Never Enough: 7 Ways to Protect Yourself (and Your Kids) From Toxic Pressure

(00:37):

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. Alright. Today I have to talk to you about something that happened this weekend. I know you're going to relate to it, but here's what happened. So I'm in the middle of the fall of my son's senior year of high school. So we are in the thick of it with college applications. And one of the things that I've loved about living in southern Vermont is that nobody really talks about it. So I haven't really felt the pressure cooker that the college application process can be, but oh my God, something happened this weekend 

(02:40):

I became that freak. I became that psycho parent. There was something in me that was like, what do you mean? What do you mean? You mean he's not going to get in? You mean he's within range and they're going to take somebody else? And I became that parent that all of a sudden started to own their kids' choices and success and their outcomes. And I came racing home and was like, Oak Oak, have you written your college essay? How is the process going? Can I take a read of it? Can I see it? And he's like, yes, you can read it. And he sent it to me. First draft, I'll be honest, not that great. It made my heart go even more. And then I go to say to him, is this done? I mean, this is not what you're submitting. I mean, this doesn't even sound like you.

 

(03:23):

And he's like, mom, could you back off? I'm working with it at the counselors at school. This is the first draft. Can you get off my back? It's all we fucking talk about at school, would you, whether you're in the college application process or not, you have experienced it yourself or with somebody that you love. And there is something psycho weird about how competitive things have gotten. I mean, I always joke that when I applied to college back in 1985, if I were playing today, I would never get in because of how crazy competitive things have gotten. And I have prided myself on not getting sucked into this. I have meant it when I have told you that I do not put the bumper stickers on my kids' cars, that their achievements are not a reflection of my parenting. That my kids need to own the process. They will end up where they're meant to end up, that they will get the lessons they need. They will figure it out. I believe that. But there was something about somebody going, oh, well that didn't happen to ours. That made me go.

 

(04:32):

And I went crazy for about 48 hours. Well, thankfully I bumped into another friend of mine, shout out to Paige, and Paige and I were talking and she was saying that she was reading this incredible book and I was like, really? What is the name of the book? And she's like, yeah, it's so incredible. It's called Never Enough. And you got to get this woman on your podcast. And I'm like, what's it about? And she said, the entire book is about something called Grind Culture and the way that we are prioritizing what this author calls toxic achievement, how parents have gotten super sucked into it, how we've gotten super sucked into it. I said, Paige, say no more. You are like an angel from the heavens who is hitting me with a sledgehammer saying, Mel Robbins, you got to talk about this pressure we are all feeling.

 

(05:21):

And so you know what I'm going to do? I'm tracking her down and we're getting Jenny Wallace on the show. She has written a book called Never Enough. You may know Jenny Wallace at least her work because she has been an award-winning Harvard educated journalist from 60 Minutes. She's also a journalism fellow at the Center for Parent and Teen Communications at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. And I got a copy of this book Never Enough. I dug into it. And I just want you to get ready because we're not only going to talk about how you break free from the grind culture and how you can get your life and your peace of mind and your just control back. We're going to talk about a deeper topic because she says that the way that you break free from grind culture and toxic achievement is to actually focus on something else, the thing that you and I are both seeking. And we're going to explain what that is in this conversation. So please help me welcome Jenny Wallace to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

 

Jennifer Wallace (06:21):

Thank you so much for having me,

 

Mel Robbins (06:23):

Jenny. Thanks so much for jumping on so quickly with me and I just really want to jump into it. You have this term that you call the grind culture, and I think even though we don't know what the definition is, we all feel that we're in the thick of it. It's this stress and this pressure to do more all the time, and that when you're not doing more, it's never enough. So no matter how successful you are, it's never enough. No matter what school you get into, it's never enough. And so I want to start off with the terms that you use in your research. What is the grind culture?

 

Jennifer Wallace (06:56):

Grind culture to me is a set of messages that tell us we are only as good as our productivity, our performance, what we make, the grades we get, the college we get into. So it is grind. Culture to me is your worth is contingent upon your performance.

 

Mel Robbins (07:17):

That makes a lot of sense. And I think we all understand what that is because we all feel this vice on our heads right now. But you also use this term in your research toxic achievement. What exactly is toxic achievement?

 

Jennifer Wallace (07:32):

Toxic achievement is running for the next goal because you feel like you are not worthy until you hit that next goal.

