Something You Should Know - How to Make Your Point So People Get It & Dealing with the Growing Entitlement Mentality

Episode Date: December 11, 2017

Does love at first sight exist? Many experts say no but many people claim to have experienced it. So what’s the truth? We begin this episode by looking at this intriguing phenomenon. Then, whenever you speak, you should have a point. And not only should you have a point but you must make sure the person listening gets your point. Communications trainer Joel Schwartzberg, author of the book, Get to The Point: Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter (http://amzn.to/2A5k8aL) explains that too often people don’t know what their point is. And even when they do, they don’t make it clear to the listener. In this discussion Joel reveals how to make your point crystal clear.  Then, the Navy Seals have something called the “40% Rule.” It has to do with human potential. When I first read it a while ago, I cut out the article and always remembered it during those teams when I needed to get more out of myself. I think you’ll find it useful in your life as well. Are today’s kids and young adults too entitled? Do they think the world owes them something? Well, certainly not all of them think that but there does seem to be a growing entitlement mentality in our culture. So where did it come from? According to psychologist Michael Wetter, it is primarily a parenting problem. Parents want to protect their children and keep them happy but the unintended consequence is that kids are not prepared for the real world. Dr. Wetter is author of the book Earn It!: What to Do When Your Kid Needs an Entitlement Intervention (http://amzn.to/2BZL1hO) and he offers some great advice and insight to deal with this problem.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, do you believe in love at first sight? Let's look at what the evidence says. Then, making your point.

Whenever you speak, you should have a point. And the reason people ramble or stumble over what they're trying to say is they don't know what their point is. And they often confuse their point for a topic, a theme, a subject, sometimes a catchphrase. They think that's their point, but actually that's not their point. Also, a great piece of advice that comes from the Navy SEALs that I think you're going to like. And a lot of young people today seem to have a real sense of entitlement. You know, they work at a certain company or workplace for two or three months, and they say, you know, I deserve a promotion and a raise now.

The bosses say, well, why do you think you deserve it? Well, because I've been coming here for two or three months. I show up on time, and I do what you tell me to do. Therefore, I should be rewarded. No, that's what you're supposed to do. All this today on Something You Should Know. Something You Should Know. Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel.

The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. One of the most gratifying parts of doing this program is all the nice emails I get from all over the world. It's just amazing. And lately I've been getting not only really nice emails, but also some great Facebook comments as well. So I appreciate that. And if you would like to email me, I always love hearing from people who listen to this podcast. I'm at mikeatsomethingyoushouldknow.net.

mikeatsomethingyoushouldknow.net. Hey, do you believe in love at first sight? You ask any relationship expert and they tend to agree that love at first sight doesn't exist, citing the fact that it's impossible to fall in love with someone who you don't know. Lust, maybe. Infatuation, possibly. But true love? Not possible. And yet, in surveys, 40% of people say they have actually experienced love at first sight. What does it feel like? Well, people report feeling excitement, a lot of them felt an instant, lasting attachment,

and some of them felt a wholeness or completeness. And in many cases, the love did last. Psychologist Dr. Earl Nauman, who studied this and wrote a book about it, believes that there is conclusive proof that love at first sight does exist. If 40% of all people claim to have experienced love at first sight, how could it not exist? And he says the experts who claim love at first sight doesn't exist have no real evidence to back that up. Something to think about, and it's something you should know. How many times have you listened to a person speak,

either one-on-one in a conversation, or maybe that person is speaking to a group, and when it's all over, you ask yourself, what was the point of that? What was this person's point? The fact is that for all of us, if we're not careful, we can talk and talk and talk and never make a point, or never make our point clear enough that people get it. And when you think about

it, what's the point of talking if you don't make your point? Joel Schwartzberg is a public speaking and communications trainer and author of the book, Get to the Point, Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter. And he joins me to discuss how to make sure people get your point,

something that eludes an awful lot of us who speak. Hi, Joel. Welcome. Thank you, Mike. It's a pleasure to be here. So I love this topic because doing this program, I'm constantly talking and interviewing people, and sometimes I get someone who really doesn't get to their point, or they have trouble getting to their point, and that's when I really have to go to work and help them try to make their point. And so I love this idea of helping people understand what their point is and get to their point and all. But why is this

interesting to you? Well, this topic is very important for me because I've been training public speakers for over 10 years. And one thing I've noticed is that even as I've made them stronger speakers with better eye contact and better volume and they stand right and gesture right, when I ask them what their point is, often they come back to me with something that's not a point. And the reason people ramble, as you mentioned, or stumble over what they're trying to say is they don't know what their point is. And they often confuse their point for a topic, a theme, a subject, sometimes a catchphrase. They think that's their point, but actually that's not their point.

