Good Life Project - Why Grit Alone Doesn’t Cut It: New Research From Angela Duckworth

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

Angela Duckworth on why grit is only half the story. Acclaimed researcher Professor Angela Duckworth returns to unpack a bigger idea behind grit: your environment matters as much, if not more, than your mindset. Jonathan and Angela Duckworth explore how situation, peers, mentors, and culture shape the thoughts you have, the effort you can sustain, and the kind of person you become.They also dig into the practical question of change: if you want a different outcome, how do you stop blaming yourself and start redesigning the conditions around you?Key topics:Angela Duckworth reframes grit as part of a larger system, arguing that the "inside game" and the "outside game" are linked.She explains why high achievers often think in more positive, productive ways, and why those thoughts are strongly influenced by the situation they are in.The conversation breaks down the three-box model: situation, thoughts, response.Angela and Jonathan discuss how emotions and behavior fit into that model, and how feedback loops can create either virtuous or vicious cycles.Angela shares how trying harder during a difficult period in her marriage and career made things worse until she changed the situation.They walk through four situational levers: personal space, peers, mentors, and culture.Angela gives concrete examples of environmental design, from keeping her phone out of reach to using visible reminders like notes, rings, and calendar prompts.The episode makes a strong case for noticing before changing, using situational awareness as the first step toward agency.Angela distinguishes agency from blame, arguing that recognizing a harmful situation does not mean it was your fault.The conversation closes with a broader definition of a good life: creating situations that bring out the best in other people.You can find Angela at: Website | Instagram | Episode TranscriptNext week, we’re sitting down with Allison Aubrey to talk about why midlife can become a turning point for purpose, connection, and a deeper kind of self-trust. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss that or any upcoming episodes!Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I don't think I've met a person who doesn't want to accomplish something big and meaningful, even if they never say it out loud. Ten years ago, Angela Duckworth brought the concept of grit into the zeitgeist, positioning it as a kind of the driver of achievement in nearly anything big that matters, including personal change. Now she's back with groundbreaking research that basically says grit was only half the answer. The real and maybe even more important key is it's not the inner game of grid, but the outer game, the situations, the people and culture that surround you. So if you're tired of being told to just, quote, try harder, this conversation will change how you think about what actually drives lasting achievement and transformation. Angela talks about the three box model, situation, thoughts, and response.

She shares how this framework, it explains everything from high performance to anxiety and why changing this. set, the props, the people, and the cues around you can change what you believe is possible. From a simple personal space audit to choosing peers, seeking mentors, and paying attention to culture, she lays out a practical path to designing a life that supports the person that you want to become, both from the inside out and also, importantly, from the outside in. You'll also hear Angela reflect on the personal cost of over-reliance on just trying to work harder and harder and harder and harder. And how she and her husband moved from near separation to a healthier marriage by changing

their situation, not just by changing themselves, and by asking for help, which is a skill that belongs beside hard work. We'll also explore the danger of blaming people for the circumstances that they inherited, the myth of rugged individualism, and the power of situational agency to create real change without shame. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And we'll jump right in after this short break.

Angel Deckworth, it is so great to have you back in conversation here. It's been a number of years. A lot has changed. The world has changed. I'm sure you and I have changed in meaningful ways. You are one of the only people that I've ever known who literally can claim to own a word or phrase in the English language. Oh. Is that true, though?

I don't know. But come on. Let's go there, right? You're exactly right that really for the first half of my career, I studied the inside game of achieving your potential. It was very personal to me because I, you know, was born into a very ambitious family, very achievement oriented. And, you know, I worried that I wouldn't actually meet the expectations of my dad in particular because I, you know, wasn't obviously especially talented. did, you know, especially intelligent by any of the conventional metrics. And I discovered that there is this inside game of having a mindset that abilities can change to having habits of,

you know, working on weaknesses with feedback. I discovered the psychology of effort. And it was a wonderful professional and personal journey that culminated in this book. I don't think I can claim ownership to the word grit. You don't have to claim it, but I'm going to say from the outside of the end, your name is pretty much synonymous with the word grit when people ring it up in conversation. And, you know, I still believe in grit as much as I ever did, because it is the final common path to achieving excellence in any field. You want to be a great musician. You want to be a great artist. You want to be a great writer. You want to be a great teacher, you know, there is this final common path and, you know, maybe talent is how fast you can

run down the path, but the grit element is like how long are you willing to stay on the path, you know, how consistent are you going to be? So the reason why I think that's not the end of the story of achieving your potential and why I felt the need to complete the picture is because there is an outside game too. And not only that, I'm going to, I'm going to try to convince you in this conversation that the outside game and the inside game are linked. Because if you get the outside game right, you kind of get the inside game for free. And here's what I mean. So studying these high achievers, which is a great job, you know, like studying people who I'll never get bored of like watching, you know, a three-star Michelin chef or like, you know, a grand chess master. I mean,

it's just fun to watch human beings do something extraordinarily well. I think, I think, you if you widen the aperture and you say like, okay, they're working really, really hard and consistently. They do have this like mental, you know, game that they're playing and they're playing it really well. But if you widen the aperture and you say like, well, where do those positive, productive, optimistic thoughts come from? I mean, one of the things that really struck me in studying high achievers is that their thoughts are more positive and productive. You know, they they think to themselves like in one way or another, in so many words, like this is so interesting. This is the most important thing in the world.