 

Mel Robbins (07:40):

I worry about our kids because I don't feel like I felt that pressure when I was their age. And I know a lot of you are worried about either your kids or your nieces and nephews or your grandchildren or you've felt this pressure. And even though you're through college, you feel this pressure to climb the ladder. You feel this pressure compared to what your friends are doing. You feel this pressure because you're not making the money your friends and finance are making. So if that's toxic achievement, what is healthy achievement?

 

Jennifer Wallace (08:08):

Healthy achievement is recognizing your strengths, recognizing that you need other people to reach for these high goals. And if you miss it, if you miss a goal, to not feel as though it's an indictment against your worth.

 

Mel Robbins (08:22):

That makes a lot of sense. And so here's how I want to handle this, because your work is primarily focused Jenny on the toxic achievement and grind culture aimed at children and teenagers and young adults and how it's impacting their mental health and how it's backfiring and not working. But it relates to all of us. Here's what we're going to do in this conversation. Number one, I want you to unpack your research for us. And then what I want to do is I want to go to the deeper conversation that relates to all of us, which is the root cause of toxic achievement. We can all feel it, it's never enough, but how the hell did we get here?

 

Jennifer Wallace (09:03):

What's happening today is that parents are becoming, in the words of researchers, social conduits, they are trying to prepare their kids for this uncertain competitive future. And it comes out in our parenting. We tend to become more controlling. We tend to become more perfectionistic in what we're demanding of our kids. And again, not to blame parents,

 

Mel Robbins (09:26):

But why not? Hold on a second. I blame myself and I don't have a problem with it. And by the way, this is so relevant to me as a boss too, to take responsibility for how you take the pressure that you feel and pass it on to somebody else. You have a huge impact in other people's lives based on how you process and handle the pressure that you feel, whether you just jam that down your kids or your colleagues or your friends' throats because you can't tolerate it yourself. And so I think there is a massive role that parents play that they need to wake up and start taking responsibility for.

 

Jennifer Wallace (10:00):

I don't disagree with you, and I agree that it's blame is the word that I'm tired of. I guess what I'm trying to tell parents is to zoom out and put into context the anxieties and the fears that they are feeling so that they can see them. It's not personal. Every parent is feeling this. I mean, as I mentioned, I worked with a Harvard researcher to conduct a first of its kind parenting survey, and we were hoping to get a sample size of a thousand parents, and within a few days, 6,500 parents had filled it out and there were these universal themes that parents today are feeling. I feel responsible for my children's achievement and success.

 

Mel Robbins (10:43):

Does that concern you?

(10:53):

But when I was growing up in the seventies and eighties, my parents, yes, they would buy me a tennis racket or a pair of running shoes, but they didn't feel like they had to push me to the front of the pack. And I think today parents feel that responsibility. But here's one other thing I want to say. Not only do they feel that responsibility, they think other people are judging them on that as well. I asked how many agreed with others think that my children's academic success is a reflection of my parenting. 83% of parents agreed with that statement. So it's not only that we feel responsible for creating these safety nets for our kids and making sure they're successful in the future, but other people are judging us.

 

Mel Robbins (11:37):

In fact, this is the first time in US history that kids are worse off than their parents. Worse health outcomes, life expectancy, higher anxiety rates, higher depression rates, worried about the environment, the changing job market. It's no wonder everybody is stressed out.

 

Jennifer Wallace (11:55):

I asked parents, so we're talking about the stress that they're feeling in their homes, right? I said, how many of you agree or disagree with this statement on a S scale from one to four? I wish today's childhood was less stressful for my kids. 87% of parents agreed with that statement.

 

Mel Robbins (12:12):

I want to know who are the 13 that didn't,

 

Jennifer Wallace (12:16):

My God,

 

Mel Robbins (12:18):

Maybe they

 

Jennifer Wallace (12:19):

Read

 

Mel Robbins (12:19):

The question wrong.

 

Jennifer Wallace (12:21):

At the end of the survey, I asked parents if they would be willing to be interviewed, and hundreds of parents reached out. And so I traveled the country listening to these stories over and over again. It was the same story, the sleepless nights by their kids in order to cram in all the AP classes, the weekend spent at soccer tournaments, missing family gatherings, missing birthday parties. The mother in Alaska told me her kids never understood what a Thanksgiving meal really was because they were always on the road going to soccer tournaments on Thanksgiving. So I guess what surprised me the most was how universal this feeling was and how honest parents were about it.

