Nadim Saad - How to Reparent Yourself and the 10 Powers Kids Need to Learn

I am so glad you could join us. I'm your host, Mo Gawdat. This podcast is nothing more than a conversation between two good friends sharing inspiring life stories and perhaps some nuggets of wisdom along the way. This is your invitation to slow down with us. Welcome to Slow Mo. Hello.

Hello.

Welcome back to Slow Mo. I am once again in Farm Girl in South Kensington in London. As I say every time, they are not sponsoring me, but they make such good coffee and they're really nice people. And so I asked them if I can host my podcast here. And there we are. Today I also have with me my wonderful daughter, Aya, who is manning the cameras, womaning the cameras. And for an artist like Aya to just come and help me with my shots is actually really kind and it's wonderful. And today we're going to be talking about parenting. So what an appropriate setup. I also spilled a bit of coffee on my t-shirt. So hence Aya is wearing my black t-shirt today and I'm wearing Aya's t-shirt. Shirt, which is by one of her friends, an amazing brand. Do what you have to do. Say it again.

Always do what you should do.

Always do what you should do, which actually is— this t-shirt is for charity. So the proceeds of this go to kids in Brazil. So again, very appropriate for me to have spilled that coffee. I am today with a very dear friend, and I often get a lot of questions about my books and my work where people ask me, can we do that for kids? And my answer is normally that I'm actually good with happiness. I don't know. I feel that kids are a big responsibility for me. I haven't found the language and the angles, if you want. I'm working on a few little stories for kids, hopefully for the end of the year. But to really go deep into the happiness for kids, which I believe is the most important thing to do, because basically it's like preventing the problem instead of waiting for it to happen and then trying to fix it. So today, my dear friend Nadeem Saad is actually the expert, and we have like a million and a half of his books. I don't know how many those are, but they are an incredible resource. It's called the Happy Confident series. I mean, basically, Nadeem started the Happy Confident company, which was really all about coaching kids and helping kids find happiness through methods similar to the message that I describe, for example, in That Little Voice in Your Head and others. He is an author. He is a bestselling author. He is a speaker, an entrepreneur, of course, with his business to try and make children happy. But he also, don't tell anyone, is the absolute best dancer I have ever seen. He is the life of every party. And I have to admit to you, today he's wearing a white shirt and very formal but if you see him in his pink trousers and yellow t-shirts, you realize that you could not dance that good if you're not gay. I was shocked the first time I met him. He is not gay, but he is the best, best person to be in touch with his emotions. So I'm not going to start with kids, Nadim. Thank you so much for being here. I'm going to start with how do you dance that well?

Thank you for this introduction, Mo. I'm actually— you said I'm someone who's really in touch with my feelings, but it took me many years actually to be in touch with it. So I was in touch with these feminine qualities of dancing, of compassion and trying to be intuitive, but it took me a long time to actually get in touch with my emotions. My whole work came from that, from realizing how blocked I was. And I would go to therapy and the therapist would first ask me, so how are you feeling? And I go in my head. We don't do that. Middle Eastern men, we don't. We're not good with this. As you say, you're also right in your book, it's practice. And I tried to practice, but it didn't work. So sometimes you just think, oh, of course. So I love your exercises. Or just think, well, think how you're feeling, because that's it. And then I would sit there and I'm like, I'm not sure. I think I'm feeling this because of that. But that's not— Amazing statement. But that's not what you're feeling. You think you're feeling. So really difficult. And actually what changed completely was me creating now what's a game called Feel It, and a whole method now, emotional literacy method for schools. And I realized that I can, if I look at cards, so it's a stack of cards with 84 feelings in total. And when I look at the feelings, it's a different part of the brain that works. And I'm not thinking about it anymore. I'm actually just thinking, oh, wow. Yes, I'm feeling a bit of this and a bit of that. And as you say so rightly, the little voice in your head. It's so many different things. And so the exercise that we do with children, but also with adults, is try and then go from all of these to maximum 3, so you can feel more in control. And that— and then we teach them to go from what you're feeling to what you want to feel. And by just doing this, there starts to be a shift in emotion. So I actually learned that I needed to practice this, and I needed to actually create the resources for this. The roses for my kids and for myself. So a lot of the things that I created for kids were actually ultimately the result of more than a decade of personal development, looking at everything, reading so many books, and actually thinking, how can this be applied to kids? And we found, and we now have a method that's been developed in schools, and the results are so amazing. And so—

Hold on, you're trying to escape my original question. How are you How are you such a good dancer?

