Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #1022 - The Pursuit of Happiness

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#1022 - The Pursuit of Happiness · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:03
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for.
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Speaker 2: The time poor parent who just wants answers.
0:10
Speaker 1: Now, if we do things because we think they're going
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Speaker 1: to make us happy, we will often not always, but
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Speaker 1: we will often be disappointed.
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Speaker 2: And now here's the stars of our show, My mum
0:21
Speaker 2: and dad.
0:21
Speaker 1: Hello, this is doctor Justin Colson, the founder of Happy
0:23
Speaker 1: Families dot com dot a you. It's a Monday morning. Kylie,
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Speaker 1: my wife none who has six kids podcast partner is
0:29
Speaker 1: thing opposite me yawning, because that's what Mondays are for, right,
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Speaker 1: Big weekend, don big weekend, bit tough. Woke up a
0:40
Speaker 1: bit late this morning, just a little not feeling great.
0:44
Speaker 1: We are so grateful that you've chosen to join us today.
0:47
Speaker 1: We're having a conversation about whether or not we're responsible
0:50
Speaker 1: for our kids happiness. When I ask this question in workshops,
0:54
Speaker 1: it's the number one response. The question is what do
0:57
Speaker 1: you want most of your kids? And everyone always says
1:00
Speaker 1: I want them to be happy. I hear it again
1:02
Speaker 1: and again and again, and today I want to bust
1:05
Speaker 1: the myth that it's our responsibility to make our kids happy.
1:07
Speaker 1: In fact, I want to expose the lie that it
1:10
Speaker 1: is that we need to make our kids happy. I
1:13
Speaker 1: want to argue that that's not our job. Not that
1:16
Speaker 1: I'm suggesting that we're therefore here to make our children miserable.
1:19
Speaker 1: That's not it either.
1:20
Speaker 2: I think that we have just lightened the load of
1:22
Speaker 2: every parent ever.
1:24
Speaker 1: But we need to explain why. And so what we're
1:27
Speaker 1: going to do because you're not feeling one hundred percent
1:29
Speaker 1: today is I've put together a list of five things
1:33
Speaker 1: that go wrong when we try to help our kids
1:36
Speaker 1: to be happy when we think that it's our responsibility.
1:39
Speaker 1: So you can sort of just join in the conversation
1:42
Speaker 1: around that, but I don't want to put too much
1:43
Speaker 1: of a load on you, because not my job to
1:45
Speaker 1: make you happy, on your job to make me happy.
1:47
Speaker 1: And then, oh, I just thought of a sixth one.
1:49
Speaker 1: And then after the break, we're going to play around
1:51
Speaker 1: with what we are actually responsible for. If we're not
1:53
Speaker 1: responsible for our children's happiness, what are we as parents
1:57
Speaker 1: responsible for other than clothing and feeding in sheltering them.
2:00
Speaker 2: Well, let's dive into it. What's the first one.
2:02
Speaker 1: The first one is that if you think that you're
2:04
Speaker 1: responsible for your children's happiness, you're often going to make
2:07
Speaker 1: short sighted decisions.
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Speaker 2: I think about this all the time because I can't
2:12
Speaker 2: even count the amount of times that we've taken the
2:16
Speaker 2: kids on an outing or you know, spent a whole
2:19
Speaker 2: heap of money that we probably really didn't have, but
2:21
Speaker 2: we were desperate to put a smile on their face.
2:23
Speaker 2: And you know, spend spend quality time together as a family,
2:27
Speaker 2: only to get in the car or maybe not even
2:29
Speaker 2: make it to the car after a wonderful day out
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Speaker 2: and have someone griping because there's not enough leg room
2:36
Speaker 2: on the car, or the sibling next to them is
2:38
Speaker 2: breathing in their air, or whatever it is. It just
2:42
Speaker 2: blows out of proportion after all of that effort that
2:45
Speaker 2: we've gone into.
