The "hero license" concept he concludes with seems pretty close to "90% of success is just showing up," and stories about how much a good attitude has an effect

The "hero license" concept he concludes with seems pretty close to "90% of success is just showing up," and stories about how much a good attitude has an effect on performance. However, family, education and class can all create the hero license condition. While I don't think he linked it, there is some anecdotal data (and now that I looked it up, research! https://jumpmath.org/us/research/ https://jumpmath.org/us/research/) from teaching kids math using an analogous hero license can have outsize results. I'd even take it a step further and suggest the hero license comes from a teacher who can act as a real coach invested in your success as opposed to someone just transmitting received knowledge. The greatness of the family members in the article suggests the means to transmit that license were present in each case.