What Comes After Grit? | Angela Duckworth

What if the problem isn’t you—but the situation around you? Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit, explains why perseverance is only part of the story and how changing your environment can change your life. Her new book, Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best, explores how culture, peers, mentors, relationships, and physical surroundings shape who we become. Angela joins Stanford negotiation lecturer Stan Christensen to discuss the next major idea in her work: grit is necessary, but it is not always sufficient. Sometimes the best way to improve your behavior, relationships, career, or performance is not to push yourself harder—it is to create a better situation. Their conversation explores how to recognize a culture that is holding you back, when grit can keep you in the wrong place too long, and how the people around you influence your ambitions and choices. Angela offers practical advice for finding mentors, creating effective peer groups, parenting through example, and designing environments that make better decisions easier. Angela also shares the deeply personal story of how changing the situation helped her and her husband navigate a crisis in their marriage. The conversation then examines political polarization, public education, social media, smartphones, and the environments that increasingly separate us from people who think differently. Get Angela Duckworth’s new book, Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best: https://www.angeladuckworth.com/situated Get Angela's Best Selling Book Grit: https://www.angeladuckworth.com/grit CHAPTERS 00:00 What’s Wrong With My Situation? 02:25 Steve Young and the Meaning of Grit 06:00 Why Angela Wrote Situated 09:00 How Culture Shapes Who You Become 13:30 When Grit Keeps You in the Wrong Place 17:00 Microcultures and Career Decisions 18:15 What Taylor Swift Understood About Place 21:15 The Power of Peers 28:45 How to Find a Mentor 34:00 Parenting Through Environment and Example 37:30 Changing the Situation in a Marriage 42:00 Grit, Opportunity, and Political Division 45:30 Social Media and Polarization 49:00 Smartphones and Children 55:00 How Physical Environments Shape Behavior 59:30 One Small Change That Can Improve Your Life ABOUT ANGELA DUCKWORTH Angela Duckworth is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a faculty member at the Wharton School. She is the author of the international bestseller Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, which has sold more than five million copies. Her TED Talk on grit is one of the most-watched TED Talks of all time. Her new book, Situated, reveals how high performers intentionally shape their cultures, peer groups, mentorships, and environments to bring out their best. ABOUT ALL THINGS NEGOTIATION All Things Negotiation explores negotiation, persuasion, communication, leadership, and the decisions that shape our lives. Host Stan Christensen has worked as a professional negotiator across numerous industries and has taught negotiation at Stanford University for more than 20 years. Subscribe for conversations with leading thinkers, entrepreneurs, diplomats, authors, and decision-makers. #AngelaDuckworth #Grit #Situated