Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #215 Self Control & Stinking Thinking

Transcript

#215 Self Control & Stinking Thinking · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:03
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast.
0:05
Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
0:09
Speaker 2: wants answers.
0:10
Speaker 1: Now, our job as parents is to say, okay, so
0:12
Speaker 1: something bad has occurred. The consequences are ugly, yucky, horrible.
0:16
Speaker 1: We don't like the consequences. But what's the belief underlying that?
0:20
Speaker 2: And now here's the stars of our show, My.
0:23
Speaker 1: Mum and dad. Hello, this is doctor Justin Colson, the
0:25
Speaker 1: author of six books about raising families that are happy.
0:30
Speaker 1: And I'm here with my very sore wife, missus Happy Families.
0:33
Speaker 1: Kylie giggling because a couple of weeks ago we were
0:37
Speaker 1: cheering you on because you've joined the gym and you've
0:40
Speaker 1: been doing box jumps. Well, you did your very first
0:43
Speaker 1: ever box jumps.
0:44
Speaker 2: I don't know if we can call them box jumps.
0:46
Speaker 1: They are a jump, but they're not really you're jumping
0:49
Speaker 1: onto a box. The box was only a couple of
0:51
Speaker 1: cent a minutes higher, but you were doing your first
0:52
Speaker 1: ever box jumps. And today you've walked in here to
0:58
Speaker 1: do the podcast with me, and I don't know if you
1:00
Speaker 1: can call it a walk.
1:02
Speaker 2: You sort of.
1:03
Speaker 1: Staggering in because your last trip to the gym you
1:08
Speaker 1: doubled the height of your box jump.
1:10
Speaker 2: I did double the height.
1:11
Speaker 1: Yay for me, I double that's right. And then you
1:14
Speaker 1: showed me when you got home how box jumpy you were,
1:17
Speaker 1: and now you can't walk. Isn't the gym great? Isn't
1:21
Speaker 1: this fantastic? This fitness kick? Doesn't it feel amazing? Well?
1:24
Speaker 2: I tried to just roll out today. I didn't even
1:26
Speaker 2: do any hardcore exercise.
1:28
Speaker 1: But too much pain.
1:30
Speaker 2: Oh so pain.
1:31
Speaker 1: I'm so so proud of you, so impressed. This is
1:34
Speaker 1: what resilience is, right, I mean, so we're talking about
1:37
Speaker 1: resilience because book Club has recommenced. We do four weeks
1:41
Speaker 1: of book Club once every term as part of our
1:43
Speaker 1: Happy Families membership. So if you're a member of Happy Families,
1:47
Speaker 1: which you can get all the information at Happy Families
1:49
Speaker 1: dot com dot e it's like twelve bucks a month
1:51
Speaker 1: or seventeen if you'd like to be a Premium member,
1:54
Speaker 1: you get to sit in on book Club and review
1:57
Speaker 1: one of my books each term. I don't know what
1:58
Speaker 1: we're going to do when we run oder the boo.
2:00
Speaker 2: I was about to say, does that mean I'm going
2:01
Speaker 2: to be a widow again?
2:02
Speaker 1: And you're going to head off and I'm going to
2:04
Speaker 1: have to write more books maybe, So at the moment,
2:07
Speaker 1: we're working through nine ways to a resilient child. Last
2:10
Speaker 1: week was book Week one. In the podcast, we talked
2:14
Speaker 1: about some of the myths of resilience, but in book
2:18
Speaker 1: club we talked about how building identity in our children
2:22
Speaker 1: is one of the most surefire, powerful ways that we
2:24
Speaker 1: can create resilience in our children. When they know who
2:27
Speaker 1: they are, they're much more likely to be resilient. And
2:29
Speaker 1: there's loads of research to support this idea that teaching
2:32
Speaker 1: kids about their roots and helping them to figure themselves
2:35
Speaker 1: out over time, which you know that just happens in life,
2:38
Speaker 1: they become more resilient. And we also talked about psychological flexibility,
2:42
Speaker 1: which is just a fascinating idea.
