measured on a scale that ranged from 7 to 35 and included items such as, “If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.” In the same study, I measured positive emotions such as excitement and negative emotions such as shame. I found that the grittier a person is, the more likely they’ll enjoy a healthy emotional life. Even at the top of the Grit Scale, grit went hand in hand with well-being, no matter how I measured it.
When my students and I published this result, we ended our report this way: “Are the spouses and children of the grittiest people also happier? What about their coworkers and employees? Additional inquiry is needed to explore the possible downsides of grit.” I don’t yet have answers to those questions, but I think they’re good ones to ask. When I talk to grit paragons, and they tell me how thrilled they are to work as passionately as they do for a purpose greater than themselves, I can’t tell whether their families feel the same way. I don’t know, for example, whether all those years devoted to a top-level goal of singular importance comes at a cost I haven’t yet measured. What I have done is ask my daughters, Amanda and Lucy, what it’s like to grow up with a gritty mom. They’ve watched me attempt things I’ve never done before—like write a book—and they’ve seen me cry when it got really rough. They’ve seen how torturous it can be to hack away at innumerable doable, but hard-to-do, skills. They’ve asked, at dinner: “Do we always have to talk about deliberate practice? Why does everything have to come back to your research?” Amanda and Lucy wish I’d relax a little and, you know, talk more about Taylor Swift.