It isn’t grit, or character, or any of the other words we throw at it. He had a voice in his head that could act as the adult in the room. What the voice actually isPsychologists have a boring name for the neighbourhood this lives in: locus of control. Private speech drops underground and becomes inner speech, the silent commentary you are running right now while you read this. It puts air between you and the panic, which is roughly the job a good adult does.