You know, I didn't figure that one out. I've been asked many times, when is the time that you clicked in dancing? So you weren't always— No, no. I remember one thing. My mom took me in Cannes to see Alvin Ailey. They're an incredible company, dance company. And I was— that really was my first— I was about 10. That was my first real connection with dance that I remember. And then we saw flamenco together and things like that. She loved dance. But I don't know when I suddenly started dancing this way. And I've been— but what's really interesting for a Middle Eastern person, I mean, I've been told several times, do you realize that you look gay when you're dancing? I'm just like, what's the problem with this? I'm just expressing myself. And I didn't realize that actually—

I think it's because honestly, you know, when you're a macho, like very rigid person, especially, you know, a very rigid macho man, you end up not in touch with your emotions at all. And I'll say openly, I mean, this is something that I struggled with growing up. It's, I don't even think it's just being a Middle Eastern. I think being a man in general, you're raised to not acknowledge your emotions. You're raised to not feel them to start if we can. And, you know, you're, you're raised to be tough and it's sort of like, don't be a softie, if you know what I mean.

Totally agree. But in my case, it was this extra level of 'No sadness. Why? You're so lucky. You have everything. So just be happy.' I interpreted the fact that basically it's, I need to be happy. I have no reason not to be unhappy. And I didn't realize that I was a very sensitive child and that I just suppressed all these feelings. And I became— I was the lucky guy who had this incredible coping mechanism, being happy and confident all my life. But what— and so if I told my friends, for example, that sometimes I would be angry at home, they couldn't believe it because they had never seen that side of me. The problem is what came out with my closest relationship, my partners, my wife, my kids, was that anger that I couldn't understand. Oh. And so being happy and confident all the time, but sometimes suddenly being angry.

Outbursts.

Outbursts. And the conflict was okay. For me, conflict was normal because it was part of my upbringing. My wife at the time, now divorced, had never had conflict in her family. So it was really challenging to deal with that. But so coming back to emotion, basically, I just thought anger was okay and expressing it just in a short outburst and then just calm down was totally fine. But that was not the case. It took me years to realize that it does leave a big mark and that actually, particularly children, just don't feel safe. Because the challenge they have is they see this happy father always present, really being there, and then suddenly they see another aspect they do not understand. There is no coherence in that person who suddenly seems to be not loving and really harsh and screaming at them. So it took me years to realize how much damage we can do. And I do not want to feel like, make every parent who shouts at their children guilty, but It's actually where it starts, is to realize that we normalize, and hypernormalization is something that you speak a lot of in the book. We hypernormalize that it's okay to shout at our kids. In the end, you know, it's normal because it's normal to get a short fuse and sometimes be stressed. But the problem is, ideally we shouldn't do it, and when we do it, the most important thing of all is connection, is reconnection.

Do you think the majority of kids grow up to be told not to express their emotions?

Well, that's the hypernormalization, actually, because we're uncomfortable as already because of our past, basically, as being parented ourselves and the discomfort around emotions that already existed. We were told that, oh no, we distract kids. We just tell them either, oh, it's going to be okay, and we save them from the emotion, or we tell them, oh, come on, man up, you know, it's okay, it's not that bad. We rarely— of course, now it's changing, thankfully. And that's what we're trying to do with all our— we work with families and schools— is to actually allow the feelings so that children actually learn to experience the discomfort and learn how to better regulate this rather than suppress them. Because if they don't, if they constantly suppress them, one, it takes some of your brain power away by just suppression, actually removes your cognitive ability. And then, as we know, it actually comes back and bites you in other ways. It's much better to feel them, understand them, label them. You probably know the name it to tame it. So it's actually when you name the feeling, it reduces its intensity in the brain. And therefore we feel more in control and more capable of regulating the feeling. So that's what we teach kids and parents so that we really bring this to the system and we make all feelings okay. But obviously it's not how you express them that's important. And that's what you can't express anger with hurting others, etc., hurting yourself. You just learn to regulate it and identify the strong feeling before it becomes a problem, and to actually express it in a different way. To express a respectful boundary. For example, "Oh, I'm feeling super angry right now. I'm about to shout. Maybe it's better as a parent, you know, it's better if I remove myself from this situation because I'm about to really, like, you know, lose it." And that's so much more effective, actually, and so much more powerful, and it doesn't get kids into fight or flight and make it even more difficult for them to do as they are told. Because that's the biggest one of the challenges is we often make it more difficult for our kids to do what they're told because, for example, when we shout, as we know, we put them in fight or flight, so they're not connected to their prefrontal cortex and therefore they can't actually react the way we want them to.

