Commit to a purpose mindset.
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Matteo Sloane was home on spring break when FBI agents showed up at his family’s home in Bel-Air at 6:15 a.m. to take his father to jail. When his father, Devin Sloane, returned home that evening after posting bail, Matteo, then a freshman at the University of Southern California, confronted him with a heart-wrenching question, “Why didn’t you believe in me?” Devin replied, “I never stopped believing in you, not even for one second … I lost sight of what was right, and I lost belief in myself.”
Devin is one of thirty-six parents who were criminally charged with cheating the college admissions system in order to ensure their children’s entry into top universities. Many of them have received prison time for using William “Rick” Singer’s services as a college admissions consultant to rig their children’s ACT/SAT scores or to disguise them as athletic recruits to ensure their entrance into elite universities.
In separate interviews by the Wall Street Journal’s Jennifer Levitz and Melissa Korn, each Sloane described intense anxieties about college that contributed to a pressure-cooker environment at home and school. This mirrored the accounts of other families drawn into the scheme. Here was a son who had an impressive academic record on his own merit. He spoke three languages fluently, was taking Advanced Placement classes, and was making the honor roll. Not the picture of a struggling student who needed to cheat to win. And yet we have a father sentenced to four months in prison and a son disillusioned by his family’s pursuit of success.
Varsity Blues is one of the most newsworthy academic scandals of the decade. It was a lightning rod for public outcry because it symbolized what so many families have come to resent about higher education—the power of privilege shrouded in the veneer of meritocracy. The families involved in the scandal were ridiculed across the internet for their lack of morals and brazen disregard of norms and laws. Throngs of people were quick to take to social media to deride the audacity of these horrible people using their privilege to tip scales already weighted in their favor. Criticizing these “bad” people is cathartic for parents because it validates feelings that the education system is rigged, and that the rich will cheat to maintain their power. The Varsity Blues scandal proved to many, once and for all, that “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is a farce.
However valid these sentiments might be, this scandal reveals a deeper, more insidious problem impacting families across the country. Consider those involved in the admissions scandal: celebrities, high-powered lawyers, venture capitalists, and investment bankers. Arguably some of the world’s most successful individuals, with all the financial, political, and social capital needed to lock up their children’s futures. Their kids were headed to material success on their own merits. Olivia Jade Giannulli, daughter of actress Lori Loughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, had already built a business and solid social media following as a beauty blogger. She had amassed 1.9 million YouTube subscribers and 1.3 million followers on Instagram. She had sponsorship deals with the biggest fashion businesses in the world, including Sephora and Dolce & Gabbana. These families had every advantage, yet acted deeply insecure about their kids’ futures.
To truly get the nature of this problem, we have to be willing to take a deeper look into our own hearts. We have to ask ourselves: Why in the world families who had it all would break the law and risk facing jail time? It’s tempting to cast stones and think of them as bad people with no moral compass. But is there a part of their story that resonates in us, though we hate to admit it? This is the part we can relate to—being scared about our children’s futures. Can’t we understand being so gripped by fear that we take matters into our own hands to ensure their success and happiness?
Varsity Blues isn’t just a story about other people. It’s a cautionary tale that can help us see ourselves more clearly. It’s a way to understand the precarious world our students live in. It’s a story that reveals how seeds of fear cause us to make the worst decisions. Our goal is to help parents and students break free of this fear. To do so, we have to first understand where it’s coming from.
As we write this book, the whole world’s attention has been consumed by the novel coronavirus. What started as a small outbreak at the end of 2019 exponentially exploded into a global pandemic. COVID-19 is one of the few historical events that has affected every living human. People have gotten sick and died, the global supply chain was disrupted, and economies collapsed. As the first global virus to strike in the digital age, we could track, in real time, the terrifying speed and mobility of its spread. Watching it was like standing on a beach, bracing against the impending approach of a tsunami.
And as we observed how people responded to the pandemic, especially in its early days, we gained insight into the way the human psyche works. In the spring of 2020, fears about a worsening outbreak led citizens around the world to stockpile their “pandemic pantries” with canned goods, hand sanitizer, and bottled water. Tech billionaires in Silicon Valley spent tens of thousands of dollars to keep chartered jets on “standby” in case they needed to suddenly flee the virus. The high-end real estate market in safe and livable places like Boise, Idaho, skyrocketed, as the country’s richest residents made their escape plans, buying houses sight unseen. Against the pleas of the CDC, people hoarded masks, bottled water, and toilet paper.1
Why, despite experts’ pleas, did people continue their stockpiling? If we can learn from this scarcity mentality, then we can gain insight into how we react to our fears for our kids’ safety and future. Research suggests that when people feel unsafe and insecure, they respond in predictable ways.
The more unsafe and insecure we feel, the more we search for security in the form of material resources.2 We seek safety and comfort in physical things.
This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint: when we are hungry, our stomachs growl and all we can think of is food. When we’re cold, we seek warmth. When we feel unsafe, we look for physical sources of relief. We focus like a laser beam on getting the material things that will make us safe. It wasn’t an actual shortage of toilet paper that made us run to Costco and clear the shelves—it was our perception of scarcity that did it. Our survival instincts kicked in and we fixated on stockpiling goods. The worry over not having enough supplies, not being able to maintain our lifestyle, being left behind if we weren’t proactively preparing for survival—these fears sometimes upstaged fears of the virus itself.
