Grant?

  There's a danger that we would speak in code.

• 3:08Brené Brown?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:09Adam Grant?

  So I think you should run the show on this one. And I'll jump in where irrelevant.

• 3:13Brené Brown?

  I'll do it. Yeah, I mean, you know, I have 742 questions. And I need a lot of personal therapy and help. So, great, I'll run the show, you jump in. Because I do have a lot of questions for her around... Well, let's talk about who she is first. She's a psychologist and a professor who researches motivation and achievement. And I'm reading this from the prologue because I thought this was a great... We'll put her formal bio on the Curiosity Shop website. But this is a really great way to think about her work. She writes that she's a psychologist and professor who researches motivation and achievement. She began her career studying remarkably successful people. After a decade of study, she took a six-month sabbatical and did her very best, she said, to write their stories in her book, Grit,

• 3:57Brené Brown?

  which summed up everything that she knew about passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Another decade has passed now. And in that time, she's turned her attention from the psychological profiles of high achievers to a different common denominator, the strikingly similar features of their situations. In other words, her curiosity has taken her from what goes on inside the minds of high achievers to everything and everyone around them. Which, what a cool move.

• 4:30Adam Grant?

  Oh, it's so important. It's like the missing piece of the grit puzzle. And I'm excited to talk to her about, what are the kinds of situations to select ourselves into? And then what do we do to change our situation to try to bring out the best in us and those around us?

• 4:47Brené Brown?

  I can't wait. And I'll just be, I'll confess that I read this from a research perspective as someone who studies courage and vulnerability. But I cried like seven times in reading the book. Like, it was really personal. So I'm excited to tell her thank you and frick you. Because in equal measure, it was tough. It was so insightful and also hard. Let's jump in.

• 5:08Brené Brown?

  Welcome to The Curiosity Shop.

• 5:09Adam Grant?

  A show from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 5:17Brené Brown?

  Angela Duckworth, you are in a shit-ton of trouble with me.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  Are we gonna beef?

• 5:23Brené Brown?

  We're gonna beef.

• 5:24Speaker 04

  Okay, let's go.

• 5:26Adam Grant?

  I'm ready to moderate.

• 5:27Speaker 04

  I don't know about what, but like, sure.

• 5:29Brené Brown?

  Okay. This is what I've decided is my six words to describe your new book.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 5:36Brené Brown?

  You ready?

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:38Brené Brown?

  Incite, full, painful, and hopeful.

• 5:44Speaker 04

  That's good. Wait, is that six?

• 5:45Adam Grant?

  I counted three.

• 5:46Brené Brown?

  No, I'm saying incite, period, full.

• 5:48Speaker 04

  Yes, okay, got you.

• 5:50Brené Brown?

  Pain, full.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  Definitely painful.

• 5:53Brené Brown?

  Hope, full.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  I hope so.

• 5:56Brené Brown?

  Yeah, so it is full of, for me, it was full of incredible insight, incredible hopefulness, but it was also a little painful.

• 6:03Speaker 04

  Tell me more about the painful part. I wonder what you mean. I have my own version of this, but...

• 6:10Adam Grant?

  I witnessed it.

• 6:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, Adam kind of knows more about the journey that was not straight or sure.

• 6:18Brené Brown?

  Well, first of all, I have to say that this is going to be our next organization-wide read.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  Oh, what? I didn't know that.

• 6:26Brené Brown?

  Yeah, no, I think it's a game changer. And I do not think at all that it is an about-face from grit. I think it is a yes and from grit. I went too far down the grit road, even despite your warnings.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  You are very gritty, Brene. And I wonder whether, you know, some of our strengths, and I say our, meaning maybe you and I share similar strengths, common strengths, maybe they, you know, get us into trouble? Do you mean by that that you've always worked your ass off? And that's gotten you really far? And now I'm projecting. Right now, I'm telling you my story. But I'm wondering what you mean.

• 7:08Brené Brown?

  No, it's a direct hit. Let's start with this. Here's a sentence for me, that grit is one thing, a great situation is another, and fully realizing your potential requires both. I know in every part of me that that is true, and I hate it.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  Because?

• 7:31Brené Brown?

  Because I make up that I have complete agency over my grit.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, over what you do and how you think.

• 7:43Brené Brown?

  Yes. And I want to hear from you, what made you do this to me personally? Explain to me what's happening.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:52Brené Brown?

  And then I have a lot of questions because looking at your work through a courage and vulnerability lens was tough. Because sometimes the courage is lock in, grit up, get it done.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, suck it up, buttercup.

• 8:09Brené Brown?

  Yep. And sometimes the courage is, have I completely ignored creating the situations around me that bring ease and flow into my life?

• 8:24Speaker 04

  You know, nuance is not very... I don't know if it's popular or not these days. Certainly not common. But I hope that's what this conversation is. Because there is no one-liner, prescriptive, like, you should just always make the best of your situation. Like, suck it up, suck it in, grit it out.

• 8:44Brené Brown?

  Let it go.

• 8:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, yes, right? That's also, you know, whatever pithy aphorism, right? Like, sometimes you have to do that. I do think there is a little bit of a escape-patch mindset that some young people have. Like, this is painful, this is hard, I'm not vice president, I'm already 24. I mean, there is a danger in saying, sometimes you need to change your situation. It can be weaponized, right? So that you're making excuses and not making the best of your situation. But at the same time, you know, if you're pushing a wheelbarrow through like a wet, muddy field, like, girlfriend, like, you're just not going to get very far. So where does your individual effort and grit, where does it pay off? Where does it make sense?

• 9:29Speaker 04

  I mean, I think the advice that I was given a lot growing up was that you make the best of your situation. If you don't like your teacher, you don't complain about your teacher. Like, you get an A anyway. You don't like your, you know... Well, I was a cheerleader, so I'll just say. Like, if you don't like the other girls on the cheerleading team, like, well, you're not going to change the other girls on the cheerleading team. The only thing you can control is you, right? I think the provocative concept that I'm trying to champion here is that agency isn't just controlling your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. I think there is agency in changing the situation. So sometimes, it's exactly what you should do.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  And it is the courageous and vulnerable thing to do, I think. Especially if you've been raised not to think about it, not to complain about it, and not to consider it something that you have power over.

