High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 418: Getting Grit with Caroline Adams Miller, Bestselling Author, Keynote Speaker and Educator

Episode Date: March 27, 2021

Caroline is one of the world’s leading experts on the science behind successful goal setting and the use of ‘good grit’ to achieve hard things. For more than 30 years, she’s been sharing her research-backed, actionable strategies to help people cultivate more grit and dig deeper to clarify and achieve their toughest goals. Achieving hard goals is one of the most rewarding things we can do in both our personal and professional lives. Caroline’s TEDx talk, “The Moments That Make Champions,” explores the three things that we can choose to do differently to improve our chances of developing authentic grit. Caroline has a Masters of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School’s Executive Education program. Caroline is the author of six books, including Creating Your Best Life (Sterling 2009 and 2021) and Getting Grit (Sounds True 2017). Live Happy Magazine named Creating Your Best Life one of the top 10 goal setting books ever published and Getting Grit one of the 10 books that would change your life in 2017. She is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) through the International Coach Federation.  In this episode, Caroline and Cindra discuss: What is authentic grit 2 life-changing exercises to help you find your best possible future self 3 types of grit we don’t want to cultivate Strategies to build our grit Why building your passion to fuel purpose is key to your success HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/418 HOW TO ENTER THE PODCAST GIVEAWAY TO WIN $500 CASH: www.drcindra.com/giveaway FB COMMUNITY FOR THE HPM PODCAST: https://www.facebook.com/groups/highperformancemindsetcommunity FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong TO FIND MORE ABOUT CAROLINE: https://www.carolinemiller.com/ Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901  

Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your goals and dreams. So I'm over here following my big dreams and I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Ms. Pac-Man.

Yes, the 1980s game Ms. Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the high performance mindset. Angela Duckworth said, Grit is sticking with your future day in, day out, and not just for a week, not just for a month, but for years. Seth Godin said, everyone has their own Mount Everest. We are put on this planet to climb. And Caroline Adams Miller, who I interview in this episode, said, your life is a sacred journey. It is about change, growth, discovery, movement, transformation, and continuously expanding your vision of what is

possible. Thank you so much for joining me today. This is your host, Dr. Cindra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you are here. If you know that mindset is essential to your success, then you are in the right place. Now, if you haven't already, head over to the High Performance Mindset community over on Facebook. We have been posting these interviews live, and it's been super fun to connect with you over there. You can actually ask us questions as we are live on these episodes when you join the High Performance Mindset Community. So again, head over to Facebook and just search High Performance Mindset Community, or you can scroll down on these show notes and the link is right there. My name is Dr. Cinder Kampoff, and if this is the first time you're joining us on the

podcast, I am a keynote speaker, an executive and mental performance coach where I work with entrepreneurs, salespeople, business leaders, and high performing athletes. And if you are looking to level up your life and your performance in 2020, and if you wanna free yourself from the mental roadblocks, reach out to me for a free discovery coaching session. You can email me at syndra at syndra.com and I would love to connect with you. Today's episode features Caroline Adams Miller

and she's one of the world's leading experts on the science behind successful goal setting and the use of good grit to achieve hard things. For more than 30 years, she's been sharing her research-backed, actionable strategies to help people cultivate more grit and dig deeper to clarify and achieve their toughest goals. And I was really excited to have Caroline on the podcast today. I wrote a book called Beyond Grit, so I'm very familiar with their research on grit. And her book called Getting Grit was really fun to talk to her about because achieving hard goals is one of the most rewarding things we can do in both our personal and professional lives. Caroline's TED Talk, The Moments That Make Champions, explores the three things that

we can choose to do differently to improve our chances of developing authentic grit. Caroline has a Master's of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School. Caroline is the author of six books including creating your best life which was published in 2021 and getting grit which was published in 2017 live happy magazine named creating your best life one of the top 10 goal-setting books ever published and getting great as one of the 10 books that will change your life in 2017 she is also a professional certified coach through the International Coach Federation

or ICF. In this episode, Caroline and I discuss what is authentic grit, two life-changing exercises to help you find your best possible future self, three types of grit we don't want to cultivate. Of course, we talk about strategies to build your grit and why it's so important to cultivate your grit and why building your passion to fuel purpose is key to your success. Now, the great thing is you can head over to the website for this episode and get the full transcription over at cindracampoff.com slash 418. All right, my friends, without further ado, let's bring on Caroline Miller. Thank you so much, Caroline. I am so excited to talk to you today on the High Performance Mindset podcast. So thank you so much for joining us here. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me and having me.