I can do this. And I know exactly what to try next. And when you have those thoughts, you're like a little kid on, you know, Christmas Eve. You're just like racing down the stairs to get, you know, to, you know, to the first four, so you can put on your shoes and go to work. And that, you know, is not enough because you have to ask, like, where do they those positive thoughts come from. And they're not only from within. They are from without. When you are in certain places doing certain things with certain people, you're more likely to have those positive

thoughts. And when you're with others, you're less likely. And just to give an example that comes to mind, I mean, when I was in high school, I had an English teacher named Mr. Carr. And when I was in Mr. Carr's classroom, I was like a different person, you know, like I would be this ditsy cheerleader in the hallway wearing like a really short skirt and, you know, carrying her pom-poms. But when I walked into his classroom, he had such conviction that the most interesting and important thing in the world and something that we could all do and, hey, here's something you could read next was, you know, like William Faulkner. And in that classroom about schoolwork, I began to, you know, say those things. Like, oh my God, this is so interesting. Wow, this is so important. Wait, I can do this. And, you know, I know what I'm going to try next. And I do think this outside game, like, if you're better with Mr. Carr, then you are without Mr. Carr, if you

are better when you're with certain friends, like you like yourself more, if you're better when you're around certain food or away from certain things, then why not put yourself proactively into those better situations. Yeah, I mean, that lands really well with me. And then also it speaks to a question that not only I've had, but I think a lot of people have had since you really brought the concept of grit to the world, which is, I know you've been asked this question so many times. You and I went back and forth about this last time we chatted.

It's the notion of the case, so if we agree that grit matters, okay, how do we get it? You know, and it's been this thing that so many people have struggled with. Like, what's the practice? What's the tool? And I think with the linkage you're making here is that the getting part is not just an internal thing. It really may hinge a lot on what's happening external. Does that land? That lands so, you know, like so affirms something that I think is, you know, really at the heart of what we all ask ourselves. You know, like, what can we change? change and what can't we change and how do we change when we want to. You know, I want to acknowledge that there is something that we can't change, which is our DNA. You know, there are genetic dispositions to grit. There is a large twin study. You know, I don't think we needed it because pretty much everything is partially genetic, everything about us, not just our height and our weight, but our, temperament and our grit. I think the idea that the environments that we're in are very important.

I think a lot of people will say, oh, genes and environment, but they don't think, well, genes and environment, but I can change the environment. I think so often we think of environment is something we can't change. Like, we can't change where we were born. We can't change the socioeconomic status to which we were born. We can't change, you know, in many ways, you know, things that we would like to change. But the reason I think this is such a powerful insight is that, yeah, the environment shapes you and you can shape aspects of your environment, especially the places that you go, maybe not the places that you've been. And human nature, if I, if I may be permitted a bold statement that sounds so sweeping as to lack all

humility. I mean, I have been struck in my lifetime about the plasticity of human nature. I mean, it is amazing that, for example, human beings can read. Like, we did not evolve to read. There is no part of the brain that is like the reading part of the brain. But we have somehow like repurposed, you know, parts of the brain for language and for object recognition. And now literacy is not a rarity. it's a universality. And when you think about culturally, how differently we think about, you know, about sexuality, about, you know, who deserves a place at the table in 2026 than we did in 1996 or 1976, you know, and 1776. You know, human beings are remarkably plastic. And if that's true, that means that our environments do shape us profoundly.

It doesn't matter what genes you got, like your environment, your current environment, not just your past environment. And then you can take one more step and say, I want to be in an environment that shapes me into the person I want to be. I want to have a mindset about my environment, my situation that says it doesn't just happen to me. I shape it. And so, you know, whether through epigenetics or through neuroplasticity, I mean, if those things make you more credible about the enduring impact of your environment on who you are, how you think, what you do, the decisions you make, then that's fine because that's accurate. I don't know that you need that to believe it, but it is true. And I think the profound impact of the environment, to me, it gets overlooked, I think, because, you know, we habituate to our environments. I recently went to San Francisco with my husband.

You know, we live in Philadelphia. And you just get used to the way things are in Philadelphia. And when I got to San Francisco, at least the neighborhood that I was in, I was like, wait, why is there no trash on the sidewalk? like what are people doing here? And also, why is everyone drinking protein? So, so you, you get used to your environment, like you get used to living in Philadelphia, you get used to walking a certain way, talking a certain way, eating a certain way, exercising a certain way. And then you take a trip, you know, as simple as a weekend vacation even. And, and you realize it's different. And I think that insight that you're not always aware of your situation, um,

leads you, I hope, to the second insight, which is once you become aware of your situation, you might see that, you know, your groove is more of a rut. You might find things that you could change. And I hope we talk about the particulars of it. But in the abstract, I think in the abstract, that is really what I've spent the second half of my career, trying to understand, you know, how we can shape our situations that shape us from. the better. Yeah. I mean, along those lines, you, if we start to zoom the lens out and say, okay, your environment matters, the situation and all the contributors to that situation that you find yourself in or that you create for yourself, they matter. They matter in the context of grit,

but they also matter in a million different ways. And especially in the context of wanting to, wanting to do anything big or meaningful or often hard and sustained, right, it makes a really big difference. You have a sort of a simple three box model that I think makes clear. to relate the waterfall of what this all looks like. Walk me through this. You know, I hadn't thought of it as a waterfall, but I love that. And I will explain it on behalf of myself and another psychologist named James Gross. He's actually the reason I was in San Francisco in the first place because we were working on our 13th paper.

I met James at a point in my career where I was really frustrated that having discovered the wonders of effort and this personal quality of grit, that my interventions weren't very successful. In fact, I would classify them as failures, you know, trying to get people to just like try harder and work longer, more or less wasn't working. And James Gross studies emotion. So he doesn't study high achievers like me. He studies emotion, anxiety, sadness, happiness, happiness. joy, where do emotions come from and how do we regulate them? And he came in his career to the conclusion that emotions evolve in stages. And the reason we call this the three box model is because you can draw three boxes, so just three stages and you can connect them with two arrows,

right? At the first box, you have the situation you're in, you know, who are you with? Like, who are you talking to? What are they doing? What are they saying? Where are you? And, you know, what temperature is it? Like, what is the culture of where you are? What can you see? What can you reach? So you have this situation. If you want to think about it as a movie, it's like, what's the set? What are the props? Like, what costume are you wearing? Who are the other characters, right? And then Box 2 are your thoughts. Your situation will shape your thoughts much more than you think. You know, it's fun to read old philosophers who kind of like with astonishment observe how much their thoughts are influenced by their situation. Like, they kind of come to this discovery, you're like, wow, when I'm with this person, I tend to be a pessimist. You know, when I'm, when this person, I'm funny. You know, when I'm that person, I'm talkative. But when I'm with these people, I'm quiet.

