Radically Genuine Podcast with Dr. Roger McFillin

Welcome to the radically genuine podcast. I'm Dr. Roger McFillin. I'm proud of the work we've done on this podcast over the past two and a half years. I think we've brought attention to issues that a lot of people in the mainstream listening audience who are exposed to ideas around mental health, probably we're not aware. I'm really proud of the work we've done on disseminating research around psychiatric diagnoses and drugs.

And I think we've brought attention to cultural issues that are influencing the mental health crisis. One of the questions that I often get from people is, all right, what's the answer? You know, you're so critical of the way that we respond to the mental health problems that exist in the United States. What are your solutions? And to be honest with you, I think we're missing the point by even asking that question because I think mental health.

problems and treatments are a consequence of other cultural issues that are prominent in American culture So I recently Posted a sub stack that spoke about five principles of mental well-being We've also put a video up on our YouTube channel radically genuine Where we're talking about protective factors, and I want to have that conversation today

How do you raise your kids? How do you respond to young people? Those in education, those in positions of leadership, mentorship, church communities, and even mental health professionals, what are some principles that are associated with thriving in life? We talk a lot on here about resiliency.

My experience right now is one of the areas that are driving this mental health crisis is how people talk about mental health. Some of the ideas that are perpetuated in school system, traditional advice, it's kind of fueled this narcissistic self-obsession. We misrepresent emotional distress, unpleasant thoughts and normal developmental challenges. We're pushing more.

Kel (02:16.833)
and more people into the mental health system.

To have this conversation today, the three of us are back in the studio. Our producer, Kel Weatherhold, welcome back. Thank you. Great to see you. Good to see you guys. Sean, welcome back. Good morning. I think when we have this conversation today, and I want it to be conversational, I have my ideas about ways that we can improve coping, how we can talk about protective factors and begin to reshape our own culture so we're stronger.

emotionally. We're better as a group of people in responding to the challenges that exist. And it's a challenging world. There's no doubt about it. I mean, we're sitting here on a rainy Saturday morning, but there's chaos around the world. All of us are exposed and our hearts are out to the innocent people in Israel and the innocent people in Palestine as well. We live in a culture of anger and war.

and violence. We're exposed to images of children and women being murdered. And it often leads us to either find ways to detach from it, just to go through our day to day, or we get lost in it. And getting lost in it means to feel the sadness of the human race. Like I always question how the hell did we get here?

that there's so much violence and there's so much division.

Kel (03:55.661)
And so we know life is going to be hard. There's no way out of it. It's difficult. And the manner in which we think about this adventure we call life matters. So I've identified five principles that I think can inoculate young people from indoctrination into the mental health system. And I think the mental health system has become commodified with nonsense that lead people to end up feeling worse and struggling more.

So this is just to keep them out of the system. I wanna keep them out of the system. I mean, we're all parents here. My kids are older, but your kids are younger. So it's some questions about how do we raise them? What ideas matter? What do we know from people who thrive? Like that's the stuff that's interesting to me. I wanna know people who are thriving, people you can count on in this life. There's solid people in the midst of tragedy.

and struggle, they rise above. They have great families, they contribute to their communities.

They have value and purpose in their life. They're full of love and connection. So let's talk about those critical aspects of coping. It's a mindset. It's a behavior. It's a way of thinking and approaching life. And this has nothing to do with happiness. This is how people respond to the normal stresses of life and how they go about their day that allows them to continue to thrive. The reaction to struggle.

The reaction is what's important. Yeah. I think you get, you just focus on, on happiness. You're, you're missing the point of it too, because, uh, you know, life is going to, is going to be hard. And ultimately when life isn't happy, when things aren't the way we want them to be, how we react in those moments are the difference maker. That's why I like this word inoculation. Like if I was in a school system, school system is bombarded with all this propaganda.

Kel (05:59.961)
That's a culture of fear. School systems are cultures of fear. They're more likely to attend to, oh no, this could be wrong. This could be wrong. Let's send them to this expert. Let's give a little bit of information on complex concepts and let's make our teachers and educators experts in this area. That culture of fear, I think drives more people into focusing on things that otherwise probably would have been temporary and are just natural parts of, of development.

I mean, that's the big shift I've seen over my lifetime, where things that were accepted to be part of growing up are no longer part of growing up. They're pathologized. And that's what leads to my first one, how important it is to normalize life challenges.

Well, in education, it's like a giant porcelain doll. They're not allowing, you know, children to go through the struggles. And then when they do, they're basically over protecting them. And so I call it, it's a porcelain doll because you're creating an entire generation of fragility. Yeah, that's a good question. Do you fellas think that there is a fragilization of these generations?

these younger generations, culturally speaking, do you think there's some form of fragilization that's going on? I have to say yes. Just, primarily just from like scrolling through social media and just being exposed to some things that are happening out there. The level of people getting upset about nothing is just, it's too much. I just, I don't imagine that it was like that 40 years ago.

I think one of the challenges when I'm meeting with parents, especially when we're doing our DBTA program, is some of the messages that have been communicated to them out of fear. And I think there's irresponsibility from our medical professionals in dealing with teenage mental health problems. A great example of this is that in terms of some form of crisis, and a lot of the families that we're working with have kids in crisis, that could be that they are self-injurious or...

Kel (08:16.433)
they're talking about suicide or they're not getting to school. We're hearing things like doctors assigning a label of serious mental illness to them, even at the age of 14 and 15, and then saying, actually making predictions that, you know, they're never going to be able to function without your help. And that is so irresponsible and it extends outside any bounds of legitimate science.

