Speaker 1: Good parenting is a pretty tricky idea to talk about,
Speaker 1: especially in the age of social media. Even with the
Speaker 1: mountain of books about parenting, it still feels like you're
Speaker 1: throwing into the deep end when you first become a parent,
Speaker 1: and then every moment in your children's lives makes you
Speaker 1: feel like you're starting all over again. Parenting a toddler,
Speaker 1: between a teenager and even an adult can feel like
Speaker 1: diving in the deep end every single year. If parenting
Speaker 1: feels like a full time job, imagine how doctor Justin
Speaker 1: Coulson feels. Not only is he the father of six daughters,
Speaker 1: but he's also one of Australia's most trusted parenting experts.
Speaker 1: He's the author of a slew of successful parenting books,
Speaker 1: the host of The Happy Family's podcast, and co host
Speaker 1: of Channel nine's Parental Guidance.
Speaker 2: Vice.
Speaker 1: Does Justin have about motivating people, especially little people, to
Speaker 1: do something that they just don't want to do? What
Speaker 1: goes on behind making a successful TV show for a
Speaker 1: commercial network and why is giving people less information instead
Speaker 1: of more a better strategy for communicating. My name is
Speaker 1: doctor amanthe Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder
Speaker 1: of behavioral science consultancy Inventium and this is how I
Speaker 1: work a show about how to help you do your
Speaker 1: best work. Something that you might have been asked in
Speaker 1: your life is have you achieved your potential? Or if
Speaker 1: you're a parent, perhaps you're focused on helping your kids
Speaker 1: reach their potential. But Justin Coulson is not a fan
Speaker 1: of the idea of potential.
Speaker 2: A while ago, I was driving past a scoo and
Speaker 2: there was this beautiful sign with a smiling child who
Speaker 2: was looking like they were just living their best life.
Speaker 2: And underneath the sign out to the front of the school,
Speaker 2: it said helping your child achieve their potential. And I
Speaker 2: remember looking at my wife and saying to her, would
Speaker 2: you like our children to achieve their potential? And Kylie said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean that sounds great. Isn't that why we send
Speaker 2: our kids to private school? Because at the time we
Speaker 2: were doing that. And I said, I'm just curious, honey,
Speaker 2: have you achieved your potential? And she looked at me
Speaker 2: strangely and said, no, not yet. And I said, are
Speaker 2: we getting this wrong? Why do we actually think that
Speaker 2: we can that our children can achieve their potential? Achieving
Speaker 2: your potential is one of those how long is a
Speaker 2: piece of string kind of things. You can never actually
Speaker 2: achieve your potential. Even when you do your best, you
Speaker 2: know that you could have done better. Let's say it's
Speaker 2: a cross country race, or a swimming race, or it's
Speaker 2: an exam, no matter what you do, no matter how
Speaker 2: you review the presentation you just delivered, or I mean
Speaker 2: you pick it. Whatever it is that you do for work,
Speaker 2: you might be laying bricks, no matter how well you
Speaker 2: lay those bricks, no matter how were you cut that hair,
Speaker 2: no matter how were you put the brass in for
Speaker 2: the plumbing for the water to travel. I don't care
Speaker 2: what it is. There's always going to be something that
Speaker 2: you could do just that little bit better. I don't
Speaker 2: know that we ever actually achieve our potential. And the
Speaker 2: idea that we're going to, I feel feeds into the
Speaker 2: anxiety riven, perfectionistic culture that we're creating that's so harmful
Speaker 2: for our families, so harmful for our children, and frankly
Speaker 2: so harmful for us. Just when I see helping your
Speaker 2: children live up to their potential, now I want to
Speaker 2: kind of tear the sign down and say, can they
Speaker 2: just be kids? Can we just have a family where
Speaker 2: we like, if I go to the beach this afternoon
Speaker 2: with my kids. I lived near the coast, right, So
Speaker 2: when I pick the kids up from school, if I
Speaker 2: take them down to the beach, have I failed them
Speaker 2: because they're not living up to their potential this afternoon
Speaker 2: because we're lounging around on the beach and swinging in
Speaker 2: the waves. I mean that we have this always on optimizing, maximizing,
Speaker 2: fulfilling potential mindset that has helped us to get to
Speaker 2: the moon and have jet travel and genetically modified foods
Speaker 2: and all of the things that make life better or worse,
Speaker 2: depending on what your perspective might be. And yet I
Speaker 2: think that we're actually missing out on what life really
Speaker 2: is about. I'm not convinced that life has to be
Speaker 2: constantly about fulfilling our potential.
Speaker 1: It's a good segue into talking about motivation. I think
Speaker 1: I know that we're both fans of self determination theory.
Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite theories of motivation. Tell me
Speaker 1: how you think about motivation, and particularly when you're trying
Speaker 1: to motivate your own kids to do something that they
Speaker 1: don't want to do. And I'm sort of asking for
Speaker 1: myself here I'm keen to hear what you do.
Speaker 2: Justin now you need to remind me how old your beauty.
