Success is pregnant with meaning and nuance. We wish it for our chil-dren, our friends and relatives, and ourselves. While most people equate success with material wealth for others it is recognition and ac-complishment.
We have grown up with the aphorisms about success that formed our national ethos: the Horatio Alger stories of rags to riches ensorcelled past generations. Thrift and hard work were all preached from the pul-pit, the dinner table and in the classroom. But success is achieved by so much more.
THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
Success is pregnant with meaning and nuance. We wish it for our chil-dren, our friends and relatives, and ourselves. While most people equate success with material wealth for others it is recognition and ac-complishment.
We have grown up with the aphorisms about success that formed our national ethos: the Horatio Alger stories of rags to riches ensorcelled past generations. Thrift and hard work were all preached from the pul-pit, the dinner table and in the classroom. But success is achieved by so much more.
The research of Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, the book The Triple Package by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld, spouses and professors of law at Yale (she of Tiger Mom fame), and The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko dating from 1996 have, collectively, deconstructed it.
It is both fasciating and interesting how these disparate works come together to provide insight, and, in the case of Duckworth, an iron clad predictor of success.
Angela Duckworth has spent the last seven years researching this sub-ject. And she found that from among the scores of criteria evaluated, one stood out as a predictor that all else was statistically insignificant. And her findings reinforce the observations of Chua and Rubenfeld, and that of Stanley and Danko.
To be accurate Chua and Rubenfeld studied why certain groups were successful. And Stanley and Danko were really looking at the common traits of self-made millionaires.
Among the factors that Chua and Rubenfeld looked at were IQ and SAT scores, GPAs, geographic location, family wealth, ethnic and racial factors. Chua and Rubenfeld asked, and answered the question why certain groups were successful beyond their numbers. By the way, the findings of Duckworth are synonymous with Chua and Rubenfeld be-cause successful groups are comprised of successful people.
What accounts for the inordinate success of the Jews who, while only 1.7% of the US population, account for over thirty percent of our No-bel and Pulitzer prizes? Or the disproportionate success in business of Mormons who comprise only 1.3% of our population. Similarly East In-dian Americans, Asian, Iranian and Cuban exiles have made outsized gains far beyond their population size.
As for Stanley and Danko their findings, from interviewing hundreds of self-made millionaires, are directly in line with a trait characteristic found by the others.
This key trait is Grit or Drive. Yup that’s it, not an IQ that exceeds Ein-stein, stumbling across a killer app or the solution to cold fusion when attempting to find a better way to make ice cream. While each defines the formula behind the trait differently it amounts to the same thing.
Duckworth defines success as Passion plus Perseverance. Chua and Rubenfeld as a triad: Superiority plus Insecurity plus Impulse Control. Stanley and Danko do not so much define the successful traits and habits as finding them in virtually every person they studied.
In the Duckworth studies she determined that passion for a goal, while crucial to attainment, without perseverance will fail. Chua and Ruben-feld define the passion component as superiority coupled with feelings of inferiority. At first blush one would think these two traits are incom-patable but in actuality they are two sides of the same coin.
Stanley and Danko confirm that impulse control or deferred gradifica-tion (defined as the voluntary regulation of behavioral, emotional, and attentional impulses in the presence of momentarily gratifying tempta-tions or diversions) is the defining factor in virtually all the successful people they interviewed.
Most are familiar with the fameous Marshmallow test of psychologist Walter Mischel. Mischel placed a marshmallow before three to five year olds and told them that they could eat it immediately, but if they wait-ed they could have two marshmallows. The majority ate the treat im-mediately and the minority waited for fifteen minutes to received a double treat.
What is little known about Mischel’s research is that he followed up on the roughly 650 children in his study when they were in high school. Those children that controlled their impulses did measurably better ac-ademically and socially than those who evidenced less self-control. As much a 210 points better on their SAT scores and that impulse control turned out to be a better predictor of success than SAT or IQ scores.
Superiority is not arrogance but the belief by a person that they can do or accomplish something, be it learning Manderine or the violin. Inferi-ority, whether formed by scorn, fear or family, is the motivator. The scorn of “No dogs, no Chinese” for example, fear; real or imagined, and the insecurity formed by familial expectations.
It is here we find the Jewish mother syndrom and the Tiger Mom, where no accomplishment is ever good enough. True story. Back when the SATs topped out at 1400 (700 verbal and 700 math) a friend of ours sent her son to take a very expensive remedial course because, although he had gotten a 700 in math he only got a 694 in the verbal part.
Impulse control goes far beyond simply waiting for the second marsh-mallow. It enbodies the ability to continuously absorbe failure and still persevere. Now I am not saying that the marshmallow test does not pertain. The findings of Stanley and Danko show that most grew rich because of modesty, thrift and patience (née impulse control). They lived happily in starter homes, they did not subsidize irresponsible adult children and they have an aversion to luxury cars, bling and tro-phy wives.
Warren Buffet and Sam Walton personify this class. Buffett still lives in the tract home he bought many decades ago.