And I have to flip the script. I got to completely shift for parents. And I have to say, listen, you have to be really careful of what you are now manifesting into reality because you want to see your kid as something that's mentally ill and that's chronic and they are now disabled and they are going to be under your care for the rest of your life. You are gonna treat them that way. It will be a self-fulfilling prophecy, trust me. Be very careful of the standards you set for your kids. When they start becoming low, you are now

irresponsibly setting forth into their lives, what they're capable of achieving. And I think that's very, very damaging. When we used to see emotional problems as normal episodic conditions, and we tried to improve people's ability to cope with it. Now you're assigning a label of like you're mentally ill for the rest of your life. For a teenager who's in puberty, whose brain hasn't even completely developed yet. Yeah. If you accept that, then there's like a mindset.

shift as a parent to almost look at your child as, you know, needing more support than would be normal or typical. I should say what's it, what is normal support? I think, I mean, in our family, it's, it's hard to separate what happened to ourselves when we grew up, but there was just multiple times where if I was tired or, you know, didn't want to go to school, you know, it was never like, okay, you know, let's just stay home today. It was a get up.

get ready, you're leaving in 20 minutes and then you were forced. Well, there certainly wasn't a fragilization. No. Right. Like in, in any way it was kind of suck it up. This is life. It's not easy. Yeah. I didn't want to use the word suck it up because we've used that before. But why, why is that so frowned upon? Now? Yeah. I mean, why is that mentality so frowned upon in our society right now? I just think it comes down to the parenting tactics that

Kel (10:44.569)
Maybe were used 10 years after, you know, we grew up where parents almost wanted to be their children's friend and wanted to, wanted them to, one of their, one of the kids that their kids to know that they understood what they were going through and being more supportive because they felt like they didn't get enough support growing up and they don't want to make the mistakes that their parents made, but I think it's a misinterpretation of what a mistake as a parent.

is it wasn't a mistake. It was actually lessons knowing that things were going to get tough and you needed to develop those skills to respond later in life. I think kids nowadays because of that mentality have more of a fear of failing, more of a fear of struggle than they do of focusing on any success that they want. They focus so much more on avoiding like, you know, failing and failure and struggle. So again,

I reiterate, what was wrong with, you know, suck it up. What's wrong with that? Well, let's understand what that actually means. It's communicating, you can handle it. You're making out bigger than what it is. In no way, shape or form will you limit yourself and what you can handle. Yes, sometimes things are gonna be hard, deal with it. Now, inherently, that is a message that is supportive and loving and encouraging. And it's in those times that you learn.

And that's the problem with being overprotective, trying to prevent exposing your kids to challenges or difficult emotions, even it's that they don't get to learn what they can handle and can't handle. I think some of the greatest life lessons is when things are really, really difficult and your ability to rise above it, or at least even get through it. Yeah. Maybe that's when things go wrong is there's always situations where something maybe really

horrible has happened to a teenager and they don't want to go to school. Now they have the opportunity to stay home and stay home another day and another day, but eventually they have to go back to school. And the longer that you give them permission to avoid it, the harder it's going to be for them to try and, you know, resolve the issue. Right? Yeah. Imagine that if you took the viewpoint that whenever you felt anxious or whenever you felt sad,

Kel (13:09.465)
that was some justification for taking care of your mental health and avoiding. And so these are normal aspects of life. And that's why I think the pathologizing of normal human experiences then create problems in itself because feeling anxious and feeling down is normal. But how you respond to that is determines whether that becomes an episode or not. So if every time you do avoid going to school,

or facing responsibilities when you feel anxious, it's just a matter of time before you are completely overwhelmed with the normal aspects of life. And now it is mental illness, but it was from your reaction to the initial emotional experience. The experience itself isn't pathological. And that's the danger of the medical model and being able to communicate these things as signs of mental illness. It's it.

complete false teaching. It's a false narrative. And we have to be really careful what we claim into reality because it becomes a reality. And I'm afraid that culturally, it has now become that reality. Taking care of your mental health is like a code word for seeking professional help from experts. I would never send my kid to. I mean, how many people in the mental health system would you feel comfortable shaping your own child based on how they're taught?

in the American academic system, the Hollywood culture that exists, the pseudoscientific pop culture, nonsense. The idea is we are fragilizing our kids in that way because it's a fear-based culture. We grew up in it. We grew up on them being paraded in American television. Watch out for this. Be careful of that. Going to the school systems where the same exact thing happened, reinforcing the same ideas of fear. So now parents, they respond in fear. They walk on eggshells around their own kids. So...

That suck it up concept, as long as it's doing, as long as there's a lesson within that, I think it's really valuable.

Kel (15:12.241)
Should we go on to number two? Sure. Okay. And Fels, challenge me on this if you don't agree with or you even have some other ideas that you think are really important. I am actually concerned about attention. Attention is another word for consciousness, right? Where do you focus your attention in your life?

And the excessive use of social media, screen time, very clearly linked to mental health issues. A fulfilling life is one that engages outward into the world, right? It is doing things, it is engaging in things. I don't care if that's sports or it's creativity or it's music or it's a live friendship or a conversation or it's exercise or it's connection to nature.

or its service, that idea of your attention going outward into the world versus inward. I think the more we are in solitude, bringing our attention only to ourselves, we begin to limit our capacity for pure connection, true connection and purpose. And instead you become to swim in your own intrusive thoughts, anxieties.

neurotic beliefs, fears. And that's the harmful aspect of any form of isolation. So in my sub stack, I said, where your attention goes, your energy flows. And I remember when my kids were young, one of the things that was paraded on American television was the harms of overscheduling. And I don't know if you guys remember that or not,

you didn't have kids in the early 2000s. And when I was entering into my grad school, and there was some research that was being posted then and when I was in graduate school about American culture and overscheduling. And I always took the path with my kids is that they have to be engaged in things that are meaningful and personal. And there has to be balance between things that are necessary, like the power and importance of schoolwork and attention there, with

Kel (17:39.877)
physical activity and play and a number of those things. And often I felt like by the end of the day, everyone was pretty exhausted and could go to sleep. There wasn't a whole lot of downtime in my kids' lives. And I think that protected them, to be honest with you. Because even now, when I see my kids have downtime, what do they go to? The phone? The phone. The phone, right? They're going to the phone. And...