I read your books a few years ago called Getting Grit. And so I know you've been doing other things since then, but I'm just really looking forward to talking to you about this idea of grit, mostly because we've both written about it, but also would just love to hear all the things that you have going on and how you might serve the audience. So maybe to start us off and tell us what you're passionate about. Oh gosh, there's so many things I'm passionate about, but right now a lot of my harmonious passion is going into finishing a quick book that fleshes out the guidelines I've written

many years ago actually on mastermind groups for women, how women need to all be in them. I explain why the psychology behind it, but how to start, join and participate in a successful mastermind group. So right now, that's where a lot of my focus is going. Wow. Excellent. So tell us a little bit about, and we will come back to the mastermind, but I'm curious,

like what first got you studying this idea of grit and writing the book about getting grit? It really all starts with me going back to school in 2005. I went back to Penn in the first ever Masters of Applied Positive Psychology. And it was 33 of us from all over the world who got to study with Marty Seligman and other really cool people in the field of psychology and motivation, but mostly the science of happiness. And while there, I realized that there were no goal-setting books on the market, the mass market, none whatsoever, ever, that had any research or footnotes in them. I realized they were all

full of snake oil and urban legends, and there were no footnotes. So my capstone project connected the science behind goal success and goal setting theory with the science of happiness. And in the process of writing about the best kinds of goals, meaningful goals, purposeful goals, evidence-based goals, I discovered that the happiest people wake up every day to really hard goals, not easy goals. And as I'm writing about that, I realized, well, if I'm going to put this book out here, I have to write about how do you accomplish hard goals. And Angela Duckworth was running in and out of our classrooms doing some for early work with Marty Seligman before grit was even known. And so I included a chapter about grit and creating your

best life, which just got reissued. And I spent the next 10 years really studying and focusing on and coming up with a theory, evidence-based theory on how to actually cultivate grit, because if it matters so much, how do you cultivate it? And that's what I spent 10 years really refining. Awesome. So from your perspective and from the research that you examined, how would you describe to us, how do we cultivate our grit oh well that's a big question i'm just gonna have to give you some highlights otherwise i'll keep you here okay no one wants that um well i mean grit angela has a definition angela duckworth has a definition passion and perseverance in pursuit of long-term goals. And so I think it starts with that, but I actually broaden the definition to qualify a lot of the men and women

I work with all over the world, mostly as an executive coach. I speak to a lot of audiences and I realized that that definition didn't hold for people like you and me and people who want to get more in life. So I broadened it to be about not just passionate pursuit of hard goals, but outside of your comfort zone that also awe and inspire other people. Cause I think it's really important that we talk about food grit and that you take risks. So I went from there and I broke it, broke it out into a number of chapters on the behaviors and the mindset and the environment that I saw around people who fit my definition of authentic grit. So that's just kind of where I started. Great. Well, that was going to be my next question for you is I really like your chapter

on authentic grit. So maybe dive into like what that means to you. Authentic grit for me is a good kind of grit. It's doing hard goals for the right reason in the best possible way you can do it, which will involve undoubtedly going out of your comfort zone, taking risks and doing it for a very long period of time because grit presupposes being in it for a long time. And so good grit is the kind of grit where other people watch you not trying to get a participation trophy or a bonus or a pat on the head or to be recognized. People who watch you doing things that are intrinsically motivating, important to you, you know you'll have regrets if you don't pursue these goals. But doing it in such a way that you on inspire other people who then,

you know, say to themselves, maybe outwardly or inwardly, they say, wow, what if I live like that? What if I brought that kind of passion to the world? So there's bad kinds of grit, which I felt was important to talk about. But good grit often inspires other people, but also allows you to pursue and achieve some of the most meaningful goals in your life. Yeah. And you know what I find, Caroline, my work as an executive coach and speaker as well, I find that people really aren't clear exactly what they want, right? Like if we use Angela Duckworth's definition of passion and perseverance for your very long-term goals, I think people aren't always very clear what is it that they want. What are your thoughts on that? And for people who might be listening saying, yeah, I don't really exactly know what

