The Key to Success

The purpose of this paper is the review and analysis of the TED talk of a former teacher and professional psychologist  Angel Lee Duckworth “The Key to Success” who was talking about the success of students at school and employees in the work place and was discussing the quality of grit.

Angela Lee Duckworth defines grit as stamina and the ability to work hard in order to achieve a certain goal and make a future life better. She is saying: “Let’s be gritty about getting our kids grittier”. I like the fact that Duckworth says that grit is actually much more powerful than a talent. This means that a gritty person is able to get father forward in life and be much more successful than just a talented person. I strongly agree with her because, as I already know from my own personal experience, success is 99{bcdc0d62f3e776dc94790ed5d1b431758068d4852e7f370e2bcf45b6c3b9404d} of perspiration and only 1{bcdc0d62f3e776dc94790ed5d1b431758068d4852e7f370e2bcf45b6c3b9404d} of talent. This basically means that talent does not make a person gritty, but a gritty person has much more chances to succeed than a person who is talented but does not put any efforts. In her speech Duckworth also points out that in order to become gritty and have stamina, a person should not be afraid to fail or be wrong.  He or she should also have enough power and self-confidence in order to be able to learn from his or her mistakes and start over again. I share the psychologist’s view because from my own personal experience I  know that sometimes in order to achieve your goal you need to struggle and be prepared to fail at first.  As the proverb says: Rom was not built in a day. There are also many examples of famous people, who achieved success after many failures and a lot of struggle. They would have been able to do that if they were not gritty. One of such examples is Thomas Edison, who made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing a light bulb. If he had not been gritty enough, we still might not have had electricity today.

I think the Duckworth’s speech is relevant to all areas in life and especially in education. As an educator myself, I feel it is important to teach children from the very early age to be gritty instead of focusing on just their skills and talents. It is great to have a talent, but it is definitely not enough in order to be a successful. The key to success is a combination of an actual talent and grit, which helps a person to move forward. As an educator, I think it is very important for me to explain children that making mistakes is ok, and there is nothing wrong with a failure. Instead, actually mistakes and failures are those bricks that help to build up the foundation of success.

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