That's dangerous. So anything that drives your attention into a screen or just focus on yourself is really problematic. That's why I thought it was so nefarious to suggest that going to a mental health app on your phone and schools having some role in trying to now start pushing that as mental health treatment was going to make people worse and it will. So I wanted to...

you in this idea of overscheduling, whatever that means. Obviously there's a dialectical balance or a middle path, but I think kids should be busy. I think they should be out of the home. And when we were young, when we didn't have structured play, like sports and other things, we had to figure it out ourselves. We left our house and we created games and we did a number of those things. That just doesn't seem to happen anymore.

That's why I actually think there's some truth in that statement about the dangers of overscheduling. And maybe at the time it was prior to the proliferance of these, these phones that are constantly in your hand as a crux. So by not overscheduling, you're almost forcing kids and teenagers to learn how to be creative, to use their downtime, to do other things, but now

It's so easy just to take your phone out of your pocket if you've got 20 minutes or 40 minutes or an hour and just mindlessly scroll. But now more than ever, you actually kind of need to keep them scheduled and keep them busy. Well, that's how they interact with each other. Now that's their social time. Yeah, that's horrible. Snapchat. Yeah, I know. Right. It's, it's, it doesn't have to be that way. No, I mean, you gotta, you have to control it as a parent. Yeah. So, uh, I've been working with adults and teens.

Kel (20:01.237)
I wasn't doing this last year, but I've started like, I get everyone to bring out their phone and I ask them, look at your average screen time. And there is some research that supports that once you have more than two hours of screen time on that phone, it has starts having detrimental effects. So imagine two hours being the limit. What do you think I'm actually seeing?

I'm going to say it's about six to seven hours. I'm going to say probably eight to 10, eight to 10. Is it really like, you know, I know that. How do you know that? Cause I did that with my, my students. I had them pull out their phones and do the screen time. And the average was eight, like anywhere from between eight to 10 hours. So I took to, to eliminate that in the class, I had to incentivize I'm a big fan of incentives. You know that. So I created a zombie box and I said to them,

In our school, kids can have their phones. In fact, they're pretty much in every school. But they'll pull them out. So I incentivized it and I said, I'm not gonna force you to give it up because if I force you to give it up, you're not making the conscious decision to do so. I'm gonna reward you for giving it up and they can put their phones in the zombie box, sign their name and then I give them two extra points per day, they do it. I love it. You've always been so innovative. So some kids do it every year on the first day, maybe the first three weeks.

I got 90% of kids are like, yeah, I'm going to do this. Guess what happens around, around October, it cuts it down. There's like maybe four or five, six, some, some classes about half. It goes down and down and down. These are two extra points every day. You could like legit not take a test or whatever and pass and they still won't give it up because my point, what I wanted to point out is that the coping mechanism for these kids that we're talking about now has become the phone.

And in many instances, communication in general, just raising your hand, just focusing on the teacher, looking at your fellow students and talking to them in academic discourse has become intolerable for some of these students. Intolerables to the point where this has now become their haven. And some parents probably are okay with that. They're just like, well, as long as they feel calm, as long as they feel okay. So what's your screen time?

Kel (22:27.129)
Check. I'm curious. 17 hours. Your act Rogers actually on social media posting quite often and engaging. So I'm curious to see what your time is. Yeah. The other thing about this is what I've learned is that if you use your phone for like podcasts or even directions, yeah, like maps that ends up counting the time. So where do I find that again? Go to your settings.

And then, all right, everybody, all your listeners, let's go pick up your phones. Yeah. Check that now. Settings. And then go to screen time. I'm mine. Shut off. Where is that? It should be your second block down.

Kel (23:11.153)
Two hours, 43 minutes. Kelly? Mine's turned off. Oh, good for you turning your phone off. I'm at two hours and 16 minutes. Yeah. So when you compare that to eight, nine, 10 hours, that's saying, like, let's say a kid sleeps 10 hours. I mean, what are they gonna have, like, four hours without screen time? That's insanity. And that's phone addiction. And they do exhibit the signs of phone addiction.

that when it's away from them, they experience, they call it FOMO, fear of missing out, but it's just anxiety. And you gotta turn off these dang sounds, right? Like that's one of my problems. Sean like pointed it out like a couple months ago because he did something on his computer and email popped up, right? And he's like, Roger, you gotta turn that off. Like I uploaded a file to our shared drive and it went ding, and I was like, what? Yeah, but that ding has become like, ooh, piece of candy.

Yeah, it really is. Yeah, like I'll be watching the Phillies playoffs, for example, and have my phone 10 feet away or something like that. And those dings go off. It's like, boom, like my head goes right to it. Oh, and here's a little story. So for our listeners, we're in the Philadelphia area and the Phillies are doing great. I mean, I love playoff baseball because every pitch matters. Right. It's just a cool thing. Regular season baseball doesn't have that.

experience because when you play 162 games, not every game matters. Yeah. But these, every pitch matters. Awesome. So I'm watching the game four against the Braves and we watch it on Hulu. Cause now we stream everything, but who is a little bit behind live. What's really happening. And so we're watching this lat, you know, the last pitch cause there's two on there, it's two outs and it's a, the score was three to one. Right? So the winning run is actually at, up at the plate.

So I'm watching it with my son, it's late at night. And I'm like, we're really anxious. I got that pit feeling in my stomach. And then everything starts going on my phone before the pitch. Phillies win. And it took away the entire enjoyment from the experience because she knew what was about to happen. Imagine streaming and watching sports in Los Angeles when you're surrounded by hundreds and thousands of people. I'd be watching games and I'd hear people scream. And then I'd be like, what are they screaming at? That's what I was screaming about.

