Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - How to Cultivate Your Character Strengths | Angela Duckworth

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

This week’s conversation is with Angela Duckworth, the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive. She is also the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative, and faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics.A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, Angela has advised the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs.Angela completed her undergraduate degree in Advanced Studies Neurobiology at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude. With the support of a Marshall Scholarship, she completed an MSc with Distinction in Neuroscience from Oxford University. She completed her PhD in Psychology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.We all know Angela from her book, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” the #1 New York Times best seller, which was the impetus for our first Finding Mastery conversation back in 2016… that’s Episode 029 if you’re looking for it.I wanted to have Angela back on to discuss her new research on character, and how character development can be actioned to benefit others (and oneself). As Angela says, the term “character” is used far too vaguely most of the time. She shares the 3 dimensions of character – and – ways to train them.She is incredibly grounded in the scientific evidence on how character strengths like self-control, curiosity, and gratitude are critically important to social and emotional well-being, physical health, and achievement.Angela is amazing. Her work is a gift to us all. This conversation, and our friendship for that matter, is a breath of fresh air - life-giving and life-lifting._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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are insecure, what happens to us when we do things out of fear, like, you know, how do we build these things? Like, I don't know, it's a pretty great world. Hey, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist, fortunate to work with some of the most extraordinary thinkers and doers across the planet. The whole idea behind these conversations is to learn from people, to pull back the curtain, to explore how these extraordinaries have committed to mastering both their craft and their minds. And I hope you would recognize that our minds, as humans, are one of our greatest assets. If you want to learn more about how you can train your mind, this is just a quick reminder here to check out the online psychological training course that we built, where we pulled together the best practices to meet that unique intersection of the psychology

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Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash findingmastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash findingmastery. Now, this week's conversation is with Dr. Angela Duckworth, the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive. She is also the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor

at the University of Pennsylvania, Faculty Co-Director of the Penn Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative, and Faculty Co-Director of Wharton People Analytics. As a 2013 MacArthur Fellow, Angela has advised the World Bank, NBA, NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs. When we talk about excellence, and certainly in this case, academic excellence, look at her body of work here. Undergraduate degree in advanced studies, neurobiology at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude. How cool is that? With the support of a Marshall scholarship, she completed a master's in science with distinction in neuroscience from Oxford University. Then she completed her PhD in

psychology as a National Science Foundation graduate fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Many of us know Angela from her book, Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance. It was a number one New York Times bestseller, which was the impetus of our first Finding Mastery conversation back in 2016. And that episode is episode 29, if you're looking for it. But I wanted to have Angela back on to discuss her new research on character and how character development can be actioned to benefit others and of course oneself. So as Angela says, the term character is used too vaguely most of the time. So she shares the three dimensions of character and ways to train them. She is incredibly grounded

in the scientific evidence on how character strengths like self-control, curiosity, and gratitude are critically important to social and emotional well-being as well as physical health and even achievement. Angel is amazing. Her work is a gift to us all. This conversation and our friendship for that matter is a breath of fresh air. It's life-giving and life-lifting, and I hope that you find her work to be meaningful in your life as well. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with a true legend and a friend, Dr. Angela Duckworth. Angela, how are you? I'm good, Mike. I'm better than I was at the end of 2021. I'm good. Okay. Well, we're not going to just gloss over that.

A little bit of a teaser, I guess. Yeah, at the end of 2021. I think it's been a hard couple of years. But without too descript, what was going on? I went on vacation with my family to Miami and, uh, right there, I think I would say like vacation for me is like, not usually where I want to be. I think I, uh, I think, I think I, I just vastly prefer working than being on vacation, but I was making it. Okay. I was like surviving, um, like being away from my work, my research. And then we went snorkeling. We were

like off the coast of somewhere south of Miami. And my close to 87-year-old mom nearly drowned. The happy ending, by the way, is that she didn't drown. but between almost drowning and drowning, there was the ER, the ICU, the hospital, and then a few other misadventures. So anyway, all that happened. But by the time January 1st rolled around, we were approaching the equilibrium that we had before the vacation and all that. So that's what I mean by I'm, I'm feeling great, relatively, Mike, I'm feeling great. Okay, good. All right. Health is in order. Purpose is in order. Sounds like your relationships are healthy. And people are doing okay. So kind of the big rocks are in place for you. Yeah, the big rocks are there. And I will tell you like all life threatening or, you know, I think there's nothing quite, you know, the same

as like watching your own mother possibly have her life ending. But you get to look at your rocks and you get to say like, which ones are the big ones and which ones are the little ones. And so I do feel like I have some perspective. There's always a gift in every situation and the gift is almost always perspective for me. Well, there's a couple of gems that you're dropping. One is a framework of optimism, a framework of hope, a framework of finding what's good. And then you've also got something you said, I'd rather be working than vacationing so that's interesting as a as a framework and then the other that you you share is that um you might and it's

a hint and so wave me off if i'm wrong but this might have been a traumatic experience for you we'll start with the end about trauma so i did have this experience when I was out in the ocean with my mother while she was not breathing and turning blue. And we were literally, well, I guess we weren't literally in the middle of the ocean. We were far from the boat that was supposed to be keeping an eye on us. We were apparently far enough from anyone's eyesight or earshot that my cries for help, like somebody help. It was like a movie. I was like, somebody help me, like help, help. Nobody could apparently see or hear us. And in that moment, I think just a tiny part of my brain was like, oh, this is where PTSD comes from. Just a tiny part of my brain, most of my brain was just trying to figure

out what to do. But a tiny part of me was like, huh, this is, yeah. I have never, Mike, I don't say to say, I don't think I've ever experienced terror, like that terror in my life. I have been afraid before. I have probably done stupid things where I should have been more afraid. But in that moment, there were minutes of sheer terror and then dread following that because it's like, is she now going to be brain dead? Is she going like make it out of the ER? So there was trauma. I had to Google. I mean, this is ridiculous, but I was talking to my therapist. Why was I talking to my therapist?

