Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-and What We Can Do About It

by Jennifer Breheny Wallace

Coach Mike engaged the boys in a simple exercise. First he asked them to write down everything they’d done, totally independently, without any help, to contribute to their own success. Then he asked them to make a second list of all the things others had done to support them over the past twenty-four hours. He asked the kids to put a percentage comparing the two. “It’s always fun, because a kid will say, ‘Uh, it’s about fifty-fifty,’ ” he told me. “And I press them: ‘Tell me really, what have you done?’ And then they’re like, ‘Huh, I guess I’ve been driven and clothed and sheltered and fed and loved and financially supported. Maybe it’s more like five to ninety-five percent.’ The point is to plant this idea that they really need people—and that there are people in the world who are going to need them.”