Speaker 1: I've got an eight year old daughter, eight year old
Speaker 1: daughter who there are many things that she enjoys that
Speaker 1: like doing her times tables, would not be on that
Speaker 1: least I would.
Speaker 2: Say, yeah, yeah, well there's a handful of things here.
Speaker 2: So let's actually dive into self determination theory because it
Speaker 2: is consistently the theory that has the most abundant and
Speaker 2: practical body of evidence supporting it. And while there hasn't
Speaker 2: been a lot of work done with self determination theory
Speaker 2: and parenting in comparison to organizational behavior and so on,
Speaker 2: what is there is profound and impactful. So the first
Speaker 2: thing is that self determination theory, for those who are
Speaker 2: not familiar with this concept, is a psychological idea that
Speaker 2: was developed back in the nineteen seventies by ed DC
Speaker 2: and Rich Ryan at the University of Rochester and Upstate
Speaker 2: New York. It's about an hour away from Niagara Falls. Beautiful,
Speaker 2: beautiful place and so much around there. Anyway, ed DC
Speaker 2: and Rich Ryan identify that when it comes to motivation,
Speaker 2: there are three what they call psychological nutriments or basic
Speaker 2: psychological needs that we each have, and when those needs
Speaker 2: are met, our motivation increases, and so too does our
Speaker 2: well being. When those needs are not met, our motivation decreases,
Speaker 2: and so to does our well being. The first of
Speaker 2: those is relatedness, a sense of belonging, knowing that you matter.
Speaker 2: The idea of relatedness kind of When I think of relatedness,
Speaker 2: I think of connection. And Brene Brown defines connection in
Speaker 2: rising strong, in such succinct and sublime terms. She says,
Speaker 2: connection is feeling seen, heard, and valued. When we're in
Speaker 2: a relationship where we don't feel seen, heard or valued,
Speaker 2: we don't have any connection. Therefore, we don't really have
Speaker 2: a relationship. But when we're in a relationship where those
Speaker 2: things exist, it's powerful. It's just incredible. So from a
Speaker 2: child's perspective, let's talk about the times tables. If we,
Speaker 2: as a parent are focused on what I would what
Speaker 2: I would call correction and direction, which rhyme with connection,
Speaker 2: but they do very different things. If our focus is
Speaker 2: on correction and direction, what we end up doing is
Speaker 2: we we become coercive. We become the manipulative, cajoling parent
Speaker 2: who's saying you need to do this. Why haven't you
Speaker 2: done this already? No, not like that? Like this? How
Speaker 2: many times do I have to ask you? If this
Speaker 2: is the first, though it's a thousand, and we kind
Speaker 2: of we flip out a little bit. What that does
Speaker 2: to the relationship is devastating. If you're an eight year
Speaker 2: old girl or a two year old toddler, or a
Speaker 2: seventeen year old boy who is desperate to be seen,
Speaker 2: hurd and valued, to feel like he matters and belongs
Speaker 2: and is part of that fundamental unit of what our
Speaker 2: society has become, that nuclear family. If he doesn't feel seen,
Speaker 2: hurd or valued, if all that matters is the grade
Speaker 2: or the capacity to get through those seven times tables,
Speaker 2: because an eight year old should know their seven year
Speaker 2: old there's seven times tables by now, Then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, the relationship shifts. It doesn't become about people,
Speaker 2: It becomes about things like times tables, or dishes or
Speaker 2: tidy rooms. And Amantha, if life let alone self determination theory.
Speaker 2: If life has taught me anything is that people matter,
Speaker 2: things don't. When I think about how I would help
Speaker 2: my eight year old daughter to do her times tables,
Speaker 2: it would be together, because it's motivating to do something
Speaker 2: with someone I had an experience the other day. Actually,
Speaker 2: let me go through the other two things and then
Speaker 2: I'll share the experience. The second basic psychological need that
Speaker 2: DC and Ryan identified is competence. Competence, Now you think
Speaker 2: about it when you start a new job and you
Speaker 2: don't you know what it's like. You go through orientation. You
Speaker 2: show up at the workplace. They sit you down and
Speaker 2: they say, okay, this is where you're going to be working.
Speaker 2: Toilets are over there, I'll, by the way, meet and
Speaker 2: I'd like you to meet Jenny, and this is Sue.
Speaker 2: And they go through the fifteen people that you're going
Speaker 2: to be working with and you meet them all and
Speaker 2: shake their hands or you fist pump them or whatever
Speaker 2: you do in these COVID dish sort of times. And
Speaker 2: then they say, and before we do any of this,
Speaker 2: here's the orientation video. There's three hours of orientation content
Speaker 2: for you. And this is the payroll slip. You log
Speaker 2: on here, you'll put your password in and then you
Speaker 2: feel in these things, but not those ones, only these ones,
Speaker 2: and la da da da. And the orientation process takes
Speaker 2: let's say a day or half a day, and you
Speaker 2: show up the next day for work and you're ready
Speaker 2: right like, do you remember how you have to go
Speaker 2: and ask somebody, how do I feel in the pay
Speaker 2: slip again? I mean, this is the most important part
Speaker 2: of working. You're going to there to get paid and
Speaker 2: you don't even know how to fill a pay slip
Speaker 2: in You feel completely incompetent. You don't know how to
Speaker 2: open the toilet door, you don't remember anybody's names. You
Speaker 2: kind of all over the place. And when our children
Speaker 2: are growing the majority of their lives, they feel incompetent.
