Hidden Potential Quotes

“Beating yourself up doesn’t make you stronger—it leaves you bruised. Being kind to yourself isn’t about ignoring your weaknesses. It’s about giving yourself permission to learn from your disappointments. We grow by embracing our shortcomings, not by punishing them. Make it feel wrong.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Even in the Olympic judging rules, a 10 doesn’t stand for perfection—it stands for excellence. He was teaching me the art of wabi sabi. The lesson hit home: I didn’t need to be perfect.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“People drank from pottery that was worn and weathered. They called this practice wabi sabi. Wabi sabi is the art of honoring the beauty in imperfection. It’s not about creating intentional imperfections. It’s about accepting that flaws are inevitable—and recognizing that they don’t stop something from becoming sublime.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn,” the lead psychologist concluded, “if provided with appropriate . . . conditions of learning.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“He could see potential where others had missed it. He was looking to grow roses in concrete”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“It’s a question of which coaches to trust. I like to break trustworthiness down into three components: care, credibility, and familiarity.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“If we wait until we feel ready to take on a new challenge, we might never pursue it all. There may not come a day when we wake up and suddenly feel prepared. We become prepared by taking the leap anyway.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Knowing your principles doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to practice them, particularly under stress or pressure. It’s easy to be proactive and determined when things are going well. The true test of character is whether you manage to stand by those values when the deck is stacked against you. If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Many people associate procrastination with laziness. But psychologists find that procrastination is not a time management problem—it’s an emotion management problem.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“You can’t tell where people will land from where they begin. With the right opportunity and motivation to learn, anyone can build the skills to achieve greater things. Potential is not a matter of where you start, but of how far you travel. We need to focus less on starting points and more on distance traveled.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“If we judge people only by what they can do on day one, their potential remains hidden.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Potential is not a matter of where you start, but of how far you travel. We need to focus less on starting points and more on distance traveled.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“I now believe that impostor syndrome is a sign of hidden potential. It feels like other people are overestimating you, but it's more likely that you're underestimating yourself. They've recognized a capacity for growth that you can't see yet. When multiple people believe in you, it might be time to believe them.”
― Adam Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“As exciting as it is to see a candidate like Jose succeed, it isn't enough. his success shows us what we're missing in so many others. He hand to break the mold to make it through a broken system. He's the exception, but he should be the rule. When we evaluate people, there's nothing more rewarding that finding a diamond in the rough. Our job isn't to apply the pressure that brings out their brilliance. It's to make sure we don't overlook those who have already faced that pressure- and recognize their potential to shine.”
― Adam Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Growth mindset says, “I don’t know what I’m doing yet. It’s only a matter of time until I figure it out.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“when we feel a strong sense of belonging to a group, we feel our bootstraps are linked. We become driven to defy low expectations of our group in order to pull the entire group up. We don’t just want to prove ourselves—we want to blaze a trail for others to follow.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The downside of competing against others is that you can win without improving. They might have a bad day, or you might benefit from a stroke of good luck. In Brandon’s form of deliberate play, the person you’re competing with is your past self, and the bar you’re raising is for your future self. You’re not aiming for perfect—you’re shooting for better. The only way to win is to grow.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“, ambition is the outcome you want to attain. Aspiration is the person you hope to become.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“stereotype that darker-skinned kids weren’t bright. He knew from experience that although talent is evenly distributed, opportunity is not. He could see potential where others had missed it. He was looking to grow roses in concrete.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“It’s often said that those who can’t do, teach. It would be more accurate to say that those who can do, can’t teach the basics.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The very doors that societies are supposed to open to people with great potential are often wrongly closed to those who have faced the greatest obstacles.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The Tennessee experiment contained a startling result. Chetty was able to predict the success that students achieved as adults simply by looking at who taught their kindergarten class. By age 25, students who happened to have had more experienced kindergarten teachers were earning significantly more money than their peers. Chetty and his colleagues calculated that moving from an inexperienced kindergarten teacher to an experienced one would add over $1,000 to each student’s annual income in their twenties.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“As the philosopher Agnes Callard highlights, ambition is the outcome you want to attain. Aspiration is the person you hope to become.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“He knew from experience that although talent is evenly distributed, opportunity is not.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Comfort in learning is a paradox. You can’t become truly comfortable with a skill until you’ve practiced it enough to master it. But practicing it before you master it is uncomfortable, so you often avoid it. Accelerating learning requires a second form of courage: being brave enough to use your knowledge as you acquire it.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“in meta-analyses of dozens of experiments, students and adults were more adept at understanding and speaking a new language over time when they had been taught to produce it rather than only to comprehend it. They also learned better in “flipped classrooms” that challenged them to study vocabulary before class and then practice communicating during class.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“If our cognitive skills are what separate us from animals, our character skills are what elevate us above machines. Computers and robots can now build cars, fly planes, fight wars, manage money, represent defendants in court, diagnose cancer, and perform cardiac surgery. As more and more cognitive skills get automated, we’re in the midst of a character revolution. With technological advances placing a premium on interactions and relationships, the skills that make us human are increasingly important to master.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“When people talk about nurture, they’re typically referring to the ongoing investment that parents and teachers make in developing and supporting children and students. But helping them reach their full potential requires something different. It’s a more focused, more transient form of support that prepares them to direct their own learning and growth. Psychologists call it scaffolding.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Dalton had built the chess equivalent of an Olympic training center. Each kindergartner took a semester of chess, and every first grader studied the game”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things