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Speaker 1: I'm thinking theme parks, right, You take the kids to
2:48
Speaker 1: the theme park because we want you to have an
2:50
Speaker 1: awesome day. But they fight on the way to the
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Speaker 1: theme park. They fight and winge and complain because you know.
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Speaker 2: I don't want to go on that ride. They want
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Speaker 2: to go on this ride.
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Speaker 1: I want to sit next to Dad, not Mum. And
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Speaker 1: then and then when you take your picnic lunch, because
3:01
Speaker 1: you're not prepared to spend forty six dollars on one
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Speaker 1: burger and chips plus an extra twelve dollars if you
3:08
Speaker 1: want the forty cents worth of softfering that you have
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Speaker 1: to buy. I just and the kids winge and whinge wing.
3:14
Speaker 1: And you're thinking, but I did this so that you
3:16
Speaker 1: would be happy, and that right there is the problem.
3:19
Speaker 1: But we make all of these short sided decisions. The
3:22
Speaker 1: kids winging and so we say, well, I just want
3:23
Speaker 1: you to be happy, so I don't have to go
3:24
Speaker 1: to school today, or the kids winging, and we say, well,
3:26
Speaker 1: I just want you to be happy, so yes, I'll
3:27
Speaker 1: buy you that treat in the supermarket. It's short sided
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Speaker 1: decisions that don't actually make the kids happy. Like let's
3:34
Speaker 1: say you do let them stay home, are they truly
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Speaker 1: are actually happy? Let's say you do buy them in
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Speaker 1: the treat? Do they treat everyone well? Like? Are they
3:40
Speaker 1: happy after that? It doesn't. It just doesn't work out
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Speaker 1: that way. So we make short sided decisions when we
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Speaker 1: think that we're responsible for our children's happiness, and it
3:49
Speaker 1: rarely works to anyone's real advantage.
3:52
Speaker 2: What's number two?
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Speaker 1: The second one is that it's impossible to satisfy our
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Speaker 1: children's craving for happiness.
4:00
Speaker 2: Weren't satiable it is.
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Speaker 1: There's a psychological reference to the hedonic treadmill. So hedonism
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Speaker 1: is avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. And when you get
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Speaker 1: on the hedonic treadmill, what happens is you get something
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Speaker 1: that feels really good, and then you keep on chasing
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Speaker 1: more and more of that good stuff. You become acclimatized,
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Speaker 1: You become accustomed, you become habituated to all of the
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Speaker 1: goodness in your life. And as you become familiar and
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Speaker 1: comfortable with all of the stuff that made you happy,
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Speaker 1: once it's no longer enough, it doesn't make you happy anymore.
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Speaker 1: You need more.
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Speaker 2: Yes, I'm thinking about the multiple times I may have
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Speaker 2: read fifteen books a bedtime instead of one because it
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Speaker 2: just was never enough. And now that we've got a
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Speaker 2: seven eight year.
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Speaker 1: Old who is reading on her own, reading.
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Speaker 2: Chapter books, one chapter is not enough. We're up to
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Speaker 2: three chapters and I Dad.
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Speaker 1: I fall asleep asleep when they ask me to read,
5:01
Speaker 1: because I just can't read that long at night. Once
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Speaker 1: my head once on horizontal, anyway, it's impossible to satisfy it.
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Speaker 1: So when you think that you're responsible for your kids happiness,
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Speaker 1: you keep on pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing,
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Speaker 1: which it's just too much, which kind of leads to
5:15
Speaker 1: my third idea, and that is that being responsible for
5:17
Speaker 1: somebody's happiness is actually an impossible burden to carry because
5:22
Speaker 1: your kids are always going to have experiences. Not always,
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Speaker 1: but your kids are going to end up being mad
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Speaker 1: or sad or bad, feeling horrible, and then you feel
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Speaker 1: like it's your job to make it all better. And
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Speaker 1: I don't know if this is helpful or not, but
5:35
Speaker 1: I want to make it really clear. It's not your
5:37
Speaker 1: job to make it better as a parent. You don't
5:40
Speaker 1: have to fix it because they're feeling bad. You don't
5:42
Speaker 1: have to fix it because they're feeling sad. You don't
5:44
Speaker 1: have to fix it because they're feeling mad. What you
5:48
Speaker 1: do need to do is let them know that you
5:50
Speaker 1: get it and they're to support them as they figure
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Speaker 1: it out. But what we do is we sit there
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Speaker 1: on the carpet, laying beside our children, reading chapter four
6:01
Speaker 1: and chapter five because we just want them to be happy.