Speaker 2: We put them into a standardized, structured I'm going to
Speaker 2: use the term that Todd Rose in his book Dark
Speaker 2: Horse uses. He talks about this standardization, the standardized covenant
Speaker 2: that we make with everyone else in society, that where
Speaker 2: our children will follow a standardized path from the time
Speaker 2: that they're entering school at age four or five right
Speaker 2: through until pick whatever time you want. But it's later
Speaker 2: on in life and they finally retire at sixty five
Speaker 2: and say, what do I do with my life because
Speaker 2: I followed the standardized covenant. As our children go through
Speaker 2: this progression through the school years, they feel incompetent most
Speaker 2: of the day. Most days as teachers, continue to pile
Speaker 2: on the work and pile on everything else. And so
Speaker 2: when we're sitting down at home, we're saying, all right, kid, oh,
Speaker 2: it's sign for a second shift. I know you've already
Speaker 2: done six hours to day, but let's do some timetables.
Speaker 2: They've already felt incompetent all day, and now they're feeling
Speaker 2: incompetent again. Our job as parents is to help them
Speaker 2: to feel competent, otherwise they're not going to be motivated.
Speaker 2: And you know what it's like, if you've ever work
Speaker 2: with anyone who's struggling, the words out of their mouth
Speaker 2: will be I can't. And with that sense of I
Speaker 2: can't incompetence in capacity, there's this diminished motivation and there's
Speaker 2: a sense of hopelessness, foreboding this is too hard, I
Speaker 2: can't do it. So that's the second basic psychological need.
Speaker 2: So when you're sitting down with your precious eight year
Speaker 2: old and you say it's time to do times tables,
Speaker 2: you do the times tables while I'll prepare dinner. Number one,
Speaker 2: there's no sense of relatedness because we're not in a
Speaker 2: relationship here together. You why I'm in one room, you're
Speaker 2: in the other room, or even if we're across the
Speaker 2: kitchen bench, we're not really engaging with one another. And
Speaker 2: there's this sense of incompetence. And the third challenge that
Speaker 2: we have, and this is the biggest to me, the
Speaker 2: psychological need that's most important of all, is this sense
Speaker 2: of autonomy. That is, am I a volitional agent or
Speaker 2: actor in my own life? Or am I just being
Speaker 2: pushed from pillar to post and doing what everyone else
Speaker 2: tells me to? Am I under control? Or am I
Speaker 2: actually getting to choose to control myself? And when it
Speaker 2: comes to kids and motivation, wow, we just constantly I
Speaker 2: don't know that there's any data on this, but I
Speaker 2: reckon if we as parents were to just make a
Speaker 2: little note on a scratchpad every time we gave our
Speaker 2: children some correction or direction, every time we told them
Speaker 2: what to do, I think that we would probably do it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, what do you reckon? Ten twenty thirty
Speaker 2: times an hour, forty times an hour, forty times a
Speaker 2: minute sometimes. So with all of that as backdrop, that's
Speaker 2: the theory in a nutshell. So in a very basic way,
Speaker 2: the other day, I'm in the garden, I'm picking up leaves,
Speaker 2: We've just moved from one and a quarter acres to
Speaker 2: eight hundred square meters. On the one and a quarter acres,
Speaker 2: I didn't worry about the leaves, but now I've got
Speaker 2: eight hundred square meters, it feels doable. And I like
Speaker 2: my lawn looking nice, and the trees is dropping some
Speaker 2: leaves and there's just one little area where all these
Speaker 2: leaves land. And I figured it's something going to take
Speaker 2: me three minutes. I can pick these leaves up. And
Speaker 2: then I thought, hang on, I've got kids. They should
Speaker 2: be helping me pick up these leaves. So I called
Speaker 2: out to my twelve year old and my eight year
Speaker 2: old Emily. Lily come here. Now, Lily's twelve. She came
Speaker 2: out and I said, hey, kiddo, I'm picking up some leaves.
Speaker 2: Will you join me? And, like any self respecting twelve
Speaker 2: year old, she rolled her eyes and went, oh, but
Speaker 2: she came over. I don't know. She knew that I
Speaker 2: had that expectation, and she's big enough to regulate herself well,
Speaker 2: and she came over and started helping to pick up
Speaker 2: the leaves. Emily came out and saw what I was asking,
Speaker 2: and she said, that's not fair. I hate picking up
Speaker 2: leaves and had a big tan from right on the spot.
