스크립트
00:00:00I want to talk today about one of the greatest sources of both happiness and unhappiness for
00:00:03many, perhaps most people, and that's being a parent. What are the kinds of things that you
00:00:08think that you need to do so you can have good and happy kids? Should you be lax? Should you be
00:00:13strict or easy? Should you yell at them a lot? Should you have a lot of rules or not so many?
00:00:20Should they be free range? What are the different styles of parenting? How should you behave?
00:00:24Does it matter at all what I do? And that's really the nature versus nurture debate.
00:00:29How much of a child's development is due to their genes rather than their upbringing?
00:00:35It turns out that there are certain things about parenting that not everybody takes into consideration
00:00:40that are really important that most people don't know about. And if you do these parenting
00:00:45things, it'll matter a lot.
00:00:54Hi, friends. Welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. This is a show about love and happiness
00:00:59more specifically about the science of love and happiness, how you can use the best that has been
00:01:05thought and said in neuroscience, behavioral science, philosophy, wisdom, traditions, put it all
00:01:10together to create a strategy to live a better life and to help other people live a better life as
00:01:15well. That's just my personal mission. And I'm so happy and so gratified that you've chosen to spend a
00:01:20little time on this journey with me. I want you to use this in your life, but also to pass it on to
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00:02:43things that you can listen to, ways that you can get actually engaged in our movement.
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00:03:47I want to talk today about one of the greatest sources of both happiness and unhappiness for many,
00:03:52perhaps most people. And that's being a parent, being a mother, father. Most people will talk about the joys that
00:03:58that that brings, the frustrations that that brings, the fear that that brings is being a parent. And I want to talk
00:04:04about that because I have two questions that I want to ask empirically and that I want to help you craft a life
00:04:11strategy around. If you have kids, are going to have kids, contemplating having kids at some point in the future.
00:04:17Number one, how to be a great and happier parent. And number two, how to raise great kids and indeed happier kids.
00:04:25What are the data say? It's not all chance, as it turns out. Now, of course, this is a huge topic.
00:04:31We could dedicate many episodes to it. We could dedicate a whole podcast to this. And in fact, people have. If you like this episode,
00:04:38please tell me and I will do more on this subject. Parenting is something that I feel very deeply about.
00:04:44It's a very personal issue as a parent and grandparent. It's something I've done a lot of research on.
00:04:48And in conjunction with romantic partnerships, marriage, these are some of the most important things that we can do.
00:04:54This is really how we live forever in our way. So please let me know if you want to hear more about this.
00:04:59This is just the opening act, if it will be according to you. Now, what do parents care about?
00:05:04What do parents most care about? And this is a question that empirical researchers have asked over the years.
00:05:10If you have children or plan to have them, what do you want? What do you care about the most? What are you most worried about?
00:05:15That was actually asked in a survey last year by the Pew Research Center, which is one of the most robust and best research organizations for survey-based research.
00:05:24It ranked in order what people most want for their kids and what people are most worried about for their kids.
00:05:31Number one and what they want, the desire of most parents. This is 94% of parents say that they want their kids to be honest and ethical.
00:05:39Interesting, right? Not having a good old time, not being all cheerful.
00:05:44Number one, 94% say this is, this outranked everything else is I want honest and ethical kids. Hmm.
00:05:51Number two is what are they most worried about? I should say, what's the number one thing on the worry list?
00:05:57This is 76% of parents in the number one slot is that they're, they're worried that their kids might struggle with depression or anxiety.
00:06:04Now that probably wouldn't have been the case 50 years ago because depression has about tripled among adolescents and anxiety has about doubled when we talk clinically, when this is diagnosed actually as psychiatric conditions, mood disorders.
00:06:18So they wouldn't have talked about it in this way, but they would have talked about being worried about their kids not being happy, which kind of amounts to the same thing.
00:06:24So all together with these data tell us, and once again, I'll put this survey in the show notes so you can go look at it yourself. Is it what most people want overwhelmingly is their kids to be good people and happy people or relatively happy people.
00:06:37That's what most parents want. But in that order, by the way, good people who are also happy. And those two things are obviously really related.
00:06:44So this is what we're really worried about as parents is what we can do to give our kids the highest odds of being good people and happy people.
00:06:52And I know exactly how this feels in those two categories. You know, I, I'm, you know, I have three kids.
00:06:57Um, those of you who follow my work might know that I have three, they're all adults, 28, 26 and 23 at this point.
00:07:04And, you know, 10 years ago, they were all, they were all teenagers, which was a super fun walk in the park, as you can imagine having three teenagers at home.
00:07:12And they were all challenging in their own way. They were all difficult in their own way. And they, oh, they worried Esther and me in their own way.
00:07:18Uh, one of my kids, when he was in middle school, um, he was particularly difficult at one period. They all go through their periods of particular difficulty.
00:07:27And I remember haranguing him constantly about his homework and his grades, which had become a real problem.
00:07:33Not because he didn't understand, but because he, he sort of lacked motivation, wasn't living up to his potential, you know, classic, you know, get calls from the school that, you know, he was getting bad grades or, or he might fail a class or, you know, he didn't show up for his exams.
00:07:46Finally, Esther's like, at least we know he's not cheating. You know, she's an optimist.
00:07:50But one night after an especially bad day, I was taking stock of the situation and I came to this realization.
00:07:57I didn't actually care about his grades. I was haranguing him about something I didn't care about.
00:08:01I was using his performance in school as a proxy for what I really cared about was him becoming a responsible, ethical, faithful, well-adjusted man.