They can't stop crying if we're telling them to shout at them, "Stop crying." I mean, my theory has always been that we're born happy and then we mess it up, right? Or our parents mess it up for us. Is that true in your view?

So I think that it's a great part true, but at the same time, we are bound to be unhappy. And actually, what's important is how we deal. We all have to develop a frustration muscle, a disappointment muscle. If we don't, if we're not taught actually just to experience the frustration, disappointment, then we don't know how to deal with it. That's the problem we have at universities right now. A lot of people are going, you know, they're not resilient enough to be outside of their home because we didn't teach them enough. There's too much helicopter parenting, for example, so that we don't teach them to actually go through disappointment. And it's a muscle, as we know, it's all practice. So we have to go through disappointment, through unpleasant feelings, and feel them, and then learn to actually convert them. So although we're happy, as I agree that our default state is happiness, we're bound to have things that life throws at us, so many challenges. So it's about how we actually deal with these, and we learn how to deal with this from an early age so that we express them better, and then they don't hurt us as much.

So the idea is being overprotective. I don't know if our listeners will hear this, but there is a screaming child outside since we started recording. I don't know if people will hear it, but I'm constantly saying, Why is that child screaming so much?

Well, that I cannot be in that child's mind. However, it is very probable that this comes from the reaction of the parents to the child screaming, because actually what should they do when the child screams? Well, acknowledge that, wow, you're having a really tough time. So first of all, and then automatically the child feels more listened to, and then find strategies to name the feeling. For example, oh, so you must be super disappointed, or you're very frustrated, or angry, or whatever they may be feeling. And Actually, you don't have to get it right because you teach the kids to actually help you find what's happening to them. That already puts them in a better situation. And then you help them think, so what could we do differently? So you reconnect them with their frontal cortex from the fight or flight and losing it. They're completing the brain, their limbic brain. You help them reconnect with their prefrontal cortex and decide, oh, actually, I can probably do something different. So, for example, you can ask them choices. So when they hurt themselves, you can say, oh, are you really hurting a lot or medium or just a little? And then suddenly you see them, actually just a little, and then they can stand up and just— it's amazing. I mean, I've tried this too. It's fascinating how many small techniques we can teach children and parents, and it can completely change their lives. That's why I got into parenting, because I realized that there were so many things I didn't know. Initially, my reaction was, oh, please, because my wife at the time, we disagreed on how to parent. I was more authoritarian, quite Middle Eastern. Her parents were quite authoritarian, but she decided to do the opposite because she didn't like the way she was parented, subconsciously, actually, not so consciously. And therefore she decided that she was going to be more— well, she decided subconsciously she was just more permissive. And so we constantly disagreed. And that's normal. I remember that, actually.

I had that in my life too.

Well, that's pretty normal because 75% of couples actually tend to disagree on how to parent, and more than 50% of disagreements are around Discipline, how to discipline the kids.

Interesting. I remember vividly all I wanted was when Aya woke up, remember Aya, and said, I don't want to go to school. Basically, I just wanted her to go to school. Nibel was like, okay, babe, you know, it's fine if you don't want to go to school.

Then you have a disagreement because like one second, but it's important for her to go to school. If you teach her that not going to school is okay, she's going to do this more often. We go into that thing. And that's where, I mean, it's a constant battle. And that's where at that point of my life, I thought that there's no parenting science, and therefore there are so many books out there that will say the opposite. So I would ask my wife, hey, give me just an executive summary, but show me it works first.

I mean, she's the boss eventually, right?