I hadn't talked to my therapist in 10 years, but my daughter said to me, my daughter's 20, she's like, you know, you have to go to therapy. And I was like, I don't want to go to therapy. And she was like, nobody ever wants to go to therapy. And I was like, yeah, that's probably true. So I got in touch with my therapist. I recounted this. She was like, yeah, you to go to therapy. And I was like, yeah, that's probably true. So, I got in touch with my therapist. I recounted this. She was like, yeah, you never want to see me. And I was like, true. Anyway, I was talking to my therapist because I knew at some intellectual level that one ought to do something like that after. And we did talk about trauma and I guess

what's called acute stress disorder. There's like the 30 days after a traumatic event and like, you know, are you experiencing any of these symptoms? Within 30 is acute stress. And then post 30 is where you meet some of the criteria from a timeline for PTSD. Post-traumatic, sorry. Yeah. So anyway, I will tell you this. I think that I, in the very immediate aftermath probably had some, you know, like I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating. I was like obsessively, you know, Googling drowning and so forth. But I think the difference for me was, and maybe this is like less relevant to most people, like my mother lived, you know, I was so grateful. I was euphoric. I was shocked. Like my mother is from all perspectives, like completely fine. And so I probably would otherwise have, you know,

a much, you know, different, you know, like feeling right now, I probably wouldn't be like talking to you. I don't know what I would be doing, but, um, that was, that was like the sequence of things. Um, during this, I do want to say this, like my mom, like, I think her first text to me, um, from the hospital when she got her phone and she was able to not, not so much on oxygen that she could, she said, like, I'm an optimist. Um, it's close. Like, this is a funny text to get from my close to 87 year old, not dead mother. Like I'm an optimist and I'm so glad that we have something to learn. Um, and you know, I'm fine. And, um, like really looking forward to thinking about what we all learned in this situation. So I don't know if I'm an optimist.

My mom is definitely an optimist. That's a teacher too. Yeah. So she's a seeker to understand deeper and committed. It sounds like her whole life to grow, even in the face of something that was life altering, potentially at least. Yeah. And even at 87 right where you know you might think like are you still um eager to grow like apparently

what a cool role model my mom is like like the bestest person i have to say that she is uh definitely the goodest person like she is a good person, like, to her. So, and, you know, in these states of compromise, maybe, Mike, as a psychologist, especially, you know, you've seen so many people in so many, you know, different kinds of adverse circumstances. I do think there's something, like, revealing. It's like, you know, it's like your prefrontal cortex might not be on. You're sort of, like, stripped down to, like, your basic impulses. And so, and in those states, for example, when my mother was like just coming back to life, you know, right after the CPR, like, you know, she could barely talk. It's like, you know, what she is stripped down to

like, nothing is just a good person who was like her first thoughts was like, you know, is everyone okay? I'm sorry. Like, like, are you okay? And I, you know, I, you know, I have to say that like, you know, is everyone okay? I'm sorry. Like, are you okay? And I, you know, I have to say that like, if I grew up to be half the person, well, I guess I'm already grown up. If I could ever be half the person my mom is, I'd be very proud. And I love hearing this because you're bringing up another part of it. I'm still not clear if you're out of the acute phase or technically in the post 30, but still having some stuff. Still within 30. It's still within 30. Yeah. And the label of PTSD, and there's criteria. It's life-threatening to yourself or others. It's

some sort of event that really will jar a person. But the label isn't quite right. Post-traumatic is right. Stress disorder, I guess, is correct. But really what it does is it forces somebody to reorganize a lifestyle to avoid being re-traumatized. So you think that's what really is going on when we talk about- That's totally what's going on. That's interesting, yeah. Yeah, so it's avoiding re-traumatization. So what do we do? We are amazing species. We are an amazing, I don't want to say machine, that's not it.

The ecosystem is beautiful. And when something like that happens, we are supposed to be alerted to it. And so say there was a particular smell or color or a sound that you heard, and it was even below conscious, that your brain would say, yeah, don't get near that again. Right. Kind of like food poisoning and being like, don't eat that again. Exactly. Yeah.

And so you can watch that. Like, am I avoiding being on a boat near water, washing my face? Well, I'll tell you this. You know what? Like a subsequent text, not one day afterwards, my mom apparently is going to go to Barbados to see my sister. And she's like, I know this sounds crazy, but I think I'm going to go snorkeling. And I was like, really? She was like, oh, but definitely in shallower water, you know, I'll make sure I'm like, great. Just go for it. Yeah, I will watch myself. I seem to see none of these avoidant

behaviors in her. Yeah, I will watch it. That is a very interesting thing. It's almost like we learn, but we learn sort of like overlearn or we learn the wrong lesson, right? But there is something where we're trying to adapt and learn, but we're sort of like taking the wrong lesson right but there is something where we're like trying to adapt and learn but we're we're sort of like taking the wrong lesson or making the wrong adaptation well we're from a evolutionary standpoint we're making the right lesson which is stay away from the foul smelling something you know stay away it just turns out not to be necessarily like adaptive in the long but yes there's the understandable reaction right yeah that's exactly right yeah so it's a survival mechanism as opposed to a optimization you know and so yeah very cool um and you know you also like back to mom is that when we're going through something heavy we're stripped down and then also when we're witnessing something in your

role we're stripped down so you see this is why i one of the reasons i'm so in love with the the life of getting to the frontier whether that's in an academic or an athletic standpoint, like really pushing to the edges. Because when you are on the edge, you 100% know it because every mechanism in your body is true. And either you have the internal skills to dance on the edge or you're doing everything you can to get away from it. The two kind of orthogonal extremes there. What happens when we're not on the edge, right? So what happens when you're not in the middle of the ocean trying to tread water and scream for help? What happens when you're just living life and you're far away from the frontier? Well, so in my model, those are the times when we're training, developing, growing,

because all humans will be tested. Elite athletes, elite musicians, artists, fundamentally organize their day to be tested every day, right? From a physical, from a mental, from an emotional, sometimes a life perspective, spiritual standpoint, technically for sure. They fundamentally, that's a key word, they fundamentally organize their life to be tested. Where the rest of us, life is pretty hard and stressful. And it's because we don't have the fundamental commitments in place and we don't have the fundamental psychological skills to kind of go test. We're just trying to get relief because we're tired and we're struggling with like the big order of things, you know, purpose and whatever.