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Speaker 1: We just want them to know that we're there for them.
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Speaker 1: We just want to connect with them. Now, I'm not
6:07
Speaker 1: saying that we shouldn't connect and that we shouldn't enjoy
6:10
Speaker 1: quality time together. But it becomes pathological once we start
6:14
Speaker 1: to think that we're responsible for their happiness, and if
6:16
Speaker 1: they're not feeling happy, that we are the ones who
6:18
Speaker 1: are responsible to do something about it.
6:20
Speaker 2: Well, right, you know, and then we're burdened by the
6:24
Speaker 2: fact that our children are unhappy.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So what's before number four is that
6:30
Speaker 1: when we think that we are responsible for our children's happiness,
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Speaker 1: we actually set them up to fail in life. Because
6:39
Speaker 1: if they think that their happiness, that their emotional stability,
6:44
Speaker 1: that their emotional well being is predicated on somebody outside
6:48
Speaker 1: of themselves, what are they going to do when we're
6:51
Speaker 1: not around. What are they going to do when they're
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Speaker 1: at university or when they're in a relationship with another adult.
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Speaker 1: Are they going to think that that other person is
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Speaker 1: responsible for their happiness? Going to think that it's all
7:01
Speaker 1: that other person's fault that they're not having a good day.
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Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes other people can interfere with our otherwise
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Speaker 1: best laid plans and we can feel like we're having
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Speaker 1: a bad day, But we were actually setting our children
7:13
Speaker 1: up to fail because they're looking to external sources to
7:18
Speaker 1: satisfy their sense of well being. And it's so unhealthy,
7:22
Speaker 1: it's not going to be in anyone's best interests.
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Speaker 2: It's interesting that you brought this one up, because it's
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Speaker 2: something that I've actually really only come to fully understand
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Speaker 2: as an adult, that concept that this is actually my gig,
7:34
Speaker 2: it's up to me. But for so long I looked
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Speaker 2: to external sources to kind of get that lift and
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Speaker 2: that happy. And I didn't like being on my own,
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Speaker 2: not because I don't enjoy being in my own space,
7:47
Speaker 2: but I just love being with other people. But I
7:50
Speaker 2: was relying on them to make me feel good.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, And that brings me the last thing, and that
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Speaker 1: is that nobody can actually make you feel good. I
8:00
Speaker 1: can't make somebody happy, I can't make somebody sad. I
8:04
Speaker 1: can certainly treat people in a particular way that is
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Speaker 1: going to make it easier for them to choose one
8:11
Speaker 1: thing or the other. But something that I have noticed,
8:14
Speaker 1: I mean, we've made no secret of it. Over the
8:16
Speaker 1: last few weeks, we've had some particularly challenging times with
8:18
Speaker 1: one of our children, but a couple of our kids
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Speaker 1: have been giving us a bit of a rough old time.
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Speaker 1: And one thing that has come back to me again
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Speaker 1: and again and again, is that I'm not responsible for
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Speaker 1: their happiness and they can't make me miserable, so I
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Speaker 1: can give them all the love and compassion in the world.
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Speaker 1: But ultimately, when I step out of that room, it's
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Speaker 1: on me how I feel, It's on me, how I react.
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Speaker 1: It's on me whether it gets me down or whether
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Speaker 1: I say, well, that's the way they are right now,
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Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean I have to be miserable as well.
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Speaker 2: I think it takes a level of maturity to get
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Speaker 2: to that point, and it's.
