295: Situated: How Your Choices Today Shape Your Child's Tomorrow | Angela Duckworth

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1:02I am not alone, I think, as a parent of teenagers and when they were younger too, of sometimes feeling really frustrated with my kids seeming to have trouble focusing, right? Whether they're doing their homework and they're, you know, reading, but also picking up their phone and checking it. Or whether, like, they're supposed to be getting out the door and they can't find their stuff, but it's stuff that they actually use every day and they should know where it is. I'm not proud of this, but I think in those moments, I can feel like just like kind of annoyed with my kid and I'm wondering why they can't kind of get it together.

1:33My conversation today is changing how I'm thinking about these moments, and I think it might change it for you too. Today, I am joined by Angela Duckworth, who is the Rosalie and Egbert Chang Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. And she's the number one New York Times bestselling author of Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance. She's here today to talk with me about her new book, Situated, Find the People and Places that Bring Out Your Best. And you'll hear in this conversation that maybe instead of focusing on what's going wrong with the individual from time to time, we might help ourselves out and also help them out if we focus instead on the contexts around them and how those contexts can be shaped to better support the things that we want them to do or the things that we ourselves want to be doing.

2:25Let's get into it. Angela Duckworth, thank you so much for joining me. Lisa, I'm excited for our conversation. As you know, I have been excited about it. So here we are. Well, good. And you've been such a good colleague over the years, and I'm glad to be in person with you. Thank you. Okay. Situated. You wrote this beautiful book. Situated. Find the people and the places that bring out your best. I always like to start with this question, because this is the question I like. Why this book? And why you to write it?

2:57Angela Duckworth: Why this book? And why me? Well, I think there are lots of books about changing your mind, being mindful, having a healthy mindset. And by the way, I agree with all of the attention that goes to how we think about things, what goes on in our head, how we can change those things. I think a lot of therapy is about that. I've benefited from therapy about thinking about my situation differently. But I can't think of a book for a general audience that's about changing your objective situation, not just the way you think about your situation, but the situation itself. And as a psychologist like you, I believe that there really is power to the situation, maybe more than we are consciously aware of.

3:46Angela Duckworth: And I think the situation is malleable, not fixed. So that's why I thought this book ought to be written by someone and was frankly surprised that nobody had written it. Why me? In some ways, I'm an unlikely emissary for the message that your situation shapes you and you can shape it because I have been studying individual characteristics like grit and self-control for much of my career. And I think people identify me as somebody who says, regardless of your situation, you can outwork it. Regardless of your circumstances, you can overcome. And I believe in grit and effort, but I think it's not a contradiction to also say that in some situations, your effort pays off more than others.

4:37Angela Duckworth: And so I felt an obligation to study it and then to write about it. I am so glad you did. I will say in reading it, I felt so supported in some choices I've made. Because one of the things I know and that you know as a psychologist, right, is that willpower is such a limited resource, right? Like we only have so much, right? So even if you've got grit, you only have so much on a given day to get things done. and it was funny I um in the middle of working on the book I have coming out I joined the JCC here in Cleveland which is my favorite gym in the world and I go every morning and I realized the part of what I was doing because I'd previously been working out at home yeah I was gonna say where were you working out before I was working out my basement so I had to make myself get down there and then I had to make myself follow along with the Peloton whatever video I was watching.

5:30And I realized that in turning myself over to classes at the JCC, what I was doing was I was actually saving willpower for later, that I was offloading some of the self motivation to my situation. Like if I got in my car, basically the workout was happening no matter

5:49Angela Duckworth: what it was done. Probably the moment that you got in your car, it was like a fake accompli that you were going to get your workout in. Absolutely. Right. And then you get there and then there's the pressure of the other people and, you know, being in public and you just get a good workout. Even if you don't want a good workout, you end up with a good workout. And I found that it actually helped me have more reserves for the parts of my life where there is nothing but willpower. Yeah, that you can't outsource it. Can't outsource. Right, right. Like parenting. Yeah, like parenting or like sitting down and making yourself write a book, right?