• 10:23Adam Grant?

  Angela, it reminds me a little of George Bernard Shaw. To paraphrase, reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people adapt the world to themselves. And therefore, all progress depends on unreasonable people.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, I think it's from a play that I only read that little passage of. So I don't have the context, but I think that's exactly right, though. Right? I mean, you can't get as far as you want, I think. And also, I don't think you can avoid burnout and exhaustion. If the only tool in your toolkit is just try harder. And I, I hope that this perspective, which really is a figure ground shift, right? To like, really consider the surroundings, the other people in your life, your entire situation. Unless you take it really seriously, unless you bring it into focus. Then I think you really only have one toolkit, you know, and one tool in your toolkit. And it took me a while to learn that, too.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  I mean, I think in my 40s is probably the, the chapter in my life that I would mark as like, oh, Angela Duckworth finally realized the power of the situation.

• 11:32Brené Brown?

  Let's start with defining, what do you mean by a situation?

• 11:37Speaker 04

  Renee, I mean, everything, everything outside of your mind, really, right? Your situation is physical, right? So you can look around and you can say, you know, what objects are within my reach and my sight? Right? I've got a glass of water. I've got a set of headphones that don't work, right? I'm at a wooden table, I'm sitting in a chair, I'm wearing a black dress. But then, of course, your situation is also social. Talking to Renee, I'm talking to Adam, I'm in a podcast. So the situation is everything and everyone around you. And by the way, it extends beyond just, you know, your immediate space. So, you know, what zip code are you in? What culture are you working in?

• 12:22Speaker 04

  And so one of the challenges of even beginning a conversation about the situation is, it is all of that. And that makes it somewhat, you know, intractable, I think, for, for many people to consider what they can do about their situation because it has so many layers and so many levels.

• 12:41Adam Grant?

  But that also gives you so many levers, right?

• 12:45Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 12:45Adam Grant?

  If a situation is so multifaceted, it means there's more there to change externally than internally.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  I think if you're thinking about it that way, yes, right? So if you accept the premise, and again, I do think it's a paradigm shift. I think it's a different way of thinking. If you consider that the situation is malleable, not fixed. And if you consider your agency to extend from what's inside you to what's outside of you. Yeah, then the option space of things that you might change. You're like, oh, you know, I want to have a water bottle near me. Like, I want to have, you know, Diet Coke farther away. Should that be what you're trying to drink more of and less of? Or, you know, I can move my phone away. So, oh, right, and then I could put my workout clothes out. We could also say, you know, I've been working on this startup and feeling like I'm not getting anywhere. Maybe I should find other people who are working on a startup.

• 13:36Speaker 04

  Or, you know, and the list goes on. And so hopefully, considering every element of your situation as important and recognizing that at least some of them can be changed. It really does open up a world of possibility, you know, from the near to the far.

• 13:55Brené Brown?

  Let's go through kind of some of the terminology that you use. Cause I think it's really helpful to Adam's point about increasing our sense of agency. Our sense of, I have some choices here. So when I was writing Strong Ground, trying to understand kind of a large collection of skills that are going to define leadership, it's really interesting because the one that I could not ignore during the interviews was situational awareness.

• 14:25Speaker 04

  So. Which is a term, right? That some people use, not, yeah, not, not everybody, right? In business.

• 14:31Brené Brown?

  Not everybody. And so what I want to understand is, so you talk about situational awareness, situational agency.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  And situational responsibility.

• 14:43Brené Brown?

  And situational obligation or responsibility.

• 14:45Speaker 04

  Most relevant to leadership.

• 14:46Brené Brown?

  Yes. Okay, so our situation, which is as important as our get shit done grit.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 14:55Brené Brown?

  Our situation, setting up our space, picking our peers, building relationships with mentors, coaches, and choosing our culture and shaping our culture. How do you think about situational awareness? If I, if I'm listening right now, and I'm like, oh, my God, this is, I'm having a Renee reaction to this book. And I want to develop some situational awareness. What does that mean for you?

• 15:27Speaker 04

  Well, let me define it. I think situational awareness precedes any kind of agency of your situation. You have to notice your situation, right? Before. So situational awareness is really having some conscious attention to who's around you and what's around you. It is not the default. Human beings, by the way, in times of stress in particular, I think you'll agree, look inward. And, you know, they just ruminate and we quote unquote, get inside our heads, right? We sort of have a sense that we're getting inside our heads, and then we get inside our heads even more. And really, what situational awareness is, to direct your attention outward, not inward. And again, it's not necessarily to like, lay blame at the feet of your situation.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  And then like, you know, brush off any sense of responsibility that you have to do anything differently. But situational awareness would say, for example, I actually made a scorecard for this book because I am a fan of self-reports as a tool for self-reflection.

• 16:26Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  And I thought, why not make this real? So you can audit your personal space. You can say, do I have temptations like a cellphone or crap to eat? You know, like, do I have that within reach and within due? Have I decorated my personal space with reminders of my goals? One of the findings in my research with teenagers is we asked thousands of teenagers all across the United States, what they did to study for the SAT. We also had their PSAT scores and their SAT scores because we did this in partnership with the College Board. And we gave kids like, a really long list of things that they might do. I remind myself that college is important, I have a study.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  But the number one strategy was I write down my goals for studying somewhere concrete, right? Writing it down on a piece of paper and I post it somewhere I can see it. High achievers decorate their personal space with reminders, with quotes, statements of their mission. So you can audit your personal space. But I also think you can audit those other social dimensions as well. You can ask yourself, you know, am I trying to achieve these goals with or without a, a group of like-minded strivers who are also trying to start a podcast, trying to write a book, trying to run a marathon? So the list goes on, the scorecard goes on. There are 10 items altogether.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  I don't score a perfect 10. I do think that's what I mean, though, by situational awareness is to audit your situation. And with as much clear-eyed objectivity as you can find, ask yourself whether it is aligned with your goals or not aligned with your goals. That's where I would begin. And then, of course, creating alignment, that's situational agency.

• 18:16Adam Grant?

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• 20:36Brené Brown?

  So the weirdest thing happened to me when I was reading this book. And I don't know why I'm so emotional about it, but it's really weird. So I split my time between Houston and Austin and Houston's kind of the house where we raised our kids. And I'm a maximalist. Adam is a minimalist.

