I surveyed 500 young adults ages 18 to 30 and I asked them,

what do they wish their parents knew about any pressures they may have felt in high school?

And their responses were quite hard to read as a parent.

One student said, I wish they would have understood that grades are not everything.

Their pressure to be an overachiever was the catalyst for my depression and anxiety issues.

Another student wrote to me, it felt like my worth was tied to my grades.

And one student wrote, I wish my parents knew that it was okay for me to get less than

perfect grades sometimes. It's okay not to be exceptional at everything.

One in four kids feel like their parents love them more when they're successful.

And no matter how high they reached, the bar would just get higher.

It was never enough.

So we all want the best for ourselves and our kids and as parents, it's maybe one of the most

universal human drives. We want to thrive and succeed and see our kids or kids that we care

about or who are in our care do the same. But what if what's become the dominant achievement

focused definition of success is actually harming us and them, whether it's rooted in grades,

sports, relationships, admissions to the quote, best schools or jobs or rising up a certain

ladder that we're supposed to want to climb or just existing in this achievement obsessed

society with relentless pressure that we put on both ourselves and kids today. It's real and

it's coming at us from all directions. And according to a mounting volume of research and

command, if we're really being honest, it collapse of happiness and peace of mind and the rise

of anxiety and angst that we all see around us. This has been a wildly failed experiment.

So, originally this, if pushing ourselves and our kids to constantly achieve, achieve, achieve

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