Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Jennifer B. Wallace on the Consequences of Prioritizing Achievements Over Mattering EP 335

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

Discover the shocking truth about the toxic achievement culture and its impact on children's well-being. Join author Jennifer B. Wallace as she uncovers the devastating consequences of prioritizing achievements over mattering.  Jennifer is the author of the new book Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-What We Can Do About It. Want to learn the 12 philosophies that the most successful people use to create a limitless life? Pre-order John R. Miles’s new book, Passion Struck, releasing on February 6, 2024. Full show notes and resources can be found here:  https://passionstruck.com/jennifer-b-wallace-achievements-mattering/  Unlocking the Power of Mattering: How It Transforms Children's Well-being - Jennifer B. Wallace In this episode of the Passion Struck podcast, join host John R. Miles as he interviews Jennifer B. Wallace, author, and Journalist, as they explore the concept of mattering and its profound impact on children's well-being. With a focus on parents and caregivers, this episode delves into the importance of creating an environment where children feel valued and significant.  Brought to you by Netsuite by Oracle. Download NetSuite’s popular KPI Checklist, designed to give you consistently excellent performance at https://www.netsuite.com/passionstruck. Brought to you by Indeed: Claim your SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR CREDIT now at Indeed dot com slash PASSIONSTRUCK. Brought to you by Lifeforce: Join me and thousands of others who have transformed their lives through Lifeforce's proactive and personalized approach to healthcare. Visit MyLifeforce.com today to start your membership and receive an exclusive $200 off. Brought to you by Hello Fresh. Use code passion 50 to get 50% off plus free shipping!  --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/ZmIlZ3obiQQ  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://youtu.be/QYehiUuX7zs  Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Dr. Caroline Leaf on Parenting or a Healthy and Confident Mind. Watch the solo episode I did on the topic of Chronic Loneliness: https://youtu.be/aFDRk0kcM40  Want to hear my best interviews from 2023? Check out my interview with Seth Godin on the Song of Significance and my interview with Gretchen Rubin on Life in Five Senses. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  Passion Struck is now on the AMFM247 broadcasting network every Monday and Friday from 5–6 PM. Step 1: Go to TuneIn, Apple Music (or any other app, mobile or computer) Step 2: Search for “AMFM247” Network  

Coming up next on Passion Strock. I will say the most surprising thing I found in the research was that when you have a child in distress, the number one intervention, according to decades of resilience research, is to make sure the primary caregivers who are most often the parents that their well-being, their mental health, their support system is intact because a child's resilience rests fundamentally on a parent's resilience and a parent's resilience rests fundamentally on the depth and nurturance of their relationships. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host John Armeils And on the show we decipher the secrets tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom

into practical advice for you and those around you our mission is to help you unlock the power of Intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guest ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries and athletes.

Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 335 of PassionStruck, consistently ranked by Apple as one of the top 10 most popular health podcasts. And thank you to all of you who come back weekly to listen and learn, how to live better, be better, and impact the world. PassionStruck is now on syndicated radio

on the Brushwood Media Network, Catch Us Monday and Friday from five to six PM Eastern Time. Links will be in the show notes. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, we now have episode Sturder Packs, which are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we organize in the convenient topics. They give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either check it out on Spotify, or you can go to passionstruct.com slash stutterpacks to get started.

In case you missed it, last week I interviewed Rebecca Rosen, who's a psychic medium and author of the new book What Is Heaven. Rebecca serves as a mediator between two realms, the physical world which entails everyday problems and the spiritual world where she has gained insight revealing that every individual is born with the unique mission, and it's our responsibility to fulfill it in this Earth School. I also interview Jason Harris, who is the co-founder and CEO of Mechanism, a leading creative advertising agency. Jason has become a beacon of soulful persuasion, showing us that anyone can become a true artist in their own right.

We discuss his Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Soulful Art of Persuasion. Please check them all out, and I also wanted to say thank you so much for your ratings and reviews. We have now surpassed 10,000 reviews in the US alone, and I am so thankful for all your support. If you love today's episodes, we would so appreciate you giving it a five-star review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners. Today, we delve into a pressing issue that affects students everywhere. The toxic achievement culture, our special guest, Jennifer Perheni Wallace, an award-winning journalist and social commentator joins us to discuss her insightful book Never Enough when achievement culture becomes toxic.

And what we can do about it, in a world where success is prioritized above all else, students are facing unprecedented pressure to excel. Unfortunately, this drive for perfection has led to alarming rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harmed in some of America's highest achieving schools. Parents, educators, and community leaders find themselves grappling with a common dilemma. How can we guide our children towards excellence without crushing their spirits? Through her research and interviews with leading experts Jennifer Shed's light in our discussion,

on the deep rooted causes of toxic achievement culture, she reveals how this pressure to perform is not solely a matter of parental choice but is ingrained in our larger society. Children are increasingly internalizing the message that their worth is tied solely for their accomplishments, perpetuated by the media and our broader culture. Drung from interviews with researchers, educators, psychologists, and a comprehensive survey of nearly 6,000 parents and children, Jennifer uncovers what kids truly need from the adults in their lives, a sense of matter.