 

Mel Robbins (13:04):

That makes a lot of sense, and I can't wait to hear what we need to focus on in order to get back to the kind of life where you are focused on healthy achievement instead of being driven to the race to nowhere based on this toxic grind culture and this pressure that we feel. I mean, when I explained that story about how my friend said something and next thing you know I swoop in and start pressuring my son because now I'm all freaked out and I'm buying into this. That's exactly what we're talking about, that there's the ability to strive and to want to achieve something and to do it in a very healthy way rather than amping up the pressure and the stress that we feel. So how do we get there?

 

Jennifer Wallace (13:48):

Yeah. At the root of all this suffering is an unmet need to feel like we matter for who we are at our core.

 

Mel Robbins (13:58):

Seriously. I mean, I thought we were talking about achievement. Now you're talking about mattering. I mean, that's kind of a squishy topic. You're going to have to break this down for me and for the person listening, because you're talking about doing as the problem, but somehow being, being and feeling like you matter, how are we going to get there?

 

Jennifer Wallace (14:23):

Mattering is a core need that we all have to feel important, significant, and like we make an impact on the world to matter. We need to feel valued for who we are at our core, by our families, by our colleagues, by our friends and our larger community. And importantly, we need to be dependent on, we need to be relied on to add value back to families, to our colleagues or friends and to our larger communities. When we experience that feeling valued and adding value, that's when we have a high level of mattering. And mattering acts like a protective shield against anxiety, depression. It's not that the students that I met who experienced this high level of mattering, who were striving in healthy ways, it didn't mean they didn't have failures or setbacks, but what mattering did is it acted like a buoy. It helped to lift them up when they had a setback, when they felt like they were failing.

 

(15:24):

It wasn't an indictment of their worth. So as part of my research, I went in search of the healthy drivers. I wanted to know what, if anything they had in common, what was home life like for them? What was their relationship like with their peers? What was school like? And I found about 15 or so common threads that these healthy achievers had in common. And as I was looking for a framework to present my findings, I came across the psychological construct of mattering. It's been around since the 1980s. It was first conceptualized by Morris Rosenberg who brought us the idea of self-esteem. And what he found in the eighties was that students who felt a healthy level of self-esteem felt like they mattered, that they were important to their parents and known for who they were at their core. Their value wasn't contingent on their performance or what they looked like or what team they made, and they were also on to add meaningful value back to their families, to their friends, to their communities.

 

(16:31):

They experienced this high level of mattering because they had social proof. They believed at their core that they were valued, and then they saw it in action with how they were adding value to those around them. So when they stumbled, when they had a setback, they didn't feel like it was an indictment of their worth. They were able to bounce back. The kids who seemed to be suffering the most were kids who felt like they only mattered when that their mattering was contingent, their value was contingent. The other group that seemed to be suffering the most were kids who felt like they were valued at home, but no one ever depended or relied on them. So what happens is they lacked social proof that they mattered.

Jennifer Wallace (18:14):

Right. So social proof tells a student or an adult that you are important in this world, you make a positive impact on the world around you. The idea of mattering, whether it's for students or for people at work or for people who are retired, mattering matters throughout life, young, old, rich, poor. There is what researchers call an instinct to matter. So beyond food and shelter, it is the instinct to matter that researchers say drive all of human behavior. For better or for worse. When we feel like we matter, we show up in the world in positive ways, we achieve in healthy ways. We want to give back to society. We want to be a good neighbor, we want to be a great colleague. We want to lift people up because we have this deep core of mattering. When we feel like we don't matter, when we are made to feel marginalized, we can either fall inward, get depressed, anxious, lean on substances to feed our loneliness, or we can act out. So a school shooter is among the most tragic examples. You don't think I matter? I'll show you I matter. This is a universal need that we all have and we are living in a society where it is going unmet for too many people. And that to me is the driving force behind the loneliness. We're feeling the anxiety that we think we're not worthy, the depression when we feel invisible, when no one cares about us or when we think no one cares about us.

