Weekly ideas about living a good, meaningful and high performing life in a chaotic world from Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness. Best selling authors of PEAK PERFORMANCE, DO HARD THINGS, and THE PRACTICE OF GROUNDEDNESS.
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On Raising Excellent Kids
Published 8 days ago • 9 min read
Reflect: Define Who Matters
Too often, we let other people into our heads. We play on repeat the comments from the anonymous troll or the offhanded critique of someone on the sidelines. We can't let it go. It becomes that voice in the back of our head that gives credence to the normal doubts we all face. We are wired for warnings. And our brain doesn't do the greatest job of discerning which voices to listen to and which to let go. We often talk about defining what success means to you. We can take that a step further and define whose opinion matters. There is a difference between critique from a coach, teacher, or teammate (who you know has your best interests at heart), and someone you've never met.
Before you take on your next endeavor, get clear on whose voice you want circling around your head.
Recently, Steve was discussing with a parent who’d been warned that their negligence was costing their 8th grader a shot at pursuing his dreams. The parents hadn’t planned out his entire curriculum for the next 5 years, and because certain high school courses come with a GPA, if you don't map it out, you risk leaving potential points on the table. That kid might slip a few spots in his class rank. Apparently, other parents had full-on color-coded spreadsheets to maximize their kids' odds.
We've written before about the craziness of youth sports. The private coaches, when a kid is 7, travel teams at 8, promises of athletic scholarships, and dreams of professional leagues. But we haven’t addressed its close cousin: the college admissions arms race, which includes specialized tutors designed to give your ACT a boost, resume counselors (and writers), and guides to the exact high school classes you should take to optimize the balance of perceived rigor and GPA. Gone are the days when your kid says, “Hmm, drama sounds fun, European history looks interesting.” Now it’s all about optimizing for an outcome.
The arms race in sport and academics comes from a similar place: a parent's (very genuine) wanting the best for their children, wanting to give them every possible opportunity. So when confronted with the opportunity to give your kid a slightly better shot, who isn’t going to take it?
In sports, it’s the financial freedom of a scholarship. In academics, it's the promise of a school that’s ranked just a bit higher, which implies improved future earnings. But the maximizing and optimizing for a future outcome carries a cost. It doesn’t cultivate the underlying ingredients that help our children turn into happy, healthy, successful adults. Decades of research tell us that we need intrinsic motivation to be the main driver. A meta-analysis of over 200,00 students found thatintrinsic motivation predicted higher performance, persistence, and well-being, whereas ego-involved motives linked to ill-being. We need that spark of curiosity that pushes us to explore a topic out of our own free will. And how do we cultivate intrinsic motivation? By pursuing our interests, by dabbling in a range of pursuits early on so that we can figure out what in the world we actually like; by surrounding ourselves with peers who challenge us and support our interests; by going down the rabbit hole on something that catches our attention. It’s the kid who tries speech, debate, theatre, and western literature; even if those classes don't give them the GPA boost of AP Physics.
We’ve known for 50+ years that overemphasizing academic rewards and outcomes undermines intrinsic motivation. We can point to all sorts of research that shows helicopter and bulldozer parenting is linked to mental health issues, and that autonomy supportive parenting predicts better academic and psychological development.
Yet the temptation to over-optimize, to clear the path and focus on getting that shiny outcome, is still there. We keep telling kids to take this class to get a slight edge in class rank. Show up to practice not because you enjoy the sport, but because this is your ticket. The pull is strong. And for good reason. It’s scary to be the parents who don’t go all-in on U8 baseball when all your peers are. It’s easy to feel guilty that you aren’t taking a GPA-boosting class when your entire neighborhood is doing that. After all, don’t you care about your kids? That guilt can make us throw away everything that research tells us and everything that we know. We get it. We live, eat, and breathe mastery. And still, at times, we have the feeling of, “Should I be doing more for my kid?"
Consider this your permission to acknowledge the guilt and anxiety that come with raising kids. It’s normal. But, as we so often write about, those emotions can be nudges we learn to sit with or alarms that make us panic and us go against our values. When everyone is screaming at you to panic, it’s easy to understand why your brain goes there. In these situations, it's crucial to keep returning to your values. How do you instill the underlying ingredients? How do you stoke intrinsic motivation and curiosity? How do you create lifelong learners? How do you give kids tools to sometimes take the wrong path, fail, and yet pick themselves up and find a new path?
