Ep.161- Have a Brighter Day with Elliot Kallen

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

Today's guest is Elia Callen, the co-founder and president, along with his wife, of A Brighter Day, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping teens manage depression and stress. This organization was founded in 2015 following the suicide of their son Jake, who was age 19 at the time. Every year, millions of teenagers struggle with thoughts of depression, sadness, isolation, stress, and the feelings of helplessness. And because of their mental health issues, thousands of them commit suicide, making it the number one leading cause of death for teens in the United States. And sadly, too often, these parents of these teens are the last to learn about their child's mental health challenges. And unfortunately, sometimes it's too late to take action. A Brighter Day, Brighter Day aims to stop teen suicide by educating teens and their parents about mental health disorders and providing resources that they can use to reach out and communicate when depression and stress are affecting their own lives and the lives of those around them. Elliot is also involved in several other nonprofit organizations, including the Boys and Girls Club of Contra Costa and Congregation Beth Shalom, for which he has helped raise millions of dollars. He's also a wealth manager and the owner of the Prosperity Financial Group, which helps individuals achieve their retirement goals and uniquely invest in their assets. Today's topic is going to be really important. If you need any resources, please stay tuned for all of the ways that Elliot and other organizations are helping reach those who are struggling with depression. Suicidal thoughts and ideation. And as always, if this is a medical emergency and you do need any help, please reach out to providers in your neighborhood or medical professionals locally near you. And obviously, in case of emergency for you or for someone else, please dial 911. All right, Elliot, so everybody kind of heard the intro and know that this is going to be a really incredibly serious topic and an important topic. And I really do want to thank you for one, what you already have been doing with your wife, but two, for being here today to talk more about, you know, all the different, you know, tough, tough, difficult and important topics that we're about to get into. So thank you.

Thanks for having me here.

So let's start off with, you know, how this happened. I mean, I alluded to it in the, in the intro of your son Jake, and maybe that's— let's, let's, let's get there first. And why this has become so important for you and what that has led to now. And we'll take it from all the ways that this is showing up in today's society, culture, especially for today's teens, especially as we're coming out of the pandemic.

Great. Well, thanks again for having me.

Of course.

So the story of the charity and this story, it's a sad story. In fact, 8 years ago, my 19-year-old son Jake was a sophomore at the University of Montana. Normal kid, had friends, played on the ice hockey team, had just scored 7 goals, and that was loving it and eating it up. Uh, but on a Thursday night at about 1 in the morning, no drugs, no alcohol, he walked up to the highway and jumped in front of an oncoming truck and took his life. And we knew something was wrong because the next morning we were trying to reach him and there was a gut feeling that something just felt wrong. And we tried to reach him and his phone was turned off. And as you know, Jason, teenagers don't turn off their phone. No, they just don't. And so we were leaving messages, call me when you turn this on, call me when you turn it on, call me when you turn it on. And he wasn't calling. And at 6:30 at night, Uh, Federal Express showed up with a 6-page suicide note, and some of it was rambling, but in the first major paragraph, Jason Wasser said, Mom and Dad, I've been thinking about this for a long time. I never would have told you how I felt. I never would have asked for your help, and I never would have taken your help. Pretty horrible.

Yeah.

