A Bit of Optimism - Raising Resilient Kids with Angela Duckworth

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

With unprecedented levels of stress and depression amongst young people, I wanted to know what we, as an older generation can do to help. So I talked to psychologist,  professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Grit , Angela Duckworth. This is… A Bit of Optimism.If you want to know more about Angela and her work, check out :https://angeladuckworth.com.https://www.amazon.com/Angela-Duckworth/e/B019S711S0 

With rising rates of depression, anxiety, and at worst, suicide, young people seem to be struggling with stress, and then COVID hit and made things worse. I want to understand how we can do better to help our youngest generation learn to cope with stress. So I talked to Angela Duckworth, the author of Grit, a psychologist from UPenn. She understands a thing or two about how we raise resilient kids. This is a bit of optimism.

This is a bit of optimism. Angela, I make this grand assertion, and I would love to get your reaction to it. Okay. Which is the younger generations of today, not everyone, but on balance, seem to lack the skills required for coping with stress later in life. And that is manifesting as they get older in the obvious higher rates of depression and anxiety, in the worst cases, suicide. But also we see it in the workplace where they may be quitting jobs very quickly or unable to express stress healthily from work or in relationships, et cetera. I think I've actually watched you hold forth on the subject of millennials. So this is the generational argument. You're not just saying that young people in general

are not growing up to have some kind of grit in the face of adversity. You are saying that young people these days... These days. Let me give you some of my thoughts as to where the skill sets are coming from, and then you can debate it with me. So for example, there's the obvious one, which is over access to social media and cell phones, which release dopamine and the addiction looks very much like gambling. So when they are in times of stress, instead of turning to a person, they can turn to a device. So much like an alcoholic, to ease the pain, you can get the hits of dopamine. Effortless, easily accessible and immediately relieving fix, which gets you

in trouble in the long run, or doesn't get you out of trouble anyway. Yeah. Another one might be because of the broadcast nature of the world we live in, that when stress happens, a mistaking for vulnerability and broadcast, meaning, and Brene Brown talks about this, which is, you know, going on YouTube and saying how you feel and expressing all the feels while sitting by yourself looking at a camera is not vulnerability and is much easier than going to a friend and saying, I'm in pain and I need help. So this is like ersatz vulnerability that you think. And the other one, which has also been written down, I think Jonathan Haidt has been talking

about this, which is the generation of parents that lived through September 11th, who later had kids for very good reason, fear being a motivator, very, very overprotective of their kids, very over coddled. Interesting. And so, for example, it's one- Because of 9-11. Well, this is one of the theories. I don't find that hard to believe.

Well, I don't think it's just 9-11. They also grew up in a world where layoffs became a thing, and they watched their parents get laid off through no fault of their own. I would say, as a behavioral scientist, the jury, to me, is still out, only because, like, smart people I admire on both sides have disagreements about how to interpret the data. But I will say this. It's hard to believe that there aren't some generational differences. How could there not be, right?

Many of our grandparents who grew up during the Second World War or the Great Depression, for the rest of their lives, reused every jam jar and saved every piece of tinfoil. Well, that's because they grew up during the Second World War and the Depression. Like, there's nothing wrong with them. It's because their worldview was formed by their childhood experience, which means everybody's worldview will be formed in some way, shape, or formed by common or shared childhood experience. I think that is a very good argument, even on first principles without a shred of data. It's like, how could you not be influenced by your cultural milieu?

And it's clear culture must shift and historical events must have some... And by the way, there is some data from economists who do things like go back to the Great Depression and look at, you know, savings rates and so on. And like, there is evidence, not only that your outlook can be shaped, but also that it can have lifelong effects. Like growing up through the depression actually can make you more- Frugal and miserly for the rest of your life. Yeah. Okay. So point to you, let's assume that your proposition is true,

that there are some generational- I will just also say though, before I like concede the point entirely, that when we look at a 20-year-old- Just so you know, I'm not trying to win here. I'm trying to gain insight from the great Angela Duckworth to help me understand the problem that I'm grappling with. I just want to say the following, because I think all behavioral scientists would agree with me on this one, which is that in addition to generational differences, like I grew up in the seventies, how about you? There are also differences between older and younger people that have nothing to do with your generation. And so, right. Like the maturation of the prefrontal cortex during adolescence and like hormones. And that just makes it very hard to kind of

