Caroline Miller is one of the world’s leading experts on the science of goal setting and grit. She’s spent more than 30 years helping individuals, leaders and companies to cultivate grit to achieve their goals and find personal and professional success. Caroline is the author of six books, including Getting Grit and Creating Your Best Life. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC and CNN.
During our chat we discussed the two kinds of goals – learning goals and performance goals – and how grit helped Caroline overcome bulimia at the age of 22. We talked about the value of humility, hope and optimism. We defined happiness and I learned the happiest people are the people who wake up to hard goals – people who have “ikigai”, a Japanese word that means “reason for being”. I was delighted to hear that only half of grit and happiness are hard-wired – the rest we can develop. Caroline mentioned “job-crafting”, a way to find your purpose in whatever role you have. We also got into women bullying other women, and how important it is that women support each other through “active constructive responding” and push each other forward.
At the end of the episode, Caroline makes specific recommendations to build your tribe and help others thrive: for example, find two women you know and share their success stories on two social media platforms #share222; or list 5-6 people you know who are givers and set up a monthly meeting to share goals and hold each other accountable to them (in a kind way!)
To take the free VIA Character Survey that Caroline mentioned, head to https://www.viacharacter.org/www/
You can find Caroline on LinkedIn and Instagram.
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