Thriving in a High-Pressure World, with Jennifer Breheny Wallace

0:00Competitive, results-oriented, driven to be the best. We live in a culture of achievement, but what happens when that achievement culture becomes too much? When the load of it, whether it's the drive to reach financial independence at an earlier age or the drive to reach a certain net worth, the drive to get promoted in your company, the drive to be a better parent, the drive to succeed in whichever way you define it. or perhaps all of the myriad of ways in which you define it, what happens when that becomes overwhelming? You don't want to sacrifice the dream, but you also need the pathway to be sustainable.

0:48That's what we're going to discuss today. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that doesn't just apply to your money, that applies to your time, your focus, your energy, your attention to any limited resource you need to manage. And that opens up two questions. First, what matters most? And second, how do you make decisions accordingly? Now, answering those two questions is a lifetime practice, and that's what this show is here to facilitate. My name is Paula Pant.

1:19I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. On today's episode, Jennifer Brayani Wallace, the author of the New York Times bestseller, Never Enough, When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It, shares with us how to manage our need for success and simultaneously avoid the traps that come with that obsession. So she offers insights into the consequences of a culture that is obsessed with success and discusses very practical solutions to common challenges that we face. So if you have ever felt the burnout that comes from trying to do it all, and you feel like there's got to be a smarter way to navigate success without losing your sanity, you'll enjoy this episode.

2:12Here she is. I'm here with Jennifer Wallace, who writes about when achievement culture goes too far, when it becomes toxic. So I'd love to chat with you about that. So thank you for being on the show. Now let's start with some definitions, right? What is going too far when it comes to our ambitions? When it goes too far is when our sense of self is tangled up in our ambitions, in our achievements so that we only feel like we are worthy or matter when we're achieving. And when we're failing or not achieving and our self-worth sort of goes down the toilet, that is when it becomes toxic. There is in some families very much a message that your purpose for being on this earth is to go do something great.

3:05The justification of you being a carbon based life form that breathes oxygen is so that you can go make a contribution to humanity. How do we disentangle a sense of innate worthiness from that desire to, in the words of Steve Jobs, leave a dent in the universe? I think there's nothing wrong with wanting to leave a dent in the universe. I think that is what drives purpose and meaning in our lives. So I certainly don't want people not to want to be positive contributing members of our society. I mean, it's important for our society to function and it's important for our mental health that we think that we can make a positive impact on the world around us.

3:46But what I want to do is raise children, have people in my life who know that their worth is constant, whether or not they achieve, whether or not they fail, that who they are deep inside is what matters. I have gone in search of the healthy strivers. What do people who are achieving in healthy ways have in common? What is school like for them? What are their relationships like? But it really boils down to this idea that they have a high level of mattering. That is that they feel valued for who they are deep at their core, away from their achievements and successes. and importantly that they feel depended on and relied on to add meaningful value back to families, to friends, to larger communities.

4:42So mattering acts like a kind of protective shield. When we feel valued and when we are relied on to add value to others, that protects us. It doesn't mean we won't feel anxious or depressed or, you know, have failures, But mattering acts like a buoy that lifts us up and makes us more resilient. How can a person, anyone who's listening to this, who perhaps over identifies with their work and whose sense of mattering is so rooted in their work, how can they start to work out of that? And I actually, I want to break up this question into sort of different life stages, because there are some people who are listening to this who are early in their careers.

5:24And so they haven't yet necessarily proven themselves. And there are other people who are listening to this who are right on the verge of retirement. And they need to disentangle a sense of self from their job because very soon they're going to retire. And that's going to inherently produce a bit of an identity crisis when you can no longer say, I am a lawyer, I am an accountant, I am a manager. So let's actually break that up. We'll start with a person in their 20s or more broadly, the person who has not yet proven themselves. How do they disentangle mattering from self? Here's a visual that I'm going to give really everybody who's listening.