disentangle, like, are you a millennial or are you just young, right? Or are you Gen Y? Okay. So with that, all that said, let's assume that you're right, that this generation is more fragile. Or I'll put it in your terms, which is for cultural reasons, lack grit. Yeah, I was going to say the G word, but okay, fine. You used it. So let's assume that the current generation is less gritty, which is an interesting proposition. Then the question would be like, why might they be? And you thought like what technology in its various forms, immediate gratification, you really think that like young people are socially impaired in some reasonably profound

way, right? Well, not all of them, but like I said, there's a significant number because of various reasons of which we've illustrated some have unfortunately not learned, I would call, necessary life skills. You know, I'd say the necessary life skills- They've been enabled to like just perpetuate a kind of childhood or adolescence. Right. So that when they get into the real world, and we hear stories like this, we go back to the over-coddled, you know, it's one thing for a parent to call and say, why didn't my kid get an A or get into the honors class?

But, you know, the stories abound of parents calling, you know, their kids 27, 28, 29 years old, why didn't my kid get the promotion? You know, why didn't they- What? Oh, yeah. Oh, I hadn't heard that. That is rich.

Or calling up, why didn't my kid get the job? Wow. Yeah. And at some point, you're not helping your kid. I know you're doing it out of love. I get it. I get it. I get it.

And the school admission scandal, I think, is an extreme example where you're really not helping your kid. Like beyond the ethics, which, of course, is the person most important. Of course. It's like, what the hell are you doing? Like you're actually hurting your kid's ability to thrive in life. Right. Because you have like robbed them of the chance to be independent. Right.

And setbacks are not always a bad thing if you take, and I know the way you talk about grit, which is long-term, you know, if you take an infinite mindset, which is none of these things is permanent, but all of these things have permanent, but all of these things have impact. Yes. Okay. So, and I, by the way, have an 18 year old and a 19 year old named Lucy and Amanda, and I am way too busy to be the sort of parent who's kind of like, are you kidding? Have you seen my to-do list? I'm definitely of the sort of like, Have you seen my to-do list?

I'm definitely of the sort of like, hey, what grade are you in type parent? But I'm vibing, as my teenagers would say, with a lot of what you say, Simon. I think in addition to the factors that you listed, there's another demographic shift, or there is a demographic shift, I should say, right, in addition to technology, et cetera, that is huge. So my grandmother had 13 kids on my mom's side. And I don't know how many kids on my dad's side, but like, you know, they almost stopped counting. Like when you get into like those kinds of numbers. Right. And I will say that. How many kids do you have? Not sure. Digits, but I haven't counted recently. So like lots of kids, right? And if you look at the grand sweep of human history, if people had more kids, of course, fewer of them survive. But actually, I think that demographic shift is very important because when you are a parent of one child,

which is very typical, every bit of your attention is focused on this one kid. I guess Gary Becker, the Nobel laureate in economics would say that like the rational thing to do when you have one or two kids is to invest enormously in them and to actually be relatively risk averse because like, hey, kind of all your eggs are in one basket, so to speak. But there's a difference between giving a kid attention and showing that they're loved, which is really important, versus letting them scrape their knees now and then and not intervening in every altercation or every bit of tension that they experienced growing up. Well, I'm with you, Simon. I'm just trying to say that there could be some unconscious mechanisms by which people are being a lot more careful and a lot more tender than they were in part because of just the calculus.