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Speaker 1: One that I've been trying to make with our children,
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Speaker 1: somewhat unsuccessfully for some time now. Your sister is not
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Speaker 1: responsible for your happiness, and they're like, yes, yes, They're
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Speaker 1: convinced that their sisters are the ones that are making
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Speaker 1: them angry, that are making them sad, that are making
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Speaker 1: them mad. And it's that consistent water torture, just that
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Speaker 1: little drop once and then once again and once again,
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Speaker 1: and me saying, you choose, you choose, you choose after
9:22
Speaker 1: the break. If we are not responsible for our children's happiness,
9:24
Speaker 1: what are we responsible for? Imagine a relationship where you
9:32
Speaker 1: felt seen, heard and valued, one where as your partner
9:36
Speaker 1: enters the front door, they see you and their eyes
9:39
Speaker 1: light up. A relationship like that is a gift. If
9:43
Speaker 1: you don't have it now you can. The Happy Family's
9:46
Speaker 1: webinar Better Together gives you the insight, tools and support
9:51
Speaker 1: you need to have a happier relationship, Available now at
9:54
Speaker 1: The Happy Family's web shop.
9:57
Speaker 2: It's The Happy Family's podcast, the podcast for a Time
9:59
Speaker 2: Poor Pairs who just wants answers Now? And I'm curious,
10:04
Speaker 2: if we're not responsible for our kids' happiness, what are
10:06
Speaker 2: we responsible for? Doctaicals.
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Speaker 1: The first thing I'm going to say is that we're
10:09
Speaker 1: responsible for teaching our children to find their own happiness,
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Speaker 1: and they're most likely to find it not by searching
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Speaker 1: for it. If we do things because we think they're
10:17
Speaker 1: going to make us happy, we will often not always,
10:20
Speaker 1: but we will often be disappointed. In fact, happiness often
10:23
Speaker 1: comes from the anticipation of something, not doing it. You
10:26
Speaker 1: struggle with this one, don't you. I've talked about this
10:28
Speaker 1: before with the chocolate cake analogy. The anticipation of the
10:31
Speaker 1: chocolate cake is actually often better than the chocolate cake itself.
10:34
Speaker 1: It's the excitement of the trip that's quite often better
10:37
Speaker 1: than the trip itself, not always, not always, but our
10:41
Speaker 1: brain gets so excited about things. You're looking at me like,
10:44
Speaker 1: I still don't buy it.
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Speaker 2: When you say a holiday, I agree with that wholeheartedly.
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Speaker 2: More times than not, the actual living through a holiday
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Speaker 2: is not anywhere near as good as I imagined it
10:56
Speaker 2: would be, especially if the kids are involved.
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Speaker 1: Yes, that's right, but.
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Speaker 2: I'm still going to say that eating the chocolate cake
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Speaker 2: is better than anticipating it.
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Speaker 1: You've always said that since the first time I shared
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Speaker 1: this idea with you. But we are responsible for helping
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Speaker 1: our kids to find their own happiness, and there's a
11:14
Speaker 1: handful of ways that we can do that. The first
11:16
Speaker 1: one is we need to teach them how to understand
11:18
Speaker 1: their emotions.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a big one. I think that so often,
11:23
Speaker 2: especially as kids, but I think even as adults, we
11:25
Speaker 2: get so overwhelmed by the emotion we don't even know
11:27
Speaker 2: what it is, and so helping them to understand it
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Speaker 2: helps them to recognize that they actually have control over.