6:20Which like at the end of the day, you could do 40 other things, right? And so I just, I was so glad to see it both personally and as a psychologist, because I do think we've sometimes had this thing where we're like, you know, it's a moral thing if you've got willpower and you can make yourself do stuff. Or if you need outside stuff, that's like cheating. And I'm like, no. Yeah, it's weak-willed. Yeah. Like, we got to get it all done. Like, anything that works, like, use that.

6:43Angela Duckworth: I think there is a long cultural tradition. It's a little macho, frankly. It's a little bro. I mean, maybe that's an unfair characterization. Go for it. It does clearly not talking about, you know, research. I'm talking about just the vibe that if you do something the hard way, then that's the better way. If you do it the easy way, like, OK, if I get myself to the gym and I enjoy this exercise, then it doesn't feel terrible. Somehow that's lesser than. And I don't think it's just American culture, but I do think there is this kind of particularly like, you know, individualistic, like, you know, you have to do it on your own.

7:21Angela Duckworth: If you rely on anyone else or anything else, then, you know, you've kind of copped out a little bit. I think a more sophisticated and civilized way to live a life, and certainly actually, you know, since I study the very highest achievers, you know, Olympic athletes and coaches and their analogs in music and art, etc. You know, the very highest performers figure this out. As you know, because you are an informed reader, the triathlete Alistair Brownlee, who had prodigious grit and, you know, I don't know how to measure his willpower on a like precise Richter scale, but he is arguably the greatest triathlete ever.

8:03Angela Duckworth: So if you think about what that requires, obviously this person has discipline. And he uses this situation. He was like, oh, I would like always make sure that my workout outfit, I guess he called it a kit. I think he's Australian. Like it was warm. It was dry, right? Didn't occur to me that triathletes work out so much that like, you know, the workout clothes could be down. Like he laid it out. He put his running shoes by the front door. He moved to a house that was closer to where he could swim. I mean, again, this is somebody who does have willpower, but is smart enough to use the situation.

8:40Angela Duckworth: He understands that so much of our motivation actually is reactive to our situation as opposed to intentional or, you know, completely inwardly driven. I love it. Okay, so we'll take self-discipline off of a pedestal. It's one of many tools we have for getting things done. the situation is powerful you and the book lay out a three box model that I was like this is so clear this makes so much sense so simple and simple I think usually means like you've really nailed it so give us the three box model I am going to be unabashedly enthusiastic about this model because it's not mine I think if it were really my own theoretical discovery I would feel I would at least blush.

9:24Angela Duckworth: But without any hesitation, I will say that James Gross at Stanford University, when he was looking at emotion in particular, and as you know, Lisa, I am unlike you, I am not clinically trained. But I was at a conference with James. And they weren't just clinical psychologists, they were research psychologists like me. The topic, this was November 2011. I'm sitting in this auditorium. I look at the agenda, and it's an academic meeting of scientists who study behavior change. How do people work out, eat the right things, not procrastinate, do the things and say the things and even feel the things that they want to do, say, and feel?

10:04Angela Duckworth: So how do we change? We were all there to contribute our perspective. James was the very first talk, and he puts up this PowerPoint slide with boxes and arrows. And he says, I've been studying emotion for my entire career. And for the longest time, I was trying to puzzle through the many ways that people regulate their anger, their anxiety, their sadness. And, you know, people listen to music. They talk to friends. They might go to see it there. They reframe things. They suppress emotion. Like there's just like post-it notes if you put each one on and there would be like a jumble of them. And I was trying to.

10:39Angela Duckworth: All this coping. All these coping. All these coping things. And, you know, each of them interesting and some of them more effective than others. He said there has to be a way to organize these into a simple framework. And the framework that I introduce in the book is really his. We start off in box one of three. We're in a situation, an objective situation. Like when I flew to Cleveland to see you, I was like, oh, Cleveland is not Philadelphia. Like immediately, this is, you know, there are trees, people seem to be nice. I mean, like, you know, there's a pace here. It was immediately a different situation than my native city.

