Magic Ingredients of Happiness (for Kids and Parents) with Nadim Saad

What if raising happier kids was actually the easiest way to become happier yourself? Today we're talking with author Nadim Saad, who wrote the book The Happy Confident Me, and he helps kids and parents all over the world become happier versions of themselves. If you just love being the happiest version of yourself and making the world a happier place, be sure to hit that subscribe button because we talk about this every single week. Welcome to Good Mood Revolution. Today, we're going to learn the ingredients of happiness from one of the happiness experts in the world, Nadeem Saad. He's the author and founder of The Happy Confident Company. His work and tools are helping children learn the ingredients of happiness at schools all over the globe, and he's spoken on raising happy, confident children at companies like Google, and JP Morgan. Nadeem, welcome to Good Mood Revolution.

Hi, Matt. Great to be here.

Man, I'm really excited about learning how to raise happy, confident children, but really the implications of how being happy and confident can affect me as the parent and our listener as well. We're going to be talking about the ingredients of happiness. And as I was preparing for this interview, I saw you interviewed by another podcast podcast host, and you had admitted on that interview that your own daughter was having issues with happiness. I was hoping that maybe we could start with that story.

Oh, thanks. Yeah, for sure. That's what I call my origin story, actually, so of why I launched the Happy Conference Company before. So 13 years ago, I'll actually, I'll share another quick origin story. I've got two, and it's related to, it's my kids. Because they're our best teachers. That's the reality. So 13 years ago, I was convinced I was the best dad. And my wife was a Montessori teacher. So we actually had created a Montessori nursery. So we had kids, 1 to 3-year-olds. And she would be the recommender, basically Parents would go to her for recommendations and she had the best recommendations. But when we had our kids, I realized that she wasn't always applying the same thing to her kids. So obviously the emotion happens and you end up doing other things. And so I thought I was a great dad, fun dad, quite present, and, you know, but I tend to be on the authoritarian side. And my wife tended to be more on the permissive side. And by the way, that's something that happens to 75% of parents. They usually disagree on how to parent because we often have different parenting styles. It's usually linked to how we were raised as children. So we either reproduce and do the same thing as our parents or do the opposite. And obviously we have parents who are different, so we sometimes take from one and not the other. But so I didn't want to change. She was trying to make me change and I was resisting and saying, I'm a great dad, you know, stop bothering me. And she would give me parenting books and And I'd go, "Just give me the exact summary and show me it works. And then maybe I'll start applying it." But then there's this one event where I realized that something had to change. And it was a simple, like, nice lunch on a Saturday afternoon. And we're having this nice lunch. And so my daughter, 4 and a half, Noor, is serving herself some salad. And she drops a salad leaf on the table. I go, "Noor, please remove the salad leaf. Just pick it up." She doesn't react. Surprisingly, quite quickly I go up and like, "Noor, come on, pick up the salad leaf." And she ignores me again. So I go and I use my favorite tool at the time, counting to 3. So I go, "Noor, I'm going to count to 3, pick up the salad leaf." Number 1. Noor, pick up the salad leaf. 2. Come on, it's a 2. And I'm just thinking it's such a small thing that obviously it's going to end up, it's going to be like this, like usual. And I'm like, Noor, 2.5. Noor, pick up the salad leaf. 2.75. Still doesn't pick it up. I pause a little bit, but then I, it's really interesting because I still remember that moment where I completely explode and I actually have no idea what I'm supposed to do. Because I hadn't thought about what I'm going to do to pick up a salad leaf, what the consequence would be. But because my whole authority was based on that fear of her picking up the salad, well, of me counting to 3 and then getting a strong consequence, I went ballistic. And I picked her up and I like screamed at her. I put her in her room. And it was a moment that I'm still ashamed of. And obviously it ruined our whole Saturday afternoon. And obviously I had additional shame from Carol, my partner, my wife at the time, because I had been such a horrible dad. That day was the difference between my reaction and the event was so traumatic that I thought, you know what, I do need to do something about it. And thankfully my wife was already training as a parenting coach. And she started being able to show it at home that there were other ways, much more respectful with kindness and firmness, but kindness, a bit more positive discipline type. It was called Love and Logic. It's actually a US method. It was great. And she started implementing this at home and I actually became passionate about it and ended up launching a whole company, a parent coaching company with her. So that was my first origin story. If we're good leaders, At home, we can create better leaders. We can motivate and inspire. We can lead by example. We can create a vision and strategy, a purpose, family values. All of these principles that we hear in the workplace are actually things that are useful at home. And I found this so fascinating that no one applies this. Even the simplest thing like a family meeting. So important to do family meetings regularly because that's what allows— talking about happiness, this is exactly how to be a better or happier family and or a happier couple if you don't have children. It's make sure that you regularly have these times to share. And I'm getting back. Do you want me to continue on my second story?

