Is Grit毅力 the Secret of Success?毅力是成功的秘訣嗎？
What does it take to do really well in life? The answer, says psychologist心理學(xué)家 Angela Duckworth, is not innate talent與生俱來(lái)的天賦 but grit – something she learned the hard way艱難地
[1] When Angela Duckworth was growing up, her dad often applied the word genius to his daughter. He did it at random moments在任意時(shí)刻, over dinner, watching TV or reading the newspaper, and the sentence was always the same: “You’re no genius天才!” Duckworth’s older sister and brother got it too. For Duckworth’s mother, an artist, the disparagement輕視 was adjusted to fit: “You’re no Picasso畢加索!”This approach to raising children seems inauspicious不幸的 but, in a funny way, it has worked pretty well. Duckworth, now 45, doesn’t recall how she answered her father, but her book Grit is her considered經(jīng)過(guò)深思熟慮的 reply.
[2] Subtitled有副標(biāo)題的 The Power of Passion and Perseverance（熱愛(ài)和堅(jiān)持的力量）, the text is the fruit of years studying the psychology of success. Swimmers, chefs, army cadets軍隊(duì)學(xué)員, telesales executives電話銷(xiāo)售人員 … Duckworth examines them all, and what she finds is that natural talent天賦 – the genius prized by her father – does not make humans disposed to使 succeed so much as the qualities she sums up as “grit”. These include the commitment承諾 to finish what you start, to rise from setbacks從挫折中崛起, to want to improve and succeed, and to undertake sustained 持續(xù)的and sometimes unpleasant practice in order to do so. She calls the people whose inspiring tales she recounts敘述 “grit paragons毅力典范”. But the most persuasive能說(shuō)服的 grit paragon, the one whose story is implicit暗示的 rather than directly told – the book is social science not memoir自傳 – is Duckworth herself.
[3] Every family has its funny sayings語(yǔ)錄, the private lore and logic民間傳說(shuō)與邏輯 that its members must negotiate協(xié)商. “At one level, you’re a kid and you accept it,” she says of her father’s sniping抨擊, but she did register記錄 an emotional reaction: a silent, internal clench內(nèi)部握緊. “Instead of feeling discouraged, I felt the opposite.” Her voice brightens. “I had the sort of … I’ll show you … response.” The reaction has been Duckworth’s life’s work. She went to Harvard, where she founded a nonprofit非營(yíng)利的 summer school for low-income middle-school pupils. She left Harvard with the Fay prize for best female student, passed McKinsey’s麥肯錫 notorious聲名狼藉的 selection process before swerving to轉(zhuǎn)向 teaching – “Couldn’t you at least be a senator參議員?” her dad pleaded提出 – and from there research psychology, and Character Lab, a nonprofit she co-founded to advance the science and practice of character development個(gè)性發(fā)展.
[4] All along, she challenged her father, who worked as a chemist at Dupont. She recalls an argument, when she was 17, about the meaning of life. “I said, ‘I think the meaning of life is to be happy我認(rèn)為生活的意義在于幸福.’ He looked at me surprised and puzzled. He said, ‘Why would you want to be happy? I want to be accomplished.’” Duckworth claims “a rebellious streak一個(gè)叛逆的性格”, but hers is not a classic tale of rebellion反叛. It’s much smarter than that. She has scientifically dismantled廢除 取消 her father’s premise前提, his coveting垂涎 of genius, by proving the idea itself to be mistaken. And she has done it all while achieving everything – and more – he could have hoped for. Three years ago, she won a MacArthur fellowship麥克阿瑟獎(jiǎng)學(xué)金/天才獎(jiǎng), commonly known as “the genius grant” – thereby因此 proving him wrong on his terms按照他自己的主張 and hers.
[5] Or did she? Is it possible that her father’s relentless殘酷的 disparagement 輕視instilled in灌輸 Duckworth the impetus動(dòng)力 to succeed? “That is an excellent question,” she says, and immediately begins to improve it. “I mean, the question is, would I have done so well – so far as I’ve done – if my dad was just, like, ‘You’re great’!” She replies that she cannot know the answer, she can only reason. “I do think that whatever ambition I may have had natively天然地 was amplified增強(qiáng) 放大 by my father’s clear valuing of it. I knew that was what my dad really cared about.”
[6] It is tempting to think人們很容易認(rèn)為 that Duckworth’s father – her parents were Chinese immigrants – used criticism to motivate激發(fā) his children. But Duckworth laughs at this idea. “Oh my God, my dad, I just don’t think he thought about it. My dad was not super-intentional超故意 in his parenting. He was very self-absorbed熱衷于自己想法的. I won’t say mean or selfish per se本身, but very self-absorbed. I think he was just thinking out loud自言自語(yǔ).” She came to understand “you’re no genius” as a self-rebuke責(zé)難. “He was thinking about the fact that he never won a Nobel prize in chemistry, which is hard to win when you’re really working on car paint refinishing車(chē)漆修補(bǔ). When I was little, he was still climbing up the corporate ladder公司晉升制度 and he wasn’t the man he wanted to be. And so he, I think, was feeling this inadequacy 不勝任 缺點(diǎn)which he projected on to his children. You know: you’re no genius, you’re no nobel laureate諾貝爾經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)獎(jiǎng)得主.” She always knew her parents loved her.