11:15Angela Duckworth: I'm sitting here with you, Lisa. You know, I would be a different Angela if I were here with my 25-year-old daughter, Amanda, and my 23-year-old daughter, Lucy. I have a different voice actually I've noticed when I'm at home like I'm a little half octave I think I'm a hacked octave lower when I'm speaking as a psychologist my younger daughter can't stand to watch me on tv she's like it's not you yeah who are you yeah it feels very jarring to her right because it's like a different Lisa yeah right and I think a lot of us are like oh yeah I have I have mom mode I have um I have you know work mode I have survival mode I have vacation mode.

11:47Angela Duckworth: So box one is a situation that will bring out a different self, includes the physical situation, you know, the objects around me, like since you put a glass of water next to me, I'm more likely to be drinking in the next hour. Includes the social, so I'm sitting across from you, not by myself or not next to other people. I'm in the culture of Cleveland and your podcast studio. So that's box one. Box two is your perception of the situation. So now we're inside the head. This is not objective. This is subjective. This is not in the world. This is mental. And that's what a lot of books are written about.

12:23Angela Duckworth: Like, how am I thinking about this? You know, am I having, you know, positive, optimistic thoughts? Am I thinking like, this is going to be a great conversation? Or am I thinking, maybe she'll attack me? Like, my thoughts. And that's like cognitive psychology, right? Like very much. We shape the world with how we think about the world, which is wildly valuable. But you're backing us up one further step. Exactly. I think, you know, why start at box two when there's box one? Of course, box three is what we do, what we feel, what we say. So box three is our response to those thoughts. And I think of therapy as sort of box two to box three, much I think of modern psychotherapy.

13:00Angela Duckworth: Yeah, I agree. It's like, you know, I know you're feeling anxious. Okay, that's box three. Let's think about what's going on in box two. And now we can change box three. And now we can change it. But your book is about box one. And my book is about box one. And I'll give you a pretty, you know, trivial but true, and I think perhaps telling example, I would like to have the following thought in box two. I would like to think, as Nelson Mandela once said, I never lose. I win or I learn. I would love to have Nelson Mandela thoughts. I'm like, could I think of failure the way Nelson Mandela thought of failure?

13:34Angela Duckworth: I never lose. I win or I learn. So I could try to have that as my box two thought when, you know, I mean, like I delivered the wrong keynote the other day, I was so like, overwhelmed. I don't know what it was. There was a box one that was going on there. But anyway, I delivered the wrong keynote, I literally did a whole virtual keynote. And at the end, they were like, that was the wrong talk, you were supposed to give a different talk. And I want to have Nelson Mandela thoughts, which is, you know, I never lose, I win or I learn, what did I learn from that for the next talk. But instead, I'm like spiraling into, you know, self blame and like, Oh, my God, I'm such an idiot.

14:10Angela Duckworth: Like, I can't believe I did that. Like, I'm a loser. And so what I did was I made a post it note, like it is a two by two post it note, you know, speaking of post it notes. And I just wrote down in my terrible handwriting, I never lose, I win or I learn Nelson Mandela. And then I taped it, because I didn't want it to fall off. I taped it to the vestibule of my office door. So just the you know, the right the edge, like right when you open and it's at eye level. And it's the first thing I see when I I close the door to my office every day. And it's the last thing I see when I go home because that's the box two thought I want to have.

14:44Angela Duckworth: I changed my box one situation to shape box two. By putting this into your environment. Yeah. And then, you know, box three will be like, well, maybe I should, you know, think of a checklist next. I mean, you know, there would be like good behaviors that would result from that kind of future oriented learning, you know, mindset. But we make choices about what we put around us that can then shape what's in box too, which then shapes our responses to things. Exactly. Yeah. One time, one of my daughters used hard-earned babysitting money to buy a perfume from an online vendor. She'd never smelled the perfume.

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17:21That's Zero Reject. I've just, I know I keep saying this like I'm so appreciative. this hasn't been elevated to the level of cognition, right? Like cognitive science sort of has a pedestal and willpower has a pedestal.