So let's segue right into what I thought we were going to talk about mostly, which is character. So it's been over five years, Angela, since you were on the podcast. No way. I don't believe you. Well, it hasn't been five years since we talked, but okay. No, no, no, no. Five years since I've been on this podcast. All right.

Yeah, I know. Okay. Half a decade. It should be. It's almost embarrassing, isn't it? So it should be like, we should have a regular segment, you know, like the wisdom from Angela, like it should be a corner staple of what we're doing. I don't think I have enough things to say. Oh, please. So, when we were first connected, you were deep in the trenches on grit. And I don't say this lightly, but your world recognized for passion, perseverance, the organization of living a particular way in an aspirational way. And so like, awesome. And I know that you've been pivoting and you've been, I don't want to say more interested, but you've been working on character. And let's just talk about the migration from grit to character and why and what's happening for you there? You know, it's a question to begin with, what is character, right? Like, what is character? We use

that phrase a lot, maybe don't use it enough. I think of character the same way Aristotle, I think, thought of character, which is, you know, character is everything that you do, everything that you think, everything that you feel, and everything that you say that is both good for others and good for you. And to paraphrase Aristotle, I think like a life well lived, right? You know, one thing that this incident with my mother nearly drowning taught me is that my mother will not be around forever. Thank God she didn't die on that day, but there will be a day where she is not here and there will be a day when I am not here. I think Aristotle, thinking about the finiteness of life, said a life that is well-lived is a life that is done in service to others as well as yourself.

Then, if you unpack character, because it must be that there are more than one thing, one more than one aspect of what does it mean to do that, I think you say, well, obviously, it's got to be being honest, having integrity, being principled. Well, there's got to be some component in there about humility, you know, knowing that like everything that you know could be wrong or that somebody else could be right and disagree with you. There's got to be kindness in there, right? Like having a genuine affection for your fellow person.

What about generosity, you know, giving, giving everything? Like, well, the list keeps growing. I think somewhere down the line, maybe like eight or nine, you'd say something that looks like grit, right? What about perseverance, the face of setbacks, and pursuing things that have purpose to you? Okay, that sounds like character too. I think of Aristotle when I think of what I want to be myself. I think of this when I think of my two daughters who are now 18 and 20. I guess they were five years younger when last we spoke. It's really clear to me that character is probably what

we should be focusing on and grit is just one component of it, not one that I want to diminish because like you, Mike, I think you and I probably personally enjoy high performance and excellence. It is a pleasure for us to see someone who is truly at the top of their game, whether it's a game like a sport or whether they're like a three-star Michelin chef or a great journalist or writer, whatever it is. So I think grit is important, but I think it's a facet of character that as a mother, as a person, as a performer, I wouldn't even necessarily count as the most important aspect of my own character or the people that I admire. So I don't know if it's a pivot because in a way, I have to say at the same time that as a scientist, you know, you have to specialize. It's like, you know, like an athlete, right?

Like you can't play all sports equally well. So I do study grit and I'm, you know, continuing to study grit now five years after the last time we talked. But I more and more want to like basically get all the researchers and psychologists who study all of these facets of character to come together and say, like, here's the stuff that we know, you know, that's useful. And also just, you know, here's how we can, you know, do more of like this good work. Like, how do we like find out more about these aspects of character?

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What I wanted to talk to you about is my neighborhood values, maybe what my region values, maybe what my country values is very different to other parts of the world. So, I do want to get like on the chessboard, if you will, like what are the core characters or character values or you calling them character virtues, that are important to you that you're studying? I know Aristotle had like seven or nine. And fortitude was definitely one of them. I think you would hang your hat on that as what he was referring to as grit.

But what are the main ones? And then can you thin slice the difference between character, virtue, and value? So there are lists of these, let's call them character strengths, right? But you could call them different things, but there are lists of them, right? Aristotle, Benjamin Franklin had a list. I think he called them the virtues, right? 13 of them, right? But then there's also like seven heavenly virtues contrasted with the seven deadly sins. And there are many lists, right? But then there's also like the seven heavenly virtues contrasted with the seven deadly sins. And, you know, there are many lists, right? We haven't even talked about like Eastern traditions, right? So like, there are lots of lists. But in about 2000 or so, like right around the turn of the millennium, there were two psychologists named Marty Seligman and Chris Peterson. Marty Seligman ended up being my PhD advisor a couple

years after this, but they decided to come up with the Encyclopedia of Character. And they took all the lists that they could find in history across religious and philosophical traditions, and they looked at what the list had in common, right? Because obviously, there are little differences. Like, oh, this list doesn't have humor on it, but this one does. Like, look, I found temperance on these four lists or close synonyms. And what they concluded is that

though there are some differences across history and across culture, there are striking commonalities. And so they came up with a list of 24 strengths and they have things on there like appreciation of beauty, curiosity, humility, perseverance, things that, again, if you had a blank piece of paper and you just had to list things, you probably would get close to the list that they came up with. 24 is a lot,

Mike. I honestly couldn't name all 24. If this were a final exam, I'm sure I wouldn't get 100%. It was like, okay, wait a second. All right, that's up to 22. I don't know. So, I think it might be simpler to think of the categories of these. Are there families? Is there a smaller number than 24? So, there's been a lot of scientific research asking the question, are there natural bundles of character strengths that go together and are all pointing to the same thing? I believe that there are really three natural families of character strengths. I'm going to call them heart, mind, and will. Because like you, Mike, I think having a language for this that is a little

bit memorable and feels right is important. So, let's start with heart. So, these are interpersonal character strengths like generosity and kindness, like empathy and compassion, like honesty, because if you're honest, it affects some other person. And if you're dishonest, it also affects other people. These are all character strengths, which I would argue are the most important character strengths. Your strengths of heart are the ones where if you don't have them, you know, it very clearly other people than you suffer. And I think when you talk to someone about someone else, like if I say, hey, Mike, I want you to meet this high performer. First thing I want to tell you about, they have great character.