• 20:55Speaker 04

  Why are you going to Austin? Like at all? I thought you were just in Houston.

• 20:59Brené Brown?

  No, because I work in Austin a lot. I teach in the MBA program at UT and I have a lot of work here. So and both my kids are off building their big lives. But I was sitting in Austin, where I stay when I'm here. And I was doing some creative exercises and I called Steve and I was so weepy. And he said, what's wrong? And I said, I can't be creative here. And he said, why? And I said, because there's not enough of Ellen and Charlie's art on the walls here. And he said,

• 21:34Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 21:35Brené Brown?

  What do you mean? And I was in your book and I said, it's a situational variable. And he said, okay. And I said, there is some beautiful art here. It's a beautiful photography here, but I need the kids' art to remind me that that's my favorite art and it's imperfect and they just did it without thinking about it. And that's what inspires me to do my best work.

• 22:02Speaker 04

  You know, it seems like a crazy thing to say, right?

• 22:06Brené Brown?

  It does. It feels weird talking about it.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  You have your laptop, you have your like,

• 22:09Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  Um, but Adam might know this. We know. And Brene, do you also know Bob Cialdini, the psychologist who wrote Influence?

• 22:17Brené Brown?

  No, I don't know him.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  He does not hang out in Houston much, nor Austin. But if you ever go to Arizona, I mean, you know, that's where he lives. And when he was writing the book Influence, he was finding himself to be pedantic, long winded and dry, which is how you write a scientific journal article. The drier, the better, right? And he was just like, oh God, how am I writing a book about my research on persuasion for an audience of more than seven people? And, and what he did was he changed where he started writing. He moved from his campus office where he was Professor Robert Cialdini to his home office where he was Bob.

• 23:01Speaker 04

  And those physical cues, right? The, the setting, you know, it inspired a different character. And I think this is why when you tune into the Oscars, you know, there is an Oscar for set design. There is an Oscar for costumes. You know, Shakespeare said, all the world's a stage and each of us its players. And what's on that stage? The props, the backdrop, the lighting? I think it makes a huge difference. And I think we have the view of human beings as being reflective, like we are the reflective animal, but we are much more reactive, I think, than we would admit. And so there are these trigger cues, you know?

• 23:41Speaker 04

  Like when I'm in my house, my voice is a half octave higher than talking to you, right? Like when I drop into Professor Angela Duckworth and I do this and I'm like, I'm all business. I have a cousin who's a physician and we could be having a conversation. But when I trigger cue her with, so I've got this like cut on it. Her voice drops and she goes into physician mode, right? So I do think there are these situational trigger cues that bring out oneself or another. And they seem trivial, but they're not. They're really not. We should take them seriously.

• 24:18Adam Grant?

  Angela, I think anyone who's with us right now can relate to this. We all have places where we do our best work, where we struggle to concentrate, where we find creative inspiration, where we feel like we've never had an original thought. At the same time, I'm really troubled by the reality that we are so malleable. And I think about the power of habits, which is something you've spent a lot of your career studying. And I think, you know what? I don't have to be in the right hotel room to brush my teeth. Like I don't need the right toothbrush or the right floss, right? I do it regardless of my circumstances and I want to be more immune to my surroundings. What can you tell us about that?

• 24:56Speaker 04

  Well, as we all know, you know, nearly half of human behavior is habit, but the other half is goal directed. That's the research of Wendy Wood. And what has Wendy Wood and other habit researchers, you know, discovered? Well, you know, you can actually override any habit system with the goal system. Like if you have the habit of driving home a certain way, you can override it and like stop at the supermarket. Human beings are able to do that. But very often we have what are called habit slips. And you're like, oh, no, the habit system was just in charge. And, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've checked into a hotel and like just forgotten to, you know, do one thing or another, especially work out. I'm like, oh, right. Just, it just, I didn't have the cues. It wasn't in the routine.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  So yeah, maybe I should have turned on my goal system. And sometimes you have to do that. But I think a wiser approach to changing yourself is to start with the situation. And if you are asking me about the science of habit, something that I don't think is understood, even though there's so much written about habit, so much published about habit in the broader sort of media environment. Here's something that habit researchers like Wendy Wood cannot seem to get across to people. A habit is a behavior that is repeatedly rewarded. And then the brain goes on a kind of neural autopilot. It doesn't need to think, what should I do? It just does. But it can only do that in a stable situation. In other words,

• 26:24Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 26:24Speaker 04

  You are not able to do anything habitual unless it has a trigger. The trigger doesn't have to be physical. It can be like when I'm hungry, then I do this, like when I'm angry that. And, and I'm not saying all habits are good, right? Like grinding your teeth is a habit too. Like when I'm stressed or, but the idea is that preceding any habitual reaction, there is a stimulus, a situational cue. And therefore, if you want to build habits, right? If you're worried about the half of human behavior that is on autopilot and you're saying, that's where I want my exercise routine, right? That's where my writing routine, that's where I want my mindfulness routine, then you 100%

• 27:05Speaker 04

  have to honor the situation and you have to design the situation with the cues that you will reliably encounter.

• 27:12Brené Brown?

  Oh my God, that is, you could just come to my house and do a study on if I lay my workout clothes out the night before I go to sleep.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  Is that not the best hack ever?

• 27:23Brené Brown?

  That's the best hack ever.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  Isn't it a miracle?

• 27:26Brené Brown?

  It's a miracle.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  It's like, it's like nothing, Brene, right? Like, okay, I keep my workout clothes in this one drawer in my bureau. I mean, it's really not that hard to reach down into this drawer. And it's all like folded and dry. So like, how hard can it be to reach into that drawer and take out this, you know, top and this pair of shorts and this pair of socks? The miracle that happens when that top, that pair of shorts and that pair of socks are laying on top of the same bureau and it's the first thing I see. I mean, first of all, you can't get into other clothes when you have an outfit out. You're just like, I'm going to wear this because it's sitting there. This kind of micro friction as a postdoc who works with me, Asaf Mazar calls it, it is incredibly powerful.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  And once you put on the workout clothes, right? There you go. I mean, nobody doesn't work out in their workout clothes. That's my number one exercise hack is to put my workout clothes out the night before.

• 28:20Adam Grant?

