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Speaker 1: What if self control could be taught? What if we

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Speaker 1: could be way more effective with self control and help

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Speaker 1: our children to control themselves, to regulate their emotions, to

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Speaker 1: hold it together a whole lot better. Today we give

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Speaker 1: you the answers about how this can be done. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to the Happy Families podcast, Real Parenting Solutions every Day.

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Speaker 1: It's Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are Justin and

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Speaker 1: Kylie Coulson. Kylie, a little while ago I had to

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Speaker 1: chat with a guy called Ethan Cross, and we're going

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Speaker 1: to play some snippets from that interview and replay the

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Speaker 1: full interview on Saturday. Self control is one of those

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Speaker 1: things that we find ourselves constantly talking to our kids

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Speaker 1: about the whole idea of being able to regulate your

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Speaker 1: emotions hold it together. Sometimes the kids do better and

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Speaker 1: sometimes they do worse.

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Speaker 2: When I think about self control, I think about the acronym.

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Speaker 3: Halts, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, stress.

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Speaker 2: And how our self control capacity is minimized.

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Speaker 3: Does decrease so much, just decreases.

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Speaker 2: So much in those time things. But I also feel

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Speaker 2: like my personal experience is my self control is really

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Speaker 2: highly determined by my level of motivation. So if I

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Speaker 2: am highly motivated to exercise every day, then my ability

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Speaker 2: around self control to get out of bed and to

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Speaker 2: actually put my shoes on and go for a run

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Speaker 2: or go for a bike ride even when it's raining

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Speaker 2: is high.

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Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, isn't that curious because.

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Speaker 2: My motivation to do something is high. But if I

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Speaker 2: if I'm not motivated, then you can almost guarantee that

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Speaker 2: my self control is going to be about as low

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Speaker 2: as it can get.

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Speaker 1: So I want to share something with you from this interview.

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Speaker 1: Let me quickly I introduce who Ethan Cross is. He's

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Speaker 1: a professor at the University of Michigan's Psychology Department and

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Speaker 1: the world class, world leading Ross School of Business. He's

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Speaker 1: also the director of the Emotion and Self Control Lab.

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Speaker 1: He actually studied under Walter Michelle. The name might not

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Speaker 1: mean anything to you, but you know what.

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Speaker 2: Will He's a marshmallow.

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Speaker 4: Really you knew that. I'm so impressed.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, the marshmallow experiment. Guy, I didn't that was not

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Speaker 3: set up.

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Speaker 4: I didn't think. But you had known that obviously you

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Speaker 4: could tell from my response.

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Speaker 1: Ethan's the author of the international best seller Chatter The

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Speaker 1: Voice in Our Head, White matters and how to harness it.

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Speaker 4: It was chosen as.

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Speaker 1: One of the best New books of the Year by

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Speaker 1: The Washington Post, CNN, and USA Today, and the winning

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Speaker 1: Winter twenty twenty one selection for Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grantz's

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Speaker 1: and Cain and Dan Pink's Next Big Idea Book Club.

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Speaker 1: It's been translated into over forty languages. It's a big deal.

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Speaker 1: It was a big deal to have him on the pod.

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Speaker 1: When I asked him this question, Kylie, I love these answer.

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Speaker 4: I said, a.

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Speaker 1: Question of self control? Do some people have it and

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Speaker 1: some people just not have it? And here's how he responded.

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Speaker 5: One other thing we know is that you can change

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Speaker 5: your self control. You know, one of my pet peeves

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Speaker 5: is when I hear people saying you have no self control.

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Speaker 5: That's absolutely not true. Everyone possesses self control to some extent.

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Speaker 5: Some of us are better at exerting it in some

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Speaker 5: context as opposed to others. I may be really good

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Speaker 5: at exerting self control regulating myself when I'm working on

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Speaker 5: a problem at work, but maybe I have a little

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Speaker 5: bit more difficulties when I'm coaching soccer. That's not true.