You probably would spontaneously think of these interpersonal strengths of heart. That's actually, by the way, not what I study. And this is why I want to be humble about what I study. I mean, it's not like I study the most important dimension of character. It's all these other people who study this most important dimension of character. It's all these other people who study this most important dimension. And I do want to say, when I say this is a natural family, it's like people who are generous tend to be grateful. People who are grateful tend to be honest. People who are honest tend to be like, so when I say it's a family, it's like when you have certain of these

character strengths, you tend to have the other ones. And I do think it's all about an orientation toward like other people matter at the heart of all of these, at the heart of all these strengths of heart. So that's one of these families. The second family that I don't find it too difficult to remember is strengths of mind. And I think it's important to say that whether you're an athlete or, you know, one of the things that just shocked me when I got to hang out just a little bit with professional athletes, which I know you've done a lot of work with in your life, it's like how smart they are. I was like, oh, I didn't know you were going to be really curious, intelligent, analytic, creative. So, I will say of athletes and non-athletes, you know, these, humility, especially intellectual humility, imagination, creativity.

These strengths, I want to tell you that I've been doing research about labor trends, at least in the United States. When you look at a lot of data and you ask what jobs in this country are paying more and, as a trend over the last 15 years, are paying more and more, in other words, from a practical standpoint, the labor market is rewarding these jobs. They tend to be jobs that really actually have this intellectual dimension. It turns out that machines and algorithms are increasingly replacing the rote tasks, whether they were manual tasks or more like problem-solving tasks. Anything that's kind of standard, an algorithm can do it better than you can. By the way, the algorithm works 24-7 and doesn't make any mistakes. This strength of mind category, I think, is increasingly important because it is uniquely human to be a creative

problem solver. It is uniquely human to have curiosity about unrelated things. It is uniquely human to have these particular strengths of mind. Artificial intelligence will not beat out, I think, human intelligence in the way that these strengths describe. That's what I mean by strengths of mind. Then the last thing is what I do study, strengths of will. I study self-control and grit. I study optimism and growth mindset and productivity. I think all of these strengths are important for getting things done. I think as somebody who started out as a teacher who saw a lot of kids who were failing, and they were failing out of school, they were failing my tests as a math teacher,

they were not on trajectories where they were going to do well in life, I think a lot of my attention went to strengths of will because they were not doing what they could have done. But when I say that it may be the least important family of character, it's just like, I just think of my own daughters. If they were honest and good people and they were really curious and learners, but they didn't get a lot done. I mean, I would certainly take that as a trade-off, you know, versus having them be like really gritty, you know, people with no heart, you know, or, you know, really gritty people who were very close-minded.

So strengths of heart, strengths of mind, strengths of will. And that's my description of them. There's a lot of, you know, research to suggest suggest that, yeah, those are three defensible ways of thinking about a complete roster of character. So super clear. I love that you've found which ones hang together. You've bundled in a way that I can easily remember as well, heart, mind, and will. And I want to tell you an exercise I did when my son was first born that I think it's been

a meaningful exercise for my wife and I is that unsophisticated, but intentional. She wrote down a list of a bunch of come to think about it as character strengths, character values. I still need to get the definition from you. Oh, yeah. I haven't answered that one. Yeah. But so we just, she wrote it on a page and I wrote on a page. And then we said, okay, let's boil them down. And then we each got to three.

And what we wanted this exercise was to try to help clarify what are the strengths that we want to be able to pass on and cultivate in our son. What were they? And we knew that, so I'll tell you, so we got down to two. And so, one of them actually, yeah, one of them, but this has been a guidepost to help us think about our thoughts, our words, and our actions towards our son, the environment that we're creating. And I want to play a game. I wonder if I could guess, knowing you and knowing what matters to you, I wonder if I could guess what three you would pick or two or three you would pick for your kids. For my own children. For your kids, yeah. So, mine was kindness and strength. And

so, strength is really about courage and to do the hard thing, the fortitude to stay with it when it's hard. Yeah. Right. And so that's where strength comes. And then kindness is exactly what it sounds like. Right. And so those are the two that guide us.

And so anyways, I didn't have a third category. I didn't have the buckets that you had. That's good though. Kindness and strength. It's even, it's even, but well, you, so you, what you didn't mention, right? Like, so you didn't mention, um, curiosity or, you know, love of learning, et cetera, right? It was on the list. It was on the list, but you had to prioritize. Yeah. We're like, okay, let's, let's focus on two. And maybe what we do now is we,

we open it up and focus on the third one. by the age of 13, he's got those two pretty well grooved. We've been pretty relentless with it, but now we maybe open up another two or whatever. But can I guess what I think yours? Yeah, this is great. Go for it. I wrote, I know what I, I think I know what I think. Go ahead. Okay, so for heart, will is easy, right?

Shouldn't that be one easy for you that you're going to teach grit? Uh, yeah. And I have to say like, yeah, if we, if we teach by example, then like, yeah, they see a lot of grit and yeah, I would be lying if it weren't, you know, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a value. And so strength of mind. Um, I think you leaked it when you said, oh, you didn't have curiosity. So, and I know you to be really curious and to be intellectually curious and, you know, to be like, well, where does that come from? And how does that work? So I would imagine, I would imagine curiosity. Yeah, that's good. I'm going to give you a point for that one too. So two out of two.

Okay. And heart. Yeah. Which one do you think I picked for heart? Give me three and I'll, I bet I could get the one. Okay. You said kindness. I'm just going to, I don't know exactly how you mean kindness, like, but I'll, I'll use that sometimes with generosity. There's gratitude. And in strengths of heart, I would also count like honesty. So you could call it, you know, generosity, gratitude, honesty.

Which of those do you think? I think we're like-minded in this way. I'm going to go with kindness. Yeah, you got it. Oh my gosh, Mike, you know me so well. I would have, yeah, I would have, you know, said that, but I actually literally wrote it down just to keep myself, you know, just keeping the score here. Like I would have been honest in my reporting, but yeah. And if I had to rank order of hours, right? Like which of those is most important? I mean, I think for me probably, you know, kindness, like, you know, I just, it was really important to me.