Kel (25:36.749)
Oh, yeah. I was always delayed. Well, you would do that to me when you're living in Los Angeles and we were watching Eagles. Oh, that was the worst. Yeah. One of us would be ahead of the other. You were always ahead of me by like 30 seconds. Yeah. And I'd be like type something, yeah, let's go. I'd hang up on you. I'm like, I can't talk to you. But the point is how much of a distraction that can be. And with the phone dependence addiction that exists in our lives, if we're going to talk about protective factors, and there's researchers are calling for this.

that schools should not use phones at all. Like it should go in the locker, it should be turned off, you should never use a phone. But parents keep finding out, parents stop that. Parents are coming in and they're saying, there's an app, I can't remember what it's called, it's like Life something family. Life 360. Life 360, it like basically shows you exactly where your kid is at all times. So what the kids are doing now is they have it because their families are forcing them to have it on because the parents have to know exactly where they're at all times and now they're doing it to their friends so they know.

And these kids are just like on this app trying to find out where people are. And I'm sitting there like, am I the only one that thinks this is the most ludicrous application in the face of the planet? It's dangerous. It's more dangerous than knowing where your kid is. It is fear culture of fear. You can't live that way. You cannot live that way. And if we don't change, it's just going to get worse. You cannot live in constant fear. And

Where your attention goes, your energy flows. So that's number two. Let's like, we get off on these conversations, but number one. Wait, we get off on this? I get off on this. The whole Philly's. One is normalized life challenges. The second one, get your kids off phones, get your families off phones, and get your kids involved in activities. Fuck over scheduling, over schedule them.

Get them involved in doing as many things as possible. Make sure it's fun. Don't make it stressful. It's gotta be enjoyable. Make sports enjoyable, make music enjoyable. But that's play, right? If we had communities where kids were able to leave and hang out outside and unstructured play, that would be cool, but that doesn't happen anymore. So like if you don't have that, they're in their rooms, they're playing video games, they're interacting on video games, playing with somebody else.

Kel (27:59.853)
or they're on their phones. So make sure you set that kind of stuff up for your kids. Get them involved in different things. Can I just point something out before you move on? So obviously I'm over scheduled, you know that, right? I know you're over scheduled. Well, and I'm okay with that. It does cause stress on the parents, in terms of like taking activities. And I think that from what I've heard from even other family members, like, well, why do you have them involved in so many things? And I'm always like,

Exactly the reason you just said like it doesn't matter to me if my kid is not starting I want him involved in this particular activity and they say but you seem so stressed and I'm like, well, of course we are So one of the messages maybe you need to send to parents is it's gonna be hard to do that And it's gonna put some stress on you, but it's worth it. It's well worth it for those kids

Kids also learn time management skills as a result of that. Because if you're busy with sports or art or whatever, and you've only got a small window to do your homework, you do your homework during that window. There's no such thing as procrastination. Exactly. And parents can mitigate that stress. Like they don't have to be stressed because their kids are involved in a lot of different things. I think some of the reasons why parents are so stressed is part of also the fear based culture. There's a competitive nature to all these different things, like especially sports. Sean, you're going to

you know, get Kazan into the sports based culture. But like I remember it's soccer, like with my oldest Madison, you know, it was always to get on this club team or get on that club team. I'm sure it's the same thing with baseball, basketball and the other things. With my son, man, we were traveling around the country at age 10, you know, and 11 for wrestling. And so, you know, there becomes pressure around that. It doesn't have to be, you know, if I was wiser,

in my younger years, I definitely probably would have gotten my son involved in different things and try to diversify his experience because right now he is school and he's wrestling. And you know, we limited him in some ways because that's what we did. He's great at doing great at school. I think he's a good athlete. He's a good kid. But I'm not sure how I'm not sure how diverse he is. Right. So

Kel (30:16.993)
I want to see what he's like when he goes to college and he gets exposed to people who are a lot different than him and how flexible and adaptive he can be. I think you have to develop lots of different interests for life to be fulfilling and you have to be able to be comfortable with people who are different than you. So all those things matter. The point being is though exposure to these things is important because your attention is going to be in that area. I get them.

out of their heads. One of the things that we're just seeing with the teenagers here that are really struggling, they're lonely and they're isolated and they don't have enough things to be doing and the parents stop pushing them. So there's a reality that's being created. Do the parents stop pushing them because they're just getting kicked back from the adolescent? Well, they're gonna get kicked back from the adolescents. Of course they are, yeah. And then it's the fear.

Right? You push them to do something too hard. You know, they have this mental health disability, the dumb therapists and the medical model aren't gonna understand this from a larger perspective. They're gonna think about it through a disability model. Come on. You know, I, throughout my 20 plus years of doing this, kids respond when there's an expectation and a standard set for them. It's gonna take small, gradual steps.

to be able to get there because with each step that they take forward, you're gonna have to reinforce that and praise that and strengthen it and they're gonna have to develop confidence in their ability to handle things. You don't have a kid who's struggling to function and even get to school, then you expect them to do really, really big things. That expectation's not realistic, but it's small steps. It's a learning process. And I think our mental health system just does not allow for that process to unfold because of fear.

because of fear, which I think transitions to my next point, the idea of communicating to people that they can handle difficult times. And I think we have to focus on building what's called distress tolerance skills. Distress tolerance is your ability to handle the most intense and distressing and anxiety provoking moments. It's almost like a,

Kel (32:43.769)
container that you have within your own experience. I'll use this metaphor a lot too. I'll tell people like, let's imagine this, right? Let's say we did a little science experiment. I gave you all a cup of water. And that's whiskey. It's got to be water, cup of water. And I handed you a little tea kettle that only held a cup of water in it. You poured that

cup of water into that one cup of the tea kettle, that container, and then you put on the stove, the burner on high. What happens? It boils over. It boils over, right? So I think this is a metaphor is that if your container for distress is really small, like you don't have this capacity to handle it, once the fire gets turned up, it overwhelms you and that's that word. I feel overwhelmed. I can't handle it.