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Speaker 5: I'm pretty good there too, But I have my I

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Speaker 5: have my weaknesses. They're associated with the with the pantry

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Speaker 5: post ten pm at night, when I crave some foods.

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Speaker 5: We all have our Achilles heel when it comes to

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Speaker 5: self control. But what we know is that there are

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Speaker 5: different tools we can use to improve our self control.

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Speaker 5: And these these these different things we can do. They're teachable,

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Speaker 5: their strategies are often easy to implement, and so I

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Speaker 5: talked to my kids about the different ways that they

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Speaker 5: can manage the temptation when it exists.

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Speaker 2: So I'm curious. You're only obviously sharing a snippet, Yes,

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Speaker 2: but what were the tools that he shad?

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Speaker 3: Well, you'll have to listen on Saturday to hit the

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Speaker 3: whole feet.

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Speaker 2: It's not fair.

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Speaker 1: But as he talked about the pantry after ten pm,

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Speaker 1: I said ice cream. Ice cream doesn't belong in the pantry.

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Speaker 1: Ice cream belongs in the freezer.

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 3: I said it because that's my weakness. Yes, I struggle

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Speaker 3: with self control so much around ice cream.

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Speaker 2: But again, your motivation is minimal.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And what's curious is just recently we've been on

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Speaker 1: a pretty big health kick.

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Speaker 4: My interest in ice cream.

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Speaker 1: Chop actually perused the lolly aisle in the supermarket the

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Speaker 1: other day, and as I walked through the aisle, I

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Speaker 1: was just like, not interested, don't want any of it,

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Speaker 1: completely disinterested. Again, motivation plays a really big, really big role.

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Speaker 2: So I really struggle with the concept of changing self control.

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Speaker 2: From the point of view I probably never heard the word,

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Speaker 2: but when we look at the fact that our motivation

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Speaker 2: levels shift with time, with education, with life experience, with

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Speaker 2: different seasons, it would make sense that our ability to

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Speaker 2: change and modify our self control in different areas would occur.

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Speaker 1: And a lot of this is about habits. A lot

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Speaker 1: of this is about what you prioritize, what your value.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes we know that we need self control and we

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Speaker 1: just think, don't want to be controlled right now. Habits

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Speaker 1: like anger is a habit. For example, yelling is a habit.

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Speaker 1: We can be controlled when we need to, when we're

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Speaker 1: motivated to because maybe somebody's observing us and so we're

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Speaker 1: going to be on our best behavior.

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Speaker 2: So when I think about self control, and I think

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Speaker 2: about the many stresses that we have on us, and

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Speaker 2: I think of holts and how many times we find

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Speaker 2: ourselves hungry, angry, lonely, tied, or stressed, we could pretty

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Speaker 2: much put our hands up every day with any number

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Speaker 2: of those things. If we're relying entirely on self control

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Speaker 2: to get us through tricky situations, we're going to fail

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Speaker 2: a lot.

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Speaker 4: We talked about that a lot in the interview.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to sort of spoil the whole interview,

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Speaker 1: but that's one of the big things we talk about,

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Speaker 1: and how the people who seem to have the most

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Speaker 1: self control often set up their environments in such a

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Speaker 1: way that they don't need to exercise.

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Speaker 4: It at all.

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Speaker 2: That's right.

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Speaker 4: It just looks like they're doing so.

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Speaker 2: If ice cream is a big issue for.

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Speaker 4: You, don't buy ice cream, you don't.

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Speaker 2: Walk down the ice cream as to start with, but

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Speaker 2: you don't have it in the house.

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Speaker 4: That's right, exactly all right.

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Speaker 1: After the break, we're going to talk about one of

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Speaker 1: my favorite parts of the interview. It's just brilliant. I

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Speaker 1: think you're going to love it. And it's a strategy

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Speaker 1: you asked about the strategies. It's one of the strategies

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Speaker 1: that you can talk to your kids about. Kylie Ethan

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Speaker 1: Cross is the international best selling author of Chatter, and

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Speaker 1: as we had this conversation, I asked him to share

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Speaker 1: some strategies about how we can teach kids self control.