Well, that's the over-coddled argument. Yeah, that could be one reason why we're coddling. But my point is – Because if you look at the state of our country now, you know, a complete incapacity to listen on either side to somebody who disagrees with your holds. Like, show me the empathy, you know? Like, I think the empathy, you know? Like, I think the empathy is, it's a little more self-congratulatory. Like, look how much I care, but I won't, I don't care about what you care about. And I think there's a lot of virtue signaling,

which is going on, which is also extremely annoying to me. Like, I would rather you go and tutor someone or like work on a political campaign or whatever, and not just constantly tweet about your outrage over X, Y, or Z. So it's like Instagramming happy father's day. And with a little picture of you on your dad's knee, you know, from when you were a little kid, except your dad's not on Instagram. I'm not sure what that does, but maybe you should call your dad and maybe you don't have to broadcast happy father's day because your dad's not on Instagram. Yeah. This is like an exhibitionist. Yeah. It's all like all of this. So I agree. Maybe not as loudly or as energetically,

but I lament some of these things. And I think to your point about like the fragility, I mean, look, when my daughters were younger and they were joining soccer leagues and running in track meets and bringing home homework. I mean, it was kind of like almost New Yorker level funny to me that they would get eighth place ribbons in track meets that only had eight people in them. Do you really need a pink? But actually they had a pretty good sense of humor. So we would all have a good laugh about it. Like, you know, soccer games where you can't keep score. Yeah. You had a sense of humor about it because the data bears this out that the kids who get medals for coming in last, it doesn't actually make them feel better. It actually makes them feel worse because they know they don't

deserve it. Ah, interesting. So it's a double whammy. A double whammy. And the kids who actually worked hard for their medal, it devalues their effort. So it's lose-lose all around. It's lose-lose all around, right. Well, when I was a young mom, I read this book that I loved, not by a scientist, but by I think a former rabbi named Wendy Mogul. Did you ever read the book The Blessings of a Skinned Knee? I like the title, though. I was like, it's so Simon Sinek. You would love this book. I love the title.

And she's also a mom. So Wendy Mogul wrote this book about how when a kid grows up, there's a reason why we have all these scars on our knees. It's like you have to learn to get up, and you have to learn it's okay. You cry a little bit and it turns out your cheeks are waterproof. And I remember there was a part in the book where she was saying, if your kid is of a certain age and cannot make their own toast, you should run, not walk to the kitchen to show them. They have to be independent. And very recently, I was interviewing Esther Wajicki. She is, of course, an amazing woman in her own right.

However, she's also an amazing mom. So she had three daughters. One of them runs YouTube. One of them started and runs 23andMe. And the third, not to be outdone, is some award-winning scientist, professor, scholar somewhere, right? So they're all three unusually accomplished women. And she wrote a book about how to raise children, successful

people, as she puts it, I think. And she, in our recent conversation, was saying, when my daughters were very young, very young, I would allow them to do things like continue shopping downtown and meet you at home, that kind of thing. And apparently, to your point about generations, she now has grandchildren, right? And likewise, she's like, great, here's your bus pass. I'll see you at home. And her grandchildren are like, what? And the probability that they will be abducted or something is not zero. But the trade-off is if you're going to hold your kid by the hand until they're 42, guess what? They'll never know how to get home by themselves. I think that's your point, right?

Yeah. And look, I'm not saying that the standards don't change from generation to generation. I remember I was late to having a cousin. I had no cousins until I was about 12. And I remember my little baby cousin, James, who's now an adult, when he was a kid, he would fall over. He would clearly have scraped his knee and he would look at me before he reacted. He would look at the adult. And if I went, are you okay? Immediate tears, right? But if I went, you're fine. He would get up and just continue playing. And it was astonishing how I started to learn

that his reaction to adversity was learned. Right. You are the mirror. Right. And he's going to figure out what's going on by looking at your expression. So if a modern day parent is intervening everywhere, every time, doing everything for their kids

to the point where they can't make toast or the parents are calling, why didn't my kid get a promotion or get the job? Then that learned behavior, my fear is as stress becomes, I mean, we have the stress of COVID, we have the stress of loss of relationships, we have the stress of bad jobs and your parents really can't be there every day anymore. And you kind of are out on your own because it's called life. My fear is that that anxiety and depression

can become crippling. And the ability to form, and I've heard this when I've talked to young people, they have said to me, these are their words, that they struggle to form deep, meaningful relationships. They will concede that they wouldn't be surprised if their friends canceled on them because they got a better offer for different plans. And even though they may love the company of their friends and have fun with their friends, in a dark time, they wouldn't call their friends. Oh, interesting. They have not learned how to do that. Right. Actually, there's a new research study. I don't think you've read it yet because it just came out. And the researcher is