When parents and educators adopt the language and values of matter, children develop the resilience of confidence and psychological develop the resilience self-confidence and psychological security they need to thrive. In our discussion, Jennifer discusses the crisis plaguing today's teens, but also a practical framework for positive change. Hacked with memorable stories, this discussion urges us to rethink our approach to achievement and prioritize the well-being of our children. And now let's learn more about our esteemed guest, Jennifer Perheni Wallace.

Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now let that journey begin. I am absolutely thrilled and honored to have Jennifer Wallace on Passion Struck. Welcome, Jennifer. Thank you so much for having me. And as I did my research, I found that you like to go by Jenny, so that's what I'm going to refer to you as for the rest of the interview. Perfect.

Jenny, I'd like to start these interviews out by giving the audience an opportunity to get to know you a little bit. I understand that after graduating from Harvard, you worked for 60 minutes as an associate producer for eight years. Can you share any special memories from your time working with the likes of Mike Wallace, Leslie Stahl, Andy Rooney, Ed Bradley, Vicki Maybury, Brian Gumball? I can't believe the people that you got to meet. It was amazing. Steve Kroft at Bradley. My gosh, it was a couple of decades ago now, plus.

It was extraordinary to be surrounded by such talent. And I don't know if you know this, but 60 minutes, at least back then, operated very much like mini production companies. So I worked exclusively with Morley Safer. I would find stories. I would go on the ground and pre-interview people helped to put together a wish list of who we'd want on to talk about the story that we were going to shoot with him, draft some questions. Then the

producer and I would work out scripts, just giving Morley a kind of outline. Morley in particular, he had a very old-fashioned typewriter. And so he would get our drafted script and he'd within 30 seconds improve it to a level that would just had the touch of Morley safer. I feel like I learned from the very best in the business. And just as a personal aside, Mike Wallace was also working there at the time. I didn't get a chance to actually work with him,

but he for several years tried to set me up with his grandson. And for several years, I said, that is so kind, but I'm good. I have a boyfriend, and then I broke up with my boyfriend, and he asked me to just go on one date. And so I thought, all right, I'll just go on one date and then he won't, he'll stop asking.

And that was 23 years ago. So worked out. I wondered, but I wasn't going to ask if there was a connection there. What a story. It was a good story. Mike said he just does another little aside. Mike said that he would shaperone the date and then Arifat called and said he would allow Mike to interview him. And so Mike had to go and fly to the Middle East and Peter and I had our first date

without Mike Wallace shaper running. Worked out. Well, speaking of the Middle East and I just thought of this a couple years ago, I got to meet Laura Logan and it was interesting and I know she was on 60 minutes as well, but she was doing this very hush talk to a number of veterans like myself. And this was just after we had

pulled out from Afghanistan. And I didn't realize until I heard her speak with so much passion, just how important to her as a journalist the Afghani interpreters were as they were to soldiers in the field. She talked about on one or two occasions, they actually saved her life. She was as large an advocate as the service members were getting some of these Afghani interpreters and loyalists who are cause out of the country. I don't think we think about the harm that some of these journalists put themselves in to tell their stories. the harm that some of these journalists put themselves in to tell their stories. Yeah, and also the harm that the interpreters do to helping the journalists tell their stories.

It's really, it's extraordinary. Talk about purpose and meaning when you're risking your life for a cause. That is the deepest, I think, sense of purpose. Well, I want to ask you just one more question about your time at 60 minutes. I understand that you were part of the team that won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for a story that you did on homeless children. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, that story has really stuck with me. We were covering a school that is now no longer an existence called the Papas School in Arizona. And it was the first school that was set up exclusively for children who were homeless. The Coalition for the Homeless, the National Coalition for the Homeless based in Washington, D.C. are advocates for the homeless. And they understandably were quite concerned with separating out homeless students from the rest of the population. Was it stigmatizing? Were the standards as high? This was in their eyes the wrong approach. And so we went on the ground and we interviewed families.

And I just remember my first day there, I met a family. I have never really talked about this. I met a family of five. The mother was a single mother on and off with her husband. And she was living in a motel. And it was infested with mice and with bugs, and the water came out brown. She had no place to refiturate things for the kids,

and it was really just musty and horrible. I was talking with her daughter, who was about 10 years old at the time, and she later went on and was interviewed for the piece. And I asked her about the school. She was attending the Papa School and more Lee asked her what is it that is her greatest wish and she said to have a place to lay my head that is safe. That is my greatest wish and the family had been going from motel to living in a car. And that stuck with me.

