Help Youth Build the Most Important 21st Century Skill: Moxie
Saying "Yes, and..." to life
Many of us parents are troubled by a fundament question: how will kids learn to thrive in a world beleaguered by change and uncertainty? College admissions are increasingly competitive and continue to favor the elite. AI is poised to steal jobs we once thought were the unique domain of humans. Economic forces have driven an unprecedented number of young adults to delay launching into independence. And rates of youth mental illness are skyrocketing.
As a psychologist, I believe the key to helping young people thrive in these uncertain times is not to protect them from challenges. It’s also not one of the usual suspects like hard work, a perfect resume, or the oft-cited 21st century skills of collaboration and critical thinking.
The key is an old-fashioned word for a modern superpower: Moxie.
Moxie is a mix of energy, spirited determination, and courage, with a large helping of curiosity. The word became popular in the 1930s from the eponymous soft drink then advertised as "nerve food" which "strengthens and invigorates." Over time, moxie made its way into the lingo as a way to describe gutsy people with the nerve to do hard things while savoring the challenge. “You got moxie, kid!” Those with moxie persist despite - and even because of - roadblocks thrown in their way. Moxie exists because of antifragility – our human capacity to gain and grow stronger because of the strain of uncertainty and disorder.
Moxie is when high school senior Liam Garner embarked on a 20,000-mile bike trip, alone, without a phone, from Alaska to Argentina. After 527 days, he completed his epic journey - after being robbed 5 times, enduring heat-stroke-level temperatures, and recovering in hospital from a serious accident. When asked by a reporter whether it was worth it, Liam responded, “One hundred percent... I picked the most impossible thing because if I somehow managed to finish the trip … I would never be able to doubt myself again … so anything in the future that I considered to be impossible was now on the table.” Liam showed moxie because he took on this challenge in order to test his limits. It was the journey, not the destination, that mattered the most.
Luckily, 20,000-mile biking adventures aren’t the only way to cultivate moxie. Instead, we can follow three psychological principles to prime moxie in everyday life:
Build distress tolerance. Distress tolerance is a person’s willingness to experience emotional distress, confusion, and uncertainty as they pursue goals. It’s a building block of mental health - and moxie - because feeling painful feelings is an essential training ground for coping, persisting despite adversity, and developing self-confidence. People who have difficulty tolerating distress can be found across the spectrum of mental health challenges - from anxiety disorders to addiction. Accordingly, building distress tolerance is a core treatment goal in therapy and hallmark of its efficacy. That’s why, with the obvious exception of exposure to violence or hate, we must help young people engage rather than reject experiences that make them uncomfortable. Indeed, protecting them from feelings and ideas can backfire in classrooms and prime more distress. Parents can help kids build distress tolerance by borrowing from the concept of productive struggle - allowing people to work through a problem before offering assistance. Next time your child faces a challenge, first encourage them to persevere on their own through false starts and frustrations. If you do offer support, provide a structure or strategy, not the solution. It’s the journey, not the destination that matters most for building the confidence and skills they need to handle the next curve ball life will inevitably throw their way.
Reject perfectionism to embrace excellence. Perfectionism is the relentless pursuit of flawlessness. It’s all or nothing thinking – you can be a winner or you can be an abject, worthless failure, with nothing in between. That’s why perfectionists compared to others are more emotionally distressed with lower self-esteem, higher rates of depression, and debilitating fear of failure. Meanwhile, they achieve less because they procrastinate, problem-solve less effectively, and stop taking on challenges altogether.
We can guide kids away from perfectionism by helping them build a mindset of excellencism: Having high standards but not beating yourself up when you don’t meet them. Excellencists develop the moxie to take chances, make mistakes, and practice learning from failure so they can achieve great things. Thomas Edison was an excellencist: “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Students benefit from excellencism. In one study, 2,000 undergraduates completed creativity tasks in which they generated original solutions to real-world conflicts. The degree to which someone embraced qualities of excellencism, like learning from mistakes, predicted higher quality solutions and greater persistence, particularly on the most challenging tasks. So, next time your kid makes a mistake, celebrate their opportunity to take that mistake - or the 10,000th one - and determinedly learn from it so they can reach excellence.
Pursue purpose, not passion. A passion is something that makes you feel good, enthusiastic, and joyful. In cultures that value independence and self-expression, like the U.S., it follows that doing what makes you feel good should make you happy. But counterintuitively, the prioritization of passion has been shown to result in less happiness and more depression, especially when things don’t work out. The better option is to prioritize purpose, or goals that are both personally meaningful and consequential for the world. People who regularly engage in more inherently purposeful actions, such as expressing gratitude, persisting in an important goal despite obstacles, and volunteering to help others, report greater well-being and life satisfaction than those who choose goals to maximize pleasure and avoid pain. If we encourage kids to do what they care about instead of just doing what feels passionately good, they will be better equipped to create a life well lived. Joy will almost certainly follow.
If you fear that the kids might not be alright, here’s the best thing you can do: prepare them for the 21st century, don’t protect them. Let them take chances. Help them build the skills and confidence to endure distress, persist in the face of imperfection, and take leaps into the unknown to pursue purpose. If you do, their moxie will grow, and anything they might have once considered impossible will now be on the table.