Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy

25:26And I think self -care has gotten, you know, misrepresented. It doesn't mean getting a manicure every week. It could, if that does it for you. But when I think about self -care and I really think about the work we do with parents at good inside, we always say good inside. And like our app, it's not parenting. It's for parents. It's for the journey of what it means to be a parent. It's for your own stuff. It's for your triggers. It's for finally learning how to set boundaries. It's about finally learning that it's okay to get your needs met, even when they inconvenience others. It's learning that your relationships are strong enough that they can get through hard moments where people are upset with you, right?

26:04It's about finally saying to, if you need to your mother -in -law, we can't have any visitors on Saturday. And the reason I'm finally able to do that is because I understand myself value and all the stuff that says nothing to do with the fact that your kid isn't sleeping at night. But that is the foundation for intervening in the way you're proud of when your kid is waking up at 2 in the morning. Right. So that is the self -care. It's really like a, not just self -care, it's self -establishment. It's self -gross, really. I don't know the psychology literature or clinical literature around this, but I'm thinking about speed of emotional shifts.

26:44In my own experience of life, I've known moody people and I've known not as moody people. I define moody as people that, who is mood fluctuate quickly and sometimes spontaneously. But this idea that some people are like steady as a rock is a great concept. We also know that we need to feel our emotions express them to some extent. And yet there are people where if we were to plot this, it would look like a high -frequency wave, where some people are really upset, then they're feeling better again. They're upset, then they're feeling better again. I'm not talking about extreme pathology here. I'm talking about someone cuts them off in traffic and they're pissed, but then they're fine.

27:24They're very, very happy about something they see. So it does always have to be negative. But then they're kind of like flat affect and then they're into something negative. I think that experience of emotions is so far and away different from the experience of emotions emitted from somebody who you can kind of see the emotion coming. It's like a slow swell. It's like an expansion and then a contraction again that you have time. And I feel like I keep coming back to this theme of time perception. But anytime we have time or we hear about like in the Buddhist traditions like space, like you're trying to create mental space and you know that there's gap between stimulus and response.

28:02It all sounds great, but with some people you have to really be on your toes. Or perhaps you disengage. And so I've never heard a satisfying answer to this probably because I've never asked it out loud. If you're a kid or if you're a parent and somebody is experiencing something, let's say they're really angry or really happy, you can imagine riding that wave in with them. You could also imagine sitting back from it. And some of this is probably what we'd call temperament. But maybe you could talk about this a little bit in the context of having one or both parents as kind of a high frequency shifts between emotions versus kind of a slow expansion and then settling of emotions.

28:44Because I feel like those are two completely different experiences of life. Yeah. I mean, I think you're speaking to how differently we feel emotions. I mean, you know, I think about one of my kids who I call a deeply feeling kid. Right? So my image is always she's just more poorest to the world. And so if you think about someone who's more poorest that their pores are literally wider, a lot more is going to come in. And guess what? A lot more is going to come out. Right? And she's a kid who by the way, you're in a certain area in New York City. She's like, I can't be here. The smell for me. I'm wired differently.

29:22I was like, I literally don't smell anything different. No, does that mean she's wrong? No. I actually bet knowing her she smells things. And then she lets me know how awful it is. And she can't stand on that corner. And for me in that moment at least, because we're probably all volatile in different ways. I look steady as a rock. Right? I have another kid who, yeah, is pretty steady. Until he feels like his authority and power is threatened. And then he better watch out. You know? And so in one moment someone might see him as, oh, wow, that kid's really volatile. But in probably 90 % of other moments, he's kind of cool as a cucumber.

30:00So I also think it's important to categorize kids not as like always one way or another. But we all feel emotions differently. None of them is wrong or right. To me the goal is to not be locked into any one thing. That to me, rigidity is always the enemy. That's what holds us back in adulthood. If we're always one way, I can never handle someone cutting me off in traffic because the emotion takes me over and I have road rage. Yeah, that's not good. That's a very rigid, limited way of living life. But it's probably also limiting to say, I've never really gotten riled up about anything. Forget road rage.

30:37But it's kind of amazing to get riled up once in a while to feel really passionately about something and to feel something enough that you want to go do something about it. Right? So there's no morality on it. I think what's tricky, I can even say as a parent of three kids, is each of my kids, I always kind of imagine this, five of all these different parts of me, they each need a different part of me to kind of lead. Like they almost need different lead parents, right? So my kid who is my deeply feeling kid, I know what's so important is that I believe her experience and I'd better be ready with certain boundaries because she feels things so intensely, especially when she was younger, I have to step in more often.

31:17There's more difficult behavior. Right? My kid who is really, really steady, I try to sometimes, even though it's convenient because he's so easy, you know, there's definitely a lot going on in there. And sometimes I wonder to see almost feel like all the emotional space is taken up, by his siblings, and the only thing left for him is kind of steady as a rock. And that can lead to a rigidity later in life, right? So I think these are like moving systems so much of how we experience emotions growing up is also dictated by the system and kind of the roles our siblings play. And so I don't know if that kind of gives you enough of an answer.

31:57But I think that's very informative. Yeah, I think the thing I really want parents to know is I think we place a lot of morality on it and for honest with ourselves, we're probably just comparing our kid to how we do things. So if you're someone who's pretty steady, you're like, my kid is crazy, they're dramatic. Right? If you're someone who's a little more out there, you're not as bothered by that kid. And then you have another kid, you're like, that kid's kind of boring, right? Because they're so flat. And so, I mean, I think this is true in couples too. Whenever we're fighting, we're probably just saying, why can't you be more like me when we're triggered by our kid?

32:25We're like, why can't you be more like me? That's probably what we're always saying to each other, going back to communication. But if you take a little different perspective, I've held on a second. There's no wrong or right way to feel emotions. Some behaviors are not allowed, but all the emotions have information. And what might my kid need right now? Instead of, oh my goodness, is my kid messed up or why is my kid not just a little bit more like me? How useful is it to talk to kids about emotions when they're not happening? I mean, to me, this is something like I always just say I was phrased it as emotion talk, right?

33:01Just knowing that emotions live within you, knowing that there's names for them, that they're normal, that they make sense to me. It's like the ultimate leg up in life. It gives your kids such resilience because we can't be our emotions. I feel like we've been trying that for generations. If I just only didn't feel so angry or so jealous or so sad, our emotions are so primal in our body. And I really do believe emotions, they're information. That's what they are. Why would we ever want to not get the information? Our body is giving us. And sometimes it's almost dramatic what happens in an amazing way.

33:45So many people, I think about so many times I have people in a room for therapy. They start crying. I'm so sorry. You're feeling something so intensely that your body is producing water from your eyes to get your attention. That must be really important information. Why are we saying sorry? And as far as we know, a uniquely human thing, I could be wrong about this, but a colleague and a minute Stanford and psychiatrist called Dyseroff talked about this that humans are the only species that we are aware of that Sheds tears for sake of emotion. Other animals, I have lacrimal glands, they produce water, a sort of salty water that comes out of their eye region, but not as it relates to emotions.

34:33At least we don't think so. So that's a great example. I even think about a conversation I have had with my kids. And I like to just have these moments here and there. Whenever I talk about good conversations with my kids, I think people think I have these 45 minute. No, they're usually 10 seconds. I say one thing. My kids say, can I have a snack now? And I think that's a great conversation because I know it gets in there. Do you know that tears have really important information for us? What do you say? I'm just thinking. So many people think tears are bad. Tears are kind of amazing. It's like our body is trying to stop us.

35:05And it's like asking us to pay attention to something really powerful. I just think it's kind of an amazing thing. Our body does. That my kid does kind of pretzels. Oh, sure. I'll get your pretzels. That to me is a win. I just want to tell everyone that is a 10 out of 10. I'm bragging to people about that. Like I have the best conversation because I know this is seeping in. Because in the moment, my kid is crying. You think it's going to be helpful when my seven -year -old just crying. Tears are amazing. They're like a few months. I don't want to hear that. My reflex would be to tell them the biology of tears.

35:42No, I'm a solo who was on the podcast. I told us that tears contain hormones that signal to other people. Fair mones, excuse me, that literally change the biology of the people around you. We can actually smell tears. We don't realize we're doing it. See, here I go. So I realize you tell a kid, I spend enough time with kids that if you tell them that, they're like, whatever. But you know, and that's a great conversation. They're on the dinner table. And again, your kids will roll their eyes. That kids roll their eyes about everything. I always think rolling their eyes or stop is kind of a kids way of saying, there's a lot coming at me.

36:12I'm my own person. I just need to push it away a little so that on my own time and under my own control, I can take it in. And we take irls or whatever it is so personally that then we end up getting into a power to go, why are you rolling my eyes? And we miss this opportunity. If we just say nothing then, our kid is going to take in what we just said. Just walk away. Let the whole process happen. You know, it's kind of like if your boss comes in and says something like, oh, look, that project really wasn't as good as it could have been. And I really need these things done. And then imagine you're rolling your eyes at me.

36:44If your boss just leaves the room, you probably think, I didn't do that as well as I could. I'm going to go work on it. Right? So I feel like not taking the bait is a very important parenting tool. But I think those moments with our kids to talk about emotions and to talk about our own, especially when it comes to struggle. Right? One thing I think a lot about, I try to be intentional with my kids, especially when they're younger. I just think kids are flooded by their parents' capability. And it is so hard to learn in environments where someone's capability is so far beyond your own. I'm not a good cook, but if I was really learning to cook, I would want to learn from someone from here there, you know, burn some garlic or messed up the broccoli.

37:35And then it was like, okay, well, I guess I could do this next time. But if I'm learning to cook from someone who is whatever celebrity chef, I don't know, I got my, that person's like way too far from me. And I almost feel shame. So I think about this with our kids and how this relates to emotions where when your kids are younger, especially if you just think about the first 10 minutes of their day, like they're trying to figure out maybe how to brush their teeth, how to go to the bathroom, how to turn on the sink, how to wash their hands, they always put their shirt on the wrong way. They can't get on their socks.

38:05There's so many things and you come out dressed perfectly. And then I can't get on my socks and you go like this, okay, one, two, and kind of in those moments, I always think that's I'm just kind of saying to my kid, I can do everything easily. And they don't know our history. They don't know. We struggle to put on socks for five years too. I put on my shirt backward, you know, until college, they don't know that. And so I think again in these calm moments, you have this opportunity to say something like, I cannot finish this Crossword puzzle. Or like I love New York Times games, right? And it's so fun with my kids now that they're older, but my connections was really hard today.

38:44I just, I really struggled with it. And I was like, Oh, I can't do it. I can't do it. And then I took a deep breath and I tried it a little more and you know, maybe I said, and I did it or I didn't do it. Whatever it is. And it gives my kid, for some, it gives my kid an opportunity to just notice that I struggled to. It gives my kid again, kind of an arc and a story of, Oh, someone I admire so much. Every kid admires their parents. They've had hard times. They still have hard times. They work through things. They burn garlic. They can kind of talk themselves through it. That is such a more powerful kind of lesson in emotion regulation than teaching your kid, kind of directly.

39:25It also seems that here we're not defining the age of the kids, but if one presents themselves as perfect or close to it in any kind of relationship work romantic parenting, et cetera. Sooner or later, you're going to fall from grace because they're either going to be looking for the mistake or the moment you make a mistake, it's going to be this fracture in the picture that people had of you. And I have to say, and I think some people might get irritated or dare I say triggered by the language I'm about to use, but I feel like the real ninja move in all this is to acknowledge that there are power dynamics between parent and child, but then to try and dissolve the power dynamics.

40:11And I say this in the context of having run a lab for a long time, which is very different than raising small children, but you have people who are coming into your laboratory. They are, if they're your graduate student or postdoc, they're sticking their whole career on your ability to teach and mentor. And a lot is at stake. Nothing is for certain. They might not get a job. They papers might not work out. And so there's just so much tension around it. And so as a PI as a principal investigator in a lab, I remember feeling that pressure of like, it's got to work out. And one of the best things that ever happened to me as a graduate student was that my first paper took forever to get accepted.

40:48And we almost got in and then I didn't get in. And then finally it got in such that every paper after that felt like a breeze because it took so damn long the first time. And I got to see that my advisor couldn't like make magic happen. And fortunately, fortunately, that's the way the scientific process is supposed to work. And I think about this in the context of parenting, like if you're seen as invincible, you know, we hear about this. Like people say, I thought my dad was Superman. I thought my mom was superwoman, you know, and then, but you can imagine how disappointing it must be when they discover anything about a lack of capacity or a break in emotional stability, etc.

41:27So how does one present themselves as both powerful in the positive sense of the word, such a thawing word, but powerful in the positive sense of the word, but human and vulnerable to making mistakes in a way that you don't give up the essential, let's just call it what it is, a power dynamic with your kids so that the kid then doesn't feel they have to parent you. I love this topic because it's so interesting right now. It's kind of review season at good inside because I also in the CEO of a company. And to me, the things I talk about with parenting and my kids and for other people parenting their kids, they are at the exact same principles, exact as leading a team.

42:08And so when I think about review season and the way we get feedback and the right and back and forth, it brings us all together and I'll explain. So the other day, I said to my kids, I love resolutions, I actually do love resolutions, right, because I love just the opportunity to say what is one small thing? I'm like, I value and I'm going to hold myself accountable to do. What I said to my kids was I want you to come up with one thing, just one thing for now. And it has to be something like manageable and real that I could do that would really make me a better mom to you. You asked your kids to ask my kids this?

42:48I actually asked my kids this relatively frequently. It's like a review, right? Because it's something I do at work all the time. And what I say at work is because often my direct report is saying nothing. I said, I just want to tell you something. I need one thing from you by the end of the day. I need it because I know, I know I can get hot, I know I can get a little reactive, right? I know I'm always go, go, go. And there probably is a moment that, you know, I need to pause. I know I know I have a lot of issues. So if you don't tell me one thing, I don't trust you as much. So here's what happened with my kids.

43:23At that point, it was only two of them. It just happened the other day. My son says, my seven -year -old son, sometimes when you're trying to get some work done at home, and I want to get your attention for something, this is what you do, mom. One minute, one minute, one minute, and then you still don't give me. He's quiet. He's quiet. I'd rather you tell me five minutes and then give me your full attention. That's what I would. And I, I should say, that is a really good suggestion. And I really need it to hear that. I can do that. This was a couple days ago. Okay, I have to admit, two days ago, he was trying to show me something.

44:09And he just goes, you're doing it. You're not really giving me your attention. And I said, you're right. Thank you. Change is hard. I actually do need about two minutes. Is that okay? And then you'll put my computer down because I'll sometimes look at him and like, you know, and he goes, okay, it was kind of so beautiful. My daughter said, at night, she goes, it's so interesting when you give people this opportunity, how generous they can be with you. I think it's been true at work at home. I don't know. I know when it's my bedtime at night, I always want to do one or two extra things. I know.

44:43I always have to get my water. It's just how I am, as she said. And you get this rushing voice. And you go, come on, it's bedtime. And that's like the last voice I hear before bed. And I really don't like that voice. And so can you just know that I always need to do those one or two extra things and not use that voice? And I said, you know what? I wouldn't want to hear that as the last voice. You know, and I think at night, especially as a little digression, I always feel like I'm in a rush. I don't know. I don't know. An extra two minutes with my kids. Like, I kids are getting older. They're not even in my house for that much longer.

45:21I just have to remind myself, I'm not in a rush. Like, this is the best use of my time. And so I said, and that one I've been really good at. And so how do we show our kids that were fallible one way is actually like asking for feedback, especially when you've older kids. When you have a teenager, this is the number one thing that can change things around. You know what I'm thinking about? It's hard to be a teen. And I'm definitely not a perfect parent of a teen. I'm sure you have a long list. But for right now, can you name one thing that I could do? That would make me a better parent to you.

46:00And I want to follow the stooooks, what a lot of teens will do or parents will say, my teenager tells me something ridiculous. They'll say, well, you know, how you make me charge my phone at nine or 10 p .m. out of the room, you could let me sleep with my phone, which maybe I'm just not going to do that. Or they'll say, you know, you could do, you could give me a thousand dollars every week for an allowance, right? And so parents will say, my kid doesn't take it seriously. This is where like to me, one of the most important life skills, parenting, management, friendships, it doesn't matter. Is differentiating someone's words on the surface from their needs or their feelings or their fears, whatever it is underneath.

46:39And not responding to the words, but kind of cutting under them. That's even saying I can said the phone thing. What would be so great about having your phone just help me understand it? I know in my head, I'm never going to do it, but we don't realize just because we're not going to do something, someone asks, it doesn't mean we don't owe that person the right to try to understand why they want it. Right? So I might just ask questions and might probably end up with luck. I actually hear what you're saying. All of your friends are on Instagram until midnight. It sounds like you legitimately do miss out on conversations by the time you get to school, you feel out of them.

47:12Like I'm not even joking. I feel like if I was your age, I'd be like, that's like basically the worst thing ever. I believe you. Having your phone after X time, it's just one of my non -negotiables. It's actually just because I love you so much that I feel like my job is to protect you. I wonder if there is some other way that we can figure that out. Or my kid says $1 ,000. I might say, what would you do with $1 ,000? Oh, you want to go to more concerts? Oh, your friends all get more allowance. Tell me more. No matter what your kid says to you, there's information. So I think feedback is one. I think repair is another way.

47:45Repair is the most important relationship strategy to get good at. And I just hope everyone hears the duality in that and realizes what that means because if you're going to get good at repair, you have to mess up. The only way to repair is to mess up. And so if I'm telling you, get good at repair. I am telling you you have to accomplish step one, which is yelling at you. You have to. And you're going to do it anyway. I do it. But if you then tell yourself, wait, I'm getting good at repair. Step one is messing up. I crushed it. Amazing. I'm half the way there. Then when you repair, which is when you take ownership, I'm sorry, I yelled just like you.