Before we wrap up, we want to leave you with an example from Steve’s experience, along with some heuristics Brad uses himself and with the youth sports teams he coaches.
Steve’s brother is a well-known economist with a PhD. His sister is a genetic counselor. In the family, Steve had the worst class rank and test scores of the Magness trio. In no small part because while his brother and sister were pursuing their academic interests, he was off running 15 miles a day. The irony is that Steve got accepted to pretty much every college in America (even though he had much lower test scores and GPAs) simply because he could run in circles faster…but that’s a story for another day.
Surely, in a house filled with academic heavyweights, there was a push to play the college admissions game. Nope. In high school, Steve’s brother took German for four years because it was interesting. He nerded out in extracurricular clubs that didn’t do much for his resume. His sister played tennis and sang in the choir. She was no phenom, but she liked being on the team and slowly worked her way up to varsity. Steve opted out of advanced math the minute he had the chance, replacing it with “office aid” so that he could do less homework and spend more time running.
There was never a mention of class ranks or getting into prestigious schools. In fact, when Steve was a senior in high school, after visiting an Ivy League school, his dad told him not to get carried away by the prestige and that it didn’t make much sense.”Ivy schools don’t give athletic scholarships. You could go here and be in debt for a long time. Or you could go somewhere else for free.” If there’s one thing Steve’s parents did, it’s that they never got caught up in the chase.
There’s a reason every coach preaches process. It's why Bill Walsh titled his book The Score Takes Care of Itself. It sounds cliché. It sounds simple. But all of these coaches realize the same thing the research on motivation tells us: Build the underlying ingredients. Stoke intrinsic fire. And the outcomes take care of themselves, from winning games to pursuing careers.
It’s scary to let go. But that’s kind of the point. The easy thing is to quell the anxiety, to bulldoze, to over-optimize. The hard thing is to sit with the anxiety and ask: Are you raising your kids in accordance with your values? Are you giving them valuable tools and helping light the fire? That’s what matters most over the long haul.
IF YOU WANT TO RAISE EXCELLENT KIDS, GET COMFORTABLE SAYING: “I love you regardless of the outcome.”
Your kids need to know that your love and approval are not contingent on them performing a specific way.
Study after study shows that young people improve most when they know they are loved deeply and accepted regardless of the result.
You can’t just say it. You’ve got to show it, which means keeping your shit together when things don’t go well. You’re the adult. Act like one.
IF YOU WANT TO RAISE EXCELLENT KIDS, GET COMFORTABLE SAYING: “You can put yourself out there, I’ve got your back.”
As young people are developing an identity, self-confidence, and trust can be a challenge. Your job as the parent: be a backstop of belief, which, paradoxically, will help them establish their own.
IF YOU WANT TO RAISE EXCELLENT KIDS, GET COMFORTABLE SAYING: “It's okay to come up short.”
Kids need to know it’s not a catastrophe if they fail.
Honor their feelings, but also give them perspective. Consider implementing the 48-hour rule: give them 48 hours to grieve defeats or celebrate victories, then nudge them to return to the activity itself.
IF YOU WANT TO RAISE EXCELLENT KIDS, GET COMFORTABLE SAYING: “It’s cool to try hard.”
We live in an epidemic of nonchalance. The reason people don’t try hard is it requires putting yourself out there. It’s scary enough for adults. Now imagine being a kid in today’s world.
Remind your child that trying hard and giving a damn is so much cooler than never trying at all, regardless of what the popular kids do.
IF YOU WANT TO RAISE EXCELLENT KIDS, GET COMFORTABLE SAYING: “Focus on the effort, not the result.”
Praising effort, not result, is the crux of developing a growth mindset.
Results are often contingent on many things outside of our control. They will ebb and flow. Effort is within our control. It’s also a requirement to improve and find satisfaction and fulfillment—regardless of how naturally talented you are.
IF YOU WANT TO RAISE EXCELLENT KIDS, GET COMFORTABLE SAYING: "What can we do to make this more fun?"
