Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #590 Becoming a Hope Builder
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
- 0:07Speaker 1: time poor parent who just wants answers.
- 0:10Speaker 2: Now, I've talked about Blue, I've done interview about Blue.
- 0:12Speaker 2: I've watched an episode here and there. But we've started
- 0:14Speaker 2: watching Blue every night. And the kids they're hopeful every
- 0:18Speaker 2: day because they know that to not we're gonna have
- 0:19Speaker 2: great family.
- 0:19Speaker 3: Time watching Blue.
- 0:20Speaker 4: Well, our nineteen year old will literally say, you cannot
- 0:23Speaker 4: put Blue on until I get home from work.
- 0:27Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, my mom
- 0:30Speaker 1: and dad.
- 0:31Speaker 2: Hello, this is doctor Justin Coulson on are you okay day.
- 0:35Speaker 2: I'm here with Kylie, wife mom to our six kids,
- 0:38Speaker 2: eating my chocolate. Every time you come into my office
- 0:41Speaker 2: you find my chocolate stash.
- 0:42Speaker 4: Well, you don't do a very good job of hiding it.
- 0:44Speaker 4: It's right next to my seat.
- 0:47Speaker 2: The thing is, I'm trying to eat less sugary junkie stuff.
- 0:50Speaker 4: But every can't tell.
- 0:51Speaker 3: Every time I.
- 0:52Speaker 2: Give a presentation, people will give me a little gift,
- 0:54Speaker 2: and it is it's almost always chocolate.
- 0:57Speaker 4: And it's not dodgy chocolate. It's like delight.
- 1:00Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, this one is.
- 1:01Speaker 2: This one is called Jocelyn's Provisions and it's like it's
- 1:05Speaker 2: got big pieces.
- 1:06Speaker 4: Of orange, candid orange.
- 1:08Speaker 2: Candid orange stuck in dark chocolate, and I don't even like.
- 1:11Speaker 4: Dark chocolate, but it's delicious.
- 1:13Speaker 2: Surprised that you can even talk because you've put so
- 1:15Speaker 2: much of it in your mouth.
- 1:17Speaker 3: Are you okay? I am now now.
- 1:19Speaker 2: That chocolate fix aook Day is something that we decided
- 1:23Speaker 2: to talk about today because its happening right around the nation.
- 1:25Speaker 2: But yesterday's conversation with Gus Walland was I think really valuable,
- 1:30Speaker 2: so helpful. He's such a knowledgeable and helpful guy and
- 1:34Speaker 2: such a such a great guy. But the last couple
- 1:37Speaker 2: of years have been pretty rough around the world, and
- 1:40Speaker 2: even in Australia. We've dealt with obviously the COVID pandemic
- 1:43Speaker 2: and everything associated with that. But this year there's been
- 1:46Speaker 2: a war in Ukraine that's captured our attention. There's the
- 1:50Speaker 2: threat of China's influence in the region, and if you're
- 1:53Speaker 2: interested in geopolitical stuff, that's increasingly in the news and
- 1:57Speaker 2: people are talking about that a lot. And now we're
- 1:59Speaker 2: dealing with stuff like inflation, mortgage rates going up, rent.
- 2:03Speaker 4: Natural disasters, you've had shootings, there's always something in the news.
- 2:09Speaker 2: Yeah, and even I mean, you mentioned school shootings for
- 2:12Speaker 2: us in Australia hasn't happened, but we hear about it
- 2:14Speaker 2: in the US, and it just makes the whole world feel,
- 2:17Speaker 2: I don't know, depressing and scary. And then you've got
- 2:19Speaker 2: the stuff like the identity politics and the way that
- 2:22Speaker 2: that's infiltrating our social media and our general relationships with
- 2:26Speaker 2: other people, and suddenly people don't feel safe to say
- 2:29Speaker 2: how they really feel about things because you've got to
- 2:31Speaker 2: be politically correct and you've got to be so sensitive.
- 2:33Speaker 2: And I talk to people all the time who are saying,
- 2:35Speaker 2: I just don't know where I stand. I don't know
- 2:36Speaker 2: what I'm allowed to say anymore. I don't I don't
- 2:37Speaker 2: feel like I can be me as I'm navigating the world.