48:26I'm managing my emotions. Emotions are really tricky. Emotions are really hard. And do you know what? Even though you're going to have a leg up on this compared to most people and their adults, because you're learning how to regulate emotions, you're still going to be practicing that when you're my age. That is my responsibility to work on. It's not your fault. And I love you. So powerful. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, A .G .1. A .G .1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. A .G .1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs and it tastes great.

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51:32Again, that's Juve, j -o -o -v -v dot com slash huberman to get up to $400 off. I love, love, love this thing about asking for a request. It's different than asking for feedback, which could quickly lead to a list of all the things that one does wrong as opposed to a request for how one could do better. There's an important distinction there. Then it seems that the question that the parent or who knows the boss or whatever, maybe it's with a romantic partner needs to ask themselves is, what is this request really about? What's underneath it? I'm just paraphrasing essentially what you said. What's it really about?

52:14Is it a request for more autonomy, for more social connection with other people? Then one starts to realize it, certainly in this example that you gave a child asking for more time with their phone late at night, is that it actually has nothing to do with your relationship to them. It's really about their relationship to their friends. The fact that they might feel as if to another question, which is, what if you as the parent partner boss, et cetera, keep your phone close to you until midnight? They know that. One of the worst things that I believe anyone can say is, do as I say not as I do. It's just such a blatantly arrogant stance of you're supposed to do what I say because I say so, but I'm not going to do it because I don't want to.

53:04Yet there are times like in parent child relationships or boss employee relationships where you're telling somebody to do something and you yourself are not going to do it or no longer do it or choose not to do it. In reality, you don't have to. Maybe there's a good reason why you don't or don't have to. That's why I use these words, power dynamics. Which everyone hears and goes, oh boy, here we go, but it is an issue of power dynamics. You have more power than the than the kid. So what you're doing is you're giving the kid power to express where they want more agency. I like to word maybe agency more than power.

53:41Yeah. Did you grant your son the the right to use his phone later into the evening? My son, my son, not to pry into your personal person. My son did not ask me that. And he knows that our phone rules are not negotiable. That's not to pry into your family. No, but that kid, if that's a rule, you would never give it to them. But I think so many times and then I'll go back to power. We shouldn't be afraid to learn more. I actually just think that's what it is. Our kid says, oh, my friends, get this. That's not true. Why don't you just learn more? Oh, they do. It's like learning more about what someone says.

54:16Doesn't mean you ever have to change your boundary. Most of conflict is about a lack of understanding anyway. When you learn more, you're trying to understand your kid, understand your someone wants to raise and you think it's ridiculous. You can learn more. Tell me what's been going on. What are you doing? Learning more about someone's position does not weaken your position. And I think that's really, really important in any form of leadership. Now, in terms of the power dynamics, there is something about the word power that like, you know, yeah. I mean, I think the way I think about it and what we do at good inside a lot in terms of our leadership and parenting style.

54:54I don't use the word power, but I think it's about embodying your authority. Parents have authority. Pilots have authority. Bosses have authority because they're the ones kind of who have the job of setting up the whole system for success. That's their job, right? My job isn't to make my kid happy. My job is to help create the conditions for my kid to be like a real functioning, confident adult. So I believe, right? A pilot job is definitely not to keep passengers happy. It's to get everyone safely on the ground. A boss's job is not to keep everyone happy is to set up the conditions for health and success of the business, right?

55:34Now, if you know that's your job, it's no one else's job, but the CEO. I mean, to some degree, all the management, but that is their job. And so there's a difference where if the CEO believes a job needs to be done a certain way, it's not that they have power. It's just their role involves having that authority. And if someone else disagrees, it's up to them to say you can keep the job or not. It's just a different, you have different roles. So, and I actually think owning that very out, right? It's actually something I recently said at work in a review around something I really wanted and kind of owned like in my role as a CEO.

56:09So that is under my role to decide this is important. And now we have to figure it out. Let's see, I would love some input on how we're going to get this done. Same thing for a kid. One of the lines I said over and over and over to my kid when they're younger. And I see so many good and side parents tell me that their kids reflect back to them later is my number one job is to keep you safe. So what does that mean? That kind of relates to power. It can mean why am I not letting my kid, I don't know, jump up and down on our kitchen counter. It's not because I'm pissed that my kid isn't listening.

56:46I'm not letting them jump up and down on my kitchen counter where there's a light above their head because my number one job is to keep my kid safe. Is that power? I mean, I guess I think it's authority. How would I embody that authority? I would say it looks hard for you to get down. I'm because I have authority, right? We get to this phone discussion, let's say. And I really do believe that the phone has to be charged out of the room at a certain time. I'm going to understand, I'm going to understand, I'm going to listen. Hopefully I'm connected to my kid and they feel respected by me in a million ways.

57:20And it might lead to me saying, look, my number one job still is to keep you safe. And that really means making decisions that I really believe are good for you. Short term and long term, even if you're upset with me, this is one of those times. And so I love you. This might be a point of conflict. I know we're going to get through this. And that is my role as a parent. And it comes from a place of wanting to protect you. And I think when you embody your authority in that way, kids never say thank you and they will roll their eyes. And kids always feel loved and protected. They really do. I hear it from my kids.

57:59You know, and maybe this is so true. Sometimes things happen with my kids and I'm like, no one's going to even believe this. But I was walking with my seven year old the other day and I said, what does it mean to be a good parent? What does it really mean? Curious. I really thought, because it means you're kind of strict. And I said, what do you mean strict? As you have certain rules that you think matter. And he goes, but it also means like you also have to be loving and fun. And my heart like hurts hearing like myself say this like in a good way. I heard they know I think kids know and maybe he says that because that's what we are.

58:40But I think kids know and I can't even tell you how many kids I used to work with in teens especially the pain of their parents not embodying their authority was so clear. They knew that they shouldn't be out at a certain time. They knew that they were hanging out with kids who were like bad news and their parents had no idea and they felt unanchored like they really, really knew not that their parents weren't exerting power. That word isn't their parents weren't embodying their appropriate authority to protect their kids. I had something come to mind which is not a phrase that I've ever used before I heard before.

59:21But what comes to mind is kind of statements of stance. Yes. I feel like statements of stance in parent child relationships families workplace romantic relationships etc are great when they're about actions or about sort of overriding themes like no matter what I'm trying to keep you safe. I might not get everything right but like that is like non -negotiable internally and I'm going to try and make it non -negotiable externally. It's a statement of stance about actions or keeping you healthy and safe is my number one priority. Those are facts. Those are things that one can really say and believe and until the end of time be trying to incorporate into one's behavior.

1:00:07But I feel like statements of stance about emotions are very dangerous. We don't yell in this house.

1:00:18It's okay to cry. There's always a caveat. Of course it's okay to cry. But there are times when crying is less appropriate. There's times when yelling might be appropriate. There's times when emotions need to be expressed or not expressed in a particular way because I don't think I'm alone in thinking that the kid tantrumming in the public environment is an embarrassing thing for them, for their parent, for people around and it's not the end of the world. It's a tantrum for goodness sake. People will survive. But I feel like statements of stance about emotions kind of hold us to this standard that will never be able to meet.

1:00:59But that statements of stance about action are until we fail and hope we don't. We can say things like my job is always to keep you safe. I'm always going to try and make the best decision for you and for your sister, for instance. But I think that many people, I'm not just speaking for my own experience, but in talking to friends and others that they grew up in homes where they were these philosophies, these statements of stance. And the moment that things didn't match that statement of stance, the whole concept of what parents and children are supposed to be about just kind of started to dissolve.

1:01:38And it creates that underlying fear. Do they even really know what they're doing? Or maybe they don't know what they're doing, but maybe they're trying. So in any case, it's just something that maybe we could talk about for a moment. I have some reactions that I think, I kind of think you're talking about values and principles. And so I think there are, in my house, to be honest, it's not like we have some wall of like, these are our family values. I've seen those in people's homes. Yeah, that's not. Yeah, I'm a refrigerant. Not organized enough to do that. But if I thought about a couple that come to mind, like my job is to keep my kids safe.

1:02:13By the way, safe does not mean they're never in a situation without risk. That's not what I mean. But in general, I'm in its own form of danger. Exactly. The minimization of risk is also not safe. But in general, my job is to keep you safe. I'm not going to let you do things that endanger yourself or others. So that's one. Another principle I think about is I will always tell you the truth, even if it's uncomfortable. Like you can always count on me for that. We call that kind of, I call that truth to overcome for. So if my kid says to me, how are babies made? That value is useful. Another thing is like all feelings are allowed.

1:02:53Not all behaviors are okay. Right. Stuff like that. What about we don't swear in this house? So what I was about to say, and then you're on the phone and then you scrub and then the kid goes, you swore. To me, what's very different is these kind of rigidities around behavior. We don't swear. Swear as a behavior. We don't cry in public behavior. We don't tantrum here. That's a behavior. Behaviors all the time are a manifestation of feelings that overpower skills. So saying we don't do certain behaviors, to me, it doesn't even make logical sense. Well, what if I'm in a situation where I have a really intense emotion and don't know the skill to manage it?

1:03:31We don't, that's the behavior is going to happen. And then I feel like a bad person. That's very different than values around intention. I want to be truthful with my kids, even if things are uncomfortable. I might fumble around with the words. Right. I might even sometimes lie because I didn't do that value in action. But what I can come back to is, okay, nobody lives their values 100 % at the time. So I think we're talking about actually something core to what we think about a good inside, which is I'm a good person with values, who is totally imperfect. And sometimes acts in ways I'm not proud of.

1:04:07Both are true. When families have values that are very behavior -based, what ends up happening in the kids is they start to equate certain behaviors with morality. These are good behaviors that make me loved in my family. And these are bad behaviors that kind of make me feel like I'm not the right part of my family. And they even make me wonder, am I loveable? Am I good inside after all? Am I worthy? That's not good. Because whenever we type behavior to identity, that's shame. And we've tried to motivate kids with shame for hundreds and hundreds of years. And it does not work and causes a lot of problems.

1:04:46I think another one which is interesting is that she's my kids get older. I said this to my teen recently. This is really tricky. One of my jobs, as always, has been to create guidelines and rules with you. It's always going to be kind of collaborative. Some because of my authority will be directive that I believe are going to keep you safe. I think this really relates to a phone. I want to tell you another part of my job that might sound contradictory, but I actually think we just need to hold them both at once. Another part of my job is to be there for you when you inevitably go against those guidelines.

1:05:18And I want you to know that we have rules around what Canon cannot be done online. And I'll say this here, like, and like, if you do kind of become part of a really inappropriate text conversation, if there is bullying, if you do come across some images online that make you feel really uncomfortable and you're like, I shouldn't have seen that. You're not getting in trouble with me. I'm not going to throw you a party. I will be there for you to help you through those moments. Those things sound contradictory and in our family, we know two things can be true. And those really important thing for a teenager to know.

1:05:57Let's talk about guilt and shame. Yes. I've heard some kind of catchphrasey stuff, not from you, but like, oh, you know, guilt is about the thing you did and shame is a feeling about who we are. And you know, while I'm not against those sort of 1990s, early 2000s kind of psychology isms, I feel like they're not very useful. In the same way that hearing that there's a gap between stimulus and response. And if you identify that gap, well, then goodness, you're going to be the kind of person that can feel stressed but not be reactive. You're going to be responsive, not reactive. That's just a bunch of words that doesn't hear my biologist.

1:06:33So I'll just say it doesn't take into account the fact that the biology of stress changes your perception of time and a whole bunch of other things that basically make that gap between stimulus and response much, much smaller. And I think once people understand that, they go, oh, so like the kitchen refrigerator magnet or the poster on the wall that says, you know, like, there's a gap between stimulus and response, it was supposed to save me, but it didn't of course not. Like, we're just in different states of mind at different times. So how do you define no pressure here? But how do you define guilt versus shame?

1:07:08Great. And what about guilt and shame? Great. Two of my favorite topics. I have a couple of different ways of defining things. I'm like you to me, I like defining things in ways that are very concrete and very usable. That's all. And if there's multiple ways of doing that, that's great. So the way I think about guilt, this will probably set us off in a direction about what is not guilt. Also is guilt is a feeling I have when I act out of alignment with my values. And in that way, guilt is a really useful feeling, real useful, because it makes me reflect on, wait, I didn't act in line with my values.

1:07:47I wonder why? What would I have had to do differently? What got in my way? Well, I'm so glad I have that information from my body to have this deeply uncomfortable feeling to set in that process, right? So if I yell at my kid, I'm going to feel guilty, right? I think about a time when my kid told me, you know, I lied to you. I did take that eraser from that kid in school and I feel really guilty. And I said, for some, so glad you told me that, I'm so glad you're feeling guilty. That's the right way to feel. No, there must have been something so hard about seeing something so shiny and fun that you don't have.

1:08:24I totally get that. And you're right. That's not in your values to take it. So that's a useful feeling. That feeling is going to help you not do something like that again. Let's figure out what you can do. Not just to say sorry. This is what parents miss. You know what's going to happen another time?

1:08:43You're going to take that. You're going to have to park again. I would too. What can you do the next time you have that ball? All of this comes because of guilt, useful feeling. Guilt is a feeling you have when you act out of alignment with your values. Now, to me, guilt is one of the most misunderstood feelings because what you hear all the time and you'll hear how much it kind of conflicts with this definition is something like this. I haven't seen my friends in years. There's finally a dinner, but it would require me not to put my kid down to sleep. You know, and I'm talking to someone, I'd say, okay, well, I'm guessing you're not leaving your kid alone.

1:09:23Now, again, my husband or my mom, someone who's a totally safe adult. But Becky, I told my kid and she was clinging to me, like, no, mommy, I needed to be you, I needed to be you. And so I'm not going to dinner.

1:09:43Do you oh, someone asked me to be in the PTA meeting. I'm so busy. I can't, but I can't do it because I feel so guilty. Okay.

1:09:54Again, I'm just curious. It sounds like you really want to go to dinner with your friends. She's like, oh, I do. All I do is parent these days. I literally haven't seen these friends in years. They're in town. And I just tell me about your friendships. Usman, you've got to value my, yes. I know that I'm kind of more than just someone who puts down my kid for bed. And I love doing that. But, but this matters too. So I said, this is really interesting. You really value your friendships. Your life right now feels out of balance. And that your friendships, that part of your burner of your stove is like really low.

1:10:25Okay. And you're not going because you feel guilty. I just want to share an idea. Guilt is a feeling you have when you act out of alignment with your values. It seems like going to dinner would be in line with your values. And almost, it's like, yeah, that's true. So what is this feeling? And here's what I think the feeling is. I call it not guilt just because I haven't figured out a more sophisticated term. But here's what I think is happening. A lot of us, especially women, when we were growing up, we learned to notice everyone's feelings around us. And we learned that our value really, and our worth really.

1:11:03And we were kind of best and good girls when we took care of everyone else's feelings, except for our own. I think so many young girls, especially, become expert at what people need of them by becoming distant from what they need for themselves. The picture I get in my mind is sort of like having on 10i cast in every direction. That's right. Except perhaps at the exclusion of paying attention to the 10i that are inward. Exactly. And we are, you know, attentional resources are finite. I mean, we just don't have the capacity to like respond to other people's emotions and feel at the same time to the same degree that we would have we just concentrated on theirs or our emotion.

1:11:49And this is a fact of how humans were. Yeah, and kids are oriented by attachment. They have to learn with their families. How do I become the most lovable, safest version of myself? So I have a friend who I remember her even in middle school, I can't come. My dad's traveling and my mom really needs me to stay home and watch a movie with her. Right. And I know this mom was like, oh, you don't love me. You don't write. I mean, this was so she became expert at always noticing other people's emotions and not only noticing them. Taking the emotions from them, kind of like taking them into their body and almost metabolizing them for them.

1:12:30That's not guilt. That is taking someone else's emotions and taking them into your body at the expense of taking care of your own needs. And so I have a visual for this because I think it's really powerful where let's say it's the situation where a mom is saying, I really want to go out to dinner, but I feel so guilty. First thing is just powerful to say that is not guilt. It is something else and it is real and it is powerful, but it is not guilt. What is happening? I'm on one side of a tennis court, like me and you, Andrew, but let's say it's a tennis court. And you're on the other side or even in between instead of in a glass table.

1:13:06Over here, I am here in my desire to go out with my friends because I do value my friendships. Okay, over there is your upset about it. And let's say instead you're my daughter, you're like, no, no, don't go. No one else can put me to bed. That is definitely hard to deal with, but that is your daughter's feelings. Those are not your feelings. Those are your daughter's feelings. And some of us, slash a lot of us, have developed this tendency where we're on this court and all of a sudden, all those feelings from your side somehow go through that wall and they come to your side and you call it guilt.

1:13:41It is not guilt. And to me, one of the most liberating things and this actually relates to empathy as I was saying is to give that feeling back to its rightful owner because what that means is if I really give it back, now I have a boundary, that's my kids feeling, that's not mine. And I can now actually empathize. People said, no, I was empathizing. I wasn't going out. No, no, no, that's not empathy. You weren't going out with your friends because you couldn't handle the distress in your body. You just made your daughter's feelings your own. You just engage in something almost selfish. This has nothing to do with your daughter.

1:14:18In those situations, that's why we say weird things to our four -year -old. Like, don't you want mommy to have friends? I feel like four years ago. Why are you asking me that question? It's like a pilot being like, don't you want me to make an emergency landing? Like, if you need to make an emergency landing, don't ask me for permission. Because once I give it back to my daughter, I can do this. I can say you really wish I would put you to bed tonight. You're right. It feels so different. One grandma does it. Oh, it does. I'm going out. It's okay if you're upset. I'll be back and I'll kiss you and I'll see you in the morning.