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Speaker 1: It, right, And that's the critical thing. Nobody else can
11:37
Speaker 1: make you feel happy or sad. And when you start
11:39
Speaker 1: to understand how your emotions are working, that your emotions
11:41
Speaker 1: are just giving you information that you can accept that information,
11:45
Speaker 1: or you can argue against it that there are different
11:46
Speaker 1: ways to deal with the emotional information that's coming through
11:49
Speaker 1: your system. As that starts to resonate for your children,
11:54
Speaker 1: they start to learn how to regulate those emotions better
11:57
Speaker 1: and choose for themselves how they want to be presenting
12:01
Speaker 1: in the world, how they want to be showing up
12:03
Speaker 1: critically important. So we've got to help our kids to
12:06
Speaker 1: understand emotions. Usually we're going to do that best by
12:08
Speaker 1: emotion coaching. While emotion coaching, especially as suggested by Professor
12:13
Speaker 1: John Gotman, is often well done in the moment, my
12:17
Speaker 1: experience with our kids has been that it doesn't work
12:20
Speaker 1: so well in the moment. My experience with you is
12:22
Speaker 1: that it doesn't work so well in the moment. Sometimes
12:24
Speaker 1: it does, but it takes a lot of practice. It's
12:26
Speaker 1: a really heavy skill to learn. It takes a lot
12:30
Speaker 1: to learn to do it, especially in the moment. But
12:33
Speaker 1: emotion coaching doesn't have to take place just when someone's emotional.
12:36
Speaker 1: You can deal with the emotion coaching process much more
12:40
Speaker 1: effectively sometimes after the emotional outburst, when things have calmed down,
12:45
Speaker 1: or a week later or a day later, or whatever
12:47
Speaker 1: it might be, Another way that we can help our
12:50
Speaker 1: children to find their own happiness is to teach them
12:52
Speaker 1: how to have positive relationships. Teach them what a real
12:55
Speaker 1: friend is like, what a real friend is not like,
12:59
Speaker 1: how to deal with conflict and control issues, how to
13:06
Speaker 1: repair relationships when they go wrong. When we learn how
13:09
Speaker 1: to do those things, when our kids learn how to
13:10
Speaker 1: do those things and get better at the social interactions
13:14
Speaker 1: that they're involved with, when their relationships improve, they're going
13:18
Speaker 1: to be happier.
13:19
Speaker 2: As you shared that, I remembered a couple of instances
13:22
Speaker 2: where our children have had pretty significant falling outs with
13:25
Speaker 2: their friends and they've come home just a mess. Whether
13:30
Speaker 2: it be your eye, we've got them in the car,
13:32
Speaker 2: we've driven them up the road, and they've been able
13:34
Speaker 2: to go knock on the door of their friend, and
13:37
Speaker 2: literally just that process has been It's just so beautiful
13:42
Speaker 2: to watch it because they're upset and they're burdened by
13:45
Speaker 2: what they're feeling, and if they don't face it, it
13:49
Speaker 2: just fest is and they create a mountain out of
13:52
Speaker 2: what was probably a molehill to start with. And every
13:56
Speaker 2: single time these two girls have just crashed, didn't teach
14:00
Speaker 2: you other and given each other a big hug and
14:02
Speaker 2: cried and said sorry and life goes on.
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Speaker 1: And that ties in with the next idea that I
14:07
Speaker 1: wanted to share. If you want to help your kids
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Speaker 1: to be happier, not only do they need to get
14:10
Speaker 1: relationships right and learn how relationships work and how to
14:14
Speaker 1: have good relationships, but they need to learn how to
14:17
Speaker 1: do hard things and saying sorry or asking for help.
14:21
Speaker 1: They're hard things to do. But can I just give you,
14:25
Speaker 1: like huge kudos on what you've just described. I hope
14:28
Speaker 1: that every parent who's listening to this podcast heard what
14:31
Speaker 1: you just said and got it. When the kids are
14:33
Speaker 1: fighting with a friend, sometimes instead of just leaving them
14:36
Speaker 1: to figure it out for themselves, sometimes the best thing
14:39
Speaker 1: you can do is stick me in the car and
14:41
Speaker 1: drop them to their friend's house and go knocking on
14:44
Speaker 1: the door and say, oh, my kid needs to talk
14:47
Speaker 1: to your kid. Can we just get them together for
14:50
Speaker 1: a minute. You've done that a handful of times with
14:52
Speaker 1: our kids over the years, and relationships are restored. But
14:55
Speaker 1: it's doing hard things. If you want your kids to
14:57
Speaker 1: be happy, you can't give them an easy life. You've
14:59
Speaker 1: got to get them the opportunity to do things that
15:01
Speaker 1: are hard to invent, or to get curious, or to
15:04
Speaker 1: push their limits, or to try and to fail and
15:06
Speaker 1: to I don't know, memorize lines in a musical, or
15:10
Speaker 1: learn how to play an instrument, or get good at
15:13
Speaker 1: a sport, or practice an art, do karate, whatever it is.