Actually, no, that's the problem. I did not— that's actually what really created a lot of struggle, is I didn't agree it was a book, because actually, often— she was a Montessori teacher originally, and I saw her do things that were that she wouldn't recommend other parents to do, because obviously when the emotional aspect of the parent comes in, well, I see that you do. Yeah, they do different things. So therefore we were in constant struggle. Thankfully I did this, um, well, so first she became a parenting coach and she started giving— just to make you— no, no, just to actually to really realize, one second, this is not working. I'm a Montessori teacher, but I'm actually not managing to deal with my private life in the best way possible. So I'm going to look for something. What was amazing is she actually taught me so much because she started using techniques that would work for me, that were kind and firm. So it was setting boundaries. It was basically a lot of— the best education is you put very clear boundaries, but you have a lot of freedom, a lot of autonomy. And so she applied several techniques that worked for me. She started giving parenting courses from home. So I started to participate and share all the great things we would do at home. And then I did a big— so the Hoffman Process is kind of this one-week intensive therapy where you think about the legacy of your parents and what you want to keep or not keep.

Interesting.

And I realized that I had— and I thought I was so independent and from my parents, and I went there and I was like, oh my God, I have double whammy. So my very critical— so I have a huge saboteur, very inner, big inner judge. And it comes because both my parents were hypercritical. A lot of things were basically double whammy from both my parents. And then I was like, oh my God, so all of these things that I didn't realize that I got from my parents, how is it possible that we don't know this? So I decided to make it my mission to go out there and actually teach parents that all of this is things that we get from our parents and actually that we can do differently.

Can we really, Nadim? I sort of, if you think about one thing that could fix our world, It would be that parents need a license before they start driving.

Exactly.

Right? But it's never going to happen. I mean, when you really think about it, we become parents, honestly, when we are least prepared for it. Right? At times where life is extremely stressful, where you have no idea what you're doing, and then suddenly you have those little, very cute things. So you really love them. But now suddenly you go like, I'm Superman and Superwoman, and I'm going to take care of them by doing incredibly extreme things. And it's just happening over and over and over and over. It's just endless, really, everywhere.

Okay. It is the biggest challenge. And actually, this is the topic of my upcoming parenting books, although I already wrote 5.

You originally write for children.

So, no, I originally write for parents. I wrote 5 parenting books, and then I wrote for children. I'm going to explain why just now, because it's all related. But so now that I wrote for children, I'm also writing a book called Be the Parent You Wish You Had.

Oh, that's an interesting name.

That is for parents, because actually it's about all of that experience that I had across the years of realizing what it is that really can help us change. And that's what I— so you're right, it's very difficult. And that's why I— so I stopped for 5 years working with parents and focusing on children. Because they were hopeless. Because I was so frustrated, because basically the parents would come back after a year or two and would say, I love your course, I love everything you shared, but you know, the problem is now I feel guilty because I know what I'm supposed to do. I know what I'm doing. It was so frustrating. I was like, no, I'm here for transformation and I'm hearing parents who actually not managing. So I was very frustrated because the first year or two it was really working so well. They would apply the techniques. It was very left-minded, so kind of left brain rather than left-minded. And okay, do this, do that. And then it becomes a bit second nature and it works and it does. However, then kids grow and then suddenly these techniques don't work as well. And then you have to adapt and then the parents weren't. That is where I realized, and that is where I divorced, and our middle child went through a tough time when we divorced. She was quite mean to her sisters and quite mean to me. It was really challenging. I tried parenting techniques. It was not really working that well. Because I was actually trying to reconnect her to what I thought was her true self, which was she was always bubbly, happy. She was this child. I was like, it is not your normal self. What is happening to you? Thankfully, as a parenting coach, I realized that it was not working and I was not doing the right thing. So I actually coached her. It took more than half an hour to an hour to actually get to her saying, "I hate myself." And just imagine, for a parenting coach who basically, I mean, I am supposed to know what I am doing, and it was— I mean, I was distraught and it is so hard for any parent. But I took it as a, wow, wake-up call because I checked with her school and they had noticed nothing. She was totally normal at school. She was her bubbly self. And I realized, oh my God, if I wasn't a parenting coach and I didn't get this from her, this information, I would have probably just got into this negative cycle of probably punishing her, although I didn't believe in punishment already because as a parenting coach, more in consequences. But still, it would have been a negative cycle. And so thankfully I had these tools. And that's where I realized, oh my God, we so need to give these tools to kids. We so need to give the kids the tools of self-expression, of safety, of expressing themselves and getting to know it. So it's developing metacognition. Emotional intelligence, and mindfulness. And that's what I set out to do. So I created this whole program. I started with workshop in different schools. We saw incredible— so kids who didn't like school who would come back and say, "Oh, Mom, guess who aced the history test?" Or kids who actually seemed to be on the ADHD, on the spectrum, and didn't want to participate. And after just 2 sessions, suddenly, like the boy, 8-year-old boy, was his hand raised all the session, all my workshop. And I was like, he can't always have something interesting to say. But every time he'd actually speak, although he seemed to be a bit distracted, he just had the most— I would literally say, oh my God, hallelujah. I was literally saying to this 8-year-old child. And his mom one day called me and said, my child just went, oh, Mommy, you're getting a bit angry. Maybe you'd need a bit of PBS. So she said, and PBS, I asked him, what is PBS? He said, pause, breathe, and smile. So he was teaching her the techniques that we were teaching. So that's where— that's what I realized is actually if we can teach the whole system, it's a systemic change we need. So we can't teach only the parents or only the kids or only go through schools, and the teachers also need to know this. It's actually about working with the system as a whole so that kids' parents are motivated because they see their kids doing things differently and learning things like neuroplasticity interoception, so the feeling our feelings, mirror neurons, a lot of things that you talk about. Basically, we're teaching kids from age 7, 8, all of these, what we call the 10 powers, life skills, basically. And that is transformative. You see the kids in bringing this at home, and therefore then the parents, it becomes part of the language in school and in the family, and it just transformed the whole thing. So, so that's working.