1:14:51And then this next part's so important. When you walk out, I don't want any person having any illusion that the daughter is going to be like, yes, you go, girl. No, she is going to scream. That's okay. Going back to the boundary. You're allowed to take care of your needs. And other people are allowed to be inconvenienced and upset by it. It doesn't mean your needs are wrong. It doesn't mean their feelings are wrong. And it definitely doesn't mean you feel guilty. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't.

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1:18:18Again, that's 8sleep .com slash huberman. Wow. I say wow because I think the lens that you're looking at guilt through and the way you're defining it is so very different than the way it's been discussed ever. And I think this is a super, super important topic. So I'd like to lathe into it a little bit more. In some ways, the way that I think many people experience guilt, at least according to your definition, which by the way, I love, it's when we act out of alignment with our values versus feeling pressure. I think about, I mean, Lord knows I don't have the best reputation as getting having a short text response latency.

1:19:05It's variable. Sometimes I'm quick on the draw and other times I'm like goodness, it'll be days or weeks. I mean over the holidays, I was spooling through it. I would respond to people like a week later. And I do my best, but I do often feel quote unquote guilty about not being as responsive in text to a number of people because I care about them. Yeah, I value them. Yeah. But I get overwhelmed by text messaging very easily to the point where I have to put my phones out of the room when I work, et cetera. So the way I experience a bunch of text messages coming in is as pressure that then I feel guilty.

1:19:44I'm not trying to make this about me, but I feel quote unquote guilty. But do I really feel, but what's interesting is, you know, I believe in cognitive dissonance. And then what I notice is that then my brain tries to bridge that gap. I come up with these like justifications with like, well, when I text people and they don't respond if like two weeks, I don't get upset, which is true unless it's in a particular sort of category of circumstances. So how come the way they view this whole dynamic is not the same as the way I view this dynamic. Maybe this is a more male -centric view as opposed to feeling porous like I feel they're upset.

1:20:17But I will say, you know, in fairness to all the chromosomes and their arrangements, I do feel bad. I get sucks. Like I love these people and they're reaching out to say, whatever, happy new year or something. And I'm feeling pressure as opposed to feeling yeah, how wonderful it is to have people in my life. So here, here, this is such a beautiful example where I'd ask myself or I'd ask you to ask yourself, okay, I already, you already named one of your values, which is interesting. I really value my relationships. You said that. Okay, that's one value. And I think this is, I'm going to ask you this question, do you value quick responses all the time from you on text message?

1:20:57Is that a value of yours? From me or to me? From you. Do I value always responding to people on text right away? The truth is, if I'm really honest, yeah, I hate shallow exchange of any kind, except maybe a fist bump to somebody you just kind of feel some kinship with on the street and you have that connecting you just give them the fist bump. Great. But I like more in depth lengthy connection. Like three hour long conversations. Three hour long conversations or drop a friend came by the other day for New Year's, he was on my list of people that, and yes, I made a list of people that I want to deepen my friendship with in the New Year.

1:21:34It came by, we had a two hour lunch, we chatted, and I feel like it was awesome and worth a million single line text messages. And I'm also the kind of person who were like, I'm good to not see him for a while, not because I'm tired of him, but because I also have other friends and things to do. Right. So I'm more of a depth, not breadth kind of guy. So this is to me, this is such a powerful process. And then after this, I kind of want to link it back to how I've actually told my kids about why I do go out to dinner with friends, right. So I value deep relationships, I value relationships, I value deep relationships, and with them, if I'm honest with myself, responding to someone right away, it's actually not my value.

1:22:14But again, we can hold multiple things at once. That doesn't mean I don't care about those people. And I just laid out all my values. What I think is so powerful as a not guilt diffuser is naming this directly to the people. So it doesn't have to be on text, but you're seeing person X and you know, I'm never that good. I just want to tell you, I really value our friendship. I really value these times we have together. Something I just also want to get off my chest is going back and forth quickly on text. That's not something that's easy for me that I do very often. And so you might text me and it might take me a while.

1:22:49And I just wanted to name that to you. Right. Now look, someone else always has the right to say, well, that's interesting. That doesn't work for me. One of my top values with friends is someone who's always getting back and forth. To me, that's actually great. Great. Now we know, okay, what are we going to do about that? That's fine. You know where someone stands. And the reason I relate this to the situation with going to dinner is I remember early on when my daughter said, why do you have to go to dinner with friends? Or why do you and dad? This is it. Why do you and dad go to dinner without us?

1:23:18I know the couple you're going out with. You both have kids. Why can't you bring us? Right. And this is where we say we feel guilt, but we don't, because I'm like, time out. She's feeling this feeling, not me. And also, I don't need her permission or approval. That's the real, perentified thing. We like go to our seven -year -old and we're like, don't you want me to have adult conversations? Again, not. It's not an atypical response. I've heard parents do that. Say that. Like, don't you want me to have a social life? But you know what it is? Is asking your kid to do your job for you? Again, can you imagine a pilot say, do you think we should make an emergency landing?

1:23:55It you'd be, that's how a kid feels when they're asked that. I'm like, why are you asking me that? Here's what I said to my daughter in that situation. I really did. I want to tell you something. I love being your mom. I really do. It's one of the most important things in my life. I also really like being married to dad. And I really like the times we have when it's just us and other adults. That's really important. I remember saying this. Maybe I was really trying to double down. We actually, we we had that before you guys were here. You know, I think what? Yeah, yeah. And so one of the reasons I want to be honest with you, why do we go to dinner without you?

1:24:36It's not so much we go to dinner without you. We think of it as going to dinner with each other and just adults is that something we really enjoy? It's really important to us. It's a really important part of us. And that's why being really vocal about your values as opposed to looking to your child unconsciously to give you permission to have those values. If you want to use power, that's a power. That's a power move. And it's amazing. This is true in any time in life. The more you can locate someone, the more you respect their boundaries. I use that word a lot. And I'll like locate. I'm sure you know people in your life.

1:25:17Like, can I locate them? You kind of know who they are. You know what they value. And you respect them, right? When you can't locate someone, you feel very uneasy around them. You're kind of like, where are you? Who are you? Where are you? Stand for. And as you can see with my daughter, it was a, I wasn't saying something mean. I was saying something true. And so I think with the friendships. And when you say, is this guilty? Well, maybe my step in my action is just actually being honest with this person. I'm not very good at responding right away. I want to let you know I deeply care about our friendship.

1:25:51I'm not very good at responding to kind of small talk over text. And I just wanted to let you know that. So you didn't misinterpret it. Like, I wonder what would happen? I wonder if people would kind of respond really positively. I love it. And I can't help I recall when I was a kid, after dinner, my dad would sometimes take a walk by himself. Now, Grante is a physicist. And he was, he's a theoretical physicist. So he's like all his experiments were in his head. And I mean, he did work on paper too. But so he would take these walks. And occasionally I'd see him coming back from these walks. And he'd be smoking a cigar, something he doesn't do anymore.

1:26:27Fortunately, I'm grateful that he's very robust. He was actually a guest on the podcast recently. He talked about science and life, et cetera. And one of the things that I remember thinking and still to this day think and feel is kind of awesome how he takes this walk. And he looked like so happy with the cigar and his thoughts. And he walked. And I wanted to be on those walks with him. He was very, very busy. In fact, I wanted a lot more time from him than I got. It's kind of interesting because now it's oftentimes that I'm the busier one, the tables turn kids. But in all seriousness, I didn't think of it as self -care, but it was so clear that that was his time.

1:27:05Yeah. That was absolutely his time. And I knew when I could and should join for things and when I didn't. So when you say the more you can locate someone, the more you respect their values, I feel like Bell's going off. Exactly that. And there are other examples of my mom, et cetera. But it's kind of interesting when we see somebody, adult or child, like really in their element of their thing. Yes. It's almost like we love them for it and through it. And it fills us, I think, with a healthy sense of safety right there. Kind of like the pilot flying the plane really well. That's right. Actually, we don't really want to know about the pilot.

1:27:46I want to hear the thing at the beginning where it ought to take off. I actually don't like it when we're landing and they say, well, beyond the ground in just a few moments, I'm like, we're at 10 ,000 feet, can we make it a little bit longer than that? But you get the point, which is that I don't want to hear from the pilot. I just want the pilot to fly the plane. You want the pilot to do their job. And again, in these, I think I have so many pilot metaphors around sturdy leadership and I think it really is such a metaphor for how we teach people the skills they need to parent. Because again, no one becomes a pilot overnight.

1:28:16No one becomes a CEO overnight. No one becomes a lawyer overnight or professional basketball player. I think we actually laud CEOs these days who say, I don't know how to do leadership as well as I want to. I'm getting executive coach. You all want to work for that person. The amazing athletes in the world get amazing coaches and they go to amazing training camps because they're amazing. And so I just somehow with parenting, it's like the last area where people think I should become an amazing parent overnight. I shouldn't have to invest in skills or education. Even people who invest in skills and education for every other area of their life that they probably care about less.

1:28:53There's so much shame we've internalized that we should be able to do it naturally. And you do become a parent overnight. You become a parent overnight. You do? Yes. I'll remember my graduate advisor at two kids while I was working in the lab saying that there were all these books back then about pregnancy. It's just like it's wild. There are all these things what you should eat and shunny and how you should you and your partner and how you should prepare for the birth and all this. And then the hospital, they're like here. Granted that was in the early 2000s. That's still what it is. And they're like, what do you need?

1:29:24And they go, you need a car seat to leave the hospital. Which by the way, you definitely need that. That's all. Just a car seat. How am I supposed to manage this? Because I think I'm parents to know because the answer is just so much shame. And maybe we should talk about shame, right? Is the only thing that comes naturally when it comes to parenting is how you were parented. That comes actually. That lives in your bones. That lives in your circuits. And there might be some people who say, amazing. I have the greatest privilege in the world. Then what will come naturally is exactly what I value and what I want to do.

1:29:58I would say more often people would say some version of definitely not what I want to do or parts I'll take, parts I want to do differently. And to me, it's kind of like if you were brought up speaking English, and you really want to speak Mandarin, or you want to speak Mandarin half the time to your kid. And someone said, are you going to learn Mandarin naturally? I feel like someone's saying, how does one learn Mandarin naturally? You would, I don't know, you'd probably sign up for, you know, do a language, find a way to app or something or a course. And you'd then practice and practice. And you'd be able to make progress because you actually learn something new.

1:30:36And so, I just think big picture, like parents are, they're so under equipped and set up to feel, and this is I think has to do a shame, that when my kids are struggling or when I'm yelling a lot, it means something that's wrong with me or something that's wrong with my kid. I feel like these days in almost every area, if a CEO is saying, I feel like I'm struggling. Is it my fault or my employees fault? They probably say, I don't know, there's probably people around who can help me, who can teach me? Why do I keep yelling, right? And same thing with almost every other field. And to me more than, like if there's any legacy I get to leave in this world, it's not even the approach itself, even though I think our approach to parenting is very different.

1:31:22I just want parents to know, there's no shame in investing, in learning, and growing, in parenting, and to look at that, they probably look at every other area of their life. I assure you that your legacy extends far beyond that, but includes it as well. You've had a tremendous impact and continue to. I mean, it wasn't long ago that the power dynamics of parent -child relationships, where you do what I say, and I'm the parent -year of the kid, and that kind of thing. And I grew up in a different era, I'm 49 now, and I've been wanting to say I'm 49 now, so that I can actually say something with with having had some experience when things were truly very different.

1:31:59They were just so different. Yeah. It was like you took what you got and you worked with it, and you know, things are so different thanks to your part in all of this. And one thing I do want to return to, because I realized I took us off track with it, is this idea of kids, but perhaps adults as well, feeling or thinking they feel someone else's feelings, taking that on. Yeah. This difference between real guilt and gosh, it's really hard to come up with a word for it. At one moment, I thought, well, maybe it's faux guilt, but no, you're not pretending. You're actually feeling something, which feels like guilt.

1:32:37It smells like guilt. Someone said co -dependence. I don't know that much about that word, but something like that. Yeah. Yeah, it's a whole landscape. Yeah, it's exactly. That's whole landscape. But one practice that I'm familiar with, that I know exists in a couple of different realms of, let's call it modern psychology, tools is this idea of creating a frame separation. So like after you come together with somebody to say to do therapy or something, or you've had sort of an emotional bind or entanglement, doesn't have to be negative. That one way that you can learn over time to differentiate their needs and wants from your needs and wants is this idea of in your head, I know it sounds kind of corny, but there's a clear neuroscientific basis for this, at least to my understanding.

1:33:27In your head, you say, for instance, like if we had just done this, like we had some resonance around something, maybe an argument, okay, like Dr. Becky and I got into a fight, that in order to really be able to move away from that and see it clearly, how much of that was yours, how much of that was mine. There's this idea that you tell yourself, okay, what are five ways in which you and I are clearly distinct entities? So you say, and I know this folks might chuckle at this, but you say, okay, I'm a man, you're a woman. I live in California, Dr. Becky lives in New York. You could even make it like first person, you say like a third person rather, you could say, I'm Andrew Heberman and I'm wearing a black shirt and a black over shirt and Dr.

1:34:03Becky is wearing black and white. Okay, so some people might think like, what's the use of that? But to me as a neuroscientist, whoever came up with that and it wasn't me, is nothing short of brilliant because the brain organizes emotions in these broader scheme as of physical objects and physical distance and distance in time. And that's the way that we can differentiate between ourselves and everything around us. And there's a whole discussion to be had about this. But so it's something that I've been playing with a little bit because I don't claim to be this ultra empath or anything, but I think it's clear that sometimes we take in our thoughts and feelings about what other people are feeling, sometimes accurate, sometimes not, and it can become very difficult.

1:34:51Whether or not someone say one of these, I guess you call it deeply feeling, deeply feeling kids, deeply feeling kids, or not. I mean, anytime you get into an emotional resonance, good or bad, I think it's, we're porous. We're porous. And that's part of what makes human so beautiful. But I've found that practice to be very useful. Even if it's just in my own head, like they're over there and I'm over here, but not even necessarily pushing off them. The thing like, oh, like I'm me and you're you. And there are a bunch of ways in which we differ in time and space. And I think the nervous system comes to understand that as a felt thing, as opposed to just a statement like, hey, like you own your emotions all on mine.

1:35:33That's just a statement. Is this any of this? I've never heard of that, but I love that. And it is in parallel, I think, with so many of the things I teach parents. So even the idea of locating someone, to me, like my version of people in my life that I know and love, even if I don't agree with anything they say that I can locate. They're like an egg with a shell. They have a shell. There's like a there's a boundary. We're really talking about boundaries. We all have different levels of porousness to the external world. And I think if you know, and there's there's pros and cons of both, like I really mean this, I am not terribly porous to other people's experiences.

1:36:12I really have solid boundaries. They're definitely moments in my closest relationships because what people will say to me, okay, like I know these are my feelings and not yours. Like we're in a close relationship. Like can you be here a little bit more with me? And that is true. Like that is what I want to do, right? And sometimes it can be a little distancing, right? And a little separate people on the other end of that spectrum. If they know I'm very porous. I tend to, to me, one of the ways of also thinking about it, I think I gaze in before I gaze out. And I think a lot of people gaze out before they gaze in.

1:36:48Right? They spend a lot of time in other people's brains and last time in their own. Right? What do they think of me? What do they think? Right? If that's what's going on for you, then the shell to your egg isn't always intact. And so there's a spillover. Like whose feelings are who's who's thoughts are who's spending so much time worried about what that person thinks of me. I almost like, what am I? What do I? What do I think? Right? And so the exercise you're naming is actually just a resetting of a boundary, right? And things that are absurdly concrete are necessary for the most primal parts of our brain to actually understand.

1:37:28My name is Becky Kennedy. To me, what I say, I don't usually say that. I'll say, my feet are on the ground. When I do a grounding exercise, everyone in our community knows this. My hand is always on my heart. I think there's some amount of having contact with your body. My hand is on my heart. Sometimes I used to do this with clients, especially after an emotional experience going like this, name five things in the room is probably another way. There's a red clock. I'm wearing a white shirt. They're very, very, very basic as a way of kind of coming back into your body. Two mantras that I find help parents a lot actually make me think about this exercise.

1:38:12One is I am the pilot, not the turbulence. In our kids, turbulent moments when they are that turbulence, what so easily happens is we merge into that with them. And then it's no wonder our kids can't calm down or episodes last forever because we're just turbulence and turbulence together, right? So I'm the pilot, not the turbulence. Also, one name and do a partnership with some airplane company because I feel like airplanes are just so beautiful because the pilot gets a cockpit, they get a boundary. That's what parents need. So that's one. And the other one, when your kids are upset or after there's an argument, some people get very dysregulated just knowing someone's upset with them, right?

1:38:58Which is again, kind of whose feelings are whose. I find one of the most effective mantras. And again, these sound cheesy is just safe. This isn't an emergency. I can cope with this because our body, if you tend to be poor, is you get activated just by other people being activated, even though it wasn't your feeling in the first place and your body actually needs a reminder that you're safe to not kind of add to that turbulence. I love it. Can we talk about projection for a second? One of the things that drives me insane, people close to me know this, because of this issue of porousness versus nonporousness is when people tell me how I feel.

1:39:46And so I've talked to a few very qualified psychiatrists about this and it's called projection. Sometimes it's if in anger, it's a vacuum of projection. You think I'm crazy. Someone will say, you think I'm crazy or you're upset with me or something like that. I feel like projection is one of the kind of litmus tests of how porous we are. Because in theory, somebody should be able to tell us that we feel whatever. And if we first look inside, and by the way, I love this concept of do you first look inside or outside? Do you listen to what's inside or outside first when something kind of arises and emotionally, emotionally outside?