The homeless is something that I've been passionate about from my childhood. When I was an undergraduate, I worked at the only student-run homeless shelter in the country, which was up at Harvard and Harvard Square. What I learned in working with the homeless people that I met are lessons that I mean, Trump anything I learned in college. And I'm currently on the board of the coalition for the homeless here in New York, and I can't

think of a better use of my time than helping our most vulnerable neighbors. I'm so glad you brought that up. I as part of a church program spent a number of years where when it got cold down here in Tampa, Florida, which doesn't happen that often, but when it did, I would volunteer at the homeless shelters. And what really struck me

from talking to so many of the people, many of which were veterans, but there were doctors and lawyers and people from all walks struck me from talking to so many of the people, many of which were veterans, but there were doctors and lawyers and people from all walks of life. And I remember talking to this prominent cardiologist who was now homeless and he had a mental breakdown

over the death of a patient he thought he could save and he ended up turning to drugs and it led to one thing after another. He lost his family. He lost his medical license. He lost everything and he was just telling me about how close any of us are to being in the same position. But then how difficult it is once you find yourself there to climb out of it because there are not very many avenues to it. I think it's similar to coming out of the prison system, I would guess, that they face.

So what a worthy cause you're involved in. So thank you for sharing that. Today we're going to be talking, speaking of children, a lot about the topic of children and teenagers. And you wrote this incredible new book, which releases this week called Never Enough, when achievement culture becomes toxic and what we can do about it.

And I wanted to ask you, what inspired you to delve into the topic of toxic achievement culture and write this book? So in academic circles, when a researcher is studying a topic that is close to their own hearts, they nickname it, Me Search. I will say writing this book was very much a Me Search project. I'm a journalist. I grew up in high-achieving communities, went to high-achieving schools. I have three teenagers and I was noticing how different my

childhoods were compared to my own. I was confused by it. And I remember standing on the sidelines of my eight-year-olds travel soccer team in the sleeting rain and looking around and thinking, how did we get here? I'd traveled an hour and a half to take them to a game. How did we get here? I'd traveled an hour and a half to take them to a game. How did we get here? Why are we even doing this? Why are we all standing on

the sidelines of eight-year-olds devoting our days to travel soccer? What has happened over the last several years? So those things were as percolating in my mind. And then in 2019, I wrote an article for the Washington Post about how students in what researchers call high achieving schools, those are public and private schools around the country where most of the students go on to four-year colleges where the standardized test scores are high where AP classes are offered. students attending these competitive schools were now officially an at risk group. After kids in poverty, kids with incarcerated parents, recent immigrants, children living in foster care, it's now these groups. And they are at risk for clinical rates of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, disorder anywhere from two to six time

national averages. My kids are attending these competitive high achieving schools and I wanted to know what I could do in my own home to buffer against it, to protect them. I was going to ask you about that article. So I'm glad you shared it. I'm interested to know what impacted it receive and did the response surprise you. Oh my gosh, the response really surprised me. It went viral. Ahead of schools shared it with parents and their communities. Other parents talked about how

it was posted on the school bulletin board as soon as you walk in. I received countless emails to my personal website asking me for more information. It really started me on this journey to unpack why achievement has become toxic in so many children's lives and what we could do about it. So it was a big impact. I will tell you, speaking of surprises and impact, before I wrote the book, I wanted to make sure that the achievement pressure that I was reading about and hearing about and seeing in my own community. I wanted to make sure it wasn't just a few select communities around the country or confined to the coasts. With the help of a researcher

at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I conducted a first of its kind parenting survey. And I wanted to get to the coasts. With the help of a researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I conducted a first of its kind parenting survey. And I wanted to get to the roots of what parents were feeling. And I wanted to know, was this something that was being felt everywhere? So the researcher said to me, okay, we need to get a sample size of a thousand. I said, okay, all right, I think that's doable. And then within a few days over 6,500 parents had filled out the parenting survey. It had shown up on parenting websites. What I found was that this was not confined to the coast. At the end of the survey, I asked parents if they would be willing to be interviewed for my book, either anonymously or with their names attached to email me. And I left my email at the

end of the survey and hundreds of parents reached out. That set me on a journey. I traveled to Maine. I traveled to Washington State, to Cleveland, Ohio, to Jackson, Wyoming, to Connecticut, to Pennsylvania, to Florida. I went all over the country to interview families. I spoke with families who at lost loved ones to suicide whose kids had dropped out of school because of the intense pressures. And then I started shifting my focus and looking for who were the kids who were thriving, despite the pressures that these parents had identified in the survey. Who was thriving? What did these kids have in common? What was home life like? What was school

like? What were their peer relationships like? What did they see as their place in the larger community? I wanted to know if there were common threats. I found about 15 things that these wealthy achievers had in common as I was looking for a framework to present my findings to parents. I came across an idea, a psychological construct called mattering. And mattering, it's been around since the 1980s, it was first conceptualized by Morris Rosenberg who conceptualized self-esteem. And what he found was that teenagers who enjoyed a healthy level of self-esteem felt like they mattered to their parents that they were important and significant.