00:08:11In other words, I wanted him to be good and happy.
00:08:14Exactly the qualities that the Pew research team found in, in their survey-based, uh, data.
00:08:21And that led me as a behavioral scientist to start studying how to do that.
00:08:25So not just hoping and not just using intuition and not using sort of pop psychology and not just Googling it.
00:08:31I started to do some real no-fuland research.
00:08:34This is one of the great things about being a behavioral scientist is because it's not research, it's me-search.
00:08:38And it's my family search, as it were. And so I started doing real work on this.
00:08:43And I want to tell you a little bit about what I've found over the years that subsequently I've been able to verify with respect to the, the, to what I see in the data, what I see in the studies.
00:08:52And also, uh, what I've experienced as I've worked with families, um, in my, in my everyday work.
00:08:58What are the kinds of things that you think that you need to do so you can have good and happy kids?
00:09:02Should you be lax? Should you be strict or easy? Should you yell at them a lot? You should, you have a lot of rules or not so many?
00:09:12Should they be free range? What are the different styles of parenting? How should you behave?
00:09:17How should you treat them? That's what I looked into.
00:09:20But here's where my research really started. How much does it matter?
00:09:24You know, cause this is kind of the baseline of what you would do as a behavioral scientist.
00:09:28You want to know as like, does it matter at all what I do?
00:09:31And that's really the nature versus nurture debate. How much of a child's development, um, and an adolescent's development is due to their genes rather than their upbringing.
00:09:40Okay. Now, now when I was a kid, the psychology literature, uh, suggested that nurture was a lot more important than nature.
00:09:47And this has kind of gone back and forth over the years, but there was this blank slate kind of theory that we were tabula rasa or, or nearly so.
00:09:56And that parenting is what really mattered to mold who they will become as adults.
00:10:00Lots and lots and lots of books came out about that.
00:10:02There's a lot of parenting and child rearing books.
00:10:05I mean, the famous Benjamin Spock book about, about how to raise children, babies and children was really a lot about how to treat them in a particular way so that they will grow up.
00:10:16Depending entirely on how you treat them and what you say to them and how you act to become happy and good, good and happy, like we talked about before.
00:10:25And I was sort of interested in this to begin with, cause I didn't know, I didn't know what the current state of the literature was.
00:10:30And, and by the way, the nature nurture thing is really interesting because our kids vary with respect to how much nature and nurture are going to work.
00:10:37Let me explain.
00:10:38As I explained in a past episode, two of my kids are biological and one is adopted.
00:10:43And so this is like a social scientist dream, right?
00:10:46I mean, we didn't do it so that I could get data.
00:10:48I promise you I'm not that weird, but, but I wanted to know how the similarities and differences and, and how they responded to different kinds of parenting stimuli would differ with respect to nature versus nurture.
00:10:58Now it's interesting because my three kids, my two older sons are biological.
00:11:03My daughter's adopted my youngest.
00:11:04She's now 23, but they, they all are like me and my wife, but in different ways.
00:11:11So my oldest son is 28.
00:11:13He thinks just like me.
00:11:14We have complete cognitive similarity.
00:11:17He and I make the same jokes.
00:11:19We have the same sense of humor and, and, and many of the same ways of solving problems.
00:11:25So we're cognitively really similar to each other.
00:11:27My middle son, we have the same appetites, good and bad.
00:11:30We're attracted to the same kind of stuff, right?
00:11:32You mean the, you know, the exploding fireworks and you know, that, that whatever it is.
00:11:37I mean, we have the same tendency to be attracted and averse to the same kind of stimuli with the same appetites, what it comes down to.
00:11:45And my youngest daughter who was adopted, here's where it gets really weird.
00:11:49We have exactly the same interests.
00:11:51We're interested in the same stuff.
00:11:53She specialized in college.
00:11:55She majored, you don't call it specializations, majoring for Pete's sake.
00:11:58I'm a 30 year academic.
00:11:59I should know this.
00:12:00She majored in, in psychology with an emphasis on neuroscience.
00:12:04I mean, yeah.
00:12:05And why?
00:12:06Because ever since she was a little girl, we'd have these intense conversations about the stuff that I talk about on the show and the stuff that I write about.
00:12:12She's really, really interested in that.
00:12:13And she's not technically biologically related to me.
00:12:15So I want to know how much of all of these things are nature and how much of all of these things are nurture.
00:12:21Now, again, the old thinking is it's all nurture and no nature, but that turns out to be quite wrong.
00:12:28And how do we know this?
00:12:29Because modern research has been able to use quasi experimental methods on twins, identical twins, those who are, especially those who are separated at birth into, into separate families and then given personality tests later on in life.
00:12:42That's not a diabolical experiment.
00:12:44It just kind of happened naturally in the way that, that adoptions were undertaken, especially between the 1930s and the 1960s in the United States.
00:12:51And, and they're, they're voluntarily reunited.
00:12:54There's nothing, there's no ethical problems with the surveys, with these, with these experiments, as a matter of fact.
00:12:58And, and you can see some of these, these meetings for the first time on, on YouTube.
00:13:03They're beautiful and funny and really lovely.
00:13:05Imagine you're 40 and you find out for the first time you have an identical twin, how weird that would be.
00:13:11And, and, and, you know, seeing people understanding this for the first time and the thrill they took in it, it's just really, it's actually really, really, really, really inspirational.
00:13:20Um, the early studies on this, uh, on these twins, uh, were coming in the late 1990s.