17:38Angela Duckworth: Yeah. Willpower is box three, by the way. Willpower is like, I'm just going to be, you know, more productive. I'm going to get off this phone. I'm going to go to the gym. Like that's box three. Box two is great. Cognitive therapy, right? 50 years or more of cognitive therapy. Amazing pedestal. But to put the context you're in, the situation you have, choices that can be made at times at the same level of importance, that feels to me very fresh and very helpful. I hope so, Lisa. I told you in private, and it's absolutely true that this is the hardest thing I have ever done. I think writing about the situation, talking about this, thinking about the situation, you know, we sort of rush past the first box.

18:22Angela Duckworth: And I think we have a lot of awareness of our thoughts. And so we're intrigued by them. And the idea that we can flip them is, you know, life's work, I guess. But I felt compelled to finish the book in part because I feel like we do need to take the objective situation seriously to rush past it, especially when you do have agency. And I know that not everyone has equal agency to change their situation. But there are many families where, you know, how you set up the physical space, you know, what you surround your children with, it is a choice. So speaking of family, you talk about a time in your marriage where it was rough.

19:03Very rough. Very rough. Cusp of divorce rough. Cusp of divorce rough. Okay, that is a place nobody ever hopes to get to.

19:10Angela Duckworth: Yeah. And you talk about it in the context of this one, two, three. Share that with my audience, like how this new set of glasses that came with working on a book like this helped you out of a marriage crisis. Well, my husband Jason and I, we were both strivers, I think, before we met. And when we did meet, it was, you know, lightning and thunder. I mean, head over heels, very fairytale romance. I think we recognized each other as, you know, the strivers who got to where they got, not through natural talent or gifts, but just trying harder. And it got us really far. It got us into the colleges we wanted to get into.

20:00Angela Duckworth: Then it got us all the honors at the colleges that we attended. Then it got us a lot of professional success. When we were, you know, young parents, you know, trying really hard to be perfect parents got us really far. You know, like our kids were raised on the organic, you know, like exactly what you're supposed to do. You played by all the rules. All the rules. You got A plus on everything. You know, it was a great trick. I think it's a great trick to have. I hope I still have it. But what happened to both of us is that we reached a point in our careers and then also in our parenting and our marriage where trying harder wasn't working anymore.

20:38Angela Duckworth: We were, I was on tenure track. He was a real estate developer. So we were facing these new professional challenges. By the way, he was a real estate developer during the financial crisis of 2008. I'm so oblivious to world events that I really don't think I fully appreciated what it meant to be a residential real estate developer during that time. But his work weeks were going from like 40 to 50 hours, 50 to 60, 60 to 70, 70 to 80, 80 to 90, 90 to 100. Now, there are only 168 hours in a week. So if you can do the math, you're like, okay, that meant he only had 68 hours left. But he also had to be a perfect dad.

21:13Angela Duckworth: So there wasn't a lot of sleeping going on. There wasn't a lot of exercise. And there was no fun. I was on tenure track. I was failing in a lot of my studies for the very first time, Lisa. So like, I don't know, in graduate school and immediately after, it was like home run after home run. Lots of success. Yeah. Which is sustaining also, right? Keeps it going. It's so motivating. You're like, yay. and, you know, as my failures kept, you know, coming in, I also tried harder. And at one point in our marriage, I have to say it was so grim that, you know, he was working himself to the bone, I was working myself to the bone.

21:48Angela Duckworth: Then in our remaining hours, like we were just trying to be perfect parents. I was raised, by the way, by a very traditional Chinese mother who also laid on the table the duty to make my husband happy. So it was a to-do list goal. Like it's like make Jason happy. I was clearly failing in that. And the only thing I could see was one way to change things, which was situational. But the only thing I could see was to exit the situation. Like this isn't working. I was like, yeah, this isn't working. Like, you know, this is not the fairytale romance. I guess I was wrong. You're not Prince Charming. I thought he was like a depressive.