And so on that note, we flew up early the next morning. Sheriff Wasser called us within minutes of that. Uh, because he was a John Doe all day. And we flew up because we needed to bring his body back to Northern California for burial. In that suicide note, he had said, please cremate me and spread my ashes in the mountains. And I had told my, uh, Jake's mom that we're not going to do that. We don't owe that to him anymore. Um, I'm going to be very traditional. I'm going to bury him, and I'm going to give people the opportunity to mourn, especially his family. And so there's a cemetery not too far from where we live, maybe the other side of town. And we began that process. And on the way, you know, they talk about stages of grieving. The very first stage is shock. It's not mourning, it's shock. And we were in shock. And, and on the way back on Southwest Airlines with his body under the plane on ice, I just kept reading that one paragraph over and over. And I realized at that moment we had to take action. We have to do something to stop this devastation, this family destruction from occurring to other families. We're always going to be victims. We will always have an endless supply of lemons here. What can we do to change lives? And we came up with the concept originally of starting a charity called A Brighter Day. It's abrighterday.info. Great, great resources online. And offering. And we came up with the idea of taking a concept that's tried and true, Battle of the Bands. We repackaged it, called it Teen Band Showcase, because the word battle was creating stress. We didn't want that. And we said, let's create resources, let's stick them in a backpack, make them free for every teenager who comes to these concerts. And we began these concerts all over California, teen bands playing for teens. Winning band gets a college scholarship. And so, pretty amazing. We started to raise money. First, the first golf— we raised money on golf and galas. My wife and I wrote the first golf outing because somebody's got to do it, of course. And then after that, they began to get some, some traction here. But we did this for the first 4 years of just, uh, musical band showcases. And we gave out about 2,000 backpacks with these resources, original writing. I'm a bit of a writing junkie.. And we started, there's plenty of stuff on the internet, by the way, but we just wanted to rewrite it. And we did that. And then COVID hit. Hmm. And we thought, uh-oh, what do we do here? We gotta repackage ourselves, reinvent ourselves. And we tried doing a YouTube channel with Teen Talent Showcases, and we own that name. And we got 14,000 people to watch this, the very first one. But we could not, because of YouTube constrictions, we could not get people from YouTube to go back to the website to download the resources that were free. And we thought, well, we have to figure this out because that— we're not just trying to be America's Got Talent for teens, right? We're doing— trying to really get resources into hands of teens. So again, we, we redoubled our efforts. Again, we just made that website super robust, created a biweekly— so that's every other week— newsletter that comes out mostly to parents, included parents, because parents read more than teens on this stuff. On everything from what you should look for to how you can act to what's going on to signs of depression. Every other week we have something coming out with examples, including even bullying and things like that, because we want people to know it. But we also realized along the way, as we started to approach more people, that not everybody's a reader. So for teens who are particularly non-readers, because they have enough to read at school, they're texters. So we just came out with, not too long ago, a 24/7, all 50-state text line for teens. It's free. You could spread it to every school system in the country. There'll never be an advertisement on there. It goes to our— it's on our website too. They can talk— every teen, every day of the week, as long as they're at least 12 years old, can talk to a counselor in all 50 states for up to 45 minutes a time. They can hang up and do it again, but 45 minutes is the max that any counselor can stay on with one person. And this has been spreading like wildfire as I saw more of it. It's just text the word Brighter, B-R-I-G-H-T-E-R, to 741741. It will be responded to within 5 minutes. That's our contract. With all these counselors with a back room. And the most popular question they ask is, am I the only one feeling this way? Because they, they're isolated. That's one of the signs of depression. And then if that doesn't work, because, and we think that's really gonna be more for teens than parents, we just created two more programs. One is in a beta stage, but the first one is we did a partnership with BetterHelp in all 50 states. Because for somebody to get a counselor— if your teen is in trouble, Jason Wasser, and they're going to do damage and you don't even know what to do as a parent, but you now know you need to take some action and panic is starting to set in because if you're wrong, it's your child's life on the line.

Sure.

Yeah. To get— today in most states, maybe not with you, but in most states it takes 6 to 10 weeks to get an appointment. Now they're— your industry is bombarded with people that need help.

Beyond. Yeah.

And so we teamed up with BetterHelp. We can get somebody help in 7 days. That's live Zooms. Now, these are Zoom programs now. And when we checked with BetterHelp, statistically, because they've been doing this and they're all over the internet, we just have a partnership with them. They said for teens that call in and ask for help on a weekly basis, it takes about 3 months of Zoom therapy to turn the corner for most teens. We've decided as a charity we will pay for those 3 months for teens. Wow. So it's nothing out of pocket, which means your demographic— that you're— you happen to be in Florida, but if they're in the Panhandle and they're a child of a military person where every penny is counting, and they said, I can't afford to get my— I have to decide whether we eat or do I pay for $150 an hour of a counselor, right? You don't have to worry about that now. We'll cover that cost for 3 months.

Incredible.

