Letting Go of Achievement Culture with Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin
In this episode of Good Enough for Now, Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin shares her experiences researching achievement culture, particularly among teen girls. After noticing the dynamics of a group of girls she supervised at camp as a teen herself, it became a lifelong passion to explore the psychological, social, and developmental challenges that are unique to girls.
The internet may highlight some of the competition and comparison that we all feel today, however Dr. Benjamin shares why a lot of the messaging kids receive about achievement may come from the adults in their lives, if even unintentionally.
Beth shares from her own personal journey and offers some guidance for normalizing that we must first fail if we want to succeed. Listen in to hear more.
LISTEN NOW
what we cover in this episode:
The pervasive achievement culture in teens and the stress they experience at school and at home.
Strategies to shift away from the achievement culture, create downtime for teenagers, and foster the development of inner resilience.
Broader societal factors contributing to adolescent mental health issues, such as college admissions pressure and the expectation of perfection.
The role of parents and educators in navigating the achievement culture, including the need for aligned messaging and recognizing the pressures they face as well.
The importance of celebrating the process, embracing imperfections, and fostering collective resistance to achievement pressure in order to build resilience in teens.
Resources
Connect with Dr. Benjamin on LinkedIn
Cultivate Community, Find a New Path with Judy Schoenberg and Linda Lautenberg
What Good Enough For Now Means To Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin
Wherever you are is a point on a line that you don't know where it's going to extend to. Whatever limitations you might be feeling or struggling with feels unresolved, whether it's that you're not living up to some sense of external standard or you're just not in a place where you want to be, the “for now” is kind of setting sights on the horizon and also recognizing that where you are now is not where you will always be.
Good enough for now is both kind of permission to be in process and imperfect in the moment and also to care about getting to somewhere else and that the somewhere else is out there
ABOUT Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin is an adolescent development scholar and a designer and facilitator of civic engagement and leadership programming for young people. She is Founding Associate Director of the Center for Social Responsibility at the Manhattan Jewish Community Center, More recently, Beth served as Director of the Westover Resiliency Project at Westover, a girls' boarding and day high school in Middlebury, CT. There she led a multi-year grant-funded initiative to challenge achievement pressure and perfectionism and to foster resilience and well-being among students and adult staff. Beth has authored both scholarly and popular articles, and she consults on research, strategy, program development, and training with individual and organizational clients.
She received her master's and doctorate in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Beth lives with her husband and their two young sons in Maplewood, New Jersey, where she practices embracing imperfection as a cook and a knitter
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Stephanie Kruse 0:05
Welcome to Good Enough For Now, a podcast aimed at dismantling perfectionism one conversation at a time. I'm Stephanie Kruse. And along with my guests on the show, we share stories of false starts unexpected you turns in moments of reinvention that happen as we move through life. Thanks for joining me, my hope is that our conversations will help you stay grounded, feel a little less alone, and a little bit more together.
Stephanie Kruse 0:36
Come everybody to the 41st episode of Good Enough For Now, I am super proud to be able to talk to you today. And to introduce my guests, Dr. Beth Benjamin. She and I had a conversation, which really sums it all up about achievement culture in teens, which is a lot of her academic and professional work. And as a parent of a teen, which many of you know, this time of year is fraught with a lot of stress and anticipation, both of getting through the finals of the school year in grades, and also looking forward to summer when hopefully, there can be a bit of rest. And I think this is the tension. How do we help kids get out of achievement culture and have downtime, be happy with where they are in their lives and continue to help them on their journey to developing their inner resilience and acceptance of who they are? And that's exactly what Dr. Benjamin and I talk about. Let me tell you about her.
Stephanie Kruse 1:38
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin is an adolescent development scholar and designer and facilitator of civic engagement and leadership programming for young people. She is the founding Associate Director of the Center for Social Responsibility at the Manhattan Jewish Community Center. More recently, Beth served as director of the Westover resiliency project at Westover, a girls boarding and de High School in Middlebury, Connecticut. There, she led a multi year grant funded initiative to challenge achievement pressure and perfectionism, and to foster resilience and well being among students and adult staff. Beth has authored both scholarly and popular articles, and she consults on research strategy program development and training with individual and organizational clients. She received her master's and doctorate in human development and psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Beth lives with her husband and her two young sons and Maplewood, New Jersey, where she practices embracing imperfection, as a cook, and a knitter. Beth Benjamin, thank you so much for joining me on Good Enough For Now today. Happy to have you.