1:40:26Love, love, love that. It's something I'll have to explore. But if we don't do that, then you could see how projection would be very effective. And I'm not accusing anyone of using this and any kind of diabolical way. I think people just do it because it worked and they're doing it because they've always done it. But if somebody says, you know, like you don't care about me as a friend or telling someone how they feel is so very different than telling someone how we feel. Yeah. All right. It's coming obvious. And yet once you start watching for projection, you see it all the time. Yeah. Not just at you, but like in between people.

1:41:04Right. Like, you know, like I know this stresses you out, but you know, people start doing it all the time. It's very interesting to see how people kind of divide into a couple different groups on this, maybe two or more groups in terms of whether or not it affects them, whether it gets in their head or somehow they're like, no, it's ridiculous. I don't I don't feel that way. And for me, it's very context specific. But I love your thoughts on projection both towards kids and from kids. So, all right. I'm going to respond to that and you just cut me off. You're like, back it. That's not the direction I want you to go in.

1:41:37Because I guess MGI, which is I call most generous interpretation, is to me the like embodiment of not what I do all the time, definitely not some imperfect. But what I think is just a useful framework to try to employ as much as possible. Because the idea of what is the most generous interpretation of someone's behavior like projection counteracts are very natural human tendency, which is just what is the least generous interpretation. Right. We all come up with the least generous interpretation of people's behavior all the time. And it's just quick. It's easy. And I think it's because in our brain, if we see something bad or annoying, it's just easy to think that that's the whole.

1:42:16Right. So I can't even tell you how many times every parent I know. Well, say, my kid doesn't listen. They hit all the elevator buttons. They hit other people. And then I said, and I know you're thinking there are sociopaths. They're like, that's literally what I'm thinking. I was like, I know I have that thought too. No, when I was a kid, I used to push every button in the elevator. Right. Does that mean I'm a sociopath? No. It means you are a good kid who has not yet learned the skills to regulate urges. That's all it means. That would be the most generous interpretation. There's a reason you just want.

1:42:44No, I'm kidding. You just want to push you. I'm joking. I'm joking. My I have a kid like that too. He wants things for himself. And he derives a lot of joy from things. Those types of kids are going to do things. Okay. That's my resilient rebel. Okay. But projection. Why am I bringing that up? So what's my most generous interpretation of why this projection would happen? Why would a kid say you're mad at me? Or I can see how mad you are at me or why would someone even say an adult hood? You seem really, really stressed out. Right. Again, the gazing in versus gazing out. I think it comes back to in our childhoods.

1:43:21I mean, that's what often a lot comes back to. Were we taught that we have an emotional life that lives inside of us? Then were we taught how to understand that emotional life? Then were we taught how to manage and cope with that whole emotional life? Most people were not. So it becomes this very, very complicated conundrum. The emotional life is happening inside me again. Like you can't beat it. It's happening. Our feelings can't get rid of them. And they're very powerful. They're sensations. But if your framework is, was always you're getting punished, you're getting ridiculed, you're being a baby, you develop a very conflictual relationship with your feelings.

1:44:04Like they can't be real. They almost can't be mine. That's really what they can't be mine. People like this often blame other people a lot for things they never did when they're really frustrated and upset because it's almost like this can't be mine. So like, who did this feeling to me? You know, there's a lot of the world. A lot of that in the world. Who did this feeling to me? Who put this in me? Right? It's so fragile and so sad almost. And so toxic. But projection in a way is the only way that I can understand my emotional life is by imagining you having an emotional life. I don't know. Like a lot of these things, I hear I still say this.

1:44:55I like mellows. What a vulnerable way to go about the world. What an awful way to live in your body that you're so overwhelmed and almost so self abandoning of the information in your body that it must be someone else's. So that's so that's what projection is. Right? So what do we do when we see it? Right? I don't know. What's an example? You're so stressed out. You've been so stressed and you're thinking maybe you're thinking of partnership. I feel like you're the one you stressed. Never helps in the heat of a moment to be right. I've tried it a million times. I don't know about you to be right in the market to be right in a heated moment when you're like, I'm going to be right.

1:45:44Not if you want an effective, effective outcome. No, but it's a very hard urge to resist. No, it took me many years to learn, but someone taught it to me in one hour. I feel very grateful that she taught me this. She didn't tell me to do it, but I just realized if you just like, I don't have any word other than just like soften. If you just kind of like imagine becoming more like a noodle than like a rigid bar of iron, I just like oh, and I actually, I think of the way that like my, he always comes up by my, I had this Bulldog mast of Costello and he was like super lazy. The contract with him was he would protect me with his entire life, but if my life wasn't on the line, noodle.

1:46:30And I remember just thinking like, if I just go there, then the basic contract of like, I care about you, I'll protect you with my life is still there. So I guess I learned it from my Bulldog, but it sort of played out in a romantic relationship. And it was just really beautiful. It was one of the best things I learned that from the two of them. Yeah. Is that I just like literally like physically soft and then like everything becomes apparent. Somehow for me, it allows me to get back into my own egg shell. Yeah. But still have optics out. Now that's me. I realize it's, you know, and that doesn't mean in the heat of the moment, I'm not like feeling like I want to be reactive.

1:47:07Right. But for me, a physical change to my body, self directed physical change to my body is what just kind of like changed everything. Yeah. And I think, you know, this is so true and relationships definitely at work and definitely in parenting is you don't have to represent everything you believe in. Like a given moment. Like we're not so fragile like to be like, no, and you're projecting like, I have time. Like this is this is a heated moment. I can kind of chill out. You're so stressed. And I think I'm not. I think there's projection. I might say like, oh, I am. Who cares? Just like get through the moment.

1:47:47Right. And then maybe after, if it feels important, I say, I feel like this thing happens sometimes when you're stressed, you say, I'm stressed, I don't know what like, like let's talk about this. That's when that happens. I think this is really true with kids too. Right. This happened the other day. And in some ways, it's the same strategy, which I jokingly on Instagram called do nothing with the capital D and a capital N because so many times in hard situations, especially when you're accused of something that's not true. People will say to parents, Oh, so you're just going to do nothing. I'm like, take away the just like doing nothing in a heated moment is a very sophisticated technique because really what you're saying is you're doing nothing on the outside and you're being a adult and managing your feelings on the inside.

1:48:34Amen to that. Versus doing nothing on the inside and just yelling or reacting on the outside. So the other day my son came to me before school. My youngest and he goes, my sweatshirt is still dirty. And I was like, Oh, man, you promised me you would wash my sweatshirt before school. Between us, he never, he never asked me that. Okay. And here's my fork in the road. It's like we all know what it would be easier and what I by the way, I wanted to say back to him 99 % of me was about you know, you never asked me. And then he said, I did. No, you didn't. And now you're lying to me. And all of a sudden it's like, okay, you know what he was saying to me?

1:49:17I wish my sweatshirt was clean. That's what he was saying. That's what we're all saying. And I'm so upset about it. The feeling is so big that it's like too overwhelming in this moment as a seven year old to be mine. So like I kind of have to make it your fault to try to make sense of it. So what did I do in the moment? I literally did nothing. What I did. You promised me you watched my sweatshirt and I went like this. I kind of was just like looking at him like I knew what it was like to want something and not be able to have it. And he's like, you did. In the moment I go, I did. Oh, my sweatshirt is dirty.

1:50:01You really wanted it to be clean. It's kind of, he's like, I really did. That's like, it's the worst. Not joking. And then he, by the end by five minutes later, I didn't say anything. He got another sweatshirt. We moved on. I didn't say I wasn't going to like ruin the moment by being like, see you could cope or you never asked me. But I think in both these moments, whether someone saying you're stressed or my kids accusing me, if I think about this a lot in parenting, I don't have to prove my parenting in a moment. I don't have to prove it to my kid. I have to prove it because my mother -in -law is watching.

1:50:36Like I trust myself way more than I trust one single moment to represent everything about me. And I think when we can gain a little bit of that confidence, we have a lot more freedom to just be effective and to also know there's a moment to do nothing. And then if something's a chronic issue, if my son's chronically blaming me, when things are less heated, I'm going to say to him, you know, something and, you know, a calm moment. So, super important and novel approaches to things that I think everybody deals with. Kids in the picture or not. My audience sometimes gets angry with me when I ask very long extended questions.

1:51:19But could I just share with you something I learned about an experiment? Because I think the blue my mind, I won't take long. And there's a imaging experiment. So you put people in a scanner, they image their brain, see what areas are active. FMRI. There's a really wild experiment where they bring people in for the scan. They don't tell them why they're there and they tell them they're going to be paid $30 and they set out $3, $10 bills. Maybe you know this experiment. I don't know. And then they go into the scanner and then they come out and then the researcher leaves and there's a discussion, et cetera, et cetera.

1:51:56And at some point, one of the $10 bills is removed by the researcher. And people are told that the end of the experiment, you took one of the $10 bills. And they're like, no, I didn't because they didn't. Nobody says you're right. But then they re -imaged them and they compare that to a condition in other subjects where people actually did a little sneaky steal during a money game. And the same areas of the brain light up that we think are associated with guilt. In other words, if somebody is told that they did something, even if they know they didn't, there are aspects of brain circuitry that reflect a quote -unquote feeling of guilt.

1:52:45It's like it introduces this question about reality. And so they can know with 100 % certainty, you can know with 100 % certainty that you did not do something. And yet it starts to introduce these questions about how you gauge reality. Simply because somebody you just met a few minutes earlier, yes, in a position of authority, the researcher, you're the subject, et cetera, told you that you did it. I think this has huge implications for parent -child relationships, for romantic relationships, workplace relationships, for real bias in the outside world. You can imagine if you're told your whole life that like you're a piece of garbage or that you're part of a bad group or something like this, like I'm not trying to get political here, like you could come to believe that at a level that is biological, even if cognitively, doesn't make sense.

1:53:29So this is where I think about this like challenging boundary between knowing what we know, being a container, staying in our frame, you know, pick your favorite lingo around this. And the fact that words and the emotions of other people really do have the capacity to rewire us on the inside. You know, a question I'd have about that study. I'd be really curious if there was variation among subjects where some people that guilt part lit up a lot more. Okay, so you reminded me. So this is the wild part. Okay. The distribution of kind of like people who have this, by the way, folks, there aren't single brain areas for whole emotions, but let's just for sake of simplicity here, that have the guilt area activated even when they didn't take the money.

1:54:18Yes. The entire population of subjects doesn't experience that to the same degree. You have these people who for whom it's very high amplitude response and others who aren't. Now, I don't recall and I need to go back and look at the study if it divided according to male female because earlier you said that this tendency, I would bet a million dollars that if I got to know those people, the people who really light up have a lot of focus on gazing out and determining their inner reality by what other people think about them and the people who did not light up as much are the people who gaze in and have a deep sense of themselves even in the face of kind of a lack of validation or even in the face of criticism.

1:55:00I would bet my money on that psychological kind of is that a moderator or a mediator? I don't know. You would tell me. So I'd be very curious about that. Great. Well, I have no skin in the game like I didn't run this study and I'll go back and check it out. It's a collection of studies and I hadn't known about this. I mean, I read the neuroscience literature but I hadn't known about this. I find it like a complete yes of course on the one hand and also super surprising on the other. Yeah. And just oh, so cool. Yeah. In the sense that it's informative and it's making me think that some people really need to do the work of paying more attention to other people's emotions and feeling them a little bit more and other people probably need to do the exact opposite.

1:55:41That's exactly right. And to me, like I always I say this people I manage. I say like I think about this in general with adults. I think such an empowering thing as an adult is just to know where you are in any given scale. So for me as a leader, I'm always gas. I'm like go go go we can do this. We can get this accomplished. I'm probably like pretty far in that. And given that, I know it's really important for me to have people around me who sometimes say like, well, let's look at this first, right? I also know that sometimes if I do have a like maybe I should slow this down. I should like really listen to that because that's like not, right?

1:56:20But knowing where I am in a scale is important. I talk about someone that I manage who she really needs to be more direct with the people she manages. Just like, you know, like sometimes ask questions when she really wants statements and can have a little higher standard. And I think it's helpful to know where she is in that scale because I remember saying I want you to go as far as you can toward the other direction without being disrespectful because it's almost impossible to do that, right? And so I think for adults to know, let's say I gaze in or I'm more gaze out, neither is better or worse.

1:56:53Probably again, mental health and resilience is about having just a lack of rigidity. And so to say what is my starting point? Like anyone listening, what is my starting point? There's no morality. It's literally not better or worse. It just gives me information about which direction to experiment with. And I like to make this a concrete experiment, right? So let's say you are someone who tends to gaze out before you gaze in. And you're always like, I can't do this thing I want to do because it wouldn't convenient someone. I told the story the other day on my Instagram and people wouldn't be known as about it.

1:57:27Hi, was that the airport? And I got a cup of coffee in the morning. And I like my coffee just like a really little bit of milk, right? And I know to specify it if I'm asking someone else. So I went to the counter and I said, Hey, can I get a medium coffee? Not black, just a little little bit of milk pretty close to black. Sure, no problem. I go, I went in line, then it's on the counter. I pick it up, Becky. And it's like light as can be.

1:57:54I got back online. I brought the coffee. And I said, Hey, I asked for this. I know there's a lot of people probably got lost. Could you, I asked for this, you know, darker? Could you pour out a good amount of this and refill it with coffee? The person, you know, who knows if it could have gone differently, different day should, oh, right. No problem. Here you go. This happens with things that are so much bigger than coffee, but the coffee example is such a good one. Because what I'm doing in that moment is I'm saying, I'm allowed to have my coffee the way I wanted it and ask for it, even if it's awkward or inconveniences the other person.

1:58:32Now, can people be on the opposite extreme and it can someone hear this and be like, I probably need to do a little bit less of my own needs. That's what I'm saying. If you know you are, but what I have found at least with moms is the idea of, oh, you know, I asked for almond milk, and this is whole milk. Or I always, I used to give my clients this experiment who had this trouble. I said, I want you with the grocery store. Basically, don't checking out to say, oh, you know what? I actually don't need those paper towels. I can't even tell you people are like, I can't do that. I can't like return it.

1:59:12Like, oh, my goodness. It's like a panic attack and the panic, the panic feeling is that would be a completely new circuit. That would be me saying, I'm willing to do something to meet my own needs. I actually don't need that paper towel. Even though it could get an eye roll or inconvenience temporarily someone else, those little experiments, and it might be the opposite. It might be saying to my partner tonight, you know what? We always sit down and talk about my work. And I actually did have a stressful day, but you know what? I want to hear about your day. You go first. That's also an experiment.

1:59:51And for someone who's on that extreme, they're going to also have a panic attack. They're going to be like, this is deeply uncomfortable. But just knowing where you are in the spectrum gives you the information you need to get a little bit of balance. Yeah, I think there's clearly a distribution. And whether or not it's a binary distribution or it's kind of like a normal distribution, I don't know, but there's clearly variants here from one person to the next. And probably even depending on how well rested we are and all the rest, but I do think that we do kind of fall into phenotypes of prone to reacting to other people's emotions without hearing and listening to and responding to hours first, like truly hours first, versus people who are just really out there.

2:00:34I realize it's very different than any other kind of relationship. But when I first went from being a post -doc to having my own laboratory, the chair in my department, my chairman in one department anyway, he said, you know, you should get a great big desk that's like really thick. I was like, yeah, like why? I mean, I get it. You don't want to be singing like right next to your employees or something, but like why so that he goes so that when they cry, you won't feel like you need to cry or take care of them, you'll just slide the Kleenex across the desk. And I was like, are you kidding? And he was like, no.

2:01:05And then years later, I looked back and I realized I understood what he was saying. I mean, he didn't know me at all, but he was just saying probably something about himself, which is people are going to come into your office. They're going to cry. And it does happen. And you're going to need to be the boss, which is to be supportive and empathic, but like you can't get pulled into it because they might be crying about something they don't like about the lab or about something not happening the way they wanted. I mean, you can imagine any other reason to cry in your boss's office, but maybe they have a family issue.

2:01:38And you know, so you have to remember, you're the boss. And I thought, that's interesting. I ended up with a desk that was kind of medium and with, but I think that nowadays there's a lot more kind of bleeding of roles. And you know, it used to be that everyone got really dressed up for work now dressing down. And it was like common in certain circumstances and not others. I think that there's a lot of kind of lack of clarity about, here we go again, you know, power and authority and, but also kind of staying in our own frame versus taking on someone else's frame. Yeah. You know, I have a friend who runs a pretty large business and he did the same experiment that you did of asking people, you know, how he could do better.

2:02:23But first he unfortunately made the mistake of asking people how they felt about being there. And they ended up making one of these emotion clouds where they took everyone filled out a thing and wrote what the most dominant emotions were. And then he told this story like, call me late at night. He sits down and they're going to present this as data in front of everybody. And this emotion cloud comes up. And the biggest bubble in the middle just says stress. And he was mortified. Right. But he learned that they all feel really, really, really stressed. That sort of exercise would never have happened 10, 15 years ago.

2:03:00Yeah. It's like, yeah, like I won't say what profession he's in for sake of privacy. But like it's a profession where stress is part of the process. And you don't kind of get the certificate at the end, so to speak, if you don't experience stress. But this actually relates to what we started with in a way, I'm going to circle it back there, which is, and because I hear this a lot, you know, kind of some kids these days, they don't, they don't know how to tolerate stress, or they're always overwhelmed. But part of it is, again, maybe this is my MGI, maybe they haven't been told the right story about stress or anxiety.

2:03:35It just came up with my kids the other day. My older son had his first basketball game of the season. And he goes, oh, I'm really nervous, feeling all anxious. And it's just so interesting. Like the way we respond, we respond in little ways to our kids in these moments form like the way they end up thinking about those feelings later on. I said, well, of course, you're nervous. Being nervous means you care. You really care about basketball, right? And obviously we've had many conversations about what feelings mean. But it was so interesting. I watch him go, yeah, I do care. Kind of in that little sentence, being nervous means you care.