I want. Do you have any thoughts on maybe where they could start? Well, your coach, so you understand coaching isn't about coaching people to do what you want them to do. Coaching is about excavating and unearthing what's hidden inside of people that they really want. And so a good coach could ask the right questions. And I find that a lot of people do know what they want. They just never stopped and either ask themselves the right questions, done any kind of thoughtful analysis of why they're in the position they're in, what they're afraid of, who's around them, you know, and I think a lot of people are contaminated by negativity and pessimism from people around them, particularly women. And so we know that women are dying in really untold historic numbers right now from diseases of despair at midlife. And this is a

crisis. And it's for women who haven't redefined what their purpose is. Maybe they never felt it or found it before. But because they don't feel purposeful, they don't feel their lives are meaningful. And as a result, they're taking their lives or losing them to alcoholism and suicide and opioid addiction and eating disorders and depression and all kinds of diseases of despair. And so that's a piece of what really matters to me right now is making sure the message gets out to people that when you identify your ikigai, the Japanese word for that, which I wake up for, maybe through the help of a coach, maybe through a mastermind group. That's when

really, I think people begin to get hopeful and clarify what they're doing on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, that's so good. What do you think right now is happening with women, you know, that maybe is leading to this? I think, you know, for me, it might be societal pressure or just, I'm also thinking about inequalities and how it can feel just like, you know, you're, you're, you're pushing your head above the above the ceiling. Just like there's always barriers in front of you. Sometimes it can feel like that, you know, do you think it's central matter? What's your thoughts? I have a lot of thoughts on that. And again, I don't want to keep you all day. Again, I've spent a lot of years trying to figure out if I'm going to talk about this problem, particularly the problem of women shooting at other women, women undermining other women. I wanted to talk about lack, well, not always lack confidence,

but I think women mostly don't know who has their back. You know, that phrase, stabbed in the back, whatever, backstabber, knifed me in the back. I think a lot of women for cultural reasons, linguistic reasons, and biological reasons, don't have other women's backs. And some of this is we have this tend and befriend oxytocin release in our bodies when other women are hurting and they don't get what they want or they need solace. And we know that women need other women because they tend and befriend them when they need help, when they need care after childbirth, et cetera. But what we don't have is a hardwired believe in the chief response.

So some of this is cultural. I think there's an assumption that they're mean girls. And we just assume this. And we put shows on television. There's even a show called Mean Girls. There's nothing analogous for boys, but there's that. There's words like cat fighting that don't have opposites for men. Dog fighting is actually a really positive thing. There's the Disney rule. Most people don't know the Disney rule is well known within Disney, which is if you're drawing princesses in the same frame for a picture or a movie or whatever, you can't draw two princesses looking in the same direction in that picture.

They have to look in opposite directions because the clear message is, and think of all the millions of little girls who are primed, not knowing what they're seeing, but you can't look in the same direction because it means you're in the same room and you can't have that. You can't have two sparkly princesses in the same room. There's also no word in the English language for being joyful in someone else's win. There's schadenfreude in German, which is taking pleasure in someone else's misery. But I spent 15 years, 15 years searching for the opposite because there's scholarship showing that if a word doesn't exist in a culture, the behavior does not either. And in 2019, when I was running with Diana Whitney, the co-founder of Appreciate Inquiry in Melbourne, Australia, running a one-day workshop called Thriving Women, Thriving World,

