Jennifer Breheny Wallace

So I started writing Never Enough when my oldest, who's now 20, was in eighth grade because I was noticing this achievement culture and wondering why my children's childhoods were so different from my own.

And so that's what led to Never Enough.

And so what I've learned in researching the book is so much.

I've learned to lead with mattering.

I've learned that our children are growing up in this achievement culture.

We put them in environments like the Upper East Side or affluent communities, you know, what some researchers call super zip codes, the idea that, like, people with similar definitions of success, similar means are all in one place, competing for limited spots in colleges and having a similar definition of success, and that makes us vulnerable.

And so there's lots of stuff that has changed from researching these two books.

But one of the things that I really focus on is something I learned about in book one, and that is how our values impact our well-being.

So, living on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, certain values are activated day in and day out.

So, let me just give you a quick little summary on what I found in the research.

So, researchers who study values say that all of us roughly have the same core values, and they separate them into extrinsic values and intrinsic values.

Extrinsic values are things like wanting the big house, the high status job, a certain image or popularity.

Intrinsic values are things like wanting to be a good friend.

wanting to be pro-social, good to the environment, grow spiritually.

Values operate like a zero-sum game.

So the more time and energy you spend pursuing those materialistic goals, those extrinsic values, the less room you have in your life for pursuing the intrinsic ones.

And here's why this matters.

Because extrinsic values, like those that are activated often on the Upper East Side, are linked with negative mental health and substance abuse disorder.

And intrinsic values are linked with the well-being that we want for ourselves and our kids.

And here's the bottom line.