The main determiner of whether kids continue in a given activity is whether or not they’re having fun.
But what about all the uber-serious parents on the sidelines? Research shows that 70% of kids quit youth sports by age 13. The number one reason they give: it’s not enjoyable.
Chill out. Kids need to play. And have fun.
IF YOU WANT TO RAISE EXCELLENT KIDS, GET COMFORTABLE SAYING:"I love you just for who you are."
Your number one job is to love and support your kid—not their performance, but their being. Nothing you do at age 9 or 10 is going to make your kid a Division I athlete or conservatory scholarship student. But you can help them build a good relationship with themselves and the activities they love—and that can last a lifetime.
It starts and ends with your love and support. At every practice. At every recital. After every report card. Never forget this.
-- Steve and Brad
The Way of Excellence
Hey! Brad here — As you may know, my new book, The Way of Excellence, is coming out soon. I don’t mean to hard sell you, and I hope this doesn’t come off as presumptuous, but if you find this newsletter valuable, I think you are going to love the book. It's a big swing at excellence, and includes examples from many different crafts. If you think you may get the book when it comes out, it’d mean the world to me if you consider preordering it now. Preorders go a long way to help the book’s launch and secure a big first printing. It's the best way to support this newsletter and our work more broadly. We're also giving away some great bonuses if you pre-order today, including a masterclass, reading list, workbook, and more.
Listen🎧: "Doing it All: The CEO Who Ran a 2:29 Marathon (with Nick Thompson)" (SPOTIFY/APPLE/YOUTUBE)
“Runners tend to decline in their 30s and 40s, but the main reason we slow isn’t our bodies, it’s our lives.”
This is something Nick Thompson writes in his recently released book, The Running Ground—which makes it all the more interesting that Nick’s running and his life have only seemed to improve with age.
He ran a personal best 2:29 in the marathon at age 44 (14 minutes faster than he’d run it at age 30), and then went on to set the American record for men aged 45 to 49 in the 50K at 3:04. He’s also CEO of The Atlantic, a father to three, a sought-after public speaker, and a guitarist. (Did we mention that he just wrote a book?)
On today’s episode of “excellence, actually”, Nick explains how he does it all, including…
the five-column to-do list that keeps him on track
the importance of having “non-goals”
how he pushed through a decade-long performance plateau after recovering from cancer
the lessons that have most helped his running, writing, and leading
If you want to hear more from Nick, be sure to check out today’s episode, “Doing it All: The CEO Who Ran a 2:29 Marathon,” wherever you get your podcasts.
— Clay
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Weekly ideas about living a good, meaningful and high performing life in a chaotic world from Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness. Best selling authors of PEAK PERFORMANCE, DO HARD THINGS, and THE PRACTICE OF GROUNDEDNESS.
Reflect: Rules for Life Try hard. Care deeply. Put yourself out there. Don’t be scared of coming up short; it’s how you grow. Be patient. Realize good things tend to take time. Never sacrifice your health. Walk. Run. Lift. Swim. Dance. Cycle. Depression hates a moving target. Ask for help when you need it. Help others, too. Learn from failure. Learn from success. But also embrace a next-play mentality. The past is in the past. The future is in your imagination. You’ve only got the moment you...
Reflect: Excellence Excellence is not hustle-culture bullshit. It is not waking up at 4 AM to cold plunge and telling everyone about it. It is not a restrictive diet. It is not a chest thumping act of look how great I am. It is not sacrificing your soul or bending the knee to make as much money as possible. Excellence is throwing yourself fully into things that support your values. It is caring deeply and giving your all. It is making the most of your unique gifts. It is hard work. Creating....
Reflect: Actual vs. Pseudo Competitiveness Just after Faith Kipyegon won the gold medal in the 1,500m at the world athletics championship, the TV cameras focused in on a lady in the crowd with tears of joy streaming down her face. It was Beatrice Chebet, a fellow Kenyan athlete. A few days later, Chebet and Kipyegon went head-to-head in an epic battle in the 5k, with Chebet just edging out Kipyegon. When it comes to competition, we often think we need to hate our opponents, to make them our...