I actually worried once my older daughter was like, I had made banana bread for her, like preschool teachers or something. And we were like packing it up and she was like, no, I want to keep this. And I was like, no, it's for your teachers. She's like, I don't want to give the banana bread to the teachers. I want to keep it. And it was like, oh no, my daughter is going to grow up to be an unkind person. But yeah, no, I have to say that what I'm most proud of, I think, is that my daughters really are kind, spontaneously,

I think, authentically wanting to take care of their friends and make a small positive debt in the universe. There is something, though, I have to say, of late I have recognized as being really important. So it wasn't spontaneously what I wrote down myself or thought about. But I do think more and more that honesty is really important. And we haven't talked about my husband, but my husband really, of the two of us, I think, is the better parent. And, you know, thinking about honesty, you know, the pandemic has been hard. And the pandemic has, there's research on this, you know, when people are in a stressed state, you know, it's easier to cut corners, it's easier to justify, you know, a little cheating here, a little fib there. And with my daughters who are

now kind of like 18 and 20, I mean, they're like young adults, right? They're like not in our house anymore, at least right there. Like, you know, just what they see happening. And like, like, I was like, you wouldn't, you wouldn't cheat, right? Like, and they were like mom like nobody who's a daughter of jason would ever cheat and i was like yeah that's true so i have lately come to a daughter they didn't say me but angela i know they didn't feel like a daughter of i was waiting for it's like yeah but i already knew i was like yeah jason Yeah, my husband is as square as they could be, as a human being could be. So anyway, I think these character strengths are guideposts. They are things that parents-to-be or parents who are, or like any of us are like, what

do I want to do in 2022? I mean, what better way to set a New Year's resolution? Rather than like, I want to lose five pounds. What about your values? The ones that you want to say at the end of the year, like I lived that life, right? Aristotle said that character is life well-lived. That was the year 2022 that I lived. And I'm going to answer your question now about values versus character. So when I said that around the turn of the millennium, around 2000, that these two psychologists, Chris Peterson and Marty Seligman, decided to come up with the Encyclopedia of Character. There's literally a chapter for each of the character

strengths. They're 24. They decided on the title for the book to be values in action. Their definition of character is the values that you hold dear, so the principles that you hold to be more important, the aspirational principles that you would like to say that you live your life by. Maybe you don't. Maybe you haven't yet, but these are the things you believe to be the most important, so of higher priority than other things. These are your values, but values in action is character. So, if you really think honesty is important, but you don't enact honesty, then you can value honesty, but you do not have the character strength of honesty. So, I thought that was a very carefully chosen and apt title for this encyclopedia of character. And I think it's a

good way of us to think about character because it is not just aspirational. It is also only enacted. You can only have character by enacting character. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night, and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently,

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for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Two parts to that. One is we put values in action in our online course and it's a oh you use a via yeah and so yeah it's a resource that people can can go in there and just figure out you know like you get their scores right they get their signature strengths yeah that's right yeah so so it's it's from that standpoint it's great and then on the honesty bit i think that honesty this is personal right like i don't have data so i'm not speaking from a data mind here but for me honesty it of course it's a

value but to do so when it's hard to do so requires courage and so that's why i laddered back to strength yeah i was gonna say like why did you say strength and like what do you mean by courage like what is courage for you then? Courage is like doing the noble thing when it's hard to do it and having the courage to, in modern times, like what I'm teaching him is to know who he is, to know his core values, and to live authentically that even when it's hard to do so. And so it's courage to speak. It's courage, truth it's courage to speak. It's courage, truth, maybe courage to act. So that term that you've chosen, courage, is that because the enemy is fear? Is that what makes it difficult? Is that you

have to overcome fear to tell the truth or to do the right thing? Yeah. I think we are struggling professionally with, and not just our profession, but leadership in general. I think courage is something that is hard for people to do. And you have courage and also have compassion. So like on Thursday nights, I've been teaching this class of high school students. So it's kind of like finding mastery type stuff, but for high school students. And I was like, trading homework? You're not allowed to trade homework. It's a euphemism for cheating. And then they were explaining these circumstances, but also they were like, this is a really

hard year. We're exhausted. We are tired. And I was like, you know what? It is exactly when you are tired. And I was like, you know what? It is exactly when you are tired, exactly when you're exhausted, is exactly when you are stressed that I think it becomes more important to remind yourself, what is the right thing to do? And I guess under certain very narrow circumstances, trading homework would be okay. Under many circumstances, that's called cheating and it's not okay. So I think it's interesting. And there is research on this that, you know, when people are feeling stressed out, they are more likely to endorse

cheating and to cheat. So, so I do think that like this idea of courage, like, I don't know if it's fear or like, I did want to unpack that a little bit. Like what, what is the enemy to be overcome? You know, is it fear or is it fatigue? like it puts this heavy blanket on passion. It puts this heavy blanket on being agile to adjust to the unfolding unpredictable world around us. And so fear and fatigue, if you're going to call them enemies, those are the ones that I am relentlessly working with people and businesses to help them have tools and perspectives and practices to be able to work with that, to go upstream to fear, to go upstream to fatigue and get the practices right so that we're not chronic in both.

And courage is a, I think it's, I don't know this to be true, but I think it's got to be, at least for me, the key pin where it's like a lot starts here with courage. And you think of it as a skill? Yeah, I can practice courage. I think that's another aspect of, you know, let's say character includes grit, but it includes courage and includes generosity, includes all these things. I think another difference between a value and a character strength is a character strength is a value in action. So you can practice it and you can watch somebody else do it and be like, oh, like that. I mean, there's like actually strategies, right? I've heard this like tiny little book on creativity, which is not something we've been talking about, but it would be a strength of mind,

right? And it was by John Cleese. I think he's like the Monty Python, one of the Monty Python guys. It's like as slim as your pinky, but it's one of those books where you pick it up in a bookstore and you sort of feel guilty because by the time you want to buy it, you've literally read the whole thing. I did buy it by the way. But anyway, it was a really interesting perspective on creativity. It was like, creativity is a decision. It's a choice. It's a really interesting perspective on creativity. It was like creativity is a decision. It's a choice. It's a skill. It's a strategy.