00:13:25And so this is when the thinking started to change, which was really my time coming out as a, as a, a behavioral scientist.
00:13:31I finished my PhD in 1998.
00:13:33So the first big study that asked nature versus nurture with respect to personality came out in 1996 in the journal of personality.
00:13:41So really an apex journal in psychology.
00:13:44And they were looking at these, um, 123 pairs of identical twins, which have identical DNA.
00:13:50And 127 pairs of fraternal twins, which share 50% of their genetic material.
00:13:57So they're, they have 50% in common in their genetic profile.
00:14:01And then they looked across the personality profile.
00:14:04Now, those of you who have been following this work for a while, you know that we study personality with respect to five dimensions.
00:14:10And, and the five dimensions are remembered in terms of the acronym ocean.
00:14:15O-C-E-A-N.
00:14:17This is how you remember it when you're first learning it for the first time in school.
00:14:20O is openness to experience or openness to personality.
00:14:24It's a neophilia is another way to say as you like new stuff.
00:14:27C is conscientiousness.
00:14:29You live, you know, true to your word.
00:14:31E is extroversion versus introversion.
00:14:33That was the first of the personality characteristics.
00:14:35Believe it or not, that was sort of popularized by Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist.
00:14:39In the early part of the 20th century.
00:14:41So that was the first of these.
00:14:42A is agreeableness.
00:14:44You know, that's agreeableness.
00:14:46You're going out of your way not to be disagreeable and to be agreeable with other people.
00:14:50And N is neuroticism, which largely is correlated with sort of melancholy and anxiety, depression and anxiety today.
00:14:57Those particular mood disorders are, and that's a Freudian term is neuroticism, but we keep that in there for the N.
00:15:03So how much of these five personality dimensions are inherited?
00:15:08O.
00:15:09Openness.
00:15:1061% inherited.
00:15:11If you have parents who are open to experience, that's going to explain 61% of the variance across the population in openness to experience among children.
00:15:21Right?
00:15:22C.
00:15:23Conscientiousness.
00:15:24Conscientiousness.
00:15:2544% of your conscientiousness is basically inherited or the variance is explained by parenting.
00:15:31E.
00:15:32Extroversion.
00:15:3353%.
00:15:34A.
00:15:35Agreeableness.
00:15:3641%.
00:15:37N.
00:15:38Neuroticism.
00:15:3941% as well.
00:15:42That's a lot.
00:15:43And so it's somewhere between low 40s and low 60s.
00:15:48So let's just say 50% of your personality is explained by genetics.
00:15:53And the rest is the other 50% is not genetics is what it comes down to.
00:15:58That's a lot.
00:15:59Right?
00:16:00And that's, and what that means is that old nurture is, is not right.
00:16:05At least that we're not blank slates.
00:16:07Okay.
00:16:08You say, all right, great.
00:16:09So it's 50% genetic.
00:16:11That, that turns out not to be bad news, by the way, because if you turn out to have a personality you don't like very much, don't just say it's true.
00:16:20My mother did make me unhappy biologically.
00:16:23It just means you need to do more work to work on your personality than somebody who has a personality they like or a personality that's more pleasant.
00:16:31Right?
00:16:32There's nothing wrong, but you have to know if you know your genetic tendency, you can tailor your habits.
00:16:37That's everything that we often do about happiness.
00:16:39If you have a genetic tendency to be gloomy, you need better happiness hygiene.
00:16:43People who are just bubbly and a bullion all the time don't need to do that.
00:16:46But the same thing is true with, with the genetics of your personality.
00:16:49You need to know it.
00:16:50And it's not bad news.
00:16:52I've talked about this in numerous shows about how you can change that.
00:16:54And I'll talk about that a little bit later here today.
00:16:57Okay.
00:16:57Now the other half, however, you're going to say, okay, fine.
00:17:00I only have half with my, with parenting.
00:17:02It turns out that's not right either.
00:17:04Because it's probably more experience, the individual experience that people have over the course of their lives, which has a lot to do with a lot of things besides parenting.
00:17:14And parenting per se, in the way that, that children are parented, doesn't make up very much of the other half at all.
00:17:22So this is not from the same set of studies, but here's what really kind of sums it up.
00:17:26This is an important article that I'll put in the show notes from 2021 from Calabra Psychology.
00:17:32Also a really, really good psychology journal that, that showed that parenting has about as much on average, explains about as much of the variance in personality as does birth order.
00:17:46So you've seen some of the birth order studies, the first child, the second child, the third child, it's real, but it's actually not that big a deal.
00:17:53It just, it, it, you kind of see it, but it's really, I mean, I know a lot of people where the first kid is one way, where the first kid is a second way.
00:18:00Everybody knows that the middle child's a problem.
00:18:02Well, not always.
00:18:03Sometimes the middle child is the most responsible of the children.
00:18:06There's, there's, there's stereotypes about this, but they don't really carry very much weight.
00:18:10They just tend to be kind of true, truthy.
00:18:14And, and the same is true with respect to parenting.
00:18:17It, it kind of on average approaches 0% of the explanatory value of the variance in personality.
00:18:24Okay.
00:18:25So the rest is just the individual experiences that people have, notwithstanding the effect that parents are having over them.
00:18:30And, and now you're saying, well, man, that's ridiculous.
00:18:34That doesn't make sense at all.
00:18:35Or it's at least it's really unfair that no matter what I do, that it doesn't matter.
00:18:40That's wrong.
00:18:41That's a wrong interpretation.
00:18:42That's the wrong statistical interpretation, but it's also wrong in the following way.