Over the last several decades, the research on mattering has started to really pick up. And the definition that really resonates with me, what I saw in the healthy students that I interviewed for this book, is that these students felt valued for who they were at their core, by their family, by their schools, by their communities, and they were dependent on to add meaningful value back to their families, to their schools, and to their larger communities. That developed this high level of mattering that served as a protective shield against the stress and anxiety in their environments. It didn't mean that these kids didn't have failures. It didn't mean that they weren't

anxious and depressed sometimes. But mattering served as like a buoy that would help pick them up when they stumbled. That was a long answer to your questions. Jenny, I typically prepare about 30 questions for these interviews because I never know what direction they're going to go and sometimes they go just like I want them to and then sometimes I get answers like that and I'm very glad I prepared more questions because you covered about three or four that I was going to ask you in that answer. But I'm glad that you brought up mattering because I recently did an interview with Seth Godin and he has written a new book if you haven't read it called The Song of Significance. It's an incredible book, very short and to the point. He and I had an enlightening conversation about how so much of today's work environment

dismisses the importance of people feeling that what they do matters. It's another thing, when I think about it, as you brought up about its impact on children, it got me thinking if so many people today who are raising kids feel like they lack significance in what they're doing, because I think that this is a huge issue right now to why 85% of people feel disengaged with their jobs. Do you think there's any tide to that?

And this idea of lack of significance for adults and that it's getting passed on to our children and they're feeling this lack of mattering as well because of the pressure and maybe the influence that their parents are putting on them? Oh, yes. I will say the most surprising thing I found in the research was when you have a child in distress, the number one intervention, according to decades of resilience research, is to make sure the primary caregivers who are most often the parents that their well-being, their mental health, their support system is intact because a child's resilience rests fundamentally on a parent's resilience and a parent's

resilience rests fundamentally on the depth and nurturance of their relationships. So when you have parents all day long going to the office where eight, nine, 10 hours a day, they are made to feel that they don't matter. They don't have a voice. They could be the next layoff. They're not recognized for the efforts they're putting in. How could they then show up every day after work to their children as first responders to

their kids' distress? Where do they have that resilience? Where do they have that strength when it's been knocked out of them 8, 9, 10 hours a day? I think there's absolutely a connection between not mattering at work and both not having the resilience to be there in the way we need to be for our children in distress, but also that if we're not modeling our own mattering, where are our children learning it?

Children learn their sense of mattering first at home. That's the first place where they learn whether they are valued and significant and whether their self-worth is not contingent on their performance. They're growing up in environments and we're all living in environments. Where are worth to our companies is 100% contingent on our performance. So as a society, we don't do a good job on delivering, on mattering. The researchers who study it say that after the need

for food and shelter, it is the need to matter that drives all of human behavior for better and for worse. For better, when we feel like we matter, we show up to the world in positive ways. We see abundance. We see cooperation instead of hypercompetition. When we don't feel like we matter, when we have low levels of mattering, it can cause us to act out in destructive ways. Oh, I don't matter to you. Well, I'll show you, I matter.

A school shooter is the most tragic example, a long answer to your question. But yes, the adults in children's lives, teachers, parents, coaches, they're mattering, the researchers who study mattering are saying that the levels their mattering, the researchers who study mattering are saying that the levels of mattering are the lowest ever in the adult populations that they are surveying. Well, one of the most fundamental is I too have a book coming out in February. I devoted

the introduction of it on this whole topic. Because I think so many people today, myself included, we're a mask of pretense because we are trying to live up to societal norms of what we should be instead of living the authentic life that we are supposed to be living. And I think that this is just a huge issue that is not getting reported enough. I like you agree that the thing gets passed down

to the kids who then pass it down to someone else unless we put a stop to it, which is one of the things I'm trying to do in my book. But I have another concept that I have brought up, I don't talk about it that frequently. What you just said about people who feel like they don't matter or don't have significance and they end up doing things that compromise their goals. I think we end up becoming our own visionary arsonist. We end up because of a

lack of the things that we feel. Ar some of the very visions and goals and aspirations that we long for because of this feeling. But I throw that out and see what reaction you might have to it. I would agree with you. I went in search of a solution to that never enough feeling that you're describing. I describe the never enough feeling of our young students, but I also talk about the never enough feeling that you're describing. I describe the never enough feeling of our young students,

but I also talk about the never enough feeling of the adults in their lives. What the research points to as an intervention to solve this never enough, I'm not good enough, my worth is contingent. It sounds like a simple solution because it is, but it's actually quite profound and deep. So just as our children need to be loved unconditionally by us,

to be seen and known for the unique people they are at their core away from their achievements, the adults in their lives also need to be surrounded by people, adults in their lives, who see, who they are at their core, who love them unconditionally, who remind them of their worth when they're feeling down. As I was traveling the country meeting parents in these communities, it wasn't that the parents didn't have friends. They pretty much all had friends.

What they didn't have was the time and the bandwidth to invest in these kinds of friendships, these relationships, so that they could be a deep source of support, a relationship someone they could come to when they're in distress, when they're questioning their worth. We just don't have these solid, deep relationships anymore. And that is the epidemic of loneliness that our Surgeon General is talking about. We have prioritized, as you said, what researchers would call materialistic goals, career success,

material success, over intrinsic goals of caring relationships, of being a good neighbor, what those intrinsic goals give us is social proof that we matter. We could get the big promotion and we could get the fancy car and we could feel like we matter, but deep down we know it's just these things

that are the facade of mattering. When you invest in your friendships, when you are vulnerable, when you learn how to depend on people and allow people to depend on you, you get a sense of value and worth that really gives proof to your value in a deep, meaningful, profound way. Thank you so much for sharing that. That was really profound. I just wanted to give the audience two great episodes that they could refer to for more on this topic.

