As you know, we've had a lot of really, really interesting guests on the program.

And interestingly, they pretty much all of them talk about the importance of grit.

So to investigate, we are thrilled to have the world leading expert on the topic.

Angela Duckworth, with us in the studio.

Very welcome, Angela.

Nikola, I'm so excited for this conversation. It's good to see you. Very good. Well, let's start with the basics.

What is grit? I define grit as the combination of two things. Passion and perseverance for

long-term goals. So not just perseverance for long-term goals,

not just being resilient and taking feedback

and trying to get better every single day,

but also doing all of that for something that you love.

You know, passion is a word we use for romance,

for the people we fall in love with. And I think that when I, when I, you know, passion is a word we use for romance, for the people we fall in love with.

And I think that when I, when I, you know, give you a picture of what a truly gritty person is, you know, you should see the sweat.

You should see the kind of like bouncing back and the optimism moving forward, but you should see all of that in service of something

that that person stays in love with for a very long time, years, decades, sometimes a lifetime.

How do you measure it?

As a researcher, as a psychologist who studies excellence, I typically use a completely fakable

questionnaire called the Grit Scale. Nikolai, when I was just

starting out studying high achievers, and that's really what I do. I try to reverse engineer

human excellence, figure it out, see if we can begin to manipulate or, I guess I would say,

emulate some of the things that high achievers do. I interviewed people, honestly, like you, but like a lot of the people even talking to.

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