this young Yale professor named Julia Leonard. And she had this experiment where little kids, right, like preschool age, are doing hard things like puzzles and so forth. And the question is, what is the effect of an adult who takes over for you? And what she finds in a series of studies is that taking over, bad, right? Kids don't learn to struggle. And just to link this up with other science, you cannot learn things without struggle. It is part and parcel of learning to be confused and to have things not make sense and to be clumsy and awkward. And so I do think we're robbing kids of the struggle and the strength that comes from struggle if we are taking over for them. Two thoughts come to mind as you're sharing that. I knew this young leader for an

organization and read all of the books and watched all the TED Talks and really wanted to be a good leader. She had a couple of direct reports, so she had a small team. And as the day progressed, she didn't want her team to work late because she understood work-life balance. And so she would send them home at a reasonable hour and she would stay at work till 11 o'clock at night, finishing all the work. And what ended up happening, this would happen regularly. A, she was martyring herself. She was exhausting herself. She was stressed out and couldn't, you know, just became dysfunctional. But the flip side was the folks on her team stopped caring as much about their work. They became disinterested because it didn't matter if they finished or not.

It didn't matter if the quality was good or not because she would just finish it for them. And dare I say, laziness set in. Oh, right. She was like swooping in and fixing everything. She was the parent finishing the puzzle. And so what ended up happening is the kids were just like, whatever, you're going to fix it anyway. So who cares if I get it right or wrong? Who cares if I try again? So I hire a lot of 22-year-olds who are doing essentially a two-year fellowship with me, right? But they're staff of the University of Pennsylvania, and therefore I must adhere to the human

resources guidelines and rules about how many hours they're allowed to work, overtime, etc. And this is what I say to them at the very, very beginning, like day one. I say, now I'm going to tell you two things that completely contradict each other. Number one, I cannot ask you to work evenings or weekends or to spend more than the required work week to do your job. I cannot do that legally. It's also arguably you could say like unethical, like that's the first thing I'm going to say. So I will not actually ask you to answer emails in the evening or work on weekends or do anything actually that you don't want to do within the kind of nine to five boundaries of this job.

Number two, you will never, ever make it in academia if you do that. So you should just know that I don't start working at nine, stop working at five, not think about my work on the weekends, not answer emails in the evening. There's no way you will get into a PhD program, make it through a PhD program, or get a job in academia if you do number one. So there are your two mutually contradictory things that I need to tell you as you begin this position. At the end of those two years, I'm always right that the students are on track to get into a top

program and to have an actual career are the ones who electively chose to do what I do, which is to allow their work to become a passion for them and to not think of it as like, okay, well, it's time for me to sign off. And also, I don't care about quality, to your point. The nuance here, which is worth pointing out, is it's a choice. And the choice has to be made for the right reasons, which is I don't like working hard on things that I don't want to do. If it's something that in some way, shape, or form contributes to the greater good, to my vision of the world, then I find myself working odd hours or odd times or, you know, giving up a weekend. But it doesn't feel like work because I really, really want to do it. It might be hard. It might be stressful. But I want to do it,

not that I feel that I have to do it. I think I'm going to add your postscript to my little speech. I think that's the resolution of one and two. But what's your advice to young adults who don't know how to get to that kind of voluntary obsession that you and I probably both embody and also recommend? What do you say to the many, many, many young people who say, well, that sounds great. How do I get there? I'm like the opposite right now. I don't have any strong interests. So my advice is to help someone who's struggling with the same thing. Oh, interesting. Say more about that. We're social animals and we need each other, which is why these skills are so necessary

because loneliness is devastating to a human being. You know, like other social animals, like a gazelle. You know, gazelles are, they live together. And if you are sick or old, you get pushed to the edge of the herd so that the lion will eat you. Because the survival of the herd is not going to do really well if the lions keep eating the young and the fit. So they organically push the old and the sick to the edges. And for human beings, it's the same, which is when we're ostracized or left alone, the feeling is we're being put out to die. Right. And that's why we have such a strong need for belonging and acceptance.

