Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / Enhanced Games (and Why Failure Might Be Your Child’s Best Teacher!)

Transcript

Enhanced Games (and Why Failure Might Be Your Child’s Best Teacher!) · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: It's The Happy Family's podcast. What can doping athletes teach
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: us about success? What can our children learn from drug cheats?
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Why are we talking about this on The Happy Families podcast?
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Has it got anything to do with parenting at all?
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: I think that you might be surprised. Doping, athletics and parenting.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: That's next stay with us.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: It's been billed as the future of sport, but the
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Enhanced Games in Las Vegas has been declared a flop.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Australia's own James the Missile Magnuson bombed out in his event.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I'll just one world record has been broken.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: It's The Happy Family's Podcast. Welcome to a brand new week.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: We are Justin and Kylie Colson. Parents have six daughters.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: This is the podcast where you get real parenting solutions
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: every single day. Astraight A's most downloaded parenting podcast. On
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: May twenty four of twenty twenty six, the first Enhanced
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Games took place in Las Vegas.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: So when you opened this podcast, I thought you were
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: saying dopey as in one of the Seven Dwarfs.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: No, I'm not talking about lacking intelligence. I didn't say dopey.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I said doping. Doping as in drug checks.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: Now I'm really confused.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Evidently, And we're not talking about the recently completed Commonwealth
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Games that was supposed to be Victoria but ended up
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: over in the UK either. We're talking about doping, doping athletes.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: So did you hear about the Enhanced Games? It's not
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: a joke. It sounds like a punchline's coming. But the
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Enhanced Games back in May?
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: Did you I heard minimal?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Okay? Great? And what did you? What do you know
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: about it?
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Just that they were allowed to use drugs okay to
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: enhance their performance.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Pretty much. According to the organizers, and this is a
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: direct quote from their website, the Games are ushering in
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: quote a new era in athletic competition that embraces scientific
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: advancements to push the boundaries of human performance. So that's
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: pr speak. Four. Our athletes are doped to the gills
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and we're encouraging it. Right, That's that's the whole box
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: and dice. It's the Olympics.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: But the cheats, it doesn't makes sense at all. And
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: I'm still confused why we're talking about it today.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, I'm going to get to the parenting
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: thing in just a sec. But I just want to
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: be really clear. The promise of the Enhanced Games was
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: We're going to see a whole lot of world records,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: We're going to see a whole lot astonishing performances, and
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: a whole new world of limitless potential.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: So what I'm hearing is that if parents had access
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: to hallucina genics or I don't know, psychedelics, that we'd
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: actually enhance our parenting. Is that where we're coming, we're
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: getting anywhere near that.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I was thinking, where are you going? What have you been? Anyway,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: the more chilled we are, the better. No, no, no, no,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: no no no. But that was the promise of the
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Enhanced Games. The reality of the Enhanced Games was very,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: very different. Here's what happened. There was a whole lot
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: of drugs. It was a woeful competitive spectacle, and essentially
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: there was zero enhancement of anything.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: So no world records broken even with the enhancement of drugs.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Let's just say that the East Germans of the eighties
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: and the Chinese athletes are the nineties doped more successfully,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: and they were doing it illicitly, right, So let's talk
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: about the records first. The swimming is the one that
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I'm most interested in because I used to be a swimmer.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: One world record was beaten, and in the write ups afterwards,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: it seems that it was much more to do.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: With wasn't there a massive controversy over the swimming.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Well, they were wearing a supersuit. The supersits were banned
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: in the twenty tens. Yeah, and the write ups basically
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: say it probably didn't have anything to do with the
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: with the banned substances, with the steroids. It was probably
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: the supersuits because they give a boost of about five
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: percent to your performance, so probably they're On the athletics
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: track results were shabbier than the results in the pool.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: The men's times, get this, the men's times on the
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: athletics track were closer to female world records than male
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: world records, because there's quite a difference, right, So the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: men were running much closer to female times the male
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: times even though though I'm doping.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: So basically, even after they still didn't perform any better.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: They're literally high schoolers that are running faster than these
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: drug sheets. Like I'm not even I'm not exaggerating, it's
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: not hyperbole. They actually are. And the problem is this,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the organizers believed that if they could rope in some
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: of the best athletes in the world, or at least
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: some of the former best athletes in the world, and
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: then fill them with steroids, that they become Superman or
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Captain America or whatever. But that's not how it works.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: And that's where I want to bring this back to parenting.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: So what's going on here is we've got this cult
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: of optimization that the world runs by. Now, steroids will