The point is something that you can argue, make a case for, that you can prove. It's a proposition you're trying to make so that your audience can digest it and then perform an action as a result. And you can't do that if you only have a title. And is it your sense that if you don't have a point, you probably shouldn't be speaking in the first place? Right. You're literally pointless. And who wants to be pointless? But if you've ever been a, what I like to say is a captive audience or a hostage audience for a speaker who goes on and on and on, that person usually doesn't have a point. And I counsel people not to be nervous when they're public speaking in many ways. But if you doesn't have a point. And I counsel people not to be nervous when they're public speaking in many ways. But if you don't have a point, the truth is you should be nervous

because you don't know what you're trying to convey to your audience. And the beauty of having a point is it's something you can always go back to. Even if you go off track or ramble, you leave the reservation, you can always say, all right, we talked about a number of things, but here's my point, or here's the thing. I believe that X, Y, Z. Because at the end of the day, if you successfully convey your point, you succeed. If you do not, you fail. That's the ballgame. So you have to know what your point is. Don't you say that in order to identify your point, you can put the words, I believe that, in front of it? Right. So take what you think is your point and simply put the words, I believe that, in front of it.

If you do not have at that point a complete sentence, a grammatically correct sentence, then you sort of need to reformulate. So, for example, you can't say, I believe that public speaking, or I believe that politics, or I believe that social media, because those aren't complete thoughts. You need to go back and come up with something, for example, that would say, I believe that through social media, we're going to be able to reach millennials. Or I believe that our political system is in a woeful state of disrepair. Now you're making an argument that has a feasible counterpoint, and it's something you could actually provide reasoning or logic or evidence for to make a case. And at the end of the day, your audience is going to take something of value from it. Can I have more than one point? You can have more than one point, but it's important that they be segregated. If you try to

jam too many points into one sentence, then it has the effect of what I call split ends. Then you have ideas competing with each other. For example, if you say this approach is going to be very successful, productive, effective, and efficient, you think you're doing yourself a favor by adding different ideas to that same point. But actually, you're hurting your. You think you're doing yourself a favor by adding different ideas to that same point, but actually you're hurting your point because now you're asking your audience to figure out which one of those is most important, but you're also diluting the impact of each of those points because they're fighting each other. And more often than not, the audience will take no point from that because they have four things. Imagine if it was 12 things. Then you know they wouldn't know what to take away from. So I generally

counsel people to come up with one big idea. This approach will make us more efficient. So then what do you fill up the rest of the time with? Evidence? Right, evidence. Then you develop that point. But at the end of the day, the audience is not going to leave so much with your tactics, with your examples, with your illustrations. Audiences generally remember one or two or at most three things. So what's the big idea you want to leave them with? That's what you have to identify. So even though you're making the case, you're using evidence, using case studies, at the end of the day, you want them to leave with this one thought. So when I make my point, do I first make my point and then support the evidence,

or do I give you the evidence and then say, and therefore, and here's my point? There are no spoilers in public speaking, only in films. So you want to say that point as much as possible. But let's look at what parts of a speech an audience most remembers. The first part and the last part, and particularly the last part. And something I say all the time is, you can say that point as many times as you want. No one comes away from a public speech saying, you know, it's a great speech, but the speaker made his or her point way too often. Nobody says that because the point is the piece of the value. That's the gift you're giving to your audience. So to answer your question, Mike, I would always lead with it. Something I always counsel my

speakers is to come right out and say who they are, what their point is, and why that point is relevant. Now, that doesn't mean you can't begin with a joke or a story or something you heard on the radio this morning or something silly your kid did. That's an icebreaker. But know that that is not part of your job in delivering the point. That's delaying your point, but it's sort of waking your audience up. So you're not really doing your job until you're saying explicitly that point, and whatever the strongest and highest value version of it is, that's when you're doing your number one job. That's when you're making the delivery of that point. Well, I like what you said that, you know, no one ever complains that he made his point too much, because we often walk away going, what the hell, what was that about? Right, what was the point?