2:04:10I mean, think about it. You're never nervous about anything you don't care about, right? If being nervous means I care, I have a story to understand it. I now inherently feel like the feeling is normal. I'm almost, I'm almost like proud. You know, like, yeah, I do care. Right? My relationship with that feeling is going to be so different than if my parents say, well, how are you nervous? There's nothing to be nervous about. Or, oh, you're nervous? Oh, does that mean you're not going to play well? Oh, my goodness. Are you going to miss your fall shots? I mean, so in the first, right? My kid feels like being nervous is wrong.

2:04:42So I just set them up to feel like they're feeling the wrong feeling when they're feeling nervous going on. In the second, I'm lingering on my anxiety to their nervousness. Not a great combo. But the stories be tell matter. So in the workplace, you're stressed. Yeah, you know, actually, this makes me think maybe not right now when new more time, we're really helpful to talk about what, what is stress? Why do we feel stress? How do we talk to ourselves when we feel stress? Does anyone here know the way you talk to yourself when you're stressed has the power to make stress feel a little smaller or a little bigger?

2:05:18That's really interesting. I wonder, is anyone here use a session? Should we do something in the workplace about how to deal with stress because you're right? This is a stressful job. And this is where I don't think about power, but authority. And I want to own that and let you know that stress comes along with this type of job I'm making this up. And this is why you get paid pretty well. And this is why, you know, whatever else could be true. But one of my jobs is not just being honest, but actually helping everyone develop the best skills that maybe no one ever taught them before to manage stress.

2:05:51Let me know if that's of interest. I just think about the whole mood just changed. You kind of own your authority and you own the story. And I think whether you're talking about being a CEO or being a parent, it's actually all the same. That makes sense. I have a rule which is if my pulse rate goes above a certain limit, my thumbs stop working. Meaning I won't allow myself to text. I don't talk on the phone. I'll just go in the bathroom and sit for a second if I have to, but that's rare. Typically I just, I'm like, I have a rule. My heart rate goes up. My thumbs don't work. What do you do? I just do nothing.

2:06:26I follow the do nothing. I just wait. I mean, I also have a rule which is unless somebody's hemorrhaging right in front of me, it usually can wait. Drives people crazy, but they thank me later. Unless somebody's literally hemorrhaging, I can pause my response. Because I'm a kind of like move -asking thing, it's done at a person. Actually, it was taught to me by a chairman of a major university in New York, home city of New York City. He said, there's always more time. And I said, that's ridiculous. He said, unless somebody's hemorrhaging right in front of you, there's always more time. Go back to my daughter.

2:07:02It's one of the mantras that's been really helpful for me as someone who, again, just knowing myself, I always like to go, go, go. I get so much pleasure, probably identity, value from doing things. And so a byproduct of that is I always kind of feel like I'm in a rush because my body craves movement and checking things off. But being in a rush is never terribly helpful in close relationships. No one likes to feel like, come on, sometimes I think efficiency in relationship building are like antithetical. I am a man of a thousand times over. I don't think we can be efficient in relationships. It's like efficiency and other things is beautiful.

2:07:47Well, it's a unitary experience being efficient in relation. And so when I can be in efficiency a lot, mode a lot, and it's something that I have to really think when I'm going home to my closest relationships. And it's interesting now that I work so much more than I used to. It's almost reinforcing the efficiency mode. So I really know I did my own therapy, like really work on like that's not a value of mine. All the time at work, maybe sometimes even there, sometimes you got to get out of it to connect to people. Right. And so that is something again where like knowing where I am on that scale, asking people to call me out.

2:08:24Oh, mom, you're rushing me at night. Becky, I want to tell you the whole story. I'm not just trying to give you the TLDR. I want the experience of telling you the story. I'm like, right, I'm doing that thing. Yes, slowing down is rarely a mistake. I guess it's occasionally, but rarely a mistake. Really true. I'd like to talk a little bit about technology. I know this is a growing interest of yours. I've been thinking a little bit based on our earlier discussion about people who are in their own container or sensing what's going on inside them prior to paying attention to and sensing what's going on in other people, because clearly both are important.

2:09:04I don't like this idea that it's like one or the other. But with the advent of text messaging, so here I'm not going to talk about social media. This is not about social media. With text messaging, first of all, this is the first time in human evolution that humans have written with their thumbs. That's weird, but kind of quirky reflection. But the other one is this is the first time in human evolution, meaning very recently that we are aware of what's going on with so many other people. We're expected to at least know it and perhaps even respond to it. I know people younger than 30 are probably going, wait, no, it's always been this way, but it wasn't always this way.

2:09:42Clearly, our brain has adapted to this new format, but it did not evolve in this format. Whereby, you're getting on a plane and you look at your phone and you are aware of the movements and requests and maybe kind statements, etc. from other people. We're tethered in so many ways. And that means that our brain is really tethered to the states of others, their emotional states, their physical states, where they are. You said, and I'll keep repeating it because I love it so much. The more you can locate somebody, the more it reflects their values. So being able to locate somebody in space and time and understand how bounded they are or not to their own emotions, or yours fantastic.

2:10:22But the fact that you have 10 people in your phone that you're aware of, you're not even supposed to be aware of 10 people at once except the 10 people perhaps around you on the boarding a plane. So we're being forced to navigate a new landscape with all this. Yes. After this conversation folds, we'll look at our phones. You couldn't have that many, guarantee one thing no matter how many text messages or few text messages you have, it's far more conversations if you will, than you could possibly have by phone at once. So in the old days, you left messages and you get on the phone when you could, not saying we go back to that.

2:11:01But I think we might be asking ourselves to do something that is possibly hard and maybe even bad for us. Yeah, I don't know how apocalyptic you want me to get about this. But I think I actually, in my husband and I were talking about phones and text and social media and AI and I brought up some in him, he said, I don't think I had in all the arguments I've heard I haven't heard that. Where I feel like we're changing in a dramatic way, our basic evolutionary drive around attachment. In a way where attachment has always been the primary evolutionary drive of humans. And with all the different technological shifts there have been, because people say, oh, there's been this, there's been this, what's never been shifted is kind of the nature really of one to one human attachment.

2:12:01We're entering into something really new, where let's even say text messages, 20 at once, 10 at once. Our bodies will always crave what's immediately gratifying over what is long term good for us. It's just, it's, and I, another way I think about is our bodies will always choose convenience and ease and gratification over what's good for us long term. So you think of all these pings coming in. It's a lot of information, this text, that text, this text, this text. And what you're doing in your circuitry and over time evolutionarily is getting used to the multiplicity of relationships, the multiplicity of information, it's just more gratifying than one on one.

2:12:40To the point that one on one conversation over text or even in person is going to have so much more of a gap than it ever has been in terms of how slow, how low stem and how boring and awkward it is compared to especially for kids who get this early, the constant information flow and gratification and stimulation. I think that's going to have a profound impact not right away, but over time, and then if you add in social media and then if you add an AI, I mean, on the way humans just are even able to relate to each other. So yes, I think like this advancement and technology and what's happening, I think there's always been a trade off, always between how short term gratifying something is and how long term good something is for us because the things that are really good for humans long term are the things that involve humans to tolerate frustration.

2:13:40I would say that is a most important skill, I think, for kids to learn. But the world more than ever, it is built now with insanely low frustration tolerance because we're built for so much information, so much consumption and so much media gratification. This is actually, I think, the thing that isn't talked about with technology, it's why parenting has changed. It's why so much parenting is about making kids happy and their lives easy because there's never been a generation of parents like my generation where our lives are just so much easier. We have so much less tolerance for our kids' tantrums because we're on our phones wanting our life to be easier, so we stop the tantrum, we make their life easier, we make them anxious, we make them fragile because of our lowered frustration tolerance.

2:14:23So I don't know we're landing here, but and by the way, I text, like I'm not like a purist here, you know, I'm a realist, I live in the world, you know, but I think it's profound how it's changing human interaction and expectations and gratification. And my colleague Analemki wrote dopamine nation, cited some data that humans have more free time now across socioeconomic groups, more free time for everybody than ever before, more expectation of immediate gratification. And it's not just the text that we're getting, it's for some people the text that they're not getting, they're thinking about the people that they haven't heard back from, etc.

2:15:06I mean, the number of tethers, right? Exactly. Like the number, the number of tethers is just, is just astonishing. I had a conversation with somebody recently that popped to mind where it was a little bit, it was like a low friction one that ended in a really good place where I said, you know, the problem is, you know, I was talking about there's a little bit of an age gap and I said, you know, the problem is you think slow is low. Like what I was saying was I like to just chill. This is something I haven't done enough of in my life because I'm pretty ambitious person and always have been since I was little about everything.

2:15:42But I've learned that like slow isn't low. I had love just like sitting down and like hanging out with the dog or just like slowing down. And it used to feel like slow is low. It used to feel like, oh, nothing's happening or this is depressing or it's boring. And I think in recent years that became more and more the case as I got more and more pulled into technology. And then I did a little bit of a technology distancing experiment, if you will. I have this wooden box that someone made for me and I put my phones in there and it's so amazing how once you put the phone in a different container, it like completely changes the relationship to it.

2:16:19I don't get it. But anyway, again, physical barriers to make to take emotional steps. Always a good idea. And I just realized like slow isn't low. Like slow is awesome. So I totally agree that the circuits of our brain have now adapted to expect immediate gratification. I like to think and maybe this is a false wish. But I like to think that there are components of our brain that are hardwired enough through tens or hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that might be able to recognize and appreciate the slow moments and not feel like slow is low, meaning slow is depressing. But I do think that if one is weaned in, raised in an environment where you expect things quickly, well then you know, it's going to feel like the horse and cart compared to the car at some level.

2:17:11I do agree. And I think for parents who have young kids, I think these are such powerful and empowering things to think about when your kids are young because I think it's easy to think, okay, so I'll deal with this when my kid gets a phone. It's the circuits around, even how your kid will use the phone, how much you're going to be able to set boundaries with your kid when they get a phone. All these have to do with the patterns early on. Right. So if we go back to slow is good. Frustration and frustration tolerance is the name of the game. It requires a lot of inconvenient moments that matter so much for how not only your kid learns to tolerate the frustration inherent in life, but I think this is really important.

2:17:58How your kid learns to feel capable. Kids only develop capability from watching themselves get through hard things. They don't develop capability by being successful ever. In some ways, it builds up this pressure and a fragility if that's been the only thing they have. And when we think about this whole generation who's so anxious, kind of so fragile, I really believe the antidote to anxiety is capability. And we, and I'll give you an example, like we steal our kid's capability all the time when they're young in the name of short -term convenience for everyone. So here's an example. Like, Mike, I remember this day, my oldest was now 13.

2:18:37It was like three and he was really into puzzles when he was three. The puzzles are like really hard, right? He was working on it and he something like, I can't do it, you know, the classic wine, which I just want everyone to know, like no part of me is like, I love that sound. No, like nobody likes whining, okay? But to me, those are like bang for our buck moments. You know, they're not our easy moments. They're are bang for our buck. My kid is going to learn something about how to deal with situations. They don't think they're capable of completing. That is such an important lesson. And I have a fork in the road.

2:19:14I can either do the puzzle for him, which gives me short -term convenience, stops the meltdown. But beyond frustration, tolerance, like one of the things I really remember thinking when my kid was young is if I do it for him, I'm stealing his capability. Because if he can get through this and kind of get to the point where he says, I did a puzzle. I didn't think I could do. That's incredible. So I remember this because it felt so he's still wine. But there are these moments as apparent. And this is what I like to help parents with. Our wins are not based on our kids' reactions. Our wins happen when you just know there's this amazing feeling you have of a parent.

2:19:58I know that was important. I know it. And I remember saying to him, with this puzzle situation, sweetie, I'm not going to do the puzzle for you. And I want to tell you why. The feeling you get when you think you can't do something, kind of take a deep breath, maybe take a break, maybe even the next day, watch yourself do that thing is literally the best feeling in the world. It is the best feeling. It becomes addictive. And I will not take that feeling away from you because I believe you're going to get it. I could cry. And one of the things I feel people hear the story like, right, I don't know.

2:20:39Okay, back to you. You know, I do not do that all the time. Sometimes I finish the puzzle. But when we think about what we want for our kids later in life, it might be, no, I'm not getting you a phone yet. How a kid reacts to that situation. It's not just about a phone. It's kind of, well, have you always just done the thing for me? Have you always just given me what I want? Do I have any ability to feel like I can tolerate frustration and weight and figure things out? That all layers into how kids react to not getting a phone, how kids approach hard math problems, how kids do or do not sit down to start their English essay.

2:21:15That is difficult to do. And all that stuff, you can start building those skills in the teenage years. Don't get me wrong. But the leg up your kid has at 14 when they've been basically building those life and academic skills from the start and they've built their identity around capability. Like that's what I want to give every parent and every kid in the world. Yeah, it's awesome. You know, I said it last time we spoke. I'll say it again. You know, if you're thinking of adopting, I'm I'm happy to put myself up for adoption. It's such a beautiful philosophy and stance to take around effort and frustration.

2:21:52I mean, again, this isn't about my life, but I feel so blessed that came up in science where things take forever. You can work two years on a project and then discover you do the right control experiment and you know, like we got nothing. Like literally we have nothing. Yeah. There wasn't and there still is intertendency to publish what are called negative results, which aren't bad results, but where you basically got nothing. You can find a flaw in the the reagents you're using. You get nothing. You're starting again. Yeah. And to have that, you know, a few times and to have some papers take two, three, four years to get accepted other papers six months.

2:22:25I'll tell you the six months feels really short. But these days we we get so much immediate gratification. Yes. The other day I was staying in a hotel and I ordered food in. I don't do it that often. I was like, I really want like a poke bowl. There's that poke bowl place. Or it was there in 11 minutes. I was like, wow, like this is so wild. I was like, I got to be careful. Not because I'll overeat poke balls. You can only have so many poke balls. But it's like you just it's there. Convenience. Yeah. So you know, it's it's incredible. I remember and sad and scary and exciting and all the things, you know, so I think having variable durations of effort reward in one's life and being able to see where like the latency is very short.

2:23:10Yes, social media, but you know, other things that where you have longer duration effort to reward contingencies. I'm sounding kind of it is like nerd speak. But I've gone on records saying before and I'll say again, that dopamine that is achieved without effort preceding it is just be really careful. Doesn't matter if it's amphetamine, cocaine, social media, or anything else. You get used to the schedule. That's right. And I think we need to be able to tolerate and enjoy and lean into and save our variable schedules of effort and reward. It's so interesting. You say that two thoughts that number one, I think about the puzzle situation.

2:23:49That's like effort because effort effort effort struggle deep breath effort effort. Nope. That's not it. Forever and then you get the dopamine that circuit. I just always think that is such a benefit to my kid later in life. It's kind of the opposite of, you know, which we all do sometimes, but if it's the only circuit being on your iPad all the time as a little kid and the no effort all the dopamine. Well, I think that is a friend used to call it years ago, birthday money. There's one time each year, okay, maybe a couple because of the holidays, when you're supposed to get presents just for being you.

2:24:24It's called your birthday, right? Or if you're a kid, you know, or what other holidays are where we celebrate kids by giving presents or we celebrate each other. But every other day, you're not supposed to get rewards necessarily just because not just for being you. The rewards are out there in life and appreciating things. I'm not trying to be too stoic here. But there's only one day each year where you get literally presents just for being you. The other stuff is supposed to require effort. Yeah, and struggle. I think, you know, it was really interesting. My second had a lot of speech issues and she was younger.

2:24:56And I kind of noticed it like at a certain age, you're supposed to be building sounds and words and she was replacing like as soon as she had a new sound, she lost one and said a sentiment is going on. She had a pretty serious speech appraxia. She had a good speech therapy three days a week, right? For probably a year. She now, you wouldn't know. But it was interesting. I remember that time, my older one tried to five, maybe she was two or three and six. And I remember someone saying to me like, oh, that might not have like, oh, poor her kind of, you know, it's like a lot. And I don't think I said this.

2:25:27But it's so interesting. I remember thinking she's way better off than my son. If I'm going to worry about one of my kids right now, which I'm not worried about either, I would have met my son. His early years were so linear. So without struggle, like she's going to have an early experience of struggling working hard. She won't remember it with her words, but that circuitry, which are our important memories, ones we don't remember with our words, ones that our bodies remember. She has such an early experience with watching herself struggle and get to the other side, like I would wish that for every child.

2:26:06And so I also think I want to also share that story because I think parents who have kids who have those early issues, it's so easy. Oh, I actually think it's really empowering to do a complete 180 to be like, wait, I'm not going to fix this right away. I'm going to support my child. I'm not going to let them know. I believe in them. I'm going to let them know. I see a version of them that's going to get through this. They're going to still struggle. And that has actually kind of be like the best foundation and almost like the best leg up. I have a friend very, very successful who told me that he wasn't until he was in his 40s that he had a major difficult life, a major business disappointment.

2:26:44And it almost crushed him. He had never had that before. He had been so successful over and over again. It was fun for me to talk to my dad recently on the podcast because we haven't had a conversation like that ever. And we were talking about sort of mistakes that one makes. And in the context of work, et cetera. And he said, I'm still bringing in my ears. He said, well, you know, those humiliations are actually good for us. He called them humiliations. I was like, really? I was like, yeah, you know, they they humble us and they keep us thoughtful about what we're doing next. And I was like, yeah, but it was kind of wild to hear that.