One was with Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunsted, who's a professor at Bring Him Young and the foremost expert on loneliness and the epidemic in the world. And we had a great conversation about its causes and what she thinks are some of the solutions to addressing it. If that's something that listeners feeling, I also did a great episode with Bob Waldinger, who leads the Harvard adult study of advanced aging, which found

that relationships amongst everything else are the key to living a happy life. And that is a really good episode that really goes into this importance of relationships regardless of age. I just wanted to bring those two up. And speaking of interviews last year, I was fortunate enough to interview my friend Susan Cain. And I talked to her about her book, Bittersweet. But during our discussion, she talked about visiting her alma mater Princeton and discovering that so many of the students were falling into what she introduced to me was the effortless perfection trap. And I wanted to ask you, how does this effortless perfection relate to toxic achievement? Are they the same thing?

They're definitely related. Effortless perfection, the way I understand it, is the idea that you have to have a facade. Schools call it the Penn Face University of Pennsylvania has the Penn Face where you don't show your stress. Stanford has the Stanford duck move or something like that where you can envision a duck furiously pedaling under the water but on the surface they're gliding. That effortless perfection that facade creates a barrier of really being truly known. So the roots of perfectionism are really take place in childhood. The researchers that I spoke to about this,

and I spoke with the leading researchers on perfectionism, and actually one of them, Gordon Flet, who created the perfectionism scale that researchers use, has actually turned his attention to mattering because he sees it as a solution to perfectionism. And in his view, and I have to agree with him, there's no such thing as a healthy perfectionist. That perfectionism is rooted in childhood, often the belief by a child that they need to be perfect in order to be worthy of appearance, love and support. Perfectionism then is really a life-saving connection to a parent. Right? If you feel as though you have to be perfect to be loved,

if you are not perfect, you'll be abandoned, you will choose perfection every time. But what that does is, over time, it really deteriorates the person's self-esteem. They can adopt a false sense of self, where they basically go through life, pleasing other people, and presenting themselves in a way that others, they think others want them to be.

What the perfectionist lacks is the vulnerability to be really known. That is such a painful state of affairs. I will say, because I asked researchers, how can I prevent this perfectionism from taking root in my own families, in my own children? And Rick Weisbord at Harvard's Making Caring Common said to me, when I was asking to praise, play into perfectionism, you praise your kids too much, do they feel like they

always have to be perfect? He said to me, the self becomes stronger, less by being praised than by being known. If we want to try to help prevent perfectionism from taking root in our kids, one effective way we can do that is by getting to know our kids intimately, getting a PhD in what makes them uniquely ticked. That is separate from any of their achievements, like for my son, it's his sense of humor, and really taking note of that and noticing our kids at every term. As a parent of 19 and 25-year-old kids, I can completely relate to what you're saying about going back and getting a PhD into better understanding their minds and their

behaviors and how to influence it in better ways. It became very apparent to me as early as my kids were in middle school of the mental health crisis amongst youngsters today. In fact, I was interviewing Harvard psychiatrist and researcher, Dr. Chris Palmer, who came out with a great book last year called Brain Energy, and he's been studying this too. In our interview, he talked about the steady rise in all mental illness and that it is especially acute in younger adults.

And this rise is often attributed to COVID or things like social media use, but I only think that they're a small part of the overall problem. And it's something that you argue as well, that you think it has more to do with achievement pressure. And I was hoping you could share your insights on how this push that children feel to succeed is directly contributing towards childhood suffering. When you look at what is the biggest task in adolescence,

it is developing a strong sense of self and knowing who you are and building your identity. When you are getting messages in your environment, in your society, on social media, in the classroom, at home, that achievement comes first. That's what matters most. Kids lose the time and the energy that should be spent figuring out who they are, what makes them uniquely tick. Instead, they focus on these external hoops to jump and the path that's laid out before them. You talked about the suffering of adolescents and young adults, and I interviewed and surveyed 518 to 30-year-olds, and I asked

them some open-ended questions, and they talked about the meaninglessness of their lives. One, in particular, said he devoted his entire childhood to getting onto an Ivy League school, he got into the Ivy League school and dropped out because he was completely burnt out. What we do when we focus so much on achievement, we prevent our kids from developing their true authentic selves. And that is the greatest task for adolescents. And that is what enables the child to go into the world and understand who they uniquely are. What are their strengths?

What do they bring to the world? How can they contribute in a meaningful way so that they can see themselves as part of a whole? It's interesting. Earlier this week, interviewed Dr. Hatandra Wadwa who teaches at the Columbia Business School. When he started teaching at Columbia 20 years ago, he started to observe that every single thing that they were teaching these future leaders was how to lead others,

but they were not doing any coursework on how to lead themselves. He ended up proposing to the dean the course called Personal Success, which has now become one of the most popular courses at the business school and he has recently come out with a book called Inner mastery outer impact what he was trying to do here with this book was to show people that if you want to have that outer impact of influencing the world that you really have to know and understand your authentic self in order to do that. And I think what you're saying in many ways is some of the same things, is teaching people to really get grounded and to be happy with who

they are instead of trying to live up to all the hype that surrounds us and is thrust at us at what seems to be all angles. I'll get your listeners a really tangible thing that they can do. Many adults and children don't know what their natural strengths are, who their deep authentic self is, how they show up to the world, what strengths they show. There is something called the Via character survey, which was developed by the leading researchers on positive psychology, Marty Seligman and Christopher Peterson at Michigan, and also dozens of others researchers.