I don't have a question yet. My dad would have reacted the exact same way as you about a salad leaf. And then he would definitely put his foot down. And once he was committed to, I've asked you to do this, and if you defy me, I will be more powerful and I will overpower you and I will dominate you so that you do listen to me. Because the last thing that he ever wanted was to be disrespected. And, um, and so then as a child, of course, that's not a very good way to be raised. At least it's not very fun. What for the parent out there that's like, well, what do I do? They sat the salad leaves on the table. I started the counting process. Once I get to 3, there has to be a consequence. What's a better way to handle that scenario with someone so that we don't damage them?

Yeah. So, thanks for asking. And it sounds like we have the same dad. Well, I think a lot of us had the same dad.

Yeah. Or are the same dad.

Yes. Sorry. Exactly. Or are the same dad because I was that dad. And had I not realized, actually, then I became a parent coach because I realized how much I was damaging because exactly what you described that I need to win, but it comes from fear. And so that's what's so important to understand is to have compassion for all these parents like me before. I have total compassion for myself. I just used to think that if I didn't win, I wouldn't have authority. My authority was crumbled. That's why I reacted so badly because my whole authority was based on that. And therefore, if I backed down, backed off, backed down, backed off, both, then I would have lost my authority and my respect of my children because that's how my father used to get respect from me. And now I have respect for my children in a completely different way. And it's actually much more compassionate understanding. In this case, what I realized after reading the research is that because I used to raise my voice and kind of my energy was quite intense, I would send without wanting it, my daughter into fight, flight, or freeze. So the reason for her not answering on the salad leaf was because she was frozen. She was like, literally, she had to dissociate at 4 years of age. She had to dissociate because that would remind her like too much intensity and she couldn't handle that. She was very sensitive. So the first aspect was to understand what I'm doing and realizing that I'm making it more difficult for my children to do what I'm asking when I raise my voice because that's not my intention. So even the old dads out there, even the moral authoritarian and the ones who still believe that respect is the most important, and I still believe that respect is essential, will still, I hope, acknowledge that, well, actually, I don't want to make it harder for my kids to do this. Otherwise, it just doesn't make sense. Of course, I'm going to be disrespected if I make it harder. So first realizing that this intensity and the raising of the voice releases cortisol in their body, anxiety hormone, and then they go into fight, flight, or freeze. And therefore, the prefrontal cortex, what allows them to be rational and want to do what we're asking them, takes over. And therefore, that's the first step.

They get to make the choice. And so, an easy consequence for any parent out there that we use with our kids is if you don't eat the vegetables, you don't have dessert. And we just give them the choice. We're like, it's no big deal. You don't have to eat this broccoli. You don't have to, you don't have to pick up the salad leaf. It's okay. We'll pick it up. There just is a consequence. And that is that you don't get the 2 pieces of candy when your siblings do. And it's no big deal. You know, and at age 3 or 4, our kids, if they don't get their dessert, they are crying and it's so hard to not give in and just give them the candy. You know, we're like, oh, they're so cute. The first ingredient of happiness is what we're talking about. You talk about connection and connection with others, especially with our family members, is essential to happiness. For the person listening, how, how strong and important is connection? And then how can we foster better connection to increase our happiness?

