What determines if the world's in your hands - or not

If you are struggling to succeed, it turns out there are two questions can ruin everything: Am I supposed to be here? And, am I good enough? Because if you descend into self-doubt and conclude you aren't smart enough to be where you are - or good enough to succeed - you can end up the navigator of your own fall into failure.

That's the simple but stunning message of a study of young people who against all odds made it to elite universities - only to question themselves when they inevitably hit their first academic stumble. It's also a lesson for all of us who have felt like frauds when we can't immediately make the grade in a new place, at a new job or in a new role. How you interpret your setbacks can in fact determine your ability to surmount them. If you see them as a permanent reflection of your inferiority, they will derail you. But if you can believe you do belong, you can learn, you will succeed, and you will make it past the challenges that everyone encounters unless they are superhuman.

What is tragic is what these perceptions can do to kids entering college from low-income families. I read a pair of heart-wrenching articles over the weekend. Both put the spotlight on the challenges of providing excellent education to our kids, but one left me dejected and the other inspired. In the dejected department was a New Yorker piece on the painfully slow progress of reform in the Newark school system despite over a hundred million dollars in philanthropic support, a slew of expert consultants and ardent advocacy. By contrast, the other was a New York Times piece on smart, motivated and underprivileged kids struggling to get through university at all odds - and the brilliantly simple intervention that can make all the difference. While the Newark article provided few lessons other than the predictably maddening morass that comes of politicized reform efforts, the New York Times piece offers wisdom we should all take to heart and apply to all those around us. And it has everything to do with those two questions that determine if the world is in your hands - or not.

Every college freshman hits a bump in the road - a tough class, a botched test or a hard time making friends. What the New York Times piece shows is that some kids decide these setbacks are evidence that they don't belong and can't make it - while others don't see them as personal failures. It's sad that these results typically fall along socio-economic lines. What's worse is students who struggle are often placed into remedial programs - which only serve to reinforce their perception that their anxieties are well-placed.

What's hopeful is that some incredibly simple interventions can abolish that confidence gap and set all students up to succeed. According to the New York Times, David Laude and David Yeager at the University of Texas at Austin experimented with having incoming freshman read articles about how other freshmen worried about being smart enough or belonging but eventually found their place. They then were asked to write their own reflection on this material in order to hep other students. The whole exercise took less than an hour - and cut the gap in success rates of disadvantaged students by half.

"The [students] deserve all the credit," Yeager says in the article:

"Ultimately a person has within themselves some kind of capital, some kind of asset, like knowledge or confidence. And if we can help bring that out, they then carry that asset with them to the next difficulty in life."

I pass on these insights for two reasons. First, as someone who is in the profession of helping kids learn, I think it's critical to reflect on how we give all students the tools to persevere through the struggle that comes with all learning. Second, I think these lessons apply to every adult one of us who has had debilitating moments of self doubt, regardless of who you are or where you were raised. Most of us have been shaken to the core by the fear we can't measure up to the imaginary level of achievement we attribute to our peers. The remedy to that insidiously self-fulfilling thinking is to recognize it is universal - and to know it is not a reflection on who we are but rather how we sometimes feel.

In other words, these questions are something to ask -- and then overcome. Please know that you have your role in the world in your hands. You are smart enough to figure it out. Don't toss it away because of the understandably human fear you can't bear its weight or live its promise. Know you can keep it there and make it happen, however shaky your grip, because we've all felt that tremble. It isn't easy. Of course not. But it is possible. Tell it to yourself. And even more important, tell it to every young person in your life. For them, it will make all the difference.

Illustration by Sophia Robinson