Right? That's the belief system that's created. I cannot handle this. Now let's say you build someone's capacity to deal with distress. So you take that one cup of water and you dump it in a gallon pot and put that on the fire. Fire's still up there, right? But then what happens? It just steams away. It eventually dissipates, right? It steams out, it dissipates. And that's what happens with exposure, right? What is stressful at one point in time

is no longer stressful at another time. When you're exposed to it, you allow it and you learn that you can handle it. So I think we need to transition or transform people from this idea that I can't handle that to I can handle that, right? And that is the limitations of our mind, the limitations of the reality we create for ourselves. When you have this idea that I can't do something, it becomes real.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? You tell yourself you can't do something, then you act accordingly, then you avoid, and the next time you face something that is similar, you're gonna struggle in it. It's gonna reinforce the idea that you can't do it, and now you've manifested this world for you. And I know I'm a little extreme sometimes, hyperbolic when I say things, but that's child neglect. When you limit what a kid can do or a young person can do,

Kel (35:06.617)
That's neglectful because they have a life that they have to live. And that life is going to be hard and you are going to face really, really challenging times. And in the world that we live in, I unfortunately, you know, think this generation is going to be facing really challenging times as other generations have. And what are you going to do when that happens? So how do you build distress tolerance skills? Well, I think it's wise to focus on resilience.

Like encourage young people to push beyond their perceived limits. Do you understand what I mean? Perceived limits. Everything is a limit because you created it in your mind. You need to challenge their physical and mental boundaries. This means confronting fears, adopting fresh viewpoints, understanding that adversities, they mold character. They create virtue.

There's strength in this. You need to embrace the concept of pushing them to tat tackle difficulties head on, get them to fail, get them to struggle because then there's a learning opportunity. Is it also letting them sit with their emotions? Of course. Like when they're upset with it, you can be upset. Be upset. That's that is one of the things you can, you should say when they're two. That's what I'm doing. Just say when they're three, just the other day it came up to me.

I'm upset. I said, that's good. Why are you upset? I'm, I'm just upset. I'm like, okay, go sit. You can be upset. And when you're done being upset, come back to daddy. Well, it's like before we were gunning on the, before we got on the air here, Kelly was telling us his new job that he's doing with, with writing and editing and you know, he embraced constructive criticism. I did love it. Give it to me. Right. Because what's there to lose? Your fragile little small ego.

can't handle criticism. When you have this opportunity to grow, to learn, and that's what you have to, you have to transform and transcend your kids from a small fragile little ego to life is a tremendous opportunity to learn new things because I can be so much better. I can be so much greater. There's something beyond what I'm limited in what I see. You have to let them.

Kel (37:33.465)
build skills to endure discomfort because that is when the learning occurs. Yeah. One of the, I keep bringing this back up, but communication skills have kind of gone out the window mainly because of phones, partially because of COVID. They've been isolated. So I've also created what's known as hero of the day. I love these things. This is what I miss about Kelly.

Kel (37:59.93)
have all these things in a classroom that I had to go walk down there every single, what's he doing today? Let's hear Hero of the Day. So in order to get- Great Metallica song, by the way. I play it. I'll play it when it's Hero of the Day. So when I say, all right, we have a Hero of the Day Socratic seminar, what it means is I've written down the name of a kid. And oftentimes it's a kid who struggles to maybe just participate. But I never tell the kids who it is.

And I never, if they don't win it, I never will tell them. I write the name down and then we do our Socratic's, which Socratic's for those of you that don't know is basically academic discussions based off of what we're doing in the class. And you talk to each other and I think it's meaningful. You can often learn from each other. So if the kid talks to me, like all they have to do, they don't even have to raise their hand in my class. Like they just talk on point. I go nuts and I start playing this song.

and I get three stars to the class for per quarter. If they get the three stars, I give them a massive reward. Oftentimes I make them food or something like that, something where they're going to enjoy. But I've heard people say, well, aren't you taking risks? What if you put that kid on the spot and they feel even more discomfort? And I said, well, what if they don't? What if my overreaction of pure joy and I reinforce it by sending them an email?

saying I'm super proud of you. That was awesome. You don't talk the rest of your, I get it, but I'm telling you, you are the hero. I get, you know, some, some classes win some don't, but what I find is that the kids that win, when I go overboard, they feel a little bit like that, but everybody's like applauding them. Everybody's going to you're putting them on the spot for doing something that they probably felt really uncomfortable doing. But now in that one moment, I think that what I've shown them was this is what you want to do. Open yourself up.

And maybe next time that you do have to talk to somebody or talk, maybe you just feel a little less of whatever it is you're feeling. So you're a behaviorist and what you, to put these into behavioral psychology terms, what Kelly is actually doing is he's reinforcing a behavior that he wants to see increase. So reinforcing is strengthening, uh, the likelihood that a behavior is going to occur. So we have to sometimes identify

Kel (40:23.949)
what behaviors are associated with life success, right? And that's like when you come in here and we talk about people who are really thriving in life and we look at some of those skills that they possess, it's those risk-taking skills, right? It's putting themselves out there to thinking outside the box. They're not afraid of failing. They're creating. They're creating in this life. And when you start to reinforce and you create something like hero of the day,

What you're doing is you're just shaping your classroom in a manner in which provides the students life skills for success. Hero of the day, you wanna hear my Metallica story? Here we go. Just recently was at a Metallica concert and we were right down on the stage, right? Where was it? Giant, or MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford. And so I'm there, I'm like right up against the stage, right off the stage. And then, you know, they, you know how

They are, it's like a heavy metal, you know, lights are off. They start pounding on the guitars. And then I'm right in the middle of the mosh pit. It circled right around me, you know? And get him. Did they pick you up and like crowd surf you? So I was- He's a fascist, get him. So I thought for a couple of minutes, I said, here might be my opportunity. And so I just looked around and the people who were smashing into each other were about 63 to 50.