 

Mel Robbins (19:54):

So it sounds like we all have this innate, important critical need to feel as though we matter in the world at large or to other people, that we have something to contribute that that is the core issue that most of us are struggling with. And the symptoms that it's not being met are things like loneliness, despair, feeling angry, anxiety. All of those things rise to the surface when this core need isn't met. I really want to dig deeper and deeper into this because I think when our audience, which is now in 194 countries, when people write in, I have no friends. I dunno what to do with my life. I believe this is an issue, that this person has no social proof that they matter. And so can you give us examples of what is social proof that you matter

 

Jennifer Wallace (20:56):

In a corporate event, A 30-year-old raised his hand and he said, sometimes I feel like I don't matter. Is there a mantra I could say to myself to help me put myself in that mattering mindset? And I said, no. I said, here's what you need to do. You need to go down to your cafeteria and you need to smile at the cafeteria lady who always smiles at you and asks you how your day is going. And you need to say to her, these days have been a little rough for me, but knowing that you're going to be there greeting me with this delicious meal, making me smile, you brighten my day every day. I just want you to know that unlocking the mattering in other people feeds our own mattering. So instead of a mantra, better to go out and be kind and caring to the person at the drugstore who's ringing up, who's probably being attacked day in and day out for not moving fast enough for not, and just thanking them, just thanking everyday people, thanking a friend who's been there for you.

 

(21:58):

Just a quick text mattering is felt in big moments when we are celebrating a milestone birthday and somebody gives a toast to us and tells us why we matter to them. But it's also found in little everyday moments too. In those little moments of mattering or not mattering pile up. I just remember distinctly, I was at an office party with my husband and a guy was talking to me, but on his phone and texting the entire conversation. And I thought to myself, wow, I really don't matter here. I really don't matter to this guy. It wasn't being rude to me. He was just showing me, yeah, you don't matter as much as this phone. So when our kids come up to talk to us and we're scrolling or we're doing a work email, they can be getting those small signals of not mattering like I got at that office party.

 

Mel Robbins (22:52):

You recommend when kids come home from school that there's one question that you ask that shows that you matter. What is that question?

 

Jennifer Wallace (23:04):

I lead with lunch.

 

Mel Robbins (23:05):

What does that mean?

 

Jennifer Wallace (23:06):

So what I used to do before researching this book is my kids would come home and I'd be thinking, how'd you do on the Spanish quiz? How'd it go on your report today? And what I realized in doing the research was that the signal I was sending my kids, one was that achievement mattered. Two, this is what I'd been thinking about all day while they were at school. And so instead, now when they walk in the door, I lead with lunch. I ask them, what'd you have for lunch today? And I got that idea because my grandmother in every conversation I would have with her, she's since passed away. It would always be, what did you have for lunch? It was, I care about you. I care your nourishment. I care about things that have nothing to do with how you look, what grade you got, how your career is going. I just care about you and your basic needs.

 

Mel Robbins (23:54):

And what did you see change in the dialogue with your kids when you started asking about launch instead of the Spanish test?

 

Jennifer Wallace (24:02):

Well, first of all, what I have realized and what the research shows is my kids don't need me to ask about their Spanish test. They already are getting the signals everywhere that achievement matters so much. So what I've realized is that my home needs to be a place for kids to recover for my teens, to recover from the pressure they're feeling from their peers, from their peers parents, from teachers, from the college admissions process. My home needs to be a haven from that pressure. So I don't need to ask about their Spanish quiz. They're going to tell me it's already on their minds.

 

Mel Robbins (24:38):

So is the same true when your partner comes home from work or your roommates come home from work? How do you signal that they matter to you? What's the question that you ask?

 

Jennifer Wallace (24:49):

I think what was the best part of your day? I think what mattering to me is, is that I value for who you are at your core. It is not contingent on your performance. It's not contingent on how you look that day. It's not contingent on how many dates you're going on. You matter, no matter what, unconditional mattering. And we need to be a source of unlocking it in other people.

 

Mel Robbins (25:13):

And if you want to build your own self-esteem, put your attention on other people and unlock it in them, make eye contact, smile, point out what you appreciate that people are doing for you. Thank people compliment their nails. It's so easy to do and not enough of us are doing it. And you do get back this reciprocal exchange of energy that makes you feel important because you just made somebody else smile or you just made somebody else light up when you said their name. There was a Gallup study that was done that I found to be shocking that something like 80% of people haven't been told by their boss that they're appreciated in the last year, not a single acknowledgement that what you do here matters, and I appreciate you for doing it. And that to me is stunning except for the fact that the same research showed, if I recall correctly, that most people assume you know how I feel about you. And that's the huge mistake that we're all making, that we assume that our kids know that we love them, but we never say that, that we put our attention on other things like the Spanish test, which then cues to somebody that's what she cares about. That's all that she cares about. She's really happy when the team wins. She's not so happy when we don't. And so I think what you're revealing is this real thin veil that separates us one another that we don't realize we need to have to get super, super proactive about.