“Unprecedented” and “uncertain” were two of the most used adjectives describing COVID-19 times. But uncertainty—and the insecurity that comes with it—isn’t new to us. Americans have been plagued by a gnawing fear over their children’s future economic and emotional well-being since long before the pandemic. We fear that students won’t be able to find a job that earns them an honest living—especially when countless others are vying for the same positions in an increasingly volatile economy. But that’s not all. We fear for our kids’ mental health. Prior to the lockdowns, we were already navigating a world where youth in alarming numbers suffered from depression, anxiety, and near mental breakdown. The majority of parents fear that their students will struggle with anxiety and depression at some point in life.3 The world our kids inhabit feels dangerous. Seventy percent of adults feel that the world is “less safe” than it was during their childhoods.4 Even before COVID-19, rising social unrest, racial injustice, depression, and stress overwhelmed the resources available to overcome them.
In addition to this generalized fear, we worry for our students’ livelihood. Insecurity guides the values, motivations, and choices of young people, and the adults in their lives. This fear is as contagious as COVID-19. Not even the most privileged escape its grip. People share universal fears about their students’ future success and happiness.
In the next section, we expose two overarching threats responsible for the fear and insecurity that families are feeling. Then we show how these threats, and our responses to them, steer our interactions with students—from our motivations and decisions to our actions and behaviors. We’ll demonstrate how these well-intentioned responses hurt our students’ performance and mental health.
Increased income inequality. The gig economy. Automation and globalization. Rising cost of living and stagnant wages. Social injustices. All of these factors make it seem harder than ever for someone to survive, let alone thrive, in today’s economy. One of our biggest fears is that our students might not make it in the world—especially if they aren’t elite performers (or extremely lucky). They’ll struggle just to support themselves, much less find dignified, meaningful work. We worry that they’ll spend years financially dependent, paying off loans, living in our basements. They might even end up on the streets. These are real fears, and can be felt by any parent, even the most economically advantaged. And as “Covid Hoarding” taught us, when we feel unsafe, we value material resources all the more. In a parallel way, many seek solace and salvation in another scarce commodity—higher education.
College has long been hailed as a great investment. With the exceptions of billionaires like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg, the simple adage remains true: the more education you get, the more money you make.5 College graduates enjoy more job security.6 The great recession of 2008 erased more than 7.2 million American jobs.7 When the economy bounced back, 95 percent of jobs created went to people with at least some college education.8 And which college one attends is linked to salaries. Graduates of “elite” colleges can expect to earn more than graduates of other schools.9
These statistics suggest that in order to make it in today’s economy, students need a college degree. And advantages seem stacked for those who go to elite colleges. Problem is, the high-stakes game of college feels like anything but a sure bet. Admission to top universities is like finding a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. And as the numbers of applicants at the top colleges and universities have continued to rise, acceptance rates have dropped to near-record lows.10
Even for those accepted, the game isn’t won: paying for college is punishing. Attending public college costs $21,950 a year (up 60 percent from 2000). Attending private college costs $49,870 a year (up 45 percent from 2000). Depending on how long it takes to earn a degree (less than half of college-goers finish in four years),11 students can expect to pay anywhere from $85,000 to $300,00 for a diploma.
There’s more bad news: the returns on this investment are diminishing; college prices have grown eight times faster than wages in the United States.12 In response, students are taking on buckets of debt. As of 2021, Americans had racked up an astounding $1.75 trillion in loans.13 The 43.4 million students who took out student loans graduated with an average debt of $37,113. And graduates feel the impact: 52 percent of those who took on student loan debt didn’t feel it was worth it; 53 percent of millennials haven’t bought a home because their student loan debt made it impossible to get a mortgage.14
This high-risk, high-reward scenario has turned higher education into a double-edged sword. If you want a good career that affords you financial security, you need to go to college. But doing so entails an enormous financial risk, with no guarantee that it will pay off. College has become the ultimate catch-22; you need it to make money, but it might bankrupt you. And so students are caught in a vicious feedback loop: the need for economic security drives college aspirations, but the rising costs of college and increased competition for quality jobs make people feel more insecure. College attendance used to ensure security, but now it drives our insecurity, which makes us want it more, which makes it all the more scarce.
The bottom line is that there are real threats to students’ economic security. College has become an arms race. There are precious few seats at the so-called top schools. The greater problem than this reality, though, is our perception of it. Since economic success is correlated with attending these schools, we can adopt a certain self-destructive perception. We can view life as a zero-sum competition. We start to see success in college as a battle between winners and losers. People are either ahead or behind, and we better make sure it’s not our student on the short end of the stick. There’s a reality to the threats we worry over. Our students’ real-world survival and success are on shaky ground, especially if we define success in terms of wealth, power, and prestige. In response to this threat, we view life as a vicious, dog-eat-dog game of survival. We call this life view the performance mindset.
People with a performance mindset view life as a fierce, cutthroat competition. The goal is to win. The game is winner-take-all, and to the champion go the spoils. When we adopt this performance mindset, we pour our all into helping our kids be successful. And we will take down any obstacle in their paths to make it happen. This is the mindset that enabled Belle’s parents to get to the United States, and because of all they risked, she felt the need to make good on their bet. Winning at school felt like the way to make her parents’ sacrifice worth it.