So sometimes we bury the point. You know, like, storytelling is a big deal nowadays in public speaking. Tell a story, tell a story. The more personal, the better. But what we fail to mention and fail to reinforce is that the story is a vehicle through which a point travels. So you haven't, again, done your job if you begin the story and end the story. Your job doesn't begin until you say, this story illustrates how, x, y, z. This story is a reflection of why I believe that, x, y, z. That is the point at which you're doing

your job, not at the point during which you're merely sharing the story. But shouldn't sometimes that be self-evident, that the purpose of this story was to, you know, if the story's well told, the point is made? Well, hopefully the point is made. But think of the burden. So when you tell a story and you expect that point to be self-evident, you're putting the burden of understanding, digesting, and making use of that point on your audience.

It's sort of like a play. Yeah, a play should be nuanced in such a way that you sort of get the point. But in a public speech, your goal is not to entertain, not to intrigue. At the end of the day, it's to make sure that point is delivered. So my question to my clients is often, why would you tell that story or leave it to chance that they've received your point? And we know this is important because there's only one way to know if you've been successful in a public speech. And that is to go to someone in the audience and say, what do you think my point was? Or my point was this, did you effectively receive it? So the question is, how are you going to guarantee that result? The way you guarantee it

is by being very explicit about it. This is my point. This is what I believe. If there's one thought you're going to leave with today, it should be this, X, Y, Z. Make it explicit. We don't always make it explicit. Sometimes we hide it, we save it, or we want to propose it in an interesting way. But in doing so, we avoid the most explicit, direct, and easily accepted way. I am speaking with Joel Schwartzberg. He is a communications trainer and author of the book, Get to the Point, Sharpen Your Message, and Make Your Words Matter. My wife and I just signed up for HelloFresh, and it has changed the way we eat in our house. Let me tell you what happened when we got started. This box got delivered to my front door with all the ingredients for several meals.

All I did was pick a meal and get started. I picked sizzling southwestern chicken with bell peppers and feta crumble. Now that may sound daunting, but the recipe card was easy to follow. I chopped some beautiful fresh produce, roasted the chicken, chopped the herbs, put it all together, and 30 minutes later I had a delicious restaurant quality meal everyone loved, all for about $10 a meal. And here's something you should know. HelloFresh makes everything simple and convenient. You choose the delivery date, all the ingredients come pre-measured, and there are three plans to choose from. The classic, vegetarian, or family plan. These are really high quality, nutritious meals that taste amazing. You have got to try HelloFresh. It'll change the way you eat, and you get $30 off your first week.

Just go to HelloFresh.com and use the promo code SOMETHING30. That's HelloFresh.com, promo code SOMETHING30 for $30 off your first week. So, Joel, you often hear people who talk about making presentations and the right way to communicate that the way to do it is tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. Is that kind of what you're saying here? That framework is good. I just don't like those things to get in the way of the number one job, which is much simpler, which is really just this, deliver your point. So when you preview something, you get into something, you tell them what you just said, that's fine, but I'd rather go right to the heart of the matter. What is your point? Did you make

it strong? Did you crowd too many ideas in it? Did you use adjectives? Adjectives is a word like very good or fantastic or great that's not really saying anything, and then did you end with that point? So there are lots of other constructions and parts and elements of a great speech. But if you don't know your point and are not successfully conveying your specific point, then all that stuff doesn't matter. Because at the end of the day, you don't want to come away, someone to come away from your speech thinking, oh, that speaker, she was hysterical, or she is so knowledgeable or so charismatic, so memorable. Because that's not your goal, to make you memorable. Your goal is not unlike a messenger, you know, a bicycle messenger. Your goal is to take this thing, which is your point,

and to convey that to the audience so they can leave with it and take value from it. Do you think this translates into one-on-one communication as well? I think it translates into all communication because the question is, when do you ever need to make a point? And that's constantly. So that can be an email, that can be in a review of your direct reports, that can be certainly in a job interview, it could be in a classic speech setting, it could be to your mother-in-law. In all these cases, there's a point to be made. Do you know what it is, and have you made it strongly enough?

