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It's not brains or talent. Expert says high achievers have two traits anyone can learn.

She broke it down into a simple formula.

via TED / YouTube

Angela Duckworth speaking at a TED event.

Why is it that some people are high achievers who have a track record of success and some people never come close to accomplishing their dreams? Is it talent, luck, or how you were raised? Is it that some people are just gifted and have exceptional talents that others don't?

The good news is, according to psychologist Angela Duckworth, the most critical factor in being a high achiever has nothing to do with talent or intelligence. It’s how long you can keep getting back up after getting hit. She calls it “grit” and, according to Duckworth’s research, it’s the common denominator in high achievers across the board, whether it’s cadets at West Point or kids in a spelling bee. Duckworth goes into depth on the topic in her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.

What personal traits make someone successful?

“The common denominator of high achievers, no matter what they’re achieving, is this special combination of passion and perseverance for really long-term goals,” Duckworth revealed on The Mel Robbins Podcast. “And in a word, it’s grit.”


“Partly, it’s hard work, right? Partly it’s practicing what you can’t yet do, and partly it’s resilience,” she continued. “So part of perseverance is, on the really bad days, do you get up again? So, if you marry passion for long-term goals with perseverance for long-term goals well then you have this quality that I find to be the common denominator of elite achievers in every field that I've studied."

When pressed to define the specific meaning of grit, Duckworth responded: “It’s these two parts, right? Passion for long-term goals, like loving something and staying in love with it. Not kind of wandering off and doing something else, and then something else again, and then something else again, but having a kind of North Star."

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For anyone who wants to achieve great things in life, grit is an attitude that one can develop for themselves that isn’t based on natural abilities or how well one was educated. Those things matter, of course, but having a gritty attitude is something someone can learn.

"I am not saying that there aren't genes at play because every psychologist will tell you that's also part of the story for everything and grit included,” Duckworth said. “But absolutely, how gritty we are is a function of what we know, who were around, and the places we go."

Why grit is so important

Grit is critical for people to become highly successful because it means that you stick with the task even when confronted with barriers. In every journey of taking an idea that you love and turning it into reality there is going to be what’s known as the dark swamp of despair—a place that you must wade through to get to the other side. It takes grit and determination to make it through the times when you fear that you might fail. If it were easy, then everyone could be high achievers.


Grit is what keeps people practicing in their room every night as teenagers and makes them an accomplished guitar player. Grit is what makes a basketball player the first one in the gym and the last to leave so that they make the starting lineup. Grit is knocking on the next door after 12 people have just slammed their doors in your face.

The wonderful thing about Duckworth’s work is that it presents an opportunity for everyone willing to do the work. You can no longer use the fact that you may not have specialized intelligence or a God-given talent as an excuse. All you need is perseverance and passion and you have as good a shot as anyone at achieving your dreams.

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'Don't follow your passion': Self-made millionaire says you should do this instead

There's something more profound than passion.

via Vice and Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

A woman painting and Scott Galloway.

“Follow your passion” is a cliche you will hear in almost every graduation commencement speech. But we all accept it as a golden rule for life because we hear it so often and it feels right.

We tell ourselves that if we are passionate about something, we will be good at it and it will sustain us throughout our lives. However, Scott Galloway, a self-made millionaire and marketing professor at New York University Stern School of Business, thinks that telling people to follow their passions is bad advice.

In 2005, Galloway founded the digital intelligence firm L2 Inc., a venture that would go on to be acquired by Gartner for a staggering $155 million in March 2017.

″[Return on investment] and sex appeal are inversely correlated. What do we mean about that? Simply put: Don’t follow your passion,” Galloway told CNBC Make It. Instead, Galloway proposes a more practical approach. “Find out what you’re good at and then invest 10,000 hours in it — and become great at it,” Galloway says.

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The 10,000-hour theory Malcolm Gladwell explains in his book “Outliers,” states that to become exceptionally good at something, you need about 10,000 hours of practice. In his book, he emphasizes that it's not just talent that matters; putting in the time and effort is key to mastering any skill or profession.

In “Outliers,” Gladwell notes that highly successful people, including Bill Gates, The Beatles, and Robert Oppenheimer, all put 10,000 hours into their particular skill sets before reaching incredible heights of success.

“People often come to NYU and say, ‘Follow your passion’ — which is total bulls***, especially because the individual telling you to follow your passion usually became magnificently wealthy selling software as a service for the scheduling of health care maintenance workers. And I refuse to believe that that was his or her passion,” Calloway continues.

Calloway adds that one of the benefits of focusing on our natural gifts is that it will eventually inspire passion. “What they were passionate about was being great at something, and then the accouterments of being great at something — the recognition from colleagues, the money, the status will make you passionate about whatever it is,” Galloway said.

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A 2018 report by Stanford researchers came to a similar conclusion. The researchers believe that following one’s passions isn’t a clear road to success for numerous reasons. The maxim assumes that we have only one passion in life and that it will not change over time. It also gives the impression that when we follow our passions, we’ll always magically fall into our dream jobs and become successful.

Finally, just because one is passionate about something doesn’t necessarily mean they are good at it.