15:18
Speaker 1: Doing hard things makes us happy. I know the kids
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Speaker 1: winge and wine and complain and say this is the
15:23
Speaker 1: worst day. Hey there's a coach down doing this. I
15:25
Speaker 1: don't want to do this anymore. And yet by pushing
15:28
Speaker 1: through those hard times, they tend to be so grateful
15:33
Speaker 1: and tend to be much happier because they did something hard.
15:36
Speaker 1: It builds resilience, It builds self efficacy, it builds confidence,
15:39
Speaker 1: it builds satisfaction. It actually creates happiness as a byproduct,
15:44
Speaker 1: not as an end in itself.
15:47
Speaker 2: I love it.
15:47
Speaker 1: What's a five? The last one is that we need
15:50
Speaker 1: to teach them to be responsible for their own emotions,
15:53
Speaker 1: for their own happiness, which is kind of the recurring
15:55
Speaker 1: theme of this podcast. They get to choose, They get
15:59
Speaker 1: to choose if they're going to be And we've had
16:01
Speaker 1: this conversation conversation without kids so many times. You know
16:03
Speaker 1: what you get to choose, You get to choose if
16:05
Speaker 1: you want to lay here and be miserable or if
16:06
Speaker 1: you want to get up and come and join us
16:08
Speaker 1: and be happy. And every now and again our kids
16:09
Speaker 1: have looked at us and said, I choose misery. Yes, okay,
16:14
Speaker 1: that's your choice. We're going to go out there and
16:15
Speaker 1: we're going to smile and have a great time because
16:17
Speaker 1: we love being together. When you feel like doing that,
16:19
Speaker 1: come and join us. They get to choose.
16:22
Speaker 2: But if we're being completely transparent, every now and again,
16:24
Speaker 2: you and I choose misery too.
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Speaker 1: We do because we're human, like I've done a few
16:29
Speaker 1: times over the last couple of weeks because it's been hard.
16:31
Speaker 1: But we really hope that these ideas are helpful for
16:35
Speaker 1: you and your family. When we think that we're responsible
16:38
Speaker 1: for our kids' happiness, or anyone's for that matter, we
16:41
Speaker 1: make short sighted decisions. We put an impossible load on
16:47
Speaker 1: our own shoulders, We set our children up to fail.
16:52
Speaker 1: We will never actually satisfy them anyway. And all we
16:58
Speaker 1: do is kind of suthe ourselves in the moment, makes
17:00
Speaker 1: it makes selves feel like we're doing a good job.
17:02
Speaker 1: We're not. What we're responsible for is helping our kids
17:05
Speaker 1: to find their own happiness, not by searching for it,
17:07
Speaker 1: but by understanding their emotional world, by practicing healthy relationships,
17:11
Speaker 1: by doing hard things, by repairing relationships, and by being
17:15
Speaker 1: responsible for their own emotions.
17:17
Speaker 2: It's a big list.
17:18
Speaker 1: Well, it's not supposed to be easy. Missus Happy Families.
17:22
Speaker 1: I'm not responsible for people being happy to have heard it.
17:24
Speaker 1: I just want to share the ideas. The Happy Families
17:26
Speaker 1: podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Craig
17:29
Speaker 1: Bruce is our executive producer and if you'd like more
17:32
Speaker 1: information about how to make your family happier, you can
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Speaker 1: find a whole lot of content about the stuff we're
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Speaker 1: sharing in this podcast on our Facebook page Doctor Justin
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Speaker 1: Coulson's Happy Families