Someone once countered this to me and said, well, at a conference, the person introducing a speaker, that person's not really making a point. But in fact, ideally, that person is making a point. That person is expressing to the audience why the speaker's point is relevant to that audience, what he hopes or she hopes they will take away from or learn from that presentation. So there's always a point to be made if we sit down and really think about it and apply that I believe test as the first step. You know what you said about nobody ever accuses somebody of making their point too often in a speech? That's probably true in a speech, but I've been in conversations with people where, okay, I get it. You know, I get it. Stop. Please,

stop. You've made your point. And that's actually a critical issue. And here's the reason, not just because it's annoying, but because when you've made your point and you're still talking, everything you say after it is going to dilute your point. Because remember, audiences remember the last thing you say. So you want to make the delivery of your point close to the very last thing you convey to someone else. And then you need to, as you would agree, Mike, would stop there because you're only hurting yourself by continually pointing it out. If someone is saying the same thing over and over and over again, there's probably some insecurity that that person should address either with a public speaking coach or a psychological professional. But you said before that you should deliver your point at the beginning, too. So are you saying do it both at the beginning and at the end? Yes, do the beginning and the end.

Generally, I don't worry about people saying it too often. If someone is saying it 18 times in a two-minute space, that can get annoying. But and don't forget about this, because those things compete against the point. So to answer your question, the best place is to put your point certainly at the beginning, certainly at the end, and throughout it's helpful to say this piece of evidence as a reminder shows why I believe that or illustrates my proposition that this is true. It almost sounds like when you strip it down to that, that that's a pretty dull speech. What makes an interesting speech is that it has a point, it has a piece of value. And your job is to get that value to an audience. You know, sometimes people say, well, it's a dull speech. Oh, I should start with a joke.

Or I should tell this story. Or I should set my hair on fire. You know, those things will certainly make you more interesting, but it won't help propel your point. When I look at audiences, you know, and the crucial value is, is an audience going to be bored or interested? And if you want them to be interested, you know, the last thing you do is want them to be bored. They could disagree, but at least they would still be engaged. So the thing you want to do to make sure they're interested is to have a strong and valuable point. And as long as you do and are making that argument, you should always be perceived as

relevant because that's the piece of value. Everything else is icing or supporting that point. So when I am bored by speeches and when I am unengaged, it's almost always because they don't know what their point is or they haven't sharpened it to something of true value to me and they needed to reimagine it to dig a little deeper. It seems, though, that your way would make every speech about three minutes long, that you don't want to crowd it with a bunch of other stuff that gets in the way of the point, so you strip that all away and you you make your point, and you're done. One of the things that we use in the test is to make sure it's not a truism or something too short.

So say someone wanted to say social media is great, or to be a great public speaker, you need confidence. Well, those things you need to make sure you can develop it so that you're giving a speech that meets the 10 minutes or the 15 minutes or the 7 minutes. So, yeah, I can only talk for 30 seconds about why social media affects particular audiences or how different states have different legislative priorities that feed up into a larger social movement. So often if you feel like you have a point but it's going to be a very short presentation, ask yourself why. Well, because it will trigger all these other things. And the answer to that question, why, will often lead to a larger and more developed and more sophisticated speech. So the reason we sometimes go short is because we haven't developed our point further along enough to enable us to give good examples or good case studies. There are also speakers, and I'm sure everybody's heard them, who do make

their point. They make their point quite clearly, but the speech is dull as dirt, because there's more to giving a good speech than just making your point. Absolutely, absolutely. But my case, the case I'm trying to make, is you could be the most charismatic presenter in the world, but if you don't have a point, you're not doing your job. Your job is not to make people love you. Your point is to deliver that valuable idea. Now, presentation is very, very important. And it's part of my workshop training. And it's part of the book. You want to come across with authority. You want to come across with confidence. How is that conveyed? That's conveyed with volume.

That's conveyed through ending with periods. That's conveyed through gestures that are not constant so that they mean something to emphasize a word. But the two things I always want people to leave with in my workshops in terms of presentation, one is everybody can increase their volume, just about everybody. When you increase your volume, it's not just about audibility, people being able to hear you, but volume alone conveys all those things you were talking about, authority, credibility, confidence. Sometimes if we ask someone, well, you need to be more confident. Well, how do I do that? But if you ask someone to just be louder, that will convey confidence. And the other part is pausing. If you embrace pausing, especially as a replacement for things like ah and um and so, you're actually doing yourself a great favor because audiences

become really engaged by that pausing. But also pausing slows you down and allows you to create thoughts with great precision because you're putting your mind way ahead of your mouth. Often our mouths are way ahead of your mouth. Often our mouths are way ahead of our minds so that we're speaking and we're not giving ourselves time to formulate those thoughts. So we need to slow it down, inject pauses so we can speak with precision. And all those things will lead to confidence. Yes, we want speakers who are confident, we want speakers who are authoritative, but certainly, and I would even suggest more important than any of that, speakers who have points and convey them with strength.