Yeah, I'm going to reframe that slightly. The first connection is to ourselves. And so what I've realized on the back of this story with Yasmin is I realized that it's not normal that we're not teaching kids about their feelings and about their thoughts and how just that, having negative thoughts or negative feeling, well, we don't even call them negative feeling, but unpleasant feeling can go into doom loops and could go basically make you think about things about yourself that are not true.. So I worked with the best therapists and teachers to actually create a program that would allow the kids to better understand this. And the first part of the program is really about connection to yourself first, to actually— the best connection to yourself is understanding your feelings, is labeling your feelings, getting that. And the first power is— we call it— we've got 10 powers that we've developed. So we teach 100 feelings, and then we also teach 10 powers. And the first power is the power of introspection. The power to actually of self-awareness, understanding yourself. So the first ingredient to happiness is first that connection with yourself so you can better understand yourself and your needs, so you can then express them to others. And that's where the connection happens. From that deep connection, you then connect with others who can better understand you because you've got the language as well to express this. And that's where the strongest connection happens because then people understand you better because you've actually better managed to express to them how do you want to be supported.

This is so important. And the story you shared earlier about the child in the pool and the mom is saying, stop crying, stop crying, stop crying, stop crying. Basically deny your emotion, deny the fear or the sadness or the disappointment or whatever the child was feeling. That's not appropriate. It's not appropriate for you to have that emotion. You're saying, and of course, that's how I was raised too. My dad's like, "Men don't cry." I'm 5 years old. Men don't cry, like 5-year-old boy. But I internalized it and said, "All right, men don't cry." And a lot of the guys I work with and a lot of my friends who are men, especially men who is supposed to be macho that we don't have these more sensitive feelings, we don't have a connection to ourselves. For the adult, for the person listening to this show that can't identify— like, 100 emotions is so many emotions. How could we reconnect with 100 emotions ourselves so that we can start to know ourselves?

What a great question. You know, I actually used to go to my therapist and he'd ask me beginning of each session, how do you feel? And I'd go, I think I'm feeling Because I was so disconnected from that feeling part. It's, you know, most feelings, a lot of feelings are here. Obviously, you can have them everywhere, but a lot of them are here, you know. And I just did not know how to connect with that part. So you're so right. We often kind of, we've just learned to suppress it and therefore we're not really feeling it. And so I had to create a pack of cards called, you know, the Feel It Cards. Because it's somatic, it doesn't use, you're not actually trying to access it from your left brain, and I'm thinking that I feel this way, but I'm actually selecting a pack of cards. So I am feeling, and you can have the normal, but you can go a bit deeper. Well, you've got the different colors, because the blue are low-intensity unpleasant feelings. The reds are high-intensity unpleasant feelings. The yellows are high-intensity pleasant feelings. And the greens are low-intensity pleasant feelings. And so you'd be surprised, but you could actually literally select 10, 12 feelings easy of what you're feeling right now without realizing that you're feeling all of this. And we're complex beings. We're not feeling just one thing at each time. We really literally have a clump. And so the trick is to then reduce to 3. Otherwise, it's kind of, oh my God, it's overwhelming. And what happens is you also have at least 10 of, I want to feel motivated and inspired, all of these positive things. But then when you really look at what you really want to feel, majority of people, kids or adults again, will go for safe, loved, and understood or valued or seen. This is our fundamental need. So therefore, coming back to that need and what is happiness, actually, our happiness starts with being safe, loved, and seen. So when our kids, or us as partner, I mean, okay, what do we want from our partners? We don't need to be, I mean, like, it doesn't have to be the big stuff, just safe, loved. And often safety, by the way, is something that is elusive and we think, oh, of course everyone has safety. It took me more than 10 years of therapy to actually realize how unsafe I felt because of my parents, because actually I get triggered by my wife, now ex-wife, and I didn't feel safe because that was a lot of baggage I was carrying. So that safety element for our kids, coming back to authoritarian dads like I was, I realized my kids did not feel safe with me. And I thought, I mean, so respect, the problem is if you're seeking respect at the expense of your kids feeling safe, you've lost the mark. I mean, and I'm sorry for the ones who are listening to this and who just, but it's just such an important realization because respect comes after safety. Once our kids feel safe, they can respect because what happens is in respect is I, that's what happened with my dad. I'll share that. It's a bit personal, but basically my dad, used to follow me, I mean, threaten me with a belt. Never hit me, but he was around the house, scaring me with a belt. Until one day, I was about 10, 11, I stood up to him, because I was his height by then, and I just held the belt and I said, what do you think you're going to do with this? He stopped, and never again did he use a belt. But oh my God, did I lose respect for him. Because the respect for him was actually so much based on that. So it's not that I started shouting at him or whatever, but you know what? I was like, and that's what we don't want. We don't want that respect to be based on fear. And so going back to happiness, because I know your question is about happiness, but these are the essential aspects of safety, loved, and valued and seen is the start of the happiness. The extra pounds of the parts of, so coming back to the connection, These are the 3 ingredients for connection as adults with other adults and with ourselves as well, is feeling safe, loved, and valued and understood, seen.