  I wonder if there's a gender difference here.

• 28:22Speaker 04

  Wait, Adam, are you not a workout clothes layer outer?

• 28:26Adam Grant?

  No, I don't think about clothes at all.

• 28:30Speaker 04

  Do you, do you have a problem? You work out regularly, right? So you don't need this hack.

• 28:33Brené Brown?

  You don't, yeah. I don't think you need it.

• 28:35Adam Grant?

  For me, it takes willpower not to work out.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  Okay. Well, then maybe you don't need this hack. You know what? I actually really enjoy working out too. I'm not one of those people for whom like working out is an exercise in delay of gratification. Like when I'm at Pilates, I enjoy Pilates. But even for me, I have found that it helps. And I will say this, Adam, you know, I'm not saying you have to do anything differently, but I've gotten to know Alastair Brownlee, the, you know, world renowned triathlete, you know, some would argue like the greatest triathlete ever. And he lays out his workout clothes the night before. He makes sure they're dry. Like he puts his sneakers right where he can see them. And so I find it interesting that even people who have a lot of willpower and a lot of motivation, and sometimes, you know, people who exercise is the only thing they do, they, they often use this too.

• 29:20Speaker 04

  I don't think micro friction benefits anybody when the micro friction is an obstacle to your goals.

• 29:27Brené Brown?

  I agree. And for me, I have to lay them out because if I see them, then I have to acknowledge I am choosing to not do what I know is good for me. I am making a choice. If I don't see them, it's just like, yeah, I'm really busy. I got a lot of shit to do. But if I see them, I am choosing a lot of shit to do over myself and my health.

• 29:51Speaker 04

  It's not just friction. I think you're like making it obvious, right? Like, human attention is a pinhole camera. You're thinking about one thing and you're not thinking about not a million things, but a trillion other things, right? So when you lay eyes on your workout clothes, boom, comes to mind. You're like workout, exercise, health. If you're not looking at your workout clothes, you could be thinking about who knows what, right? Like, you know, does Brad Pitt have veneers? Like, what's for dinner? Like, what am I doing at 10 o'clock today? Like, I think he does, by the way, but.

• 30:22Adam Grant?

  Never thought about that one before.

• 30:24Brené Brown?

  A hundred percent.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  Oh, I thought about that. Yeah, I think.

• 30:26Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I thought about it too. Yeah, a hundred percent, yes.

• 30:29Speaker 04

  Which I have nothing against, but I'm just saying, my dentist says everyone has veneers. So, so, you know, your mind wanders, right? And your mind is reactive. And this is why, this is why advertising works, right? So you have to put in your own billboards, right? Like install your own reminders.

• 30:44Brené Brown?

  Oh, I love that. Put up your own billboards.

• 30:46Speaker 04

  Put up your own billboards. You know, there's a person that Adam and I both know, but Brene, since you're mostly in Austin and Houston and not in Philadelphia, you probably don't know Chaz Howard, who's the chaplain of the University of Pennsylvania, where Adam and I both teach. And he surrounds himself with books, as I think we all do. I am usually surrounded by books, but I'm, I'm here in another room doing this recording. But he goes beyond that. He is very intentional about the spines of the books that are at eye level. And he keeps the books turned so that he can see the title outward that he just wants to be reminded of. I'm not saying that he like walks back by that bookshelf and takes every book off the shelf and reads it every day.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  But he is installing billboards, right? People get tattoos, they wear their faith around their neck. Why do they do that? They do that to be reminded of their values and their goals. And so that's the kind of intentional choice that I'm talking about. And it's a seemingly trivial one, but I think it's the tip of the iceberg, right? If you can do that, then you can ask yourself, like, who am I spending my time with? You can ask yourself, like, should I be living in Houston? Or should I be living in Austin? Or should I live somewhere else, right? I think these are the bigger questions, but you can get there by starting small.

• 32:06Brené Brown?

  It's interesting. I was just thinking, I have my two watches on.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  And why?

• 32:11Brené Brown?

  Just my Apple watch is just linear regular time. And my grandmother's watch is Kairos God Time, qualitative time, and a reminder that I need to make choices based on both. The quantitative time. Yeah, but it's a, it's a billboard. And on my other wrist, I have a tattoo that symbolizes between stimulus and response. There is a space in that space is choice. And so I have my billboards at all times.

• 32:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, right? And by the way, you don't need to be reminded, it's not like you haven't memorized that sentence, right? Between, it's just that you wanna, you know, and when your eyes are light on it, that's your, it's such a brilliant, but also so obvious way to control your attention, that I don't think people, I can't tell you how many people, for example, have reread many times Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now.

• 33:03Brené Brown?

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  And, you know, like, well, you read it once and you're like, okay, I should be mindful. But like, why are they, you know, rereading it? Why do they have a copy of it? Like, because they're putting it in their situation. They know that if you want to do anything, including mindful attention to the present, you gotta design your physicals to make that possible. Same reason why people go on retreats and so forth, right? It's like the way to get into this kind of, I want to control this thought and I want to, is actually with the situation, I think. Obviously, am I biased? I don't know. Adam's like less biased because he didn't write a book about it, you know? Although you sort of have, I think, in many ways, Adam. But, but you can tell me if you disagree.

• 33:44Adam Grant?

  I don't disagree. I'm, I'm actually really struck by the tattoo observation here. And I think there's a, there's a study waiting to be done. I've always thought about tattoos as an image thing. You're trying to project something about yourself to other people.

• 33:58Speaker 04

  You're projecting it for the tattoos for other people.

• 34:00Adam Grant?

  Yeah, but I'm hearing now there's an identity element of it. And I wonder, here's the study idea. Do people whose tattoos are visible to others but not themselves have more struggles following through on their plans and goals than people who can see their own tattoos, even if they're not visible to others?

• 34:20Speaker 04

  Oh, so you're doing like a forearm versus like torso? So they, I don't know, I think, Brene, you're the only one among the three of us who has a tattoo. What do, what do you think?

• 34:30Brené Brown?