6:03When we think about our inherent worth, here's a way of thinking about it. go into your wallet and grab a$10 bill. Hold it up. Do you have a$10 bill? All right, let's do it. Let's do it. For those of you watching on YouTube, this is happening live. $10 bill. $10 bill. $10 bill. All right. Okay. So I'm going to ask you, do you want this money? Yes. Okay. Hang on. Okay. Now I'm dirtying it with my shoe. I'm dunking it into my coffee. Do you want this dirty, wrinkled, soggy$10 bill? I still do. You still want it. You know why? Because like your worth, this value doesn't change. Whether you've been knocked down, whether you've failed at work, feel crumpled up, soggy inside, your worth is your worth no matter what.

6:57So this to me, and I'll give you back your money, this will dry out and this will de-wrinkle, if that's a word. You know, I think it's a reminder because we live in a society that likes a consumer culture that wants to sell us things to make us feel more worthy. And social media only magnifies and exacerbates the problem. So what I'd like to do is to help people make the thinking around unconditional worth visible. And whenever you're feeling like you're not worthy, reach into your wallet and crumple up one of your bills and remind yourself that your value is your value no matter what. So for a young person who's just starting out, again, ambition is great.

7:42I love ambition. But it needs to be part of a full life. we set ourselves up for negative mental health issues and we set ourselves up for potential substance abuse problems if we put too much of our worth into one bucket into work things that we don't always have control over right we can't control for downsizing we can't control for those things. So we need to have a sense of worth that is not firmly tied in our work or firmly tied in just raising our kids because they're going to go to college and they're going to start their own lives. And when you talk about people who are in retirement, mattering matters throughout the lifespan.

8:30And the times when it is really in flux are mattering is when we're adolescents and we're building a sense of self, right? And so we're trying to figure out who we actually are, where we fit in the world. And when we retire and also empty nesting or changing careers or relocating and feeling like we're alone, we're starting over again. And the same thing with retirement that we need to plan our mattering in retirement. Where are we going to add value when we are no longer adding value at work? What does that look like? How is adding value determined? What does it mean to add value? So the way I like to think about it is just values generally, right?

9:18So I'm going to really oversimplify this, but researchers who study values find that we all have roughly 12, 14 or so core values inside all of us. And no matter where we live in the world, we have these values. And researchers separate them into extrinsic values and intrinsic values. So extrinsic values could be things like career success, financial success, wanting to buy the big house, wanting to have the high status career. Those are extrinsic values. Then there are intrinsic values, things like wanting to be a good neighbor, wanting to be pro-social, wanting to be good to the environment, or wanting to grow spiritually as a person.

10:02Those are intrinsic values. And here's why understanding our values is so important, because when we are overly focused on extrinsic values, researchers have linked that with negative mental health and substance abuse disorder. Intrinsic values are linked with the well-being that we all seek and want. Values operate like a zero-sum game. So the more time and energy we spend pursuing extrinsic values, the less time we have in our life to pursuing the intrinsic ones. And so what's important is when we're growing up in these achievement cultures or raising kids in an achievement culture or living in an affluent area, we have to be very mindful of the values that are constantly being activated.

10:49And we have to surround ourselves with other values like prioritizing friendship in our calendar, prioritizing family time. If we say family time is important, how are we spending our dinners? Are we out with clients or are we home with our kids? If we say friendships are a core importance in our life, is it reflected in our calendar and how we spend our time? So values can be very protective. And when you talk about the adding value, I think we can add value to ourselves, but we need to balance that with adding value to others. When we are overly consumed with adding value to ourself and our own spiritual growth and our own success, we become out of whack.

11:34Our lens becomes too self-focused. And what happens when that happens is that we are exposed to a very kind of up and down kind of life when we are overly identified with our own failures and successes. So I'm hearing a couple of things. One is that adding value to yourself would be that achievement culture of, I've got the best job title. I've got a$5 million net worth. I've got the best house and the best car and a six pack abs, right? That level of achievement would be adding value to yourself. Whereas adding value to others would actually be that dent in the universe, even if that dent was made anonymously.

12:16Yes. I would also say that within adding value to ourself, there's the extrinsic adding value to ourself, which is what you named. But there's also the intrinsic, which is growing as a person, wanting to have better coping skills so that your relationships can be stronger, adding to the self, wanting to eat in healthy ways, prioritizing our sleep. So these are things that I think are not extrinsic. These are intrinsic pursuits to make us a strong, resilient person. So I think adding value to the self can also be extrinsic or intrinsic, just like adding value to others can be extrinsically motivated or intrinsically.