This mindset is ubiquitous. Today’s parents are also referred to as snowplow parents—a term that, while pejorative, captures our determination and skill at leveling any and all obstacles that stand between our kid and success. We make helicopter parents look like amateurs. As heroic, impressive, and well-intentioned as we are, the snowplow approach can do students harm. The college admissions scandal showed what happens when snowplow parents take it too far. People who bribe SAT proctors and pay off college coaches aren’t the only ones guilty of snowplowing because of performance mindsets. Many of us would do anything short of breaking the law to ensure our kids’ “success.” In his book Dream Hoarders, Richard V. Reeves describes this as “opportunity hoarding,” and it includes leveraging “legacy admissions,” personal networks to land prestigious internships, and any means of helping your students become successful.15
So it’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black when we blame parents for losing their way as they try to ensure their kids’ success. While most of us don’t take it to the criminal extreme, we’re on the continuum. We desire the same outcome of success, albeit via more acceptable means. The most common strategy is to identify what our students excel at and “help” them be the best at that thing. Be it math or writing, soccer or piano, we push them to seek achievement that will be recognized and rewarded. Performance mindset parents are eager to provide all sorts of opportunities for their kids to explore various sports, musical instruments, and other extracurricular activities in hopes of unearthing hidden talent. Better still if it’s one that will make them appear “well rounded” and get them ahead in the college game. And once we detect these little sparks of special talent, we make it our mission to fan those flames—to coach, cajole, cheerlead our kids on to becoming the very best versions of themselves. We sign them up for travel soccer leagues, accelerated math courses, tutoring, private lessons.
We become all about “helping” our students reach their potential by pursuing whatever they’re best at doing. We focus our energies on making sure they pursue exactly the right opportunities and paths that will lead to success. We goad them into using their special gifts. Never mind whether they view these little gems as representing their best selves. That would be an added bonus, but otherwise it’s beside the point. The point is that they need to beat out the competition. Who can blame us? We are loving parents, desperate to help our students make it in the world.
Consider the following scenario. Six-year-old Talia joined a club soccer team. Her father wanted her to have fun, make some friends, and get some exercise and fresh air. However, he quickly realized that his motivations were very different from those of the parents around him. They had grander ambitions than playing for fun. They were vying for the competitive travel team, attainable for the sum of several thousand dollars. A small price to pay if the travel team (or robotics team, math or debate club, dance showcase, etc.) puts our students on a trajectory toward a competitive college. This example is just the tip of the iceberg.
At least two companies claimed they had DNA tests that could help match youngsters with the sports they are genetically hardwired to play best. For $160, parents bought up these DNA kits, swabbed their youngsters’ cheeks, and sent saliva off to a lab to detect its levels of ACTN3—a protein supposedly associated with fast-twitch explosive muscles. Excitedly they awaited the results that would help them steer their children toward games they were most likely to win—and get scholarships to play. Kids overloaded with ACTN3 were blessed with strength and power and could go out for football, wrestling, boxing, and the like. Kids with an absence of ACTN3 were blessed with the endurance needed for long-distance running, cycling, and swimming. Kids with a little bit of ACTN3 were mixed-pattern athletes with strength and endurance—meaning they could take their pick of a sport. People clamored to get their hands on this test, believing that steering their students into the sport they were made for would increase their chances of success.
From a financial perspective, the plan makes sense. Athletics can help you get in and pay for college. Being an elite athlete dramatically increases your likelihood of being accepted into Harvard.16 Derek Thompson reported that “nearly 90 percent of recruited athletes gain admission to Harvard versus about 6 percent of applicants overall. These athletes make up less than 1 percent of Harvard’s applicant pool but more than 10 percent of its admitted class.”17 Savvy parents of child athletes are vying to tap into the $3 billion in athletic scholarships Division I and II colleges give out every year.18
In this era of performance mindset, where good snowplow parents must exploit every competitive edge for their children, is it any wonder that soccer for eight-year-olds can be not only fun and games, but an investment in future success?
Performance mindset parents, coaches, educators, and mentors are strategic. We are practical people. We see short-term successes as stepping-stones to our end destination goal. This ultimate goal is to ensure the safety and security of our students. Achievement in school, on the soccer field, in the engineering club—these are all stepping-stone goals. Yes, they may feel good in the moment, but their real value is that they help us reach our bigger, more critical long-term goals. Today’s success will ensure tomorrow’s financial security. We convince ourselves that if our students succeed at these stepping-stone goals today, they’re on the right path to safety, security, and belonging tomorrow. We hyper-focus on short-term success, but always keep in mind the long-term perspective and promise of economic security. We push our students hard, because the ends justify the means.
Seems sensible, but there’s a catch. Focusing too closely on achieving these stepping-stone goals doesn’t necessarily lead to our desired end destination. Our research reveals that the performance mindset does not actually guarantee success. It does the opposite; it undercuts students’ performance and damages their psychological health. When we adopt a performance mindset to ensure the safety and well-being of young people, it actually does the opposite.
There are three reasons the performance mindset does not help students in the long run. First, it insidiously ingrains in them a toxic message about the world they live in, one that is inaccurate and dangerous. Second, it doesn’t actually lead to long-term success. Third, it’s bad for their mental and physical health.
The performance mindset is a strategy for survival. It’s also a set of beliefs about what’s most important and of value in the world. Our subsequent actions are motivated by the worthiest of intentions: we just want what’s best for our people. However, these intentions are different from the message we’re sending them.
When we buy into the performance myth, we socialize students to embrace the side of human nature that is fundamentally competitive and self-interested. This perpetuates a vision of the world as hopeless and dangerous. Peter Railton, a University of Michigan philosopher, describes this worldview as “your great-grandfather’s Social Darwinism,” in which “all creatures great and small [are] pitted against one another in a life-or-death struggle to survive and reproduce.”19
Not only do we raise young people to be anxious and afraid for their lives with this fear-based narrative, it’s not entirely accurate. This hostile “survival of the fittest” view of life doesn’t take into account the fuller understanding of evolution that’s developed in the last several decades. Scientific evidence since the 1960s has converged with theological and spiritual beliefs that humans are created for so much more than the battlefield. Biologists have made major advances in discovering that we and the world we live in have been beautifully designed for altruistic cooperation—not just ruthless competition.20 Humans are part of a larger context in which effective cooperation within and among different species enables us to survive and thrive. For example, the forest is a community in which trees of different species share nutrients (nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorous) by associating with each other. Older trees give beneficial nutrients to the younger trees around them. The laws of the jungle have proved that self-interest is often less beneficial than mutual cooperation in promoting growth and gains.