  I think a hundred tattoos on a hundred people, a hundred different reasons. Some to capture something they never want to forget. I mean, a lot of people get tattoos when someone dies. Some of them as reminders and, and their own billboards. I think there's a lot of different reasons that people do it. And so I think it'd be, there'd be a lot of confounding variables around that. But one of the things this book really helped me do is for me, situation, context, color, connective tissue is everything. I think situational awareness is probably a superpower, unfortunately, because the way I was raised. And it's, I think it's probably the downside of situational awareness is hypervigilance. Maybe I'm, I'm, I'm constantly.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  Oh, that's interesting. Are you hypervigilant?

• 35:14Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I can be very hypervigilant.

• 35:16Speaker 04

  Oh, to threat? Are you like scanning the horizon for threat or just in other ways?

• 35:21Brené Brown?

  For understanding who's here, what's the dynamic?

• 35:25Speaker 04

  Oh, so you think you might have an excess of situational awareness?

• 35:28Brené Brown?

  I can. I have to bring it in sometimes.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  Oh, that's very interesting. Yeah. I think you're the exception.

• 35:34Brené Brown?

  It also led me to believe that, like, I was very committed to raising my kids in a Montessori environment. Because Montessori is very based on situational cluttered, you know, cluttered rooms, cluttered minds.

• 35:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is a design situation.

• 35:48Brené Brown?

  That's a design situation. Yeah. And even my kids, I remember my dad watching my kids and he said, Charlie, what are you doing? Charlie said, I'm putting my work away for new work. So he was putting a toy away to get out another toy. Because in his Montessori program, it was like one toy at a time. And my dad was like, god damn, sis, you're running a tight ship around here. I was like, no, no, that's Maria Montessori.

• 36:12Speaker 04

  Did they go all the way through? How, how long did they do Montessori?

• 36:16Brené Brown?

  Uh, through kinder and then they went to public schools.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Okay, right. So all of their preschool years.

• 36:22Brené Brown?

  Yeah, so very, very formative, very much.

• 36:26Speaker 04

  How was it for you? What was your observation?

• 36:29Brené Brown?

  Well, first I was like, holy shit, why does my two-year-old have a glass pitcher? And real glasses and what's, what's happening here? And spoons and, and they just were very much, they were almost kind of Piagetian in their thinking. They were just very much like, the situation dictates how they think of themselves, how they think of their work and how they think of each other.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  It's also a social element, right? Because the Montessori is mixed age, right? So that's very intentional. Yeah, I mean, Maria Montessori, like, thought very hard about what situation does a child need to be in to develop?

• 37:04Brené Brown?

  Yes. And it was interesting because Charlie had one of those weird birthdays, an August birthday. And when we were talking to his Montessori teacher, she said, you know, he's academically ready for kindergarten. But one of the things that we'd like to invite you to consider situationally is that he gets to be the oldest in the room, so he will miss his mentoring year.

• 37:28Speaker 04

  Hmm, right. So what'd you decide to do?

• 37:31Brené Brown?

  He stayed in Montessori for another year and then went to public school kindergarten and did that year again.

• 37:35Speaker 04

  What did they mean by mentoring year when he mentored the younger kids?

• 37:38Brené Brown?

  Yes, so that he had been mentored.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  At age five?

• 37:41Brené Brown?

  Yes, but that he was, he was the, I'll show you how to hold the glass. I'll show you why we wash our own glasses, you know? And so let me, let me ask you these. I have to get to these and I'm aware of time. But there are so many fricking paradoxes in your book. And Adam and I always laugh at the paradox, having the podcast paradox.

• 38:01Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 38:02Brené Brown?

  So can you just comment on these paradoxes as I run through them?

• 38:06Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 38:06Brené Brown?

  Self-control can sometimes mean needing less self-control.

• 38:13Speaker 04

  Self-control, the paradox of self-control is that to delay gratification, you have to create immediate gratification. So you have to make exercise fun now. You have to make eating nutritiously something you enjoy now. You have to make what's good for you in the future, what's good for you now. And the other paradox of self-control is that you control yourself by controlling the situation. So self-control sounds like something that can only be done on the inside. It's self-control. But depending on what you have out on the table and what you have out on the desk and the people you're with, like, you know, when I was in Miami during the pandemic,

• 38:56Speaker 04

  I had just written a New York Times op-ed on the importance of masking. When we landed there, it was like the first time you could fly, you know? It was like the first thing my family wanted to do is like leave Philadelphia. We get off the plane and nobody's masking. I was like, hello, people, it's a global pit. Hello, COVID-19? So day one, we're like indignant, day two, we're self-righteous. And day three, I'm sorry to say, we weren't masking either, right? It's like just, it was just, I couldn't believe it. I was just like marveling, but you know, I couldn't swim against the current. So we should control ourselves by controlling our situations.

• 39:35Adam Grant?

  Angela Duckworth, you failed to cite your own research to make your point.

• 39:39Speaker 04

  Well, which study, Adam?

• 39:40Adam Grant?

  Well, I know you've done many, many, many of them and it's hard to remember them all. But I'm thinking of your finding that the people who have the most self-control use it the least because they've arranged their situations to not have to exercise it.

• 39:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't want to take credit for a finding that many people, but I do think it was a revolution in self-control research world. Because when I went to graduate school, Brene, I was like 32 years old, it was 2002. And the first thing that I read were all these articles about how self-control is a muscle. And it was like, you have to like exercise the willpower muscle. And like, if you do things like hold a hand gripped tight for like five minutes, which is very hard and painful, then you'll be better at like, you know, not procrastinating and controlling your temper. And I did a bunch of willpower studies and they all failed. And what I and many other behavioral scientists have discovered is that willpower is exhausting, willpower is fallible, it's not quite the muscle we think it is. And it is the worst way to change your behavior.

• 40:37Speaker 04

  So I don't want to take credit for that finding because over the last 20 years, it really has been a sea change in how we think about behavior change. But it is an epiphany that we should be talking about more often.

• 40:52Brené Brown?

  Okay, so this is interesting and related. So the next paradox that I wrote down. Agency can grow sometimes when self sufficient, our self sufficiency story gets smaller.