And it's a free online quiz that adults can take. And there's also a VIA quiz for children. can take and there's also a via quiz for children. And what it does is it gives you a sense of what your natural strengths are. And then what you can do with your kids, and I've done this with my kids, our whole family has taken this survey, when my kids are having an obstacle, we look at their strengths, and I say, which strength could you use to overcome that obstacle? What can you do? So, for example, my daughter, when we took the quiz, she was in eighth grade, and there was drama in the lunchroom.

She was going through like a period of lunchroom drama. I said, look at your strengths. What could you use to solve this problem? She said, humor, because she's very sarcastic and funny. She said, I can make a joke the next time somebody tries to provoke somebody at the table, I can make a joke the next time somebody tries to provoke somebody at the table. I can make it a joke and she did. She got through it. I highly recommend you can just Google up via character survey. It's free it's 10 to 15 minutes, it's scientifically validated and will give you a sense of what your strengths are and what your kids strengths are. You can reinforce them and

help pointed out to them. That's one way to get a PhD in your kids. Follow-on question to that would be how has your own research influenced your parenting approach to promote healing and what I like to call intentional growth? Oh my gosh, in so many ways. I feel very grateful that I had four years of learning from the leading researchers and psychologists and speaking with literally hundreds of families and educators around the country. I've started to already implement things in my own house. So the first thing, the leading researcher, Sonia Luthar, who did a lot of this research that I quote in the book, she's recently passed away. But I asked her, what's the first thing I should do? I now, I quote in the book, she's recently passed away, but I asked her, what's the first thing I should do? I now am getting this information, how do I start implementing

it in my home? And she said, I have two phrases for you to keep in mind, minimize criticism, prioritize affection. And so that is just a simple way of remembering what our job is as parents. She also said, make your home a haven from the pressure. We all think it's our job to raise our kids to reach their potential, but they're living in a toxic environment where they are getting these messages to achieve more, do more, reach higher. And that home needs to be a place to recover from those pressures. One other thing I learned from a parent that I interviewed was to make the thinking explicit. Meaning that you love your child unconditionally. You love them for who they are at their core.

Make that explicit. And she showed an experiment with a $20 bill. Whenever her children come to her with a failure or they didn't get on the ATM or they didn't do well on a test or their friends were icing them out, she would reach into her wallet and she'd grab a $20 bill. And she'd say to her child, do you want this? And the kid would say, yes, of course. And then she would say, okay, hang on. She'd crumple up the $20 bill, she'd stomp it on the floor, get it all dirty, and then very dramatically dunk it in a glass of water. And then she would hold up the $20 bill to her kid and she would say, do you still want it? The soggy, dirty $20 bill. And the child would say, yes, of course. And she said, like you are worth,

this $20 bill is like your worth. It doesn't matter if you are dirty, if you are wrinkled, if you are sopping wet, if you have gotten cut from a team, if you've gotten a bad grade, your worth is your worth. Like this $20 bill, it never changes. And to me, that was such a profound and in a way countercultural way of teaching kids that they are worthy for who they are, not their failures and not their successes either.

I think that's a great story and a great illustration of a parenting technique that the listeners could use. I know it's difficult in my case. And I think all kids are very different. My son, we had to push him more to achieve at least at first and then reach that development stage where he got it. Now, he has done extremely well after going through that tiny period. My daughter on the other hand is one who puts the pressure completely on herself.

And we try to back away and tell her, we're not expecting you to do any of the things that you're doing. And we don't expect you to put the pressure on, but it's difficult when they continue to do that, even though everything you were trying to do is to take that feeling away from them. Do you have any advice if a parent is facing that situation? I interviewed a few parents like that in my book. One of the mothers that I interviewed talked about taking the kettle off the burner. What she did was what you're saying, she was very explicit about her expectations for her child. And it was in many ways countercultural. She said,

I don't want you taking all the AP classes. I want you to be ambitious basically for more. I want you to be ambitious in your friendships. I want you to be ambitious about your health. I want you to be ambitious about your relationships. What this mother was telling me is as a parent, we can guide our children. It's hard because your daughter is older. Parents who have kids living at home have more control in a way. They can put up those bumpers. They could say the lights are out. I had another mother I interviewed, the internet went out at 11.30 at night every night, no matter what, even if her son had a test, they knew it and that internet went off

so that her son could get eight hours of sleep before school. There are things we can do when our kids are younger to try to help them build a life That they will not have to one day try to escape from With drugs and alcohol and overworking But it's hard. We live in a culture that sends those messages to us that we are only Worth our next achievement. That's what I'm trying to do with this book is to help parents go back to

the very basics of valuing our kids for who they are at their core because actually what that will do is give their kids this healthy fuel that will last throughout life and help to prevent burnout. I'm glad you brought up the whole sleep aspect because that's something I did want to cover with you. Last year I had an enlightening conversation with Dr. Sarah Medneck, who's a prominent research expert on sleep at University, California, Irvine, and she wrote the book, The Power of the Downstate, which is about the importance of downtime.