Okay, so 10 powers, we have time, right?

Because actually, in my book, Be the Parents I wish you had. I actually teach these 10 powers to parents as well. Because what I realized, actually, when I— all this, so more than a decade of personal development, learning all of these different techniques, I actually then put them for kids. But I realized that the parents also need them. I was actually— so my therapist told me, oh, can I use this for training my therapist? He is a top therapist. And he said, I am training therapists. Can I use the book? Literally, I am talking about the— book for kids. Okay. The Happy Comfort Me Life Skills Journal. Yeah. Can I actually use this to train therapists? I just thought that was the best. I was like, thank you, I'm so honored. It's not just so honored, it basically proves that we're all kids eventually. Actually, so, yeah, I'm gonna get into the 10 powers. And be the parent you wish you had is actually, as I was explaining, is first be the parent you wish you had to your inner child.

To yourself.

To yourself. Because actually we all have an inner child.

That's such a biggie.

And when we manage to have self-compassion, self-care, and most importantly, to reconnect the different parts of ourselves that we do not like so much, and we are not in resistance to these parts that we do not like, everything changes and we become the parent we wish we had to ourselves. And then we can so effortlessly— well, effortlessly, no, rewind. It takes a bit of work and practice, but it is so much easier than to become the parent you wish we had to our kids. And they just feel the difference. And I'm feeling this for the first time with my kids.

Are you saying we're bad parents because we're unhappy children?

I say it's very difficult to be a parent if you haven't dealt with your inner work. It's very difficult. Very difficult. And that's what's beautiful about parenting, about becoming a parent. It's the first time we actually really realize we have responsibility. And therefore we want to do better, particularly the first years when you have young children. We feel that we have an innocent life in our hands, and therefore we want to make an effort. But often we don't have the tools, we don't know what to do, and so we end up parenting by default. Or we think, like I used to think, oh, there's no science out there of parenting. But what I realized, and as I started my research in parenting, is that it's the same science of leadership. So because I came from a leadership background, MBA, etc., I actually, I was reading the science of parenting, I was like, well, this is leadership. This is the same thing but applied to kids. It's actually about motivating, about leading by example. It's about communicating effectively, two-way communication. It's about vision and strategy. It's all of the things that actually we learn as leaders, not management, real leadership. So I love Eisenhower's definition of leadership. He says leadership is the act of getting others to do what you want because they want to do it. And that's what we want for our kids. When we become parents, we really want to develop. We realize that we have such responsibility. Unfortunately, in our— often in our relationships, so with our partner, we expect something from them. We expect to understand us. We expect, and therefore in this expectation comes a lot of challenges in the relationship. When we have young kids, we can't expect them to be— I mean, some parents do, but the majority realize that there isn't much they can do. And therefore we're much more patient. Well, at least we try. And it gives us this willingness to try and be better human beings, to improve.