• 41:04Speaker 04

  You know, when we think that we are able to do things by ourselves, then we don't ask for help. When we think that it is our job to do things by ourselves, to be independent. Hello, I'm raising my hand to that one as well as you, Renee. Then, you know, we don't admit vulnerability. We don't admit like, I can't. And the courage to say, I can't. I can't do this alone. I need help. I don't have the answer. My motivation is at all time low. I'm a dumpster fire. You know, we think of as shameful, embarrassing an admission that we're lesser than. But it really has to be a lesson. And I have to credit you more than really anyone, Renee,

• 41:47Speaker 04

  for spreading this important message. Like, it is strength to say, I can't. It is strength to ask for help. It is strength to say, I don't know. And it's been very hard for me, too, to do that as somebody who's always wanted to be independent and also didn't want to be a burden on anyone. But but it is a lesson that I keep trying to repeat and learn better because it's just true. And however great you can be by yourself, you can be greater when you ask other people for their help.

• 42:21Adam Grant?

  Hint, hint.

• 42:22Brené Brown?

  Shut up, Adam.

• 42:25Brené Brown?

  Okay, last paradox. And I think this is interesting. And Adam, you and I have talked about this before. Perseverance may require leaving.

• 42:35Speaker 04

  You know, I'm often asked, when do I quit? And when do I grit, right?

• 42:41Brené Brown?

  Oh, I love it because it rhymes.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  When do I keep going? And I don't take credit for that question, but it does rhyme, and I let things rhyme. So when to quit, when to grit? And recently, some folks over at the NFL who do player development for the National Football League said, you know, these young football players, like, they quit too soon, you know? Like, they don't get to start. You know, that suddenly they won another team, you know? When they're in college, it's like they don't get enough playtime. They want to like change universities. Like, how do I get them to grit and not to quit? And so I want to answer you this way, right? I do think there are times where you're in a situation where you're suffering and it's hard. And you should stay because that is the nature of the work.

• 43:26Speaker 04

  That is the nature of the path to where you're trying to go. And there are other times where you should quit. When? When there is a different path, a better path, that will get you to where you want to go. And it is maybe a smoother path or a straighter path. So sometimes it is the right thing to quit. But I don't think you should quit only because like, this is painful. I don't like it. I wish I were there already. I do think those are wrong decisions. But I don't think it's a terrible question to ask yourself, right? Like, should I keep going? Or should I go somewhere else? And I don't think the answer is always one or the other. But if you can just keep the guiding principle,

• 44:11Speaker 04

  which is, where am I trying to get to? What are my real goals here? And then to try to look with some objectivity at the options. And the last thing I'll say is, most people cannot do this by themselves. They need to actually have other people who say, I know you, Renee, and I have some objectivity. I have some psychological distance on this question. And I think you should do this. If you hear a chorus of opinion from people who know you and who care about you and who also know something about these paths, I would listen to that chorus of opinion, you know? It's not always that you should just be like, oh, you know, everyone's wrong. That's not grit to like, never listen to other people.

• 44:56Adam Grant?

  Angela, this is a great resolution of the debate that we started exactly 20 years ago when we met, which was...

• 45:03Speaker 04

  We've been debating so many things. Adam, where did it all begin?

• 45:07Adam Grant?

  It was the fall of 2006. And we had a great debate about where do you draw the line between healthy grit and escalation of commitment to a losing course of action? And I think you just resolved it. I think what I just took away from what you just said is, we should be slow to abandon our goals, but quick to rethink the path.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  We should be hyper adaptable with the how and hyper stubborn about the why. There are many ways to get to what you want to achieve. That's the why, right? Like, what is your purpose? What are you all about? And maybe you do use AI to do it. Maybe you don't. Maybe you do do it with these people. Maybe you need new collaborators. Like, you have to be, I think especially now, hyper adaptive, like, so

• 45:55Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 04

  quick to walk away from a dead end. But the destination, you know, the overarching principle of what you're about, like, I'm here to communicate. Like, I'm here to bring out the best in other people. Like, it's to be the best chess player. But you have to have steadfast dedication to your highest level goal. And, you know, infinite ability to walk away from a tactic that's not serving you.

• 46:23Adam Grant?

  I think it's time for you to walk away.

• 46:25Brené Brown?

  Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna do our rapid fire. But this is why

• 46:29Adam Grant?

  Now, leave.

• 46:29Brené Brown?

  This is why I said hopeful. Because I think what you're describing reminds me so much of C.R. Schneider's research on pathway as an element of hope. That we think of pathway as all internal. High levels of hopefulness require just grit and pathway. But that pathway is equally situational, which I think is so interesting.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  I couldn't agree. You mean Snyder of Snyder and Lopez, right?

• 46:56Brené Brown?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, the like really seminal work on happiness. And, you know, I will tell you that in my 40s, when all I knew how to do was try harder, my early 40s in particular, I was not happy. And I got less happy with every extra hour of work. And and to really fully embrace the idea of the situation matters and I can change it is something I can't claim to now. If I mid to late 50s, I'm working on it. But the more I do, I think the more human I become. You know, like, when you see somebody and instead of blaming them for being like not gritty enough, right? Not dedicated enough. And you really take a step back and you try to consider that person and their situation. Do it for yourself, do it for others.

• 47:42Speaker 04

  You know, maybe you'll be more successful. You'll definitely be more of a human being.

• 47:46Brené Brown?

  Grace. I love grace.

• 47:49Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 47:50Brené Brown?

  Okay, two questions in the lightning round. You get to leave any one item in our curiosity shop, no matter how weird it is, how wacky it is. What's one item you'd leave on our shelf in the curiosity shop?

• 48:01Speaker 04

  Well, if I could leave a painting from my mom, I would leave the painting that hangs above my bed that I saw every day growing up. And she painted when she was 24. And it's a painting of a mountain and the ocean and some sailboats. And one of the little sailboats represents my mom. And when I used to look at that painting, I thought she was just like a little brave sailboat on her own. But then recently, I've been noticing that there's a flotilla of sailboats and the sails are full. So she must have had a tailwind. So I think now I look at it and I see my mom. And with increasing sensitivity, I'm appreciating her situation.

• 48:39Brené Brown?

  God, that's beautiful. We may have to just leave it there.

• 48:42Speaker 04

  It's a very nice thing in the curiosity shop, I'll just say. It might be the prettiest thing in your curiosity shop. I don't know.

• 48:47Brené Brown?

  I bet it will be. No question. Thank you for being with us. I think this is... Let me just hold up this, I was gonna say bad boy, but this bad girl right here.

• 48:58Speaker 04

  Girl boss book.