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: enhance performance, there's no doubt steroids will enhance performance, but
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: so will things like sauna, and so will things like
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: magnesium or peptides and whatever other fad that's out there.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Although do you remember do you remember about twenty years
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: ago everyone was running around with those power bands on
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: their wrists. No, No, they were a really big deal.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: But they don't enhance performance, there's no anyway. The reason
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I'm sharing this in today's pod, it's been on my
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: mind a lot because we saw the Commonwealth Games and
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: a whole lot of records and a whole lot of
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: brilliant athletic performance from people who weren't doping, and yet
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the people who were doping thought they were going to
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: get the records and they didn't, And The thing that
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I kind of wanted to push on is this cult
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: of optimization, this society that says there's a quick fix
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: for everything, and we keep falling for this idea that
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: there's a quick fix, that there's a shortcut everywhere. And
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: like James Magnuson, who has just been one of Australia's
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: best swimmers, was very very public that he was going
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: to go out and win a million dollars because he
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: was going to dope himself as much as he could
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: and swim faster than he'd ever swum, and he looked
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: like the whole I mean, he looks so strong at
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the Enhanced Games. But the reality is that the athletes
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: at the Enhanced Games just weren't training as hard as
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: they did when they were training for the Olympics. And
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: if they're not, if they've only got a handful of
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: months to prepare for the Enhanced Games, and if most
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: of them are not full time athletes, we have a
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: problem here. And so I want to talk about what
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: that means in relation to life and specifically in relation
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: to what we teach our kids next, because I want
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: us to get away from the idea that there are
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: shortcuts there are quick fixes, that there are band aid solutions,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: that the injectable or whatever is going to be the
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: right way forward because too many of our kids and
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: too many of us are falling for it. That's the
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: whole point of bringing the enhanced games into a parenting podcast,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: and I'll explain why. Next we're back into the Happy
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Family's podcast. Okay, if you've stayed with me during my preamble,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: my preamble, here's what I'm getting at. So we've got
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: James Clear. Atomic Habits sold something like twenty million copies
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: of this book, now one of the world's best selling
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: books kind of ever. And in the book, he describes
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: in an interaction that he had with an elite weightlifting
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: coach who visited the gym where he was doing some training.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And this was a coach who had worked with thousands
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: of athletes during his career, including Olympians, and Clear, who
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: was into bodybuilding and weightlifting, asked to asking me a question.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: He said, what's the difference between the best athletes and
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: everyone else? What did the really successful people do that
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: most don't.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: Put more effort in? It's practice, practice, practice.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's so. The coach talked a bit about genetics.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: He talked a bit about luck, he talked a bit
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: about talent, but then he said this, and this is
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: a direct quote from what James Clear says. At some
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: point it comes down to who can handle the boredom
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: of training every day, doing the same lifts over and
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: over and over.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: So James Clear when he's writing about this, he says,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: the only way to become excellent is to be endlessly
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: have to fall in love with boredom.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really curious. I remember reading something from Michael
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: Jordan and him talking about the fact that he wasn't
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: the best player out there. He was willing to miss
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: a thousand hoops or whatever it was to get the
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: one hoop, Like I'm totally botching it up. But I
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: remember when I read it thinking he actually misses, Like
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: he's so famous because of what he's capable of doing.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Jr. I want you to play the clip.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: Miss morning nine thousand shots. In my career, I've lost
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: almost three hundred games twenty six times. I've been trusted
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: to take the game winning shot and missed. Have failed
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: over and over and over again. In my life, and
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: that is why pros succeed.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: How good is that?
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: It's so good? But when you think about Michael Jordan,
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: you don't think of someone who's failed. You think of
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: somebody who's succeeded. And if they've succeeded, clearly they're not
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: making mistakes, they're not stuffing things up. But the fact
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: that he acknowledges the only reason he's capable of doing
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: what he does on the court is because he was
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: willing to keep doing it even when it looked like
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: he was making a mess of it.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and every study of it, astonishing world class success
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: points to the same thing. Mary ma who was a
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: three time Olympic gold medalist at the nineteen eighty four
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: LA Olympics. I know we're going back away here, but
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: this is what she said, direct quote. She said, people
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: don't know how ordinary success is. So the whole thing
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to share in today's podcast was this,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Everyone wants the shortcut, everyone wants the secret like we
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: want it. Kylie, you've been on a what are we up?