Yeah, but what gets me is that you're the second person that says this on Slow Mo. I hosted Zoe, my very, very dear friend who was in the first 100 episodes or so. And she spoke about— she's the one that started Motherkind, if you know the site. And she basically was saying that As she became a mother, and you know how the heart of a mother wants everything that's amazing for her child, she started to suddenly say, I needed to raise myself. I needed to go back and be a better person. Not just a better mother, but a better person to begin with. And that whole reflection was what made her— she's an amazing human being. If you guys haven't heard her episode, please go back and we'll put it in the show notes, which one it is. But basically, to reflect on your own self, to meditate again, to connect to yourself to see what issues have been the residual issues from your childhood and then use that to become a better person and accordingly a better parent is a very big responsibility.

Absolutely. And it takes more time than I would have expected because I wanted to be better, but I did not know. And as I said, I didn't realize that there was really a science of parenting, that there are things that are very clear that we can do better. And that's what I set out initially to write about.. And then I realized that it's not that easy for parents to do it. And so I wrote for working parents. I wrote about the parallels between leadership and parenting. And that worked quite well. When I'd go to corporates like Google, actually, I spoke several times at Google, and it was so well received because they could understand that language of, oh yeah, of course, we're trying to do this at work. Of course we should do it at home.

So that whole idea of leadership once again.

Yes, exactly. And it was great because actually you also remind them of what it is to be a good leader because it was basically based on all the key principles of leadership. But then I started working with children because I thought it has to be systemic. And that's what we— so what we try to teach kids, so from an early age, is first use feelings as a gateway for self-expression, for it to feel safe for self-expression and for connection. So from the year of 2, 3 years old, we actually have a program called Feel It. With feel-it time where in 10— and actually, I loved your episode with Owen O'Kane. Yeah, because he talks about the 10 minutes a day. We're very much believers in 10 minutes a day of, you know, atomic habits, short things, particularly because when we worked with schools, what I used to do my workshop, it was an hour a week. They said, we don't have an hour a week. So I was restricted by all schools who said, we can't give you an hour a week, although we believe this sounds so great. That's crazy. It is crazy.

Because I give my child an hour of geography a week because geography matters more than happiness. I mean, this sort of infuriates me, really.

Yeah, the thing is, thankfully we found an alternative because I agree, I was— it was very frustrating. The thing is, they have a curriculum to follow and there is something called PSHE, for example, in the UK, and there are times to speak about these things, but often the programs are not really geared. And therefore what we decided to do is, well, what— how can we do it? And we worked with with like renowned therapists, with teachers, we realized 10 minutes a day, 10 minutes a day of different things. Usually it's— so the, the basis of also, it's like a Pyramid of Maslow, Pyramid of Needs, is the basic need for safety, for connection, is feelings. So we call it feel-it time. In 10 minutes, you actually share what you're thinking, what you're feeling. You see, I made a mistake. And you first share what you feel, and that is a gateway to share challenges you may have had at home. So it's an emotional literacy program, and it's great because actually there's so much happening in the world at the moment around this. For example, Brené Brown, you probably know. Yeah. So she wrote The Atlas of the Heart. Yeah. And what's great is we were clearly working in parallel on this because she released her Atlas of the Heart and we had released just prior to that our 84 Feelings with the emotional literacy program with more than 250 activities to teach kids as early as 2 and all the way to— so from 2 years of age to 11 years of age, all these feelings and how to better express them, how to better regulate them. So that's Feel It. Then we add meditations and positive affirmations. So positive intentions. The whole idea is when you set a positive intention for yourself, you're much more capable of dealing with. So for example, we've got affirmation cards where you have, I am happy. I choose to be happy. I am proud. I am confident. I am motivated. Or I choose to be motivated. Or things a bit more complex, like I feel positive about myself and everything I will do today. So you set a positive intention for the day. So we often do it as a game. You just choose a card.