2:27:21I don't know why I need to hear it externally because I know it's true. I knew it was true. But yeah, it's not just making mistakes. Like sometimes, listen, I'm fully against bullying where I understand how that can be very destructive. But like, there are going to be times when we're going to feel humiliated. And to be able to bounce back from that is pretty awesome. I actually think that builds character strength. I do. Yeah. And I think, you know, this is like a great lead in the parenting. I hear this all the time where someone will say, I don't know if my kids being bullied, but like they're, you know, they were told, you can't play basketball with us.

2:27:56You're the worst basketball player in the grade. So many like that, right? Where the way I work with parents, right, is again, assuming this isn't chronic. I don't think step one is calling the school. I don't think step one is calling the other parent, right? If you zoom out, you're right. Like, I don't think a kid's going to be called the worst basketball player, you know, over and over in the course of the next couple decades, but they will be called something. They'll be left out. Or even if nothing happens, you know, it's going to happen. They're going to feel less than in a group. Like probably a million times.

2:28:28I do, right? Still. So we have this almost opportunity of like, okay, well, what skills would be useful when my kid is 18 and 30? And actually, the struggle again is my opportunity. I always say, my kids are in my home for 18 years. I, this sounds like sick. And I don't know if I really mean this, but I'm going to say it. I almost hope they have all the variations of struggles. They're going to have later on. Because then at least I can kind of get in it with them and like build some skills and help them see that they can manage. And then I feel like those bumps are going to happen. Right? I guess it's like pilots.

2:29:06Don't they? When they have simulations, there's no way they simulate perfect flights and say you're ready to fly. They simulate all the issues. So that a pilot can learn the right controls. And then they're really prepared. They don't take away the issues. Right. Now I love the analogy of flying because I, you know, I'll never forget driving in the really thick fog for the first time. This happens if you grow up in the Bay Area. Just being able to see one reflector at a time and being terrified. Now, like driving in fog never feels great, but I've been there. It's like it's a familiar feeling.

2:29:41And yeah, I've been thinking a lot these days about this whole thing about proficiency and our expectation of kids nowadays. You know, that we have been told for a long time that we need to guard against kids feeling terrible about themselves. On the other hand, we want them to be proficient in what you're really talking about here if I understand correctly is proficiency at being human, at being really good at certain things, less good at others. I can also tell, you know, any kid, because I was this kid, like in a group of musicians, I'm the least proficient. I mean, you really just talk about wanting someone to do nothing.

2:30:16I'm best off not even playing the triangle. Okay, like just doing nothing would be the best thing I could do to any musical effort. But I realize that at some point, even though every kid in my school played an instrument, they had like the use symphony and all that kind of stuff, because it was also a time when I could just kind of relax. Like you don't have to be certainly best at everything. But I also believe that in order to really find what you're kind of, quote unquote, meant for, you have to try a bunch of things and find out what you're never going to even approach partially skilled at.

2:30:48You still have to try. Yes, that's a point. So on the one hand, I guess I'm saying do nothing. On the other hand, I'm saying you still have to try. I guess you have to try to find out that you're really as bad at music as I found out. Maybe you're, I think we're also talking with it. I'm good with it. I love music, but I don't need to play it. But I think then what you're saying is you're able to separate your identity from any behavior. Being bad at music doesn't mean you're a bad person. And I think anyone hears that they're like obviously, but we can flate those two things 90 % at the time.

2:31:18That's why we really care about winning at Scrabble. It's like to some degree, we think it means we're smart and everyone's like, as you know, versus probably the same level of smart, whether I win at Scrabble or lose at Scrabble. And to me, that's what confidence is. It's not feeling like you're the best at something. It's feeling like it's okay to be you when you're not the best at something. It's feeling at home with yourself. And to me, feeling at home with yourself is for some, it's an amazing internal motivator because you get to also figure out what you're really passionate about. And yeah, learning to participate in things and even have joy in things that you're not great at.

2:31:55Again, these are things I think our kids really can learn, not from lessons, not from a textbook, not really from a teacher. They learn it from what we model. It's actually interesting. We play a ton of board games in my family. Again, I'm just, I think they're like the antidote to everything on the screen. So we have a million board games. I'm the resident. If anyone ever needs a recommendation, or a good board game, board game to play as a family. Okay, I love sushi go. Okay, I don't know it, but I'll just let you go. Parties, the better version. It's actually a really great adult game too. It's very strategic.

2:32:24We play code names. We play a lot of board games. We play boggle. We play ghost. We play scrabble. We play rummy cue. But the game I was going to say that we also play a lot of that I love is categories. Okay, so do you have your play that? Yeah, that's a fun game. I, whatever part of the brain is good at generating a lot of different things from a single letter is must be very small in my brain. I am so bad at categories. I mean, my kids are all pretty quick. I lose to everyone in my seven -year -old, including I'm horrible. It actually is a game I suggest often. I'm like, let's play scategories.

2:32:59And I think they're, like, that's actually so powerful for our kids. I mean, I think a lot of us, if we look back, we think like, is one of the reasons my parents didn't really play with me or do things, they felt like they weren't good at it. You know, like probably, right? To demonstrate to your kid, I can choose something. I can have joy in something. I can want to do something that I'm not good at. That is, again, going to be more powerful to your kid than sitting down and saying, this is what we think is going to help kids. It's okay to do things that you're not good at. You know, that's like logical words in the brain.

2:33:34That's not an experience they're building or internalizing. Kids learn from stories, from experiences. And so I think that's one way in terms of how do I help my kids be confident, but also just be at home with themselves and do things are not best at probably the best way to do that is to model it over and over to your kids. I love it. We're back to theory versus practice. Yes. I'm big on practice. Maybe on both. I feel like as long as there are kids and adults that seem, when I emphasize seem, to do everything well, the athlete, academic, musician, good dancer, as long as charming with other people, as long as those people exist or seem to exist, we're going to have to all overcome our sense that we should be at least partially good at a wide variety of things, maybe not everything.

2:34:34Do you think those people exist? No, I know they don't exist. I know that there are people that apparently are like that. They're fakers. Well, I don't know. I will say that, and this is, I don't get paid to say positive things about the university I work for or not, but I will say occasionally I'll meet a student from Stanford and I'm like, goodness gracious, like this kid, can apparently do everything. Like they're an athlete and they're a musician. They have all these things. They are those people. And I will say, but this is important. The pressure that the perception of those people creates on them without fail brings them to immense challenge in their life if not then later.

2:35:26I've seen it every single time. I know because I grew up in the town where I'm a now professor and I went to school with many people who ended up there or other places like that. Of course, there are people like that in every environment. They are outliers. They tend to be very salient. We tend to notice them. And they create this false internal pressure. This is the reason I raise it. And I want to say it's not like they eventually fail and dissolve into a puddle of their own tears. Like hopefully they're resilient and they push forward in life and some of them do amazing things and some of them do less amazing things.

2:36:01But the point is that there are people among our species that seem to do many, many things very, very well. And I think when we hold ourselves to that standard, we suffer and we hold ourselves back. I think that I believe I just have a central belief that we all do have some unique gifts that we're meant to bring to our life into the world. And it shows up in different forms. And one of the worst things we can do in trying to find that and express it is trying to be really good at everything. I just think that's the most poisonous idea in the American mindset that we're supposed to be really good at everything.

2:36:38On the other end, I personally believe that we should try a variety of things so that we experience frustration and fail and eventually find what it is that is, you know, we're quote unquote meant to do. I do. But I feel also very fortunate that I was never really pushed to be excellent at everything. I've a terrible hand eye coordination, but I'm pretty good at sports with my feet. But when I say pretty good, I mean, passable. Yeah. So I gave up on the idea of becoming a professional athlete very, very young. So I think we have to know that we have to play games with our hands and our feet in order to figure that out.

2:37:08Yeah. And I guess, you know, we were talking about this maybe before we started, but I don't know. I'm trying to think why this is, but I tend not to put anyone on a pedestal. I feel like, and maybe part of it is in part of my private practice for years, I saw, maybe I saw the Stanford grads who are then living in New York. And they weren't literally from Stanford, but I have all these late 20 year olds and their pedigree, like all look the same top of their class. I really go, man, sax, this MBA. And like so many of them had the same insane anxiety and emptiness. I still remember the way one of them described how they felt.

2:37:55And she was brilliant with her words. And she said, I walk around and this like, when I'm with people and doing things and at work, it's like, there's a ton of color. When I'm alone, I feel like I am in empty room with white walls. Oh goodness. And it's very sad. Very sad. Actually has a happy ending, which is, there has a new onstanding, but happy ending where she feeling, it's actually, I was actually saying this to a friend because actually it relates to my own childhood. I feel like, I've grown a lot, had my therapy. And I feel like when I was younger, I was really hard driving and really like somewhat people pleasing.

2:38:41And me and my friend who were both like that, were like that, have kids who aren't really like that. And they're amazing kids and they do so well, they have this internal confidence. But sometimes we joke, but there's nothing that will drive you, like feeling not good enough. There's nothing that drives you, like feeling like every test score defines yourself. And it's so sick, right? Because we're almost like conflicted with our kids. They're all great kids, they're responsible, but they almost have a little bit more inner contentment, right? But I think about that young woman I saw and how at work she felt amazing, until it didn't happen until she was 28.

2:39:27She didn't get the promotion, she thought she was getting. And then, I mean, she never failed before. And it's not only the never failure, when your internal sense of self is built outside in, which you actually can do if you have a lot of accomplishments. It works for a while. But as soon as that stops working, if you have nothing, you feel like in an empty room with white walls, what's really compelling about, you know, the therapy over the course of number of years is I still remember over COVID, we were then then zooming and she'd had an own place. And she actually went through this process and she's very artistic of painting the walls in her actual room, talking about making something concrete.

2:40:17And like kind of in the way that she was feeling a lot more lit up inside out, instead of outside in. It's great. But I just think, I guess I know myself too. And maybe this is part of why I try not to put people on a pedestal. Maybe as I'm talking, people are like, oh, Becky gets it right with her kids. And she's doing this. And like, whatever I can share, like that is that is part of my story. I also yell at my kids. I also feel like sometimes I'm on my phone too much. I feel like my life is at a balance. I don't get to see my friends nearly the way I used to. They probably often are like, where's Becky?

2:40:48Why is she not, you know, not only in the electronic detects, but remembering my birthday or whatever I forget. And that doesn't feel good to me because I used to do more of that. And so no one, no one has it all figured out. Like humans, I think it's a remarkably complicated, remarkably imperfectly. All have parts of us that feel really good. And we maybe some of us play up those parts more than others. And we all have parts of us that that feel confusing. Maybe have some shame. Feel, you know, I don't know, just more complicated. And so at least want to get that out there about myself. Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing.

2:41:29And I want to be clear, if I was at all unclear, that I certainly don't hold up these ultra performers in all domains on a pedestal. I think they're in a very precarious place inside and outside. They've essentially given up all their power and agency to one incoming failure. And maybe they never experience it and they get to the end without having known. But what a terrible way to leave anyway. I've always looked up since I was little to people that really took a unique path. I've always found that they yes accomplished tremendous things. And they have interesting, sometimes painful flaws. Like I'm a huge fan of the late neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks.

2:42:09Very, very incredible man, very complicated lives. You know, if you read his books in his autobiography, which I highly recommend everybody do, if you're interested in science, and just animals and a life uniquely lived. He's a really good example. And there are a bunch of other examples that are meaningful to me. Certainly not somebody who, you know, he couldn't do an experiment to save his life. He was moved out of multiple universities and places, you know, very, very complicated character. I had a methamphetamine addiction. Was a closet homosexual. It came out later in life. And was then at long periods of time on his own.

2:42:45And anyway, I've had a great relationship later in life. Very interesting person became that way and found his passion by realizing how terrible he was at certain things, including certain branches of medicine. So I think that trying many things and being really realistic about whether or not something's for us or not. But is the key? But then I guess the question becomes, and this must be so hard from the perspective of parenting, but also just in terms of guiding ourselves through life is, you know, how much friction do we experience before we say, you know what? Like, I'm not a musician. And I'm cool with that.

2:43:22I love music. But I'm going to put my efforts into these other things. And, you know, this thing comes more easily for me. There, you know, I do think we have a lot of natural tendencies. And I feel like especially in the United States, there's been this complicated relationship with parenting and education whereby we don't want to push people to their own, you know, like suffering and demise. But we also have to avoid not pushing them because then they don't ever find what they are proficient in. And they don't learn that overcoming friction thing. So it's tricky. I do believe everyone has a unique expression of themselves in life, whatever that is.

2:43:56It doesn't have to be in professional life. But you to try a lot of different things. And, you know, how at what point you bail out? I mean, I've had few in my lab, but I've spoken to graduate students and postdocs where I'd just say, you know what? I actually had this conversation with the postdocs. Like, you know what? You're a really good scientist. You're never going to be a professor. Let's get you a job in biotech. And they're like, oh, they thought their whole life, they were going to be a professor. I'm like, you're not. And the data are the following, which point to that. And it's kind of devastating.

2:44:24But then years later, they thanked me. Where they thanked me in that case. Yeah. A few others probably cursed me. But so how do you know when to keep pushing your kid to even engage in something? Like, maybe they're the kid that always is picked last for the team, but you know they should play sports. So I guess my first reaction is I'm reacting to word pushing because I'm not sure that's the like the verb I would think about because I think the idea of pushing your kid even like, how much do I push? There's there's a lot about us there is like, is that my I guess I grew up in a town where a lot of kids got pushed.

2:45:03Oh, I mean, I grew up in a town where every kid got pushed. So maybe that's why I know something about it, right? I mean, I think we see this all the time. And it goes back to actually what side of the tennis court, like who's feelings are who's like, is this my unlived dreams as athlete in my youth? Or is this actually about my kids' soccer skills?

2:45:25You is a prime example of M .I. living out my unfulfilled dreams and projecting that onto my daughter. Or does my daughter like soccer? And like, how can I really differentiate those, right? I think actually though, and making it back to that, a lot of this actually goes back to frustration tolerance and why it matters so much to me. Like, my approach to teaching frustration tolerance, which is like a hidden gem we have here, a good inside. I really want I want to be in every school. I think it needs to be in every school. And I want to describe it to you, okay? So I literally have this graph.

2:46:03It's helpful. And I know you like to write things down to to make it concrete. We're like point one is not knowing how to do something, okay? And point two, which is very far away is let's say knowing how to do it or being very proficient. This could be soccer. I think a good example is reading, okay? Like, you everybody starts out not knowing how to read. And let's say not everybody, but a lot of people learn how to read. The first, the space between not knowing and knowing, I call the learning space. It has a name and it's helpful to know where you are in a map. And the learning space has one feeling that you're supposed to have.

2:46:46Frustration. That is the feeling you're supposed to have. And we have this idea that we get from not knowing to knowing like this. It's because of those damn Star Wars movies. And oh, actually Star Wars incorporates some frustration, but it's because of movies. Boom, you're supposed to just have the skill because you picked up the rock or the sword or the pen or the wand. Well, and now it's because if you think about the circuitry that kids get used to with dopamine and the space between wanting and having in general is low because when you don't know something, you want to know it. Here, you do know it.

2:47:26Our tolerance and our kids tolerance for wanting and not having is so low that what's so sad is the learning space has gotten massively compressed and people fear frustration. This image when I've gone over this with kids and even teachers, I know teachers who teach us in their class, okay, today we're going to learn this new thing. We're going to learn whatever it is that, you know, how to read a short word. Everybody in this class is here, not knowing. Everybody in this class is going to get here. And probably today most of us, and you can actually do it in a map, are going to be right here.

2:48:01What does this say? The learning space. How are we supposed to feel when we're in the learning space, the class can say, frustrated. Okay, here's an interesting assignment different than you think. The goal today is not to tell me if you can read the letters that are in front of you. I want you to raise your hand when you feel frustrated, which feels like this. Oh, I can't do it, because I'm going to come up to you. I'm going to give you a high five. And I'm going to say, you are in the learning space. You are learning how amazing is that? Like, Andrew, I really believe this has been about change learning, because then when we talk about proficiency or when we talk about years from now, my kid is saying, this happens all the time.

2:48:40I get questions about this all the time. My kid says they want to do whatever it is. It's going to be a coding class. It could be a lacrosse class. And they do it once. And then they always come home and they say, I want to do it, I quit. Or maybe they're on a swim team. They want to quit. Do I let my kid quit? Right? To me, the question is actually like most likely, none of our kids are going to be Olympic swimmers or like professional basketball players. I think by the slot with you sports. The whole goal in my mind for most people with you sports, not everyone, but most is learning how to deal with frustration, learning how to do things.

2:49:16You thought you couldn't do character sharing, being a good teammate, sportsmanship, right? All those things are hard skills to learn. So the reason I'm signing my kid up for basketball is actually just because it's like a good medium for all those things. And so I want to be sure that if my kid is quitting, it's not because they're escaping the very, very natural learning space that is so important to be in life. And this happened. Actually, my oldest wanted to quit baseball. He played for years. And he wanted to quit in the conversation we ended up having was, look, let's wait to the end of the season.

2:49:54Like, and this goes back to values. It's not we don't quit. But like in our family, we really value and try as much as we can to keep our commitments and not just to ourselves, to each other. And so the rest of the season, you might be thinking all the time, I don't want to be doing this. And again, in my head, I'm thinking, good, that's like a good life experience to watch yourself go through that as long as it's not toxic. And at the end, you know, we'll talk about it. Interestingly enough, he had the best baseball season he'd ever had. He had a grand slam, which no shade to baseball. That's as exciting as youth baseball ever gets, right?

2:50:28And still, he was like, they come done. I just wanted it. And I felt really good about that. I was like, look, you ended on like, you're playing really well. It wasn't just because you got moved down in the batting water. Like if that's the reason why I could get moved down to the batting water, they're not starting on basketball. I hear this whole time. Now they want to quit. I don't have any rigid rules. But if that becomes a pattern, that worries me or not worries me, but forget you sports. That's just not a great circuitry that would be conducive with kind of resilience and confidence in adulthood.