And rest and downtime are often overlooked in high achieving and grind culture environments. I know for me, it certainly was when I was in the military and when I've been in some of these high pressure jobs, but it's also something that, as you were just explaining, our kids feel as well. Why is it so crucial to teach high achieving kids and those immersed in this grind culture, how to rest and why it's important to help them understand why it's so vital to do so. So Lisa DeMour is a child psychologist that I interviewed for this book. She said to me, sleep is the hill she will die on as a parent that sleep in her research and in other research. Sleep is the glue she said that holds humans together.

Without sleep, you're already operating without the same coping skills. You can turn to unhealthy habits to keep going. Kids need to be given this message and we do as adults as well in our grind culture, that we are worthy of rest, that we are worthy of taking the time to do more than just work in our capitalistic structure. It's not just rest to be more productive. It's rest because we are worthy of rest, because every moment in our lives isn't about achieving something. In our home, sleep is hugely important and I also model it. I go to bed very early and I wake up very early. What that does in making the parameters around sleep is that you help your child become more energy-efficient. You say to them, you cannot stay up until 3am. It's not going to happen in our house. The internet is going to go off. So you have to get your work done. You have to be more efficient in getting your work done. I have more tips like that in the book, but it is the glue that holds us together. Mental health,

achievement, our relationships, we need sleep to show up to be our best selves. I don't know about you, but I certainly feel it when I am performing at my best and sleeping well, and when I'm not getting those rems in and feel like I have cognitive fog. We've spent a lot of time today talking about unhealthy achievers. I wanted to talk about healthy achievers and when examining healthy achievers, what commonalities do they share, what types of mindsets and behaviors do they exhibit? Yeah. For this book, I went in search of what did these healthy achievers had in common? What I will say is they, first of all, mattered to themselves. They knew that they were worthy of rest.

They understood when they worked best, they put time in their calendar to actually take a break. One student I talked to actually had in his calendar take these two hours for yourself. First of all, they had this sense of value and they protected themselves. They didn't drink excessively or use drugs because they didn't wanna do that to themselves.

The other thing that these healthy achievers had in common is that they knew their strengths, their parents and other adults in their lives helped them use those strengths and match them to genuine needs in the community. So it wasn't, oh, I want to do a clothing drive because I want to get rid of the clothes of my closets. But actually having the tools to go and find out what is needed in my community right now, what can I do to help fill that need? So centering the need on the people

who actually need the help. One of the things that really stood out to me was that their parents gave them the mindset and the skill set of interdependence. So often as parents, we believe that our job is to raise independent adults, which of course it is. Like, of course, that's a priority for me. But what I have found to be more profound is to raise children and young adults who believe that they are worthy of reaching out for help and that they are worthy relationship partners

who can be depended on for others. What these parents focused on was helping their child recognize that it takes courage to ask for help. They modeled this behavior for their own children. Actually, this in my own home, my daughter was struggling on a paper. She was in eighth grade and I, her teacher had given her a lot of comments and I pulled up the first article I wrote for the science section of the Washington Post by a very seasoned editor and it had tons of edits on it. And I said to her, look, it was red, it was a bloodbath. I at first was embarrassed to need this much help, right? I'm a journalist, why do I need this much help? But then I looked at it as this editor thought I

was worthy enough to invest in. And so I was grateful for the time that they invested in it. And so they helped their kids understand the mindsets of interdependence. Not talking about co-dependence. I'm talking about this mutual, healthy reliance. That was a major takeaway for me. Yeah, I had a similar experience when I was in the military. I worked for gentlemen named Commander Bill Fitzimmon's. And he was a stickler on writing.

And I think because of him, my writing is what it is today because I can't tell you how many times I'd have to rewrite documents for him. About two years later, finally, I think for the first time he gave me one that was completely clean and said, I think he finally have got it. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing how he invested in you? It really makes you feel valued. It does. I'm sure he didn't want to have to do that. I didn't think they were badly written myself,

but he wanted them to emulate him because these messages were coming from his authority. And so I had to make sure I got his voice right and how he liked to have things communicated. It was such an important learning lesson for me. Speaking of learning, what steps can schools and educators take to create a healthier academic environment that supports students' emotional well-being,

mental health and growth rather than solely focusing on STEM courses and performance. Yeah, well, I think educators are wise on the research. I think it is accepted now in really every school that relationships and connection are needed for learning to happen. So connections between students and teachers, connections between students and students, particularly, well, in COVID, what I found in a lot of schools that I was speaking with is that they were really prioritizing relationships before rigor. I would say that's one thing a school can do is to really drill down and make sure that every student in that classroom feels like they matter to at least one of their peers and one adult at school.