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 2:45
It's great to be here. Thanks, Stephanie.
Stephanie Kruse 2:46
So you and I met I love how we connected. So I was actually one of the guests. Well, two of the guests, I should say, Judy and Linda, who run evolve me, the reinvention collective. They were guests on Season One of good enough for now. So go listen to it if you haven't, because it was a really good episode about their work. But they were so gracious and asked me to help them in kind of a speed dating experiment with people who are participating in their reinvention collective. And that's how I met you, Beth, and and in talking to you about your work.
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 3:22
That's right, you and I were set up on a speed dating, chat like this. Breakout Room
Stephanie Kruse 3:29
line professional dating. That's awesome. So when I heard your story, I was so interested in the work that you were doing, which I want to get into, I thought you would be such a great guest to come on good enough for now. So let's let people hear about your life. So tell me where you are in your life right now.
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 3:50
Oh, well, yeah. You've you framed it really beautifully talking about the reinvention collective, which yeah, I hope folks either have or will listen to Judy and Linda's interview, because I think they're doing such amazing work. And it was a real pleasure and a wonderful experience to be a part of it. But I am really in a transition. Myself. Right now. I like a lot of people who had small kids during lockdown. I wound up kind of pivoting to doing some more kind of flexible and independent work for the last few years. And now that things have settled down, I'm really excited to get back to being in a more substantial role and honestly to being on a team collaborating with people because that's been one of the real sacrifices of the pandemic is being much more on my own and isolated. So I have the flip side, these last few years have have offered me the opportunity to dig deeply into some work around achievement pressure and perfectionism, which was actually the thing that made me really excited to, to be connected with you in our little speed dating breakout room. Because I knew that these were issues that you were thinking about also.
Stephanie Kruse 5:30
Yeah, absolutely. So tell me a little about the work that you do and kind of who you work with, and some of the questions you've been pondering and thinking about.
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 5:42
Yeah, so I've been working with adolescent girls, that's really been my passion. Honestly, since I was a teenager, I my first real job was as a camp counselor and I was a real little sociologist, I, I was living in a cabin, you know, 17 years old, living in a cabin with 12 and 13 year old girls and studying. Not so far in the rear view, really, from my own experience, but really interested in kind of that transition from childhood to adolescence, and what girls were struggling with and what they needed and what they were interested in. And also reading starting to read about girls psychological and social development and the challenges they were facing. So I wound up really focusing on adolescent development, both in my undergrad studies and then in my graduate work in human development and psychology at Harvard Graduate School of Education. And I was really interested in girls leadership development, and wound up spending a year in combined Junior High in high school girl scout troop in an affluent, predominantly white suburb in the northeast and looking at how girls leadership was defined and practiced in that community. And what that had to do with growing up in a community where the default was privilege. Because of that context, I also started to hear a lot about issues around achievement pressure around perfectionism, those things started bubbling up for me in my research, and then even more so after my stint and grads school, when I was working at a Jewish feminist project at the JCC, the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan for many years, where I helped to create an and lead leadership development program for Jewish teen girls. And a lot of what came up in that cohort was concerns about academic pressure about getting into college about appearance and self presentation online and on social media. And we started seeing more and more anxiety and stress related issues, autoimmune issues, things, you know, real mental and physical health issues coming up more and more. So I had been attending to that as part of my work for for many years, and then was invited to consult on a project at Westover school, a girls boarding and de high school in Connecticut. And that was really, for the last several years, my incredible learning laboratory achievement pressure and perfectionism and, and both how they are impacting, you know, young people and the adults who are working with them and parenting them, and also what we can do to kind of push back and intervene and build resilience and foster well being.
Stephanie Kruse 9:17
Yeah, it's so interesting, you know, I have a daughter who is almost 17. And way back when she was entering kindergarten, we happen to be living somewhere where an all girls education was, you know, available, we were lucky enough to be able to, you know, have her do that and, and a lot of the reasons for why we thought single sex education was beneficial was, you know, demonstrating, you know, leadership opportunities for girls in an environment where there weren't boys competing for attention or, you know, to teach them to their the way that their brains work specifically, you know, to give them less pressure. I think ultimately we thought, too To be fully female, and you know, learn as best as a female can learn and build confidence and resilience, which you so eloquently just said. And it's interesting, because even in my own experience, you know, that all seemed fine until middle school. And as a parent watching this thinking that they've given their child different tools, the same issue still happens. So what do you think are some of the reasons that this happens?