12:56Do you want your name on the top of a library or in the whatever? Or do you want it because you want to give value to others? So what is the motivation behind your pursuits? That's where I think we tap into the values. Now, when you say values are a zero-sum game, can you elaborate on that? Because it doesn't necessarily strike me as intuitively obvious that there is a limited bandwidth that we have for values. Really values comes down to, think of it like a seesaw. The more you're focusing on the extrinsic pursuits, the less time, energy, really your schedule to pursue the intrinsic ones. So the reason it's zero sum is because we do have limited time.

13:42We do have limited emotional bandwidth. And so when we're spending time and energy pursuing career goals for shiny reasons, the less time we have to pursue friendships and deep relationships. So it is zero sum. Yeah, you can pursue any value but not every value. Yes. And you know what I found so interesting when I was digging around the research around values? This was a theory. I don't know the researcher whose theory this was, but it's the idea that people who are very materialistic, who pursue materialistic goals, not necessarily just logos, but maybe the name brand college or the name brand title, people who overly pursue materialistic goals, it's not necessarily because they believe more strongly in materialism.

14:34Not necessarily are they more motivated by materialistic goods, but rather they have less evolved social connections. And so they are spending time pursuing those extrinsic things in the hope that they will attract those relationships that will give them the intrinsic value that they want. So we often pursue materialistic goals in the hope that it will make us more worthy in the eyes of others and therefore make us better relationship partners. But unfortunately, what the research shows is that it backfires because you're spending too much of your time and energy focused on those material goals.

15:11You have less time actually focusing on the intrinsic things that will build those deep nourishing relationships that we want. Right. And so that goes back to then that sense of worthiness that many people struggle with in that they often conflate their own inner sense of worthiness with what they have accomplished. Yes, exactly. And it's also what sets us up for a very sort of up and down kind of life. It's very erratic when you are sensing your sense of self with your achievements and specifically things that you don't really have control over all the time. A lot of the people who are listening to this have some common denominator goals.

15:52People want to retire. I mean, everyone who's listening to this, ultimately, whether it's retiring at a traditional age or retiring early, everyone listening to this wants to have a good retirement. And then, you know, prior to that, they want to achieve finance, certain financial goals. And of course, it's going to vary depending on person. Some people want a nice home. Some people want to make sure that they can fully fund their kids college. Some people just want to hit a certain net worth figure because that's the benchmark that they have set for themselves. And so, you know, inside of this diaspora of goals, what I often see inside of the community is that there can be a little bit of a sense of you've made it if you've hit your number.

16:41You haven't made it yet if you haven't. For the people who are listening to this who are feeling that, or who sense that pressure from others, what practices can they do? Yeah, that's the hedonic treadmill, right? When you said to me that people have a number that they want to hit, there's data out there that shows that number is a constantly moving target. So you hit it and then you're not as satisfied. A year or two later, you want to make more and you want to make more and you want to make more. Evolution has given us that ability to adapt, right? So it's a positive when something tragic happens to us or we lose a limb or we adapt to it, just like we adapt to those external goals.

17:22And so whatever number we have in our head, that can get moved and changed as well. It's less satisfying after a certain period of time. I found this so interesting in my research. This is according to decades worth of resilience research. And that is resilience rests on our relationships. So what I would say to people is that if they are struggling to spend time developing one or two or three deep relationships where you can be vulnerable, where you can say what's bothering you, when you can admit to your insecurities and to have a reciprocal relationship with somebody who can admit that to you.

18:07And what you will find, I believe, is that the more you can invest in your social fabric, that becomes what you go to when you are struggling. So I would say the number one thing to do is to prioritize your relationships. We are sold a bill of goods by the multibillion-dollar wellness industry. Just download this meditation app, say this mantra. You know, those might be good stress reducers, but they don't give us the resilience that deep, nourishing relationships give us. I would go to try to create those authentic connections. They say a child in distress needs a sturdy adult, right? They need one adult.