I found myself in a small group of Israeli scholars talking about linguistics. And I asked them if there was a word that they were aware of. And they said, actually, there's an untranslatable word in Yiddish, firgan, joy in someone else's joy. And that is so rare. And so I think there's all kinds of reasons why women don't do this for each other. But I've got some strategies that I think will turn the tide and help us to see that differently. Excellent. I appreciate those details, Caroline,

and it made me think a lot about different variables that might be impacting women this way. You know, when I think about why women need to develop their grit and what kind of contributes to that, there was a passage in your book, I'm just going to read it. And you said, what else contributes to building the grit muscle? And you said, but I believe we need to take a look at our quality of our relationships, the prevalence of positive emotions in our lives, and or our storehouse of willpower, among other elements to develop a well-rounded, authentic grit. Tell us a little bit about thinking about the positive emotions. What are your perspective on how those help us develop our grit? Well, so my fifth book, Creating Your Best Life,

is where I really flesh this out. My capstone, a pen in that first year of the master's program, was my identification of some brand new research, which was that all success in life is preceded by being happy first. What that means is nobody succeeds in anything in life, health, friendship, work, whatever, unless they're flourishing first, which means that it's profoundly unprofessional to address the issue of goal accomplishment without first addressing the science of flourishing and what are the proven ways to up people's well-being. So when you take that then and follow the through line to grit, we know that the happiest people wake up every day to hard goals, really hard goals outside of their comfort zone. And so if you're going to achieve those hard goals, yes, you need self-regulation. You need to understand goal

accomplishment. You need passion. You need humility. But you also have to have flourishing because that is at the absolute basis of whether or not people are able to accomplish their goals, let alone the hardest goals. Yeah, I'm thinking about Barbara Fredrickson's work here about the three to one ratio, right? It's kind of some of the things I'm thinking about when I'm hearing you talk about flourishing. Is there anything else specific that you're thinking about as you're going back to the research? Well, Barbara Fredrickson's broaden and build hypothesis

or theory is important. There's also John Gottman's research from the Love Lab at the University of Washington. And there's other kinds of research showing that even work teams that are over, not just over three to one, but optimally at five to one, five positives to one negative, that can predict an upward spiral that women often are in situations and relationships where they're below three to one, which creates the downward spiral of wellbeing. And why are they in relationships like this?

Well, 84% of women say that they have frenemies in their lives, friends who are enemies. And why do they have those people in their lives doing so much damage, whether they know it or not? Because they don't want anyone to think they're not nice. And when I think about the toll that is taking on women's hopes and dreams and behavior, and their ability to not just have intentions, but have the actions to go with their intentions. I grieve for my sisters, because I think we're going through life trying to be nice without realizing how it's really just the death blow for many of us to think bigger and act bigger. I think I'm just going to do a mic drop right there. Yeah. And I'm thinking about fear of rejection. You know, I think that's some of the things that

get in, that's what gets in my way of when I want to be nice. And as I've thought about like my interest in being nice is it feels really socialized, right? That I should be nice. I think that is my human nature as well, but sometimes I think it does hold me back from getting bigger and bolder. So what advice would you give for women who are maybe agreeing with you and and saying yes you know that this um this idea of being nice is holding me back and I realize that well there's nothing wrong with niceness but I think there's an overgiving that women do in their kindness which ends up you know keeping them as doormats at times but beyond that I think all of us have heard of Adam Grant's book give and take and if you haven, it's a really good book. The problem is it was

written without the gender perspective, because he talks about how when you give and you give without that happens is that when men give, they get all the benefits of being givers. When women give, they do not get all the benefits that men get. And furthermore, and here's the part that's the real kicker, if women are asked to be givers in the office, doing emotional housework, being givers to the PTA or whatever it is, if they say no, if they have a boundary, if they say, I'd love to, but I can't, they pay a very, very significant price. They're seen as not nice. And what that means is that we lose the time that we need to have in order to nurture and pursue and achieve our deepest goals.