22:22Angela Duckworth: I was like, you are obviously a melancholic, depressive person. I think I realized now, and I did, you know, figure this out, which is why we stayed together. I was making the fundamental attribution error, the error that, as you know, as a psychologist, that when we see somebody act a certain way, like, oh my gosh, Jason's like always in a bad mood and like never laughing and doesn't want to do anything fun. I was attributing that entirely to his disposition, his character. I'm like, oh, I thought he was like, oh, but no, he's a melancholic depressive. Yeah. Yeah. Turns out maybe we should get divorced.

22:55Angela Duckworth: The fundamental attribution error is unfairly discounting the power of the situation. Well, maybe he's under incredible work stress. Maybe the housing market is literally collapsing. Maybe he's a young man who has not yet proven himself professionally. And this is ego crushing. So I made the fundamental attribution error. So you didn't make the box one explanation. You made the box two, three explanations. Yeah, exactly. It was like, there's just something wrong with the way he thinks about the world and his actions and never even dawned on me that he was in a difficult situation. And actually, it didn't dawn on me that I was in a professionally difficult situation.

23:32Angela Duckworth: I was like, you know, I didn't have a PhD advisor anymore. So I was like, just trying to succeed on my own. That's not a great box one, you know, being on your own. I never thought maybe there are other situational adjustments that I could make other than like getting divorced. He insisted that we give it a go. In other words, like that we could make calibrations to our situation and not just find an escape hatch. So we started going to therapy. And I know, Lisa, for you, maybe, well, I don't know, actually, I won't make any judgments. But in my family, going to therapy was deeply shameful. So I hadn't been, you know, and I know things are changing, but I was like, Oh, my God, I have to go to a therapist.

24:10Angela Duckworth: He went to a therapist. So that's two, we went to a marriage therapist, that's three. And, you know, three therapists, for the two of us in our one marriage was, you know, not arithmetic that I loved. It was also, I think, for us really important that we realized that we couldn't just try harder, we needed other people than therapists. So he started reaching out to mentors, he found these older real estate developers, often who lived in other parts of the country, who had some, you know, connection to him or other people that he worked with. And he asked them to basically get together every six months and to only think about Jason's problems and then to give him advice.

24:54Angela Duckworth: He started that practice. Sort of like got himself mentors, got himself support. He kind of created an advisory board. I think he calls it his advisory board. So smart. So smart. And that was the first time he had done that. And really it changed everything. I mean, these senior guys were like, oh no, that person needs to be fired. Right. We can help you here. Yeah, we can help you here. It's like that deal, you know, you need to walk away from that deal. So he was changing his situation in myriad ways. I made a decision never to do a research study by myself anymore. I was like, I know I'm on tenure track, but I am not smart enough to figure out, you know, human motivation.

25:26Angela Duckworth: So I started collaborating, you know, with a lot of people that you know and are also colleagues and friends with. So I was making all kinds of adjustments. And I will tell you that just trying harder, as great a trick as it is, is at some point not going to work anymore. And at some point, if you don't understand that you're in a box one situation that is either your ally or your enemy, then I think you risk what happened to us, which is burning out, being exhausted. Pointing the finger. Pointing the finger, making dispositional accusations that are unfounded. And, you know, I'm happy to say that our real marriage, you know, we sometimes call it our second marriage, it is so much deeper and more meaningful, I think, than the fairy tale that we thought we had signed up for.

26:18Thank you. I mean, that's awesome. I can't believe I wrote about it. He encouraged me, by the way, to write about it in the book.

26:24Angela Duckworth: I was like, really? Yeah. He was like, well, don't you want to tell people how important the situation is? And I was like, I do. I guess so. I guess so. No, it's funny. In my new book, I've shared things that I never would have shared before. But I'm also like, you know what? I'm 56. Like, if I'm not at this point, let's just do this. Let's do the tea. What your story, this doesn't do justice to your story, but I think you'll appreciate this story. There's this.

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28:57Tale, I hope it's true, I'm going to assume it's true, about Anna Freud, that she was in a very, very lengthy case conference about a child they'd done an intake on at her clinic in Hampstead. And the conference went on forever, and they couldn't figure out what was going on with this kid. And they were thinking about all these possible interventions, And apparently she said, I can't tell if this child needs psychoanalysis or if her mother needs a housekeeper. And I've always loved that story.