2:44
Speaker 2: I'm not feeling very flexible.
2:47
Speaker 1: Not physically, maybe psychologically. But we need to have a
2:51
Speaker 1: conversation about a book club for tonight. And by the way,
2:54
Speaker 1: if you missed last week, it's okay. You can still
2:56
Speaker 1: join Happy Families and become a member today and join
2:58
Speaker 1: in book club tonight. We would love to have you there.
3:01
Speaker 1: So sorry I'm saying tonight, but it's tomorrow night. I've
3:03
Speaker 1: got my days all mixed up. It's Wednesday night and
3:06
Speaker 1: tonight's Tuesday. So don't try and get on a book
3:08
Speaker 1: club tonight because that would be a bad idea. So
3:10
Speaker 1: tomorrow night, what are we talking about?
3:12
Speaker 2: Jam packed? Tomorrow night, We've got two really big topics
3:16
Speaker 2: to kind of work our way through, self control and
3:19
Speaker 2: stinking thinking.
3:22
Speaker 1: Okay, So we build resilience by building self control, and
3:26
Speaker 1: we build resilience by overcoming stinking thinking.
3:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was thinking you talk about the Walter
3:35
Speaker 2: Michelle experiment that was done back in the nineteen sixties.
3:38
Speaker 2: Everybody knows the marshmallow experiment, but can you just talk
3:42
Speaker 2: us through it a little bit. There was over six
3:43
Speaker 2: hundred kids who participated in this, all around the age
3:46
Speaker 2: of four. But what did they actually have to do?
3:49
Speaker 3: All right, here's the deal, marshmallow for you. You can
3:53
Speaker 3: either wait and I'll give you another one if you wait,
3:56
Speaker 3: or you can eat it now. When I come back,
3:59
Speaker 3: I'll give you another for then you'll have to but
4:02
Speaker 3: stay in here and stay in the chair till I
4:03
Speaker 3: come back. Okay.
4:05
Speaker 1: So everybody's heard of the marshmallow experiment. It's like one
4:08
Speaker 1: of the most world famous experiments in the history of psychology,
4:12
Speaker 1: and the idea basically is children are out about the
4:14
Speaker 1: age of four, five and six were brought into Walter
4:18
Speaker 1: Michell's laboratory from memory, I think was at Stanford University.
4:22
Speaker 1: And what Michelle would do is say to them, I've
4:26
Speaker 1: got a marshmallow. In fact, it wasn't always a marshmallow.
4:28
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was an oreo cookie or I mean some
4:30
Speaker 1: kids actually wanted sultans, because hey, people are people are people.
4:35
Speaker 1: Some people have their preferences. And what he essentially said was,
4:39
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. I'll give this to you now
4:41
Speaker 1: and you can eat it, or I've got to pop
4:43
Speaker 1: out of the office for a minute. But when I
4:45
Speaker 1: come back in here, if it's still there, if you
4:47
Speaker 1: haven't eaten it, I'll double it. I'll give you two.
4:50
Speaker 1: So they've got two cookies to mushmallows, whatever it is.
4:52
Speaker 1: And what Michelle's research showed was that, I mean, some
4:56
Speaker 1: kids just eat it on the spot, right, They just
4:58
Speaker 1: gobbled down super fast. And there's some funny YouTube, you know,
5:03
Speaker 1: where people have reenacted this, and I.
5:05
Speaker 2: Was going to say, I think that this is probably
5:07
Speaker 2: an experiment that's been re enacted in a lot of
5:09
Speaker 2: lounge trips.
5:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, much. And what Michelle found was that some
5:14
Speaker 1: kids ate it really quickly and other kids didn't. In fact,
5:17
Speaker 1: when I interviewed Ethan Cross for our Parenting in Perspective
5:20
Speaker 1: series on this podcast, which was about one hundred episodes
5:23
Speaker 1: now is back at about episode number one hundred and fifteen
5:25
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty. We'll put it in the show notes.