And so I'll just go back to women dying from diseases of despair. There's a direct connection between giving away your time and not pursuing what you're here on the earth to do and feeling like your life is meaningless and not wanting to fight're here on the earth to do and feeling like your life is meaningless and not wanting to fight any longer. You're not necessarily prioritizing yourself and you're just giving, giving, giving, making other people's maybe agendas more important than your goals and what's important to you. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I was asked to do something yesterday for an organization I'm very fond of and I've given my time over the years, but I looked at the board of directors, and we just selected a new set of directors, and it's

pretty much all women. And they started asking other people to donate their time to make sure that we continue to roll along. And I called the new president, and I said, how many of the people you're calling are the male people who also are in this organization. And she's a doctor, she's a medical doctor. And she said, you know, never thought about it. I'm only asking women because women give. But at what cost are we giving away our lives in order to be givers to everyone? So it makes me think a lot about good grit and authentic grit, like you talk about, and maybe the not so good grit. In the book, you talk about faux grit and authentic grit, like you talk about, and maybe the not so good grit. In the book, you talk about faux grit, stubborn grit, selfless grit as like types of grit that aren't serving us.

Tell us a little bit about those and how might they be different than authentic grit? So as I fleshed out my theory, and I have to say, you know, Angela Duckworth is just a phenomenal friend of mine and a tremendous supporter and dropped everything to make sure she endorsed my book while hers was coming out, which I have to say, how often do you have a woman who has your back like that when her own book is her first book? And but one of the things that she's been very kind about noting that I think is important about getting grit is that not all grit is good. And if you only know the word grit, you think, well, you know, that's great, but it's really not. Cause when I work with people,

I'm not just doing research. What I realized is that there's some really evil human beings who fit that basic definition of passion and perseverance and pursuit of long-term goals. Think about conspiracy theorists, for example, they have passion, they pursue their goals, but to what end? Not necessarily positive. So I realized that there were three buckets of really negative grit that people needed to be aware of. One of them, the book called it stubborn grit, but it's really stupid grit. I call it stupid grit. They thought it was rude and not nice. If I use the word stupid, but frankly, stupid is what it is, stupid. So people who have stupid grit, you know, it's like mountain climbers who have summit fever. They're just climbing to the top. They don't care what the Sherpas say. You know, they,

they don't have the humility to listen to other people. Stupid grit costs you and other people, maybe even your lives. And, and you just don't listen. So the hallmark is a lack of humility and a lot of arrogance. The second one is faux grit. People who want you to think that they're gritty and that they do hard things, like maybe even they've been special forces members, but they make it up and they fake their accomplishments. The egregious example I list in the book for that is people who pretend to be medal of honor winners in the United States, our highest military honor, and they'll buy the medal on eBay, and they'll put on their resume. I mean, just people who

aren't willing to do the work over a long period of time to be that person, they'll take shortcuts. And we have a lot of that happening in our culture right now, people who just take shortcuts because they want the win. They want to be be winners at all costs and the third kind is selfie grit these are people who do hard things but they tell you all the time and there's that again that lack of humility and arrogance but it's kind of um an unwillingness to let other people shine so um so selfie grit faux grit, and stupid grit are all negative forms of having that, you know, either desire to be a hard worker or somebody who does it in the wrong way. Yeah, excellent. I think sometimes, and I don't know where this fits with year three, but my grit can get in my own way, because I think I'm naturally gritty. But like, if I push too hard, or involve myself in a project that I then, you know, lose perspective on other things, maybe other deadlines or other projects, or I'm working, working, working. And then it's like, you know, sometimes friends, relationships,

you know, I get out of balance once in a while. So does that fit in any of your three types? I guess I'm just, I'm kind of pointing that out because I think that also can be not so great form of grit. Well, it depends on the harm that you're doing to yourself by being that, that person who might block out other kinds of, you know, entertainment. There was a wonderful book written by Edwin Locke, the co-founder of goal setting theory called Prime Movers. It's an obscure book, hard to get. But one of the things he said is people who are creating great things, either for themselves or the world, at times they're very out of balance.

And you have to acknowledge that not all things can happen at once if you're in the process of creation or childbirth, essentially. So I think it's the context and the harm that you're doing to yourself or other people when you constantly deny meeting with friends, being there for other people in their moment of joy, whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's helpful. I heard Caroline that shows that grit is connected to GPA and retention at universities, things like that, and how more teachers, I think, are teaching about grit. What are ways that you think we can teach grit to our kids or in the classroom? Well, so this is a loaded area. Angela Duckworth has gotten a lot of criticism for somehow implying that all children lack grit and need to learn grit when in fact, they're clearly children coming from