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: We're at the end of August. You've been on a
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: full eight month weight loss journey now, and it would
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: be really nice if there was a shortcut. I know
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: that there actually are some shortcuts out there, but you're
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: doing it the old fashioned hard way. And it would
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: be really nice if there was some special secret. But
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: the secret really is consistency.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: It's day in, day out. Yeah, and you've said it
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: many times on the podcast. It's okay to miss a day,
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: but just don't have two days in a row.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeap. But the hacks fill our feets, and there's
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: so many I'm going to use a really uncharit. There
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: are so many grifters who will sell you the promise
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: of an easy answer to help you to feel a
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: little less insecure or a little more optimized, and to
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: shift you towards whatever it is that you think your
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: dream is, or the dream that they're trying to sell you.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: And so, whether it's as falling for the latest fat
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: or our kids clamoring for clout, human nature keeps on
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: dragging this into thinking that there really is a pill
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: or a course or a solution that's going to get
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: us there faster wherever there is. And I'm thinking about boys, right,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I've written this book about boys that's been doing really well.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Androgenic and clovicular. Have you heard of androgenic and clivicular. No, okay,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: so these are two looks maxes. Looks maxis you're looking
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: at me. Funny, you didn't read my book.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: You're talking. It's a different language.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: So a looks maxer is somebody who believes that if
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: you maximize your looks, then you're going to maximize your life.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: The better looking you are, the more opportunities you have.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: It's not even about having the conquest anymore. It's about
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: knowing that you could have the conquest if you wanted
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: it because you look so good. And so these guys, wow,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: these are the names that they've given themselves online because
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: their influences and they need to have very strong names.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: So androgenic and clivicular are two examples of this. They're
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: telling our sons to pump themselves for testosterone and peptides
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: and toxins so they can look looks max. They're they're
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: they're hitting their faces with hammers to strengthen, to break
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: their bones down, but to strengthen their bones up. You've
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: got the Andrew Tates and Myron Gains of the world
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: and others. They're just sewage peddlers offering all of these
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: shortcuts to wealth and status via their crypto scams and
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: their leadership inverted quote those scare quote leadership programs and
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: literally hustler universities. And I just think the Enhanced Games
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: is another version of this. It promises what's the word
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: on superhuman results through chemical shortcuts, and what the Enhanced
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Games actually delivered was embarrassment. There's no other word for it.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: What was the follow up with the athletes that were involved.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Like, well, it just went very quiet. There were not
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: a whole lot of news releases. There was not a
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: lot going on in the media because it's just such
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: an awful failure. The real lesson and the reason that
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I wanted to do this podcast is just a reminder
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: the shortcut might sometimes get you there, but more often
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: than not, it probably won't get you there at least faster.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: And even if it does, the shortcut is going to
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: hollow out or maybe even arrays the only thing that
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: actually matters, and that's the person that you become on
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: the way. It's not actually about getting there, it's about
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: who you become while you're getting there.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Colonel Sanders, right, how many attempts? No, it's a numbers game, right, right?
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: He went through this recipe. I think it was like
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: a thousand times before. He wasn't the recipe, no, it
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: was trying to do it, was trying to sell it.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So while you're saying that, I'm just
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: looking up. And apparently, if the record is correct, Colonel
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Sanders was reportedly rejected one thousand and nine times times
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: before he found a restaurant that agreed to use his
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: secret fried chicken recipe.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: And look at him now, right, There's just so much
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: that we learn as we go through different experiences. Our
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: twelve year old she's decided she wants to learn to sew.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: And a big thank you to everyone. Over the last
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: couple months he's been putting their orders in. She's been
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: NonStop sewing it sewing machine and getting really good at it.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: And when we first started, we did a couple and
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: I was right there beside her, and she decided that
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: she felt really confident she was going to do it
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: all on her own. And the third time round, she
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: did do it all on her own. And let's just say,
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: we couldn't sell that one, right, right, And she came
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: to me and she said, this is my worst one yet.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: She said I'm like, I'm really bad at this, and
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: I said, but you're not. I said, because you've actually
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: made it. You've done all of the steps, but there's
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: a few little tweaks. And because you're new at this,
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: I said, yeah, you just didn't remember a few of
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: the things that I talked to you about. I suspect
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: the great thing is now that you've actually made the mistake,
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: you'll be more aware of what needs to happen next
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: time so you don't make it.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: And that's why writing an essay with AI doesn't work,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: because you don't have the learning. We need to wrap
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: it up how time is done. But I'm going to
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: share a quote from a book called How to Live
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: by Derek Sivers, because it's really the encapsulation of the
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: whole point of this podcast. Mastery, Sivers says, is the
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: best goal because the rich can't buy it, the impatient
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: can't rush it, the privileged can't inherit it, and nobody
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Mastery is the ultimate status. When our kids understand that principle,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: their lives are probably going to be harder, but they'll
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: be vastly richer. Sound and audio engineering for the Happy
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Families Podcast, Justin Ruland from Bridge Media, Mim Hammond's looks
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: After admin and additional support. If you like this podcast,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: please join for the rest of the week. We've got
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: so much great stuff to talk about, including kids who
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: are lying. We're going to be talking about the new
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: threat to our daughter's pornography and how it's affecting girls,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: and some brand new science highlighting that screen time can
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: damage the development of our undertoos. All of that and
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: more this week on the Happy Families Podcast. We'll talk
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: to you tomorrow.