The influence of Box 1, your situation on Box 2, your thoughts, you know, begins to tell the story of like why this is related to grit because those positive thoughts like, oh, you know, this is interesting. This is important. I can do this. I know what to try next. those thoughts are more likely to come about in certain situations in your life than others. And then when you connect box two to box three, that's connecting your thoughts, box two, to your response, box three. And when it comes to grit, my focus has been effort. So really what this book does is it kind of completes the picture.

I mean, the first book, Grit was really about box two and box three. It's like, have these positive thoughts. Here's what the thoughts are like. here's what effort looks like for a paragon of grit. And this book asks the question like, what situations are these remarkable individuals in? And how can we put ourselves in situations that incline us to the thoughts that we want to have, which will incline us to the behavior that we want to have? So I credit James Gross with the three box model because he was working on it before he met me and explained it to me.

But I think together what we've been able to do is expand it beyond emotions. It's not just that your anxiety, your sadness, your fear, your happiness, your joy, your contentment come from your thoughts, which come from your situation. It's also that everything that you do, including trying hard, comes from your thoughts. And your thoughts, again, originate in a much more bottom-up way than I think is obvious, perhaps, in your surroundings. And again, I think sometimes if you're in the same surroundings over and over again, day and day out, it's like a fish and water. You're like, what water? But when you change, when you go somewhere else, you go over someone's house, I was this house for dinner. And I remember this when I was a kid because, you know, I'd mostly eaten dinner in my own house.

And then you get old enough, you like, go over somebody else's house and you have dinner. And like, the kitchen smells different and the kitchen table's different. And like, I had tongue at my friend. I was like, what? Who eats tongue? You know, the bathroom is different. The toilet paper is different. But you're so inured to your surroundings until you shape them. So I think this book is as much about agency as it is about awareness of our situations. Yeah. So then it sounds like emotions would be in boxery and also behavior. You know, like what is the thing that you're going to do? If you're in a situation, it causes you to think this. like and then how am I going to respond to that thought well I may start to feel a particular way but also that may compel me to take a particular action so like an emotion has you know the root of emotion is motion right like and and you know the evolutionary purpose of feelings are are you know that it's not like you know and then in itself I mean the evolutionary purpose of feelings emotions survival so when you are fearful you know it's It motivates you to withdraw and to be vigilant.

When you feel happy, it motivates you. It urges you to approach and to, you know, capitalize on a good position. So I think that I think you're exactly right, that, you know, you have this thought. It leads to an emotion and very often the emotion, like, you know, very quickly leads to a behavior. But James and I would just sort of put like the emotion and also the, you know, behavior. that sometimes downstream, I like your waterfall language, like that's downstream from that. We just put it all in box three because we would say like box three is your response. So we're sort of, you know, being broad when we think about that, just for simplicity. And it's like a feedback mechanism,

right? Because then your emotion perceived by other people or your behavior perceived by other people or perceived by anything that's in your situation may then actually change the nature of the situation, which then creates a whole new cycle through it. And that can be, either constructive or destructive. Yeah, absolutely. It's a, it's a, whenever you connect, you know, three boxes with two arrows, there's always the possibility of adding a third arrow to, you know, and then you've got this flywheel, you've got this cycle. And I think, I think you're exactly right. I think, you know, there have been times in my own life where I got into a vicious cycle, including writing this book, to be completely honest. I had a sabbatical to write this book,

and I thought it would be a really good idea to, you know, stay at home in my pajamas and work, you know, in isolation, not just five days a week, really like seven days a week, because it was very hardgoing. And I found myself, you know, working harder and the book getting worse. And really that negative cycle for me was, like, be isolated working on something that's not working. like have pessimistic, catastrophic thinking, like, maybe I should retire and be a pastry chef. That's not necessarily catastrophic thinking, by the way. That could be really fun. I think for me, when I did say out loud, like, maybe I should be a pastry chef, like, it was a little shocking to my husband who was like, what? You don't even eat pastry.

And I was like, I think it was probably a cry for health. But, you know, the response, which was to like further, like, isolate. I was just like, oh, now I can't even go for a walk on Saturday with my friend because I have to work on this book. Like, I kind of dug myself a deeper hole because now I was in a situation where I was even more isolated because I wasn't just, you know, working by myself five days a week. I was withdrawing from, you know, friendship on the weekend, which would have been very perspective giving, I think. So I think the cycle can be vicious. And of course, I've really focused on where the cycle can be virtuous. And I really think that's true.

So I just want to agree with you. You know, the circle goes around and hopefully you spiral up, right, instead of spiraling down. Yeah. But I think even just being aware of the fact that there is this thing happening, it's like that simple awareness. I think it gives you a little bit of the ability to sort of like step back and take a bit of more of like a metal lens at times. Not always, but maybe if you at least know this model works

and it may be impacting what you're up to. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. I want to drop a little bit more into something else. I mean, you just shared something very recent in your personal life about like this is how it showed up. You also write about something that was much bigger and more existential. You kind of frame your life in three acts, you know.

Just try harder the first 40 years or so burnout. And then setting up the classic romance novel, H-E-A. Happily Ever After, which I'm told you can't have... I'm a sucker for romances. I have to confess, you know, never, you know, never not liked a romantic comedy. Yeah, apparently you're not allowed to have a romance without a happily ever after.

So that's one of the rules. If you violate it, you're thrown out of the world of romance. There has to be an airport scene. Right. For you in the middle act, And it also sent your personal relationship into a really challenging place. This was back in 2008, if I remember correctly during the crash. Yeah.