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it. So I made a decision because
Speaker 2: my relationship with her matters. People matter, things don't, and
Speaker 2: because I wondered whether she just felt like I don't
Speaker 2: think confidence was an issue, but I certainly thought that
Speaker 2: autonomy was an issue. I thought to myself, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to say anything. I'm just going to keep on
Speaker 2: picking up the leaves with Lily. Well, Emily disappeared, and
Speaker 2: I have a rule most parents, when they asked their
Speaker 2: children to do something, if they don't get response within
Speaker 2: about ten seconds, they ask again, and then they give
Speaker 2: them about five seconds they ask again. I have a
Speaker 2: rule that I try my very hardest not to ask
Speaker 2: for about five minutes. So I gave it what I
Speaker 2: thought was going to be five minutes. But about a
Speaker 2: minute later, Emily walked back out of the front of
Speaker 2: the house and walked over to me, and she started
Speaker 2: picking up leaves. She was in a bit of a
Speaker 2: bad mood about it, but she just came over and helped.
Speaker 2: And then I had this idea, I'm going to go
Speaker 2: and grab the rake. So I went and got the
Speaker 2: rake and started to rake some leaves, and Emily said,
Speaker 2: can I do that? Now? Emily doesn't know how to
Speaker 2: use a rake, and there's all sorts of bush, chip
Speaker 2: and soil that's going to get moved all over the place.
Speaker 2: And I knew that she was going to make a mess,
Speaker 2: but I handed it at the rake and let it
Speaker 2: go for it. And Lily wanted to step in and say, no,
Speaker 2: you're making a mess, You're doing it wrong. And I said, Lily,
Speaker 2: she only learns if she's got the opportunity. And if
Speaker 2: I keep on telling how incompetent she is, she's going
Speaker 2: to lose motivation. And so Emily within about three minutes,
Speaker 2: had figured out how to use the rake with any
Speaker 2: instruction at all. She's figured it out. And then she
Speaker 2: started to tidy up the mess that she'd made in
Speaker 2: the first three minutes. And within about five minutes all
Speaker 2: of the leaves were done. And how the kids they
Speaker 2: were playing and they were laughing. They love being in
Speaker 2: our space. If we unpack that story, what is really
Speaker 2: going on here is we've got a sense of belonging,
Speaker 2: a sense of relatedness. The kids were together with me.
Speaker 2: I didn't send them out into the yard to do it.
Speaker 2: We were doing it together. And that's how ancient tribes
Speaker 2: used to work with their children. They didn't say, hey,
Speaker 2: go over there and hunt the lion. They'd say, let's
Speaker 2: go on a lion hunting trip, or don't let's forage together.
Speaker 2: They didn't send the kids off one hundred yards down,
Speaker 2: the one hundred meters down or a kilometer down the road.
Speaker 2: So they went and foraged together. They don't send one
Speaker 2: person to get water. They all go to get the water.
Speaker 2: So there's that belonging. But there's also the competence in
Speaker 2: that our kids have got to do stuff for themselves
Speaker 2: and learn for themselves. The more we are teaching them,
Speaker 2: the less competent they feel, and the more anxious they
Speaker 2: are that they've got to be perfect, that they can't
Speaker 2: measure up, that things are never that I'm no good
Speaker 2: at do it. And so it's about backing off, not
Speaker 2: controlling in terms of their confidence, but also about giving
Speaker 2: them the freedom to or the autonomy to have that
Speaker 2: inner pang of I want to be close to them
Speaker 2: and I want to do what they're doing because they're
Speaker 2: all having a good time. Now, screens are a disaster there.
Speaker 2: Screens will get in the way of that. So we
Speaker 2: need to minimize screens. But other than that, that's that's
Speaker 2: the way I'm be going. So back to the not specifically,
Speaker 2: but perhaps a little bit helpfully working on Amantha and
Speaker 2: eight year old times tables, it's more like, hey, let's
Speaker 2: let's play a game. So we sit down with our
Speaker 2: eight year old and we make it a game. We
Speaker 2: have some fun with it, and we do it together.
Speaker 2: We turn into a quiz, or we buy some of
Speaker 2: those flash cards, or we pull out some Smarties or
Speaker 2: some M and M's or whatever confectionery of choice. Maybe
Speaker 2: maybe it's some hagues freckles, Amantha, I mean, take your pick.
Speaker 2: But we turn it into a one game where we're
Speaker 2: engaging with one another, where our child is choosing to
Speaker 2: be there, and where their competence is developing because they're
Speaker 2: with us and it's fun. That's how I would be
Speaker 2: trying to do everything.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I know life is not a game show, but our
Speaker 2: children are little. It's not like they're out there in
Speaker 2: the workforce. Yet some people say, oh, you know, the
Speaker 2: real world isn't like that, and my response is, well,
Speaker 2: when they're big enough for the real world, we'll let
Speaker 2: them deal with that, then they will actually mature and develop.
Speaker 2: We expect so much of our children emotionally, so much emotionally,
Speaker 2: much more than they're developmentally capable of providing, quite frankly,
Speaker 2: and we expect so little of them physically, much less
Speaker 2: than they're willing they're able to do. I love it.