- 2:42Speaker 2: It's like this ongoing challenge and pain associated with how
- 2:48Speaker 2: the world is going and where it's heading to or
- 2:50Speaker 2: bringing kids into it, and it seems like there's a
- 2:53Speaker 2: lack of hopefulness about the future.
- 2:56Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting when life feels hard and you don't
- 2:59Speaker 4: really to feel like there's a light at the end
- 3:01Speaker 4: of the tunnel. Considering that so much of what happens
- 3:04Speaker 4: in the world is out of our control. It's no
- 3:06Speaker 4: wonder that so many people are left feeling hopeless. It
- 3:10Speaker 4: makes me think of first time labor, when I started
- 3:15Speaker 4: contracting and I had no idea how long those contractions
- 3:18Speaker 4: were going to last. They felt like they would never end.
- 3:21Speaker 2: So you're saying that our lives at the moment, the
- 3:24Speaker 2: way the world is feels like it's a never ending contraction.
- 3:26Speaker 4: Kind of a little bit, but we're all in labor
- 3:28Speaker 4: together now. By second second labor, we kind of worked
- 3:32Speaker 4: out the process and you were we had prayed at timing, and.
- 3:35Speaker 3: We had some incredible education. That was the key.
- 3:38Speaker 2: We got great education and we learned about the labor process,
- 3:40Speaker 2: and so then I was able to support you and
- 3:42Speaker 2: let you know the contraction that you're feeling is going
- 3:45Speaker 2: to peak in about another fifteen seconds and then it's going.
- 3:48Speaker 3: To slowly, slowly disappear.
- 3:50Speaker 2: Once we got to fifty or sixty seconds, I'd be
- 3:52Speaker 2: saying to you, it's going to be ending any second now.
- 3:55Speaker 4: It's almost done, and you're going to have two minutes reprieve.
- 3:58Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'd tell you, well, it starts again, you're.
- 3:59Speaker 2: Going to have a couple minutes to rest and while
- 4:01Speaker 2: you're resting, I'd say, can I get you some eyes?
- 4:02Speaker 2: And I sort of coached you through the labor, through
- 4:04Speaker 2: the contractions, and I was awesome, right.
- 4:06Speaker 4: You were awesome.
- 4:08Speaker 2: But I think that what we really want to do
- 4:10Speaker 2: in this podcast episode today is coach you through the labor.
- 4:15Speaker 2: We want to give you some tools to help you,
- 4:17Speaker 2: some skills to help you if you are labor through
- 4:20Speaker 2: life yea, as your children go through their challenges, or
- 4:23Speaker 2: as you and your partner or your husband, or your
- 4:25Speaker 2: sister or your mum or your neighbor or whoever it
- 4:27Speaker 2: is that you're closed to going through these really hard things.
- 4:31Speaker 2: This podcast is about giving you a hope that the
- 4:34Speaker 2: contraction will end, the baby will be born.
- 4:37Speaker 4: Sorry, Dad's but I do know that Justin felt exactly
- 4:42Speaker 4: the same way as I did in relation to those
- 4:45Speaker 4: contractions ending.
- 4:47Speaker 2: We both wanted them to do, which is one of
- 4:48Speaker 2: the baby. And so this podcast is really about building hope.
- 4:51Speaker 2: That's what it is so scientifically about. Twenty years ago,
- 4:55Speaker 2: a researcher by the name of Shane Lopez worked with
- 4:57Speaker 2: another guy, Snyder, and the two of them have both
- 5:00Speaker 2: passed away now tragically and so sadly because they were
- 5:03Speaker 2: giants of psychology.
- 5:04Speaker 3: Their research was so.
- 5:05Speaker 2: Impactful, and both Snyder and Lopez taught us about hope
- 5:09Speaker 2: and what they said is hope has three aspects to it,
- 5:12Speaker 2: three facets. If any of these three things are missing,
- 5:16Speaker 2: we will not be hopeful. We will be hopeless, hopeless.
- 5:20Speaker 2: So as you consider where you are in your life,
- 5:23Speaker 2: and as you consider what's coming your way, ask yourself,
- 5:27Speaker 2: am I hopeful or hopeless? Are these three things present?