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Speaker 1: He shared a bunch of them that we're all revolving

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Speaker 1: around this idea called self distancing. Self distancing will explain

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Speaker 1: it in a lot more detail in the full interview

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Speaker 1: that will replay on Saturday, but in short, it basically

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Speaker 1: means that you kind of move yourself away from the

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Speaker 1: thing that's causing the hot emotions where you don't have

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Speaker 1: any self control. And he talked about one it's my

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Speaker 1: absolute favorite. I'm going to play it for you.

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Speaker 5: Now you can try something what we've called the Batman effect.

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Speaker 5: Find their favorite superhero. So superheroes are usually generally really

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Speaker 5: good at exercising restraint right and being able to do

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Speaker 5: good things in the world, and so in some studies,

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Speaker 5: what a Colleague of Mind Sephanie Carlson has found is

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Speaker 5: that having children imagine their superhero, use their name, imagine

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Speaker 5: your Batman and say what would Batman do right now?

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Speaker 5: Would Batman be able to not eat the marshmallow? Or

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Speaker 5: Dora the Explorer? What would Dora do? That can be

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Speaker 5: really powerful. It transports them into this other role which

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Speaker 5: gives them some distance from the temptation and also the

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Speaker 5: superpower to restrain it. So that's been a fun strategy

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Speaker 5: that the kids have been able to benefit from in

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Speaker 5: some experiments.

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Speaker 1: So I guess the main thing I'd say is make

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Speaker 1: sure your kid doesn't want to be deadpool. That won't

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Speaker 1: work so well.

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Speaker 2: Coming from a religious home, We've had plenty of conversations

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Speaker 2: with our kids, and growing up, I had conversations where

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Speaker 2: there was an acknowledgement what would Jesus.

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Speaker 3: Do if he was there?

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Speaker 1: It's the WWJD think that's the grown up version of

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Speaker 1: the Christian version of the Batman effect.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but another take on it is what would I

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Speaker 2: do if my favorite person, whether it's a school teacher

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Speaker 2: or mum or Auntie jan Like, what would I do

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Speaker 2: if they were here and they were watching me?

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Speaker 5: Like?

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Speaker 2: How would I respond? I want to do everything I

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Speaker 2: can to be seen in a good light by them,

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Speaker 2: How would I respond in this situation?

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Speaker 1: In the interview, I talked to him about how regularly,

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Speaker 1: and I feel a little bit embarrassed to say this,

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Speaker 1: but regularly people will come up to me and say,

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Speaker 1: when I'm struggling with my parenting, I just imagine that

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Speaker 1: doctor Justin Colson is sitting in the living room watching me,

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Speaker 1: and it helps.

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Speaker 4: Me to be a better parent. That's kind of the idea.

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Speaker 1: That's the self distancing idea, and it helps us to

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Speaker 1: be better with our self control. It helps us to

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Speaker 1: quiet the chatter in our head and simply behave better.

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Speaker 1: It's a fascinating interview. It's one of the favorite, one

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Speaker 1: of my favorite interviews that I've ever done, and I

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Speaker 1: can't wait for everyone to hear it. So that's happening

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Speaker 1: on Saturday morning. It's for your weekend listening. A little

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Speaker 1: bit longer than the usual interview, but it was just

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Speaker 1: so much fun that I kept talking and so did he,

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Speaker 1: and I think that you're going to get so much

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Speaker 1: out of it. Make sure you check it out then.

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Speaker 1: The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin.

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Speaker 4: Ruland from Bridge Media.

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Speaker 1: If you'd like more information about how to make your

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Speaker 1: family happier, please visit us at Happyfamilies dot com dot au.