Speaker 1: I'm don't going to be definitely a flying those strategies
Speaker 1: with my daughter. I want to talk about Parental Guidance,
Speaker 1: which was the TV show that the first season went
Speaker 1: to air. I want to say in the back half
Speaker 1: of last year, twenty twenty one, and the second season
Speaker 1: is airing soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't give you exact details. The programming people
Speaker 2: at Channel Mine won't allow me to do that, but
Speaker 2: in the second half of twenty twenty two is probably
Speaker 2: the best I can give you.
Speaker 1: Amazing. For those that didn't see Parental Guidance, can you,
Speaker 1: in a nutshell describe what that show was about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got a whole lot of different parents who
Speaker 2: acknowledged that their parenting styles are quite different. So we
Speaker 2: had helicopter parents, and we had tiger parents, and we
Speaker 2: had free range parents, and we had nature parents who
Speaker 2: were literally living in a tent. We had a single
Speaker 2: mum who was a homeschool parent. We had a couple
Speaker 2: of dads who were routine parents. We had two school
Speaker 2: teachers who were the disciplined parents. We had a Baptist
Speaker 2: minister and his wife they were the strict parents. And
Speaker 2: so all of these, I mean, let's be honest, these
Speaker 2: parenting styles are made for TV. In a lot of
Speaker 2: there's some research evidence for some of these styles, but
Speaker 2: for the most part, they just made for TV media
Speaker 2: oriented styles. But there are different ways that all of
Speaker 2: us raise our kids. And so we got each of
Speaker 2: these families to do a whole lot of different challenges
Speaker 2: and then something that you never see on any other
Speaker 2: television show ever, so reality TV. Normally people get it
Speaker 2: all recorded and then that's it. That's all they do.
Speaker 2: And then the people in post production put this TV
Speaker 2: show together and they craft these narratives and get to
Speaker 2: say whatever they want to about those people in the show. Really,
Speaker 2: what we do in Parental Guidance is we sit in
Speaker 2: a studio with all of those parents and we watch
Speaker 2: their challenges back and then we have kind of like
Speaker 2: this big roundtable discussion with what was ten sets of
Speaker 2: parents about what they saw those parents do or what
Speaker 2: those parents did and what worked and what didn't. It
Speaker 2: actually becomes a little bit of a let's sit down
Speaker 2: and tease apart how we're parenting, and let's take criticism
Speaker 2: and judgment and let's take the good with the bad
Speaker 2: and see how we can improve the way we raise
Speaker 2: our kids. So that's what parental guidance is all about.
Speaker 2: And I was the parenting expert. I am the parenting
Speaker 2: expert and co host on the.
Speaker 1: Show I'd love to know for you making a show
Speaker 1: about parenting that's on Free Too Wear TV and it's
Speaker 1: watched by lots and lots of people, Like, what were
Speaker 1: some of the biggest things that you learned in that.
Speaker 2: First series where you know, it.
Speaker 1: Was this whole new experience for you, Like outside of anything,
Speaker 1: you learned about the different kinds of parents and the
Speaker 1: parenting styles.
Speaker 2: For you personally as someone that.
Speaker 1: Like your normal day to day work is doing things
Speaker 1: like writing and keynote speaking and the Happy Families podcast,
Speaker 1: what were some of the biggest things that you learned
Speaker 1: from that experience.
Speaker 2: Amantha, this might sound really obvious, but what I saw
Speaker 2: was just how much these parents love their kids. And
Speaker 2: I know everyone knows. Everyone says, I love my kids
Speaker 2: like crazy, But we don't have these kinds of conversations
Speaker 2: in our society in any meaningful way. In any other forum,
Speaker 2: I've not seen people sit around and talk about parenting,
Speaker 2: the good and the bad, and literally talk about the
Speaker 2: way other people are raising their children in a constructive way.
Speaker 2: It was just extraordinary to see the love that they
Speaker 2: have for their kids, the complete dedication they have to
Speaker 2: raising children well. But the other thing that I learned
Speaker 2: is that you can have hard conversations with people who
Speaker 2: see the world differently to you and make them productive
Speaker 2: and constructive, make them helpful, and even make them entertaining.
Speaker 2: I was just amazed at how the show went. It
Speaker 2: was such an eye opening experience for me.
Speaker 1: We will be back with Justin soon where he unpacks
Speaker 1: what he now applies unconsciously to be such an effective communicator.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for more tips to improve the way
Speaker 1: that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that
Speaker 1: contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me
Speaker 1: work better, ranging from software and gadgets that I'm loving
Speaker 1: three to interesting research findings. You can sign up for
Speaker 1: that at Howiwork dot code. That's how I work dot co.
Speaker 1: If you were to unpack some of the things that
Speaker 1: perhaps you unconsciously do and to think about consciously what
Speaker 1: they are, because like you speak so well, you're such
Speaker 1: a great storyteller, You're so succinct and just clear with
Speaker 1: what you're saying. I've been struck by that on the
Speaker 1: you know, on the conversations that we've had. What's going
Speaker 1: on in the background to do that, or what are
Speaker 1: the rituals or practices that you've adopted to get to
Speaker 1: be so good? Like for example, I remember I had
Speaker 1: Sandra Sally on the show a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: now and something that struck me. It's like she's been
Speaker 1: reading the news for I think three decades or something
Speaker 1: like that, and she will still quite regularly watch herself
Speaker 1: back And I was really struck by that and surprised,
Speaker 1: but in a very impressed way that she has that
Speaker 1: despite the fact she's been doing it for thirty years.