- 5:30Speaker 2: Or is one of them missing? The first thing to
- 5:32Speaker 2: have hope is you need to have a goal, a vision,
- 5:37Speaker 2: an end in mind. If you don't know where you're going,
- 5:41Speaker 2: if you don't see an end the baby being born,
- 5:45Speaker 2: or the war ending or mortgage rates flattening out, or
- 5:48Speaker 2: a new job, or if you're a child, finding a
- 5:50Speaker 2: friend or getting a new teacher, or whatever it might be,
- 5:53Speaker 2: getting an invite to a party. If you don't have
- 5:56Speaker 2: an end, a goal, a vision, then you'll be hopeless.
- 6:01Speaker 4: So like us going away every three months to have
- 6:05Speaker 4: a couple's retreats.
- 6:06Speaker 2: Which we used to do before COVID, and I can't
- 6:07Speaker 2: remember the last time we did it, because blur leaves.
- 6:10Speaker 4: Me feeling a little bit hopeless because I can't see
- 6:13Speaker 4: an end in sight to the family drama that happens
- 6:16Speaker 4: day in day out.
- 6:17Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 6:18Speaker 2: And here's another kid's example. Sometimes do you remember year eight,
- 6:22Speaker 2: year nine? Like, if you can get through those two years,
- 6:24Speaker 2: you can get through anything in life. I believe really
- 6:27Speaker 2: tough years. And I remember the story of a year
- 6:30Speaker 2: nine science teacher who walked into class one day and
- 6:33Speaker 2: everything was just hey, what and nothing was going right
- 6:36Speaker 2: in class. Kids were rowdy, they were ambunctious, they were disengaged.
- 6:40Speaker 2: So the teacher rubbed everything off the whiteboard, got the text,
- 6:43Speaker 2: and wrote in big letters across the whiteboard, there is
- 6:47Speaker 2: life after high school. And the students all looked at
- 6:52Speaker 2: her and were like, what's going on? And the teacher said,
- 6:55Speaker 2: we're not learning anything today.
- 6:57Speaker 3: No one's got it.
- 6:58Speaker 2: So let's just talk about how high school is not
- 7:00Speaker 2: the end of your life. There's so much that's going
- 7:02Speaker 2: to happen after high school. What do you want? Where
- 7:05Speaker 2: do you want to go? What do you want to be?
- 7:06Speaker 2: How can we help you to get there? And she
- 7:08Speaker 2: said at the ten year high school reunion. So obviously,
- 7:12Speaker 2: thirteen or fourteen years later, I can't do maths very well.
- 7:14Speaker 2: I was clearly not in a mass class learning that
- 7:17Speaker 2: fifteen years later, fifteen years later, she showed up and
- 7:20Speaker 2: these students said, we still remember that class. We remember
- 7:23Speaker 2: you wiping everything up the board and riding there is
- 7:24Speaker 2: life after high school.
- 7:25Speaker 3: And it gave us hope. It gave us a.
- 7:27Speaker 2: Goal and end of vision, something that we believe we
- 7:29Speaker 2: could work towards. So that's the first element. The second
- 7:32Speaker 2: one is having a pathway. Not only do I believe
- 7:35Speaker 2: that there's something that I'm working towards, but there's a
- 7:38Speaker 2: way to get there. And this is why it's so
- 7:40Speaker 2: hard for say a child who doesn't feel like they
- 7:42Speaker 2: have any friends, because they know that the goal is
- 7:45Speaker 2: to have friends.
- 7:46Speaker 3: But when we say, all.
- 7:47Speaker 2: Right, well what can we do to help you get friends,
- 7:49Speaker 2: and they slump their shoulders and their hands hang down
- 7:52Speaker 2: by their knees, and their bottom lip starts to quiver
- 7:55Speaker 2: and they say, I don't know.
- 7:56Speaker 3: I don't know. Because they don't know what the pathway.
- 7:59Speaker 2: They don't have to strategy the steps to take to
- 8:02Speaker 2: build those relationships.
- 8:04Speaker 3: We can't just have a goal. We have to have
- 8:06Speaker 3: a process.