Well, I think you made your point, and you're right. I think it's so common for people to, when they talk, to get so concerned and distracted by all the other things that they fail to make the point. And if you don't make your point, what's the point? Joel Schwartzberg has been my guest. He is a communications trainer and author of the book, Get to the Point, Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter. You'll find a link to his book on Amazon in the show notes for this episode. Thank you, Joel. Thank you, Mike. I look forward to hearing it. I'm sure you've heard the complaint that today's kids and young adults are too entitled,

that they feel the world owes them something and they don't understand how the real world works. Now, this obviously isn't true for all kids today and all young adults today. I know plenty who don't fit this description. But for many, there is this sense of entitlement, that achievement isn't so important. As long as they show up, they should be rewarded. And we've seen this growing up. I mean, kids today get a trophy just for being on the team, whereas a generation or two ago, you only got a trophy if your team won the championship or if you were a winner. The problem is that when kids go out in the real world as young adults, just showing up and being on the team doesn't mean

much. Achievement does. So what's going on here? Dr. Michael Wetter is a clinical psychologist and author of the book, Earn It, What to Do When Your Kid Needs an Entitlement Intervention. Welcome, Michael. Thank you. Great to be here. So my guess is that this entitlement problem in the more recent generations is not something inherently wrong with these people. It's probably more to do with how they were raised, with their parenting. Yes? If you take a look around, you start to see that in many cases, even with young kids,

the kids are the ones who run the household. And you see the parents scrambling after the kids and almost, you know, trying to appease the children so that they don't freak out. They don't have a tantrum. They're happy all the time. Well, guess what? That's going to translate to a certain attitude later in life, 15 years from now, 25 years from now. And so we may see the emergence of a problem now.

What we're really going to see is a big problem 20, 30 years from now. And I think that's very prevalent. I do think that's probably more of a majority than a minority at this point in time. Well, we're already hearing those stories of college admissions people saying that kids come to college completely unprepared and that mom and dad often come with them to fill out the paperwork because the kid just doesn't know what to do. And, you know, for the college admission essays, it's the parents writing them. Or more to the point, in some cases, it's the parents hiring somebody to write an essay for the child. And so not only do children come unprepared, but they learn the lesson that somebody will do the work for them. And that's not all, you know, foreign to the workplace environment now where

people come in, you know, they work to, you know, at a certain company or workplace for two or three months, and they say, you know, I deserve a promotion and a raise now. The boss will say, well, why do you think you deserve it? Well, because I've been coming here for two or three months. I show up on time, and I do what you tell me to do. Therefore, I should be rewarded. No. That's what you're supposed to do.

But this expectation that just by being present is sufficient and deserving of recognition, that's what we want to prevent. So clearly there's some sort of disconnect, because I don't think any parents with this outcome in mind, and yet in the moment of parenting, it seems like the right thing to do. Well, and that's, I think, the most common error. And by the way, I'm preaching based on the way I've historically practiced, which is I'm guilty of this as well. I think the common denominator across multiple parents is we want our children to be happy. And I think sometimes the erroneous decision is trying to keep them happy all the time and therefore not allowing them the opportunity to build the skills associated with distress tolerance, which eventually leads to resiliency. So we're actually having a paradoxical effect on our kids.

By trying to keep them happy all the time, we don't teach them or prepare them how to deal with life when life throws you things that are not going to make you happy. And by trying to circumvent that and keep that smile on their precious faces while they're 3, 4, 8, what happens when they're 28 and you can't do that and life doesn't do that? So I think there are certain inadvertent things. Now, the good news is it doesn't matter what age. You can intervene as a parent. You can reverse what's been done. It's better to do it at an early age, but you can certainly intervene at any point. By doing what?

By being consistent, by communicating, by modifying expectations. Most specifically, I think the first step that any parent has to take is take a good, hard look at what behaviors are you as a parent doing that inadvertently are leading to entitlement and attitude behaviors associated with entitlement in your children. In my most recent book, Earn It, there's actually, it starts with a 10-item self-assessment quiz. And based on that score, you can see you as a parent, how likely are you to be sort of fostering and contributing to entitlement-related behaviors with your children inadvertently? Do you sense, and I want to ask you maybe to talk about some of the questions in that quiz, but before we do that, do you sense that parents who are doing this, who are raising very entitled kids, know it?

