After high school, I eventually ended up at Brown University, and I remember one particular day vividly. My father picked me up at the airport after I flew back to Muscatine from Providence, and when we were driving home, he asked me, “So what are you thinking of studying?”

You see, my father knew all about uncertainty. He knew that it’s impossible to be sure about where you might end up in life. And he worried that his own success might have deprived his children of the opportunity to understand deeply the meaning of running away from the noodle police while, of course, finishing your noodles. He wanted me to have a skill and he wanted me to butt my head up against the joy but also the hard reality of finishing medical school, finishing residency and caring for patients in life-or-death situations.

I’m so grateful to my father.

So far I’ve told you that life is uncertain, but you already knew that. What I really want you to know is that you have abundant tools to face that uncertainty and to lead an extraordinary life, even beyond your wildest dreams.

Roy Baumeister is a psychologist who has devoted his career to studying the qualities in human beings that lead them to achieve what he calls “positive outcomes.” In this fascinating field, researchers have found that two traits are most consistently associated with success: intelligence and willpower. In Baumeister’s book entitled Willpower, we learn that efforts to permanently increase intelligence have failed, but people can in fact improve their willpower. Baumeister and his colleagues have shown that taking certain actions to improve willpower is the surest way to a more successful life. Moreover, they’ve shown that willpower is like a muscle that can be built with practice, but also that if you don’t actively exercise your willpower, your capacity to do so will atrophy just like your stomach muscles if you stop doing sit-ups. They’ve even learned that because willpower is associated with a certain part of your brain, maintaining glucose levels in your blood to feed that part of your brain is critical for sustaining your willpower!

Looked at from another angle, a group of researchers has shown that, more than talent, practice is what determines mastery over any given skill or ability. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, popularized an important body of work that showed that the path to mastery required 10,000 hours of practice. Books with titles like “talent is overrated” have been published to make the point.

Now I want you to know that there’s really good news here, especially for Northeastern graduates. By graduating today, you’ve shown your families and the world that you have plenty of IQ points to accomplish anything you set out to achieve. Willpower, discipline and focus -- the essential qualities for success that everyone needs -- are in your hands to develop and build. As Baumeister shows in his book, you can indeed go to the willpower gym and come out mentally buff, ready to take on the world.

Now about the 10,000 hours it takes to achieve mastery. Well, because you’ve studied here at Northeastern, you’ve got a head start. My own estimate is that, through your cooperative education in which you’ve received both classroom knowledge and practical knowledge, you all deserve at least a couple of thousand hours of discount off the standard 10,000. Good for you and congratulations!

But in addition to thinking about uncertainty and willpower, there’s one more thing I want you to try to will yourself to remember today. I want you to think about how you can use time effectively and for good in this complex world.

Back in Iowa, my mother used to read to me the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. In Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he writes about understanding the urgency of the present. He writes about an experience with a white moderate -- an ally of the civil rights movement -- who wrote to him saying that he, Dr. King, was in too great a hurry and that “the lessons of Christ take time to come to earth.” African Americans, the moderate argued, would eventually -- eventually -- be granted their full civil rights.

Dr. King responded, and I quote: “Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time and a strangely irrational notion that there is something in the flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral. It can be used destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.” End quote.