difficult circumstances, difficult homes, where they already have grit. Just showing up at school is gritty. What they need is hope. They might need purpose. They might need to build their self-efficacy. So I want to quickly say that that's been a debate that's been out there and it has been addressed. So how do you teach grit in the classroom? I am a big believer, and I actually just gave a talk this summer to the International Positive Education Network about the fact that I think all children, starting young, but teens and adults too, should all learn the science of goal setting, goal setting theory, because simply having the ability to create your own environment and have control over what happens to yourself by setting goals in the right way, gives people a feeling of confidence. And when

we have all this fake news stuff that's been spread around and kind of promulgated by the ex president, you know, don't believe what you see, believe what I tell you. The rise in anxiety and depression just spiked because we found that our youth didn't believe what they saw around them. They were told to distrust their own senses. And so I think goal setting is really important. We also know that Carol Dweck's work on fixed and growth mindset is making a huge difference. So Carol Dweck's work on teaching children, not that it's all about the outcome, but it's about the effort, really can make a difference. I particularly love her finding about using the word yet. Not no, you didn't get it, but you haven't understood it yet.

Give it another try. That word yet is powerful. is powerful yeah great I know a lot of teachers who implement those practices into the classroom so I'm hopeful that will help the young the young children in our nation despite all the things that are happening one of the things I really like about your book Caroline is just the different exercises that you give us to help us think about our grit. And one of the ones I want to highlight is the one called Me at My Best. And I really loved reading about that and thinking about that. Tell us a bit about that exercise and how those people who are listening right now, if it's on a cast, might be able to use that exercise to think about themselves. Yeah. So if you, if you've, it all flirted with positive psychology, you've heard this research.

And I'm not sure if I should attribute it to Laura King or Sonia Lubomirsky. They're both massive luminaries in the field of positive psychology research, but it's a simple exercise, but a powerful one, which is to take your top five strengths from the VIA character strength survey, which all of my clients take. The first assignment they get is take the VIA character strength survey, which all of my clients take. The first assignment they get is take the VIA character strength survey, which ranks your strengths from one to 24. It's a free test. I have nothing. I get no kickbacks from the VIA Institute, but it's a phenomenal free test. And all my clients use it regardless of what they do in the world. But then take those top five strengths and write an essay where you come up with times in your life, personally, professionally, both,

a situation, a specific situation or a period in your life when all five of those strengths were being used in a positive way, a proactive way, and intermingling them brought out your best self, maybe even that self who odd and inspired other people as you did gritty things. But inevitably, what you find is that's a situation. That's the context. Those are the people who elicit you at your best because the overuse of those same great strengths are weaknesses. And you have to understand what is that little red line that you can cross over when you're not in those ideal situations where something like zest can become just recklessness instead of just a positive joie de vivre. So it's an important exercise. Everyone does it.

And you know what the other interesting thing is? When you hear someone else's me at my best story, you never, ever forget it. Ever. Nice. So I'm thinking about if you're on a team, maybe a business team or an athletic team, or you could do this within your family where you do the exercise and they share it with each other. I could see how that could really build a lot of cohesion and just better understanding each other. A lot of leaders that I work with have been doing these endless Zoom meetings and they've often broken it up

to ask people to share that side of themselves. I mean, they see kids running through the back of their room or one guy in a company I coach and showed up one day with a mohawk because his kids had buzzed his hair. And so the vulnerability that you're seeing online can be kind of further amplified in a positive way to hear me at my best story, something you've

never heard about this person you see every day, but in a new way and in a positive way. Love it. Love it. So you can check out that exercise in Caroline's book, Getting Grit. You know, one of the other things that I really liked that you talked about, Caroline, is you talk about how building passion to fuel purpose is really key. So tell us about the passion piece and maybe your perspective and how you see that connecting with grit. Okay, great question. So there's a researcher, Robert Valoran in Canada, who's done research on what's called harmonious passion and obsessive passion. And the best analogy to this is a relationship where your partner loves you and accepts you,

but doesn't jealously guard your time and kind of police you versus the obsessive passion, which is that not so great relationship. So what he has found is that passion, when you think again, passion in pursuit of hard goals, it has to be the right kind of passion. It can't be an all or nothing kind of passion. You have to have eggs in a variety of different baskets. So if you're trying to make the Olympics in, you know, whatever it is, and you don't achieve it, it's not everything about who you are. There's a harmony in your life that allows you to do your best with what you have when you can versus it's the sum total of who you are. And so that's just an important distinction, the passion research that I like.

