To Change Yourself, Change Your Situation

The Art of Manliness

In this episode of The Art of Manliness, psychologist Angela Duckworth discusses her new book 'Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best,' shifting focus from

Key takeaways

• Success is not just about internal qualities like grit; external environments such as peers, mentors, and physical spaces play a crucial role in shaping behavior and outcomes.
• The three-box model of behavior highlights that actions are influenced by individual traits, situational factors, and the interaction between them.

Main topics

• The role of environment in shaping personal success
• The three-box model of behavior (individual traits, situation, interaction)

Notable quotes

"The expansion to the common denominators of the situations of high achievers was, I think in some ways, it was natural and in many ways inevitable."

Conclusion

Angela Duckworth concludes that while personal qualities like grit matter, the most effective path to

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) So Kate and I spent the summer creating a fire pit area in our backyard. We've got teenage kids. We wanted a spot where they can hang out with their friends and where we can roast s'mores together as a family. When it came time to find the actual fire pit and the benches to go around it, we went to Wayfair. That's where we usually start when we need something for the house. Speaker 1 (0:15) Wayfair has thousands of products across every style and budget, and the thing that makes shopping there easy is the reviews. There are more than 20 million verified five-star reviews on the site, plus customer photos, so you can see what a piece actually looks like in somebody's real backyard instead of a staged showroom shop before you buy it. Wayfair also hand vets products through a 10-point quality inspection, and those get marked as Wayfair verified. So whether you're making a fire pit area in your backyard or just replacing something that's worn out, start with Wayfair. Transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5% back on every purchase. Head to Wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's Wayfair.com, W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Speaker 1 (1:01) If you've ever bought anything from the AOM store, Shopify handled that transaction. We've used Shopify to run our store for years, and the reason is simple. It makes selling stuff online so dang easy. A lot of guys have a business idea that's been kicking around in their head for years. What often stops them from acting on it is the logistics. Setting up a website to sell your stuff seems complicated, so the idea just stays an idea. Speaker 1 (1:21) Shopify removes that excuse. It puts everything you need to run an online business in one platform. Their templates and AI tools will get a good looking site up and running fast, no coding needed. The checkout is smooth, so customers actually complete their purchases instead of abandoning their carts. And if you get stuck on something, Shopify has built an AI assistant called Sidekick that can help you troubleshoot and keep moving. Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide. It's worked for us for years, and I reckon it will work for you. If you're ready to hear the... of your first sale, head over to shopify.com slash manliness to start your free trial today. That's right. Start your free trial at shopify.com slash manliness. That's shopify.com slash manliness. Speaker 1 (2:03) Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the AOM podcast, which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders that glean their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler. The AOM podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, word, and deed. Also, be sure to explore our articles in artofmanliness.com, read the deeper dives we do in our sub-stack newsletter at dyingbreed.net, and turn our content into real-world action by joining the Strenuous Life program at strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show. Speaker 1 (2:43) Professor of psychology, Angela Duckworth is famous for her work on grit, the combination of passion and perseverance that leads to high achievement. But she's come to an increasing appreciation for the fact that success isn't just a matter of the qualities inside you. It's also driven by what's outside you, your peers, your mentors, and even your zip code. Today on the show, Angela, whose latest book is Situated, Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best, shares how our environments play a much bigger role in shaping us than we realize. She explains the three box model of behavior, Speaker 1 (3:11) why relying on willpower is a fallible strategy for altering your habits, and why the most effective way to change yourself is to change what's around you. We discuss how different situations bring out different versions of ourselves and how to shape your surroundings to encourage good habits, mitigate bad ones, and become who you want to be. Whether that means rearranging what's on your desk or moving across the country. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash situated. Speaker 1 (3:45) All right, Angela Duckworth, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much. Looking forward to our conversation. So the last time we had you on was way back in 2016, episode number 210. This was a long time ago to discuss your book, Grit. So you're the grit lady. I'm sure people who are listening know you because of your work on grit. You got a new book out and it's all about how our situations. can contribute to our success. So grit was all about how perseverance and passion lead to success. This book, Situated, is all about how the situations we find ourselves in can help that. How did you make that shift from how our internal world or internal motivations or internal drives contributes to our success to looking at how our external world contributes to that? Speaker 1 (4:32) You know, in a way, I think my career as a scientist obsessed, fair to say, with achievement and human potential. Maybe it was the natural thing to look inside the head of high achievers first to ask, you know, what are these mindsets that differentiate them from people who don't work as hard or aren't as resilient? You know, to ask, you know, what kind of goals do they set? How do they organize their goals? What habits do they have? And, you know, that is a lot of what psychologists do is they... Speaker 1 (5:01) look at what is going on mentally. But if you widen the aperture, and I don't think it's a contradiction, this new work on the power of your environment to shape your outcomes. I don't think it's a contradiction, but it is an expansion because I think if you widen the aperture and now you see this person with all of their positive, optimistic thoughts and the mindsets and the habits that lead to those thoughts, that lead to their actions, and you ask the question, Where do those thoughts come from? I mean, what influences, you know, how we think about what we're doing and, you know, whether we should give up or whether we should keep trying or, you know, try something different. And you end up realizing that to a great degree, our thoughts come from our situation. When we're around certain people, you know, a coach or a mentor, a teacher who... Speaker 1 (5:57) really believes in us, we find that our internal thoughts are more positive. There are more confident and optimistic. So the expansion to the common denominators of the situations of high achievers was, I think in some ways, it was natural and in many ways inevitable. And you use the story of Michael Phelps as a way to explore this at the very beginning of the book. So Michael Phelps, most winningest Olympian in the history of America. And we typically think of this guy, man, this guy is gritty because he would show up to practice every day, even on Christmas, even when he was kind of sick. But you explore like, well, yeah, he had grit, but also his environment that he found himself in helped with that. I don't know if there is a paragon of grit who is grittier than Michael Phelps. And I very intentionally chose him to demonstrate that grit. Speaker 1 (6:53) is a lot of achieving greatness, but it is not everything. Michael Phelps had an amazing mom to begin, Debbie Phelps, who might well be grittier than her son, Michael. You know, they would be neck and neck, I think, in a competition. She raised Michael and his two sisters for a lot of their childhoods. She was a single mom because she and her husband had split up. She was working as a public school teacher, later a principal, so not a lot of money. But she had this unshakable faith in the potential of her children, including Michael, who was not at the beginning of his life, I think, anyone who... Speaker 1 (7:36) the teachers were singling out as like, oh, most likely to succeed. He had a diagnosis of ADHD. You can imagine what a, you know, extremely energetic boy with ADHD, like what the letters home from teachers sounded like. And the reason I want to emphasize how important it was to have a situation with a parent like that is that you can imagine a pain in the butt. little boy going a completely different way in life. But this very wise mother wrote back to those teachers and said, you know what? He's really smart. You may not see it. I do. He's also extremely disciplined when he is doing something he's interested in. And by the way, this kid has so much energy. You got to put him in the back of the room and let him stand up and walk around. Speaker 1 (8:25) He'll learn for you, but maybe not in the conventional seating arrangement. So that was just like one little anecdote to illustrate how important this particular situation was for bringing out. Michael's best. But the other element I want to raise is that Michael happened to be born in Baltimore. It wasn't complete chance because his older sisters also swam. And when they got competitive, they realized that there was a pool and a coaching system that was a little farther away from their home than was convenient. It was like an hour drive both ways. Debbie Phelps had a motto, have minivan, will travel. And so this long trip became a little bit arduous. They actually moved. Speaker 1 (9:06) to be closer to this world-class pool in North Baltimore. And that is actually where Michael started his swimming career. First, just watching his sister swim up and down this pool when he was too young to get in, and then himself getting into the pool. And why was that so important? Well, it is the premier youth aquatic program in the country. And it had at the time... Somebody who I think you could argue is the best swimming coach in history, and that's Bob Bowman. And so would Michael Phelps have become Michael Phelps, the Olympic star, the most decorated Olympian of all time, as you said, but I think he's also the athlete who has broken the most world records. I think he's broken the world records for breaking world records, if I'm not mistaken. You know, would that have all happened if he hadn't had the best swimming coach? Speaker 1 (9:58) in history for the 20 years of his career. And if you ask Michael what his answer is, he says, without Bob Bowman, my career would be different, 100% different. Yeah, we had Bob Bowman on the podcast a while back ago to discuss his coaching Michael Phelps, but also just his system that he established with his swim team. It was a system, it was a culture. We're going