And then we're just starting now. We're taking— we're in a beta stage. We're taking a page out of, um, AA— AA, excuse me— where we're just starting on the West Coast here, where we will have once a month and hopefully once a week eventually a Zoom program with a counselor, with a parent like me, and anybody can call in on us on Zoom. They could text their message in. They can make themselves anonymous. They don't have to— they could be in Seattle, they could be in Chicago. It doesn't matter. We're going to do it per time zone on there. So then you could spend an hour on a Thursday night getting your question answered about your teen. Is my teen feeling this way? And because we're gonna have a parent like me on there who's gone through it, I can answer it as a parent and I can say, you know, I really suggest this. All this is going on a website at abrighterday.info. And so we've gone for the first 4 years, Jason, from giving out 2,000 backpacks So last month we had almost 19,000 people use our resources in some form. Staggering difference. So we're, we feel like we're saving lives. Very hard to measure that statistically. Of course, nobody sends us a note. I've got some cards from people, from parents and even from teens saying thanks for saving my child's life, or thank you for saving my life. But I know we're making a difference. Yeah.

Yeah, this is, this is, you know, throughout my career as a practitioner, um, you know, it's such a deceptive experience because there are people who are walking around with a bright smile on their face and are suffering to no end. And like you said within the letter, um, from your son, I'm not gonna let— I wouldn't have let you know, I'm not gonna ask for help. And, and even there have been times where I hear this, I hear this from practitioners, and you hear this in clinical training and continuing education and, you know, how we have to discern as practitioners to even ask and push and probe, even when a client— even on our intakes, it says, you know, has there been any thoughts or ideation or attempts and stuff like that? And, and someone can easily just put no because they just don't want to share it, and they're, you know, they're showing up for therapy for some other reason. Um, but those that aren't even showing up, that are keeping it under under wraps. What are some of the, the, the, just the perspectives that you, you have seen and learned and guide others to, to look out for? And, you know, as our listeners are going through this, so they can, they can be mindful of, of whether it's for a loved one or, um, you know, to have these conversations with other people, but even to, to look out for, for themselves.

Sure. And so if I could, that's a great question, Jason. Let me break that down into symptoms that you should look out for, for your teen. And by the way, if you have a parent who's going through depression, they're the exact same symptoms. And elderly depression and military depression and suicide in the military, these are epidemics. These are not one-offs. They're gigantic out there. So the very first thing, and this is my experience talking, I do not have a PhD. I'm talking both as somebody now that has run a charity on depression, suicide for 7 years, and as a parent who has experienced it. Directly is that the first thing that you should look out for as a parent, and that's who I'm talking to here, is isolation, is that withdrawal from whatever they're doing. They're going to— teens begin to withdraw from friends, they begin to withdraw from sports, they begin to withdraw from studies, they stop caring. It's, I don't care. So if I think about depression, which is insidious, I think about a room with 6 walls. Including the floor and the ceiling. And those walls are getting darker and darker and blacker and blacker. And when they're all black, you've got 6 walls of blackness now. The teen's going to turn around and say, well, this is horrible. I won't use the word I'd like to use. It's on air.

It's all good. Go for it.

Yeah, it's the— today sucks. Tomorrow's going to be even worse. Nobody's going to miss me anyway. Why bother? And that's that critical stage. And I'm going to tell you, by the way, like I said, I think it's the same for adults, but because my world is all teens, I know they go through that. And so withdrawal is a big thing. Thanksgiving just came around. Christmas just came around. Did you notice that your teen was kind of absent while they were there? Did they want to leave the table? And by the way, just because your teen doesn't want to do something doesn't make them depressed, right? That's very normal teen behavior. Just because your teen doesn't— is having some type of eating disorder and doesn't want to eat anymore doesn't mean they're depressed. They all— but all these things coming together can begin to mean things. And so that's a really big thing, um, that you notice these things. And then what can you do as a parent? Because as parents We want to fix it, especially as a male parent. The parental figure wants to fix everything. If you're broken, I can fix it. And by the way, I'm no different. I want to fix everything about you that's broken. And so what I tell parents— and we've got all these symptoms on our websites, there's, there are more symptoms than that, even than that— but the first thing you need to do is create an atmosphere for your teen in a— that's non-judgmental. Now, obviously, you may need to get your team some help. You're— you do that every day of the week in your, your profession. We've got that on our website, live Zoom and text and so forth and so on. And we tell every parent, the first thing is give this out to your team because your team may reach out for help on a text line before they reach out to you. But create a non-judgmental way. There are 3 ways you can do that in your house., or in, in general. First is, this is— that cell phone is the enemy of your team. So we gotta get this out of our team's hands. You're not gonna be able to take it away. It's impossible. But you can take it away at dinner.