2:51:06I love, love, love this concept, which I believe to be entirely true, that the learning space between unskilled and skilled, if you will, is characterized by the feeling of frustration in mind and body. I don't want to rattle off another experiment, but there is just, oh, so much data. I'll share this with you offline. The papers that is showing that brain plasticity changes in neural circuitry only occur when the chemical milieu of the brain is different than it normally is. Otherwise, how would the brain know it should change? So what sets the context for massive change in our neural circuitry is when there's a lot of adrenaline in the body.

2:51:48Sorry, folks, it's true. Adrenaline also called epinephrine and nor epinephrine released in the brain. Now, you don't want to be in a state of panic or stress to the point where you're debilitated. But that shift in the chemical milieu sets the stage for rewiring of connections between neurons. I mean, this is known at the molecular level. It's known at the cellular level. It's known at the circuit level. And I'm excited to share that literature with you because it just basically is a bunch of nerds speak and numbers to support the fact that you're nailing it right in the bull's eye, which is without frustration, there is no rewiring of the neural circuits.

2:52:26And if you think about it, it had to be that way. Otherwise, why would the circuits change so that the error signal is what sets plasticity in motion? Now, the actual rewiring occurs during sleep. So this is my reminder to make sure that your kids get enough sleep because that's when the actual, this is the phenomenon of not being able to do something coming back a few days or weeks later and you're like, can do it. Well, because it happened in sleep, the final portion of the rewiring. So I phones shouldn't be in the bedroom for kids. I think 75 % of people, between the age of seven and 18, are massively sleep deprived.

2:52:58And, you know, there's the neural rewiring deficits associated with that are serious. And these are what we call sensitive periods. I like sensitive periods more than critical periods because critical periods imply an open and shut sensitive is there's a tapering, but it does taper. So this unskilled to skilled and frustration and the learning space model, this is part of something that you're putting together now. Could you, could you, I already have it. I mean, our frustration tolerance program, it's a workshop. It's, you know, on our, it's within our membership. Right. So it's one of, you know, it's one of 30 workshops.

2:53:32To me, it's one where, you know, the thing is no parents say, Dr. Becky, what I'm really dealing with is low frustration tolerance. You know, they'll say, I have, you know, my kid is having tantrums or they won't do their homework or kids with ADHD tend to have low frustration tolerance, right? So, to me, it's like one of the first things I recommend to new members where I say, okay, you might like, this is the thing, this is like the key thing that underlies a lot of tantrums, underlies entitlement, and underlies not sharing, and underlies why you throw the board game when you're about to lose, and underlies quitting.

2:54:06It's not homework. And again, the MGI, the most generous interpretation is wait, right? The commonality in all those situations is my kid is frustrated. And if what they're learning or what they've practiced is when I feel frustrated, it's so intense. That's, sometimes I think like, do our kids learn that their emotions operate on a dimmer switch, earn on off switch. We want our kids to operate on a dimmer. Like you said, if you're at a 10 out of 10, nothing, you can't operate. But if every time, and I'm so interested in this literature, you mentioned, because I was thinking, what would happen in the first number of years of a kid's life if every time they're frustrated?

2:54:45Well -intentioned, but again, just under resource parents, turn it off. Then what I think would happen, I'm wondering, is then something that could be like a 5 out of 10, I feel like would feel like a 10 out of 10, because you never had a dimmer, right? Because if you only operated when a light went on with always going off, then even over time years later, the light was at a 5, it still could feel blinding, right? And so this idea of a dimmer, you want your kids when they're frustrated. That's what frustration tolerance is. Nobody says I'm frustrated, I can't read, yay, no one says that. But if it kind of comes up, oh, there's that light.

2:55:27We want their bodies to think, okay, all I need to do, and I have skills to get my 9 out of 10 to an 8, an 8 to a 7, when I'm at a 7, that's where learning happens. That's very different than it's at a 9, and kind of like, who's going to turn it off for me, or the reason in those situations, because they I'm not doing my homework, is they don't have the skills to bring it to a 7. And so their choice is to stay at a 9 or 10 out of 10, which no human can do, or walk away and bring it to a 0. And so what I'm saying is our frustration tolerance workshop, which I want every parent to take, but I also want to get into schools, is literally the thing that helps you teach your kids how to get frustration tolerance.

2:56:11How do you really can do this? It sounds sick, but like, you can get your kids to like being in the learning space to be like, I'm going to thrive here. The good feeling is eventually going to come. I'm relatively comfortable here because I just have watched myself survive it that many times. And so the benefits of that workshop, and it just the program, is not only tantrums, but actually it is a lot in academics, because that so many times and kids have issues in school, I'm not ADHD is real, dyslexia is real, that definitely can be a component. But so many times it's actually an issue of frustration, tolerance, and that's often not kind of labeled for parents.

2:56:58I'm realizing as you're saying this, that the literature that I'm aware of about stress and trauma is actually relevant here in an interesting and perhaps surprising way whereby, this thing I said earlier, the brain only changes under conditions where noripinephrine and epinephrine are released. There is such a thing as one trial learning and it's associated with negative experiences. And the reason negative experiences create such robust learning in only one trial is because there's a massive amount of epinephrine and noripinephrine and other neurochemicals release. So it's stamped into the nervous system.

2:57:31But learning of things we want to learn relies on the same neurochemicals. I mean, there's a wild and really cool literature from a guy named James McGaw, who showed that like, if you spike adrenaline before learning, the learning is much faster and much more durable. If you spike adrenaline after learning, turns out the learning is more durable. Now, we can't start getting into biohacking experiments on kids or themselves, but the adrenaline is supposed to come during the learning itself, which is what you're saying. But the problem is, if we stop once we're frustrated, we get the increase in adrenaline and noripinephrine.

2:58:10And again, other neurochemicals as well. But then the perception is that the plasticity loop is closed there. So what did you learn? When I do hard things, I get frustrated when I stop the frustration goes away. That's all you learn. In the same way that somebody exposed to trauma, this underlies the basis of almost all modern trauma therapies is in the right setting, take people back through it sequentially, let them experience that and start to desensitize to it. So they can complete that loop. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so I think it's so important to push through frustration. And I think it's so important as I'm just agreeing with you here clearly.

2:58:48But that oftentimes that frustration can last more than just the learning session. It can be weeks or months or in some cases, a year of a really challenging course or sports, sports participation. And so that's where it gets tough. Because as empathic creatures, one hopes we hate to see members of our own species suffer, especially our kids. And so it becomes this thing of like, do you let them opt out? Like what did they learn by opting out? And that's where it gets really complicated. Because we also got a forebrain which can set all these different rules. And so but can I I don't know about frustration for a year.

2:59:24I guess I always think how we experience a feeling is the feeling plus the story we tell ourselves about the feeling. And the feeling kind of is at a certain level that the story we tell ourselves about the feeling and what it means about us or how capable we are coping with it. That can make a feeling that was here. Go to here. Something about frustration of a year. Like it's interesting. We're talking so much about stories. But again, if one of the things I try as a parent is when my kid is saying, I don't know what would and you're thinking, okay, like first of all, quitting is not always weak or wrong.

3:00:10Sometimes quitting is a very brave, awesome, great thing to do. Definitely sometimes the absolute best thing to do. 100%. But as a parent sometimes and I get this a lot, I'm conflicted like I don't know what's right. First of all, there's probably not a right. And again, our parenting never hangs on one decision. So just let that go. But I think what I would be curious to just experiment with. Again, maybe it's because I'm so obsessed with frustration tolerance, especially in this world that is so working against frustration tolerance. I feel like it's like even more my duty as a parent to help.

3:00:42So I'm like, okay, let's just have an experiment where I would say, okay, let's talk to me about why you want to put your masks on. And I might know in the back of my head. Maybe they're not as good as everyone anymore, right? Or maybe they just don't like it. Who knows? But I might say, you know, look, maybe this isn't relevant. I'm thinking about when I did, you know, I'm thinking about a different sport. When I did track growing up. And there were like whole years where I was like, I love track, I love track. And I don't know if I ever told you this, but when I was 11, I hated track. I went from left to heated.

3:01:18And part of it was, again, say something kind of relevant to your kid. Part of it was there was a new kid at school. And my god, I was kind of the track star until she came in. And then I was like, second, and that just kind of stunk. And no, I didn't tell myself, it's okay. I kind of told myself this stinks every day. And part of it was all my friends were doing soccer. And I kind of felt left out. But I finished the year. And the next year or something interesting happened. And this is what a kid will say. I'll go, oh, what? You love track again. You know, and it's this amazing moment because they're always going to say that to be like, no, no.

3:01:55I ended up deciding that next year is my last year at track. And I stopped after that. But I can't explain it. It just, it felt like it came from like a different place. And almost like I felt more settled, I think, after like I really knew. And I don't know if that's relevant to gymnastics. I do know you've loved it for a while. It's kind of new to not like it. And sometimes when something's new and you don't like it, you just got to go. But other times when something's new and you don't like it, you want to like figure it out. And I don't know. I'm wondering if we should give it a few more weeks to try the figuring it out thing.

3:02:29And again, maybe your kid says, no, I want to quit. And you're like, fine. And in some ways, you've already had the experience with no matter what they do. But I think that's that's what I think about playing around with with kids way more than I think what parents say is, so should they quit or not? It's so binary. It's so rigid. And I think we're missing the nuance of the story and the process that matters more than the eventual decision. I love your use of story in narrative with your kids. It seems like you use that a lot. I do. Instead of saying, you know, and forgive me for I'm not an analyst, but I feel like it starts with an observation like, okay, you're behaving this way, maybe what's behind the behavior, you're expressing this, what's maybe deeper to that.

3:03:17But when talking about your own experiences towards your kids as you've been doing here in these pseudo hypotheticals, I'm sure some of them is this will interview your kids later and find out now I'm kidding. It's clear that you use story as a way to kind of share genuinely, but also probe for what might be going on with them. And I have to say I find it really delightful because it raises lots of questions that I think anyone would have. And I think it's part of your gift, clearly, because so many people follow your advice. But the advice you give is also, it's interesting. It's like an observation.

3:04:02Like frustration is key. I want to increase frustration tolerance. But then you're not like, okay, you're going to hammer down their throat's frustration tolerance in the following way. So it becomes a question like, where's their frustration in your life? And then you put it into your own narrative as opposed to necessarily asking them questions. I think asking kids questions or asking people questions generally is great. Like, hey, how can I do better as you pointed out earlier? But it's really, I don't know if the word is disarming, but it's really in a entirely positive way. Like you use your own narrative to allow people to start going, oh yeah, like, where am I experiencing frustration?

3:04:40Where can I tolerate that better? And so I think that there's this incredible triad of like, or tripartite thing of like observe, consider like the deeper layer and then offering a narrative that's really a bunch of questions when, where you're speaking from your real truth. It's really elegant. I have to say it's spectacular. I hadn't realized it until right now. I don't know if I realized those parts, but you is interesting as it brings up the word we kind of mentioned before, but didn't talk about, and maybe it'll be surprising that I say this is shame. And I think shame is the biggest block or to learning.

3:05:20And shame, I think, could be defined like a lot of things in many ways, but it's the experience of a loneliness. I think shame is the feeling you have when you kind of feel like a part of you is not attachable. So for a kid that's an existential threat to not be an attachment with someone. And in that way, when you're not attachable, you're alone. You're alone. And so so many of the things that happen with our kids, because I'll model another story and maybe I'll get some flack for this because it's probably countertuitive. But I think about like one of my, one of my kids, my resilient rebel who was in a hitting stage when he was younger.

3:05:56Hitting, and he's just also in like a, he was in like a couple of weeks. He was hitting. And then there was this one. There was this one time where we were doing a family puzzle. And he was younger. He was probably like three. It was really hard. It was more familiar for our kids. He was kind of doing his own thing. I think he was putting the blocks on the side. We leave. We come back and like couple of the puzzle pieces were missing that weren't. And I just knew I knew it. He saw it. I know most generous interpretation. He felt like, oh my god, I can't participate with the rest of the family is doing.

3:06:29And so you know what I'm going to do because I'm a smart kid. I'm just going to stop them from participating. And so I'm going to take the puzzle pieces and hide them. I knew it. I know. So he'd come back and we'd worked really hard on this puzzle. Of course you're angry. But again, I can either do nothing on the outside or do nothing on the inside in that moment, not always, but just to be an adult. And I was just like, I know he took the puzzle pieces. I just were working on this puzzle. I get that is probably frustrating, but like you need to, I'm not, I didn't have the puzzle pieces. That was not working.

3:07:07And then this is really going back to stories and going back to shame. If you feel like you're the bad kid who's doing bad things, and you're the only one who's like that, you are shut down from learning. So I went up to him on the couch and my husband ever watched me be like, what are you doing? And this is how I started. I go, I don't know if I can tell you this, which any kid's, I don't know if I can tell you this. When I was probably about seven, I did something really bad. That's what I said. And he was like, I can't even tell you. He like every part of his anger, like defused. And you can really draw it in by just saying to them, I can't tell you, I've never told him, I go, okay, and this is true.

3:07:59I go, my sister was two and she had these like oily stickers. And I really wanted them. And I asked my mom and she said, no, we couldn't go the store. No, those are, you know, my sister stickers. And you're never going to guess what I did. And he was like, I don't know, you asked her for them, you waited, you know, and I was like, no, I took them, but that's not the worst part. What? And my mom asked me if I took them. I knew I did. So you know what I told her. And he said, you told her, yes, second call, no, I told her no. And he literally goes. And I feel like in that moment, what's happening?

3:08:55Is he saying like so many things that you can never say did I practically like, mom, like, you're my mom, I love you. I hold you on a pedestal and like, even you did something that wasn't so great. There's like so much hope and goodness. And then I didn't in that moment, I did not say, and you cannot say any situations. So now you can tell me that you just have to like trust. Because I think the shame of the badness shame freezes you, right? As an animal defense state, right? Shame freezes you. So a kid who's lying to you is always in shame. And you can't get a kid to unfreeze and move to a different place of telling you the truth.

3:09:41If you're adding more shame through fear, like the math doesn't work. But you can through stories. Now true story, he did not right after that. I was just like, I remember my husband, okay, we'll be saying this. He was like, we have to punish him. We have to punish him. I was like, in the moment, that's going to feel very cathartic to us. That's what punishment does. It makes you feel very powerful. It makes you feel very cathartic. It doesn't work. It just doesn't, especially not with kids who are strong -willed. I was like, just give it a couple days. It's probably a good three days later. And he brought me the puzzle pieces in a bag.

3:10:21I need to say, I took them. And he truly started crying. And I did not lecture him. I feel like the whole arc, the whole lesson had basically already happened. Honestly, like the day after. So, again, this is what I think we miss as parents. And we're almost afraid to just name the humanness of it. And I kind of gave an example earlier. He's going to want to do something bad again. We all want to do bad things. That's not a bad urge. It's just about having the skills to do something differently when you have the urge. So I think a couple days later, and I do this, I do this at a role play. Is it take like 20 seconds?

3:11:00I was like, oh my goodness. Look at the puzzle, because we'd still been working on it. What if you want to take it again? He goes, I won't. I go, I know, but I think you might want to. Remember how I took the oilies? So you're acknowledging that inside him, there might be a piece that still wants to do the wrong thing. Feelings? And that's an urge. I teach my kids. An urge means you want to do something. My kids will say an urge is not a behavior. Behavior is doing the thing. That's not okay. But the only reason your urge doesn't convert into behavior is because you have a skill to manage the urge.

3:11:31And you can't build skills if no one teaches you them. So I said, what could you do instead? Could you run to me? And say, I really want to take the pieces. Can you say, I need time with you? Because at the end of the day, I think he fell left out. And we did. And by the way, this kid is he like perfect now. No, you know, but like, it, it brings together so many things. When number one, when we trust ourselves that we have time, when we realize shame, the fear of being the only one, being bad, being unlovable, being alone, is often the biggest blocker for kids. When you really realize that, punishment and sending your kid away makes no sense at all.

3:12:12And you can kind of give yourself freedom to tell stories, right? Because when we're really struggling with something, you don't want to look at someone, especially someone who's perfect, right? It's like when you really have a bad experience as an adult, the only thing you want to hear is your friend who I don't like, you know, I'm a mortified. I sent this email to my boss. The only thing that would make me feel better is someone like, let me show you the email. I said, I'm like, oh, wow, that's worse. That's the only thing that makes you feel better. Not because I wish bad upon other people, but because you want to know, you're not alone.

3:12:43And other people's stories do that vulnerability. It's kind of like, it's like this magic trick. I mean, it's pretty far away from the parenting dynamic, but the understanding and actual data from like 12 -step programs and group therapy generally, including trauma therapy that is of a group therapy nature. Uh, fully supports everything you said. Hearing the terrible or end or humiliating things that people have done or have done to them as awful as that sounds, you know, is often what underlies people's willingness to recover, ability to recover. And then they become the teachers. That's right.

3:13:27Over time, like you said, I think you said so many incredible things there, but right the end, you said something that I hope everyone internalizes that when you do something embarrassing, maybe even humiliating, the last thing you want to hear is look, it's all going to be fine. The thing that actually helps is somebody who has experienced something similar and is doing fine. Yeah. And I use that at management all like, we had someone do a presentation network. And it was for a bunch of people and it did not go well. And I met with her and she knew kind of didn't go well. And honestly, the only thing I said to her, I don't even manage her directly, she's more junior.

3:14:02And I really mean this. We had in clinical psychology grad school, like it's intense. You do a session when you're first in sessions. And like everyone's watching you. They're like watching you do their V, which is helpful. But I remember my first one. And I felt like pretty okay about it. I was like, this is my first one. I was okay. I got torn to shreds. They were like, that was not good. And now obviously, I'm on the, I feel good about my clinical abilities. But the only thing I said to her is I was like, look, and I shared it with her. And I said, like, I've been there. Like, eventually I look back on that helped me learn that day.

