Nobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is.

You can't simply will yourself to like things, either. As Jeff Bezos has observed, 'One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves.

Follow your passion was not the message I heard growing up. Instead, I was told that the practical realities of surviving "in the real world" were far more important than any person living a "sheltered life" such as my own could imagine. I was warned that overly idealistic dreams of "finding something I loved" could in fact be a breadcrumb trail into poverty and disappointment.

You cannot will yourself to be interested in something you're not interested in. But you can actively discover and deepen your interest.

Grit, in a word, is stamina. But it's not just stamina in your effort. It's also stamina in your direction, stamina in your interests. If you are working on different things but all of them very hard, you're not really going to get anywhere. You'll never become an expert.

When people tell me I can't do something, I have a visceral reflex to say, 'Yes, I can.'