What's your question for the day? Okay, I'm not taking this one. I feel very skeptic now. I'm sharing my emotion. I celebrate my achievements.

Oh, man.

No matter how small. That's such an interesting card for me.

I celebrate my achievements no matter how small.

Yeah, that child in Mo never stops, just keeps going. One amazing book, success, and there you go.

You could have taken this for me too. Yeah, exactly. And so we set positive intention, mindfulness, and these meditations are actually about guided meditations that bring kids to a relaxed state of real focus. We could call it flow, but I know flow is a bit different because flow is that, but it's real between relaxed and not too excited and really pleasant, satisfied. And then they're really ready for learning. Then we bring from 6 years of age, we bring journals. So our gratitude journals. So rewire positive your brain through 3 top things of the day. So the 3 blessings of positive psychology. Applied for kids, and then a whole page of self-reflection. So they often start by just drawing when they're smaller, but very quickly we see the kids actually starting to write about their day. And so there was an incident, for example, in school where the headteacher brought 3 kids together and they all said, oh, can we get our journals? And they spoke from their journals because that was the time where actually they reflected and they remembered the action, what happened, the incident. And what made them unhappy. And they spoke from their journal because it was a really precious moment for them and they knew that they had put it in there. So that's journaling and self-reflection from age 6. Then from age 7, 8, we actually then teach the 10 powers, the 10 life skills. And the 10 powers that everyone should have is first the power of introspection. So it's self-awareness, realize what we like, what we don't like, what our needs are, what bothers us so that we can actually express, so we better know ourselves, so we can better communicate with others. The second power is the power of optimism. So we teach them CBT, so cognitive behavioral therapy. We teach them that thoughts lead to feeling that lead to behavior, and how they can often be in a trap. For example, the trap of you've got— you see someone who's not reacting the way you want, and then you don't feel very good, but then you behave towards them in a way that actually just increases So it creates a problem that could have disappeared if you just change your thoughts to something more helpful, like, oh, maybe they didn't see me when I waved, for example. And so we teach them this, and they can become a lot more conscious about their thoughts. And as— I mean, it's a whole subject of your book, so I don't know— is how to convert their unhelpful thoughts into more helpful ones and identify them. So we teach them metacognition, basically. Then we go through the power of interoception. So interoception is our sixth sense. It's the sense, so our ability to feel sensation in our body.

So hold on, what's the first?

Introspection is the first. So self-awareness. You're aware of yourself. And interoception is actually still awareness of yourself, but of your body-mind connection. It's actually being to feel, it's very much to feeling, using your vagus nerve to feel what's in the different sensations. And you speak very well about this in your book, is how important it is to feel, to understand, oh, this, not everyone has the same emotional you know, signatures, as you called them. But the majority, we do. And so learning these early on and being a detective, we teach them to be a detective of their emotions, detective of their thoughts early. Just imagine how much the prefrontal cortex grows by doing this early on instead of waiting till 24, because it's in development until 24. We teach them this early on. And the power of interoception is so powerful because it makes them realize that they are much more in control of their feelings, they can better regulate them. Because they feel them and they feel them before they flip their lid. We teach them what flipping your lid is, how you go into fight or flight. And actually you end up— so we actually have a— and we do this as a video program too. So we just filmed it actually, and it's coming out in September. It's going to be free for schools where we filmed it with a famous celeb, basically presenter called Emma Willis in the UK. And we present these 10 powers in video format. Alongside, we have testimonials from kids who actually share how they struggle in life and also how they use these powers in their daily lives. So third is power of interoception, and it helps really kids be much more in control of their emotions or regulate them better rather than control them. The fourth is power of mindset, and we teach them about neuroplasticity. We teach them that actually their brain is not set, and therefore it's not true that they can't do something. They can do anything, they just can't do it yet. And if they practice and they put effort into something, they can actually maybe not be world-class at it, but they certainly can be good. And so we give examples of kids who think they're not good at math, they're not good at writing, etc. And actually, that if they put effort and they just change this thought, as we know, they can do it. We can all do it. Then the power of failure. That's the fifth power. And that is a huge one. That's amazing. It's a huge one because the problem of the whole system is there is a lot of shame around failure. So for example, we filmed this 7-year-old girl who said in camera, I feel like I'm a bad person when I make a mistake. And but this is very much what my daughter, you know, I hate myself, is because she was making mistakes. So actually most kids feel that.