Mm-hmm.

So as difficult as it is, have everybody put their, their cell phone so they don't have to text and look at social media and look at Instagram and look at Snapchat and look at everybody having a great time but them. Because that's what social media has done.

Yeah.

It's, it's made it worse for teens. Yes. They can look up the, the population of Afghanistan in 10 seconds and do a book report on it. And now with AI, maybe now with ChatGPT. Yeah.

Yeah.

But they get that dinner to be cell phone free. That means no calling grandma at dinner. Mm-hmm. No calling the oldest child who's in college at dinner. No calling anybody. Just talk and then learn to ask great questions. Questions could be not just, how was your day at school? Because you're going to get a shrug, especially from a boy. They're cavemen. How was your day at school? Okay. My son has just completed getting two PhDs, my twin 29-year-old. He still answers me monosyllabically. I have to remind him. I have to say, Cody, I paid a lot of money for your education. Can you please answer me monosyllabically? And he'll say, I'm doing well, I'll just say very well.

Just add one extra word.

That's 3 syllables. Come on. Right, right. And so, but that's what boys can be, cavemen. Yeah. Yeah. And so you've got to get them answering. So you may, you may want to ask a question like, what's your best class? What's your favorite class? Who's your favorite teacher? Who's your best friend's favorite class? Who's your worst? Which is your worst class? Who's your worst teacher?

Contextual questions, right?

How is your best friend doing? If you hate chemistry, you're not doing well in chemistry, but you're thriving in math or history, and your best friend is with chemistry and chemistry with you. How's Jimmy or Johnny or Mary doing also in chemistry class? Yeah, because you might find that your teen and Jimmy or Johnny and Mary, they've checked out of class and they're not showing up. And you may learn that. And so those are good questions to ask. Somebody gave me a great question that they asked their teen at dinner every day. What did you learn today? What's the one thing you learned today in any class that you could share with me that I'd like to learn?

Yeah.

And you can't say it was nothing. Why didn't you learn anything today? Because you learned something. Because you didn't have 6 periods today or 7 periods and learn nothing. You might have learned quadratic equations in math and you don't know how to talk about them. I know. Or sentence structure and, you know, and, you know, dangling participles and stuff like that. But there's something you could share. Yeah.

And one of my favorite questions that I love asking friends is, what was the highlight of your day/week? And a lot of— it's funny, I'm seeing this more and more in communication, especially with texts, and this is with other adults. A lot of people just deflect without answering. And, and putting it back into context of teenagers where you're going to get the shrug or the I don't know, or it doesn't matter. Right? The apathy is a huge part of being a teenager. And asking contextual questions is so important because as I see from, you know, elementary school all the way up to couples and families, you know, the context of what John Gottman in his couples counseling protocol calls love maps. And it's a way— how many questions contextually can you ask that gives you a greater landscape of the people and the part with specifically in this situation, your partner, but I think it could be expanded out into contextual questions. So you can have a landscape of meaning and understanding of the person in front of you. What's your biggest stressors? What's, what's, what things are you looking most forward to? What vacation do you want to take next? What's your favorite food? What food did you hate? What food are you looking for? What meal, if I gave you $100 right now, would you love to— any of these open-ended contextual, bring yourself to being understood and known questions.

It's interesting, my daughter one year decided that she would be— she would walk the Golden Gate Bridge. In San Francisco on suicide watch on Christmas Eve. It's Christmas Eve, for obvious reasons about the Golden Gate Bridge, Christmas Eve. And she got some training to do it. And the training was to— oh, that every time you see somebody walking alone, and she did, and confront them, but be in a safe place, which works because you don't know if the situation could be worse than you think, right? And they would ask— she would ask the question of Where are you going tomorrow for Christmas? That was their number one question. It was Christmas Eve. Yeah. And if they said, I have no one, then they knew that person was probably suicidal. But I'm going to say, I'm going over my sister's or my brother's or my— then they knew that person probably was not, because the person was looking forward to tomorrow. And that's kind of what you're saying.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think the looking forward way, when I see anybody, or we know anybody, or, you know, the people who are going through this that don't have that tomorrow, that don't have— no moment will ever be any better than the worseness of what I'm feeling right now. Like you're saying, the black room with the, with complete darkness. And, you know, it's interesting, just going back to, you know, we were talking a little bit before our conversation about, you know, our high school shared, shared experiences. But at that same time, I was going through my parents' divorce, and I was going through what I later realized was a home of domestic violence, which you wouldn't, you know, we wouldn't necessarily have put into, you know, put into context until, you know, I as a therapist, having been trained in what domestic violence is, is like, oh crap, I didn't realize that that's, that, that was my context as a kid. And, and knowing the depression that I had, knowing the context I had, knowing that like, I don't know if anything is ever going to get better. And thankfully, I had a support system. Thankfully, I had a youth group in my synagogue and youth directors and advisors and friends. And, and even that still didn't always solve that innate underlying feeling of things going on at home are really, really terrible. But I think the sheer numbers of the community that I was involved with contextually and culturally probably did not allow it to get worse.