29:26Angela Duckworth: You know, it could be. It could be. It just says that your objective circumstances absolutely matter. And not everyone can afford a housekeeper. But whatever you can do, I think, to make your situation like the ocean current flowing in the direction that you're already swimming or want to swim. As opposed to fighting the current, then it shouldn't be shameful to do that. And also it shouldn't be something that never occurs to us. Okay. I loved your section around parenting and context for kids and the research you talk about in terms of the ways in which the environment around kids, even like the number of books in a home, right, has all of these incredible downstream effects.

30:11So think with me on this one. So we have a fair bit of say until our kids are about 8, 9, 10, maybe 11 about the contexts around them.

30:21Angela Duckworth: We make a lot of the choices for them, right? When they're at that age. We do. And so we can work that box one pretty hard. Yeah, this is the play date that we're going on now. Here's where we're going to eat. Yeah, exactly. Once you've raised two adolescents, you've gotten kids in DNA. Yeah, they're in their early 20s. I guess one's 25. Yeah. Mid 20s. Yeah, it's like so fun to have big kids. I love having big kids. It's really fun. When we think about adolescence and we think about the context they're in and the places where maybe there is some choice still to be had or some guiding still to be had, what would be your advice to families about making the most of that for teenagers?

31:01Angela Duckworth: Okay, well, when kids enter adolescence, and you, Lisa, I think, are a real adolescent psychologist. I have worked in adolescent psychology, but I wasn't trained in adolescent psychology, so I should be humble about these statements. But, you know, it's kind of obvious that in this developmental stage between childhood and adulthood, this independence, you know, the natural drive to make choices for oneself as a teenager has to be reckoned with. And you're not changing the friends on a willful basis because you're the mom or the dad. Your teenager has opinions. I do think the choice of a school, which is usually not the teenager's own decision, but the parent's decision, like we're going to live in this school district or I'm going to send you to this particular school near where we live.

31:49Angela Duckworth: I think that's enormously important. Why? Because schools have a culture. They attract certain families. They attract certain students. Norms emerge in these schools. There are some schools where there's a norm of kindness and compassion. I have seen kids that I thought to myself, this little boy is going to be bullied into oblivion. But what I didn't take into consideration was, oh, he goes to a school where the norm is – so they're not going to bully him for having panic attacks. And like, no, they're just going to be like there and understand they're going to take care of him. Like, holy smokes.

32:26Angela Duckworth: You know, that kid I'm thinking about, by the way, is a first year college student at a very fine school and totally killing it. Like, it's such a great kid. And I'm like, hmm, I'm really glad his parents chose to live in a community and chose to send their son to that school. So I think the choice of the school, I also think the choice of the postal code. I think there are neighborhoods that have cultures where, you know, it's walkable, it's safe, you know, the kids can play. When my husband Jason and I were raising our two daughters, we were very intentional, not only about the schools where we sent them, but also where we lived.

33:04Angela Duckworth: So when they were children and early adolescents, we lived in Narberth, Pennsylvania, which was essentially like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. There was like a little, you know, baseball diamond. There was a library. Kids ran bare feet down the sidewalks. As they got older, we wanted them to be in a more socioeconomically diverse community and to grow up with a, you know, awareness of, you know, different kinds of lives. So we moved into Center City, Philadelphia, we sent them to a public magnet school called Masterman. And those choices, I'm not saying they're perfect. And I'm not saying that anybody could make them.

33:44Angela Duckworth: But they were very intentional, because the kids who went, for example, to the high school where my daughters both graduated were really humble, hardworking, ambitious kids who never took anything for granted. And sort of set the tone. It set the tone. I mean, these kids were like the opposite of entitled. Now, the school sometimes came through for them and sometimes didn't. But when I listened to these kids try to figure out how to do pivot tables in Excel on a conference call at 11 at night because the teacher hadn't quite described in detail how one would actually make a financial plan, which was their group assignment.