While some may think Calloway’s advice is cynical and heartless, there's something extraordinary about nurturing our natural gifts and using them to achieve success in life. In a world where our talents and passions may not always align, embracing what makes you unique and sharing it with the world in your own special way is a beautiful gift that you can offer.

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Ever told your artistic friend they're 'wasting' their talent? Here's why that can hurt, not help.

I need good live music only a little less intensely than a caffeine aficionado needs their next shot of espresso.

And woe to the mortal who gets between me and my fix.

In fact, when I go to events with my friends, I usually have to remind myself that they’re also there to socialize, and it isn’t polite to hiss at them when they try to start a conversation with me. I haunt open mic nights semi-professionally, and I played as part of a duo in Florence, Italy, for more than a year while I lived there.

So it often surprises people when I say that I don’t want to pursue a life as a professional musician.

Although singing is one of the great joys of my life, I would never want to make a career out of it. I would get burned out in a matter of weeks, and performing would lose most of its magic for me.

So although performing live music has become an integral part of my life that I can’t imagine giving up, I’m perfectly content to jam out with a band once or twice a week and sing to myself while I do the dishes (or cook, or clean, or walk down the street, or wait in line at the Chinese place).

Creative expression doesn’t have to be serious to be fulfilling; it only has to bring you satisfaction.

Since we’re talking about musicians, my friend Derek is another good example. He went to one of the best art colleges for illustration in the US, but he’s chosen to pursue a career in music instead. At some point he realized that paid illustration work wasn’t satisfying because of the limitations that clients placed on him, but he found the gratification he was looking for in casual expression.

I often forget about his artistic background until I see him sketching, and I’m always blown away by his talent. And the thought always creeps up in the back of my mind: It’s such a shame he’s not using that talent more.

And I always have to remind myself that he is using it, just in the way that he wants to.

My judgmental, hypocritical ass just needs to take a chill pill and stay in my lane.

The musician that I know best, however, is my guitarist, Francesco. When I watch him work, it confirms everything I’ve come to believe about dedication. He lives and breathes music, not just for school or his various projects (like me), but for the sheer joy of it.

It drives him, the way that stories drive me. I have entire folders full of words that burned me up until I wrote them down. Does it bother me that almost no one is looking at them right now? Sure.

But that hasn’t stopped me, because that’s not why I do it. I write to quiet the ghosts in my head, and whether or not I publish another word won’t change that.

So what do you do when you find yourself with a talent that you don’t want to pursue?

Just let it make you happy. It never needs to be more complicated than that.

This story originally appeared on The Feed and is reprinted here with permission.

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They say it takes practice to play Carnegie Hall. This 13-year-old has done it 3 times.

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Some people spend their entire lives dreaming of the chance to perform at the famous Carnegie Hall.

The lights. The sights. The history. The audience roaring with applause. If you get the chance to play there, you know you're doing it right.

Pianist Sriram Narayanan might as well receive a frequent performer card for his time spent on stage there.

All images via Sunanda Narayanan, used with permission.

Sriram has dazzled audiences at Carnegie Hall not once, not twice, but THREE times.  Did I mention he's only 13 years old?

That's quite an accomplishment for anyone, let alone someone who's barely considered a teenager. But Sriram thrives under the pressure. For a child with other challenges, music has been an incredible outlet for him.

"He doesn't get nervous," said his piano teacher, Tatyana Dudochkin of the New England Conservatory. "He enjoys performing so much for an audience and sharing his joy. He absolutely loves when people clap and cheer for him."

And cheer for him they do.

He's always practicing!

Sriram's success is a testament to the power of patience and encouragement — especially with kids.

Learning is not a one-size-fits-all type of deal for many children, including Sriram. As a toddler, Sriram was diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder (APD) — a condition an estimated 5-7% of children live with today. APD can make it difficult to recognize sounds in words, understand the messages of others, remember information presented verbally, and localize sounds, among other things.

That means for people living with APD, it can take a little bit more time to figure out directions, complete a homework assignment, or memorize a new song on the piano. But just as we all learn differently, those with APD do too, and patience and understanding from others helps to play a big role in their development.

It's what helped Sriram find his own path.

"I just started to work with him and it was difficult," said his teacher Tatyana, "but he loved learning the music I played for him and he was very passionate about it. When I pushed him to do even more, he did it, and it helped to build a lot of confidence."

Sriram and his teacher, Tatyana Dudochkin.

Sriram found an area where he shines — and that has helped him in every aspect of his life.

When Sriram was encouraged to start doing competitions, it took him to a whole new level. In addition to the competitions that have landed him at Carnegie Hall, he has won many others, including receiving honorable mention as the youngest contestant of the 2016 "Newton Has Talent."

Between his family, his music mentors, his school Learning Prep, and others, he knows he has a community of support behind him in his journey.

It's important for children to be able to explore various hobbies and interests while they're young. Every kid is different — living with APD or not — and you never know what will stick.

When Sriram was 4, his mom, Sunanda gave him a keyboard that was destined for the trash. She thought it would keep him occupied for a while. What she didn't realize was the path it would lead him on.

"All of a sudden he was teaching himself songs from 'The Sound of Music' by ear," she said.

Fast forward nine years later, he's showing us all what he can do from the big bright stage.

As Sunanda says, "It is amazing to see him be social and to show off his talent. Music is going to be a very integrated part of his life."

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