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Hi welcome back to another episode of the YouSchool podcast. I'm Scott Schimmel. I'm here as your host. And we are walking through each of the critical foundations questions one by one taking a look at each one of these questions. And my goal is to convince you that this question is absolutely essential for anyone that they must answer this question in order to have all the ingredients, the right ingredients, to build a life that's not just happy, not just personally fulfilling, not just successful life, but a life that's truly meaningful. And I think you've probably heard of this phrase before, the idea of being a helicopter parent. So this, the term first came about 15 years ago. And the idea was that there had been a shift in parenting styles. Were perhaps a generation before. Kids were, you know, latchkey kids, meaning their parents were off working, building their careers. And more or less, the kids were left to their own devices left alone, to figure out life for themselves. And so their reaction to that when those kids grew up and became parents, they responded and reacted to what they felt like they lacked and the ways that they were neglected, and maybe overreacted, overcorrected, and became the term was helicopter parents, the idea is that parents were hovering over the daily affairs of their kids lives in a way that was uniquely different than before. Now, we fast forward to another generation, who are now parents. And these are kids who were elementary, middle school, high school age, and the new phrase, the critique isn't helicopter parents anymore, the phrase it's emerged is lawn mower parents. And the idea is that their reaction is gone even further, to be even not just involved in a round and aware of a kid's life, but to be out in front like a lawnmower, tearing down any resistance or roadblock or obstacle in the kids way. And the way this practically comes out the illustrations that you might have heard, or what people would say is that there are now parents who are going before their kids to talk to their teachers trying to resolve problems, maybe interpersonal problems that their kid is having in class, maybe talking to a coach, how can my kid isn't getting more playing time, rather than a generation or two before it was really up to the kid to resolve those issues, to talk to the teacher to talk to the parent. If if a if a school? Sorry, a kid wasn't doing well, in school or in a subject? Well, it's the kids fault, essentially. That's how it went when I was growing up. You trust the adult, not the kid. But it's been flipped. And the parenting style is to remove obstacles, resistance, roadblocks, protect kids at all costs, and that equates love, and a good foundation. So we're gonna examine that in our major premise. With this particular question, my my bias is that's not good for kids. It's not helpful. And what we're trying to do is answer this question. This is the critical question. What have you pushed through what roadblocks or obstacles or setbacks Have you pushed through in your life, we're now seeing, especially in college and early entry level employees and their career, kids who have never really experienced failure or setbacks or resistance kids who had 4.5 GPAs, who played on two or three varsity sports, also were involved in ASB, and theater program. And they get to college, they get to their job, they get to life. And all of a sudden, they're not the favorite. They're not special things are hard. And it gets really overwhelming. And you see kids more than ever quit school, go home, quit their jobs, because it's hard. So can you imagine a life well lived, where someone hasn't pushed through resistance, and roadblocks and barriers, a life where someone hasn't demonstrated and cultivated an attitude of resilience in their lives and what we know and I'm sure you know, this channel doesn't setbacks shape someone's character. That's how it works. That's how people grow. It's challenges and setbacks, it's by going through them, not around them, not be protected from them. That's how that's how character is built. And we want our kids to have good character, strong character.
The more opportunities kids have to face setbacks, failure and disappointments, with and the here's the subtle shift the subtle difference with caring, non anxious adults who stick close to them, the more they will have the muscle mass and muscle memory to grow. So, helicopter is I'm hovering around lawn mower is I'm removing the obstacles we're talking about. And then the other option, obviously, is maybe what some of us grew up with, where our parents didn't even know about our obstacles or challenges. This is almost a fourth option, where you are aware, you're close, and you walk with them not as a sense of where their problems are your problems, but you walk with them to be a guide to help them navigate through the different options they have. And to deal with the underlying emotions. And why would we do this? Obviously, it grows character. We talked about that. But we also want our kids to be able to handle adversity, maybe more adversity, because life is going to be hard, there's going to be tough stuff, they're likely going to get married, have careers. And they're those those two right there are filled with adversity. So what do you want your kids to be able to do? Handle it or not? All Secondly, we want kids to be able to keep pursuing their meaningful goals, rather than give up because it's hard. And if it's hard, this is wrong. That's often the equation that someone who doesn't have the character quality of resilience and grit, they might give up on something that's actually really meaningful and worthwhile. We, if somebody has more resilience, we can help them avoid feeling overwhelmed and defeated. We can help them avoid feeling like a victim, we can help people take charge of their lives. So the question then becomes, can you build resistance? Can you build resilience and resistance to giving up? Well, the answer is yes. And what I'm gonna introduce to you in a really quick high level, is the research that comes from the science of hope. And the hat tip here is to my friend, Dr. Abby, Muhlenberg Trevino, who is a PhD researcher at the hope Research Center in Oklahoma, she has a PhD in educational psychology, from OSU, Oklahoma State. And she has taught me about the science of hope. What is hope? And how do you teach it? And what is the science behind it? Well, it turns out there have been over 2000, validated, significant sophisticated research studies on hope. And hope is the belief is the