5:28
Speaker 1: What Ethan Cross was Walter Michelle's student. He was a
5:31
Speaker 1: PhD student under Walter Michelle, and he talks about being
5:34
Speaker 1: involved in these self control experiments. But a lot of
5:37
Speaker 1: people are like, oh, well, hang on, that means if
5:40
Speaker 1: I do this experiment in my living room and my
5:43
Speaker 1: kids eat the marshmallow while I'm out of the room,
5:46
Speaker 1: that means that they've got no self control and they've
5:49
Speaker 1: got no resilience, and their destiny is inside that mush mellow.
5:53
Speaker 1: They're gone. And some parents will think, well, if my
5:55
Speaker 1: kids don't eat the marshmallow, then they're going to be
5:58
Speaker 1: superstar successes because they have got self control.
6:02
Speaker 2: So what did Walter actually find? Like his findings so in.
6:06
Speaker 1: A nutshell, what he found is that he tracked these
6:08
Speaker 1: kids over the decades or at least over a little
6:12
Speaker 1: more than a decade, and what he found was that
6:14
Speaker 1: on average, the kids that ate the marshmallow, they had
6:17
Speaker 1: less self control, and as they got older, they did
6:20
Speaker 1: less well in school, they did less well in terms
6:22
Speaker 1: of their social relationships, they did less well in their careers.
6:25
Speaker 1: And there's even another study that has come out of Dunedin.
6:28
Speaker 1: It's called the Dunedin Study. It's all about self control.
6:31
Speaker 1: It's followed people for well over thirty years now and
6:34
Speaker 1: the researchers have found that the kids at score lowest
6:37
Speaker 1: on what we call trait self control, that is, they're
6:40
Speaker 1: just not very in charge of their ability to control themselves.
6:44
Speaker 1: They do worse at school, they do worse in their relationships,
6:46
Speaker 1: They're more likely to take drugs, drink alcohol, end up
6:49
Speaker 1: in jail, have premarital sex, and end up pregnant the
6:52
Speaker 1: results of lacking self control. I mean, it kind of
6:55
Speaker 1: makes sense, right. The question is does the marshmallow tell
6:58
Speaker 1: us who's going to end up in jail and who's
7:00
Speaker 1: going to end up as the CEO. And that's where
7:02
Speaker 1: the answer is absolutely no, it doesn't.
7:06
Speaker 2: What I found interesting is I read a little bit
7:08
Speaker 2: more about the experiment, was that if he spent some
7:12
Speaker 2: time working with these children and then put them through
7:15
Speaker 2: the experiment again by teaching them some really simple techniques.
7:20
Speaker 2: They were actually able to withstand the marshmallow for up
7:23
Speaker 2: to fifteen minutes in comparison to the three or four
7:26
Speaker 2: minutes that they'd previously been subjected to.
7:28
Speaker 1: And that's why Ethan Cross, in my conversation with him
7:30
Speaker 1: about this, he just said, you can't. And I've written
7:33
Speaker 1: this in the book, which obviously I wrote a few
7:35
Speaker 1: years ago. Now, you can't put somebody's destiny inside that
7:39
Speaker 1: little ball of white, fluffy, sugary gelatine stuff. You just
7:43
Speaker 1: can't say that your destiny is in the marshmallow. Because
7:46
Speaker 1: self control is something that can be taught.
7:50
Speaker 2: There's some hope, there's some hope right there we can
7:53
Speaker 2: learn this skill.
7:55
Speaker 1: So I guess the take home message here is that
7:57
Speaker 1: self control can be taught. We don't have time to
7:59
Speaker 1: talk talk about how, but that's in the book. It's
8:02
Speaker 1: in Nine Ways to a Resilient Child, which you can
8:04
Speaker 1: get online at Happy families dot com dot a U
8:05
Speaker 1: and if you do it, you get the workbook for free.
8:08
Speaker 1: By the way, just go to happy families dot com
8:10
Speaker 1: dot you and you can get on the info there.