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 10:36
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a big complex beast, right? It makes sense to me that your daughter would end up facing some of the concerns that you had, you know, tried your best to kind of head off or avoid, because they're just bigger and badder and more widespread with more roots than, than just the school environment. There, it's very much the the water that kids are swimming in. Some of it is is positive in that I think we are more attuned to these issues, and we see them more because we're looking for them. And because there's more, you know, the the there's a lot of discussion right now about an adolescent mental health crisis, some of which I think, is that we, there's more space for conversation for open conversation about mental health struggles, right? So it's not all negative. But there are some pressures that exist, you know, we weren't dealing with social media pressures, when we might were their age. We there's a kind of intensity of comparison and curation. The idea that, you know, we're we're only seeing what somebody wants to present to us. And it's very hard to hold that in the context of people having complex lives and struggles. And, you know, what they choose to share? What they don't choose to share what they feel is acceptable and unacceptable. You can't read all the things that are not in the post. Right. Yeah. So So I think that's a significant challenge. I think young people are contending with real existential issues, you know, they're, they're paying attention to the world around them. They're seeing political polarization and, you know, breakdown, they're facing environmental, you know, existential disaster AND, OR, and doing safety drills in schools and right, have grown up down drills backing right, lockdown drills, exactly, and expecting that their schools may not be a safe environment, those are real, real, legitimate, understandable, reasonable sources of stress and pressure they're contending with. That's not and that's not something that, you know, schooling can avert.
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 13:30
When did he quit, it's an and college admissions pressure has grown exponentially, you know, when both the cost of college and the acceptance rates for for highly competitive schools have, you know, actually moved in the opposite direction from each other. Yeah, have gotten more, you know, more selective and more unattainable for a lot of kids. So it feels like the stakes are getting ever higher in all kinds of dimensions.
Stephanie Kruse 14:05
You could frame it out for me, that isn't just we're gonna blame this on phones, or we're gonna, you know, blame this on demographics, you know, what is underlying some of this for them? Is it a kind of like, what's the point, you know, mentality?
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 14:26
So, I don't think that there is one basket that that the blame goes in. I think this is, this is a problem with many masters. Parents are, I think, almost always, unintentionally, a powerful source of messaging. They mean to be a powerful source of messaging, but they don't always mean to be conveying the messages that kids are hearing. There's a researcher out At Harvard at name Rick Weiss Ford who runs a project called Making caring common, and he has written a lot about how teens who have really highly tuned hypocrisy detectors, that's the polite way of saying it. They're very attuned to, to hypocrisy and contradiction in the messages they get from adults, anyway. And they are very attuned to hearing from their parents, the things that their parents say, are the most important to them, their parents say they want them to be happy, and they want them to find their passion, and they want them to, you know, stop stressing so much and take care of themselves and enjoy themselves. But their parents are also endorsing things and setting expectations for them and conveying messages that that's not always the thing that they value the most. So there, there are certainly ways that parents can contradict themselves, in ways that teens really pick up on and struggle with. I think parents are also parents and educators, the adults in in young people's lives, are also struggling with a lot of the same stuff, you know, this interview is gonna wind up on social media. Yeah, we're all engaging, you know, we're all engaging with those same forces and resources, and we feel our own pressures to be perfect. It's one of the beautiful things I think that you do with this podcast is really kind of normalizing detours and dead ends and transitions and pivots and uncertainty and working your way through things that haven't turned out the way that you expected them to. Because that's the human condition. But it's not the way that we are often kind of pushed to present ourselves.
Stephanie Kruse 17:15
Yeah, I mean, it's I love that idea of the reality is, we're all humans living, you know, on this planet, having a life journey, you know, as long or as short as we get. And that's similar for everyone. Right? That's a common ground. But I wonder if in the work that you're doing, if we come out of commoditize our children in some way, in terms of the output is a life that looks like, you know, ABCDE, or a end result of their education and growth is a particular level of college entrance or job title or prestige?