to talk about the role of culture plays in success. So in this book, you introduce a mental model. that you call the three box model of personal change. And you note that your longtime podcast co-host, Stephen Dubner of No Stupid Questions fame, one of my favorite podcasts, he said that this is his favorite mental model. So tell us about that. What is the three box model of personal change? The three box model is something of a blueprint, not only for understanding effort and excellence, but really, I would argue just Speaker 1 (10:54) All of human behavior, like all of it. If you ever wonder like, why'd they do that? Why do they say that? Why do I feel this way? Like you can explain it using three boxes and two arrows. So I want to start with the third box on the far right. If you can imagine this visually, it's what you do. It is what you say, what you feel. It's your response to what's going on. What determines how any of us respond? Well, Box two, which precedes this box, so you're moving now to the left, that is what's going through your head. These are your thoughts. A lot of psychotherapy in the modern era is about interrogating those thoughts, questioning whether you are... Speaker 1 (11:39) unfairly pessimistic, for example, or doubtful in your thoughts. So that is actually, I think, where a lot of personal development coaching stops. They say, if you want to work hard, if you want to be resilient, you got to examine your internal thoughts. And I want to agree with them, but go farther. I say, don't forget the first box, right? I need another arrow and another box. Now I'm on the far left. Now I'm at box one. I'm at the beginning. Where do our thoughts come from? they are not just internally generated. They're in a startling way, I think, if you really understand how human nature works. They are bottom-up. They are responsive to the situations. When we are around certain people, we have certain thoughts. When you are on Bob Bowman's team, you have thoughts about the value of effort, about what practice should look like, about what you should be. Speaker 1 (12:34) thinking about that are different than if you are being coached by another person and surrounded by different teammates. Even I would argue being physically at the aquatic center that lucky for him, Michael Phelps grew up around, it was a facility that had a 50 meter pool outside for sunny days and a 50 meter pool inside for all the rest of the year. I think even just physically being in that kind of circumstance is entirely different than, I don't know, I grew up around a pool that was, you know, around the corner. I obviously didn't become an Olympic swimmer, but the vibe, you know, of this like world-class training center with its cues of like, we are here to train the best of the best. Speaker 1 (13:23) to be the best of the best. I think all of those cues change those thoughts in box two. Those thoughts in box two determine our response in box three. So this three box model I think of as a blueprint for effort, achievement, the things I study, but really happiness, anxiety, I mean, anything that you are trying to understand and the natural conclusion of understanding how our situations. lead to our thoughts and our thoughts leading to our behavior. The natural conclusion is that you start at the beginning. If you want to change yourself, change your situation. And you mentioned that most personal development books or even talk therapy, it focuses on that second box, the thoughts in our head, or even maybe you could say emotions to an extent. People try to gin up emotions inside of them to get motivated. Why do we... Speaker 1 (14:18) typically go there? Like, why do we, when we're trying to make a change or trying to achieve a goal, we focus on willpower and effort and not the situation. Why do we completely ignore our environment? Well, I want to talk a little bit about willpower. I want to answer your question directly about willpower. I think it's a profound question, by the way, and one that philosophers have grappled with. with some success. And more recently, psychologists have really figured it out, I think, what willpower is and why it's fallible. I also want to say that the three box model of human behavior is Speaker 1 (14:50) A model that was developed by an emotion researcher named James Gross at Stanford. He's the one, I think, who really opened my eyes to the power of the situation as an academic researcher. And I think one thing he would just want to say about, you know, the folks who, as you mentioned, like they try to gin up, you know, a certain emotion, like they try to get themselves to be, for example, famously, you know, Michael Jordan, right? Like getting himself to be angry before a game to get that. Speaker 1 (15:17) the extra kick, right? I think what he would want to say is that when you feel like you're going to generate an emotion, like I'm going to be psyched, I'm going to be angry, I'm going to be confident, really what you're doing is you're ginning up some kind of boxed-to thought. There is some thought that engenders that emotion. That's one of the big discoveries, I think, of emotion research, just how intimately thoughts and emotions are connected. in particular by thoughts leading to emotions, whether we recognize that or not. But why is this all connected to becoming your best? And why do I think willpower is the most fallible, the worst way to change your behavior? Well, willpower is intervening in the process at box three, in these three box sequence. It's waiting until you have an impulse to eat something, to look at something. Speaker 1 (16:07) to say something, you know, all of which you might regret, right? And we can do it. You can do it. I can do it. And we've all done it. We've all forced