8:11
Speaker 1: And tomorrow night in book club, you're going to talk
8:13
Speaker 1: specifically about what I've highlighted in terms of the strategies
8:18
Speaker 1: for building self control on our kids so that they
8:20
Speaker 1: don't end up in prison and instead they do end
8:22
Speaker 1: up doing well at school and having successful resilient lives.
8:25
Speaker 2: I'm really looking forward to that conversation. So up next,
8:28
Speaker 2: let's talk about stinking thinking.
8:31
Speaker 1: It's their Happy Families podcast.
8:34
Speaker 2: For a happier family, try a Happy Families membership, because
8:38
Speaker 2: a happy family doesn't just happen.
8:40
Speaker 1: Details at happy families dot com dot au.
8:44
Speaker 2: It's the Happy Families podcast, the podcast for the time
8:46
Speaker 2: poor parent who just wants answers now. And we have
8:49
Speaker 2: been talking about a couple of chapters that we're going
8:52
Speaker 2: to be discussing in book club tomorrow night.
8:54
Speaker 1: And from Nine Ways to a Resilient Child, the book
8:57
Speaker 1: by me. I was going to be really humble about it,
9:02
Speaker 1: and then I thought, no, I've gone too far. I
9:04
Speaker 1: wrote it and it's been one of the best selling
9:06
Speaker 1: resilience books over the last few years in Australia for
9:08
Speaker 1: parents really really been a very very helpful book for
9:13
Speaker 1: a lot of people.
9:13
Speaker 2: So our second topic is stinking thinking. I think this
9:16
Speaker 2: is something that we all struggle with.
9:18
Speaker 1: Whether we're three or where thirty.
9:20
Speaker 2: Three or one hundred and three. You know, we have
9:22
Speaker 2: these negative experiences happen in our lives, and it can
9:25
Speaker 2: be really easy for us to fall into the trap
9:27
Speaker 2: of negative thinking.
9:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we talked with I think her name was
9:31
Speaker 1: Taran just in episode two hundred and seven about taming
9:34
Speaker 1: that voice inside our own head as parents, because what
9:37
Speaker 1: if we say horrible things about ourselves and then the
9:39
Speaker 1: kids learn that what we were really talking about was
9:41
Speaker 1: stinking thinking. So if you'd like to hear more about
9:44
Speaker 1: this idea, just go back to episode two hundred and seven,
9:47
Speaker 1: willing to that in the show note so that you
9:48
Speaker 1: can catch that. But I want to approach it really
9:50
Speaker 1: differently today based on what's written in the book.
9:52
Speaker 2: So you talk about this ABC model, and you actually
9:57
Speaker 2: shared a really cool experience that you had with one
9:59
Speaker 2: of our children who had had a bad experience at
10:01
Speaker 2: school and she came home and just lost the plot
10:04
Speaker 2: and said she was never going back to school again,
10:06
Speaker 2: and you were able to talk her through this process
10:09
Speaker 2: using this ABC model. Can we kind of talk a
10:12
Speaker 2: little bit about what that is and how it looks.
10:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, you bet, I won't mention our daughter and her
10:16
Speaker 1: experience at school. I'm going to change the experience up
10:19
Speaker 1: a bit because I think it's just quicker and easier
10:21
Speaker 1: for our purposes today. But A stands for adversity. So
10:24
Speaker 1: in life, everyone experienced adversity, and resilience is our ability
10:27
Speaker 1: to move past adversity, to experience that and grow from it. Right.
10:32
Speaker 1: But if we've got this stinking thinking what happens, Adversity
10:36
Speaker 1: can sometimes crash us. It makes us feel like I'm
10:38
Speaker 1: never going to go back to school or I'm no good,
10:40
Speaker 1: and that stinking thinking really starts to permeat. So we
10:43
Speaker 1: had this adversity that hits us, And let's use the
10:47
Speaker 1: example of this bad thing that happens is I'm a
10:50
Speaker 1: nine year old boy and I really want to spend
10:53
Speaker 1: some time with my friends this weekend, playing and hanging
10:56
Speaker 1: out and doing really cool stuff. And so I make
11:00
Speaker 1: three phone calls to my three best friends and all
11:01
Speaker 1: three of them say no. One of them is going
11:05
Speaker 1: to a birthday party for a cousin that I don't know.
