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The Rage to Master: Reminding Teens That Not All Effort Is Equal


When Alysa Liu skated at the Winter Olympics, we saw this remarkably composed young woman with exquisite technical precision.   What we didn’t see on our TV screens was her relationship with skating.  The long hours she spent practicing a skill she both enjoyed and steadily mastered. That combination, liking something, getting better at it, and using it to meet challenge, is a powerful engine of human motivation.

This idea surfaced recently when Reese Witherspoon reflected publicly on the importance of discovering one’s talents. Her point was not about celebrity or success, but about something more ordinary and more consequential: people thrive when they find an activity that feels like a natural fit. Psychologists call this working from one’s strengths.

Research in positive psychology suggests that a true strength has three features. It is something a person enjoys. It is something they do well or improve at with practice. And it is something that provides energy rather than draining it, especially under stress. When these elements come together, they often produce what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi famously described as “flow” — a state of deep absorption in which effort feels purposeful, and time seems to pass unnoticed.

Elite athletes are obvious examples, but the principle is far broader. A teenager who loves building things and becomes skilled at it may lose herself in design projects. Another who enjoys listening and advising friends may gravitate toward mentoring roles. A student who finds pleasure in solving puzzles may lean into mathematics not because it is easy, but because it is satisfying.

For our teens, understanding this matters more than we realise. Yes, teenagers need to experience struggle - to learn how to tolerate frustration and manage strong emotions.  But struggle alone isn’t enough. They also need spaces where they can use their strengths: activities they genuinely enjoy, skills they can grow with practice, and challenges that energise rather than drain them. These experiences tap into what psychologist Ellen Winner has called the “rage to master” — the intense, intrinsically driven desire to understand and improve in a particular area. When our teens are working from their strengths, they discover that effort doesn’t have to be punishing, it can be engaging, motivating, and even joyful.

Yet many of our teens do not encounter these experiences in school. Classrooms are built around standardised skills and shared curricula. For some teens, this structure aligns neatly with their strengths. For others, it does not. A teenager whose gifts lie in performance, mechanics, or leadership may pass years without seeing those capacities reflected or rewarded. The result is not only boredom, but a quieter erosion of confidence: a sense that learning itself is the problem.

This gap is hard on us as well. We watch our kids slog through material that does not seem to fit them and wonder when, or whether, they will find the place where effort feels worthwhile.

The lesson is not that every teenager needs a passion by age sixteen. It is that they need to understand that development is uneven and often delayed. Many adults trace their sense of competence and purpose to experiences found only after formal schooling ended: in work, in relationships, or in unexpected interests.

What our teens need in the meantime is reassurance that struggle in the wrong setting does not define them.

 

 


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