- 8:08Speaker 2: And the people who are most resilient, the people who
- 8:11Speaker 2: have the most hope are the ones who they might
- 8:14Speaker 2: start to walk down a pathway that they think will work,
- 8:16Speaker 2: and they come up against a rock wall and realize, ah, yeah,
- 8:19Speaker 2: that pathway is not working. So they take a few
- 8:22Speaker 2: steps back, and then they start to use the metaphorical
- 8:26Speaker 2: cutting your way through the jungle. They pull out the
- 8:28Speaker 2: blade and they start to slash it the vines and
- 8:31Speaker 2: they forged their new pathway, and they create a pathway
- 8:35Speaker 2: to get to that end.
- 8:36Speaker 3: Goal. You've got to have a pathway, and you've got
- 8:38Speaker 3: to have a goal.
- 8:39Speaker 2: And the third thing that you've got to have is
- 8:41Speaker 2: agency or a belief that you can do it, like
- 8:43Speaker 2: that self efficacy thing. I've got the goal, I've got
- 8:47Speaker 2: the pathway. Do I actually believe that I can walk
- 8:50Speaker 2: along the pathway to the goal? Can I get there?
- 8:53Speaker 2: You've got to have the belief. You've got to believe.
- 8:55Speaker 2: If you don't believe, it doesn't matter about the goal
- 8:58Speaker 2: or the end. It doesn't matter about the path even
- 9:00Speaker 2: if it's gold plated. If you don't believe you can
- 9:03Speaker 2: walk along it, you're not hopeful. You're hopeless.
- 9:06Speaker 4: So after the break, let's talk about a few ways
- 9:08Speaker 4: that we can help ourselves and our children Build Hope.
- 9:14Speaker 1: It's their Happy Famili's podcast.
- 9:17Speaker 2: Our boys are struggling with friends, mental health, alcohol, drugs, pornography, emotions,
- 9:24Speaker 2: and so much more. But science tells us that the
- 9:27Speaker 2: most important thing for your son's well being is his
- 9:30Speaker 2: connection with you. The Bringing Up Boys Summit is about
- 9:35Speaker 2: one thing, taking you into your son's world and helping
- 9:39Speaker 2: you connect with him in.
- 9:40Speaker 3: The way he needs you.
- 9:41Speaker 2: To find out more on the Happy Family's webshop and
- 9:44Speaker 2: start connecting with your son today.
- 9:47Speaker 4: It's the Happy Families podcast, the podcast with a time
- 9:50Speaker 4: poor parent who just wants answers now. And I'm looking
- 9:54Speaker 4: at your list and it's rather lengthy.
- 9:56Speaker 2: So I love talking about how we can build hope.
- 9:58Speaker 2: If we can't be hopeful, everything is lost. It's so hard.
- 10:02Speaker 2: This is why are You OK Day matters? Because AOOK
- 10:05Speaker 2: day is really about saying, what are you looking forward to?
- 10:07Speaker 2: How can we build some hope into your life. Let's
- 10:09Speaker 2: believe that life is worth living because good things are coming.
- 10:12Speaker 2: You've got to believe good things are coming.
- 10:14Speaker 4: So I'm going to just put it out there that
- 10:16Speaker 4: the first thing that would be on my list would
- 10:17Speaker 4: be creating moments to look forward to so I'm just
- 10:21Speaker 4: putting it out there that I'm expecting in three months time, you.
- 10:24Speaker 3: Really want to have our ques we get away. We
- 10:27Speaker 3: need it, you know what.
- 10:28Speaker 2: I'll talk to my parents, I'll see what I can do.
- 10:30Speaker 2: I just worry that the kids are going to be
- 10:32Speaker 2: hard work for them, but yes, we've got to have
- 10:34Speaker 2: something to look forward to. You've got to create those things.
- 10:36Speaker 2: But they don't have to be big. It doesn't have
- 10:38Speaker 2: to be a quarterly get away for a couple. It
- 10:40Speaker 2: can be what you can say to the kids, what
- 10:41Speaker 2: are you looking forward to at school today?
- 10:43Speaker 3: They might just be.
- 10:44Speaker 2: Excited because it's pe or it's library, or it's sport
- 10:46Speaker 2: or I don't know, whatever it is.