We can see the same principles played out in human communities. Just as ecosystems with rampant predation dissolve into chaotic states of starvation and violence, human societies fall apart when competition is too fierce. It’s easier to survive and thrive when people come together, pool labor, share risk, and seek alliances. Rebecca Solnit, in A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, documents the many examples of newfound purpose and communities that arise after disasters.21 Hurricane Katrina, like many disasters, was marked by altruism—young people who decided to take on the responsibility of supplying material goods and protection to strangers stranded with them. In the same way, we see examples of people who have chosen to behave in ways that protect others in the face of COVID-19 and racial injustices. These altruistic, cooperative behaviors have led to the greater good of communities. In March 2020, as the severity of the pandemic was becoming clear, #Caremongering was born across Canada. #Caremongering was a community-led social movement that organically emerged as a way for Canadians to offer and seek out help, support, and information during lockdown. In just the first few days, hundreds of thousands of Canadians joined the movement, eager to offer their support.
Yet everywhere we look, the themes of predation continue to saturate popular culture. From superhero franchises, to professional sports, to zombie apocalypse dramas, we’re immersed in and entertained by watching people fight to the death. In each of these situations, it’s “everybody for themselves.” Kindness equals weakness and is often fatal. A cutthroat competition dictates who will survive, who will prosper, and who will be no more. As scary as this worldview is, it’s also highly seductive. We love seeing the underdog conquer obstacles, annihilate opponents, and claw to the top, victorious. While the stories we tell through arts, media, and sports perpetuate this vision of the world, reality is different, and thankfully so.
In 1967, biologist Lynn Margulis published a seminal article on the origin of Earth that had been rejected by fifteen journals.22 She posited that hungry one-celled organisms nearly annihilated the planet in a fierce competition for food resources, before disaster was averted by different cells that entered communal arrangements. These mitochondria and chloroplasts exchanged nutrients that became the building blocks of all higher life forms. People thought Margulis’s theories were absurd and largely ignored them until they were powerfully substantiated by genetic evidence. Similar to her generation, which placed a premium on competition, the performance mindset prevails today, such that students are terrified of skipping a beat for fear of losing their competitive edge. We’ve been conditioned to raise versions of one-celled organisms who will take over the world.
The performance mindset is built for this type of world. It’s a strategy to help students “win” in this hyper-competitive zero-sum world of school, college, and career. The performance mindset says you win by beating others. It’s a dangerous myth that leads to fear, futile striving, and collapse. Even if they don’t agree with the mindset, many well-intentioned families feel they need it to survive. We don’t want our students to be left behind. We don’t want them to lose. And so we start with what’s in front of us: helping them win right now.
The sad irony is that this mindset may win short-term gains, but cost dearly in the long run. This is due in part to adolescent brain development. Neuroscience findings show that kids are short-term decision-makers. Their prefrontal cortexes, the brain region that allows for self-regulation, envisioning the future, and making long-term decisions, don’t fully develop until well into their twenties. Early adolescents aren’t yet equipped to think through the long-term consequences of today’s actions and decisions. Instead, they focus on what’s right in front of them; research has shown that kids thirteen and younger are more likely to accept less money immediately than to wait for a delayed larger payoff, in contrast to those sixteen and older.23
A second key insight from neuroscience research is that adolescents are extremely sensitive to rewards and willing to take risks even for relatively small, short-term rewards (a great reason not to take them to casinos). In one study, young people took part in a driving simulation where they were tasked with getting to the finish line as fast as possible.24 They had to decide whether to stop at yellow traffic lights. The downside of stopping was a slower time; the downside of not stopping was risking a car accident. Compared to people of any other age, teenagers were much more likely to run yellow lights. The short-term reward (i.e., a fast time) outweighed the risk of crashing. These and other studies show how strongly youth are attracted to rewards, regardless of risks.
We saw this when COVID-19 hit the United States. By mid-March 2020, the entire country was gripped in fear and panic about contracting the virus. Well, not everyone, actually. Quite a few young people were more concerned with celebrating spring break. And so, going against the CDC and common sense, these young people took YOLO to a whole other level by congregating, contracting the virus, and putting scores of other people at risk. How could they be so shortsighted? Neuroscience would explain their thinking—a good time now trumps long-term investment any day.
This is why the performance mindset fails. For adults, it’s a long-term risk-minimization strategy. But young people are short-term reward-seekers. Their brains aren’t yet wired to value the long-term economic security of the performance mindset that adults’ brains are wired to value. For parents, students’ short-term achievement is assurance of success in their future. This long-term reward is more important to us than to our students. Instead, they’re tuned in to the short-term rewards for their hard work: recognition and approval.
Recognition rewards come in various shapes and sizes. Class grades. Grade point averages. Class rankings. Earning a starting position on the hockey team. An award in photography. Winning a robotics competition. A thousand likes on an Instagram post. One hundred new followers on TikTok. Youth with a performance mindset who succeed are rewarded with social status and prestige—which are extrinsic motivations.
