Situated Preface

I am a psychologist and professor who researches motivation and achievement, and I began my career studying remarkably successful individuals. After a decade of study, I took a six-month sabbatical and did my very best to tell their stories. My first book, Grit, summed up everything I’d learned about passion and perseverance for long-term goals—a common denominator of world-class performers, no matter their area of specialization.

Now another decade has passed, and in that time, I’ve turned my attention from the psychological profiles of high achievers to a different common denominator—the strikingly similar features of their situations. In other words, my curiosity has taken me from what goes on inside the minds of high achievers to everything and everyone around them.

What I’ve learned is that situations wield enormous influence—and yet, strangely, we’re largely oblivious to their power. Mind over matter, we say. You can’t control the situation, but you can control how you react to it. It’s true that what we do is influenced by what we think—but it’s equally true that what we think is, in turn, influenced by where we are. Like it or not, our every thought and action is profoundly shaped by our peers and mentors, by our culture, and even by the objects in our personal space.

Over four hundred years ago, the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote an essay about how easy it is to overlook the power of the situation. Reflecting on his own “inconsistencies,” as he put it, he found himself by turns a hero or a coward, a giver or a taker, a saint or a sinner—depending on the situation. “We do not go,” Montaigne wrote. “We are carried—like things afloat, now gently, now violently, as the water is angry or calm.” It is an inconvenient truth, he acknowledged, and one we resist, because we much prefer the notion that we are in full command of our thoughts and actions.

In this book I go further. I want to convince you that recognizing the power of the situation doesn’t undermine your own agency. Why not? Because whether you’re rich or poor, young or old, established in your career or just starting out, your circumstances aren’t fixed—not entirely, anyway. It’s true that the world isn’t always fair, and some of us have much more freedom to change our situation than others. But alongside the realities you have no power to change, there’s almost always something you can.

Consider, for example, your personal space. It’s your choice whether to surround yourself with irresistible temptations or, instead, with reminders of what you actually want to achieve. You can also pick your peers—ideally a group of like-minded people who will keep you accountable, inspire you, and, most of all, enable you to do the same for them. And you can proactively attract mentors who will teach you what they know, believe in you when your confidence falters, and open doors to opportunities you can only imagine. Even changing where you work or live is a possibility, allowing you to establish roots in a culture where “the way we do things around here” is the way you want to do things, too.

And if your primary concern is helping someone else succeed, this book shows how helping them indirectly—by setting up a successful situation—is not only the most effective way to do so but also the most ethical.