- 10:48Speaker 4: They I think it's about breaking down life. So whether
- 10:52Speaker 4: it's a daily thing or a weekly thing, or something
- 10:54Speaker 4: that you're looking forward to in three months time or
- 10:56Speaker 4: on the.
- 10:56Speaker 2: Weekend or tonight. Like we've started like watching Blue at night.
- 11:01Speaker 2: I've talked about Blue, I've done interviews about Blue, I've
- 11:04Speaker 2: watched an episode here and there, but we've started watching
- 11:05Speaker 2: Blue every night. And the kids are so excited to
- 11:10Speaker 2: be able to like that's that they're hopeful every day
- 11:13Speaker 2: because they know that to not we're gonna have great
- 11:14Speaker 2: family time watching Blue.
- 11:15Speaker 4: Well, our nineteen year old will literally say, you cannot
- 11:18Speaker 4: put Blue on until I get home from work.
- 11:23Speaker 3: So I love you.
- 11:24Speaker 2: I love your suggestion. Number one, find things to look
- 11:26Speaker 2: forward to. They don't even have to be big things.
- 11:28Speaker 2: It's watching Blue together, or it's we're doing that thing
- 11:31Speaker 2: on the weekend that we've been looking forward to.
- 11:34Speaker 4: Nanny and Poppy are coming up for family dinner, or
- 11:37Speaker 4: you know, we're going to go for a bike ride.
- 11:39Speaker 4: Number two would be sharing hopeful news. Right when you
- 11:44Speaker 4: look at the news report, just don't there isn't much
- 11:48Speaker 4: to be hopeful about.
- 11:49Speaker 3: Not at all.
- 11:49Speaker 2: In fact, when I jump onto that awful news website
- 11:54Speaker 2: that is Australia's apparently number one news website, and the
- 11:57Speaker 2: words that always come up when I.
- 11:59Speaker 3: Have a look at that are things like grim.
- 12:02Speaker 2: Or tragic, or twisted or unexpected, or it's all just
- 12:10Speaker 2: so negative.
- 12:11Speaker 3: It's all so horrible, it's all just so heavy.
- 12:15Speaker 2: So let's talk about positive news because there's so much
- 12:18Speaker 2: good stuff that happens in the world.
- 12:20Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think it's important that we are aware
- 12:23Speaker 4: of other people's experiences around the world. I think we
- 12:28Speaker 4: just have to be really proactive encountering the negative with
- 12:34Speaker 4: a whole heap of positive and hopeful.
- 12:36Speaker 2: And that's where we move from the macro here's what's
- 12:38Speaker 2: in the news, to the micro what's happening in our lives.
- 12:41Speaker 2: So around the dining table, you share hopeful news by saying, Hey,
- 12:43Speaker 2: what was the best thing that happened to you today?
- 12:45Speaker 2: What are you looking forward to tomorrow? How have you
- 12:48Speaker 2: experienced something that you're grateful for today. It's those conversations
- 12:52Speaker 2: where you're sharing again, tiny little things, the littlest things,
- 12:56Speaker 2: but it's those little things that build hope, which kind
- 12:58Speaker 2: of ties in with the next thing that you had
- 12:59Speaker 2: on your list, which was saying thanks being grateful for things.
- 13:04Speaker 3: I'm stealing your list. I'm sorry you.
- 13:05Speaker 4: Kind of are. But you know, I love this one
- 13:08Speaker 4: because literally the other day I woke up and I
- 13:11Speaker 4: was feeling a bit flat, and I got a message
- 13:13Speaker 4: from a friend. It was two lines to say thanks
- 13:16Speaker 4: for reaching out to me. You literally gave me wings
- 13:18Speaker 4: to fly.
- 13:19Speaker 3: Oh you never told me about that one?
- 13:21Speaker 4: No, I didn't. I didn't, but it actually choked me
- 13:24Speaker 4: up because what I did was in my mind, pretty insignificant.
- 13:29Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 13:29Speaker 4: But to her who felt like she was literally drowning
- 13:33Speaker 4: in that moment, just a friend reaching out to say, hey,
- 13:36Speaker 4: just checking in to see how you're doing, and gave
- 13:39Speaker 4: her the courage and the support that she needed to
- 13:41Speaker 4: feel like she could breathe again.
