It is customary to think that the most intelligent people will be the most successful in their professional career. But we see every day that people with innate talents are not as successful as they could be.
Angela Lee Duckworth, Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, saw this reflected when she taught math to seventh graders.
His smartest students didn’t always have the best grades, and the best performers weren’t always the ones with the highest IQ test scores. What was the cause?
Firmly convinced that all of her students could understand the concepts, she began testing children and adults in different settings; asking the question: who is successful and why?, trying to predict who would have the best results.
Duckworth and his research team evaluated cadets at West Point Military Academy. They studied children in the national spelling bee; to novice teachers in difficult neighborhoods and to salespeople in different companies and they came to a conclusion.
The common predictor of the most successful was neither IQ, nor physical health, nor appearance, nor social intelligence; it was determination and self-confidence.
In Duckworth’s words, determination is clinging to the future, day after day, not just for the week, not just for the month; but through years of working really hard to make that future a reality.
So it is common to ask ourselves: How to be more determined.
Determination was also the characteristic that stood out, as thousands of high school students answered determination quizzes and at the end of the year. When evaluating the performance of each one; students with more determination had better results.
Everything indicates that determination itself can get us where we want to be, but what if we don’t have it?
Carol S Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University and author of the book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”, divides two groups of people: Those with the “fixed mindset” and those with the “growth mindset”.
The former base success on their ability, the “growth mindset” believe their success comes from hard work.
Duckworth, in his TED talk “The key to success? Grit,” points out that there are many things to learn about teaching grit, and says the closest is a “growth mindset.”
It shows that the ability to learn is not fixed. You can change with determination and through the work of Carol S Dweck, it has been shown that when children read and learn about the brain, how it grows and how it changes in response to challenge; they are more likely to persevere when they fail. Since they do not believe that failure is a permanent condition.
It seems quite hopeful to know that determination and self-confidence is the key to success and that we can develop it.
So while science and psychology allow us to know more, there are some things to do. Daniel Branch, creator of Danielbranch.com, teaches us how to be more determined and achieve the proposed goals.
How to be more determined and achieve what you want.
1. Have clear goals.
Proposing goals that you really want to achieve will make the probability of giving up less.
2. Make determination a habit.
Don’t stop trying no matter what. When we believe that we are not in a position to achieve something but regardless of that we try and we achieve it; the brain gets used to overcoming those barriers.
3. Reward yourself every day.
At the end of the day, after having finished the proposed tasks that will make it possible to achieve the main goal, the reward serves 2 purposes:
- Make us feel good about the work done.
- Arrange in the best way for the next day.
So we will know that after doing what we set out to do, we will receive a reward again.
4. Be optimistic.
Optimism will allow you to see the goal through the barrier and therefore make it more possible to overcome it.
5. Live in the moment.
Only doing the small tasks that lead to the big goal can be achieved, which is why Daniel recommends living in the moment and focusing and prioritizing what needs to be done.
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