00:18:47These are averages.
00:18:48It turns out that there are certain things about parenting that not everybody takes into consideration.
00:18:54That are really important that most people don't know about.
00:18:58And if you do these parenting things, it'll matter a lot.
00:19:02Now it rounds out across the population to not mattering very much because most people don't do these things that I'm about to talk about.
00:19:09Okay.
00:19:10So, so that's what I'm thinking about.
00:19:11Think about it this way.
00:19:12I have a lot of studies that also show, cause you know that I'm very interested in the biology of how we build better lives.
00:19:18That, that, that dietary supplements, which everybody's talking about, everybody's thinking about that dietary supplements are very marginal in the way that they affect muscle protein synthesis and hypertrophy.
00:19:30For example, that doesn't mean that no supplements work.
00:19:34It just means that bundles of supplements on average that people are taking, many of which have a very marginal impact on what we do.
00:19:40Some supplements really matter a lot.
00:19:42For example, people who take relatively high doses of creatine monohydrate, but have a really, really good effect both cognitively and muscle protein synthesis.
00:19:50It's just that on average, not everybody does that.
00:19:53And that's the same thing with respect to parenting.
00:19:56Okay.
00:19:57On average, parenting doesn't have a big effect, but certain things about parenting, if you do them, will.
00:20:03And that's what I really want to focus on.
00:20:05Cause that's what gets us to the, the core of what we're trying to get in this episode today.
00:20:09Now here, let me give you some clues on what the parenting really is.
00:20:13A bunch of, uh, pretty interesting patterns emerge from the data with respect to personality, once again, and then we'll go on to happiness and virtue, et cetera.
00:20:22Big finding the literature children are more conscientious when their parents were more involved in their lives and work to provide cultural stimulation, such as them taking them to museums.
00:20:33Okay.
00:20:34That's one piece of evidence there, right?
00:20:36Okay.
00:20:36So that's not just genetics that has to do with particular parenting actions.
00:20:41That's something that the parents were doing.
00:20:43This has nothing to do with what the parents were saying and only to do with the parents were doing with their kids that affected their conscientiousness.
00:20:51Second, children are more agreeable, significantly more agreeable when their parents raise them with structure and goals.
00:20:59Once again, that's not just saying be nice.
00:21:01That's raising them with particular structure and goals.
00:21:03They tend to be more agreeable.
00:21:05And that's a pretty big conclusion, by the way.
00:21:07That means that we're going to do these things together.
00:21:09We're going to have particular goals.
00:21:11There's going to be rewards for the goals.
00:21:12We're going to have a structure in the way that you eat, the way that you sleep, when you get up, when you exercise, when you go to school, showing up on time.
00:21:21And that actually leads to people becoming more agreeable.
00:21:23And once again, those are the actions modeled by parents, not just what they're telling their kids.
00:21:29This is also true with happiness.
00:21:31For example, one really interesting study of both fraternal and identical twins found that the genetic component from ratings of happiness, largely, I mean, a lot of it is somewhere between 44 and 52% genetic.
00:21:45You know, your happiness is 44 to 52% genetic, a lot like your personality, but there are certain things that parents do that parents model that have a lot to do with the parenting per se on the later happiness of kids.
00:22:00Most notably, parental warmth and affection.
00:22:03When parents are really warm and affectionate with each other and really warm and affectionate with their kids, that tends to highly, highly associate later in life with happiness.
00:22:14And it seems to be really causal.
00:22:17By the way, that's most important from the father.
00:22:19It turns out that the father being warm and affectionate is, is, is even more important than the mother being warm and affectionate.
00:22:26And, and this is one of the reasons that you'll often hear, and I've often said this myself, I've given this advice to dads.
00:22:32The number one thing that you can do on your worst day is for your kids is love their mom overtly and clearly, and then go love them.
00:22:42Let's start with their mom.
00:22:44I mean, you got, you kind of got one job, guys.
00:22:46It's what it comes down to.
00:22:47But part of the reason is because that's has this big association with the subsequent happiness of children.
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00:23:57Okay.
00:23:58Now, these are clues.
00:23:59Now, once again, the data say that on average, across the whole population, a variance in parenting doesn't explain very much at all of variance in personality or happiness.
00:24:10Except in these particular kinds of cases.
00:24:13So, what do they have in common, these cases?
00:24:16The answer is, it doesn't matter what you say.
00:24:19All that matters is what you do.
00:24:21You want to be a good parent?
00:24:22You want your kids to be good and virtuous and kind and honest and upright and happy or as happy as they can be?
00:24:30Model what you want to see.
00:24:33That's really what it comes down to.
00:24:35Words are less important than actions.
00:24:38It's almost the case, by the way, when you look at the literature that you could talk to your kids in a foreign language, but what they see is actually what is going to rub off and have a really big effect on them.
00:24:49Um, that's why parents who say do what I say and not what I do are doing it exactly wrong.
00:24:54It should be do what I do and not what I say.
00:24:56Because the saying part, they don't really listen.
00:24:57It goes in one ear and out the other.
00:24:59Modeling, um, is so important in the literature.
00:25:03Uh, there's a really important study actually, um, from 2001 in a, in the, in the journal Sociological Focus about how to pass on religious behavior.
00:25:13So a lot of people who are religious, a lot of parents who are really religious, they, they worry a lot in a secularizing world.
00:25:18What do I do so that my kids go to church, go to synagogue, go to mosque, practice their faith, you know, in all different faiths.
00:25:24I've been asked this question by Christians and Muslims and, and Hindus and, and, and Buddhists.