11:07
Speaker 1: So it's not like I've been rejected or anything. That's
11:10
Speaker 1: just they've got something else going on, another one's got
11:12
Speaker 1: a family day at the beach, and the third one
11:15
Speaker 1: is in trouble and got grounded. Not that we would
11:17
Speaker 1: ever encourage that, but you know, every family does things differently,
11:20
Speaker 1: and so Paul, little nine year olds like I don't
11:23
Speaker 1: get to play with anyone. And so the consequence of
11:26
Speaker 1: this scenario is I've made three phone calls to my
11:29
Speaker 1: three best friends and I've still got no play dates.
11:32
Speaker 1: So that's the A and that's the CE. We've got
11:34
Speaker 1: adversity and the consequences. I'm lonely. What's the B stand for? Well,
11:39
Speaker 1: the B stands for belief? What do I believe about
11:42
Speaker 1: the situation? See what happens when we've got stinking thinking
11:46
Speaker 1: is bad stuff happens. We experience a bad outcome, and
11:50
Speaker 1: then we start to, I guess, create a story, create
11:54
Speaker 1: a narrative, create this belief system that somehow it's about us,
11:58
Speaker 1: it's our fault, there's something horrible that's gone on here.
12:01
Speaker 1: And so the belief here for our nine year old
12:04
Speaker 1: little buddy might be that I'm unpopular, nobody wants to
12:08
Speaker 1: play with me. Life isn't fair. I'm going to be isolated,
12:12
Speaker 1: like it just feels yuck for him, and so the
12:15
Speaker 1: adversity has created this belief and he believes that the
12:19
Speaker 1: consequences are a result of this stinking thinking that's going on.
12:23
Speaker 1: Our job as parents is to say, okay, so something
12:26
Speaker 1: bad has occurred. The consequences are ugly, yucky, horrible. We
12:29
Speaker 1: don't like the consequences, But what's the belief underlying that? Know,
12:34
Speaker 1: did we create this bad outcome or did something else
12:38
Speaker 1: happen outside of it? And when we understand the ABC's,
12:41
Speaker 1: we can start to I guess, examine and fight against unproductive, unhelpful,
12:46
Speaker 1: stinking thinking.
12:48
Speaker 2: I really like that and I like that it kind
12:50
Speaker 2: of there's a framework for us to work with. You
12:54
Speaker 2: talk about, you know, negative attribution styles is a big
12:59
Speaker 2: word for me, and positive attribution styles, and we'll talk
13:03
Speaker 2: about a little bit about that and book club. But
13:06
Speaker 2: I thought one thing that you actually didn't mention in
13:08
Speaker 2: the book that I thought is really powerful and we
13:11
Speaker 2: use it in our home most days, is you know,
13:15
Speaker 2: having an attitude of gratitude and how important it is
13:19
Speaker 2: for us to recognize the positive things that are happening
13:22
Speaker 2: in our lives. And sometimes when we have a family
13:25
Speaker 2: member or we all kind of you know, can fall
13:28
Speaker 2: into the trap at times of having that stinking thinking.
13:31
Speaker 2: By involving them in conversations where other people are able
13:35
Speaker 2: to acknowledge positive things happening, it helps to lift their thinking.
13:39
Speaker 2: I know, as a parent, you know, we've had nights
13:40
Speaker 2: where we're just like, today has sucked. It's just been
13:44
Speaker 2: an awful day. And then you listen to the kids
13:46
Speaker 2: one by one start to share the positive things that
13:49
Speaker 2: have happened, and you realize that through their eyes, today
13:53
Speaker 2: actually hasn't sucked at all. We've actually achieved some really
13:56
Speaker 2: cool things. But we get caught up in, you know,
13:58
Speaker 2: the little things that didn't go And so I think gratitude.
14:02
Speaker 2: I can't put enough emphasis on gratitude and how important
14:05
Speaker 2: it is.
14:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, where your attention goes, your energy flows, and stinking
14:10
Speaker 1: thinking just means that we're focused on all the you know,
14:12
Speaker 1: our attention is on all the horrible stuff that's going
14:15
Speaker 1: on in our lives. And the more we put our
14:17
Speaker 1: attention on that, the more energy is absorbed by that,
14:22
Speaker 1: and those negative things become energy vampires in our lives.
14:24
Speaker 1: We need lots of positive energy that comes from examining
14:28
Speaker 1: what our beliefs are. You know, did that bad thing
14:30
Speaker 1: happen today because there's something the matter with me? Because
14:33
Speaker 1: I'm deficient, because I'm a loser. Sometimes our kids believe that.
14:37
Speaker 1: Sometimes they hear that either at school or tragically even
14:40
Speaker 1: in their own homes.
14:41
Speaker 2: Or is it circumstantial?
14:43
Speaker 1: Right? And if we can help them to understand that
14:45
Speaker 1: things are not all about them, that they're really impersonal.
14:49
Speaker 1: Sometimes bad stuff just happens, or that it was a
14:51
Speaker 1: specific issue. It happened this time, but it didn't happen
14:54
Speaker 1: last weekend when you rang one of your buddies. In fact,
14:56
Speaker 1: you've got to hang out with a couple of your
14:58
Speaker 1: friends at the park for a few hours.
15:00
Speaker 2: Can plan ahead next time and give families.
15:03
Speaker 1: Instead of calling them on Saturday morning whatever it is. Yeah,
15:06
Speaker 1: that's right. And sometimes kids think, well, this is permanent,
15:09
Speaker 1: this is what it's always going to be, but it isn't.
15:11
Speaker 1: If we can help them to understand that those beliefs
15:14
Speaker 1: are destructive, then suddenly different consequences come into their lives
15:19
Speaker 1: because their attentions going into a different place and their
15:22
Speaker 1: energy follows.
15:24
Speaker 2: You know, I know how much you loved me, quoting
15:25
Speaker 2: you I found a quote that I wanted.
15:27
Speaker 1: To share you saying that I don't. I feel a
15:29
Speaker 1: bit embarrassed by it, but that's fine. Quote me again.
15:32
Speaker 1: What did I say?
15:33
Speaker 2: Optimism can change our attitudes, which changes our actions, which
15:39
Speaker 2: changes our reality.
15:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's have an optimistic attitude and life gets better.
15:44
Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying? I didn say. That's what
15:46
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Hey, book club is to tomorrow night. I
15:50
Speaker 1: keep getting that wrong. Book club is tomorrow night for
15:53
Speaker 1: our Happy Families members. We would love for you to
15:54
Speaker 1: become a Happy Families member. Become part of the family.
15:57
Speaker 1: You get to hang out with Kylie for the evening
15:59
Speaker 1: to talk about what's in the book. Even if you
16:01
Speaker 1: haven't bought the book yet, you'll still get loads out
16:03
Speaker 1: of the conversation. And you can grab the book plus
16:06
Speaker 1: the free workbook save twenty dollars. Just go to Happy
16:09
Speaker 1: Families dot com dot you and get all the information
16:12
Speaker 1: there on both the book and the workbook and Happy
16:14
Speaker 1: Families memberships. We really appreciate you listening to the podcast.
16:17
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. We hope that this has been helpful.
16:19
Speaker 1: Take home message.
16:21
Speaker 2: Self control can be taught. Yeah, and there's nothing like
16:26
Speaker 2: a good dose of gratitude to help with that stinking
16:29
Speaker 2: thinking and optimism.
16:31
Speaker 1: Let's be happy about life. Let's find the joy because
16:33
Speaker 1: it's there. We do hope that you've enjoyed the podcast,
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Speaker 1: from Bridge Media, we appreciate all the work that they
17:05
Speaker 1: put into the podcast making it sound great. If you'd
17:08
Speaker 1: like more information about all the stuff we've talked about,
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Speaker 1: you can get it at Happyfamilies dot com dot au.