Meet Jesse, Lexa, Amani and Cherie. One about to graduate college, one with two years left to go-due to two separate gap years-one who left college after her first year and one who has been out of college for a few years.

We had a fascinating conversation. Here are some the key takeaways:

• Success seems to be defined only by how much esteem, recognition and money you will have in your chosen profession.
• The only definition of success that has ever really been presented to us in the academic world is based on grade point average and how many extra curricular activities you have participated in.
• Having time outside of/after school helped me to find myself. Now success=being happy, having close friendships and feeling that I am evolving and growing as a human being.  It's about how I feel rather than what I can present to people.
• The more well-off my friends are, the more stress they feel about achieving great things as defined by society.
• The anxiety about achievement starts in Middle School-you feel you have to start getting serious about grades and assessments. No time to do things that are just for fun or to just be a kid.
• They feel much less pressure now in their 20s than they felt at 16-they don't feel they need to have everything figured out.
• Parents should put trust in their kids that they’ll figure it out.

Meet Felicia, Caroline, Chris and Daniella-four High School seniors (when I spoke with them last Spring). They all went to the same magnet school in suburban New Jersey.

Here are some of the questions I asked them:

• How do you define success and where did that definition come from?
• How’s your relationship with your phone?
• What was the college application process like for you?
• Are you able to talk about mental/emotional health with your parents
• What would you say, in retrospect, to your middle school self?

I hope you enjoy getting to know them and that you find our conversation as enlightening and interesting as I did.

Meet Lauren, Luca and Anna: One High School Sophomore, One High School Junior and one College Freshman.

All from different parts of the country.

All trying to find that balance between being a high-achieving student and taking time to enjoy life and get to know themselves.

I talked with these kids  about how they define success and how society has defined success FOR them-and whether or not the two go together. These definitions-and the inherent anxieties that accompany them-seem to be handed over to our kids at an increasingly early age-maybe 5th or 6th grade. The louder the drumbeat becomes, the more difficult it is for them to spend the time and the effort on activities (or LACK of activities) that might truly enable them to discover themselves, their passions, their interests and the qualities and values that truly define long-term life satisfaction.

They are encouraged to self-define at such a young age-without really knowing who they are or what they want. And all of this pressure and expectation is hurting them-they are sleep-deprived, they are anxious and sometimes depressed. 

They hesitate to speak with their parents about these struggles because they fear that parents won't understand, or won't be able to give them the support that they need, or perhaps they will just cause their parents stress-which is the last thing they want to do.

The Greeks understood that there is a lot to be gained from sharing stories of your own struggles and pain with other people. Young people need to be taught that this is part of the human experience, that this is normal-and even healthy. Parents and academic institutions need to create environments where negative and contrary thoughts are permitted. Without these, how will our kids learn to examine their attitudes and beliefs and ultimately develop their own individual value systems-which will guide their choices and decisions throughout their lives?

 Research shows-and the positive psychology movement confirms- that long-term well-being  comes from self knowledge, because when you know yourself, you can choose a path that will be fulfilling for you. When you know what floats your boat, when you know what kind of people are good for you to be around, or maybe not so good for you to be around, when you have the experience of genuinely doing something of service for somebody else, and the intense sense of satisfaction that you get from knowing that you have that capacity, these are the things that inform a path to adulthood that is likely to bring happiness.

In this episode Bryan Doerries, Founder and Artistic Director of Theater of War, reminds us that making lots of mistakes-every day-is the only healthy path towards genuine  self-awareness and self-confidence. That's how you learn to make better choices. The Greeks embraced this openness to error and exploration as the only way towards more long-term gratification. And that's not how our society-or our parenting- is oriented right now.  We would serve our kids. well if we could find ways to give them doses of that every now and then.

The Greeks understood that adolescence is a time of infinite possibility. Does our current narrow definition of achievement truly enable our kids to access that wide variety of opportunities?