Speaker 2: So I'd love to know what do you do justin
Speaker 2: the first thing is that you have to know your stuff.
Speaker 2: If you're going to stand up in front of people,
Speaker 2: you have to know your stuff. And I know there's
Speaker 2: a whole lot of people who will say, oh, imposter syndrome,
Speaker 2: I don't know my stuff. Everyone else knows more than me.
Speaker 2: I learned some years ago that we really do believe
Speaker 2: that if we know something, then it's common knowledge. We
Speaker 2: really believe that if I know it, everyone else knows
Speaker 2: it as well. Over time, I've discovered that that's not
Speaker 2: true at all. Your unique experience, your unique perspective, The
Speaker 2: way that you bring information to the fore is yours.
Speaker 2: It may be that other people have heard the same story,
Speaker 2: or they've heard a similar concept, but know your stuff.
Speaker 2: That's if you don't know what you're talking about. No
Speaker 2: matter how much you do. The whole lot of how
Speaker 2: to win friends and influence people Norman Vincent pill sort
Speaker 2: of stuff, it won't work. People will know that it's
Speaker 2: not legit. The second thing is clarity of thought. The
Speaker 2: things that you've asked me about today, I've answered in
Speaker 2: roundabout ways, not directly necessarily, but in roundabout ways for
Speaker 2: a couple of decades now. The questions that you've asked
Speaker 2: are about things that I've worked over in my mind
Speaker 2: so many ways so that I can tell a cohesive
Speaker 2: story craft useful narrative. The third thing that I would
Speaker 2: say is to remember the power of stories when you're
Speaker 2: trying to make an argument. Facts and research matter, but
Speaker 2: when you're trying to sell an argument, and at the
Speaker 2: risk of cheapening what our conversation is. Ultimately, what I'm
Speaker 2: trying to do here is sell certain ideas. That is
Speaker 2: that if we help our children feel like they matter
Speaker 2: and belong, if they feel like they're growing incompetence and capability,
Speaker 2: and if they're given some choice, I mean I'm selling
Speaker 2: self determination theory in some way, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: The facts and figures are useful, but it's the story
Speaker 2: that pulls people in. It's the story that creates emotion.
Speaker 2: It's the story that helps people say, ah, I was
Speaker 2: in that situation just the other day, and I could
Speaker 2: have brought my daughter in this way, or I could
Speaker 2: have gone to my son with this kind of approach.
Speaker 2: So it's actually finding the stories. I remember a wonderfully
Speaker 2: wise man once told me after he heard me give
Speaker 2: a talk one time. He said, justin you're trying to
Speaker 2: give everyone a PhD in sixty minutes. You can't do
Speaker 2: that when you're on the stage. And I said, ah,
Speaker 2: but I've just got so much stuff I want to
Speaker 2: tell people. And Dave his name is Dave Staughton. And
Speaker 2: Dave looked at me and said, justin you've got to
Speaker 2: stop giving people so much stuff and give them a
Speaker 2: whole lot more fluff. And when he said that, I
Speaker 2: was so offended. I thought, hang on a second, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to give people fluff. They're paying good money
Speaker 2: for my content and I'm here to change their lives forever.
Speaker 2: But as we broke it down, what he was really
Speaker 2: saying is was there is some data and evidence that's important.
Speaker 2: That's the stuff, that's the whole PhD thing. You've got
Speaker 2: this knowledge, you want to give it to them, Pick
Speaker 2: three things that matter, focus on those, but then fill
Speaker 2: the remainder of your time with stories, with narrative, with emotion,
Speaker 2: with opportunities for people to connect the theory to the practice.
Speaker 2: In other words, the stuff and the fluff. And I
Speaker 2: think that maybe one other idea might be two, actually
Speaker 2: know two more ideas because I'm making this up on
Speaker 2: the fly. I've always found nemonics to be really useful.
Speaker 2: People remember things when you tie it to something that's
Speaker 2: easily memorable. For example, when it comes to discipline, my
Speaker 2: three ease of effective discipline that we should explore our
Speaker 2: child's world, Explain our expectations and empower our child to
Speaker 2: develop appropriate boundaries and limits and solutions with our gentle support. Explore,
Speaker 2: explain empower that's easy to remember when it comes to discipline.