Such a strong need for belonging. And sometimes, and this is a, we find ourselves belonging to groups that are really unhealthy, terrorist organizations, extremist organizations, you know, gangs. But what they offer is a sense of belonging that I can't get anywhere else. And I've been ostracized by my friends, But even if I don't even agree with everything in this group. At least I'm in this group. At least I'm in the group. At least someone loves me. Right. And so I think this is one of the big things that has really been lost in our modern society. We've become so insular because we can, quote unquote, talk to people, though we're by ourselves, because we can do it digitally.

We can be alone a lot. And the problem is for human beings, that's really dangerous. So Alcoholics Anonymous, 12-step program to help you overcome addiction, right? Deeply social. First of all, deeply social. It's an entirely voluntary organization. There is no fees, no membership, no nothing. Nobody's monetized it. You can go anywhere in the world and attend an AA meeting if you want to. If you go to one, there are all socioeconomic classes, every race, every sexual orientation, and no one judges you. Everyone is equally footed. It's kind of beautiful.

You belong here. You belong here because we all share this disease. And everything else is irrelevant. And you go through the 11 steps, and Alcoholics Anonymous knows that if you master 11, but not the 12th, you're probably going to succumb to the disease. It's the 12th step that matters. The 12th step is to help another alcoholic. Oh, that's so interesting. You know, I should know that. I actually have, and you said my advice to young people who are struggling to figure out their own lives is to help somebody else. Figure out the same thing, to help someone figure out the thing that they're struggling with.

The reason I should do the 12th step is like, I literally have a published article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science called Advice Giving Helps the Giver. So we did a random assignment to say, so I should know about the AA thing. I didn't know that. So the study that we did was a study where we randomized high school students into two conditions, right? There was a control condition and then there was a treatment condition. The treatment condition was a very brief intervention, and it was just this. We said, we would love you to help students who are just like you, maybe a little bit younger. So we're going to ask you some questions, and you're going to answer them. And whatever you tell us, we're going to relay that on to other students so they can

maybe do better than you would have done if you had had your wisdom that you have now. So half these questions were multiple choice ones. Like, where would you study? Do you think you'd study in your bedroom, in your kitchen? I mean, it didn't really matter what the question was like. Which of the following do you think would be more motivating to remember, like if you're procrastinating on your homework? And then there were some open-ended text box questions also. The whole thing took less than

a class period. Honestly, it took less than half of a class period. It was like really short. So, we follow these kids up. The next marking period, we have their official report card grades. And in this research experiment that was highly controlled, we found that giving advice to other students, not being told anything yourself found that giving advice to other students, not being told anything yourself, but giving advice to other students actually improved your own outcomes. And so I agree with you that our deeply social nature, our desire, not only to fit in, I think there's a need for, as the psychologist, Aryeh Kuglansky would put it, like a need for significance, right? A better thing than getting somebody a glass of milk and a cookie is to allow them to get you a glass of milk and a cookie.

Like, honestly, that will make them feel better than you being good to them, them being good to you. So I think there's something very deep there. And all of those examples that I gave at the beginning, all in some way, shape, or form, instigate or exaggerate that. So what's the shakiest leg on the stool of this argument? What makes you doubt this technology is getting in the way and now we have this coddled generation? Do you have any doubts about any of this? Are you more just interested in figuring out what to do about it? I have zero doubts. It's not a pig-headedness. It's not that I'm anti-technology. I just believe that everything comes at a cost.

Every benefit that we derive from anything in the world comes at a cost. I'll give you a real life example, right? The Marine Corps used to have it where if a Marine wanted to change their death benefits, they used to have to fill out a form, probably in triplicate, and then get their NCO, their non-commissioned officer, to sign off on the death benefits change, right? officer to sign off on the death benefits change, right? And so if the NCO looked down on your form and saw that you're taking your mother off your death benefits, they're going to look at you and say, what's going on? But in the name of reducing red tape and cutting costs, that system was digitized, where now Marines need only log on to the intranet and they can change their death

benefits and it's all done without talking to anybody. Without even anyone really seeing it, as it were. Exactly. The Marines also had, in their study of suicides, discovered a statistic that over 90% of Marines who attempted suicide changed their death benefits within one week of a suicide attempt. Oh, that's really interesting. So did we reduce red tape? Yes. Did we save money? Yes. Did we save money? Yes.