34:23Angela Duckworth: I was thinking to myself, okay, I didn't get to choose Amanda and Lucy's specific friends. I can't say you should be friends with her, but not her. But we chose the school and we chose the neighborhood. And when we did, we essentially helped them make, I think, good choices about their own peer group. Mm-hmm. So what I love is for our listeners who are in a position to have some choice on the school stuff, that they can actually rest a little, right? That there is so little we can control often when our teenagers become teenagers. But that framing alone can go so far in terms of helping to shape young people.

34:59Angela Duckworth: I mean, I think parents who accept the default for like, this is where my kids are going to go to school and, you know, this is where I'm going to live. I think if you're lucky, the default is great. But if you want to pause and just take seriously, I think those two decisions, I think those are the two most important decisions that a parent of an adolescent who is going to make some of their own choices after you have selected that box one situation. I think those are two. Do you think that those are the two most important decisions or are there other ones that you're thinking about? I do think they are important And if you get to make them, because of the word you said, which is norms, that adolescents are so norm vulnerable.

35:41Angela Duckworth: So norm vulnerable. You know, like little kids will march to their own drama. Adults will march to their own drama. Teenagers are scanning their environments. For the norms. For the norms. And so it's not something we talk about nearly enough. Norms are enormously powerful. And so I think to the degree that you have some say over the norms that surround it. And people do this also with place of worship, right? families who are religious, like they choose a place of worship because that will reinforce the norms that they care about and the values they care about. So I think it's hugely powerful.

36:10But let's flip it now. So there are also people who are stuck in situations that drive behavior. And your book, as I was reading it, I was like, oh, this has policy implications. because I was thinking about the pretty robust data on things like food deserts and obesity. So, you know, here in Cleveland, we have areas of concentrated poverty that are also food deserts. We're like, there is no decent grocery store anywhere near.

36:38Angela Duckworth: Yeah, good luck finding a fresh vegetable or a piece of fruit. But you can find a McDonald's and a Wendy's and, you know, like no problem. And we know that there are data connecting obesity in individuals in those communities to food deserts. And I think it really ties us back to that conversation about like we've so often looked at questions of willpower. Yeah. Right. And blaming individuals for like not making healthy lifestyle choices. But when you're like, or what happens when you put an accessible grocery with reasonably, you know, priced healthy foods? Yeah. With norms, by the way, with norms.

37:14Angela Duckworth: Right. And, you know, objectively, like the ability to buy that kind of food or to walk, by the way. We didn't talk about sidewalks, but impoverished areas tend not to be walkable, not only because they're dangerous, but because they have no sidewalks sometimes and higher rates of pedestrian injury. So I was reading your book thinking like there's also policy implications for what you're saying is if we get off of this willpower is the answer to everything and we look more closely at the situation, it can actually help people who have been blamed for things that were beyond their power. You know, I am a liberal.

37:52Angela Duckworth: I guess I should just come out and say it. And I don't even know really what it means to be a liberal, but I guess I'll just say, I think we as a society have a collective responsibility to help the people who were not born lucky into the great situations that maybe you or I were born into and help them make a better situation, which, by the way, is a flywheel. When people are in a better situation, they can work harder and more effectively and further improve their situation, which does lift the whole tide. I think that it's important to recognize not only the aspects of your situation that you as an individual have the power to change, but also the things that are not up to you.

38:35Angela Duckworth: And, for example, when you talk about, you know, health and food environments, when military families are more or less randomly assigned to the next station, their BMI drifts towards the mean of that new environment. When people move to a more walkable neighborhood, they sometimes walk more than a thousand steps more a day. Now, it's the same person, the same willpower, the same goals, right? The same values. But it's a different situation. But I do think that the friction of trying to lead the kind of life that everyone knows is a good life, right? Like everyone knows we should exercise, we should eat well, we shouldn't be wasting all of our time on screens.

39:16Angela Duckworth: But I do think some people are in situations with objective constraints and social norms that hold in place behavior in ways that I don't think it's fair to blame them for. The science shows it's not fair to blame them for it, right? I mean, sort of politics aside, like we've got data. Yeah. Data are helpful. We care about the health of others. And we see when we change the environment, we do change behavior. So let's not make the fundamental attribution error at the policy level, right? Where we ignore the situation. Yeah. I just, I thought, like, I loved your book that it covered both, like.