It's not just something, it's not just a gift, right? So I love this language about character as being, you know, something you can practice, something you can get, you know, better at, you know, something that you could like read about and like get better at it because you, you know, read about how somebody else is doing it. So I think those are some of the reasons that it's different from values. Let's talk about just creativity for just a thread here is that I think it requires courage to be creative, to say or to see or to express something differently. And if creativity is, it was new to me and innovation, it's new to others. I still think it comes back to some courage to be able to explore the new to me and certainly

to explore the new to others, you know, the innovation part. So again, I'm laddering back to courage. That being said, I want to come, I want to make sure I'm hearing what you're saying correctly is that character and virtues and values. So can you summarize those quickly as just like bang, bang, bang? So virtues, I think, and character strengths are basically synonyms. I think virtues just sound so, I don't know, some people love the language of virtues, but other people, it sounds a little bit like somebody's wagging a finger at you with a very high lace

collar on or something. So, I'm just going to pass on the virtue definition because I think of it as the same thing, maybe a highfalutin word or something. But character and values, I think, has that distinction. Character is like all the things that you habitually do, think, say, and feel that are good for others and good for you. So your character should be, I hope, like a work in progress your whole life. Not just like Mike's kind or Mike's not kind, but like Mike is getting kinder. Mike is already kind, but working on kindness in 2022. So that's, to me, what character is.

These ways of thinking, acting, feeling, and doing that we're saying, I guess, that's, to me, what character is. These ways of thinking, acting, feeling, and doing that we're saying, I guess, that benefit others and yourself, that you can continue to cultivate your whole life. But they really are in action. So, they're not just thoughts you have. They're not just beliefs. They're enacted. And then values, I do think, are like the aspirational principles by which you would hope to live your life, right? I mean, you really can value kindness and not be kind, but you cannot have the strength of kindness or the character strength of kindness or the virtue of kindness without actually doing kind acts.

Very cool. Now, let's get into the applied part of this. How do you help people develop their character? Do you say first know your natural strengths and then pick two or three that you want to get better at and practice and train those? Or like, how do you, what's the roadmap? Like, how do you do this? I do think, and I think we shared this, but you tell me if I'm wrong. I do think that number one, before all, there is self-awareness. As my own therapist will tell me, your homework is to notice how you're feeling this week, just to notice. So I think noticing your strengths, noticing your weaknesses, I think that

is the very first step to any kind of growth. Do you agree with that, Mike? Step one is I don't go strengths and weaknesses. I'll go developed, still developing. That's better. That's better. That's better. Yeah. That's better language. But I can get around weakness. It's like when you put somebody in a stress test and they lie, well, there's a weakness. No, I like your language. But I think what we're agreeing is that there's this kind of like self-awareness right like you know like and you could ask other people yeah it all begins with awareness it always begins with awareness and you kind of can't go very far without it so it's like necessary but not sufficient i think it's uh you've gone a long way when you have like some self-awareness so So in terms of, you know. So wait, wait, hold on. Because you're saying something.

We are more aligned here than maybe you might have thought. But I have had some, I don't want to say scar tissue, but like I've had some arrows in my back because for years I've been saying, listen, there's three practices that I'm aware of to increase awareness. Mindfulness, call it meditation, journaling and conversations with people of wisdom. And so all of that is to notice more to become more those three practices will help people become more aware. And I've said, very publicly is that mindfulness is not alone. Oh, I totally agree. I think mindfulness is one root. I mean, like

journaling, you're right. Like, so there is some magical thing with language. Like, I don't know where the human species would be without language, but like, there is something reflective that we can do while we're writing. You know, the very word essay means to try in French. And there is this theory, like when you're writing, it's like, you're right. My mother used to say to me when I was a little girl, it's like, when you're writing, you're thinking, and when you're thinking, you're writing. So's like you're right. My mother used to say to me when I was a little girl, it's like, when you're writing, you're thinking, and when you're thinking, you're writing. So I think journaling, this thing about conversation, I mean, I don't know how expansive your thought is, but I absolutely think there is when I teach a course at my university and I say like, you know,

where does growth come from? I say like, you are all going to write in this course every week, you're going to have a weekly reflection. And That's part of it. I don't assign mindfulness or meditation, but we dabble a little bit in that. The other thing that I think is very important is conversation. I don't know how expansive you are. I don't know if you mean conversation with great thinkers through reading. I really literally mean conversation. I mean this conversation. I mean if you want to become more self-aware, it's not only that you talk to Mike about your, like, principles of finding mastery, but also, like, you talk to your sister about, like, what she sees in you as your superpowers. You know, I think there's so much, I think human beings were, like, you know, designed, as it were, like, we have evolved

to learn about ourselves through conversations with people that we love yeah you and i are completely aligned there and then can we can we slightly pivot towards developing practices to develop resilient high character kids and And I just mixed two things together, but, um, well, like let's say that resilience is a facet of character, right? It's like something that's good for you and good for others. It's like, you can practice it. You can value like, so, um, I think resilience in particular, cause let's just, um, talk about that in particular. I, I think I have wondered, you wondered, there are these stories of people who everybody else gives up and they don't. For me, I'm always wondering, why didn't the person

give up? What was going on in their head? The best answer that I can give you today is that they don't think it's hopeless. Okay, why? I think that resilience comes from a history of wins. I really do. I think it comes from, I tried and it worked. I tried again and it worked. I tried again and it worked. Now, of course, it probably also comes from I tried and it didn't work. But I read the study of Outward Bound, which is a leadership program that I know you know

about. Maybe not everyone does. They take you out into the wilderness. It could be for a day. It's often for weeks. It's very, very difficult. It's also something that, at times, you might even fear for your life, even though it's actually strictly not dangerous.

Outward Bound has these amazing long-term effects, at least in some research studies. Two years later, people are more self-confident. They have more self-awareness. They are better working in teams and so forth. I read this study that said, okay, let's ask people who have gone on Outward Bound from this laundry list of things that it could have been that helped them. What about it? Was it being outdoors? Was it these conversations? The number one thing and the last thing on this list of what helped you, the number one thing was learning from overcoming things successfully. The bottom thing, the thing they said they learned the least from was failing but not having it resolve in success. I think that resilience… I know we want to teach our children to learn how to fail. Of course, that is at the heart of it. But I think the paradox there is that what builds their

confidence is striving and seeing that they have agency, like trying and then finding that it did work out. I think as a parent, I have tried to make sure that my daughters experience struggle and that if they fail, they fail and that it's nothing to fear because they go through it. But I also really think that people have to have small wins. Otherwise, where does the confidence come from? Why should they hope that they can do something if they have never been taught through experience that that's true? What's your favorite question to ask your kids or kids in general? What's my favorite question to ask kids in general?

