The one key driver for success

For the last 150 years scientists and psychologists have been trying to understand what makes some people successful and others not?

Back in the 1940s at Stanford.

A psychologist there did a study, and it was around grit and resilience.

with 100 sophomores and what they called it was “the treadmill test”.

Pretty simple test, really.

They got a bunch of 100 sophomores.

They set up a treadmill.

They put it on a nice steep incline.

And they said, Guys, I want you to run on this treadmill for as long as you can.

…up to five minutes, it was pretty short

…up to five minutes, but they cranked up the speed. They had the incline on really high.

And then after a couple of minutes, a whole bunch of people started falling off.

Then only a few people got right close up to five minutes.

But what was fascinating about this it had nothing to do with running marathons {like DC and some of the other Dual (Company)} folk that love running.

Those that lasted longer on the treadmill had nothing to do with their fitness, athletic ability, their weight or their size.

It came down to what Duckworth calls grit, but now this is where things get really interesting.

They then did a longitudinal study for the next 60 years

of those 100 people that were running on that treadmill.

And guess what…?

those 20 year olds that lasted the longest on the treadmill,

over the next decade

…two decades

…three decades

The next 50 years

Were shown to be more successful and more adaptive in life

than those that got off the treadmill quickly.

Now that is what we are talking about.

This quality around grit is the ability to keep going when we’re out of our comfort zone, when everything on us is telling us to stop.

 

Categories