 

Jennifer Wallace (26:49):

One of the reasons that people research finds this, that we don't tell people how much they mean to us and how much we appreciate them is we think they're going to be embarrassed by our feedback.

 

Mel Robbins (27:00):

Really?

 

Jennifer Wallace (27:01):

Yeah. There's a research on gratitude about why people don't express their gratitude because they underestimate how the other person will receive it, and sometimes they think they'll embarrass the other person, but the research does not bear that out. So just to clear up any misconceptions,

 

Mel Robbins (27:17):

You just said that 80 plus percent of parents believe that if your kid is doing poorly on a test or gets bad grades, it is a reflection on your parenting. But you've got this amazing reframe. What does a bad grade mean?

 

Jennifer Wallace (27:34):

Yes, I got this wonderful advice from a child psychologist, Lisa Damore, and I have used it in my own home as well. So when a child brings home a bad grade, instead of dismissing it or saying That's okay, help them widen their perspective. Here's what a bad grade on a one-off test tells you. It tells you that that's what you knew. That's specific day. It doesn't mean how much your teacher loves you, it doesn't mean how well you're going to do in the future. It doesn't define who you are as a student. It's one test on one particular day, and we all have bad days.

 

Mel Robbins (28:10):

I love that. I love that you have this incredible family motto that you, I would love for every family to adopt this, but can you share it with us?

 

Jennifer Wallace (28:22):

So in our family, we have a mantra which is to never worry alone. And that's true of us as parents and also of our kids. And what I hope to instill in my kids with that mantra is the idea that we are worthy of support. We are worthy of being held and nurtured and supported when we are having setbacks. We are not our setbacks. Our worth is our worth. And when we worry with others, we feel validated. We hear our worth, we see it in the support that others give us. We get that social proof that we are valued no matter what.

 

(29:00):

Whatever you do, don't worry alone. That's when we get into trouble. So reach out for support. We think as parents, our job is to raise self-reliant independent adults, and that is an important thing to do. But there is a more profound lesson that our kids need to learn if we want to raise them to be healthy. And that is the skills of interdependence, how to rely on others and how to have others rely on them in healthy ways. And so that's where the don't worry alone comes from is part of the skills that I'm trying to teach my kids of interdependence.

 

Mel Robbins (29:38):

Oh wow, that's so important. You're right. And we do focus on kind of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and being self-reliant and taking responsibility, that modeling healthy connection and interdependence, getting support when you need support, talking about your feelings that we got to model that too. And if you're not, you're teaching somebody to suffer in silence the way that so many of us have for generations. One other thing that I love that you wrote about was this idea that being good enough is way better than being perfect. Why is that?

Mel Robbins (31:19):

It reminds me of this thing that you wrote, that the difference between getting a 91% on a test and a 99 is having a good life.

 

Jennifer Wallace (31:30):

That is it. That is it. As parents, I certainly fell into this trap myself, the idea that we had to put our needs behind our kids at every turn, and I certainly subscribed to that idea of needing to be the perfect mother. And then I realized that I was getting burnt out. And I would say the thing that really changed my mind about all of this is the research. The number one intervention for any child in distress is to make sure the primary caregiver, most often the mother or the father, that their wellbeing, their mental health, is in intact because a child's resilience rest fundamentally on their caregiver's resilience and caregiver's resilience, rest fundamentally on the depth and support of their relationships.

 

Mel Robbins (32:23):

I want to make sure everybody heard that. You're saying that based on the research, if there is a child that is struggling, the most important intervention that works to help the struggling child is to give the caregiver of that child deeper levels of support.

 

Jennifer Wallace (32:47):

Yes.

 

Mel Robbins (32:48):

If you're somebody that's listening to us right now and you're like, Jenny, Mel, that sounds great, but I don't have anybody or I don't even know where to start or who the hell am I going to ask? Because everyone that I know is also burnt out. You have a framework for this. So can you lay it out for everybody listening?