There's a night you describe on a walk with your husband, Jason, where you tell him, you can't do this anymore. What was breaking there? And how did what we're talking about intervene? You know, my husband and I were so in love. It really was once upon a time. And I felt like I had met my prince charming. And the reason we were so well-matched, I think, is that we had both gotten so far in life by really just trying harder.

And I know try-hard has negative connotations among some people, but, you know, that is what we were. And we were try-hard at everything, try-hard at parenting, try-hearted exercise, try-hard at academic work. And then, of course, at that point, we were early in our careers. He, as a real estate developer, me as a – psychologist on tenure track at an Ivy League school. And our solution to everything was try harder. And by the way, I again, I don't know if I may be permitted another gross generalization, but I think that it's so often the case that your superpower becomes your kryptonite, that something that you do that gets you very far in life becomes the only thing that you do,

and that is your downfall. So when things started to not go well, the timing is important. 2008 financial crisis, you know, being in real estate, not great. I was so oblivious, honestly, to, you know, the economy and, like, world events and business that I, like, wrote this chapter with my husband's encouragement, honestly. And I think I got the year wrong for the financial crisis. He was like, you're a year off, but let me just correct that. It's aish. Yeah, you know, 2008-ish.

I myself was struggling because all of these like successes that I had had, you know, these papers that I published in top journals and that gave that got me that job in the first place. You know, my studies were starting to fail. Like, you know, my, you know, my hypotheses were wrong. Like, you know, my papers were being rejected. My grants were being rejected. So we were both in crisis professionally. We were raising these, you know, two adorable little girls. But our only solution was to try harder. like work longer, wake up earlier. And we were exhausted. And he was really unhappy and working 100 hours a week. I, you know, said to him that night that I thought perhaps this was the end of the romance and the end of our marriage because it just didn't dawn on me that there could be any other solution. I just, I think I felt at that moment like so unhappy that I thought it was like unsustainable. And what I realized, you know, because he did not agree with me that we should just like end things, he wasn't like, oh, okay, like, let's get divorced. What we both, you know, came to realize is that trying harder in a losing situation just leaves you burnt out and utterly exhausted.

and the solution was not 110 hours a week. The solution wasn't wake up at 5 in the morning. The solution was to fundamentally change the situation. Now, I think it's a good detail that this happened during the financial crisis because you can't just change the financial crisis. You're like, hmm, mortgage-backed securities. How are Angela and Jason Duckworth going to personally change the macroeconomic environment? But we changed our situation. I mean, one thing is we asked for help. Trying hard is great. And another life skill,

which complements trying hard, is asking for help. You know, we became much more vulnerable. I opened up to, you know, my mom, my dad, my best friends. I got a therapist, which for me, I think, I think my daughters who are in their 20s are like, everybody is a therapist. I mean, I was not that way. I was I was raised by a father who said, you know, I won't repeat what he said, but let's just say that, you know, he didn't think much of therapy and he didn't think a bunch of people who went to therapy. But I asked for help. I got a therapist. He got a therapist. We both went to a marriage therapist. We also asked for help from colleagues. I mean, he recruited mentors to give him advice during this very difficult time. I turned, you know, more frequently to mentors.

and I actually very actively sought out collaborators. After my own personal failings as a professional, I realized that I could be a more successful professional if the work that I was doing was done on a team. And to this day, you know, I don't do anything alone. I don't work on any project alone. I never feel like I am smart enough to like figure all the problems out. And so that shift to changing the situation.

of course trying hard, right? But now trying hard in a winning situation. Well, I hope we're happily ever after. I mean, we're happy. Yeah. And I mean, what I'm really taking from this is also this notion that so many of us feel like, okay, when things get tough, whether it's personal relationship, your health, at work, whatever the context, the answer is like try harder, like you just said, like put your head down, do the work, more hours, more, you know, like, more leverage, higher stakes, or then we're told, well, if you're doing all of that and it's not working, you're not working smart enough. So don't just try harder, try smarter. You've got to do both. But it's all about you. It's like, this is you showing up. This is internal to you.

And what I'm hearing from you is like, there was no way you could have tried. There's nothing that either you or your husband could have done and that you hit a breaking point where you're like, okay, so either this is over because that's the only lever we have or there's something else and you kind of realize there is something else and that's everything that exists outside of trying harder. You know, if you were going to draw a picture like of your life, right, you know, obviously you start with yourself, like maybe you can't draw. So you just draw a stick figure, right?

Or in this case, you could draw like Angela as a stick figure and then Jason is a stick figure. And yeah, like, you know, the general philosophy we had had, which is like, you know, make those stick figures like, you know, work hard. Like put in those little lines that just show. effort. But if you just fill in the picture, like draw in a therapist for Jason, draw in a therapist for a, draw in this, like, draw in grandparents who are like happy to take care of these two adorable girls, like on weekends. So you can spend a little more time together because God knows your marriage needs it right now. You know, draw in some collaborators, draw in a mentor,

draw in the, you know, teacher you haven't talked to for a long time. But you know what? If you reached out to that person right now, like they probably have an encouraging conversation. the, you know, I think about this sometimes when I, when I look at, you know, how phone cameras work, you know, there's like portrait mode. And portrait mode looks great because what happens in portrait mode is that you come in in high fidelity. And just like you can see my background sort of blurry. I think that is actually how human psychology works. We tend to focus on the individual and just like omit, you know, like everything around them. And, and, uh, And I think one of the reasons I struggled in writing this book, you know, on a scale from one to ten, I don't know how hard writing my first book grit was. But this blows that scale out of the water. And among the reasons for that is that the situation isn't something we're used to talking about or writing about. I mean, look at bookshelves of personal development books. They are almost all about what you can do to change your inside game.

And I haven't seen books about how you can use your situation to change that inside game for you and also just to make all that effort pay off. That definitely lands. Let's get granular then about the situation because let's talk about it. Because I'm sure people are joining us. They're kind of saying, okay, I buy it. Like the world and the way out of matter. Now how? Right.