3:14:42I just fell off. I wasn't like, this is my learning space moment, you know. And so if you're feeling like that, I just want to let, you know, like, I've been there too. This is the starting point to getting better. This is going to like make you stronger. I know that I've lived that. And I think storytelling in that way is probably like a really underutilized kind of quote tool. And what's the humanizes at Calava in management and in any relationship. Love it. And I feel like the story of your son bringing those puzzle pieces back is like, there's so much there. So much. And the fact that there was a delay.

3:15:17And then he brought it back on his own accord. And that you had already kind of let it go. That's I feel like a really interesting piece. It wasn't to like a piece you was really something internal for him. Like he got the lesson for him. It wasn't just about like making mom feel okay about him. Like he clearly understood you still love him. But it wasn't about like fixing something externally as much as it was about fixing something internally, which I think is the addressing and overcoming the shame piece. I think that's right. And that's the thing. I think sometimes it's like are we teaching kids what to think or how to think.

3:15:56Like after they're gone from our house, like it's the how to think. And you said questions. I love kind of secratic questions for kids. Like, oh, if again, a different version of a story would be like, okay, I know you didn't take the puzzle pieces, but I'm just thinking for me like, what would make me take puzzle pieces? Oh, I wonder if I felt left out or I wonder if I was just really trying to get my parents' attention for a while. This was the only way to do it. And what would I do after and what would I need now? I'm going to get emotional. What would I need to know about myself or from my parent for me to share that I did take it?

3:16:36Maybe I would need to know that my parents knew I was a good kid. Anyway, sorry, what were we talking about? Like, because your kids eventually make a decision. Adults make good decisions themselves because they ask themselves the right questions. That's not because they've heard their parents' specific lesson, right? Because they're able to say to themselves, like, what am I feeling right now? What am I really looking for? Why don't I do that? So like asking questions, telling stories, asking questions without even answering them actually provokes a much more sophisticated developmental process in your kid than the lectures we all, me included.

3:17:14Trust me, plenty of times at my kid that I just lectured them. But again, they're just catharsis. They're not actually terribly effective. Yeah, if ever there was some core truths about brain plasticity, it's that frustration is associated with the chemicals that foster brain change. We know that and that questions have a really interesting impact on learning, which sounds kind of like a duh. Well, of course they do. But when we ask questions, it creates this open loop in the brain that the brain wants to solve as opposed to hearing a statement. That's why I always felt like those pictures on office walls, like motivation when you blah, blah, blah, blah.

3:17:52Like the motivational statements don't mean much in terms of because they're not about verb states. When we ask questions, we put our brain into kind of a process of verb states of asking what behaviors are going to lead to which outcomes. There's an interesting literature about this that probably isn't fully relevant here, but it gets back to trying to learn basic motor tasks and the same things are applied to basic cognitive tasks. Like how do I solve this? And a puzzle is a great example because it's both cognitive and motor. Like you're fixing these pieces in different ways. I have to get back to doing some puzzles I'm realizing.

3:18:26And emotional. I can really embarrass myself, but one of my favorite things that I again, I just noticed my kids extending for puzzles because I all did a lot of puzzles in their young is so fun. I remember my kid doing like this puzzle and getting some frustration. What I did is I did a puzzle to the side of him. And instead of doing it perfectly, I kind of like mimicked. I was like, oh, it's not that piece. Okay. And one of the things I noticed is when one of my kid was really young, he kids have a really hard time with puzzles and it's kind of a metaphor for life. For when a piece doesn't fit, they keep trying it when what they really need to do is such a metaphors put it down and pick up another piece, right?

3:19:08But I could tell my kid that but I'm not, I always feel like just telling doesn't really work. So that's what I did. Not you okay? I'm gonna sing. Get ready, okay? So I was doing it over here. I like the skill. Oh, it's not finished. Nothing here is not fitting here. And I go if it doesn't fit, put it to the side and try another piece. And I was like, oh, right. I can put it at the side. Okay, I'll get this one. And I didn't make a verb, I was like, oh, oh, that one fits there. Right? I have heard not any more of my kids are too old. But there was a time, I remember me and my husband are outside of Lyram and we heard our son like singing the song.

3:19:55It's just, it's a mantra. It's self -regulation because is it cognitive, is it physical? It's also emotional. It goes back to frustration. Tolerance where our kids need, they need mantras. They need skills. They need songs to actually uplevel their skills, to regulate the emotions that get in their way of doing great things. Right? And you know, that kid is interesting. Like not really anymore. I don't know if I think about I want to revive it. He makes up songs through situations. What an amazing skill. Right? But this stuff can like, and if anyone's hearing this, and I call that time realistic, like, it's amazing.

3:20:33You do it one time, one time. Make up a silly, strong, model the frustration yourself, make up a song, struggle again, and then get success. Whatever it is, if he went reading, with the puzzle, with putting on your sock, it could be, oh, it doesn't fit. I'm taking a deep breath and trying it, again, it could literally be anything because it adds a little play and joy. And you probably know what song does in the brain better than I do, but probably regulating. I would book money, a parenting, like that's the word. Becky, you're right. Didn't take that much time. I did it one time and my kids started singing the song and now they put their socks on by themselves.

3:21:11I love it. You taught a process through song and there actually is a lot of data on music in the brain and how it organizes things mostly in the form of a story of a beginning, middle, and end. It's the quickest example I can give is when we learn our ABCs, we learn them in song. Right, ABC. You never forget that. Right? It's much easier to learn things through rhythmic song, little motifs, then it is through a list of letters or numbers. Our brain can code it differently. Yeah, so it fragments it into a beginning, middle, and end, and then there's an underlying repetitive sort of wave, A, B, C, D, and G.

3:21:50Okay, here I'm now. I'm singing. So, at risk of inducing all sorts of bad neural responses and listeners, but you get the point. It's a wave form that the brain can recognize. Actually, a friend who's very accomplished musician and I know the lyrics to his songs very well and I said, remember that Tony he goes, well, I have to hear the underlying melody and then he can remember all the words. He's a singer. He's a lead singer in a very, very well -known band. He doesn't even know the words to his own songs if you just ask them for them, but you give them the music and he's just out the gate. And he can do this in front of tens of thousands of people.

3:22:25So then it is a cheap code for coping skills. It is. But it's a song. It becomes a verb process. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there. It's almost like saying like, oh, the mechanics of writing are you pick up? You put the pen between you, you know, there's a there's a whole rhythm to writing. There's a whole sequence of a motor sequence that we that we learn or eating or anything for that matter. No one who's an expert piano player thinks about playing the individual keys at the point where they've learned it. They've they've batched it into it's sort of like chunking, but it has an underlying rhythm that's carried by a neural circuit that allows the expression of the movements of the fingers or the words out the mouth or in this case, overcoming frustration to just kind of ride on top of all of it.

3:23:04So there's an unconscious genius to to what you what you did and I love it. Maybe as long as nobody hears me saying, I'll need to sing more to get through frustration. I have a question about Miss Edson. Yes. People are like, what? Before we started recording, you shared with us something I think is entirely appropriate to what we're talking about now, which is learning and learning hard things and frustration tolerance. And you've evolved these concepts, you know, in the course of your work and through your own parenting child relationships, clearly your own and then yours with your kids. Who was Miss Edson and what did she teach you?

3:23:48Because when you told me this, I was like, well, that's super valuable. We all need to know about this. Yes. So Miss Edson was my second grade teacher and I remember writing in her class and I remember something she told us and it's truly something that shapes me every day. And she said, if something feels too hard to start, it just means that the first step isn't small enough. And then she really kind of made this even more concrete because what I remember in her class writing, and I still use this in writing today is, okay, so something feels too hard to do. The implication is, it doesn't mean it's my fault, it doesn't mean I can't, it doesn't mean I'm stupid.

3:24:32It literally just means the first step isn't small enough. That's very actionable. And so the way I play around with it now, even in my own writing is, okay, I have to write a new article and I'm like, I can't do that. Okay, so I'm in I can't vote. Okay, if something is and I can't vote, it feels too hard. I hear her voice. It just means the first step isn't small enough. So I'll make it literally, I'll just make it smaller. I'm going to write a page today and then often I'm like, I can't do that. Okay, smaller, a paragraph, no. And I literally do it until and some days it's a word and I go, you know what?

3:25:07I can write a word. Okay, now and not okay, right? And I really think Miss Edson had it per time. I mean, obviously now we talk a lot about frustration tolerance, growth mindset, but this really is a way of saying when things are hard, it's not your fault. And there's something you can do to build the circuit of capability. Because I think when we're trying to do something hard, there are like, if you think about it, I don't know, you're on the top of a ski mountain. And on the one side is that I can't, it's too hard. And the other side is I can. We all have natural capability. I really believe this every person.

3:25:48But it's just about figuring out how to get your skis like to the beginning of the ski slope. And then maybe if we've practiced being on the, I can't do hard things slope, our skis keep trying to turn, but we just have to keep getting them back. And so if we tell ourselves, I can't do this and we just stay there stagnant. But if you say, wait, smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, like I use this with a client a while ago, I can't ask my boss for a raise. I know I deserve it. Cool. No problem. Let's make it smaller. Okay, what would be smaller? I don't know. Let's get creative. Could you write down what you would say?

3:26:25Okay, no. Could you say the word to me five times out loud, raise, raise, raise, raise, I remember Shilash was, I could do that. Cool. Let's start there. Okay. She literally did that. What I think is so powerful about Miss Edson's advice is as soon as we get even our skis a tiny bit into the I can circuit, the I can slope, we're actually just a lot more likely to stay there or at least that becomes a bigger part of our identity. Right? So with this woman that I was working on this with, one of the things we were working on, it was just, okay, so you did that. Amazing. The next thing I even just had her play around things saying to me, can you say to me, I deserve a raise.

3:27:06It was very interesting. She had, oh, I think this is one of the reasons she had trouble speaking up for it. It was really hard for her in body that we said that. She couldn't, I remember a week she said, I'm going to write it down and bring it. She didn't, again, I like parenting. I didn't punish her. I didn't send her to her room. I said, okay, that was just too big. Let's make it smaller. Let's write it together. Wrote some things down there. Right? I then had her write it as an email and send it to me. And I then had her practice it with her best friend. And then she asked her boss for a raise.

3:27:40I mean, I don't know how you know when it's surprised. Yeah, like that makes sense. She'd gotten through a lot of steps. But it's just applicable in every area of your life. So even anyone listening, we all have something in our I can't category. This is too hard or I can't. And we just stay there. And if you hear Miss Edson saying, wait, if something feels too hard to do, it only means that the first step isn't small enough. And if then the next smallest step feels too hard, no biggie. Like no judgment. Make it smaller, make it smaller, make it smaller. And then allow yourself to eventually build up from there.

3:28:15Love it. Love Miss Edson. I'm going to thank you and Miss Edson. Yes. Thank you, Miss Edson. I think the idea of lowering mistakes to be able to move forward is just spectacular. Yeah. And in everything. And I notice you do that, by the way, I'm not like analyzing. I'm just saying you do that with parenting. I think there's so much tension around this notion of like creating healthy, productive, functional kids. And I think there is a lot of shame for parents that when things aren't going great and people know it or they know it and the idea of creating lower stakes in order to be able to make pretty big moves over time, where they're required or just do nothing when sometimes that's what's required.

3:29:04Yeah. And the similarity is so interesting. What I think that the powerfully that Miss Edson's advice is she's almost saying make something small enough so you can get your first win. Having a win is really powerful. It's kind of a dictating what's my next win right here on the win circuit. You know, one of the reasons we want to create so many more resources for parents. And when parents come to us and even say, this is a problem. This is a problem. This is a problem. I often just start. I would say, okay, like what does the smallest thing would change that would make you when you go to bed at night?

3:29:37You're like, today was a better day. Like, there's some bigger stuff. I hear you. How am I not going to tackle that? Well, tackle that in time. But like, I want to get you a win today. And then all of a sudden when a parent starts to build, it's kind of their own self efficacy, their own like, oh, wait, I did feel good about that one moment. I did feel more connected to my kid. I said this one thing. It's, it's, I mean, it's momentum, you know, and we have to give ourselves the opportunity to build momentum, which really usually only starts by taking the smallest step. Anyway. I think it's spectacular.

3:30:12I was going to ask you, and I never do this, but I was going to ask you, you know, if there were one thing that people could start the process of trying to, you better parent, better to themselves, you know, if it's more about, you know, more about emotional containment, et cetera. Maybe it's this thing of, you know, asking, you know, at the end of today, like, what would be one thing that would allow me to say it was a better day? Would that be it? I mean, certainly that's power. I'm going to give you two things. One is kind of a one small thing, but it's kind of a bigger theoretical thing. And one thing is, is very, very, very concrete.

3:30:45So the bigger thing, I really believe that the single biggest thing that gets in our way of feeling more empowered and capable as parents is that as much as we say we value parenting. And I think parents, people do or parents are like, yeah, what do I care about more than parenting? It's kind of the lowest on our list in terms of what we invest in. You know, people invest in all types of things. And I want to be clear, yes, like we have an offering a good insight in our membership, but that's not what I mean. For someone listening, they might be like, there is that parent coach in my town who I've been like saying I'm going to call or maybe it's a therapist or maybe it's a parenting group at your school or maybe someone listens to me and they're like, no offense, Dr.

3:31:28Becky, there's someone else I follow on Instagram and they have a course and I like them better. I'd be like, do that today. Like, align your even purchasing decisions with your values. Like that, that and because we're not expected to know this naturally. We're not. And as long as we don't have the resources around us, a little kind of someone described it to me as like a onesy, tozy thing, like it's just not giving ourselves what we deserve. It is like a surgeon saying they're not good at surgery when you find out they never went to medical school or residency. And be like, well, I just didn't really get resourced in the way you deserve for this very challenging job.

3:32:08So that would really be the thing if I'm really honest because I'm not as much as I'm about a quick win. I'm not about a quick fix. I think that just sets us up for more for like a bandaid. Having said that, I love a quick thing. So a couple things I think people can do with their kids. Telling your kid at night and I'll model how I would say it. Like, I think most people it's not just me when you put your kid to bed. It's like, oh, yeah, I just want to be on the couch, but it's when your kids willing to spend five extra minutes with you because it's the cruel irony at night. You want time without your kids and they just want a little bit more time with you.

3:32:40If you lie yourself to lean in and you're going to say to your kid, almost like in a whisper, I think whispering to your kid is one of the most underutilized symbol of strategies. Whispers are so sacred. They feel sacred. They feel like they know they're just for you. Whispering to your kid. Like, I just want to tell you there's nothing you could ever do that would make me stop loving you. Hmm. Or I just want to tell you they're a really good kid. We're in a hard stage, but I will never, ever, ever think of you as anything but a really good kid. Don't expect your kid to say anything. Just that takes 10 seconds.

3:33:24And if you're like, whispering feels awkward, don't whisper to say it. It's a matter of your thinking, you don't know my kid. They're a teenager. Text them. Text them. Sometimes a text to a teen can feel like an unexpected whisper from a parent, you know. And that's it. And that's the single thing today. And then maybe I'm going to add a third. Just do something like that for yourself. Give yourself credit. Put your hand on your heart. Tell yourself, experimenting things really hard. Doing enough. I'm not messing up my kid forever. That's not a thing. And I've got this.

3:34:01Awesome. Well, this whole thing that you've attempted to take on is also really hard. And you're doing incredible work, educating people on how to parent. There's so many things that you've said. Today, I'm not going to recap them all. You know, we do timestamps and all that so people can find them. But in no particular order, I mean, you know, this concept of, you know, telling you, you're right to notice when they when they notice something important in you or in others or in themselves, that rigidity is the enemy. Asking like what's this really about when they're doing or saying something or expressing themselves in a way that feels confusing or maybe especially when it's irritating.

3:34:46Encouraging frustration as a route to learning. Like, incredible. And then you said the more that you can locate somebody, the more you respect their values, which I think is incredible. And on and on. I mean, there's so many gems in today's conversation. And so many actionable gems that you provide on social media through your courses, through conversations like this and others that you're holding in other podcasts. And I just want to thank you so much. You know, I you're teaching people how to parent others, how to think about their own parenting. Oh, yes, that's the other one. You said the the only kind of parenting that we do reflexively is the one that was done for us, which will evoke, you know, feelings of relaxation in some people and feelings of dread in others.

3:35:38And but it all just speaks to the importance of paying attention to this thing that we call parenting. And I think the way that you're merging this with a thoughtful eye on technology where it's taking us and where there are concerns as well as, you know, where it can be utilized. It's just fantastic. I can't say enough good things about the work that you're doing. And I'm just so grateful that you're doing it. And I'm saying that on behalf of myself and everyone else that you're making the world a better place. So thank you so much for joining today. And for for sharing so much. We'll of course point out where people can find you, but just keep going.

3:36:14It's awesome. I've learned a ton. I know everyone else has as well. Thank you. I'm honored to be back here. Is that a time I love speaking with you and look forward to the next time? Likewise, we'll do it again. Thank you for listening to today's episode with Dr. Becky Kennedy. I hope you found it to be as informative and as actionable as I did. Right now, Dr. Becky has a 20 % promotion going for her fantastic online program on parenting. Becky was kind enough to extend this discount until this Friday, January 17th, 2025, for Huberman Lab listeners. You can find more on that, along with links to Dr.

3:36:46Becky's book, her terrific social media handles and more through the links in our show note captions. If you're learning from Endor and enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. Please also subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple by clicking the follow button. On both Spotify and Apple, you can also leave us up to a five star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to include on the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

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