And that's great. I'm a firm believer in what you did in youth groups and extracurricular activities for teens, um, where they can be around teens and be themselves, because I was part of something like that too. I did want to answer your other question. Yeah, there are two more parts that we didn't talk about, and, and I don't want to be remiss and miss something because it's great. With the dinner table being— we just talked about cell phone free and good communication— that doesn't always work for every family. But you and I as parents have become taxi cab drivers in this recent generation, and we're going from clubs to sports, to weekend warriors.

And in certain communities, people are just letting their kids just take Uber so they don't have to, and they're just— they have the credit card on file, and they're now even missing that opportunity.

That's too bad. But yeah, so that car ride is another opportunity. So take out the earbuds completely, just take them out, turn off the radio, and ask the same questions. And the third way, if that doesn't work, or maybe they all work a little bit to some degree, is take a walk once a week with your team because everybody likes to walk and talk in this country. Um, and we loosen up. So for some reason, our lips are looser when our feet are moving. And so that's a great thing too. And I, and I didn't do that with my teams. Uh, we talked a lot in the car, but talking is so great and people will spill some— I, I care about people spill their guts if they're walking in with you. They'll talk about anything with you. And they're willing to do it because if it's uncomfortable, they keep walking.

Yeah.

So those are 3 great ways for parents.

Yeah, I remember that. I actually went to Israel after high school for 2 years. And one of the, one of the guidance counselor/rabbis there, that was his job. And his whole thing was walk and talks, right? 20, basically 24/7. You know, he was, that was his main responsibility. And every day, and probably to this day still, Yeah, he was head of the game, right? This was 1996. So this is 1996 or 1998, and I know he still teaches at this program at the school. And that was like, you can just see him walking around the campus with, with a student and doing the walk and talk. And right, it was the parallel process. So right, for the, for those who don't want that face-to-face eye contact, they're uncomfortable, they don't want to be, feel like they're judged or scrutinized, or, or, or they just don't have the, the acumen to feel you know, holding space with somebody else that gives you that parallel. And I think that's interesting, because like in therapy, when people are working on their stuff, especially couples, I see this a lot, right? They're not talking to each other, they're both looking at the therapist. And it allows them to share the things in a lot easier way than like looking at each other face to face and having the trigger of seeing what that response is like with the other person that they care about and really annoyed at, at the moment. So it's interesting to see that like that, that different set and setting, provides those opportunities because you're not sitting down and giving them a lecture. You're in a car, so you're parallel to each other looking forward. You're walking and you're parallel to each other in the same, you know, setting, but looking forward. You're not necessarily always looking at each other. And that does bring a whole nother level of comfort for people who are uncomfortable in those type of situations.

It does. And I experienced this in my own marriage, like you, I, I, or like your parents. I got divorced for no, none of those reasons. I got divorced because My wife was suffering from depression and she just became angry at me and angry at the world. And the kids were 6, 6, and 5 on the opposite side of this, of you. And there was no extracurricular, nothing like that.

Right.

And it was very interesting that she was just so angry. We couldn't get beyond the anger. We just couldn't as a couple. And it was unhealthy. It was becoming unhealthy.

Sure.

And then when my, when my son who took his life, we recognized something was something going on. And we went to a family therapy session with him, and he's— and the counselor asked my then ex-wife, uh, why did you get divorced? And I just looked at her. I was curious what she was going to say. Now, a lot of time has gone by. She said, I was just so unhappy. And that's the first time— that had been the first time in a decade that she, she used that phrase, I am so unhappy. Rather than, well, you're ruining my life, or you did this to me, or you, and, or you, you don't help out enough in the house, or whatever it was, right?