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 18:02
Yeah, I think you really named something important about the over emphasis on outcome, at the expense of process, that teachers, I think, are, are often especially in the public school system, where there's been a real emphasis on standardized testing and kind of routinized things, standardizing outcomes they've seen now that's come at the expense of a lot of creativity, deep engagement, process oriented learning, and it becomes very kind of performance focused or even like perform it is where you know it your if all that matters is that you know the answer, then you're gonna have a hard time getting curious about what you don't know. And that's where real learning happens. So, strategies in the classroom that really focus on deep engagement and cultivating curiosity and making space for having and pursuing real questions. As opposed to demonstrating that you already have all the answers. That's where real learning happens.
Stephanie Kruse 19:31
I love that and I think what you bring up which is so important is this idea about the tension, you know, of fear of failure, and the healthy making of mistakes. Yeah, what are things that you have learned? What do you still struggle with?
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 19:50
Yeah, I you know, in academia, we have this joke that research is me search that we we take on the projects that are gonna, you know, answer our own deepest questions or fix our our deepest flaws. So this is definitely, you know, I'm not immune to any of this and learning about it and helping to lead others in it is really given me some great opportunity for reflection on how it impacts me all the time. I'll tell you a story about my grad school experience. But in the last couple of days, last weekend, my kids and I have an eight and 10 year old boys, and we were pulling together a little family birthday dinner for my husband. And I was kind of tight on time and trying to manage a playdate ending in the other room and making a cake for my husband, and got it into the oven. And immediately realized I'd forgot to add flour, and just a small ingredients trade, right? Not a big deal at all. I and you know, my kids are there and I am not thinking oh, how can I model imperfection for them? I'm thinking oh, crap. Oh, crap. Right, so we pulled it back out again. And, and, and, you know, throwing it back and scraped it back in the bowl and mixed it up. And my kids are like, It's okay, mom, it's okay. I was like, I had to stop, I had to, like, take several deep breaths, and be like, You know what, guys, you're right. It's gonna be yummy. We're not, you know, I'm not trying to, you know, get a job as a pastry chef. This is for our family. And it's, it's gonna be delicious. And you don't know the difference. And it's, it's gonna be you guys are right, I can take a chill pill, I can tone it down and recover. And, and it didn't, it was delicious. It was totally fine. And we told my husband this story and laughed about it. And then I get to reflect afterwards and talk to them and say, Oh, my gosh, I got so stressed out about that, that was so silly. And talk about what it feels like when you are running up against your own expectations. So that like this is stuff that happens in my life, all the freaking time and having it so intimately visible by my kids is also a, you know, it's excruciating sometimes. But it's also a really great catalyst for me to keep working on this. And myself. The story I was gonna say about grad school is, I had the great fortune to work with a writing group, a peer writing group that met weekly and read each other's drafts and gave feedback. And it turned into a really valuable kind of support group more broadly, we really helped kind of Shepherd each other through the process of completing our programs and writing dissertations. But every time I would send them a draft to read, I would have this fantasy that I like to say it's like, like Athena being born fully formed out of the head of Zeus, like I my fantasy was, it had just come out, finished. And they were gonna read it and say, Oh, my God, this is fantastic. Don't touch anything. And every time every time I had to brace myself for this ego blow that I knew they were going to find things that I didn't see. And part of I think what was so hard was the realizing that there were things I didn't anticipate that were wrong. They were seeing things I didn't see and those things were flaws. And that was horrifying. If I could see it coming, I could, you know, tolerate it but they were gonna see the mistakes I've made or places where I just didn't make a logical connection that needed to be there or or I ran, I was off on too much of a tangent pleases were at editing and revising, we're gonna make the work much stronger. And I really had to talk myself down from that wound of, Nope, it's not perfect, but this is going to help it get better. And if it's in the service of communicating effectively, then this is the way to get to the goal that I want to get to. I never ever got To the point where I was totally fine, I was totally happy to have them, you know, tear it apart and give constructive feedback. I it always felt like a little bit of a pinch, and still does. But I also I've learned at least that, that that is something I can, like I built a muscle to tolerate and know that it pays dividends.