Extrinsic motivation comes from outside ourselves. We’re compelled to do something mainly because there is a reward associated with it, and we lose our intrinsic, or natural, interest in doing it.
For example, researcher Mark Lepper and his colleagues asked kids to play with Magic Markers.25 Lepper knew that the kids in his study all were interested in Magic Markers because he picked the ones who had enjoyed them in a previous activity. Once in the experimental situation, the kids were exposed to one of three reward conditions. Group 1 was told there would be a reward for kids who colored with the Magic Markers. Group 2 was told nothing, but these kids were given the reward unexpectedly at the end of the session. Group 3 was simply asked to use the Magic Markers without any reward, expected or unexpected. Later, all three groups were given another chance to play with the Magic Markers, but this time they weren’t urged to do so. Guess which kids were the most interested in using the Magic Markers again? The kids who had not been extrinsically rewarded.
Extrinsic motivations can also come in the form of punishments. If you threaten to take a cell phone away if a teenager breaks curfew, that is extrinsic motivation. This can work in the short term, especially when the adult is right there to enforce the sanctions. But experimental evidence has shown that extrinsic motivation in the form of punishments and coercion does not lead to long-lasting, dependable formation of habits or beliefs. Punishments simply are not effective when adults are absent (and thus can’t dole out the punishment!). The more severe the threat of punishment, the worse the child’s bad behavior becomes.26
Research on older adolescents and adults also showed that high extrinsic motivation was harmful for their mental and physical health. A meta-analysis on extrinsic motivation looked to see what happens when people aspire to make a lot of money. The findings were clear: the more people had an extrinsic drive for material goods, the worse off they were psychologically.27 College students who were extrinsically driven to do well (i.e., they were motivated to make money) faced similar challenges. They had lower rates of well-being than their less money-focused peers.28 A separate study showed that materialistic college students also had greater levels of narcissism and physical symptoms.29 Clearly, even if extrinsically motivated goals lead to money, they didn’t lead to healthy and fulfilling lives.
There is a price to privilege. Students from wealthy, high-achieving backgrounds suffer from higher rates of depression, anxiety, and alcohol and drug abuse than do those from other socioeconomic backgrounds.30 Paradoxically, many of these problems may be caused by struggles with self-esteem, despite the fact that privileged students tend to outperform students from lower income backgrounds in academics and extracurricular activities. Greater opportunity doesn’t automatically lead to happiness and health.
In a study examining what it is about achievement pressure that causes distress, social comparison rose to the top as most responsible for anxious-depressed and withdrawn-depressed symptoms.31 Our findings suggested that students from high-achieving schools and communities felt pressure to be extremely ambitious, smart, caring, fit, and more accomplished than their peers.32 They strived to be essentially superhuman.
Young people are hearing it from all sides—home, school, the media— that success means all-around outstanding performance in order to get into prestigious colleges, which then leads to prestige and wealth—the ultimate measures of success. Students in our studies were stressed, depressed, full of fear that they might lose the rat race—even as they strove day and night for straight As, played musical instruments, engaged in sports, and performed “community service” (which probably should be called “self” service, given its role as a résumé padder). And here’s the clincher: they said they were expected to do it with a smile. To come across as nice, cheerful, and enthusiastic. They felt pressured to “be all things to all people” for the sake of extrinsic success. All this effort led to little happiness. They reported overwhelming achievement pressures, perfectionistic strivings, and fears of failure. The performance mindset damages students’ psyches and health.
The other big finding was that extrinsic motivation doesn’t make students perform any better. It actually gets in the way of long-term performance. Extrinsically motivated youth are more likely to drink alcohol and smoke tobacco and pot.33 And highly materialistic students had lower levels of academic engagement and achievement.34 Typically, partaking in substances and disengaging from school aren’t good strategies for success.
The bottom line is: the performance mindset backfires. Students underperform rather than succeed. One reason is that a performance mindset causes people to care too much about how others view them. It gives other people the power to decide how successful we are, how meaningful our contributions are, and what our place in the world is. The performance mindset says that what other people think of us should determine how we feel about ourselves.
In fact, it leaves us out of the equation altogether.
What if we want to pursue a vocation that is personally meaningful and fulfilling, but doesn’t square with society’s definition of success? By the rules of the performance mindset, it doesn’t matter how meaningful an aspiration may be; if it doesn’t lead to external achievement, improve our social status, or serve as a gateway to prestige, it is not worth pursuing. Ultimately, the performance mindset affords us little choice in what we do; we must follow the path that is most socially acceptable and leads to the greatest recognition and approval from others. The performance mindset fails to fulfill our psychological or spiritual needs and callings. Not attending to these essential needs decreases our quality of life, hurts our performance, and undermines our ability to achieve what caused us to adopt a performance mindset in the first place.
Fortunately, not everyone succumbs to a performance mindset. You might be one of the few who sees through it. Perhaps being safe and secure is important to you, but you realize that money isn’t everything. You’ve come to the conclusion that money can’t buy happiness. You know that if you support your students to pursue their passions in the world, you might not know where they will go, but chances are, they’ll end up okay. Maybe you’ve experienced the hollowness that comes with a myopic focus on accumulating wealth. You realize that there’s more to life than wealth, status, prestige, and power. This was Tim’s mindset as a young adult. He cared much more about having fun and doing what made him happy than pursuing achievement or recognition. If you are like Tim, perhaps you’d much rather your students find their passion and do what they love. Where the performance mindset seeks economic and physical security, you prioritize emotional security. You much prefer the mantra: the goal of life isn’t to win, but to be happy. We call this the passion mindset.