And that is the pathway to learning. So schools are very strong about connection and belonging. They understand its importance. be a first step is to make sure that every student feels like they matter to one friend and to one adult. There are schools that do this to have nonprofits like authentic connections or challenge success come into your school and give you a mental health well-being card. Really look at the mental health of your students and your teachers. We talked about earlier that a child's resilience rests fundamentally on their caregivers resilience. It's also true in the classroom. A teacher needs resilience. They need to feel like they matter too,

so that they can be the source of support for the students in their classroom. Many teachers today are experiencing levels of burnout we have never seen. I would say prioritize also the teachers in your school and the educators and make sure they have supportive relationships within the environment for them to be resilient. Okay, and then the last thing I wanted to ask you

before we just go into a couple of final questions is in the book you offer a toolkit for positive change and you've been talking about some of the strategies throughout but can you highlight what this toolkit is and maybe just give the listener an idea of if they read the book what this toolkit might help them to do? At the end of the book I give how to type tips for things that parents can do within their own home, questions for reflection, plot a prioritize affection, how to make the thinking visible, things like that. Then I also talk about how to for educators and schools and what they could

be focusing on and centering, mattering in their communities. I also talk about the wider community and I talk about the importance of community-wide well-being and belonging. Our kids are not suffering in isolation. This is a systems problem. Finally, I have advised for at the university level. It's a long list.

It's several pages long of what from the micro home to the macro society what we could do to start buffering against this excessive pressure to achieve. I have done a number of episodes around systems change. It is so interesting how so many things whether it's climate change or world hunger that we're facing or loneliness, are going to require a system's level change to make the wholehearted efforts and concerted efforts that we need to see things move from where they are today to where we want them to go in the future. I completely agree with you on that point. I wanted to end by asking you if a listener or reader of the book picked it up or listened to today's episode, what are some of the most important things

that you would want them to get from their time investing in reading or listening to this podcast? I think the first thing I would want them to know and to keep in mind is that as the adults in our children's lives, we need to start prioritizing our own mental health and well-being and firming up our own support system so that we can be those source those first responders to our kids struggles. And we do not live in a society that supports adult mental health, whether it be at work or in the larger community. But that's one thing that I'd really like listeners to think about is how important it is to have people in our lives who will put our oxygen mask on for us. We always hear, oh, as parents, you have to put your oxygen mask on first. Well, when you are really desperate, what you really need is someone in your life

to see that and reach for the mask and put it on for you. And that took me a long time to actually understand how important it is to invest in our relationships for the betterment of the people within our home. So that's one thing. Another thing I would say is to learn about mattering because mattering not only will help our children, it'll help us in the workplace, it'll help us in our larger communities. It is, to me, the most foundational part of living a life of meaning and fulfillment and well-being is to live a life of mattering.

Well, I love that you ended on that and I'm going to have the book everywhere in the show notes, etc. If people wanted to learn more about you, where is the best place for them to go? Yeah, you could head over to my website, JenniferBewalis.com. And if you pre-ordered the book, where you order the book, there's some extra resources, exclusive stuff on my website. You could also head over to themattery-movement.com. That's a nonprofit that I co-founded with some highly esteemed colleagues to bring mattering from the Ivy Tower

into people's homes and workplaces and communities and schools, so that we could actually use the research and implement it in our everyday lives. Well, Jenny, thank you so much for being on the show today. It was such an honor and to the audience, this is such a well-researched and written book. I wholeheartedly encourage those who have kids to pick this up because I think it's so important to helping you go down that path of earning that PhD to better understanding them and why that's so important. Thank you so much for having me.

This has been great. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Jennifer Wallace, and I wanted to thank Jennifer, Stephanie Brody, and also Penguin Random House for the privilege and honor of having her appear on today's show. Links to all things Jennifer will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Videos are on YouTube at both PassionStruck clips, as well as John Armiles. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, we are now in syndicated radio on the Brushwood Media Network.

Catch us on your evening commute every Monday and Friday from 5 to 6pm Eastern time. Links will also be in the show notes. and newsletter on passionstruck.com or you can catch us on all the social platforms at John Armiles. You're about to hear a preview of the Passion Strike Podcast interview I did with Dr. Jill Bolt-Taylor. We discuss her transformative book, Holborn Living, where Dr. Taylor guides us on a groundbreaking understanding that led her to introduce the concept of four distinct characters within each of us. Left thinking, left emotion, right emotion, and right thinking,

empowering us to recognize their presence in our everyday lives. I call it the brain huddle because there are these four very specific groups of cells that result in very specific modules of abilities, skill sets. If I'm really four major characters, then getting them on the same page is to me, I truly believe the evolution of humanity. I think this is the ultimate goal, because that way, then, we have the ability to use all four skill sets, but to do it in a peaceful way, motivated by the collective whole of what we are of humanity as the value base. So I truly believe that whole brain living is the embodiment of the evolution of humanity.

Remember that we rise by lifting others. So share the show with those that you care about. And if you found today's episode useful, then definitely share it with those who could use the advice that we gave on today's program. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out there and become Ash and Strut. you