How defining success more broadly might help our kids to be less stressed and more excited about the future.
Episode 2: Values
Episode 3: Anxiety
Episode 4a: Struggle
Episode 4b: Challenges
Episode 5: Exploration
Conversations with Highschool Students.
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EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Meet Lauren, Luca and Anna: One High School Sophomore, One High School Junior and one College Freshman.
All from different parts of the country.
All trying to find that balance between being a high-achieving student and taking time to enjoy life and get to know themselves.
Here are some of the questions I asked them:
What does success look like to you? In your life now and moving forward? And where do your ideas of success come from?
What has your HIgh School experience been like? How do you spend your time? How much pressure do you feel to do really well? Where does that pressure come from?And what gets lost in the shuffle?
Have you had periods where you didnt feel so great mentally and emotionally?
Were you able to talk to your parents about it? If not, what held you back?
What makes you happy?
I hope you enjoy getting to know them and that you find our conversations as enlightening and interesting as I did.
The kids talk about how they define success and how society has defined success FOR them-and whether or not the two go together. These definitions-and the inherent anxieties that accompany them-seem to be handed over to our kids at an increasingly early age-maybe 5th or 6th grade. The louder the drumbeat becomes, the more difficult it is for them to spend the time and the effort on activities (or LACK of activities) that might truly enable them to discover themselves, their passions, their interests and the qualities and values that truly define long-term life satisfaction.
They are encouraged to self-define at such a young age-without really knowing who they are or what they want. And all of this pressure and expectation is hurting them-they are sleep-deprived, they are anxious and sometimes depressed.
They hesitate to speak with their parents about these struggles because they fear that parents won't understand, or won't be able to give them the support that they need, or perhaps they will just cause their parents stress-which is the last thing they want to do.