And I said, this is a matter of physics. I got to get my ass out of here. And I had to like, I got myself knocked out of the breath, the mosh pit, but insane. That's awesome. Uh, Kelly, I love your story with the flip side of that be, let's say a student comes in and he was supposed to, or she was supposed to do a presentation and they're not prepared. Would we then force them to stand up in front of the class?

and do the best that they can knowing that they're unprepared so that they can learn a lesson. Did you, did, is this from something that happened at our practice? Maybe. Yeah. That's exactly my initial thought is that you don't in any way get that person to escape. Because it's a great lesson, especially when they're young about putting the time in time management skills, preparation and professionalism.

Kel (42:52.209)
See, I would probably have them present by asking them questions as if I were just saying, well, why, you know, hey, you weren't prepared. How much did you get done? And then they would just like respond like I was doing it. And I would keep them engaged in front of the class, me and that person, just talking to each other. I would never get angry. I would sit there and by the end, I would probably point out everything you just said, you just gave your presentation.

Good job. You know what I mean? Like something into that. In exposure-based therapies, which we do here, which means you're exposing yourself to this comfort and a distress. There's a neurobiology of learning. It's called an inhibitory learning model of fear extinction. And these come out of labs of UCLA. And what they do is they do fMRIs and brain scans and they...

allow somebody to face something that they're really scared of. For example, maybe even a spider. And what happens is the longer you're in the presence of that feared stimuli and the bad thing doesn't happen, right? The feared outcome does not happen. Your brain starts changing. So fear starts to be, starts to dissipate towards what we call extinction. So I was once afraid of this. I'm no longer afraid of this.

And we learn a lot about mood regulation within that. That the longer we stay in the discomfort, it comes like a wave, right? It rises, your anxiety level peaks, it gets to a certain point, but then it eventually just crests and comes down. And we actually have to learn how to ride that wave. And the neurobiology of learning in that is really, it comes down to something simple. You walk into that activity,

with the idea that you can't handle that, it's too much. And you walk out of it learning, I can handle that. Share your story about when you were playing college football and you had to speak in front of an incoming class of parents. Didn't I share that already on this podcast? It was a long time ago, we've got new listeners now. That was like two years ago. Oh my God. Yeah, so I played small college football and it was my junior year. So I was going to be a senior. So I was in the spring time or the winter time. And

Kel (45:14.457)
It was a recruiting event and the recruiting event was going to be in an auditorium. And I was asked to just speak about being a student athlete, right? What's your experience here at this college playing football, balancing academics, you know, and sell the school. It's a recruiting event. So at that time in my life, I didn't think I really needed to prepare for that speaking event.

And listen, I was 21 years old. So I was up till three in the morning. It was a Saturday morning talk and it was Friday night and I was out, right? And so I remember being with, who's my wife now, right? She was out with me. And I remember like talking throughout that night having beers and saying, you know, I'm kind of nervous about having this talk tomorrow. It's getting late. Like I don't...

I don't really have a plan in my head. And then I would just like talk myself out of it saying, I'll just figure it out when I get up there. I'll wing it. So I remember walking to the center of campus, getting to the auditorium. You know, I had my time where I was gonna speak. So there was already things going on. Like there was a coach up there who was talking to the crowd. I walk in there and I was shocked. It was a packed house. Like somehow in my mind,

It was like a small group of recruits and their parents, but no, it's a large group of recruits. And everyone brought their brother, sister, girlfriend, both parents, grandparents. It was just a packed house. They had their laptops and notes ready to go. So as soon as I walk from the back to the front of the auditorium, my heart starts racing. And I'm trying, my mind is trying to think of how I'm gonna open this. And my mind starts going blank. I start sweating.

and the coach is introducing me, I'm walking up the stage, I feel my hands shaking. I get to a podium, look up out to the entire crowd, and guess what happens? You blanked. I blanked. Frozen. It was so embarrassing. I started mumbling stuff, I think, incoherently before the coach started asking me some questions that I would answer.

Kel (47:39.213)
And it was so embarrassing. Like it's what you fear. It's why you have a public speaking phobia because you're afraid of that kind of situation, really just being embarrassed. I remember a Jerry Seinfeld episode where he was saying that the number one fear of Americans is public speaking. You know what number two is? Death. People would rather die than public speak.

They'd either be at their own funeral, then talk at a funeral. It was just like that, that type of thing. Like how, that's how scared people are of public speaking. I love stories of you being uncomfortable. All right, let's move on. But what happened after that, and sometimes I tell some of my clients, this is the next time I had to do a presentation in class, the same thing happened. You didn't stay out till three in the morning. I had a panic attack, right? That's basically a panic attack. And the next time it fear became generalized. So now I had.

a panic attack. And so I had to be able to, in small increments, improve that. Right. So, but now I can handle the, the anxiety of speaking and that learning is invaluable. So we have to build the stress tolerance in our, in our kids and in young people. So one of the things I say, when they encounter problems with teachers, coaches, friends, please resist the urge to immediately intervene and solve the problems for them. Instead, let them build the crucial skill of enduring discomfort.

So when they're in college, they won't break down when somebody disagrees with them. They won't be easily offended. They won't require safe spaces and trigger warnings. That's the fragilization, right? That you have to be in a safe space? No. I mean, physically safe, yes. But someone disagreeing with you is not abuse. It's not trauma. And when we allow that to seep into our...

collective lexicon that someone disagreeing with you, having ideas that are different than you is trauma. And you break down. How are we supposed to face the challenges that exist in life? Because at some point we could be facing what people around the world are facing. And we're gonna need courage. Even if you don't experience that, you need courage in your life. So you can handle this. Build distress tolerance skills. That's three right there.