Now this is a question where when we were talking just about great years ago and you've had these conversation so many times, this is where I'm going. gets really like thorny because like I don't entirely know. But I think when it comes to the situation in this context, you have some very specific guidelines. It's sort of like starts with like there's four levers, areas to look at and then things to do within those. Can we walk through those? Let's walk through them. Let's walk in the order of near to far. Okay. Concrete to abstract and like what you can do right now to what will probably take a while, but might be the most important thing that you do. So I want to talk about your personal space,

then I want to talk about your peers, then your mentors, and then at the most abstract and distal level, you know, the culture, the culture of where you live and the culture of where you work. I think the first and easiest thing you could do is audit your personal space, your physical personal space.

Like what is within arms reach right now. Look around, right? I'm literally looking around right now. Right? I've got a water bottle. The reason I have my water bottle within my personal space is that according to my doctor, I need to drink more. So water bottle, right? It's not across the room. It's also 24 ounces because, you know, if I fill this up a few times a day, like, okay. And that's sort of trivial, but it's not accidental. I'll tell you. What I try not to have within three feet is my phone because I do pick it up like apparently hundreds of times a day. according to my phone stats. And so I'm trying to keep that more than three feet away. I don't have a huge junk food problem, like a huge... But I will tell you that, you know, whatever is out, like, it just gets eaten, you know? Like, my mom used to slice up apples and, like, put them out and, like, you know, like, oh, we don't want apples.

But you know what? The apples got eaten. Like, they're there. And they were sliced. And, yeah, it was just in my personal space. And so as a kid, I did that kind of... you know, being given a situation by my mom. Now that I'm grown up, I do that too, right?

So things that I want to eat in the course of a day I leave out. So your personal space can be audited. You can also, as I just did today, write down things that you want to remember. They can be beautiful quotes, poetry, you know, phrases to live by. And they can be what I just wrote down, like Ask Andrea. Like, why did I write down in marker on the, wall, erasable marker, erasable wall.

But ask Andrea, because I keep forgetting to ask Andrea, who's an administrator in our department, before I do stupid things like order things that I cannot get reimbursed because I did not use the right channels. So I just wrote down Ask Andrea because, you know, I'll just pass that when I walk into the office and then it will make me more likely to ask Andrea versus forget. So it's like these visual cues that kind of like trigger something.

You know, people get tattoos, go for it. You know, I'm wearing this wedding ring. You know, this wedding ring is a visual reminder of happily ever after. It's like a reminder that I'm in a relationship with Jason. I guess it's also a signal to other people. But, you know, I think this kind of like live your life like a cinematographer, right? Like, you know, you are the designer of the set. You design the props.

You decide the costume. if you want to, you know, have a transition for example. You know, a lot of people work from home. And I was just talking to this young woman yesterday. And I was like, well, how is working from home? She was like, well, I'm working in my bedroom. And I was like, yeah, but how is it? She was like, it sucks.

This is a direct quote. And one of the things she said was like, there is no transition. She's just like always at work and never at work. You know what I mean? I mean, we've all worked at home. So to know what that's like. And she asked me for homework. So I was like, well, if you're asking, you know, obviously you could like get up and go to a coffee shop.

I mean, literally that might be a physical transition that is helpful because then you come home from the coffee shop and at the coffee shop you're at work. And when you're not at the coffee shop, you're not at work. I even think the clothes we wear, I mean, like today's fashion is like you could be sleeping, exercising or at work. It's all the same outfit, right? which is in some ways great, but it also doesn't give you the cue. It's funny, like Jerry Seinfeld says that like when he puts on his jacket, his body knows that it's time to do stand-up routine. Right. Like, so if that, you know, helps you to like, you know, contain this, you know, or to design this, you know, personal environment that you're in physical environment, well, then you're like me because it's certainly been useful.

The second element is farther, a little bit harder. I want to make the argument that you should pick your peers. And I first want to make the argument that you should pick peers. And by that I mean, don't do what so many people are doing these days, which is to do things alone. We are eating out alone at record numbers. We are eating home alone at record numbers. We entertain ourselves often alone. You know, we're not watching things at the same time in the same place with other people.

We're entertaining ourselves asynchronously. And maybe you also saw, you know, the latest episode of Ted Lassau, but you didn't see it at the same time. We didn't laugh at the same time. We didn't turn to each other and smile. So I want to make the argument that having a situation in which you're not alone, but in fact, exercising, eating and working with other people, that is healthier. And it goes contra the trends. Young people, young adults in particular are spending less time physically. with other people than, you know, when I was a young woman and when you were younger as well.

And the trends also parallel increases in anxiety, loneliness, and depression. So I think those things are related. I think when you're with a great team, when you're with peers you really admire, you're more likely to achieve your ambitions. So I say more about that in the book. But, you know, for the sake of, of, expediency. I'll move on to the third element of a situation that, you know, is your ally, not your enemy. And that is mentors. I have these daughters, they're 23 and 24. And if I have

one piece of advice that I've repeated to them over and over again, is that to seek out mentors, you know, there are people in the world who want to give you advice. They want to be a version of a surrogate parent and like they want to share with you you know what they've learned and this asymmetry in a mentoring relationship

is um it is the very reason for it like that asymmetry where they give you more than you give them is actually what they're looking for now that I'm 56 I'm not 23 or 24 I can tell you and I'm sure you feel the same way but I'd be curious to hear like there's nothing more gratifying than feeling like you helped somebody like along the path,

you know, who's not you? Like, it feels better than helping yourself. But do I have that right, by the way? How do you feel about mentoring? There's something about being on that end of it. That's a juicy. That's really nourishing to do that. I think that's one way that young people, young adults in particular, can take situational agency.