I love it. And I want to get those cards and I want to use them at the dinner table with my kids. I want to use them for myself. I do a process like this for myself in my journal. And I don't have 100 emotions to choose from, which is why I want to get those cards. But any, any morning that I'm not feeling on top of the world, I'll just sit there and, and write down what I am feeling. I'll write down any of the thoughts that show up and I'll, and I'll see 'em and I'll, I'll look at this negative thought. You know, negative may not be the word that you use, but that's what I call it. And, uh, and then I'm like, do I want to continue to feel that way? How could I look at this situation differently? Can I reframe this? Is there some action that I could take here? And then how do I really want to see this? Because every single situation can be looked at in a way that says, hey, this isn't empowering, or this is empowering. And so I'll reframe it with a pen and paper. I think it's— I'm saying this for the listener. Oh yeah, because it's very difficult to reframe things in our mind using the cards, using something physical to say, okay, here's the emotions I feel now. Here's the emotions I want to feel. Now we have something tangible to work with. It's going to be so much easier to switch the way we're feeling with something tangible. It's why I do it with a journal, because I get it out of my head onto paper where I can work with it and then choose new ways of feeling. And I know you're huge into journaling, of course, with the Happy Confident Me journal.

And I love how aligned we are, because that's what we teach the kids and adults to do too, is the reframe. You've got to identify the feelings, but also reframe the thoughts. Because often, not always, but the majority of cases, the thoughts are what trigger the feeling. So once you have the feeling, you've got to actually go and access the thoughts of, oh, why?

What triggered? Oh, I just want to interject before you continue. This is so important what you just said. The thoughts trigger the feelings. And I want to make a distinction. It's not the external circumstance. That triggered the feeling. It's not the person that disrespected us that triggered the feeling. It's our thoughts about what they said that triggered the feeling. It's not the thing that happened at work that triggered the feeling. It's the thing that happened at work that triggered the thoughts that triggered the feeling because we could have positive thoughts about the thing at work and positive thoughts about what this other person said to me, same exact situation, and we could have positive feelings from the same exact situation. It's the thoughts that trigger the feelings, not the event. So, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think—

No, but this is so precious. I'm loving that conversation. You're so aligned. This is such an important point. And actually, to continue and to add to this is if you can realize that if you actually just landed on Earth today, and even if you had someone shouting at you, like in your face and screaming at you, you could actually not be triggered because you just think, oh, this person is having a bad day. I wonder why there's they're screaming at me like that. Because you don't have, you know, you literally have, you don't have a reason to be affected by someone you don't know. Or even if it's someone you know, well, in this case, you don't know because you've just arrived on Earth, but that's the whole point. And so you realize that triggers only because of the past or because of what we, for example, I want to be respected as a parent. That's a belief. And therefore we get triggered when we're not respected, but it's much more, Actually, it's much better to have more refined beliefs, which are not, I don't want to respect it, is I want respect, but not at the expense of ta-ta-ta. And therefore, you kind of, and you create what your reality basically. So coming back to that, it was so important because the thought process that you're talking about is essential. And that's what we teach kids. But I would've loved to see, actually, no, I don't want to share this publicly. I share it in presentation. But it's such an important aspect of exercise we do with kids. My third daughter, when she was 8, we did this exercise with her. I knew basically that my, you know, Yasmin, 2 years earlier, had quite a lot of negative thoughts at 8, et cetera. So I just did the exercise with my kids, with the 3 of them. They were 8, 10, and 12. Do you see what they put on there while they had 2 parenting coaches? I hate myself. I don't feel good about it. She's going to scream at me. He's going to be angry about all of these All of that. It's scary when you see it. But the thing is, what did you do with it? We then just took it and they kind of also draw their, what we call basically the inner bully, because we all have an inner bully. And it's much better to know it early that actually we all have this radio on and that will tell us, oh no, you're not good enough, you're not. Then to actually tell them, oh, you're not supposed to think that way. Oh, don't feel this way. Don't think that way. But then it's like, oh, I'm not normal. When we have our— the beauty of our school program is that suddenly everyone looks at each other like, oh my God, you also have negative thoughts and negative feelings. Well, not negative feelings, unpleasant feelings and unhelpful thoughts. That's how we call them, unpleasant, unhelpful.