That they just don't know how else to do it? Or they think that what we're talking about does not apply to them? I think there's a 90% chance that parents don't even realize what they're doing. And that they actually think they're doing the right thing. I think there is a 10%, you know, roughly that are saying, well, you know, if my kid grows up entitled, it's because they deserve to grow up entitled. It is because they are special. And I think that's more an extension of the parent's own belief. But I think that's the minority. I think for the most part, parents are really trying to do the best that they can.

And they think they're doing the best that they can because, let's face it, the ultimate form of feedback that we get from our child, especially at a young age, is what's the expression on their face? If they're crying, it must mean they're upset. We have to do something as parents to fix it. That's our intrinsic instinct. But if they're smiling, then everything is okay. So let's make them smile all the time. But we have to be prospective in the way that we cater to parenting. We have to think about what is the long-term result. And that's very hard to do when you're in the moment. So let's talk about some of the questions in your quiz to whet people's appetite

and let them see if perhaps maybe they fall into this group and don't think so. Sure, I'd be happy to do that. So like, for example, when your child breaks the rules, do you let them know they did something wrong and use appropriate discipline? It depends on whether it was a big rule or a small rule. And the final answer, you think they're just being a kid and you let it go since there'll be plenty of time to correct habits later. And I think when you start to look at what those choices are, I can see any number of parents choosing any number or combination

there of answers. And the bottom line is, you know, when it comes to rules and enforcing rules in the family, there are no such things as big rules or small rules. It's rules. And just like laws, okay? There's no big laws and small laws. There may no big laws and small laws. There may be big crimes and small crimes, but law is a law is a law. If your parking meter expires and you didn't pay for it, you broke the law, technically speaking. So you want to reinforce the fact that a rule is a rule.

When you break it, there's a consequence. The consequence should be appropriate to whatever the rule was, and the severity of the rule leads to the severity of the consequence. Another question. When your daughter fails at something, you A, support her effort and use this experience as a way to improve future attempts. B, tell her that failure is never acceptable and that she didn't work hard enough. Or C, blame the failure on other factors or people

and remind her that she is special and didn't deserve to fail. And what that question is really sort of targeting is how are we teaching our children to effectively fail? Effective failure leads to not only building resiliency, but how we build success. Success is built upon the foundation of effective failure. So if we are teaching our children that failure is something bad and should be discouraged and you're doing something wrong if you fail, and shame on you, we're really in many ways sabotaging their ability to succeed down the line.

But in terms of your first question that you just mentioned, there's also the advice of, you know, choose your battles. If you're going to punish your kid for every little thing, then you're going to do nothing but punish your kids. And maybe you do let some things slide. Am I falling into this? Yes, exactly. You know, and we all do. It's like, well, you know, in the grand, I mean, because one of, well, you know, in the grand scheme of things, you know, is this really bad?

Nah, let it go. It's okay for us as parents to sort of gauge how we want to respond, but the important thing is to let your child know you're aware of it. And what you're doing is you're going to be able to let them know, look, I'm mindful of this. I know you did something wrong or you, you know, broke a rule or whatever, but in the case of this, I'm going to let it go and I'll tell you why I'm going to let it go. This is where communication comes into play. You know, it occurs to me that it's kind of sad because the ones who pay the price for this are the kids who later in life hear things like, you entitled little jerk. And they don't know.

I mean, it's really not their fault, in a sense, because this is how they grew up. The rules have now changed because they're now out in the real world, and those rules didn't apply at home. That's why it really stops. It starts and stops at the home. That's why it really stops. It starts and stops at the home. And, you know, I've dealt with so many parents in my private practice who come in and they say, you have to fix my kid. Okay. You have to, you know, in fact, in my practice as a psychologist, I started seeing children very early on. And what I realized is I'm dealing with the wrong person. I shouldn't

be working solely with the child. I need to be working with the parents. And that's why really what the focus is, start looking at parents. What are we doing? And again, not intentionally. It's not about, we're all guilty of it. And it's fine. We don't have to be perfect. We can make mistakes. In fact, owning our mistakes as parents is a great modeling opportunity for our children to say, look, I got this wrong. I'm sorry, but here's what I'm going to do to correct it. I can imagine, though, that many parents who hear your message and go, yeah, yeah, I get that. I get that, that we need to follow the rules in this house. But they also don't want to become

that parent that, you know, we all remember as kids, there was some kid that always had the parents who were really strict and really hard on the kid. And I don't want to be that parent. So how do you find the middle ground? Well, finding the middle ground is really difficult, isn't it? And I think that depends on the family. I think it depends on what are your expectations as a parent. Again, we're not striving for perfection. We're striving for improvement. And the question is, what do we want to improve?