00:25:29And they're worried about the, that the quickly secularizing world.
00:25:32And they see so many of their friends' kids fall away from the faith.
00:25:35And they know that their faith is such a gift to them.
00:25:37And they want their kids to practice.
00:25:38What do I do?
00:25:39What do I do?
00:25:40What do I do?
00:25:41So this study actually kind of answers that this study actually shows that when kids see their father in prayer and practicing the faith that has an enormous predictive value on what they do when they grow up.
00:25:54Now, why is that also the mother, but the father much more so.
00:25:58As it turns out in, in, in intact families, obviously is what I'm talking about.
00:26:03It probably, and this is speculation at this point, it probably is the case that when you're really little, seeing the physically most imposing human being doing something has a big cognitive impact.
00:26:15It is a big cognitive imprinting impact on the child.
00:26:18And, and, and I remember this, by the way, I remember this.
00:26:21So as a kid, my mom and my dad, me and my brother, and my dad was six foot two.
00:26:27I mean, he, to me, he was like, like Goliath.
00:26:32He was in North.
00:26:33He was like a giant.
00:26:34Right.
00:26:35And super strong.
00:26:36And I remember asking my brother, Jeff, um, do you think dad's strong enough to lift the house?
00:26:39It was like the corner of the house.
00:26:41My dad was a mathematics professor.
00:26:43He could not.
00:26:44Um, but he was huge.
00:26:46Right.
00:26:47And he was strong.
00:26:48And, and by the way, he was a proud man.
00:26:50He would not have been on his knee before any other man.
00:26:56No way.
00:26:57Right.
00:26:58But every night before I went to sleep, I saw my father on his knees next to my bed.
00:27:05We would say our prayers.
00:27:07That's what we did.
00:27:08We were a serious religious Christian family.
00:27:11And my father prayed on his knees.
00:27:13And what did that mean to me?
00:27:15That my father was in, in the presence of something more powerful than him.
00:27:20I mean, that's, it's a big deal to a little dude.
00:27:24And it still is because when I was a kid, I said, that's what it means to be a.
00:27:28Big, strong man.
00:27:29Right.
00:27:30No, no.
00:27:31You can say how naive, how silly.
00:27:33I get it.
00:27:34And people have said that to me in the past, but that made me who I am now.
00:27:38And I made sure that my kids saw it as well.
00:27:40So, and that's the example that I'm talking about here.
00:27:43I'm not making the case that this is how you need to live.
00:27:46I am making the case that if you want great kids, you need to model great behavior.
00:27:53That's the bottom line of what this comes down to.
00:27:55Okay.
00:27:56Guys have good genes.
00:27:58Unhelpful.
00:27:59Right.
00:28:00But you can do that other half.
00:28:01And that other half is all the things that you're actually doing.
00:28:04Do you want your kids to be honest?
00:28:07Yeah.
00:28:08I mean, I got 94% of the parents are saying, I want my kids to be honest and ethical.
00:28:12What do you do?
00:28:13Be honest and ethical.
00:28:15Be impeccable to your word.
00:28:17Be admirable.
00:28:18That's what it comes down to.
00:28:20That's the reason.
00:28:21That's the standard to which you're held publicly and privately.
00:28:24If you're a dad and a mom is actually being truly admirable in all of these moral ways.
00:28:30And having your kids actually see that.
00:28:32Having your kids seeing when you could have kept the extra change that they're giving you.
00:28:36When your kids see that you could have cut that ethical corner.
00:28:39When you could have told that lie and gotten away with it and gotten a better price from the car dealer.
00:28:43Whatever that happens to be.
00:28:44And your kids are in on it and they saw you not taking the money.
00:28:48Not cutting the corner.
00:28:49Not being angry or mean when you were justified in doing so.
00:28:54And that will speak louder than any words you could ever speak in front of your kids.
00:29:01That might just change their lives.
00:29:03As a matter of fact, it's the only thing you can do that probably ever will.
00:29:06So here are three things to keep in mind.
00:29:08Here are three lessons I want you to keep in mind on the basis of all of this.
00:29:11And once again, we go deeper.
00:29:13We could dig a hole in any other part of this and go to the center of the earth.
00:29:18These things are so deep and they're so rich and there's so much literature.
00:29:21And I'd love to talk about this.
00:29:22So let me know if you want me to do more.
00:29:24And specifically what you want to know more about.
00:29:27By the way, the questions that are coming are all about this.
00:29:30And we'll get into some of these things in a minute from you.
00:29:33Three things to keep in mind.
00:29:34Number one, a lot of people today say, I can't have kids because I'm a mess.
00:29:40Yes, you can.
00:29:41I have the data.
00:29:43Even a hot mess can be a really great parent.
00:29:46Why?
00:29:47Because we can be self-governing individuals.
00:29:49There's a wonderful body of literature and psychology that comes from the British psychologist
00:29:53Richard Wiseman called the on the as if principle.
00:29:56It's actually goes back to the work of of William James, the father of modern psychology, who talked about the fact that he purported that he hypothesized that people will become something that they're pretending to be.
00:30:09Right.
00:30:10Right.
00:30:11And that's because you, you, it's not manifestation.
00:30:14It's just like it's role playing until it becomes realistic in your own life.
00:30:20You live up to the fiction that you're trying to create.
00:30:24That, that was what he believed in.
00:30:25And Richard Wiseman has shown in his work that it's absolutely the case called the as a principle act as if you were that particular person.
00:30:31If you want to be happier, pretend you're happier.