I like your terminology so much better, unpleasant feelings and unhelpful thoughts. I was at a business conference with very successful entrepreneurs. And it was a goal-setting session and there was 30 millionaires in a room together, all really successful, running different businesses, the top half of a percent of the world, right? And the question was, what are some of the beliefs that hold you back? And then all of us shared. And It was crazy being in this room with the most successful people I'd ever known. They were saying things like, I don't feel good enough. I feel unlovable. I feel like nothing I ever do will live up to my parents' expectations. And it's person after person after person after person. And the point of that exercise was that every single person has these feelings. You're not weird. You're not alone. But all these men thought they were the only ones who felt that way.

Thanks for sharing again. I love it because this is, even men, you know, most men haven't heard this either. So I went also, I was so surprised. I was very similar circumstances. It was the top like CEOs of the best like education companies in the world. Like they're educating 300,000 children, 200,000 children. They were all admitting, oh, just so it's clear, we're all faking it. We're all basically creating it as we go along. We have no clue. So we're all doing our best. That's the reality. And actually, once you acknowledge this humanity that we all have instead of feeling superior and just showing off, for the kids, it's so much safer because then they feel like, okay, I can deal with that. It doesn't mean it doesn't define me. So, for example, when we have these negative thoughts created by what we call the default mode network in our brain, we then tell the kids, and that's what I taught my 8-year-old because she still, although we had used all the parenting tools, not only the parenting tools, she was already educated in this, then she has to ask herself when she has negative thoughts, is it helpful? Is it kind? And is it true? Then is it true? Obviously, you can't do this with every thought, but what you said, that's why I wanted to continue on what you do in the morning. That's where you can sit down if you're not in a good space. It's much better to take these few minutes and rewire this and get rid of this than go all day not feeling good and actually with this, we're not even realizing what triggered this. So, when the kids do this, then they start realizing how often they tell themselves a few things. So it's very often for people, it's usually the same stuff that gets said again and again by the default mode network. And therefore, we get them to do the exercise of what more helpful thoughts they could think, what you do in the morning. And then once they do this on paper, because as you said, it's so important, then it becomes quite second nature. It becomes easier for them, particularly because at that age, they can just go, oh no, not that one again. It's okay, I already dealt with that. I know I can deal with it. So that sense of agency that you spoke about from the beginning is— that's the important thing. So identifying the unhelpful beliefs and thoughts and the unpleasant feelings and realizing that you can always do something about it and you have sense of agency, that's the beginning of happiness.

Oh, it's so good. Then it's so good. What are the 3 questions again? So we have— so, so for the person listening, there's a negative thought or an unhelpful thought that's running through our heads, perhaps it could be a fearful one, let's just use like anxiety, like, "I'm doing a poor job at work, I could lose my job." The question would be, is it helpful?

First, is it kind?

Oh, kind, yeah.

Yeah. Is it helpful? Then is it helpful? Because often it's not kind, you just disregard it, okay, that's not. And then, is it helpful? Oh, sorry, is it helpful and then is it true? Because then you're like, okay, one second, it might be helpful, but is it true? You know, it's kind of—

So, I'm the worst employee, I'm messing up, it's not kind, right? I'm the worst employee, I'm messing up, I could lose my job. Is it helpful? Maybe in some sense. It says I have some work to do and I need to do a better job. But is it even true? Most of the time we exaggerate this to such a high degree that we could look at the opposite, which is I'm the best employee, I'm doing so well in so many different ways. We could see the opposite is even more true than the thought that's causing us to spiral. We've talked about some amazing ingredients of happiness, and it's not as simple. I know that Mo and Solve for Happy wrote a very simple equation. Happiness is expectations minus perspective. And he's most likely correct, but it's still such a big, complicated subject because we're very complicated beings with 100 different emotions. So one of the other things you talk about that I really wanted to hit on here was an ingredient of happiness was having an optimistic view of your future.