It's not that every person is going to become a mentor for, life. And I would argue that if this young student, like, calls you and you do get to go out for coffee, and if that coffee is the only thing you ever have together, and if that person learns one thing, that still makes you a mentor. It makes you a mentor for a reason, you know, it doesn't make you a mentor for a season. That's when you work on something together for, like, three months. And it doesn't make you a mentor for life, but that is the progression. and everybody who eventually becomes a mentor for life at one point was all the way back at the beginning, a stranger, before that first conversation that leads to the second and so forth. So I think mentorship is something that, again, you know, you could think of, oh, of course that's part of a lucky situation, but it's not just a lucky situation.

You could be proactive and, yes, invite TED speakers and return emails and also send emails. finally, at the broadest, the most abstract, the most all-encompassing level, there is culture. And in some ways, culture encompasses everything we've been talking about because when you go to France or you go to San Francisco or you go to Boulder or downtown Philadelphia or Apple or Amazon, I mean, these places have cultures. There is a way we do things around here that determines the kinds of objects that are within personal. spaces, the sorts of peers that you're likely to have, and frankly, the mentors that are available to you. Culture, where you work, where you live, seems like the least changeable element of your situation. And I would agree, I mean, moving your work isn't even necessarily an obvious possibility for many people. They're like, yeah, I know exactly where I want to work,

but like, why don't you get me a job there? And likewise, they might say, like, sure, I'd love to live on upper east side of New York in a penhouse, but that doesn't seem to be happening. I think we can write long lists of things that we can't change about culture, but I do want to encourage people to consider whether they are kind of writing off the possibility before they really consider, you know, all the alternatives. One of the things you can try to do is change your microculture. Even if you don't love the culture of the overall workplace, you know, cultures have sort of these like local microclimates. You know, are there people within the larger organization that you vibe with, that you want to spend more time with? Like, then do exactly that.

When you talk about moving, again, very hard thing to do and not something I'm telling everyone to do. But sometimes it's not moving, you know, to France. sometimes it's like literally moving to a different neighborhood in the same city that that can change everything. And that is not speculation. That is research. You know, there's there's hard academic research showing that economic opportunity can vary within blocks of your address, not just within, you know, leagues or miles. So, so I think, I think the place to start is not culture, but perhaps the place to end is with culture. And, and if any of the, these, you know, these levers I've used to call them, these elements, you know, your personal

space, your peers, your mentors, your culture, if any of the above seem like, hmm, could be better. And maybe if I start to notice that it could be better, I will begin to imagine ways that I could try to make it better. I think like that is what I mean by situational agency. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So if somebody's joining, right, and they're like, okay, these four things, they make sense to me. And maybe they think themselves, okay, there's something in my life right now. And I wish it was different. I wish it was in some way improved.

I wish it was in some way better. Maybe it's something just about themselves individually. And they're thinking, okay, would it be a good idea? I now know that situation really matters. It's not just me in my internal, like the environment. The things around me, they matter in my ability to sort of like feel the way I want to feel, be the way I want to be in effect the change I want to object. And we have these four levers to look at.

Would it make sense for them to sort of zoom the lens out for a second and say, let me do a bit of a casual micro audit? Let me sort of like take a look. What is the space that I'm inhabiting it right now? Like how much have I created it? How much have I just stepped into it? Assuming it is what it is and I have no agency there. Who are the people I'm surrounding myself with or isolating myself from?

Just start with it almost like an audit. You know, like do I have any mentors? Wait, can I, like, grab my book and read you the audit? Because I had exactly that idea. I created a scorecard, and I like 10 point, you know, scales. So it has 10 items on it. But I'm going to read it to you because I think you're exactly right. I mean, you know, before you start doing things, you should start noticing things.

Okay, situated scorecard, personal space. Number one, I keep temptations like junk food and my phone out of sight and out of reach. If the answer is yes, give yourself a point. Number two, I've arranged my personal space to make wise choices like exercising, reading, and going to bed on time. Obvious, easy, and rewarding. That's number two. Number three is from peers. I have peers who keep me accountable to my goals and vice versa.

Number four, my peers know things I don't. And together, we are smarter than we are alone. Number five, I have peers who depend on me. When we get to item six, we're into mentors. Number six, when I don't know what to do, there are at least two people I can turn to for advice. Number seven, I'm working on a project with someone more experienced and skilled than myself. Number eight, I have a mentor with whom I intend to stay in touch for the indefinite future. Number nine, gets us into culture.

I would describe the culture of where I work as both challenging and supportive. And finally, number 10, I live somewhere, I can pursue my interests and goals. I will tell you that I gave out the situated scorecard at a Wharton reunion. So these are people who are five years, 10 years, 15 years, 25 years, and more out. Very successful people on the whole. Ask them to raise their hand. Like, who got a perfect 10? And I looked out across this darkened auditorium, but there really were like more than a thousand Wharton alumni there.

And I couldn't find many hands. And so I think that means that for most of us, There's at least one element of our situation that, as you said, we could audit, you know, think about, go to sleep, think about it again tomorrow. Like, and then, you know, let our imagination begin to generate some possibilities for us. I don't think it's automatic. I do think it's possible. Yeah. And, I mean, I would imagine I love that audit.

I love the 10 questions. And I love the way it sort of like flows through the four different elements. And I also love your just your sort of trailing imitation there to say it's not automatic. And what I heard there is the answers might not come immediately. But if we ask the questions,

it feels like what we're effectively doing is we're seed planting. And maybe it's a day from now. Maybe it's a week from now. Maybe it's a month from now. If your brain is just kind of floating that in the back, and you'd be like, oh, I thought it was boxed in.

I thought this particular thing was what it was. And I just assumed I'm going to have to suck it up and I'll deal with the others. But your brain is probably searching for alternatives. And if you give yourself a little grace, you're going to be walking down a street one day, you're like, oh, right. Does that land? Totally lands. And you know what I'm thinking about, there was a scientist that was very generous, is very famous. His name was Howard Rackland. And he studied self-control. He studied it in animals and he studied it in people, delayed gratification, that sort of thing. And he was once asked to give advice on weight loss

because, you know, he was a famous scientist who studied self-control. And his first recommendation was not what I thought. His first recommendation was to, you know, it wasn't like change this, change this. It was to do exactly what he says, just to notice. He was like, you know what? Just notice. And actually, he recommended not changing anything for a while. He's like, if you're trying to lose weight, why don't you just spend a few days noticing? Just notice when you eat. Notice when you don't eat. Notice what you eat. Notice how you feel when you go to bed.