00:30:33I've got all these interesting studies.
00:30:35I probably mentioned them before on the show that, that if you actually figure out a way to, to simulate a Duchenne smile, which is physiologically the smile that's uniquely associated with happiness.
00:30:47That involves the orbicularis oculi and zygomaticus major muscles and your face, nothing to do with the mouth, all having to do with the eyes.
00:30:54That if you can simulate that, that it will fool your brain into thinking you're actually happier and you will be happier.
00:31:00Now, the way to do that is in the morning to take your pencil, a pencil and, and clamp it between your molars.
00:31:07See what happened?
00:31:09It actually exerted the muscles that I'm talking about right there.
00:31:13And you feel happier immediately.
00:31:14If you do that for about a minute, you'll feel happier for about an hour.
00:31:18As a matter of fact, give it a try, but that's the, as if principle act as if you were the particular person you're a hot mess.
00:31:24Well, welcome to the world of hot messes, man.
00:31:27Act like a person you want to be around your children.
00:31:31You will become that person.
00:31:32And so will they.
00:31:33Well, is it harder for some people than others?
00:31:35Yeah, totally.
00:31:36But here's the point.
00:31:37We are self-governing.
00:31:39You know, we have this big meaty prefrontal cortex, a sixth of your brain by weight.
00:31:45No, wrong.
00:31:4630% of your brain by weight.
00:31:47I got that wrong.
00:31:48I got the math wrong.
00:31:49I know you're holding me through that.
00:31:50You're gonna write it into the comments.
00:31:51You just had a six.
00:31:52That's 30%.
00:31:53And, and what that allows us to do is to not choose our animal impulses.
00:31:57It allows us to live in our space of our moral aspirations.
00:32:01The executive center of our brain says the limbic system isn't in charge.
00:32:05I am.
00:32:06The conscious me allows me to be the person that I want to be.
00:32:10If I'm a mess and I'm, and I have a difficult emotional profile, if I'm suffering from mood disorders, will I, will I find it harder than other people to do the right thing and say the right thing and model the right behavior?
00:32:20Yeah.
00:32:21But all of us can do this.
00:32:22You know, actions are more important than feelings for self-governing individuals.
00:32:26And this is one of the reasons, by the way, that most people are better people once they have kids, because they're so much more dedicated to self-governance, to self-management.
00:32:37And it improves their lives because they start to live this as of principle.
00:32:40Even if you're a mess, you can be a great parent.
00:32:42And that's principle one that I want you to remember.
00:32:45Principle number two, when you don't know what to do, you got teenagers or little kids or toddlers that are, you know, waking up at two o'clock in the morning with croup and you haven't slept in a week.
00:32:59When you don't know what to do, here's your go-to be warm and loving.
00:33:04I don't care how, if you feel it or not, because the, as if principle, be warm and loving, love them more.
00:33:10You know?
00:33:11And, and I remember that when one of our kids was being particularly difficult and, you know, we just threw up our hands and my wife said, I'm completely resigned.
00:33:18I guess all we, all we can do at this point is love him, right?
00:33:22In other words, bring it in.
00:33:23This is what great families and, and, and really good couples, by the way, they have in common is when they, they, they feel avoidance.
00:33:31Like, no, they practice approach.
00:33:34Bring it in.
00:33:35It's one of the things I try to do in my marriage.
00:33:37I don't always succeed.
00:33:38It's when I'm feeling avoidance.
00:33:40I'm feeling aversion because I'm annoyed.
00:33:42I say, bring it in, bring it in.
00:33:44Because what, what are you doing?
00:33:45You're using the opposite signal strategy.
00:33:47Using the, as a principle and the ultimate rebellion against the self.
00:33:51And especially in the moments of greatest desperation is warmth and love, warmth and love.
00:33:56When you don't know what to do as a parent warmth and love.
00:33:59What if they're being a brat?
00:34:01Especially then they need your love the most when they deserve your love.
00:34:05The least is what it comes down to.
00:34:07That is the modeling behavior that will truly change their lives.
00:34:11I remember that my parents loved me when I didn't deserve it.
00:34:14And that's what helped me to love my kids.
00:34:16When they deserved it the least.
00:34:19I'm trying to do that with my grandkids.
00:34:21Although I have to tell you about my grandkids.
00:34:23They're never bad.
00:34:24They're always good.
00:34:25I don't know what it is about grandkids, but there's just great all the time.
00:34:28Okay.
00:34:29Number three, be an actor.
00:34:31Um, and, and this is related to the first two, of course, but imagine that you are playing in a play, the adult version of your kid.
00:34:41Okay.
00:34:42It's like your kid.
00:34:43And again, there's a lot of literature on this, but I don't have to give you the literature on this.
00:34:46It makes perfect sense.
00:34:47Given all we've talked about before.
00:34:49Pretend if you're, you know, 40 years old and you've got a kid, you've got a kid at home was 10.
00:34:55Pretend that you are the 40 year old version of your son or daughter behaving in a particular way that you'd find good and happy.
00:35:03Good and happy.
00:35:04Those are the two standards.
00:35:05Good and happy.
00:35:06Right.
00:35:07What are they doing?
00:35:08What are they saying?
00:35:09How are they behaving?
00:35:10How are they reacting?
00:35:11How are they treating other people?
00:35:13How are they treating themselves?
00:35:14What are their habits?
00:35:16Think about that.
00:35:17Okay.
00:35:18I'm, I'm so, you know, right now I'm, I'm 62 years old and, and, and my son Joaquin is, is 28 years old.