And I want to make sure that it's a very important ingredient and yet it is also one of the often misunderstood ones. So, it's great that we're going into this because it doesn't mean have false expectations and this being overly optimistic because then you fall short often of— because these expectations can be overly, you know, basically you might be disappointed regularly because you're just too optimistic. And that's my case, by the way. So I'm talking about my pure case. I'm just like, just everything's going to be great all the time. And then I sometimes fall short and it's fine because now I learned how to be not managing my expectations because that's what I used to do. I used to go, oh, I want this, but It's okay if that doesn't happen and I'd manage my expectations. So actually, I would put my default mode network in action to make sure that I'm— but actually what I'm sending the universe is a mixed signal because I want this, but I don't really want it. Don't do this.

I mean, we all do that.

We all do that. Yeah. But ideally, basically, you just believe in it and then you just— but you trust and you surrender and you just realize, well, if it happens, I'm going to be over the moon. If it doesn't happen, I'm going to be okay. So build that resilience of when it doesn't happen. But so coming back to these ingredients of optimism, it's really related to that negative thinking and the fact that our brains are by default wired to look for the negative. And it is so important to actually rewire it through gratitude. So daily gratitude is positive psychology. Martin Seligman and his colleagues have made this great research that shows that in just one week of doing 3 things you're grateful for, So, writing down 3 things you're grateful for for a week increases happiness by 9%. But what's fascinating— it's a lot. But what's fascinating is 6 months later, even if you stopped, you don't do this as regularly, it's continued increasing because you actually rewired your brain to look for the positive in your day rather than look for the negative. So, that rewiring for positivity and letting go of the negative thoughts is the biggest ingredient to happiness because it's basically where instead of seeing people and starting to judge them, we're actually start also, so that's another aspect, we're starting to also look at the positive in people and just like instead of being triggered by people, we can just go be more compassionate. So that's another ingredient of happiness is compassion towards ourselves and towards others because if we're regularly judging ourselves and judging others because usually it comes and, you know, it's a mirror. You judge others if you're really very judgmental with yourself. It's rare that you would go like, well, or you don't even realize, which can happen to some people. But so it's so important to have that positive outlook towards the future, but also towards every day and every moment and be grateful for the different things happening and that compassion for the moment of, oh, I made a mistake. It's okay. I'm human. As you said, we're all human. We're so complex. And it's fine and I'm just having compassion for myself and others. So, that's another aspect I just weaved in before the end.

You are phenomenal. I could talk with you for days about happiness. You're just such a wealth of information and you're making such a huge difference in the lives of parents and kids all over the world. I recommend— this journal is amazing.

Thank you.

This is awesome. And, I can't get my kids to journal all the time, but it's a really nice journal for kids. So, how could people get your products? How could they get more involved in your world?