Whereas the performance mindset is a response to the fear and uncertainty we feel about our economic future and desire to find our place in the world, the passion mindset is also born of fear. It comes from the fear of not being happy and not being able to handle negative emotions. One of the biggest current threats to students is an internal struggle, the battle for mental health.
The mental health crisis is well documented and all signs point to it only getting worse. Following the suicide of a girl in the public high school of Belle’s high-achieving community in the Boston suburbs, a New York Times article by Kyle Spencer described how painted rocks had been placed throughout the school’s large campus by its students.35 The rocks were inscribed with encouraging sayings such as “Mistakes are O.K.” and “Don’t worry, it will be over soon.” These rocks speak volumes about the toxic messages they’re pushing back against—“mistakes are not O.K., you must be perfect” and “there is a lot to worry about, the stress is overwhelming.” These little rocks give us a tiny glimpse into our students’ desperate attempts to fight against the dangerous currents they are swept up in. The waters they swim in every day perpetuate performance anxiety, even suicides. Sadly, this is just one small anecdote that illustrates a much larger crisis.
Dr. Marc Brackett, the director of social emotional intelligence at Yale University, sums up the accumulating statistics on the mental health crisis this way:
From 2016–2017, more than one in three students across 196 U.S. college campuses reported diagnosed mental health conditions. Some campuses have reported a 30 percent increase in mental health problems per year.
According to the 2019 World Happiness Report, negative feelings, including worry, sadness, and anger, have been on the rise across the globe—up by 27 percent from 2010 to 2018.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 25 percent of adolescents between thirteen and eighteen years of age.36
It’s no wonder we worry about our students. We are hearing about, and witnessing firsthand, mental health struggles associated with social media, screen time, bullying, social isolation, peer pressure, and academic and social stress. Sadly, the list goes on. Many of us know that irresistible urge to withhold nothing, to give our children the moon and the stars, and to protect them from pain, struggle, and heartache. Some fascinating research indicates how mothers are hardwired to respond to their babies’ cries. Mothers from eleven countries consistently rushed to comfort (pick up, hold, talk to) their infants within five seconds of hearing them cry.37 Five seconds. Why are we so desperate to jump to the rescue when our kids are struggling, even in the slightest way? The MRI scans of healthy mothers showed that hearing their babies’ cries activated regions in the brain tied to caregiving, movement, and speech. These are considered “readiness” or “planning” areas of the brain. So, when these moms heard their babies’ distress cries, they knew exactly what to do to remove the source of struggle. And many of us never stop doing this. We want our kids to be happy, and not suffer even five seconds of unhappiness. We’re conditioned from our babies’ first cries to remove all their obstacles, earning our titles as snowplow parents. Later, if they are uncomfortable in a class, if they are disengaged on a club team, if they are unhappy, we must do everything we can to remedy this: we call their teachers, we run interference for them, we fix their problems.
A second study suggested an additional physiological reason for our anxious response to our kids’ distress. Oxytocin, a hormone tied to mother-infant bonding, seems to cause mothers to react to their babies’ cries with a sense of urgency.38 This urgency to comfort and rescue our children at all costs continues into their adolescence. In our desperation to protect them from any hint of distress or unhappiness, we may encourage them to find their happy place—a passion that makes their hearts sing. Just like parents with a performance mindset, these snowplow parents have the best of intentions. They can often be extremely empathetic and attuned to their child—hallmarks of great parenting. Unfortunately, their good intentions can send an unhelpful message:
If you feel bad, something is wrong.
The problem with this mindset is that we can mistake mental health for the absence of negative emotions. We think that if we can eliminate any sadness, anger, uncertainty, or uneasiness, and replace these with happiness, excitement, and pleasure, then: bingo! We’ve succeeded in keeping our students mentally healthy. The truth is we cannot keep them in a bubble. Ups and downs, highs and lows, joy, sadness, and, yes, suffering are inevitable parts of life. Our role is not to remove all suffering (because that’s impossible) but to teach them how to bear it. We don’t want to send the message to students that negative emotions are to be feared and avoided at all costs. When we attempt to avoid all negative emotions, and we put positive emotions on a pedestal and worship them above all else, it backfires. The more we value happiness, the more unhappy we become. The more we try to avoid negative emotions, the more they dominate our lives.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a movie based on the real-life friendship between a journalist and children’s TV icon Fred Rogers. The journalist is a tortured soul with angst over a broken relationship with his father. He fears sadness, and acts out in anger when sadness inevitably comes. Fred tells him, “There is no normal life that is free of pain. It’s the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.” And even as the journalist’s father is dying and the family is sitting around him anxiously and awkwardly, Fred pays them all a visit. He normalizes their pain and makes it possible for them to embrace their time together in this poignant period of suffering, saying, “To die is to be human, and anything human is mentionable. Anything mentionable is manageable.”
Rogers taught people how to confront difficult feelings rather than run from them. He once said off camera:
Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it.39
Research has revealed that the more we value happiness, the harder it is to attain.40 This might be because the more important happiness becomes to us, the higher our expectations for happiness become. These expectations are harder to reach; and when we don’t reach those expectations, that makes us even unhappier. Weddings are expected to be one of the pinnacles of life. As a result, people invest enormous time, energy, and resources to make sure that they don’t have just a great wedding, but a perfect one. They want it to be a mind-blowing, awesome occasion. This need for the ideal wedding is what drives the $72 billion wedding industry and causes couples to spend an average of $32,000 on their wedding (not to mention the honeymoon!).41 This puts a lot of pressure on the couple to make sure their investment pays off. The emotional expectations and the financial stakes could not be higher.