Stephanie Kruse 25:27
Yeah, you know, there's a lot of things that you bring up in that example. Thank you for sharing that I, some big takeaways for me were, you know, What expectations do you have for yourself while you're doing those things, right, you described, having, you know, this idea that it was going to be this amazing piece of work, you know, and you were putting effort into it. So work doesn't necessarily mean, to your point about, you know, tying this back to Kids is, you know, outcomes, right, instead of the process, right. So you were tied to those outcomes. Your expectation was around that. And I think there's also this idea that feedback isn't necessarily criticism, you know, try writing memoir, by the way, like, Oh, my God and a writing group, and people are asking you like, not only, like, if you worried about grammar, and the way you framed a sentence, but you know, it's your life. Right. So that's real deep. But I don't know who's ever comfortable with that. But I think you had to go through that process to understand it's about the process. Right? And then it would make it better. And I'm wondering, is that the benefit of the wisdom of age? In some ways and experience?
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 26:40
Yeah, that's yes, it is. It I also want to say, you know, this is work that I have, have really advocated for, for implementing and introducing in schools. So I don't want to say it's only a product of, of the wisdom that comes with age. I think there's this great example from my work at Westover, where teachers noticed that students, they would be given an assignment to do something in class at the board, like in a math class, and they would work out a problem. And then the teachers noticed that the students would erase their board work and just leave the answer. And it was like the messiness of the process, was not something they wanted other people to see. And, and we realized, oh, that erasing the messiness is actually creating or perpetuating unrealistic expectations for everybody else, then the messiness is an inevitable part of the process of doing good work. I mean, when I, I was learning in my work in my writing group, to to attend to the process, but I care deeply about the outcome. And I, as I should have, you know, if we want to do meaningful, important, good work in the world, we have to care about excellence. Sure, but the way to get to excellence, it involves inevitably, a messy process, whether it's the scientific method, whether it's the revision process in writing, every field has its version of leveraging, critique and art, like, every field has its version of leveraging a kind of mass and imperfection and flaw or failure to get to better work.
Stephanie Kruse 28:36
What are some ways that schools that you're working with or as you're thinking about could do this to help people understand it better?
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 28:44
Yeah, I think visibility is really plays a big role. And I think that there's a lot of room for collective resistance to achievement, pressure, shame fasters, in, in isolation in the darkness, and so the more we can tolerate having our own imperfections, being visible, the more we give permission for for that from other people. Also, one thing with teens is, you know, they really, really hate the idea of being manipulated. And so this is also a way you know, that the culture is is giving you these messages that you know, you're being fed all these messages about perfection from people who want to sell you things, whether it's the, you know, the beauty industry or colleges that make a ton of money off of testing fees, and application fees. And, you know, there's a whole college industrial complex that yes, you know, there there are colleges that that will mark it to students who are really not in their admissions range, because if they get those students to apply and then reject them, that UPS their selectivity. Students don't want to be manipulated like that they don't want to be used for some colleges, you know, US News and World Report ranking. And if we can let them know that somebody is is benefiting from the way things are, and it's not them, then that can empower them to take concrete steps to push back. And it's the same with embracing mistakes that when you embrace mistakes in the classroom, or on the playing field, or you know, wherever else in life, it gives permission to other people, to also be human to be intrinsically imperfect human beings, and to not be defined by their external achievements, that their worth as human beings is not defined by how well they live up to external standards.
Stephanie Kruse 31:12
You said it, I mean, that is that is the rub right there. You know, there's there's the flip side of the hard part of technology and information being manipulative, right, and showing us things that aren't real. But I also think there's a benefit, because I see that I can speak to my own two kids, and what they're able to know, understand and get exposure to in the world is also a benefit that I'm hoping will get them to issuing this idea of it all has to look so good. Or I'm only as good as you know what my resume says, or, you know, whatever the profile is going to be online for them. LinkedIn, I guess, but you know that they can have more information. So they aren't just sort of following these outcome oriented approaches blindly. But yeah, if you can't see it, you can't be it. I mean, that's just the basic fact. Like, if it seems like everyone and talk about conforming, how do you see examples of teens being individuals in this journey from some of your work?