18:47Well, guess what? Adults also need a sturdy adult in their life. And so I would say to really thoughtfully create those relationships. And you might say, you know, if somebody's listening and they say, well, how do I create, if I don't have that kind of relationship, how can I create that relationship? This has been studied, this idea of what's termed authentic connections. It was an original study out of the Mayo Clinic of busy physician mothers and nurse practitioners and other busy people at the Mayo Clinic. And researchers were looking at how many hours does it take to create an authentic connection with somebody?

19:26They created these eight-week pilot study, and they had people once a week for one hour meet in person with someone facilitating the hour, but not a psychologist, just somebody keeping the conversation going. And again, it wasn't advice that they were seeking. It was just being heard, being validated, being understood. They found that it took eight weeks, one hour a week, and they measured the physician's cortisol levels. They did wellness surveys and they found that that resilience that they were seeking was found in the relationships and it was one hour a week for eight weeks. That model has been replicated on Zoom.

20:09So Zoom will also give us benefits, but what it takes is deliberate time. It takes us putting that in our calendar, that one hour a week with what researchers of those studies call a go-to person. So literally this sounds very cringy, but the researchers say you, you have to go and find your person and say, will you be my go-to person when I am struggling? Will you be the person that I reach out to? And very often the person will be honored and say, yes. And I, will you be my go-to person? And then you set in your calendar one hour a week, either to meet or to be on Zoom and meet with that person and really be methodical about it.

20:55There's another study where scientists were looking at two people standing at an incline, a hill, and they measured how steep they thought the hill was. When a person was alone, it was measured as much steeper. So what does that tell us? It tells us that when we have someone with us, when we have someone in our life going through life with, we don't feel alone. It's almost like these deep relationships act like a kind of shock absorber from life's everyday stress. So after learning all of this research, I created this own mantra in my head. When you're feeling overwhelmed, when you're feeling in distress at any time, I want people to remember this, never worry alone.

21:42That is something that I read from Ned Hallowell, who's a psychiatrist. But to me, it represents the research, which is if we have people with us going through our lives, almost everything is manageable. Never worry alone. And I'm glad you brought up Zoom because that was actually going to be my follow-up question was, you know, in this modern world, so many people live several states away from their best friends, their family, their siblings. You know, many people, their closest relationships are long distance relationships. And the research shows those connections with that one hour a week can be just as strong.

22:23Absolutely. And there's, I mean, there's published research to find this. So what I did during COVID when we were all isolated, and this has carried over since COVID, is when I couldn't see my friends, and many of them during COVID have now left New York City, so I don't see them as often. We put in literally into our calendars one hour a week. We made it Friday afternoons for an hour, and we were really religious about it. And my kids saw me doing that. My kids heard me. I would go up to the third floor where we don't have a door, and I would occasionally hear my kids' footsteps on the stairs listening to my conversations.

23:02But it was me opening up to my friends and my friends opening up to me about the struggles of going through COVID, the struggles of work, of balancing work and kids and family and being part of, you know, a sandwich generation. We are often told as Americans that we have to be self-reliant, independent. And that's sort of the goal of raising kids too, to make them self-reliant and independent. That is certainly a good goal to be independent, to be able to meet some of your needs. But what I have found in my research is that healthy strivers strive for a more profound goal, and that is interdependence, knowing how to rely on other people and have other people rely on them in healthy ways.

23:45So that is what this Zoom, that is what never worrying alone, that is what carving time out of your calendar to create these relationships that can give us resilience. That is the power of interdependence. And that study that you talked about in which a person is standing at the foot of a slope and they judge the slope to be steeper if they are standing alone. Am I correct in interpreting that to mean that we perceive hardships to be harder? Exactly. And they've also looked at somebody coming in for treatment or having a shot or whatever it is. the pain level. When we have someone next to us, the pain decreases.

24:28Like I said, almost like it absorbs some of our pain, like our deep relationships are sponges that we can sort of alleviate our worries and concerns. And those people absorb some of it.

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27:51What should a person do if they feel isolated in the type of journey that they are going through? You know, I hear from a lot of people in this community who say, you know, nobody around me understands the particular passions that I have, the particular struggles that I have, the particular goals that I have. I know that my friends love me or I know that my spouse loves me, but they don't get it. What would you say to a person who's going through that? I would say whenever I am going through something stressful where I feel like I'm not being understood. What's always given me comfort is this idea of unlocking the mattering or the magic in other people around me.