Yeah, that's really good. And I'm thinking about what you kind of talked about at the beginning about women who are struggling, right, midlife, or also just people right now who might feel passionless. And I'm thinking, I think COVID has, you know, adjust made us adjust all like we've all had to adjust to it. But I find, even for me, times where I'm just like doing the same thing over and over and over again, I have to remind myself of my passion, just to kind of keep me excited and going. What would you say for those people who maybe are listening and saying, gosh, I feel passionless? That's a great question. One thing we know is that the brain loves novelty, which is why hot peppers are so popular, because when you have explosions of novelty or newness in the brain, it kind of creates a little bookmark in the brain.

It creates a little spark of joy. So the passion that you might feel for life could be stale. You may need to change it up with a certain amount of creativity. Find something out of your zone of comfort to do, to learn, somebody to be with, even if it's on Zoom, read a book. I find myself listening to podcasts I wouldn't ordinarily listen to because I want to change things up and learn something new outside of my normal kind of interest. So as passionate as I am about learning why people tick in a certain way and how to help them optimize themselves, I'm trying new areas to actually find that so that I don't get stale just reading the same things and listening to the same people all the time.

So novelty can really spark passion. Excellent. You talked a lot about today hard goals and the happiest people are pursuing hard goals. Can you give us some examples of hard goals for you or hard goals of some of your clients? I'm thinking about trying to give the people who are listening some concrete examples of hard goals. Okay, great question.

So what's hard for me is not gonna be hard for somebody else and vice versa. So it's really important that people not judge what their hard looks like, because I think some people get into the, you know, upward social comparisons. Well, if it's not hard for them, then why is it hard for me? Well, I can't pick it up. That means I'm a loser, whatever it is. Hard means that it's something outside of your comfort zone. Maybe it's a skill that you've never learned. I think for a lot of people and executives during COVID, it was hard to learn to be on Zoom. I know my husband, I saw him having a business meeting one day and I saw him looking down into a dark computer. I plunked a

ring light right in front of him. I was like, you've got to learn how to do this. And it was hard for him. And so it wasn't hard for, you know, in our family is a very famous influencer. It's not hard for her to learn how to do zoom, zoom meetings and lights and the rest of it. So hard means that it's something that you want to do that you need to do in order to achieve an important, important goal to you, at least it's going to take a while. And it could be learning something new, trying to figure out what it feels like to master driving a stick shift car. You know, going out of your comfort zone to ask somebody out on a zoom date. I mean, hard is hard for everybody. I do happen to

live very close to Katie Ledecky, who's probably the most dominant female athlete in the world. And her parents went to, you know, father went to college with my husband and I, and I've had the privilege of watching her grow up just a few houses away from me. I've swum next to her. And what I find fascinating is that what Katie sets as hard goals, i.e. breaking world records over and over and over again, I think some people would say, well, my goodness, if you're using smart goals and they have to be realistic, then that's not a good way to set goals. Hard for her is different than hard for somebody who doesn't have that kind of drive, talent, success, family structure. So we have to be really careful not to decide what hard is for other people, because we might be limiting them. Extraordinary people set unfathomably hard goals, because for them, it's not as far out of their comfort zone as it would be for me, which is why, I hope I said that right, the spirit is there, which is why in my fifth book, Creating Your Best Life, which just got reissued, I made sure that I destroyed this idea of smart goals. That's not the heuristic by which people should be setting goals. Realistic does not match goal setting theory. Everybody just throw out this smart goal stuff. The evidence doesn't support it. Hard goals are not always realistic goals. It's just your heart is different from someone else's