Kel (50:02.009)
You know, that if we don't, we need to emphasize in our culture. The fourth thing that I thought was critically important was to identify purpose and meaning. We've talked about this in our podcast when we reviewed research on happiness and longevity, that you have to identify a purpose and meaning in your life that goes beyond yourself.

Kel (50:25.585)
I think that shields against mental health problems when we can identify a higher calling or a sense of meaning in our lives, it helps us to kind of navigate the challenges and setbacks because we're connecting with something that is much bigger than us. And this can help us reduce the feeling of feeling lost or overwhelmed by our own personal struggles. We wanna do this by engaging in activities.

that also contribute to the wellbeing of others, the community around you that fosters a sense of belonging and purpose. We can promote mental resilience, emotional stability in that way, investing our time into meaningful pursuits. Ones that allow us to see a bigger picture. That's the power of faith-based communities. That's the power of engaging in

beliefs or values that are much bigger than just you. You know, it's always the, sometimes if you ever hear like a narcissist talk or a sociopath. Every day. Kelly, that's, you don't have to take that on your, Kelly. Come on, Sean. I've got emotions. But you ever hear when people say, well, like, what do you care about that? You're gonna be dead in 35 years, right?

And that's like a window into someone's mindset. Like all that matters is me in this body, in this life now, right? And that's a very limited perspective that doesn't in any way contribute to the greater cause of things that are really critically important in our lives, especially our young people, right? Investing into next generations is...

is important and especially in like raising them with specific values. Yeah, when purpose and meaning, I think sometimes people have an idea that it means like you're destined for greatness and that's not what it is. It's about there's something that's going to happen in your life where you're going to change somebody else's life and you don't know what it is yet, but you have a purpose. But I think that is greatness.

Kel (52:37.113)
But the idea of greatness. I know that's not Western. In the celebratory United States of, you know, you're going to be in front of cameras with lights flashing. You're going to be in encyclopedias and things like that. Yeah. I think everybody can experience this from the perspective of jobs in general and kids going out and getting jobs. I always ask them like how many of you like, well, you'd be surprised by this, Roger, when I say how many of you want jobs where you're told exactly what to do? Well over half the class raises 80%. Right. Get out of here.

And so what I think this is you want a job and yeah, you're going to have a hierarchy and you want to listen, but in my opinion, you're listening to your boss. They're giving you direction, but your purpose is to then show them something that they've never seen before and stand out that way and be impressive. Yeah, you can do what they say, but you also want to take ownership, autonomy of that. And I think some people get it.

And they find purpose in their job. They find purpose in their marriage. They find purpose in their family, but all of that stems from autonomy. Comes down to you thinking for yourself and taking some risks, find a better way of doing things, innovate, improve, invent. There's a great book. I'm sorry. This is, it's in this point. I read lots of children's books. I don't know if you're aware of that, but every night, good night, construction site. Yes. But this, this particular book, yes, I do. Do you do the voice? I do all the time. I want to hear that.

Anyway, this book, it was given to us as a gift and I've given it to others as a gift as well. It's a beautiful book. The artwork is fantastic and the message is right in line with this. It's called Maybe, M-A-Y-B-E. I'll include a link in the summary. It's just a great book about purpose and meaning. I love it. I read it probably at least once a week and a fantastic book for kids.

Kel (54:29.705)
You said something I thought was interesting, like when you said striving for greatness. And I wanna go back to other concepts that we've talked about in here, especially this idea that we create our own realities. If we are creating our own realities, then the idea of greatness is also created by us. So Kelly mentioned like, well, being an encyclopedia or changing the world in some way. And I wonder if that's like sold to us.

as part of like how the media has communicated to the greater public in this capitalistic Hollywood culture that famous is somehow like an achievement of greatness, some degree of fame and riches. Well, I think people love success stories. And I think we just gravitate towards them. And then the media ends up pushing out these success stories. But I wonder how much they are stories, right?

that they... Embellishments and somewhat fabrications. Exactly. It never comes just by like flipping a switch. So if you could like, if you could get into the live, you can be a Kardashian, for example, right? No. So... I wouldn't look like this. By that measure, the Kardashians are successful, right? They are filthy, filthy rich. And so my question is, is that, does that mean they're happy?

And I see this fakeness about them. I watched the newest Kardashian. Wait, you don't think the reality show's real? Come on, Roger. But I think a lot of people do think about that as real. Like I watched it with Alexa. It's not called Keeping Up with the Kardashians anymore. I think it's just called the Kardashians. So it was so put on, you know, and you can very much see that they're just, they're faking it. Everything is just constructed to sell a brand.

And so I just watched the Netflix documentary, the Beckhams on the footballer, the soccer player, uh, David Beckham. You guys aware of David Beckham? Yep. Do you know who he married? It was a part was Posh Space. Or no, Posh was one of the Spice Girls. It was Posh Space. Victoria Adams was her name. Now she's Victoria Beckham. And

Kel (56:54.185)
I watch these things from a different perspective. I don't think I really watch it to be entertained sometimes. I try to put myself into what that life would be like. And for them, they just lost so much anonymity. Like everything about how you live, everything you do, knows that the moment you step outside your home, you're getting photographed. Miserable. I'd hate it. It seems like the most miserable life. So one of the...

At one point in his career and he was jumping around from clubs, like from Manchester United to... Didn't he come over to the US at some point? He went to Spain for a while. LA. That's my point I'm getting to. So yeah, it was Manchester United, then I think Real Madrid. And Real Madrid was like horrible because he was just so famous at that point and he was separated from his family.

But they came over to the United States, LA galaxy club, and they go to Hollywood and it's a completely different world. They're not even really that recognized. They're not photographed. They only had like one friend at that time that they knew was Tom Cruise. They remember Victoria Beckham was telling a story about they went out to lunch one time with the Cruises and no one cared about them.