 Our guest is Bryan Doerries, founding and artistic director of Theater of War. Bryan explains how the Greeks trained their young people for the vicissitudes of life and empowered them to express themselves. And while they trained their youth for participation in either the military and/or civic affairs-they balanced this with encouraging and empowering their youth to explore the world and take risks, so that they could and would experience challenges, engage their creativity and problem solving skills, struggle with discomfort on the physical and emotional levels, and be informed and emboldened to make difficult decisions.

 Adolescence is a time of dynamic change. Neuroscience has shown that not only are their bodies changing rapidly through the twenties, but their brains are still developing into their mid-20s. This is the time, the teenage years into young adulthood, where they should be exposed to a range of situations, experiences and opportunities so that they can flourish, even in the face of disappointment or mistakes.

Perhaps we've put up too many guardrails around them?

One third of our teens and emerging adults are struggling with anxiety-and less than 50% of those kids get any kind of mental health treatment or guidance.

Today we speak with John MacPhee, the Executive director and CEO of The Jed Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that has been in existence for 20 years,  working to strengthen the emotional health of teens and young adults.  John gives us an overview of the many factors affecting this rise,  including:
-a constant influx of information

-economic pressure, inequality and division

-political division and hostility

-sleep deprivation

-lack of in-person socialization and communication

-social media, social comparison and the many determinants of screen time, including the degree to which it keeps them away from the outdoors and nature

Perhaps the biggest stressor is the pressure to figure out what their lane is. How can they stand out?

It's too much pressure or their age and they shouldn't have to self-define so early. We need to let them know that..and we need to try to ease the pressure for them.

VALUES are what inspire our actions and choices -the moral compass that guides our lives and makes us feel purposeful.

How do our kids transition from a full-on acceptance of what their parents espouse to a place where they can also gain exposure to and have a chance to process and assess other perspectives?

What are the Issues and circumstances that may help-or hinder-our kids’ ability to define their values, so that they can move forward into adulthood with strong guiding principles?How do we measure the impact on our kids of an individual-achievement-oriented society-and the values that society elevates and celebrates?
Has the exclusivity and high cost of a college education and today’s college-level focus on job preparation, credentialing and networking replaced the longer-lasting benefits of learning how to think, collaborate, listen and self-define?
What links the increasing number of kids who experience mental health issues in High School and College to this diminished opportunity to seek and explore in an effort to define a path forward driven by passion, engagement and connection to the world?
How has the over-protection we have visited on our kids impacted their ability to engage, debate and listen confidently to others 

In our efforts to protect our kids from suffering more than they already do, we may actually be making them more fragile and ill-equipped to face the challenges inherent in learning and growing on the way to adulthood.

Is admission to a brand name college truly the start of the road to a happy life? 
Has the pressure to get in taken time and focus away from teens’ ability to explore and stumble and dream? 
How has the definition of adolescence and emerging adulthood changed over time and what might those changes mean for the ways in which we have  adapted or changed our parenting of today’s teens. 
What might be the consequences of letting our own anxieties about our kid’s accomplishments, which can lead us to protect them from faltering and failing, when we know that those mistakes and missteps will undoubtedly inform their road to true fulfillment? 
Are WE defining success FOR them - or is it so pervasive in the culture that they’ve espoused it without our influence?
What would some of the greatest thinkers and experts on the art of happiness-from the Ancient Greek philosophers to Martin Seligman-the father of Positive Psychology- say about how we define success today? 
What role do the things that Aristotle held up as most critical to attaining a sense of satisfaction in life-things like virtue, values, self-acceptance-play in this current definition of success. 

At the end of the day, what we really want is for our kids to have fulfilling lives. But in the here and now, it's really hard for parents to take the long view and accept that stumbles now may truly be investments in our kids' long term happiness.

 If you ask any parent what they want for their kids, almost all will say “I just want my kids to be happy”. But what exactly IS happiness, and is happiness even the right word to describe what we are after? Words aside, the real question is how do we help our kids achieve a sense of fulfillment in life?