heart. Oh, that's really good, Caroline. I'm glad I asked you that question. I think about hard goals for me take courage, you know, so maybe that's also something to think about when you're thinking about what's a hard goal for you, that it takes you really pushing yourself and being courageous. And, you know, I, I've, I've been thinking about goals for my own self, because I've read a lot of Locke and Latham's work in the goal setting research. But I find like, when I see goals is like who I can become, you know, it helps me set more difficult goals or courageous goals. I think I was taught, maybe even in sport, you know, the smart goal process, check it off, did it. But then, you know, I don't dream as big when I feel like I'm,

you know, kind of set in this, the smart goal framework. Yeah. You're touching on some interesting new research on ideal selves versus actual and ought selves and I think too many people are showing up every day as their actual self just the self they were yesterday kind of the default mode of who they are and the ought self is who they think they should be or who their culture or their parents or their spouse think they should be, versus who is your ideal self. And too often, I'm going to go back to women, but I think this is true for both men and women, but a lot for women, is they don't take the time to identify who their ideal self is, who they would most like to be in the future if change was not an obstacle and fear didn't exist.

We all need to identify our ideal selves. We know even from the research that you save more money for retirement if you have identified and befriended your ideal self. So that's another, there's an exercise associated with that from positive psychology that I like, but ideal self is a goal. Excellent. And I was thinking about hard goals and courage

and everything we just said, and made me think about the risk-taking chapter in your book about how that's really important. How do you see that connecting with grit? Oh, in every possible way, because as you said, you said it takes courage to pursue hard goals. In order to pursue hard goals, you don't necessarily know what the outcome of your efforts will be. So risk-taking is about stretching your arm out as far as it will go and making the goal you're trying to accomplish just slightly outside of the fingertips. I mean, your reach should exceed your grasp. And that's because you don't find out what you're made of. You don't find out who your friends are. You don't find out what your top strengths are. You don't find out a whole lot unless you're actually going outside

of your comfort zone. And we know that in history, and we're not telling women's history enough. I mean, in Wikipedia, only 16% of the biographies in Wikipedia are of women because their stories have not been told. The ones whose stories have been told, whose biographies in Wikipedia are of women because their stories have not been told. The ones whose stories have been told, whose biographies have made it into Wikipedia, are unilaterally rule breakers and rebels. And there was nothing easy about what they chose to do. They often had to violate social precepts. They had to go against the grain. They were often, you know, you know, hurt for it, you know, burned at the stake. But when you look at who has lived on in history, who has what I call Mount Rushmore grit, the kind of life they lived stood at a turning point in history. And it was the way they did what they did that caused them to have followers.

The humility, the dignity. You think about Martin Luther King. You think about Harriet Tubman. You think about so many of the people who've stood at the arc of history where something changed. They had that kind of grit, but they were rebels and rule breakers. Don't live a safe, small life. It may be harder at times, but the truth is it's going to be more meaningful.

And at the end of life, you're going to have so, so many fewer regrets that you'll have joy in the fact that you left it all on the floor. Caroline, I knew this was going to be an awesome conversation and it exceeded my expectations. So what I really enjoyed about this episode and just my conversation with you was the importance of going after hard goals, being courageous. We also talked about issues related to women

and teaching grit and developing grit. We talked about the role of empowering emotions. Wow, the different, you know, the types of grit that is not helpful. We talked about risk-taking. So I'm so grateful that you are on. Oh, thank you. Thank you for giving me a platform to talk about what I'm so passionate about. I'm very grateful.

And if people want to learn more or be on my newsletter list, or even be among the first to find out about my ebook on mastermind groups for women, which again, all women should be in mastermind groups that are carefully formed with the right rules. Just text the word goal to 33777, or just go to my website, carolinemiller.com, poke around, there's free stuff, there's chapters, there's, but sign up for my newsletter, and you'll always know what's happening, at least in my little world. Do you have any final advice for us, Caroline? Find out what other people's goals are and make sure you do something to help them accomplish their goals too, because it's not just about us. It's about all of us. And if COVID left us with

nothing else, it's really that we have to have compassionate grit, which is doing hard things so that other people's lives are better too. So I'll just leave you with compassionate grit is another kind of grit that emerged for me this year that I think we all need to have. Excellent. Thank you, Caroline. Thank you. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes.

And to join my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.