- 13:43Speaker 2: It's exactly what Gus talked about yesterday in that podcast episode,
- 13:46Speaker 2: in that interview, he said exactly that, And it's so
- 13:50Speaker 2: so powerful.
- 13:51Speaker 4: We think that we actually have to fix people. We don't.
- 13:54Speaker 4: We literally just need them to know that they're seeing,
- 13:57Speaker 4: heard and valued. It's so easy to do it, and
- 14:00Speaker 4: yet often we get caught up in our own selves
- 14:03Speaker 4: and don't take the time.
- 14:05Speaker 2: Yeap, And it makes such a difference. So my next
- 14:07Speaker 2: idea for building hope is counter factuals. What I mean,
- 14:11Speaker 2: you're looking at me strangely.
- 14:12Speaker 4: Yeah, I've never heard that word.
- 14:13Speaker 2: You've just scrunched up your face. A counter factual is
- 14:16Speaker 2: kind of okay. So here's the fact, here's what actually happened.
- 14:19Speaker 2: Let's imagine the scenario going differently. Let's have a look
- 14:23Speaker 2: at a counter factual. Imagine if the facts were different.
- 14:26Speaker 2: Imagine if something else had happened.
- 14:27Speaker 3: What could have happened?
- 14:28Speaker 2: How could it have worked out, How could we have
- 14:30Speaker 2: played it differently? What will we do next time? This
- 14:32Speaker 2: is kind of a way of dealing with today's are
- 14:35Speaker 2: you okay?
- 14:36Speaker 3: Day?
- 14:36Speaker 2: Let's imagine that somebody who's listened to this right now
- 14:38Speaker 2: is living in regret and pain and depression and sadness
- 14:43Speaker 2: and feeling like there is nothing positive that can happen
- 14:45Speaker 2: in the future because of the mistakes that they made
- 14:47Speaker 2: yesterday or last year or whatever, and everything's going wrong.
- 14:51Speaker 2: The counterfactual is essentially saying, well, what if, what if
- 14:54Speaker 2: I did this? How could things be different? Or well,
- 14:57Speaker 2: at least because of that mistake, these couple of things
- 15:03Speaker 2: happened that were actually good. A counter factual is like
- 15:06Speaker 2: creating a new reality based on thinking differently about the
- 15:10Speaker 2: situation that we're in.
- 15:12Speaker 4: I don't actually remember where my belief came from, but
- 15:17Speaker 4: I remember vividly being about fourteen or fifteen and just
- 15:21Speaker 4: having absolute clarity that there were no bad mistakes that
- 15:25Speaker 4: I could make in my life as long as I
- 15:28Speaker 4: chose to learn from them.
- 15:30Speaker 3: Wow, you've never shared that with me. Today's a revealing day.
- 15:33Speaker 4: I love this, and I just I'm so grateful for that,
- 15:38Speaker 4: because as I look back on my life, and there
- 15:41Speaker 4: are so many things that I wish that I could
- 15:44Speaker 4: have changed or done differently. They have inevitably helped me
- 15:48Speaker 4: make better decisions moving forward.
- 15:51Speaker 2: And that's exactly what we're talking about here. Instead of saying,
- 15:53Speaker 2: oh if only, which is a hopeless statement I've only,
- 15:58Speaker 2: we're saying, well at least or because, and we're finding
- 16:03Speaker 2: the silver lining. This isn't about toxic positivity. This is
- 16:06Speaker 2: about saying life is hard, but we can learn and
- 16:08Speaker 2: we can grow and get better.
- 16:10Speaker 4: And I'm not a perfect person, and I don't expect
- 16:13Speaker 4: other people to be perfect, So I'm going to make mistakes.
- 16:17Speaker 4: But if I can learn from them, and if I
- 16:19Speaker 4: can be a better person at the other end as
- 16:20Speaker 4: a result of it, then it's been worth the experience
- 16:24Speaker 4: because I would never have learned that without that experience.
- 16:26Speaker 3: Okay, we need to wrap up.
- 16:27Speaker 2: We've got three more ways that we can build hope
- 16:29Speaker 2: in ourselves, in our friends and family.
- 16:31Speaker 3: We're going to do them really quickly. Okay.