• 48:59Brené Brown?

  Girl boss book, but also girl love book. Like, yeah, it's just, thanks for continuing to make things better for all of us.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  Thank you, Renee. Thank you, Adam.

• 49:11Adam Grant?

  Angela, I'm so glad you didn't quit writing this this book, which I know you considered many times. But I think this was the path to helping us all see how we can improve our situations.

• 49:22Speaker 04

  Well, thank you. I hope others enjoy it.

• 49:30Speaker 00

  In deepest jungle, Cartier's panther spies a wandering bird that circles the skies. A lovebird, lost and missing his mate, is far from his path in lonely state. Dry your tears now, there's a start. Follow my steps to heal your heart. Panther stalks through the leaves with silent grace. Through the power of scent, she finds the trace. Behold, two lovers reunite in the skies. A most precious thrill sparkling in their eyes. Together forever, they shine each day, bound by the beauty of Cartier.

• 50:15Speaker 01

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• 51:08Adam Grant?

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• 51:13Brené Brown?

  I love that conversation. What about you?

• 51:16Adam Grant?

  Me too. I love being a fly on the wall, watching you interview and watching you create a situation that brings out the best in other people.

• 51:24Brené Brown?

  Oh, that's so thoughtful.

• 51:27Adam Grant?

  No, it's, it's just so fun to watch like the, you light up when, you know, when somebody has a mic drop or when there's something, you know, thought provoking, but you're also, I think one of the things I learned through, you know, being a little bit, I got to spend a little more time observing in this one than we usually do. And I, I really love the way you acknowledged what was hard for you about the book. And I think that's, that's something I normally shy away from and you went right at it.

• 51:55Brené Brown?

  Yeah, it was, it was hard for me because it's, when you step back and think for me to achieve what I want to achieve,

• 52:10Brené Brown?

  it requires a letting go that's really scary for me. And not just, you know, being in a room that has my kids' art in it, but asking for help. And I have a great coach and I have a great mentor. I have to say that I thought about you many times when I was reading this book in a weird way. So she talked about the four elements of situational agency, kind of setting up your space, attracting mentors, choosing your culture. But one of them is picking your peers. And one of the things that our unexpected and new friendship has done for me is, and Steve has pointed this out, and so has Barrett, I can talk

• 52:51Brené Brown?

  to you in a shorthand that I can, that I cannot use with very many people at all in the world.

• 52:58Adam Grant?

  Same.

• 53:00Brené Brown?

  You know, I can say to you on a quick text, like, great event, big migraine, and you can say, what happened? And I can just say, zero house lights all stage. And you're like, why do they do that? We can't, you know, like, you know what that means. You know that they like cooked me on a chicken rotisserie with a light that gave me a migraine. And the worst thing is when you're speaking, like you and I speak, maybe if you just get up and do shticks, it's different. But you and I try to engage and, and change what we're saying, depending on how it lands. So I need the house lights at at least 50% so I can see people's faces. I don't need to be lit up like the Empire State Building.

• 53:40Adam Grant?

  No.

• 53:40Brené Brown?

  But you know what that means.

• 53:42Adam Grant?

  Oh, and I mean, there's so much shorthand there. Also, if you're asking people to engage in a vulnerable conversation, I want sometimes the house lights to go down so that they feel like they can raise their hand and be a little bit anonymous.

• 53:55Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 53:55Adam Grant?

  And how do we then choreograph that dynamic so that the lights are up at the right time and down at the right time? And yeah, there are very few people that would know what I'm talking about if I just brought that up out of nowhere.

• 54:08Brené Brown?

  Yeah. And it's like, that's a technical thing, but there's also, there's just also real conversations, like having you in like my situation world now has really changed the way I think about my work. Because there's very few people that, while we're opposites in a lot of ways, we do a lot of the same work.

• 54:30Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 54:31Brené Brown?

  Like, we both taught MBA intensives at the same time this year. And I literally texted you and said, I'm fricking losing it about this. I, I have never been up against this. And you're like, oh my God, two years in a row I was up against this. Here's how I thought about it. Oh, helpful. Okay. And it wasn't like, just grit it down, Brene, you can beat this thing. It was like, I don't know what to do. Let me call someone. Let me phone a friend, which made me better.

• 54:59Adam Grant?

  Well, I, I've experienced that more times than I can count. And it's just, I think that one of the things I, I really hadn't thought enough about until we talked to Angela and, you know, really put her book in this context is, I think the, the farther we move through career and life, the more idiosyncratic our circumstances are. Like, you go through school and you have a lot of peers who have gone through the same thing. But now it's a smaller and smaller cohort that accompanies us each step.

• 55:28Brené Brown?

  That's true. That's true.

• 55:29Adam Grant?

  And finding then the person who, even just to bounce something off of, who's a mirror. And you can say, oh, wow, you do that? I never would have thought to do that. You can have a team of people who work with you? What?

• 55:44Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think I'm not as open to it. I'm more open to it now than I've ever been in my life, which means it's taken like five fricking decades. But that's also, I'm wondering if you come from kind of the volatility that I come from in my family of origin, if you overdevelop grit as a survival mechanism because as a kid, the situation part does feel outside of your control.

• 56:20Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 56:21Brené Brown?

  Do you know what I mean? And then you have to recalibrate.

• 56:25Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I can, I can see that. I think I've also seen, and I think lived to some extent, the, another flavor of that, which is like you, you come from an unstable situation. And so you try to create just complete stability.

• 56:43Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 56:43Adam Grant?

  And that becomes where you exercise control. And I mean, this is in, maybe in a mundane way, but I was, as we were talking about arranging your space and you were, you were describing needing to have Ellen and Charlie's art around you. I was thinking, okay, the mistake I would make is thinking, I need to design every situation to be alike because I want it to be consistent and predictable and repeatable. And I, I started thinking about, there's this body of research that Eric Abrahamson started on how if your desk is a little messy, you tend to have more creative ideas. And I think it's the same thing as the art. It's the permission to be imperfect, to make mistakes, to try new

• 57:27Adam Grant?

  things. But that's on me. I want to have a neat desk. I want to be ordered and structured and organized. And realizing that I need to put myself in different situations for different goals. That was an aha in this conversation as, as we were talking.

• 57:42Brené Brown?