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 32:20
Yeah, I have this great example that I've used as a prompt actually in, in teaching in doing workshops with teens. And it's a young woman who was defending her dissertation, and came to her dissertation defense, wearing a skirt that she had stitched out of 17 rejection letters that she had received in the course of her graduate work for conference proposals and articles and grant funding. And it seems like such a weird choice to like go into this high stakes situation where you have to prove your the value of the work that you're doing. And to come in armed with examples of where you have fallen short, but she was in an environment, she was part of a lab where the faculty would share the both their successes and their failures, and talk about the grant proposals that they'd had rejected or the, you know, the articles that they had not gotten published, that they really thought we're going to be successful. And it just normalized it for her and she wanted to embrace that sort of the way I was seeing that failure is an inevitable step on the path to ultimately using a successful work. It was both I thought philosophically really lovely, and also just wildly creative. And fun. I mean, you're you have a background in fashion, like the idea of adored, literally adorning yourself with these emblems of imperfection, making something beautiful out of that, I think is such a great example of creative resistance and making it visible for other people.
Stephanie Kruse 34:22
Yes, visibility, like you said, I think that that that is such a lovely example. I love that I'm gonna definitely I'm so glad that we brought this up. And I can't wait for people to hear it. But you know, it is it's visible, making it visible. You know, you're thinking about like a popular culture example. You know, you have people you know, getting an Oscar award and saying things like, this wasn't just me. There's a whole host of people that helped me do this. And yes, this looks easy, but there were so many times I was gonna give up or there were so many times that I got rejected, and not everyone says that, but you've definitely heard that and I do think that You know, to your comment about the human condition, it reminds us all that we are similarly human, we all have common ground, and what a lovely way to sort of help to buffer against the anxiety of all of these real issues that we're all dealing with and our teens are dealing with, that creates so much pressure.
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 35:20
That's exactly right, that when you are having that moment in the sun, where everything has come together, you can honor that there's, you know, there are twists and turns, but behind that, and that that's something everybody can relate to that we all have, you know, peaks and valleys in our lives, and that, you know, where you are at at any one moment is not your story.
Stephanie Kruse 35:51
Absolutely. So we could talk I could talk about this forever. But me, obviously, yes. Well, that's why it's so nice to have you on because it's your it's your literal work. So. So, to wrap up, I want to go to my last question, because I'm so curious as to your answer, and no two answers are ever the same. Which is why I love to ask it. But when you think about the term, good enough for now, what does that evoke for you,
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 36:19
um, I love that phrase, I, one of the things that it makes me think of is the concept of growth mindset, I, you know, I think about the for now, that, wherever you are, is a point on a line that you don't know where it's gonna extend to, and that whatever limitations you might be feeling or struggling with, whatever feels unresolved, or whether it's that you're not living up to some sense of, you know, external standard, or you're just not in a place where you want to be that that the for now is kind of setting sights on the horizon. And also recognizing that where you are now is not where you will always be, and that that you, you know, growth mindset is this theory that if you see your capacity as being fixed, you're gonna have a harder time growing and developing and actually attaining more, learning more, because it feels outside of your control. And if you see learning and success as something that you can cultivate through effort, and that is, you know, not not fundamentally limited by your sort of set potential. Then you actually, it actually equips you to learn better, faster, more and to persevere in the face of challenges and setbacks. So I think good enough for now is both kind of permission to be in process and imperfect in the moment, and also to take care about getting to somewhere else, and that the somewhere else is out there impossible.
Stephanie Kruse 38:32
I love that. Oh, thank you for that. That was great. And thank you so much for joining me.
Dr. Beth Cooper Benjamin 38:37
Absolutely. It's been a pleasure.
Stephanie Kruse 38:40
That was such a great conversation with Beth Cooper Benjamin, if you'd like to get in touch with her directly. You can find her on LinkedIn at Beth Cooper Benjamin or on her website, BethCooperBenjamin.com. And given that this is our last episode of this season, I just want to say a special thanks to all of you for listening for your feedback. Most of you I hear from in person occasionally responding to my weekly emails that I send out accompanying the episodes. And this project has been such a passion of love and effort and I really just can't thank you all enough for listening and for going on this ride with me. Thank you so much for joining me. Please share the show with your friends by word of mouth, send them a text and maybe leave a rating and review. It really helps people find good enough for now. Don't forget to also follow us on your favorite podcast player like Apple or Spotify. So you can get new shows automatically each time they're released. You'll find show notes a goodenoughfornowpod.com And you could connect on Instagram GoodEnoughForNowPod. See you next time.