- 16:33Speaker 2: The first one celebrate success yeah, not an success?
- 16:37Speaker 3: Yeah progress yeah. Yeah.
- 16:39Speaker 2: We every now and again, I kind of get a
- 16:42Speaker 2: little bit frustrated. I feel like I'm not reaching enough families.
- 16:45Speaker 2: I'm not helping enough people. I want more people to
- 16:47Speaker 2: find the stuff that we talk about here on the
- 16:49Speaker 2: podcast for free, or in my books or in my
- 16:51Speaker 2: courses or membership or anything like that. I know what
- 16:54Speaker 2: a difference it makes, and sometimes I actually feel hopeless.
- 16:57Speaker 2: I feel like I'm not reaching enough people. And this
- 17:00Speaker 2: isn't a pity party or anything, but sometimes I feel like,
- 17:02Speaker 2: oh gosh, what do I have to do to reach
- 17:04Speaker 2: these people who I know would benefit so much from
- 17:06Speaker 2: what we talk about? And every now and again I
- 17:08Speaker 2: just have to pause and say, Okay, but I have
- 17:11Speaker 2: written a number of books, and I've had a whole
- 17:12Speaker 2: lot of emails and conversations with people who have read
- 17:15Speaker 2: the books or listen to the podcaster whose lives are
- 17:17Speaker 2: different because of what we've done.
- 17:19Speaker 4: We've talked about this before, but I remember, you know,
- 17:22Speaker 4: you've shared it regularly at the same time every year
- 17:25Speaker 4: Facebook sends you're a reminder about the posts that you
- 17:28Speaker 4: put up when you were so excited because you had
- 17:32Speaker 4: two hundred followers.
- 17:33Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yeah, you.
- 17:34Speaker 4: Know, and that that in and of itself is progress. Yeah,
- 17:37Speaker 4: because there's no longer two hundred. There's a couple more
- 17:39Speaker 4: zeros after it.
- 17:40Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's a really great reminder. Even now, it
- 17:43Speaker 3: makes me feel grateful.
- 17:44Speaker 2: Last two things, we've got to acknowledge that cat can't
- 17:49Speaker 2: is not going to be a helpful word. And there
- 17:52Speaker 2: are better ways to deal with challenging situations, finding ways
- 17:56Speaker 2: through it, having hope and taking off that tea making
- 17:59Speaker 2: cart into a can.
- 18:00Speaker 4: Well, there are some things that you may not be
- 18:02Speaker 4: able to do. You actually can't do those things.
- 18:05Speaker 3: Well, don't roll a toe out of my nose.
- 18:06Speaker 4: But if that, if that's what we focus on, then
- 18:09Speaker 4: we're going to feel hopeless. So focusing on the things
- 18:13Speaker 4: that we actually can do.
- 18:14Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 18:14Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 18:15Speaker 4: And the last thing unconditional love.
- 18:17Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 18:18Speaker 2: If somebody's feeling hopeless, sometimes they just need to know
- 18:21Speaker 2: that they're loved.
- 18:22Speaker 3: And those three.
- 18:23Speaker 2: Words that I harp on about all the time, the
- 18:25Speaker 2: three most important words that you kids can hear, not
- 18:28Speaker 2: I love you, but the three that come after it,
- 18:30Speaker 2: No matter what, can move somebody from feeling hopeless to
- 18:34Speaker 2: hopeful in a matter of moments.
- 18:37Speaker 4: I think you've been your spouse needs here it once
- 18:39Speaker 4: in a while too.
- 18:39Speaker 3: Okay, Well i'll tell you that after the podcast.
- 18:43Speaker 2: The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin and Rulant
- 18:45Speaker 2: from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our executive producer. We hope,
- 18:49Speaker 2: we really do hope that this podcast has helped you
- 18:52Speaker 2: to feel okay, to recognize that there is something to
- 18:54Speaker 2: look forward to, and to build resilience and hope skills
- 18:59Speaker 2: in your kids. It is one of the most important
- 19:03Speaker 2: things that we can do as parents. If you'd like
- 19:05Speaker 2: more information about making your family more happy and more hopeful,
- 19:08Speaker 2: please visit us at happy families dot com dot au.