These expectations unfortunately work against the “happy” couple to be: they value happiness in the form of their dream wedding. But as we can imagine, the perfect wedding is hard to pull off. An unforeseen thunderstorm, a guest who drinks too much, a great-uncle vocalizing questionable political views are just a few of the looming threats to a perfect day. When something goes wrong, as it usually does, it can feel devastating. This was supposed to be the perfect day, and it isn’t. We feel worse. A happiness focus creates a vicious feedback loop; the more we want to be happy, the sadder we feel when we aren’t, and the more important being happy becomes, the harder it is to come by. This is the paradox of the passion mindset.
The passion mindset backfires most when people have the highest expectations for happiness, like vacations, birthdays, and going off to college. These situations put pressure on people to be happy, which unfortunately makes them less likely to attain said happiness. So, if you’ve been on a vacation that felt more stressful than relaxing, or you’ve seen kids cry at their own birthday parties or want to transfer colleges because they thought they’d be having the time of their lives, you’ve experienced the paradox of the passion mindset.
When we have low expectations for happiness, say while waiting in line at the DMV, doing our taxes, or going to a family reunion where conflict is expected, being unhappy doesn’t impact us as much. When we enter situations not expecting to have the time of our lives, we aren’t as disappointed. These reduced expectations allow us to navigate the inevitable ups and downs of everyday life with more grit and resolve. You aren’t expecting today to be perfect, so when things go awry you think, “that’s how the ball rolls,” and you’re not thrown for a loop. Because you have modest expectations, it’s easier to be pleasantly surprised … and happy.
It’s this dynamic that sets students up for disillusionment in the digital age. Social media is a huge driver of the expectation that life should be constantly happy and passionate; the picture-perfect digital identities presented online are scrubbed free of the blemishes, hassles, and mundane experiences of everyday life. If you’ve ever felt instantly worse about your own life after seeing a picture of the perfect vacation/dinner/life on Instagram, you know the feeling. Even when students know intellectually that social media is not an accurate reflection of real life, they’re hugely affected by seeing their peers on social media consistently having the time of their lives. This raises our students’ expectations for what they should be feeling, driving the passion mindset.
There is a large body of research that confirms this. Among adults, valuing happiness was associated with lower psychological well-being, higher levels of depression symptoms, greater loneliness, and even poorer college grades.42 Similarly, kids who valued happiness too much were more depressed.43 Just like the performance mindset increases the likelihood of abusing substances and spending more time staring at screens, the passion mindset can also promote unhealthy behavior. The tendency to engage in rash action in response to extreme positive affect (i.e., impulsive behavior when passionate) is associated with risky behaviors, such as alcohol consumption, binge eating, and drug use.44 The passion mindset also makes it harder for young people to connect with their peers. An article in Emotion put it succinctly: the more people value happiness, the lonelier they feel on a daily basis.45 The outcomes of the passion mindset are similar to those of the performance mindset. Both lead to what we most fear—poor performance and poor mental health.
We’ve discussed how and why the performance and passion mindsets are so deeply embedded in the ways we think and make life decisions and why decisions that evolve from these mindsets are tied to so much struggle and adversity. In this book, we present a very different lens for decision-making that is tied to radically different outcomes for students and society. Research from our lab informs this framework we call the purpose mindset. Students with this mindset thrive despite the inevitable stresses of navigating school and early careers. Findings from our research and other studies showed that compared with their peers, students with a purpose mindset were more engaged in school, got better grades, and had higher test scores.46 They not only perform better, but also have increased subjective well-being.47 They built stronger and longer-lasting relationships with their peers and teachers.48 The benefits of the purpose mindset stretch beyond school. After graduating from college, people who find purpose in their careers are much more likely to be thriving in their lives.They report greater well-being, and are even living longer lives.49 People with a purpose mindset are physically, emotionally, and financially thriving in a way their peers are not.
So, what is the purpose mindset? How is it different from the other two mindsets?
Picture a balance scale. On one end is performance mindset; outward success is king. On the other is passion mindset; inward well-being is king. The purpose mindset is the perfect balance between them. It’s about pursuing goals that are of consequence in the world (satisfying the need for outward success) and personally meaningful (satisfying inward well-being). It’s a mindset that’s good for the world and for the soul. Here’s how it reaps the external and internal rewards expected of (but not delivered by) the performance and passion mindsets.
First, the purpose mindset is about playing the long game. It’s not immediately attainable. It’s not a fleeting desire, a quick fix, or an impulsive purchase. Trying to finish your homework by nine o’clock isn’t a purpose. Making honor roll or landing the lead in the school play isn’t a purpose. But wanting to become a nurse or doctor to alleviate suffering, or wanting to get a degree in social work to advocate on behalf of child trauma survivors, or wanting to raise children in a healthy environment are long-term purposes. They persist. They can take a while. They require commitment.
Second, the purpose mindset is about pursuing something that’s personally meaningful. No one can give you a purpose, or persuade you to pursue one. A parent can tell a student to work hard to get straight As in high school, or to submit internship applications, or to be a person of integrity. But if those things don’t feel personally meaningful, and if a student is only doing something because a parent wants them to—that’s not their purpose. If they’re chasing after a dream that’s fueled by society’s values and not their own—that’s not their purpose either. It’s someone else’s expectations, but not purpose. Purpose has to be owned, it has to be something you buy into and really want to do.
The third essential aspect is: purpose is not all about you.
That is, it’s not just for your personal happiness, security, and advancement. It’s pursuing a goal that also contributes to people and places beyond the self. A purposeful goal is one that, if accomplished, will contribute to the world. Research doesn’t say what the contribution should be, whether large or small, and who gets to judge whether you’re successful in accomplishing it, and whether it makes the world better or not. Purpose simply includes an intention to make a contribution to someone else besides yourself.