Speaker 2: The secrets of happiest the happiest families. Three l's love, limits,
Speaker 2: and laughter. If you can shower your kids with love,
Speaker 2: set limits effectively using those three ease, and find opportunities
Speaker 2: to laugh, you're going to have a happy family. So
Speaker 2: those kinds of things really make a difference. The last
Speaker 2: thing probably requires another story. As a university lecturer, Amantha,
Speaker 2: I really felt strongly after a couple of years of
Speaker 2: lecturing that kids don't belong at UNI, and I actively
Speaker 2: discourage parents from sending their kids to UNI. University is
Speaker 2: a place for adults, not children. I reckon about ten
Speaker 2: percent of year twelve graduates come to university ready for
Speaker 2: what university offers. The rest of them their way to time,
Speaker 2: they're wasting money, they're just trying to figure it all out,
Speaker 2: and it's a process that they're not quite ready for.
Speaker 2: And that's because when I went back to UNI as
Speaker 2: a late twenties, father and husband. I wasn't interested in
Speaker 2: getting through UNI. I wanted UNI to go through me.
Speaker 2: There has to be something in our bones. There has
Speaker 2: to be something that we truly believe. We have to
Speaker 2: be completely committed to what we're saying to really convey
Speaker 2: and get it across to other people. It's just powerful
Speaker 2: when you know when it's in you. And when it
Speaker 2: comes to parenting, I feel like this is the whole
Speaker 2: reason I'm on the planet Earth. It's just why I'm here.
Speaker 2: And the last thing is smile. It's just powerful when
Speaker 2: we smile, Amantha, when we sound like we're happy to
Speaker 2: actually be having the conversation. My job is not to
Speaker 2: put you.
Speaker 1: To sleep, definitely not doing that. I want to dig
Speaker 1: into stories because I'm fascinated by a store worries. So
Speaker 1: when you're let's say you're crafting a new presentation, for example,
Speaker 1: and you know that you need to find stories to
Speaker 1: illustrate your points in a way that makes people want
Speaker 1: to lean in rather than just be hit with facts
Speaker 1: and figures, how are you thinking about which stories will
Speaker 1: fit best.
Speaker 2: The principle is everything, So I'll think through Let's say
Speaker 2: I'm doing something about cherishing our moments with our family,
Speaker 2: just saying this. I'm literally making it up as we speak,
Speaker 2: but I'm remembering a conversation that I had with a
Speaker 2: mum when COVID began. Like everybody, I panicked, I'm trying
Speaker 2: to run a business, and all of a sudden, I've
Speaker 2: lost I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of
Speaker 2: work just disappeared from under my nose because the country
Speaker 2: got shut down, and I had staff to pay and
Speaker 2: all kinds of stress, mortgages, children expecting food on the table.
Speaker 2: And so I opened up my calendar, which I have
Speaker 2: never done before, jumped onto Facebook and said, if you'd
Speaker 2: like to have half an hour with me, jump in
Speaker 2: my calendar, here's the cost, and I will give you
Speaker 2: a parenting kickstarter. I'll give you thirty minutes of helpful
Speaker 2: parenting guidance to just get you through whatever's happening in
Speaker 2: your family right now, particularly with COVID here, and my
Speaker 2: calendar filled up very, very very quickly, one by one.
Speaker 2: I had to chat with these wonderful families, these wonderful
Speaker 2: parents who just wanted to connect better with their kids.
Speaker 2: About the fourth last interview that I did in that fortnight,
Speaker 2: where this was my day to day routine, a lady
Speaker 2: jumped onto our call and she explained to me that
Speaker 2: about a year earlier, her two little girls had said
Speaker 2: goodbye to their dad. He'd passed away unexpectedly. I can't
Speaker 2: remember the details now, unfortunately, but he'd I think he'd
Speaker 2: experienced a tragic accident on the road or something like that.
Speaker 2: And so I expected, with that introduction to our conversation
Speaker 2: that I was going to be helping her to guide
Speaker 2: them through a difficult grieving process. So in my mind,
Speaker 2: I'm starting to get together all of the bits and
Speaker 2: pieces that will be helpful in my conversation with her
Speaker 2: when she says to me, but I'm not actually talking
Speaker 2: to you about that. I need to talk to you
Speaker 2: because about a week ago I was given a terminal
Speaker 2: diagnosis of cancer. Oh gosh, and now I only have
Speaker 2: approximately eight weeks to live, and I haven't told them yet.
Speaker 2: My two little girls are going to be orphans. And
Speaker 2: I remember sitting on the phone thinking to her, and
Speaker 2: you're asking me for advice, like how do I do that?