You know, wake up, do it again. I think that's really wise that, you know, long before you exercise situational agency that you give some time for a situational awareness, plant the seeds. Don't force them to grow right away. But do some experiments. I would say this, that part of noticing is maybe some fun little, you know, risk-free experiments. like push things away from you and see what that does. Like with food, just, just, just, you know, push something away. Make it four feet away.

And just notice. Just feel like, huh, now push it close. Notice it, you know, put a, put a napkin over it. Notice how you feel. You know, take the napkin away. Notice how you feel. So put your phone, like, face up next to you. Notice what happens for the next hour.

Then put it in another room. Notice what happens. I think all of that awareness will, as you say, you know, bear fruit, if you will. but maybe not right away. Yeah, I love that. As you're doing that series of experiments that I've run had come to mind, one that popped out immediately was I learned somehow that if I'm on a phone,

I have no control over my appetite. So now I just... You just like keep eating. Literally, I'll just like, I'll be walking around the kitchen, having a great conversation, and I'm like, I just ate a second dinner or whatever. Like, what happened? So, but there's a really easy fix.

Like, once I have that situational awareness, I'm like, okay, don't talk on the phone when, like, you're in the kitchen. Like, when you're on the phone, there's an invisible wall where there's a door that's like, okay, like, I can go anywhere in house, but not the kitchen. Yeah, don't have phone conversations in the kitchen, maybe. Right, so that was like an experiment. I literally ran it at the next hour. Like, what would happen? That's so great.

That actually works pretty well. Yeah, if I recall you, you should immediately leave the kitchen. Exactly. I want to make sure we speak to something that may be popping up. It's this idea that for someone listening where they find themselves, and they're sort of like, okay, there's a lot of stuff that I wish were different in my work, my life, my relationship, my health right now. And I feel kind of bad about it.

Maybe I feel really bad about it. It's weighing on me heavily. Now that I'm scanning the environment, I realize so many elements of the situation that I'm in are contributing to it. Where is the line between inviting someone to change our situation, but not crossing it into blaming them for the situations that maybe, especially in certain circumstances, they never chose in the first place. You know, when you audit your situation and you think of things that you want to be different,

that doesn't mean you're responsible for the way that they are. It does mean that if you don't do something about it, it's unlikely to change. It doesn't mean that you are responsible for it being the way it is in the first place. So, you know, maybe your situation isn't the way you want it to be, and it's not your fault. But maybe you can nevertheless, you know, have the agency to change it. I think that's true for so many people. I, you know, I don't think there's a, you know, a young person that I care more about than Cody Coleman. I consider myself a mentor for life for Cody.

I mean, I will say, like, you know, he's my little brother from another mother. And he's down his 30, so I shouldn't talk about him like as a kid anymore. But I did meet him when he was a younger man. And he was born into poverty and chaos. He had a severe pet allergy, but it was growing up with his grandmother because his mother was mentally ill. But his grandmother insisted on having a menagerie of dozens of cats and dogs. And so with Cody's asthma, like in his allergies, like he could hardly breathe. Like, I mean, it was pure chaos.

That's not Cody's fault, you know. It's not his fault that he was born in prison because that's where his mother is. was when she gave birth. But he is a paragon of situational agency. He is very intentional about cultivating mentorships. When I read his PhD thesis, because, you know, Cody, when I met him, was graduating from MIT on computer science and engineering. He had worked his way out of this, you know, terrible home situation to a much better situation. And in, you know, Silicon Valley, where he lives now is a CEO of an AI startup, Cody Coleman is exceptionally intentional about every aspect of his physical and social situation. And what I wanted to say about his PhD thesis, which he

completed at Stanford, I go to the back because I don't understand much about the math behind generative AI, which Cody does. But I go to the acknowledgments because that I can read, right? And I was like, holy smokes, I have never read a PhD thesis where literally, literally hundreds of people are thanked by full name. Like 17 members of the administrative staff for the Stanford Computer Science Department. Like Cody has been very intentional about surrounding himself with people who are his like, you know, pit crew and his cheerleaders and his fan club like, you know, me and many others. So, so I don't think you should blame yourself. I don't think shame has a place here.

I don't think you should blame other people either. but it doesn't mean that we don't have responsibility to change the situations for other people or that we can't exercise agency for ourselves. Yeah. And that phrase you just use also, change a situation for other people, I think is an important curiosity as well because a lot of times we may have people in our lives where we're like, I would love to see things be different for them. And oftentimes we try to persuade them, we try to convince them, we try to show them things,

we try to motivate them, we try to give them the willpower. Right. Yeah. And if you'll take what you're inviting us to do also, when we were in that position of being the, quote, helper is what if we actually focus more on helping them build a more effective situation, a support structure around them, rather than just focusing on what's the inside out? You know, as a teacher, you know, I was a high school teacher. Well, you know this. I was a high school teacher before I was a psychologist and I would, you know, like, exhort to my students to, you know, if you would just work hard, you know. And it's not untrue that if they would just work hard, but that never worked. Instead, I think, you know, now that I have this situational wisdom, like, what situations will incline them to work hard? And, you know, I'm a huge fan of Mr. Rogers. And I think that was one of Mr. Rogers, you know, of Mr. Rogers' neighborhood, like great insights that, like, parents would come to him for advice. You know, oftentimes when their kids were misbehaving and not doing what they wanted.