00:35:24I'm 62 year old Joaquin.
00:35:26Right now he's sort of past the age where I'm really, really worried about this so very much, but guess what?
00:35:31You know, he lives right next to me and he's paying attention to me now too, because he wants to know what it's like to be kind of old.
00:35:39And he's going to model a lot of his behavior conscious or not on that.
00:35:42So I'm 62 year old Joaquin.
00:35:43What do I want to see him doing to be both good and happy?
00:35:48And, and when we do that, kids actually see that.
00:35:51And that creates this imprinting behavior and that, that theater production itself will almost never steer you wrong.
00:35:59You're not going to say, you know, my 62 year old son, what do I want to see him doing?
00:36:02Let's say, I want to see him.
00:36:03I want to see him being mean to his wife.
00:36:05Yeah.
00:36:06I want to see him actually behaving workaholically and not paying attention to his kids and grandkids.
00:36:11Yeah.
00:36:12That's a really good idea.
00:36:12That's what I want him to do.
00:36:13You know, I want to see my 62 year old son being a drunk.
00:36:17That's what I want.
00:36:18No, no, it's not what I want.
00:36:20And it's even more important when I was earlier in life, when I was 40 years old, what I want, what I want the 40 and the 30 year old version of my kids to, to look like.
00:36:29Okay.
00:36:30One last note before we go to questions.
00:36:32Um, as a parent, you're going to make a ton of mistakes and, and, and here's the thing.
00:36:36It doesn't matter.
00:36:37It mostly doesn't matter.
00:36:39Most mistakes that you make, they seem really heavy and they seem really grave.
00:36:43They're not.
00:36:44As a matter of fact, I can think back on my selfishness and my blunders as a dad and, and, and all the things that I did wrong.
00:36:52All the boring sports games that I missed because I was, you know, so important at work.
00:36:57Um, birthdays and things that I, you know, it's just, I got it.
00:37:01You know, I I'm, I'm a troubled soul and I've made a lot of wrong decisions in my life.
00:37:06And, and, and on some sleepless nights, those instances roll around in my head and fill me with regret.
00:37:12They really do.
00:37:13Those aren't the big sources of regret.
00:37:15I have other regrets that are much bigger than that.
00:37:17Maybe someday on the show, we'll talk about them, but, but then I look at my sons and my daughter and, um, how did it all work out?
00:37:24I mean, I S I started the show talking about my son when he was struggling in school.
00:37:29Actually, the problem was he wasn't struggling in school.
00:37:33We were struggling with the fact that he wasn't struggling and didn't seem to care and all that.
00:37:37And, and, and how did all my hectoring about grades and, and, and values work out?
00:37:42It didn't matter.
00:37:43In the end, the fact that I made those mistakes and the fact that I, I ultimately went to doing this stuff that I really cared about, which was trying to be an upright man so that he would be upright as well.
00:37:54And it worked out.
00:37:56Was he a big scholar in college?
00:37:57No, he skipped school.
00:37:58He skipped college.
00:37:59As a matter of fact, with my full blessing and the blessing of his mother, he worked on a farm for a year.
00:38:04And then he joined the Marine Corps where he spent four years as a mortar man.
00:38:07And then as a scout sniper, which is a, an elite part of the Marine Corps and a very scary job.
00:38:12Just the training is dangerous as a matter of fact.
00:38:15But he came out at 23, married with a son.
00:38:18And now he's 26 and has two sons and he's happily married.
00:38:21And he loves me and he loves his wife and he loves his kids.
00:38:24He loves his mom and I love him.
00:38:27And we talk every single day.
00:38:30And despite the fact that I'm a complete screw up, he turned out just fine.
00:38:35And so will your child.
00:38:38So let's take some questions.
00:38:40Anonymous.
00:38:41We got a lot of anonymous this week, right?
00:38:43Um, anonymous writes in to officehours@ArthurBrooks.com.
00:38:46How do you overcome bad habits that come from having an emotionally distant father?
00:38:51Hmm.
00:38:52So now we're not talking about this from the point of view of the father.
00:38:54We're talking about this from the point of view of the adult child, which is an interesting question.
00:38:58One that I hear quite frequently.
00:39:00What really happens in the brain as someone healing from wounds of their parents?
00:39:04I had a great dad and my parents loved each other.
00:39:07And I didn't have this experience.
00:39:08My wife came from a broken home where her father left when she was a little girl, as a matter of fact.
00:39:12And she, she did have this experience.
00:39:14And, and, and I've seen the studies and I've talked to my wife.
00:39:19And so what do we know?
00:39:20Knowledge is power.
00:39:22You're not programmed into any particular behavior, notwithstanding the bad behavior of your parents.
00:39:28It can be a problem.
00:39:30The modeling is a problem per se, but if the modeling is great, great.
00:39:36If the modeling is poor, then it actually becomes incumbent upon the adult child to get beyond that.
00:39:41And what we know is that the executive center of the brain actually absolutely can get beyond that.
00:39:47That means that we have to act according to our aspirations.
00:39:49And frequently one of the ways that we do that, by the way, and I've talked about this with a lot of people that had a bad family background.
00:39:55They'll say, I think about what I would like to do right now.
00:39:57I think about what my father would do right now.
00:39:59And I do the opposite.
00:40:01That's the opposite signal strategy.
00:40:03So if you had an absent father or an abusive father or father was really troubled, that might be the way that you do it.
00:40:09But I'm not sure you have to decide that for yourself.