Yeah. And, and my biggest goal with all my clients and, and anybody, you know, I partner with in different aspects of my life is how do you move from a space of blame and victimhood to a place of empowerment. And the narrative of what you just shared is a really good example of that, of taking ownership and accountability and responsibility for your own outcomes. And not only doing it, but who do you partner with to help you get to where a better feeling place is? And I know, like, you know, teenagers who don't— it's different, right? It's different than like the '90s when I was a teenager and when you were a teenager just a few years before that. Um, but the agency that they have, the freedoms that they have, the resources that they have— like you said, they have, you know, unlimited internet. And I remember going to look up a project at the, you know, go to the encyclopedia at the library and then find the right page and find the right book in the Dewey Decimal System, which, you know, if you ask a lot of people nowadays what that is, right? Um, right now we have to write ChatGPT and Google, and, and, and, you know, everything is available to us within seconds, which is incredible on the other side of things. But we didn't have those tools. We didn't have that awareness. We didn't have the agent. I don't feel like I had that full agency in, you know, when I graduated in 1996 as a senior in high school to take those situations and say like, here's what I want to do with them, here's how I want to solve it. I felt so stuck in a— I wasn't graduating, I was barely graduating high school. I was much, you know, by the grace of my teachers and the community, like, base past high school, major conflicts at home, like I shared. And it really was adults who took interest in me and saw my value that gave me any sense of purpose and mission and drive to show up and volunteer and help and be part of the community. At that time.

You know, I hate, I hate to use that phrase, it takes a village, because I, I just— it's a political phrase more than a personal phrase. But it takes, as you just experienced, it took for me too, it takes parents who care about you, and it takes other people that are willing to listen and care about you as well. But you can't end up being a victim if you're just not experiencing that. You know, great kids come from terrible homes, and some terrible from great homes. So it's not an exact science, uh, but you as a parent can take some actions to help. And don't expect the school to, to figure out your child. It starts with you.

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about mentorship, because, you know, let's say someone doesn't have children, or they have children that are out of the home that are, that are, you know, adults. What are some ways that your, your platform, or other platforms that you're aware of, allow people either to be involved, to be mentors, to be support systems, to be bringing this to their community? Because I, again, going back to this again, and being just from my own practical experience, like, there's only so much I know I can do now as a therapist. And, um, you know, it's, it's, you know, there's, there's Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and youth groups and sports and all these other things that I know, um, other adults can be involved with in the areas that they don't know. So what are some of the ways that you would, uh, guide or suggest someone who isn't a parent, uh, or, and who are interested in being involved and, and being a mentor through this type of platform?

Well, there are wonderful skills out there. That's a, you know, that's a complicated question about mentoring, Big Brothers and type of thing, mentoring. But let me say it from a personal point of view, and that every person listening to your broadcast and every state that they're listening in, maybe even every country they're listening in, has a skill. If they think about it, they might have a people skill, a leadership skill, a writing skill, a math skill. They have a skill in some form. And most of us don't think of it in those terms, but those skills are teachable and transferable into, to students. You know, as you were in that youth group that you talked about, you met with people that were mentors in leadership. And we're willing to help foster ideas with you and leadership and things you hadn't thought about. But you had something inside of you that had a leadership talent, but would still be there if nobody helped you bring it out. Um, and that's where mentors come in. And I'm a huge fan of mentors and big brothers and big sisters and all those things, but it takes people to individually stand up to do that. So when I was in high school, when I was— to me, my teens were in high school, I helped run the debate club out there because it was a volunteer organization after school to teach kids how to speak publicly. Because I've been speaking publicly since I was your age in a youth group, and that's where I learned to speak. And in college, and then ultimately Toastmasters for 20 years. Now I've written a couple of books and I speak all around the country. So I love to speak. And you're teaching personal confidence and integrity when you're teaching speaking, because it's okay to fail. It's okay to say the wrong words. And almost everybody does at some point in a speech. If they don't, if they don't read that speech, they mixed up words. And there used to be a great show on, and the kids can YouTube it, called the East Side Comedy or East Side Kids. And they had a speaker on there, and it's comedy in the old days, who never got words right. And it was hysterical in retrospect, but what he— it didn't matter because he was making a point. It wasn't how he— it wasn't what he said, but how he said it and how he cared. And so I suggest to all parents, find time not just to be the tennis or the football coach or the soccer coach, which is a very good thing to do, but become a life coach while you're doing that. If you want to be a soccer coach, then recognize, as you already do, that all the talent is different on the soccer team. That's an obvious thing. But all the emotions are also different.