Well, there's a form of question. I really like to ask my daughters, Lucy and Amanda, about people they really admire. If they have a friend that they're spending a lot of time with, what do they admire in them? I guess it's a way of asking, well, in a way, I guess it could be anything, right? They could admire that Hannah has really great hair or something, right? Or Joanna is really good at math or something, but they tend, interestingly, spontaneously to talk about character, like who's kind, who's princi, like who's principled, you know, like who's selfless, like who's brave. So I like to ask people, actually, I like to ask all people about who they are. When I started doing research on grit, the best way to find out about, you know, what makes somebody successful is not to ask them about themselves because, you know, we edit,

we like, you know, self-deprecate, you know, But to ask people about the people they most admire, like go ask a Nobel Prize winning economist whom they most admire and why, and you will have a very long and rich conversation that reveals a lot about what that person sees and what they value themselves. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's not about avoiding poor health. This is about creating the conditions for growth. Now, hair health is one of those areas that often gets overlooked until your hair starts to change.

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we give ourselves the best chance to operate at our best physically, cognitively, emotionally, sleep affects it all. That's why I care about the environment that I sleep in our best physically, cognitively, emotionally, sleep affects it all. That's why I care about the environment that I sleep in so much. And of course, a great mattress, it matters. One of our teammates here at Finding Mastery has been sleeping on a Lisa mattress for over a year now, and it's made a noticeable difference. They specifically chose one from their chill collection because they sleep hot, something I know many of us can relate to, myself included. What are they reporting back? Fewer wake-ups, deeper rest, and feeling more recovered when they jump into their work here at Finding Mastery. Lisa has several models to choose

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One of my favorite questions to guess in these conversations is to say, if you had a chance to sit with one true master, who would it be? Where would it be? And if you only had one question, what would it be? Where would it be? And if you only had one question, what would it be? But it starts with who? And so can I ask you, like, if you could sit with one true master, who would that be?

Okay, I'm going to give you the first person that leaps to mind, but there's of course a long list. But there is a guy now long dead named Benjamin Bloom. You probably know who this psychologist was. He was at University of Chicago. He actually, you know, finding mastery, like, arguably was like the architect of just this whole idea that learning should be mastery-oriented, right? That you shouldn't go on to the next thing and to get the last thing. But he did this study called Developing Talent in Young People, where he followed 120 high performers. He didn't really follow them. He actually interviewed them when

they were already accomplished, and some of them were in retirement. But I unearthed this interview that he had done, I mean, decades ago now, right? Because this is all well in the rear view mirror for history. And he just seemed like the kindest person who basically spent his whole life trying to identify what are the foundational skills for mastery. And the thing in this interview that just struck me and did make me want to resurrect him from the dead so that I could have dinner with him and learn from him was he was like, I truly believe he's like, I'm not saying that everybody could be anything, but I truly believe that there is just enormous untapped potential in all human beings. And if we could identify the conditions to bring that out, like then, you know, we would really have like a world worth living in. And I was like, Benjamin Bloom, come back from the dead.

Oh, that's really good. Yeah, that's really good. We're up on the hour here, but I just want to ask a couple more questions about character gone wrong or not fully developed. Most people I know are saying, oh man, this is awesome. Yeah. Oh yeah, I do that too. And I want that for my children and I want that for me too. And, but you know, I know lots of people that are jealous. They lead with envy. They, um, they like to tear people down as a, as a default. They, they lack moral courage in so many ways. So like, and they came from good parents, you know, like what, character is not just aspirational. There's bad character too, if we're going to use good and bad. Like, so, can you just talk a little bit about that piece too?

Well, look, confession. So, I'm on the boat and my mom is there and I don't know whether she's going to live and she's barely breathing. She barely has a pulse. And I was, of course, praying to God. What else do you do And I was of course praying to God, what else do you do? Right. I was praying to God. I was like, I don't even pray, but like, God, if it's like God, like, like let my mother live. And this is what I promised God. And I don't know why I did was like, I won't be jealous anymore. I was like, after I got off the boat, I'm like, what the hell is that? Like, who am I jealous of? Happily married, pretty successful. What? So anyway, I don't know. We'll have to unpack that in many subsequent therapy sessions. But

I do think there's two kinds of bad character. There's the bad character you know you have, and there's the bad character you don't even know you have. And that's probably, talking about self-awareness, like the one you really have to worry about, right? Like I have known for a very long time, Mike, and it hasn't come out in our interactions, but I really do have like a terrible temper. You know, I'm like one of those volcanoes that only erupts once every few years. But like when I do, it's like, get out of the way because people are going to like,

you know, melt, right? So I have a terrible temper and that is something to work on. And I have worked on it very deliberately because of self-awareness. I'm like, oh, I know I have a terrible temper. Like when things are not right, if somebody who works for me doesn't do something to my standard of excellence, like don't lose your temper. Like it's terrible. But then there are the limitations of my character that I have no conscious awareness of. Like where the hell did the jealousy come out of? Like what part of my character that I have no conscious awareness of. Where the hell did the jealousy come out of? What part of my deep subconscious is obviously obsessing about what other people have that I don't that is somewhere there, like smoldering?

So, I guess I think of bad character in those two ways. I think that maybe the people in my life who have shown me aspects of my bad character that I was really unaware of are actually my own children. I remember calling down to the hotel front desk from a vacation. I was just indignant that our expensive hotel room hadn't been made up in three days. I'd call down every day and I hang up the phone and both daughters in chorus are like, you are incredibly unkind. And I was like, that's not true. I'm the head of character lab. And they're like, you were just mean. And I was like, I wasn't

mean. Look at this. They're like, yes, you were. And there's a poor human being who has no control over the housekeeping services in this understaffed hotel. And you, rich woman, are being mean. You're unkind. And I was like, you know what? Facts. Like, I had to. It took me a while, by the way. I'm not a saint.