Thanks, Matt. So, easiest is happyconfident.com, and that's the company. But also, we've got, particularly in the US, it's easier to buy them on Amazon. We've got our journals on Amazon. We're actually coming out with a teen journal who could be good for your eldest. And it's so amazing because it's got goal-setting exercise, it's got reflection every 10 days, it's got habit tracking because we all know what we're— sorry, actually great way to finish on the coming back to this positivity thing and optimism. It is about everyday positive daily habits. It's when we have this, when you said in the morning you wanna have these habits where you're releasing more serotonin, et cetera. And before going to sleep at night, our kids, they only remember negative often, will remember negative stuff of the day. So journaling on gratitude and the different ways they felt enables them to release that and to actually go and have much better dreams and sleep better. So that's so— and the teen journal will enable to even for teens who have much more difficulty getting into positive habits, they'll have habit tracking, they'll write down their habits and then the Feel It cards also available on Amazon. US, and all over the world actually. So, that's— and can I mention also one thing that my biggest belief actually, we've just 13 years of work actually, we finally released our most important product. It's called the Happy Confident Club. And because I was going to say, so obviously one of the ingredients of happiness is connection. And the best connection happens from having the important conversation that we often wouldn't have. With our kids. And so we have in there, in that Happy Calming Club, we have the Feel It course where you learn about these 100 feelings. So let's imagine you sit down with your kid and talk about anger and you have a video about anger with other kids talking about anger and how they deal with anger and a better deal with anger. And then you have that conversation with your kid and say, oh, how can I best support you when you're angry? And you have, it's so important because then they tell you because sometimes they might have very different ideas of what usually what you would think is good for them. And then where the magic happens is when they also tell you how they can support you when you're angry. And basically what happens, so I had this mom call me and say, oh, you know what my kid did yesterday? I was getting so angry. And he said, oh, mom, you're about to flip your lid. You need a bit of PBS. And PBS stands for pause, breathe, and smile. And so obviously as your kid says, "Mom, oh come on. I mean, we agreed we're not gonna." I mean, it's not, you know, it's kind of, I'm not gonna go into fight, flight, or freeze because I know your amygdala is being taken over. That's why you're gonna about to flip your lid. Let's just do this differently. You know, it's a bit for someone who expects respect, it could be a bit tough. You're like, "Oh hey, I don't want my kids." But actually when it comes from that place of real connection.

[Speaker] It works. My wife pulls stuff like that on me that I taught her and it works. And I'll be like, oh, thank you. Thank you for that reminder. She actually did it for me yesterday and it was a chapter from my own book.

This is it.

She quotes it to me and I'm like, huh, I totally forgot to do that today. Thank you. And I like it, like it works. So if my own kids are like, hey, Dad, like, hey, it's PBS, bro, calm down right now. I mean, I'll thank them for it. And it's also showing me that they aren't reacting to my emotions because they're emotionally healthy.

Exactly. You got it exactly. And that's where the magic happens because suddenly you're like, you've got the same sense of purpose and team. You just realize that you all wanna be connected. Everyone wants to feel safe, loved, valued. And so when you can bring this through this important conversation, it's particularly useful for dads even as a parenting coach. So it's beautiful. It becomes that flow of, hey, we're all doing our best and we're doing the best we can and we have the tools to actually do better, to become the best version, the best family possible. And so that's the Happy Conference Club and that's on happyconference.com. And it's a monthly subscription. It's like $12 a month.

So, you know, it's a no-brainer. Crazy affordable to have a happy, confident family. Nadeem, I appreciate you, man. This conversation was packed with powerful perspective-shifting truths. And honestly, it's going to be one that I'll come back to again and again. Here are my top 5 takeaways from our conversation today with Nadeem. One, respect without safety is an illusion. If our children don't feel emotionally safe, any respect we earn through fear is just shallow and unstable. True respect starts when kids feel seen, valued, and safe enough to be themselves. Two, consequences should be calm, pre-agreed, and empowering. Instead of escalating conflict in the moment, Nadim taught us the power of pre-agreed family rules and proportional logical consequences that allow kids to make empowered choices, even as young as 3 years old. Number 3, connection starts with ourselves. Before we can connect deeply with others, we must reconnect with ourselves. Understanding our own feelings, maybe using Nadim's Feel It cards that name 100 different emotions, help us name what we're feeling and take back control of our own inner critic. Number 4, thoughts create feelings, events don't. It's not what happens that causes our unhappiness, but what we think about what happens. Shifting our thoughts through reframing, journaling, or awareness can completely transform how we feel. And number 5, Your inner bully isn't truth. It's just a voice. Even Adeem's own daughter said, "I hate myself," at the age of 8, despite having two parent coaches for parents. That's how powerful our unhelpful thoughts can be. And we can teach our kids and ourselves to question these thoughts, asking, is this thought kind? Is it helpful? And is it even true? If this episode gave you new insight into happiness, parenting, or just how to be a little bit more gentle with yourself, hit that subscribe button because every week we dive deep into conversations that bring more light into the world. This is the Good Mood Revolution, and we'll see you next week.