Yeah.

And unless you're reaching them emotionally on that, in that world, you're not gonna be able to reach them at all. Our football coach used to grab our helmet and shake the helmet like this and till your ears rung, which is a form of a concussion.

Sure.

And I'm sure I had hundreds of them. In high school, in college, hundreds playing football and an ice hockey goalie. And so constantly getting your bell rung, that's a terrible way to reach a kid. But they did it in those days, and they thought that's the only way they could get your attention was to shake, you know, the stuffing out of you. These are the— that we know now that you reach children, reach teens on their level. Whatever you're doing, whatever your talent is, Combine that with some emotional connection, and you'll change lives.

Yeah, I know there's a proverb or a teaching that says, educate your child according to their path, right? And the language is very specific. It's not according to your path, it's according to their path. And this is such an apropos point of what you're just saying is that, right, when we talk about love languages when it comes to relationships and, and understanding different people's personality styles, right, Myers-Briggs or Enneagram or the DISC, right, we use that all in the professional and relationship setting. But a lot of people forget to apply this to working with their— with children and theirs, or they're in the academic or sports setting, to apply these skill sets. And thankfully, it's coming along. But it certainly wasn't in our culture when I was growing up. Everybody was exactly like that. Go to your drills. Doesn't matter. Stop your whining, right? There was still that level of things.

And literally, you wanted to hit people on the side of the head all the time.

Yeah.

You just listen to do it, please, without asking me why. But now we understand that, you know, it's, it's two-way. Now you don't wanna be stopping dead in your tracks because you got 6 people keep asking you, why do I have to run this or do this? Mm-hmm. But, but in reality, if you can reach them, all those whys are worth it. Yeah. Because they'll, they'll buy into what you're doing.

Yeah. And, and I think everything that you're saying really goes back to at one level, the work that we need to do as adults to mirror those things to the others around us, right? It's not just taking the phone away, right? Having that time for— but if we're not mirroring that, if we're not living that in congruency in our own life, where we're creating the space for our own work, we're creating the space to like not have the technology in front of us, not have the news playing, whatever channel that we shouldn't be watching anyway, always on, and not having— right? Really being present and then letting that flow and connect with others through that way, we're going to have an easier way of doing this. And that's the mindfulness, so to speak, that we've lost a lot over the years. And I know we were talking before, like, you know, my grandfather was in the military and, you know, we were talking about the different generational, you know, of the like, suck it up and what do you mean you're having emotions and you have to look at all these things that are in front of you. You shared, you know, you told me a little bit of a story about, you know, having that experience when you were in high school.

Yeah. And we learned, look, you talk about your dad and military and my dad would've, if I complained to my dad about my life and he was born in 1915 and here I had a Chevy Vega in the driveway, I belonged to a youth group, I was president of this and on the, I was, I was thriving.

You're in life. Yeah.

But I was a stupid teen also. I did plenty of stupid things and some of those things were kind of life-threatening, stupid thing, things to do. But he would have figuratively wanted to hit me in the side of the head because— and he would have said, are you out of your mind? I slept on the floor. I, I worked 2 jobs so we could afford this house. I— we ate nothing. We ate chicken fat every day because we couldn't afford butter. We rendered the fat. We— World War II happened. People died all around you. Are you out of your mind? And then if my son had said that, I might not have understood it either. But we've learned so much now just, you know, you have military families, you were telling me about PTSD. You know, if you watch the Patton movie with George C. Scott, when the one soldier had a form of PTSD in the movie and he hit him, he started to hit him with his riding crop because he didn't understand it. Like, get back out in the field. Yeah, you big baby. Now we understand there's an issue there. And with our teens today who maybe are more inundated with more nonsense and more crap, and certainly social media They are not able to differentiate between I'm feeling sad, I'm feeling depressed, and I just need to pull up my bootstraps. Those are all blended together in a way in history that they've never been blended in this country. Yeah. Who—

what resources? Because I'm thinking of, like, all the different partnerships that could be out there. And obviously, you know, the amount— the listeners that you guys are listening to right now, The listeners can be a great tool for this. Is there any organizations or programs or companies that— I'd like to make an ask of my community who are listening. Is there anybody that anybody can, for my listeners, if they have a connection that they can reach out directly to you? Is there anybody or anything that you'd like to be in front of or get in front of or be introduced to? So we can help this.