I was just like, defensive. After a few days, I was like, you know what? That is a limitation of my character that I was completely unable to see. It was in my blind spot. So if you have children in your life, God bless you because they will point out your character limitations. But if you have anybody in your life, I think these are good questions to ask. What do you see as my superpowers? And what are some, what did you say? Like developing strengths, like whatever language you want to use. But anyway, I think of bad character in that way. I really worry about what I don't know.

So, you're saying, listen, the anecdote for that, people that have behavioral patterns, character or lack of virtues and values that really what's taking place is they're either unaware or they don't care. And there are people that there's a saying, you know, what is it? Nice guys finish last. Nice people finish last. So, you know, I think there's some truth to that. I think it's much harder to do the thing excellently and to also have character virtues or, you know, aspirational character in place. Yeah. I think that's why I like, like aspirational values and character and like, you know,

having a self-concept of somebody who's trying, like I know that old people always use hashtags wrong. Or so I'm told by young people, they're like whenever you're using a hashtag or the word Tik TOK, you're wrong. Like just stop trying to, but anyway, sometimes I sign my emails like hashtag work in progress. Cause I know I screwed up or like, I don't like, I really do think having, okay. Whatever way you want to put it, like just having a self-concept of somebody who is developing, right. Somebody who's aspiring, somebody who's like, not perfect, but trying, you know, like, I, I, I am definitely

not perfect. But I have to say, there aren't many days that go by where I'm not trying. Yeah, like, there's a phrase my wife passes on to me, which is like, hey, we're all just trying to figure it out. It's like, so super refreshing. Like, just that. Yeah, it's got like, sort of, you know, layer, it sounds kind of like a, like a glib thing to say. It's pretty so super refreshing. Like just that. Yeah. It's like a breath. It's got like sort of, you know, layer. It sounds kind of like a like a glib thing to say. It's pretty deep, actually. It's actually pretty deep. It's pretty deep.

Okay. Knowing we know you. Right. Like you are transparent in a way, in a manner of strength. And so what is exciting you for next? What are you seeing? Because you're amazing in your ability to be introspective, go into the laboratory, put those two together, and then create. So, what do you want to do next? So, one of the things that I've really been, I don't know, excited or just like frustrated by

is that like in a lot of things that I've done as a researcher, you know, I can help people learn how to set goals or make plans and make these tiny little differences in their lives, which disappear in a few months. And I was like, why doesn't this stick? You know what I mean? It's like kind of like watching the first snow of the winter and you're like, God, well, at least in the part of the country where I live, it's like, why isn't it sticking? Why isn't it accumulating? I think something that you're onto as well, Mike, I think that building a deep metacognitive foundation, basically, I think my whole life's work really might be adding up to increased psychological literacy. Just like nobody can learn French or calculus in a day and expect to

have a 20-minute intervention and it's like, oh, now I know how to play tennis. Now I know calculus. I think this kind of psychological literacy, which to me is how I think of you, somebody who's helping us all become a little more psychologically literate, self-aware about ourselves, understand others, understand these principles that are at work. To me, that's what I'm excited about next. So not like 20-minute interventions or little nudges here, but really helping to make us all a little psychologically wiser, self-included. And I know it doesn't solve all the world's problems, but imagine a place where our political leaders, our industry leaders, our classroom teachers,

our like neighborhood cops, like our, whatever, like we're really just psychologically wise. They understood emotion. They understood, you know, when people are insecure, what happens to us when we do things out of fear, like, you know, how do we build these things? Like, I don't know, it's a pretty great world. So I think that's where I'm hoping to go. I want to do that with you. Whatever, whatever way. Yes. go. I want to do that with you. Whatever way. Yes. Yes. I want to do that with you. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Let's do it. Yeah, that is awesome. Okay. Listen, Angela, thank you. And where can people plug in, connect, learn from you? What's the best resource? So I am on social media, including Twitter, but I would love people to visit character lab, character lab.org. We started with character and with character, Mike, and it's

a nonprofit. So everything on there is actionable advice based on psychological science and free because it's supported philanthropically. And I want to loop it right back around to say, how did the event in the boat or in the water, how did the event in the water change your character? You know, I don't know that like I've become any better of a person, you know, in the short course of, you know, a few harrowing days and weeks, but I will say this. I, I really want to be a better person. I was like, oh, turns out life is definitely finite. And there was a blessing. And so I get a little more time with my mom. And I guess I have some time myself. But like, you know what, there will be a day where my mom's not here and I'm not here. And like, because life is short, you know, I hope that I can, you know, be a work in progress a little more intentionally than I was, you know, maybe like not really as consciously aware of the finiteness of life. You know, every year I do a thing in our whole community, it's the year of,

and we pick one or two words, like, what are you really going to commit yourself to? And so for me, this is the year of play. I run pretty, yeah, I'm intense, you know, and so like, I want to play more. So could you give me one way to practice play? You know, I heard this definition of a play. It's the voluntary overcoming of unnecessary obstacles. And it never left me. And that's not my definition. I heard somebody else say it, like Jane McGonigal or something, right?

Like the voluntary overcoming of unnecessary obstacles. And it made me think that what work is, is sometimes the feeling of an involuntary overcoming of necessary obstacles. And I think blessed are us who can blur that distinction because it's like, you know, what you're doing as your work, like other people would, you know, like watch you and feel like, you know, it's play. And I think it's just that like if in 2022, we can find ways to do things that feel more voluntary, maybe they need to get done, but we feel like we have the choice and that we've made it. Then to consider these obstacles as when you have something that's really difficult in

your life and it's really hard. If you could actually have a play mindset, how thin can we make that line between the involuntary overcoming of necessary obstacles and the voluntary overcoming of unnecessary obstacles? I think the people that I admire most, you know, the line is very thin indeed. Epic framework and reframe. Angela, you are the best. Thank you for your time and your graciousness. And I really appreciate our friendship. So, you are the best. Thank you for your time and your graciousness. And I really appreciate our friendship. So thank you. Mike, thank you so much to be continued. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us.

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