[7] This year her father turns 84. He has Parkinson’s disease and lives with Duckworth’s mother in an assisted living facility療養(yǎng)院, a 45-minute trip from Duckworth’s home in Philadelphia. It was there that Duckworth drove when she finished the book. “He likes to look outside, so I wheeled him to a window.” Feeling a little afraid, she drew up a chair next to him, and opened Grit. Over several visits, she read and read, pausing to give her father a sip of一口 water or if he fell asleep. “He seemed to be listening,” she says. Didn’t he say anything? Well, she says, now and then she asked what he thought and, “He sort of said ‘wonderful’.” But there is a hole有缺陷的 in her comprehension理解, a rare moment of inarticulacy拙于辭令. “I’m not 100% sure he’s saying that because he knows exactly what I said or because he remembers that this is the sort of thing you say,” she admits. Then she says, “He may even have uttered發(fā)出 ‘it’s wonderful’.”
[8] I am confused as to至于 關(guān)于 whether he said “wonderful” or not. By now, their relationship feels like a long conflict, and this – the reading – is the final frontier邊界. So it really matters. The next day I email Duckworth to check and she replies that she is “not entirely sure”. She thinks he said it – the asterisks星號(hào) are hers and might indicate strength of thought, or simply emphasise that this is only a thought. Ever the scientist, she adds, “I didn’t video or audio tape reading it to him.”
[9] It is odd奇怪的 to picture Duckworth, mild-mannered溫柔的 and sweet, sitting next to her father – “his own daughter telling him things that are not altogether完全地 complimentary恭維的 贊美的”. But there was some closure結(jié)束 終止 for her, she says. “The one thing my dad has always been is brutally殘忍地 honest.” She gives a small laugh. “Or let’s say unedited未編輯的.” His honesty brought advantages: as a child, Duckworth “always felt she knew him” and even though her mother was a saint圣人, and “growing up you would think I should be super close to her … Strangely I felt closer to my dad.” It was his honesty that gave her the courage to read to him. As she says, “I’m still my father’s daughter.”
[10] Duckworth is a mother as well as a daughter, and in their house, Amanda, 15, and Lucy, 14, hear a lot about grit. “I have gotten the complaint that I talk about grit all the time,” Duckworth says.Maybe the word will function起作用 for them as genius did for Duckworth, and provoke a quiet, internal rebellion內(nèi)部反叛. “Hmm. ‘I’m going to be mediocre普通的 just to show you’,” she muses沉思. “I can imagine that might happen, but neither of my girls are all that rebellious, thank God.” The nearest either comes in the book is when Lucy, then four, tries to open a box of raisins葡萄干. It’s too difficult and she walks away. Duckworth tells her to try again. Lucy declines拒絕.
[11] “I don’t know if it was rebellion,” Duckworth says. “But she had a pronounced 明顯的aversion厭惡 to things that were hard.” She describes another time, when Lucy was at maths club. “Watching her through the crack of a door, doing these worksheets學(xué)習(xí)單. She really didn’t like effort努力. By the way, most animals don’t like effort.” Eyeing盯著 the raisin box, peeping through透過(guò)……向里看 a crack in the door – what a watchful 注意的 警惕的parent Duckworth is. “I was observing them from the get-go從一開(kāi)始,” she says. She mentions the marshmallow test棉花糖實(shí)驗(yàn), which looks at delayed gratification延遲享樂(lè). “I did all those things. I was studying them but I was also trying to raise them.”
[12] To avoid some of the mistakes of her own upbringing, Duckworth teaches her children grit. With her husband, Jason, she has developed “the Hard Thing rule”. Each family member must choose a discipline紀(jì)律 – for Jason and Duckworth their work, for the girls an interest – and apply themselves to it. No one may quit until the activity has run its course.To anyone who has tried to persuade children to attend a club against their will, that rule itself sounds like a Hard Thing. Does Duckworth find it difficult to navigate between her belief that a child should persist at a task and the child’s right to choose? “It’s not like we haven’t had fights and tears about ‘I hate this’ and ‘I don’t want to do it’,” she says. Occasionally Duckworth shoots back: “Fine! If you’re not going to practise then I think we should just call it quits!”
[13] But neither daughter has capitalised利用 on these outbursts爆發(fā) to liberate themselves from their obligations義務(wù). “In these tough moments, they have never said, ‘OK, I’m done.’ I don’t want to take credit for it necessarily because maybe they would have been like that without me saying these things, studying these things, but they really are learning to do things and they are learning to do them well, and they are learning to struggle a bit, and they are learning to have bad days and wake up the next day. I would be surprised if my girls ended up as women without grit. I really would.”
[14] If her father is unedited, Duckworth is the opposite. Her most overused phrase is “I will say that …” as if what she voices is the result of a private, mental conference. And while the concept of genius doesn’t figure much in her life, she occasionally experiences “a marvelling, awestruck” sensation. It can happen when she hears Adele singing. But never in regard to her daughters.
[15] “No,” she says firmly. Though she is “not afraid to say things”. Lucy, for instance, was up till after 11pm last night trying to make flour for macaroons. “I won’t hesitate to say, ‘That’s incredible to me how interested you are in baking,’” Duckworth says. “But I think the thing that’s most useful to emphasise is this admiration for an interest and an admiration for the things they have done.” Occasionally, she tells her daughters, “You really have a knack for this!” The praise is so moderated it feels a little faint. Maybe life in a gritty house can be tough. “I get tired,” she says. “Striving is exhausting. Sometimes I do say things like ‘I wish I were not quite this driven to be excellent.’ It’s not a comfortable life. It’s not relaxed. I’m not relaxed as a person. I mean, I’m not unhappy. But … it’s the opposite of being comfortable.” “Not unhappy” – the phrase brings to mind Duckworth’s conversation with her father at 17, when she argued for happiness, he for accomplishment. If he was not the man he wanted to be, it is irresistible to wonder if she is the woman she wants to be. But the point of grit, true grit, is that no one ever gets there.