And they would say, like, you know, why can you? can't my boy concentrate? And Mr. Rogers would offer a different question. He would say, instead of asking, why can't my boy concentrate, ask where can my boy concentrate? Young people ask me, they're like, I have ADHD. Like, I can't, like, concentrate. I'm like, where can you concentrate? And then they think a while. And they're like, well, I mean, like, when there's like nothing else to do, like when I'm on an airplane and there's no Wi-Fi, like, great. Like, like, let's start there. like let's start with that insight. I think we can ask ourselves like where do we like ourselves more? You know, what are the days that we would count as good days? And what were those circumstances? Not just like what were we thinking, but where were we that made us think that way? I think that's exactly the way to begin. Yeah. That lands for me. And it's, and we've all tried to actually do the opposite. And it doesn't work as you described. It doesn't work. I know, right. Yeah. So like, okay, so now one person feels really that. and other person feels really bad because they're trying and nothing's happening.

Then the first person is feeling bad because somebody they like is trying and it's not helping. And now they're feeling bad about making the other person feel bad. It's like this sort of like spiral out of control. We have like level two feelings about our feelings. Very often feelings about feelings are not helpful by the way. You know, like feeling bad is one thing. And feeling bad about feeling bad. Wow.

Now we're in trouble. But yeah, I'll give you one very trivial example, but it does work for me. Like I have an Alexa that says, you know, when I'm supposed to do physical. therapy and also tells me what I'm supposed to go to bed. Like, just put it in my calendar and then the calendar gets announced. And you can be like, well, yeah, but you could just remind yourself or like, whatever, like you just do it. And it's like, no, but it's so much easier when Alexa tells me.

Yeah. And I wonder if part of it, you know, ties back to this kind of ethos that's become so centered, especially in sort of like an American culture, which is like rugged individualism. Like, we should be able to make this happen ourselves. We shouldn't have to rely on other people. We shouldn't have to rely on the people. We shouldn't need mentors. We shouldn't need blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Like, you should have the ability to just, like, suck it up. And, like, suck it up and, like, make it happen. And it's like, humanity was never like that. Like, it's not supposed to be like that. Nobody succeeds that way. And yet, we're told that that's ever. I looked that up recently, by the way, rugged individualism. I think it was a phrase coined by President Herbert Hoover.

But, like, who does anything alone? Like really, who does anything alone? And the cognitive science on this is very interesting. Research shows that we have what is called the illusion of self-sufficiency. Like when we figure things out, we're like, yeah, we figured this out. You know, like you didn't even notice that someone basically showed you what to do. And it's not always as obvious as like I watched a DIY video on YouTube. It's just, you know, it's almost impossible really, you know, anthropologists would argue to even survive as a human being without.

you know, a thousand interdependencies on other people, like all the things that you drink and eat and touch and feel and do and learn and read and produce are dependent intimately on, you know, people you know and people you don't. So I think this rugged individualism, you know, the kind of Marlboro man sort of like, you know, this image of a person who does anything on their own is really a myth. Completely agree with that. I love the invitation that you're really bringing people into to think about the conditions, the environment, the situation they're in. And it gives you, it lets you think, okay, I'm working as hard as I can work. I'm working as smart as I can work. And the chains that I'm seeking is not happening. I'm not done.

There's something else. There's something. And there are many other things. And maybe those other things will actually not only get me to the place that I want to be, but make me feel so much better along the way. Like, there is, I have options. There are items on a menu that I didn't realize existed. You know, this great architect, Christopher Wren,

asked that his epitaph be, look around. I think he was the architect of Westminster Abbey, and I think he's buried in Westminster Abbey, and I think that was his one request, look around. And yeah, you know, like, I think in a cultural, where we're asked so often to look within for the solutions. If you want to change yourself, as many people do, change your situation and your situation will change for you. So, yeah, look around. Good place for us to come full circle in this container of a good life project. If I offer the phrase,

to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life. Well, I end my book with Victor Frankel. Victor Frankl, who wrote Mansearcher meaning, very much believed from his time in Auschwitz, but also beyond, that to live a good life is to live a life that is pointed at, as he put it, pointed at, directed toward others. And one of the things that he always said with emphasis was that the United States,

now that we have a Statue of Liberty on the East Coast, should have a statute of responsibility on the West Coast to remind us physically to do exactly that. So I think a good life is a life in which we make the situations for other people, the situations that bring out their best. Thank you. So let's talk about some of the big ahas and really actionable takeaways from this conversation. One thing that I keep coming back to is this visual, this kind of metaphor, the camera metaphor, portrait mode she described it as. We come in sharp, high fidelity, every flaw in focus. And then that's just the face, though.

The whole background around us, it just, it blurs. Angela's point is that's exactly how we think about our own struggles. We kind of zoom in on ourselves and blur out everything that actually shapes us around us. when the real answer is off in line bringing it all into focus so that we can see and refine, not just how we show up, but how the environment and the people around us support our lives and dreams. Three other quick things that really stayed with me from this one. First, what she and her colleague James Gross called that three-box model.

Your situation shape your thoughts, and your thoughts shape everything you do. In that order, not the reverse. The second one is this idea of situational agency. It's not about blame. Angela was clear on this. Auditing your situation doesn't mean you caused it. It just means you might be able to now change it once you see it. And third, nobody does anything alone, no matter how much it might look that way from the outside. So here's an invitation. Here's what I actually do with this. Tonight, before you go to bed, take a moment and just look at what's with arms or reach of you right now. Just notice it. Don't change anything yet. Just notice what is around you and is it supporting you. or stopping you from being who you want to be and becoming what you want to become. And hey, before you leave next week,

we're sitting down with Allison Arbery to talk about why Midlife can become this turning point for purpose, connection, and a deeper kind of self-trust. So be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss that or any upcoming episode. And do me a quick personal favor,

a seven-second favor. Share this conversation with just one person who you know needs to hear. hear what we talked about today. Or leave a review wherever you get your podcast. It helps us get discovered and brings more people into the conversation. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Troy Young, Chris Carter crafted our theme music.

And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcast so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields. Signing off for Good Life Project. I'm going to be.