39:51I tried.

39:52Angela Duckworth: I was like, you know, when I was writing this book, I had written the first section on situational awareness and, you know, covered the fundamental attribution error and said, look, a lot of the time our situation shapes us in ways that we're not conscious of. Then I had a section on situational agency. This is where you can hear the music in the background getting more hopeful. It's like, oh, wait, you can change your situation. Here's how you can set up your personal space and pick your peers. Here's how to create mentor relationships. What about choosing culture? Yay. But at the 11th hour, I said to my editor, I said, I want to write a whole nother section.

40:27Angela Duckworth: He was like, now? And I was like, I think it's not just situational awareness. And I think it's not just individual situational agency. I think there is such a thing as situational responsibility. When people lack the power because they're children, because they work for a big organization, and they're not in charge, or because they are not very advantaged in society, when they lack the power to change their situations, then it is the responsibility of other people to make their situations better. So I added the chapter on situational parenting and situational leadership and finally situational citizenship, which says, yeah, let's change box one for those who cannot change it themselves.

41:08I actually feel like that is such a beautiful place to bring this on home. Yeah, we covered the book, really, right?

41:17Angela Duckworth: We did the arc of it. Angela, your work is such a contribution. You are such a delight to talk with. Thank you. I'm just so glad you're out there doing your thing. We're a little bit of a mutual admiration society, I think, Lisa, right? We're a little bit doppelgangers. I was like, yeah, I wish I had been your classmate, actually. We're the same age. But no, thank you. I didn't write this book to represent just my research. I think, as you know, there are many scientists who have long been shouting into the wind to say, it's so important not to ignore the water we swim in. But like fish, we're like, what water?

41:56Angela Duckworth: And, you know, hopefully there's something useful for parents and for others. There absolutely is. Thank you. Thank you. So for Parenting to Go today, I want to return to this question of how do we help kids set up their lives so that they can do the things that they want to do and that, frankly, often we want them to do. So instead of feeling frustrated with them for sometimes getting distracted by their phone when they're supposed to be doing their homework, I think that what Angela has given us is a way to talk with them about this. To basically say, this is a setup, right? Your phone is so alluring and so compelling and especially often a lot more compelling than the homework you've got to do.

42:39Having it nearby is asking you to exert willpower, which is just exhausting. You need your willpower to get your homework done. Let's come up with a plan where it is somewhere where you don't have to look at it. You don't have to resist it. Not because you don't have willpower, but because you need all of it to get your work done. The same we could do with when kids are being flaky about stuff that we think they should be able to handle. If they keep forgetting to pack their shoes, which they need for gym, in their bag, instead of hoping that their memory just gets better, we might talk with them instead about how they can set up their situation to stack the deck for remembering to put the shoes in the bag, whether it's they always put their shoes next to the bag when they take them off, whether it's that they have a checklist that they can rely on.

43:24The more that we can help them set themselves up for success, quite literally, whether it's how they do their homework, how they get themselves out the door, the more we have to ask them to rely on memory and willpower, which while important, are certainly limited resources. And be sure to join me next week, where I'll be joined by Dr. Meredith Elkins of Harvard Medical Center. She's an expert on anxiety, the author of a book called Parenting Anxiety. Together, we're going to answer a question from a parent about a child whose anxiety is really getting in the way. I'll see you next week. Thanks for joining us.

44:04Be sure to subscribe to the Ask Lisa podcast so you get episodes just as soon as they drop. And send us your questions to asklisa at drlisademore.com. And now, a word from our lawyers. The information provided on this podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute or substitute for professional psychological treatment, therapy, medical advice, or other professional intervention. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dr. Lisa DeMoor or Ask Lisa. If you have concerns about your child's well-being or your own, please consult a physician or mental health professional.

44:45If you or someone you know is in crisis, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. For additional resources, visit DrLisaDemore.com.