When these things (long game, personally meaningful, and contribution) are present and working in tandem, you will see all the benefits of the purpose mindset in action.
The purpose mindset can serve as a powerful motivator behind the immediate goals and motives that drive daily behavior. Kyle, a first-generation immigrant student, wanted to go to college. Many of his peers saw college as just an expected stop along their journey to success. But it meant much more to Kyle. He struggled academically and worked harder than any of his peers. He would stop at nothing to make his family’s sacrifices as unskilled laborers worth it by achieving economic mobility. So, going to college in and of itself wasn’t his purpose. It was a milestone on a longer journey. A stepping-stone goal toward his greater purpose of raising his family’s economic and emotional security.
Adults hyper-focus on short-term goals students should pursue, while overlooking the deeper reasons and purposes behind these goals. We role-model and cajole and pressure young people so that they learn to live busy and chaotic lives chasing short-term goals. Getting straight As, getting into college, or landing a particular job. The problems arise when we don’t support students to explore why these goals matter.
Purpose provides perspective and direction if we can see our long-term goals in the distance. When astronauts have seen Earth from afar for the first time, they’ve described the profoundness of this perspective shift. Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who saw Earth from the moon in 1971, explained, “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.”50 You suddenly understand the “big picture” and feel connected to your daily life and yet bigger than the daily minutiae.
In the same way, seeing our purpose clearly is like seeing Earth in the distance. We realize that this is where we’re headed. That we have a role to play on the planet. This is our mission and calling, and it’s beautiful. We develop a sense of compassion for a need beyond our own. And the will to be of service.
With a purposeful goal in mind, we connect our short-term goals to something greater. Purpose provides the long-view hope that gives our everyday tasks and responsibilities meaning.
So many students, from the poorest to the richest schools, are disengaged. Tell them to study for their algebra final and you will get no pulse. But Kyle had a different view. He wasn’t just taking a test, he was taking a step toward liberating his family from poverty. Students who haven’t seen the Earth from space lack direction and are easily influenced by others. Young people like Kyle have a better sense of their own identity, take more initiative, and are more self-directive. Purpose is the navigation tool that guides our actions, behaviors, and decisions. In an ever-changing and uncertain world, it’s our North Star, guiding us in a meaningful direction, even if we don’t know exactly where we will end up.
Yet, as any parent or mentor can attest, clarifying one’s purpose takes time, and the process is different for every person. Discovering purpose can feel frustratingly random or serendipitous. Where some people seem to be born with a sense of purpose, others struggle to develop it despite immense effort and support. Students in our research and other studies fell into four groups:
The purpose mindset is extremely beneficial, but getting there isn’t second nature. It involves struggle. It requires guidance to expand our perspective and draw our attention to the aspects of life we don’t typically notice. Writing about the Hubble Space Telescope in the Atlantic Monthly, Marina Koren explains the benefits of glimpsing places that exist beyond ourselves, especially during a global pandemic that has made so many people’s lives smaller: “Imagine yourself at a scenic vista somewhere on Earth, such as the rim of the Grand Canyon or the shore of an ocean stretching out past the horizon line. As your brain processes the view and its sheer vastness, feelings of awe kick in.”52 With this awe can come feelings of smallness and insignificance in the face of something larger than ourselves. And yet research has shown that this can be a good thing. Awe can make us feel more connected with others. David Yaden, who has studied self-transcendence, including in astronauts, explained the paradox of seeing space images or Earth from afar. And it’s true of seeing purpose: “[seeing this long view] can draw our attention to the preciousness of local meaning—our loved ones, people close to us, this Earth.”53 When we step back from our daily activities and people, and look at them from the perspective of our long-term purpose, we gain a greater appreciation of our lives. Kahlil Gibran wrote a poem that describes the clarity and appreciation that comes with stepping back from life:
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence,
as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.54
Our research and work are designed to help you see the bigger picture, and how your current life moves in a direction that is not so random after all. Drawing upon a combined fifty years of work in the field and findings from Belle’s lab, we’ve written this book to help people in all stages and from all walks of life cultivate a purpose mindset, and use it to navigate life decisions.
We will dispel commonly held views about what purpose is and isn’t. Often purpose is viewed as a singular entity that people need to “find” rather than something to be cultivated throughout life. And it is erroneously seen as a luxury for privileged people. In actuality, marginalized and underserved young people often develop more purpose than their privileged peers. Purpose is also misunderstood as an endeavor for touchy-feely, idealistic, self-sacrificing, silly people who don’t want or need to “make a good living.” But the reality is that purpose can be found within any job or career, and those who have it are ten times as likely to be happy and healthy.55 They also don’t have to sacrifice a paycheck for it.
Purpose is often conflated with passion, when actually passion is only half of the equation. Passion is defined by self-interest; purpose is defined by an interest in both self and others. Purposeful students are passionate about doing something with their lives that benefits more than just themselves. Purpose is even confused with happiness; happiness is a temporary emotional state determined by “positive” circumstances, whereas purpose is a higher aspiration that carries one through the most difficult of circumstances. All of this misinformation converges on a false message: that purpose is a luxury and a burden that’s out of reach except for the privileged few.
Purpose is for everyone. It’s the lifeblood that leads to success inside and out. Therefore, our first rule of navigation is to resist the passion and performance mindsets and commit to adopting a purpose mindset. In the next four chapters, using the five purpose principles, we will show you how to do just that.