  I have thought the same thing because there are times where if I'm getting ready to meet with our accounting person, I am chloroxing down the entire house before that happens. If it's going to involve a spreadsheet, I gotta lock in and shit's gotta be picked up. I've got it. My house has to look like a spreadsheet. If I'm in a creative, vulnerable chapter, I want my kids' art. If I'm writing something else, Annie Lamott has this quote that I love. She said before, when I first started writing, the house would have to be spotless. And now if I'm inspired, there could be a corpse in the kitchen sink and it wouldn't matter. I'm writing, you know? And so I do think it's, situation is situational.

• 58:27Brené Brown?

  Like, I know that's like very meta, but I do think, one thing that I, I wanted to say too, when I was prepping for the conversation with Angela, I just have to say that like, for some folks who are looking at the new book and saying, it's an about face from grit, what a terrible indictment of our inability to yes and. The, like Jim Collins, tyranny of or, like this idea, like, wow, now she's changed her mind. And I was like, did you, did you read the book? Like, it's grit and situation.

• 59:07Adam Grant?

  Yeah. And it's building a situation that means you don't have to rely on grit every minute of every day.

• 59:14Brené Brown?

  Yeah. I mean, yes. And what is your take on

• 59:21Brené Brown?

  grit versus willpower?

• 59:24Adam Grant?

  Well, I think I've learned most of what I know about this from Angela. I think of, I think of will, willpower as a capacity and grit more as, as a motivation. So I guess willpower is the can do part and grit is the will do or want to do part.

• 59:45Brené Brown?

  Interesting. That's helpful. I am so excited about the sea change that has happened in the research community around willpower.

• 59:53Adam Grant?

  Me too.

• 59:54Brené Brown?

  Yeah, it's just, it's so, as a resource, so finite and so small. And I don't know. I, I love the book and I love the conversation.

• 1:00:07Adam Grant?

  Me too. And, you know, one, one other quick thing that I was thinking about is,

• 1:00:11Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Adam Grant?

  I was just thinking about this, this issue of, it's sometimes hard to recognize the power of the situation. But I think anybody who's trained as an athlete has lived it. I was just thinking when Angela was talking about how, like, when I think about trying to hit a personal best on the treadmill, running, like, I know how many miles I want to go. I know what my target time is. And I, I think I've controlled every aspect of the situation, like the gym temperature, the same, it's constant. I'm listening to the exact same playlist. And one day I can do it and another day I can't, no matter how hard I try. And I look at that and I think, oh, yeah, I didn't have full control

• 1:00:54Adam Grant?

  over how well I slept the night before. And my circadian rhythm is a little different today than it was yesterday. And my recovery might be different based on, you know, the travel that I did in the last few days. And there are all these situational factors that I didn't even think were relevant that influence, like, how far does my grit take me on a given day? And I think that actually, for anybody who's still questioning, how important is it to shape your situation? Try controlling every aspect of your situation. Next time you have a simple goal to achieve and watch how much your performance fluctuates from day to day. And that to me is just personal proof that we, we need to pay attention

• 1:01:37Adam Grant?

  to the situational variables that are invisible to us. And I, I was just thinking about you playing pickleball and how much of that experience you've lived as well.

• 1:01:45Brené Brown?

  Oh my God, it's so weird that you brought this up. I played yesterday and my coach is at this place where I play. And so I saw him walking toward me and I was like, oh Lord, why is he coming this way? And I was playing open play. So my paddle was stacked, ready to play with, you know, the next time a court came open. And I said, how are you? And I kind of tried to walk by him. He goes, do you have a second? And I was like, oh, what's happening? And so he said, I watched your last game. And he said, I just wanted to check to see if you're doing all right.

• 1:02:22Brené Brown?

  Beg your frickin' pardon. And he said, I can just tell that something's going on. And literally what happened is I forgot to put my watch on mute. So I got six or seven work texts when I was on the court and I was so distracted. And there I am, it's not like from one game to the next, my skills changed, my experience changed. I have the same number of games behind me. I have the same number of lessons behind me, the same number of drills behind me, but my situation shifted. And in pickleball, unlike tennis, if you take your eye off the ball for a split second, you're going to get hit in the face with it, you know?

• 1:03:02Brené Brown?

  And I said, yeah, I just, I lost focus. And he said, yeah, I just wanted to check in. And I was like, like, but it's good luck controlling every situational variable.

• 1:03:16Adam Grant?

  Yeah, it's not going to happen. And I think sometimes we just need to be patient around letting the situation evolve. Just one other sports example I was thinking about is my diving coach, Eric Best. Sometimes I'd come into practice and I would do a dive that was going well and it just would be off. And I would want to do five or six more reps to try to fix it. And Eric would say, Adam, move on. This is just not working today. Before we overanalyze it, let's see if it's better tomorrow. And then we'll know, is there a change you need to make? Or do we just need to wait for the situation to fix itself? And sometimes he would even say, look, you need to take, we're going to not do this dive for a week or a month. I'm like, no, no, I don't want to lose it. And he would say,

• 1:04:01Adam Grant?

  look, you want to break a bad habit? Stop repeating the bad habit. And, you know, like, just let the situation evolve. And then sometimes you find that you've evolved with it.

• 1:04:12Brené Brown?

  Eric is my coach too. Your diving coach is my coach too, because I took a lesson on something I'm trying that's new. And I gave up halfway through a game trying to do it. And again, my coach walked over and said, you gotta be willing to be bad to get better. And I said, what? And he said, you gotta use this new two handed thing that you're doing. I'm like, I can't, I don't, I'm missing. And he's like, I know, you're, I know. I'm watching them all go into the net. You're gonna have to do that 140 times in a game, not in practice, but in a game to get that right. So 20 down, 120 to go. It's your choice. You want to get better? You've got to be willing to get bad.

• 1:04:51Adam Grant?

  Bingo.

• 1:04:52Brené Brown?

  Shit. Cause then that changes the situational context for my frickin' work all day. So yeah, what a fun conversation. I really appreciate it.

• 1:05:01Adam Grant?

  Same, same. As always. Thank you.

• 1:05:04Brené Brown?

  Yep. See you next time.

• 1:05:07Brené Brown?

  The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brené Brown Education and Research Group and Granted Productions. You can subscribe to The Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award winning shows

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