High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way

by Brendon Burchard

A recent study of over 168,000 tenth-graders helps us prove the point. Researchers collected data related to students’ academic achievement, socioeconomic status, and beliefs about their ability to improve with effort.35 As you might predict, students from higher socioeconomic strata performed significantly better than students from low-income families. This relationship, however, was offset in children who believed they could improve with effort. In fact, children who came from the lowest 10 percent socioeconomically yet believed in their ability to improve performed as well as kids in the top 20 percent who believed that their abilities were unchangeable. This means that the economic gap—and all the negative factors that often accompany lower economic status, such as higher stress, worse schools, poorer nutrition—were largely erased in children who believed they could improve with effort. Scientific research consistently shows that certain people maintain their strength even when the environment or culture around them is less than ideal.36 The difference is how they think. This means that with or without social support, you can use your thoughts to improve your mind, mood, memory, reactions, happiness, and performance.37