Another really good question. We're here to help. So let me give you my email address. Yeah, it's Elliot, E-L-L-I-O-T, 2 L's and 1 T, at abrighterday.info. And the website is abrighterday.info. There are so many resources, literally thousands and thousands of resources on there. And we're not the only organization to deal with stress and depression, but we just focus on that with teens with a goal of stopping teen suicide. There are other organizations out there that stop suicide, and they do a pretty good job. There are several veteran organizations that are funded by the Veterans Administration to stop suicide, which we know is an epidemic out there, and a sad, really sad epidemic in the veteran community out there. Um, there are just so many ways, places that they can go, and we put them on there. There's 988, where anybody can call that 24/7. It's a national suicide hotline that they can call and speak to somebody within a few minutes there too, as well as our organization. I can't— I love our text program. I think it's the hottest thing we have going that they can 24/7. So my son, one of the patterns you look for with a teen is sleep disorder. That's what we should check. Is your sleep, your teen's sleep disorder or pattern all messed up? And that teen, like my son, was messed up at the end. At midnight, he, he would have been the one kid who would have used that texting program at midnight, and he would have texted, am I feeling this way? What can I do? What's going on? I can't tell my parents. My parents are the biggest, you know, yaks since ever on Earth. And, and, you know, every kid thinks like that too, you know. For a while, I was just a thousand years old to my teens. And, but now we've got tools, and besides Arthur on the internet, but go to our website, take a look at that. Take a look at what's out there and you're gonna, you're gonna find things that help, but take some action. And if your teen needs to be in front of a counselor, take action, whether it's using our program with BetterHelp, it's using somebody like yourself. Don't be a victim of inaction. Yeah, you don't want to overreact because it might be just a dumb teen. It's going through just a tough phase and they didn't study for Friday's test. And they know they don't know the material and they're feeling very sad because they're looking at a D or an F in front of them. And they, and it might be that, and maybe you could find out, well, why don't we carve out some time? I'll help you study, whatever that is. Let's talk about it. Yeah. That might be good rather than yelling at them. Why don't you study? Turn off the TV. Be more nonjudgmental and help instead of pointing a finger at. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that, you know, the question that stands is, who can we introduce you to? Who can I— who would you love as an organization and as a speaker? Because we have a wide range of people in the audience who have been previous guests. So is there anybody that you would love to be put in front of any type of organization or community that would help move your organization along?

Every PTO, Every school— schools are really tough because we're off campus, but PTOs love us. Kiwanis loves us. Rotary loves us. Library associations love us. These are people that eat us up because, like, wow, you're honest, you're truthful, you open up your heart to us, and you have solutions. Anywhere where parents go, parent organizations, they love what we do.

Okay, so listeners, if you hear that and you're involved in any of these, um, but that's one way you can, you know, obviously besides educating and, and being a resource and knowing resources out there. But if there's anything in your specific community that you think Elliot's nonprofit will be a benefit and addition to, which of course it would be, please, please, please reach out directly to Elliot so we can get more of this out here. And Elliot, again, thank you so much. I know there's much more we can talk about. And maybe there'll be a round 2, because I know again, we're coming out of the, the tail end of the pandemic. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff of which we didn't even get into about what it's like for the teenagers to be home over the last couple years, you know, socialize, I socialization— isolation, excuse me— and all those different things of what we're going to have to be navigating. We are navigating now, both clinically and as families. But I think that will be definitely its own episode in the future as well. But for now, everybody should absolutely check out all the resources that Elia brings to the table and check out abrighterday.info, right? Is that correct? That's the website?

.org works too, but we started with .info. So we just stuck with it.

Awesome. And Elliot, please, uh, keep up the really incredible, most powerful mission of, of, you know, keeping our, our future healthy. And, uh, really means a lot to me. And thank you for spending time with us.

Great to be here, Jason. Thank you. Love to come back anytime.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at You Winning Life.