Speaker 2: How do I help here? And we ended up having
Speaker 2: a beautiful, beautiful conversation. It was one of the most
Speaker 2: inspiring conversations of my life. And so if I was
Speaker 2: to be asked to give a talk about loving your
Speaker 2: kids or making the most of most moments, I would
Speaker 2: go to a story like that. I mean, I haven't
Speaker 2: thought of that story for a long long time, but
Speaker 2: just that question, and it's prompted that. So we've all
Speaker 2: got a back catalog of stories, and somehow something will
Speaker 2: prompt or poke or prod a story to come out
Speaker 2: of the recesses of our mind and we'll be able
Speaker 2: to bring it to the four. What matters is that
Speaker 2: it's relevant. And what I usually try to do. I've
Speaker 2: got a fairly simple formula. It's not perfect. I'm very
Speaker 2: very flexible with it. But I'll pick a topic, and
Speaker 2: I'll pick my couple of things that need to be
Speaker 2: said about that topic, and then I'll look for some
Speaker 2: one evidence to a story, and then three something else
Speaker 2: that will fill it out a little bit. So if
Speaker 2: it was about making the most of most moments, I'd
Speaker 2: probably do that, and then I would say, and let's
Speaker 2: have a think about how many moments we have. I'm
Speaker 2: just graving my calculator here as we talk here, our
Speaker 2: children by the time they're adults. They're eighteen years old,
Speaker 2: there are fifty two weeks in a year. We get
Speaker 2: nine hundred and thirty six weekends with our children from
Speaker 2: the time they're born. Oh gosh, I'm getting weepy just
Speaker 2: think about it. Goes too We have nine hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty six weekends with our children from the time that
Speaker 2: they're born until the time that they're eighteen. Now, we're
Speaker 2: going to lose a whole lot of them with birthday
Speaker 2: parties and with school camps and with what once they're
Speaker 2: in their teens and they've got jobs and we're not
Speaker 2: seeing them on the weekends. But if you've only got
Speaker 2: nine hundred and thirty six and then you count down
Speaker 2: how old your kids are already, how many weekends have
Speaker 2: you really got left? What can you do to maximize
Speaker 2: that time and make the most of it? And so
Speaker 2: I play around with those kinds of ideas, and it's
Speaker 2: really just about, I don't know, seeking inspiration in your
Speaker 2: own life and in your own experience and then bringing
Speaker 2: it into a cohesive story, something that leads people along
Speaker 2: so that they feel that emotion, so that they imagine
Speaker 2: what it would be like to walk into the house
Speaker 2: and feel it empty because the kids moved out those
Speaker 2: kinds of things. That's what I'm looking for. And then
Speaker 2: bringing in the evidence. Here's what the research shows. If
Speaker 2: we do this, this, and this with our kids, we
Speaker 2: get to make the most of that and bring them
Speaker 2: into a world that makes sense to them and where
Speaker 2: they feel they belong and they get that enriching sense
Speaker 2: of knowing that they matter. I love that.
Speaker 1: Justin for people that want to consume more of what
Speaker 1: you are doing in the world, what's the best way
Speaker 1: for people to do that?
Speaker 2: All roads from Google will lead to something related to me.
Speaker 2: So we've got Parental Guidance Season two for the end
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty two. Just free tow are Channel nine.
Speaker 2: It's available. There's also a podcast, can I mention The
Speaker 2: Happy Families podcast I would love you too. My wife
Speaker 2: actually co hosts it with Miamantha. We just talk parenting.
Speaker 2: We love talking about family. We don't really make it
Speaker 2: about us very much at all. It's very much about
Speaker 2: research and what you can do to make your family
Speaker 2: happier and stronger. We don't hold ourselves up at all
Speaker 2: models of parenting perfection. In fact, we get it wrong
Speaker 2: far more than we'd like to admit. But the Happy
Speaker 2: Families podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts. And
Speaker 2: I mean, I've written seven books about making families happier. Oh,
Speaker 2: I've got to mention this one brand new, it's just
Speaker 2: just coming out. It's called A Dad's Guide to Pregnancy
Speaker 2: for Dummies. I've just written a dummies book. Make sure
Speaker 2: you get the Australian second edition right because there's an
Speaker 2: American edition and there's also a first Australian edition that
Speaker 2: I didn't do. But the Dad's Guide to Pregnancy for Dummies,
Speaker 2: if you know a dad who's I was going to
Speaker 2: say a dad who's expecting, but that would not be
Speaker 2: appropriate for me to say. I don't think if you
Speaker 2: know somebody who's about to be a dad, whether it's
Speaker 2: for the first time or the fifth time, it doesn't
Speaker 2: really matter. This is a book about how you can
Speaker 2: support your partner through pregnancy and specifically through labor, from
Speaker 2: someone who's done it six times himself. Really excited about that.
Speaker 2: So but basically, Happy Families dot com dot you just
Speaker 2: google my name and you'll find me.
Speaker 1: Think justin I feel like I always leave my chats
Speaker 1: feeling so inspired and inspired to be a better parent
Speaker 1: as well. So thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: It's such a lot. I love your podcast and I
Speaker 2: can't believe that I get to be on it. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I loved what Justin said about packing less stuff into
Speaker 1: what you communicate. I know that for me the scientist
Speaker 1: and research, a part of me wants to pack every
Speaker 1: talk that I design with heaps of strategies, and every
Speaker 1: article that I write with lots of stuff.
Speaker 2: But for me, this interview was such a.
Speaker 1: Great reminder that more can actually be less. How I
Speaker 1: work is produced by Inventing with production support from dead
Speaker 1: Set Studios. The producer for this episode was Liam Riordan,
Speaker 1: and thank you to Matt Nimba, who does the audio
Speaker 1: mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much
Speaker 1: better than.
Speaker 2: It would have otherwise. See you next time.