It was just refreshing. They could walk down the street. People didn't recognize them, even though they were fairly huge at that time. But it's about re-identifying that, Sean. Like, what is greatness? And greatness is, I think, does have some positive impact on someone else. I think it is realizing your potential. And I think we have divine potential to be able to make positive changes. You can redefine greatness and you can shape that with young people.

You know, greatness could be facing something that's really incredibly hard and then overcome it. And then you communicate that as greatness. Uh, Kelly would often talk about just the power of youth sports and being able to shape new learning, right? Failing then coming back and rising up about that through that showing resilience and courage and those things. So I think identifying purpose and meaning that goes beyond yourself is critically important. So

Kel (59:15.257)
Where are we going to invest our time? Like, invest it into meaningful pursuits. You do that, you're less likely to get caught up in self-destructive thought patterns. And we can focus our shift towards creating positive impacts and even lasting legacies in our life. As parents, it's really important to lead by example and demonstrate that the significance of looking beyond trivial matters is important.

So that's why, you know, Sean was talking about this when we're referring to distressed tolerance about, you know, what angers and triggers people, such little things, we have to move beyond these trivial matters, don't give it much time. So some of the things that can really hurt the self-esteem and the emotions of a developing young teen, if you don't give it much attention, like it's not that big of a deal in the big scheme of things, well, they're not going to focus their attention on it.

So make sure that you're communicating to their kids how important they are in a bigger picture. Make sense? Yep, absolutely. Last one for today, okay? And again, you guys can challenge me on this and add, but the idea that everything is temporary is a concept that holds great power, impermanence. This is spoken about in other cultures, probably more so than

American culture, the Buddhist culture talks about impermanence a lot. And I think that both adds to our life from different perspectives. First, during moments of joy and success. Well, it's essential for us to fully embrace that experience. Like you can savor every second because you know, it is temporary. So when those moments are there, you want to have mindful attention to it. But conversely, and we're talking about inoculating young people,

against major mental health problems, in times of pain and difficulty, when you can acknowledge the temporary nature of those situations, it can bring a sense of peace, knowing that this too shall pass. Because life in its entirety, if we make it an adventurous journey, not defined by any one single moment or period in our life, we get to instill a degree of hope.

Kel (01:01:42.981)
that nothing ever stays the same. And if you don't like the way things are in your life right now, you also have the power to change it. And that's the dialect sometimes between acceptance and change. I'm not saying that everything that happens to us, we have the ability to change, but we can change our reaction to it. And sometimes that's through acceptance of things that are difficult and then focusing on what we can change. When addressing mental health,

If we focus on building resilience and fostering a mindset of continuous learning, growth, and adaptation in the face of adversity, think about what we're setting up for young people, that we are constantly creators. And that is the exciting thing about this life no matter what has happened to you.

And the value that I get from meeting people who've overcome trauma and tragedy is that you begin to see the potential in all human beings. And I don't want to limit any one person at any one time, not by a label, not by an idea, not by a concept. So when you do go through a really difficult time and you're at your low point, it's not the time to attach to.

to any one thought or idea about who you are and what you can and cannot do. It's just an opportunity for growth and accept that this too is impermanent. Is it possible that this difficult time is actually necessary to propel you forward? Is it possible that this actually needs to happen for you to create a better life? Now this is an attitude. This is a mindset.

And these are skills we can develop. I've always kind of had that as my mantra in my head during difficult times is that this too shall pass. And I even, you know, sometimes break it down to little things, you know, like, uh, I've got, I have to do this evening. I really don't want to go there. I don't want to do that thing, but I know at the end of the night, I'm going to end up being home and I'll be done with that. But then

Kel (01:04:03.405)
All those things that I often don't want to do in my mind, I've created my reasons why not to, and there's usually something really positive that comes from those experiences anyway. And I don't know why I was stressing it or not seeing the potential value of participating in it. Those types of things, just even on the small level, I just kind of said, all right, I can, I can get through this. I can get through this moment.

One of the skills people have to learn is how to do difficult things. There's a behavioral principle called pre-max principle. What's that mean? Pre-max principle means that you reward yourself basically after doing something hard, but you always do the hard thing first. Oh, yeah. And it seems to have a way to get people to openly face things because you know that's temporary, right? So let's say it's...

uncomfortable or it's challenging, like workouts, like just basic things, like get up and work out in the morning and then, you know, reward yourself with a nice cup of coffee and relax or, you know, it's a lot easier to chill out and relax at night when you don't have something looming, you know, that you have to do. And so many people have problems with procrastination. It's a way to kind of tackle procrastination is you get through the hard stuff first, and then you can relax after that. And that relaxing.

Conversely, like when you're in comparison to something as hard, it actually feels good because you got that all done and you got through it. And that's another way to just build up resiliency, right? Continue to do hard things. I think it was probably a year ago now that we had the podcast on the mental benefits of doing hard things. Because when you repeatedly do things that are, when you challenge yourself and you repeatedly do it, they don't become challenges anymore, right? It changes your entire. It's the skill.

Yeah.

Kel (01:05:58.393)
I'm gonna wrap this one up. Yeah, let's, let's just go over real quick. This is kind of like a primer, I think in a lot of ways to protect young people from indoctrination into this mental health cult that's getting pushed into our, down our throats and modern society. Number one, normalize life challenges. Second one, where your attention goes, your energy flows, get busy, do things that matter, get out of those screens, keep that screen time under two hours. Number three,

Build the stress tolerance skills. Open up your container. Allow yourself to experience discomfort and learn that you can push through it, that you can handle this, and put yourself in situations that are uncomfortable. Make sure your kids are not protected. Let them have those difficult conversations. Face those difficult moments. You're building distress tolerance when you do. Number four.

Your kids matter, the young people matter, identify purpose and meaning beyond yourself. I've never found anyone who's truly happy, who was focusing all on themselves all the time. Right. That's a, certainly a path towards misery. And the final thing is around impersonous. In, um, I'm sorry, impermanence. Everything is temporary. This too shall pass. And these are powerful concepts.