Every parent wants their child to feel secure, to feel confident, to feel happy. But what we also want them to do is feel strong and be able to bear distress when it occurs. And the key term we're going to come back to is balance and having that balance approach. Remember, think of the pendulum. We want to be more towards the middle than we do from any extreme, and I think that's kind of what we want to strive for. So how do you think a parent could begin this process of moving to the middle when they haven't been there before, and have the kids follow along and not get bent out of shape? Or maybe they do get bent out of shape, and maybe that's part of the process. I don't know.

It's hard to make any sort of corrections when you don't know where you fall along the spectrum of the pendulum. And it takes a very honest, objective approach. For example, when you wake up in the morning, and let's say you're on your way to work, and your child's on their way to school, and you say, I have to go to work. Right there, you're saying something that implies that a job is a chore, that you don't like it, that you have to do this, versus perhaps even just changing it and saying, today I get to go to work. Why is that an important change?

Because not everybody has a job. Not everybody gets to go to work. There are some people who would do anything in the world to be able to have the opportunity to work and earn an income. Same thing with school. There's times where my daughter has woken up and goes, do I really have to go to school? And my response is, no. In fact, we can pull you out and you don't have to go to school. But then you're not going to do anything.

And you won't get an education. Your friends will. But if that's your choice, she goes, no, no, no, I want to go to school. I said, then you get to go to school, but then you're not going to do anything. And you won't get an education. Your friends will. But if that's your choice, she goes, no, no, no, I want to go to school. I said, then you get to go to school. It's making those kinds of changes. It's fostering a sense of gratitude and appreciation for what we have. Those small changes lead to big gains. Part of this, it seems to me, has something to do with wanting to protect our kids from the evils of the world. And we see in the media now so many evils in the world that we want to protect them. We don't want to expose them to that. So what kind of conversations are occurring in the family? What kind of conversations are occurring at home relative to all this?

Because if you have an 11-year-old or a 10-year-old and you think they're not aware of what's going on, you're wrong. They're aware. It's everywhere. So we as parents have to take the lead in not only educating our children but also shaping the behaviors we want to see. If it's dangerous outside, you know, in the world, what are you arming them with? And I don't mean guns. I mean resiliency skills. Being able to protect themselves, being able to be vigilant and alert, all those things. Well, like you said, every parent has the best intentions.

They want their child to be happy. They don't want their child to cry. We don't want our child to go through difficult times. But protecting them from those things really does them a disservice because they're not prepared to deal with those things later in life, and those things will always happen. Dr. Michael Wetter has been my guest. He is a clinical psychologist and author of the book, Earn It, What to Do When Your Kid Needs an Entitlement Intervention. You can get his book at Amazon, and I've got a link to his page on Amazon in the show notes for this episode. Thanks for being here, Michael. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

There's something I read a long time ago. In fact, when I read it, I even clipped out the article. And I'm not much of an article clipper-outer kind of person. But I thought this was really interesting, and it has to do with the Navy SEALs. Now, if the Navy SEALs are known for anything, they're known for their mental toughness. And one way they access their mental toughness is with the 40% rule. The 40% rule states that when you think you're done, whatever it is, exercising, working, studying, you're really only 40% done. You can do more. In fact, you can do 60% more. We develop these mental blocks and patterns over the years that keep us in our

comfort zone, but the fact is you can run farther, you can learn more, you can resist your vices longer. We instinctively know this because when it really counts, somehow we're able to do it. We tap into that reserve, whatever it is, and we get it done. People do it running marathons or pulling all-nighters for the big test. When it counts, people do it. The trick is to do it more often, not just in those big moments. And it seems that the more you do it, the more resilient you become and the better at it you become. Now, I'm not always sure I have 60% more, but I think most of us will agree that even when you think you're done, there's still a little something left.

So the next time you're in that situation, when you think you're all drained, you probably have a little more inside you. And that is something you should know. We are on Facebook and Twitter, and we always post new information on there that isn't in the show. I think you'll like. And please tell a friend about this podcast. If you enjoy it, I bet you know somebody else who will too.

I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love Top Ten lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial.

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