 

Jennifer Wallace (33:03):

Sure. So this is a study that was originally started by Sonya thar one of the leading researchers in the world on resilience. And she did a series of studies including people who were busy mothers and also had a busy professional life. And she wanted to find out if one hour a week for three months, one hour a week with a small group of four to five people in the same sort of world, if they could be sources of support for each other. And what she found was no mother bowed out even when the busyness of their professional and home lives were calling for them. One hour of the week they met, they talked about their struggles, and at the end of it, she measured their cortisol levels. Those had lowered, she measured wellbeing, the relationships with their kids and relationships with their parents. And what she found was that you only need one hour of deliberate support, a week, one hour.

 

Mel Robbins (34:05):

And for those of you going, but I don't know where to get, churches have free daycare and they have a lot of support groups, that would be a great place to start. Community centers looking in your town's Facebook pages for events that are going on. You're not going to find it sitting on your couch complaining to yourself about it. You're going to have to put yourself out there. You also say it's critical that we tell our kids and our colleagues and our friends are failure stories. What does that mean?

 

Jennifer Wallace (34:35):

So my daughter was in seventh grade and she considered herself a good writer, and her seventh grade teacher gave her her paperback and it had red marks all over the place. So she was so discouraged and I said, Caroline, come to my computer. And I pulled up an early article I had written for the Washington Post science section, and it was edited by a really seasoned, wonderful editor, and it was a blood bath. I mean, there were comments there, I don't understand this. Can you add more here? I need another interview. Where is this study? And my daughter was like, oh my God, I can't believe they let you write for them. And I've been writing for them for 10 years now. And I said, see, at first I was embarrassed. I told her to need all that work to see all those red marks. And then I thought about it a different way. I said, oh, this person is trying to invest in me. They are trying to make me a better writer. So I welcome feedback is what I said to my daughter. I sometimes even say out loud to myself in my office, well, that's enough for the day. Just that because I have a tendency to overwork and so I have to put the brakes on myself and I want to model that out loud to my kids.

 

Mel Robbins (35:46):

You have an ICER way of saying, I'm always like, well, I just fucked up again. And then they're like, mom, dollar in the swear jar. I'm like, I'm going to be paying for your college tuition with the amount I'm swearing around here. I screw up all the fricking time. I'm really curious for you to share with us what are the top things that parents say or do that we have no idea that is eroding or erasing the value that your kids need to feel.

Mel Robbins (36:41):

Wow,

 

Jennifer Wallace (36:41):

Really? Yeah. So what I try to keep in my mind is that to create this kind of healthy environment in my house, I need to keep a ratio in mind. I need to think that for every one criticism, I need to at least have five positive interactions with my kids. We are wired as parents to look for the negative and to try to help our kids overcome the negative. But really what we need to do to have that kind of connection is we need to focus on the positive things that are inherent about them. What is it about them that's unique? And so when you look at the research on achievement culture or on healthy connections, it is having that warm relationship with a parent, a minimal criticism and prioritizing affection. That is what helps us create this connection at home. So when I asked the leading researcher, Sonya, thar, what's one thing I could do tonight in my house to buffer against any achievement pressure in my home? She gave me a phrase that I've kept in my head, which is minimize criticism, prioritize affection. She said the kids who were the healthiest in her studies, who went to these competitive schools at home, their parents were not critical of them. They were able to separate the deed from the doer.

 

Mel Robbins (38:05):

And can you define criticism? Because I'm thinking about a situation with our daughter the other day where she's moving back to la, she's out of college. I still consider her a kid because this stuff about mattering is for all of us. And we were talking about the fact that today, while you and I are talking, she's on an airplane heading back, and she got her knickers in a pinch because she wanted to put all of her shoes in a box and then ship the box. And I was like, dude, no, that's going to cost like a hundred dollars for crying out loud. You get two checked bags for 25 bucks and I can check a bag with your, so I criticized, right? Is that what you're talking about? Or are you talking about criticizing her for being stupid?

 

Jennifer Wallace (38:48):

Criticizing her? That's exactly right.

 

Mel Robbins (38:50):

Okay.

 

Jennifer Wallace (38:50):

It's separating like you did the deed from the doer. She's not dumb spending a hundred and whatever to send shoes. That's kind of dumb when you can spend $25.

 

Mel Robbins (39:02):

Exactly. And now she's on a budget. It's amazing how you don't have champagne taste anymore when you're paying for it yourself. You know what I'm saying? I do. And that leads right into something else that I think is super important for everyone to hear based on the research. Chores, chores, chores, chores matter. They not only matter because you need the people that you live with to be helping with chores, but chores impact this instinctual desire to matter how so?