00:40:12But the truth is also that a lot of people who had absent fathers, they do just fine because they find a good role model, even as an adult.
00:40:19Um, it's interesting, you know, as a, as a Catholic, one of the things that is often recommended is that to, to go to St. Joseph, you know, the foster father of Jesus and, and, and have him as a role model in some way, shape or form.
00:40:32Is that too diffuse?
00:40:33Is that too abstract for you?
00:40:34Maybe, but it's actually been helpful for a lot of people and find somebody in real life or not in real life who can actually be a role model for you.
00:40:42And don't let your background or your, your history actually dictate your future.
00:40:46Second, again, from anonymous, different anonymous.
00:40:49Um, how to parent our oldest son, 19 years old, who's dating someone who is pretty toxic and causes division in the family.
00:40:57We try to be welcoming, but their communications are bad.
00:41:00And our son gets thrown into the middle to advocate and fight for his girlfriend.
00:41:03I don't know how to parent at this stage.
00:41:05Okay.
00:41:06Hectoring won't help this.
00:41:08I can tell you what's going to help is loving him unconditionally.
00:41:11Right.
00:41:12That's the best insurance policy against really catastrophic things happening.
00:41:15Now we have this wild, uh, situation in our country and probably around the world where we have a, a, a, a no contact movement where people are.
00:41:25Every manipulative activist appears to be telling people or therapist appears to be telling young adults that your, your family's toxic.
00:41:33You gotta have, gotta go no contact with them.
00:41:35Some no doubt are from abandonment or abuse, but it is just become so excessive on what's actually going on.
00:41:42And what you want to stay away from is doing something that creates a whole lot of ongoing bitterness that will give an opening to your son's partner to go no contact with you.
00:41:51And so the way to deal with that is, is unconditional love.
00:41:54If you're religious, I strongly recommend a lot of prayer on this, uh, and make your values clear.
00:42:00Even if, you know, if they're living in a particular way that you don't, that you don't agree with making your values clear without condemning.
00:42:06His or hers for that matter.
00:42:09One of the big points in the research that I found again and again and again, and I've taught this for years is that you can actually.
00:42:16Have behavioral differences, but if you don't have values, condemnation, you tend not to have generational schism.
00:42:23So live your life and live your life in the way that is appropriate love unconditionally, your son.
00:42:29And if they're behaving in a particular way that you disagree with love him, nonetheless, making your own values clear, but not condemning his values because he will interpret that as condemning him.
00:42:40And that will be an opportunity for a no contact situation.
00:42:43And that's the worst thing.
00:42:44And that's the thing to avoid.
00:42:45Uh, last not anonymous.
00:42:47This is from Nadia.
00:42:48It writes into the website.
00:42:50How can we help 12 year olds build discipline of happiness, build a discipline of happiness in a way that feels motivating rather than forced?
00:42:58Uh, you know what I'm going to say, because that's what I talked about this whole episode, model it.
00:43:02Don't tell them to go do happy things.
00:43:04Like write your gratitude list, you know, model it, write your gratitude list, behave in a way that shows that you're working to become a happier person.
00:43:12Not withstanding your feelings, that you're a self-governing individual.
00:43:16Talk about what you're actually doing to struggle to make that.
00:43:18So ask for suggestions from your 12 year old on how you can model it better.
00:43:23Bring your 12 year old into your own personal challenges, your own adventure in, uh, in the science of happiness.
00:43:31And that's what's actually going to do it.
00:43:33Now that, that said, a couple of other things, just practical matters.
00:43:35Um, if you want to build a discipline of happiness, you need rules around screen time, right?
00:43:40That's a very practical thing.
00:43:41I've talked about it again and again.
00:43:42And again, there are, uh, unmitigated unlimited use of screens will destroy your child's happiness.
00:43:48Sure as I'm sitting here, that's the case.
00:43:51It will suck the happiness out of your child's life.
00:43:55It will lead to depression and anxiety and loneliness and all kinds of problems.
00:44:00Meaning that beyond your modeling happiness, which by the way, means modeling good screen behavior on your own part.
00:44:07It means that you need rules around that.
00:44:09Okay.
00:44:10Second is, um, I recommend, what do you do with all that time you're not spending behind screens?
00:44:15I recommend time in sports, in the arts and in outside.
00:44:20That's what I recommend.
00:44:21If you read the meaning of your life, my last book, you'll know all of the reasons neurophysiologically, why I recommend those things.
00:44:27But they really, really, really work.
00:44:29And that means you need to model it by getting interested in those things and doing them with your kid.
00:44:33If you follow these particular rules, um, you're going to be doing about as much as you possibly can.
00:44:37So, Nadia, let me know how it goes.
00:44:40Um, let me know any of your thoughts at the email address, officehours@arthurbrooks.com.
00:44:46Like and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, Apple.
00:44:50Leave a comment.
00:44:51I promise I'll read it.
00:44:52Even if it's negative, it's great.
00:44:53I want to know what you think about this.
00:44:54And we want to make the show better and better and better because we're doing it for you so that you can actually teach this material as well.
00:44:59Please follow me on the socials.
00:45:01Uh, let's redeem the socials.
00:45:02Let's make them a good source of love and happiness.
00:45:05And that's what I'm trying to do.
00:45:06I know you are as well.
00:45:08Uh, Instagram, LinkedIn, all the other platforms, order the meaning of your life.
00:45:11Go get the newsletter, go to the website, take the, take the surveys, um, and keep the conversation going.
00:45:17Share these ideas with other people, share them with your kids, love them, um, unconditionally and have a great week.
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