definition that they use Hope is the belief that your future can be brighter and better than your past. And there's a key part and you actually have a role to play in making it better. Tomorrow is going to be better than today. And it's going to be because of you and what you choose to do. That's, that's the science of hope. And throughout all those research studies, it's turned out that to see someone have rising hope, here's the quote from one of the authors of this great book called Hope rising. Rising Hope is the most powerful way to allay the effects of childhood trauma, toxic stress, and painful difficult experiences throughout your life. People who are more hopeful, do better in school, given the same IQ, same intelligence level, if you have more hope you'll do better in school and your GPA will go up. A kid will go to school more often, a kid who's more hopeful will get accepted into colleges more often. They'll do better in their career, they will feel less pain, they will heal more quickly from disease or illness, the the data, the results of someone who's more hopeful, have effects on your life that are, to me mind blowing. And the coolest part is that hope is learnable it's practical. Anybody can learn it, kids can learn it. And it's something you can do with your kids to help them develop and deepen their resilience. And it's, again, really simple. But let's talk about what hope isn't. Hope is not wishful thinking. It's not this pollyannish tomorrow's probably gonna get better. It's not this fake optimism. It's not throwing a Bible verse or like a platitude in the direction of a challenge. It's it's serious hope is a goal that you
have a meaningful goal that you have, for something in the future, something that you want something that's important to you goal, plus what they would call in the science of open pathways. In other words, there are multiple ways to get what I want, there are multiple avenues, multiple paths that I can take. And if one path doesn't work, I will find another way. So pathways are it's the ways it's the way. And then the last part is willpower. It's the motivation, it's the emotional energy that you can garner towards moving towards a goal. Now, this again, the science of Hope says, If you are a more hopeful person, you will be more resilient towards challenges and setbacks that come your way, roadblocks, failure, disappointment, rejection, getting fired, not doing well on a test, not going to accept to the school, because you will, either you will find another goal, or you will find a different way. But you will not be defeated, you will not give up, you will not get so overwhelmed that you can't move forward, you will not play a victim, you won't say it's because of the system or because of them or because of her or him, you will simply keep working, keep moving towards wherever you're trying to go. Now, that's the kind of stuff that we want for our kids. And it starts with us to in the different domains and different sectors of our lives, to practice the science of hope, have goals, meaningful goals, move towards them, and to process out loud and let our kids see us move towards goals. And when there's resistance and setbacks and failures or rejection or doesn't go well, that we find another way. And we keep moving forward. There's more to say. But I also want to share that there is if you're seeing this, if you're listening to this, FYI, you can watch this on YouTube, it's free, just go to the youth school channel on YouTube. What you're gonna see here is the hope scale to test to see how much hope you have to what degree you are hopeful person now take a screenshot of this, or go to hope score.com. And you can type in your answers to this very simple question. And you can measure if someone's hope goes up over time. So there are different scenarios, different hypotheticals that you can ponder in these is a kind of eight question hope assessment to see how much hope you have or not, and you can score yourself, it's really simple to score. If you go to hope score.com, they'll do it for you if you don't want to add up some math. But it's a it's a wonderful way to do a little self reflection on how hopeful of a person you are. So wrapping up, challenging setbacks can shape character, if we let them. We can learn to reflect and retell the stories of our past of how we've pushed through things push through obstacles and setbacks, and roadblocks, all that stuff. And if we tell those stories, we'll actually find and discover that we are people of character we have pushed through, we have found multiple routes and ways to get something that matters to us. We have continued to garner and harness our internal energies, our motivation to keep moving forward, when things are difficult. And reflecting on those stories. Remembering those things, recalling those, asking our kids to recall those and remember them telling stories about our kids about how we've seen them do that in the past, will deepen their resolve and deepen their resilience. They'll become grittier people, the more we practice, retelling and remembering and recalling those stories. So it's key, it's fundamental, it's critical to building meaningful life, that you would have demonstrations of resilience, you've been resilient in your past, that you have pushed through things, which means the next obstacle, the next thing that you face, you are the kind of person who will move forward will find a way because your life matters and your life is up to you. And that's what we're talking about here. Next week, we'll have an interview of someone who's pushed through resilience, and we're gonna practice how you even help someone unpack that and find more resilience inside them and watch them become more hopeful. So stay tuned next week. And as always, thanks for joining the YouSchool podcast
we're taking the mystery out of building a meaningful life with a step by step roadmap. You In school, you're taught everything under the sun, from algebra to art history, to aerodynamics, but you're not taught how to understand yourself. Or given the tools to make sense of all the questions life throws your way. Without it, most people will take the path of least resistance, hoping it all just works out Sunday. That's why the use school is here. for over 10 years, we've been specializing in designing transformative curriculum and learning environments to guide people through life's transitions to find, define and unleash great stories with their lives. You only get one life. You only get one story. Make sure it's the right one.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