Did we reduce bureaucracy? Yes. But was the cost worth it? To debate the nuance of whether I'm right or wrong to me is irrelevant. There's enough evidence that it's a thing. And because I think the cost is too high, whether it's kids struggling at work, struggling in relationships, never finding love, never finding passion, or at best, at best, malaise is the life that they live. Their inability to manage stress affects the people around them. It affects them. It affects their relationships. It affects their joy of life. And we can intervene. This is not a genetic problem. So what's the intervention look like? I think, you know, do I want parents to let their kids scrape their knees more? Yes. Do I know that it's really hard to do? I have a niece

and a nephew and I'm pretty overprotective of them too. Yeah, I get it. It's really hard, but there are little ways that we can do it. And I think your way, letting them, you know, when they say, help me do the puzzle and you go, no, you do the puzzle. But you look, you've done a longitudinal study, right right so my own kids exactly how are your kids okay there was not a control group but i will say this like a lot of things that you're talking about like i made them work oh academics i know i know we're so boring so many dependent clauses so what's your opinion well i don't really have a control group for my opinion but well i have to be careful actually, I get criticism on the other side

where people are like, oh, you're so glib and you oversimplify. And I'm like, oh my God. Oversimplify, have you seen my career? Yeah, exactly. I was like, hey, there's something that I actually have zero data on. So you'll like this.

Oh, I like this. I have no data, but I'm going to say it anyway. I have a theory that growing up on a farm actually helps you be gritty. I remember reading this biography, this is now years ago, of Frank Lloyd Wright, who of course was not a farmer, but an architect. And apparently, as he recounts it, at some point during his adolescence, he was like a pain in the ass.

And some relative, maybe it was his parents, said, you need to go spend a summer at some uncle's farm or something and have a summer of hard labor. And when you come back, you'll be a different person. And he went and he said he had never worked that hard. And there is a kind of necessity of being on a farm. This animal is going to die. You have to take care of the problem. Or like, this doesn't work. You have to solve it. And you don't have all the parts and you can't get it from Amazon Prime or whatever. You just have to solve the problem. There is a kind of force of human nature and existence that, well, Frank Lloyd Wright

says, like, it did change him forever. He's like, you know, I came back and they were right. And I was no longer the lazy, self-entitled person that I was before that summer. Like all those things that you're saying, being interdependent on other people, being helpful, having real responsibilities, having consequences, and also having to like do things that are hard and imperfect. And then guess what? The sun rises the next day. You don't have to spend your life feeling anxious because like, guess what? You're a tiny part of the picture. That happens on a farm.

Here's what I've learned from talking with you. There are cultural considerations that exaggerate or inhibit grit in someone and to ignore surroundings. And look, you cannot ignore that there are generational differences because we grow up differently. You know, as we talked about, you grew up during the Second World War and the Great Depression. You have a different way of living life. Or you grow up like with, you know, immigrant parents like mine. Or you grew up with immigrant parents, right? It can be macro or micro for sure. And I'm also recognizing that when you ask, how do we solve this? Which is to put people in situations where they have to help others,

where we teach service, whether it's at work or at school, and they have a responsibility, not to a job and not to a number, but they have a responsibility to another human being to help them solve a problem that they may be struggling with themselves. And to learn that I cannot put myself first all the time is actually a very grit building skill. Though I may not be able to quote unquote teach you grit, I can teach you how to look after another person. Can I just say how nice it was to talk to you? I feel very invigorated and reinforced that really the only opportunity, the only option we have to get through this really difficult thing called life is with each other. And the skill to ask for help. And the skill to give help.

And the skill to give help are probably the two most important things that we either aren't learning as much as kids anymore, and we're definitely not learning at school or at work. I agree. Maybe we'll have another conversation sometime. Yeah. Thanks, Angela. If you enjoyed this podcast and if you'd like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Until then, take care of yourself.

Take care of each other.