As a neuroscientist I think a lot about is likely hard-wired into someone’s brain vs acquired. Research has shown that certainly personality traits show up very early in babies, and stay fairly intact up until adulthood, especially introversion, anxiety and curiosity.
But what has interested me lately is how much you can teach your child summation. Gumption is different from grit, which is now the popular term for someone’s who’s resilient, who gets back up again and again after failure. Gumption is more that trait of questing, striving, passion. It’s not pure ambition, which is usually tied to acquiring power, money, recognition.
Gumption is more about being propelled almost unceasingly to get to a higher level, in art, in science, in all sorts of things. But it’s about not wanting to do much else besides that. It’s not even about getting up after failure, it’s about failing and maybe trying something new, or trying something different, but ceaselessly striving, because it’s an inherent trait. It doesn’t seem like it can be taught. It’s either there or not.
I grew up knowing I had a constant gnawing of wanting to get more done, acquire more skills, figure out as many things as I could (without beating my head against the wall). I spent a lot of time with friends who seemed to be fine with not doing much, watching television, chatting, enjoying themselves. My thought was always, what else is there? What can be done and how to figure what’s worth doing? After a while, especially when I arrived at college, I found more friends who had the same feeling. We called it different things, go-getting, hustling, and we could recognize who had it by how much they spent time working around problems to make things happen like getting that one cool internship, filling up time completely with classwork, volunteering, various hobbies and sports.
My friends and I graduated and went on to careers full of hustling, for me a PhD and a hustle to get out the academia trap, and then pivoting several times in my science field, from prenatal drug abuse to depression research, to aging research, to nutrition for the brain and now behavioral medicine (eg digital health). Naturally these pivots took lots of learning on the job, winging it and figuring out all sorts of new skills along the way. The main thing was moving forward. Many of my friends went this same direction of striving to see how far they could go in one field, pivoting and finding what else could be done with our short time on earth.
When I had my first son I assumed he would be the same way. After all, he had my genes, and if it wasn’t gene-associated, I would teach him to have this need to hustle.
But he is not that type of person. He doesn’t want to fill his days getting to the next level. He’s very content with the level that he’s at. He’s gotten grades, had to deal with all sorts of difficult situations, from critical dangerous medical issues (collapsed lungs) to learning a new language every four years while we moved around Europe. Yet his core personality is not to hustle, it’s to find some enjoyable things and not get too concerned about his career, or how far he can push himself. Even a young child he’s always been very clear on who he is, and even when I tried to get him interested in excelling at various things, improv, sports, music, writing, science, he firmly knows he doesn’t need to get satisfaction from these things. He did not inherit this gene from me and I couldn’t teach him.
What is gumption, on a molecular/genetic level? It’s most likely to do with dopamine, that reward transmitter that makes us go after more and more release of it. Until we’re so de-sensitized that it can’t stimulate us the way it used to and often times it’s the sign that we need to try something else.
— siobhan
But what has interested me lately is how much you can teach your child summation. Gumption is different from grit, which is now the popular term for someone’s who’s resilient, who gets back up again and again after failure. Gumption is more that trait of questing, striving, passion. It’s not pure ambition, which is usually tied to acquiring power, money, recognition.
Gumption is more about being propelled almost unceasingly to get to a higher level, in art, in science, in all sorts of things. But it’s about not wanting to do much else besides that. It’s not even about getting up after failure, it’s about failing and maybe trying something new, or trying something different, but ceaselessly striving, because it’s an inherent trait. It doesn’t seem like it can be taught. It’s either there or not.
I grew up knowing I had a constant gnawing of wanting to get more done, acquire more skills, figure out as many things as I could (without beating my head against the wall). I spent a lot of time with friends who seemed to be fine with not doing much, watching television, chatting, enjoying themselves. My thought was always, what else is there? What can be done and how to figure what’s worth doing? After a while, especially when I arrived at college, I found more friends who had the same feeling. We called it different things, go-getting, hustling, and we could recognize who had it by how much they spent time working around problems to make things happen like getting that one cool internship, filling up time completely with classwork, volunteering, various hobbies and sports.
My friends and I graduated and went on to careers full of hustling, for me a PhD and a hustle to get out the academia trap, and then pivoting several times in my science field, from prenatal drug abuse to depression research, to aging research, to nutrition for the brain and now behavioral medicine (eg digital health). Naturally these pivots took lots of learning on the job, winging it and figuring out all sorts of new skills along the way. The main thing was moving forward. Many of my friends went this same direction of striving to see how far they could go in one field, pivoting and finding what else could be done with our short time on earth.
When I had my first son I assumed he would be the same way. After all, he had my genes, and if it wasn’t gene-associated, I would teach him to have this need to hustle.
But he is not that type of person. He doesn’t want to fill his days getting to the next level. He’s very content with the level that he’s at. He’s gotten grades, had to deal with all sorts of difficult situations, from critical dangerous medical issues (collapsed lungs) to learning a new language every four years while we moved around Europe. Yet his core personality is not to hustle, it’s to find some enjoyable things and not get too concerned about his career, or how far he can push himself. Even a young child he’s always been very clear on who he is, and even when I tried to get him interested in excelling at various things, improv, sports, music, writing, science, he firmly knows he doesn’t need to get satisfaction from these things. He did not inherit this gene from me and I couldn’t teach him.
What is gumption, on a molecular/genetic level? It’s most likely to do with dopamine, that reward transmitter that makes us go after more and more release of it. Until we’re so de-sensitized that it can’t stimulate us the way it used to and often times it’s the sign that we need to try something else.
— siobhan
Comments
Post a Comment