Why do we put them in that space?

Exactly. That's the whole thing. That's what we want to change. And the point is actually it's about how they feel about mistakes that's the problem. So we want to give them permission to fail. And permission to feel, so through interception. So it's actually, as a mathematician, you like that. I call this P2F², so permission to F, you know, feel, and permission to fail. So this permission to fail is so important. And so we teach kids, it's actually the problem is not the mistake itself, because we have so much to learn from it. It's what we feel when we make it. So instead of feel bad, like a bad person, or that we made— we actually teach them to, it's okay, actually just see how much you can learn from it. So you feel better about it and you celebrate mistakes. So that's the power of failure. The sixth is the power of resilience. And it's the most— one of the most important things, which is realize that whatever comes at you, there's always a solution. So we give them a toolbox to be able to face any challenge and know that there is a solution to it. And therefore, the power of resilience is about bouncing back from anything. We teach— we show them that the most successful people have all failed actually more than average because they needed to fail to actually learn and to bounce back. And so we give them examples of Michael Jordan, of so many great celebrities who've done so well. I mean, even, I don't know if you— Thomas Edison, he talks about the 10,000 times he actually didn't fail but actually did it the wrong way until he managed to get to the light bulb. And Walt Disney and all of these great examples. So that's the power of resilience. Then the power of creativity. You might know Ken Robinson's talk about how schools kill creativity. Well, the whole point is we don't want to— we're teaching kids that creativity is not just drawing, it's not just singing or drawing or thinking. So I thought until a few years ago that I wasn't creative. I had written books, I had launched at least 5 or 6 companies. I was creating products, but I didn't think I was creative. Because this was a feminine quality that I didn't think I had. And I then learned through our actually common friend who introduced us, Dorota Stanczyk, I did her Conscious Creativity course. And I was like, oh my God, creativity is part of my life of every day. And particularly because I have also this mind where I read things and then I repurpose them. For example, the leadership repurposed to parenting. This is creative. I didn't copy things. I actually just put them in a completely different way that is more accessible. So I realized how creative I was. And now I create these, all these games for kids with my amazing team. But, you know, obviously it's a lot about the vision. And so it's teaching kids that even thinking about a problem in a different way is being creative.

I have to tell you openly, of my entire childhood, I remember very— so I was a serious bookworm. And I think the book that I remember most in my life was a book that was called Cracking Creativity. Which was a book that I found in a secondhand store. I was just hunting for books everywhere. And I read in Arabic and in English. And I think I was 11 or something. And this was a book for adults. And I just read that book and it flipped my life upside down, how creativity is actually something that is welcome, that you can break the rules, that you can fail. And what do creative people do? And it just completely flipped my world upside down. And I think as I grew older and I started to work at Google and I ran a and big part of Google X for a long time, which is all about innovation and creativity. My entire argument was you're born creative and then we just switch that off and tell you, don't do that anymore. Just sit and do homework and listen to that in school all day.

And, you know, it's not— I think it's unfortunately school does kill somewhat creativity, but it's not because we're removing it. What's happening is kids early on interpret, oh, I'm either creative or I'm good at maths. So unfortunately, there's this black and white, this polarity, and it's not true at all. As you say, actually, in your books, being a mathematician can be super creative. But that's not what we learn in the system. We need to bring more creativity in the system and realization that creativity is actually what's going to do— the skill that's going to save us from AI that you know so well.

But we keep going back to the system. I think that's the challenge. So the teacher that's standing in front of the kids and wanting them to behave in a certain way, it's not because that teacher doesn't want them to be creative. It's because the system is telling him behave in a certain way, get scores in a certain way, and so on and so forth. And so I want to come back to this. We have two more powers to go, right? So let's cover the two more powers and then go back to the system if that's okay.

Sure, absolutely. I think I would love to talk about the system. So three more powers. Oh, yes, three more. I apologize. My math skills. So after Power of Creativity comes Power of Mindfulness, and that's about teaching kids the power of now. I mean, and the fact obviously that it's all about how we see events and our perception of events that actually makes our reality. So it's— and we teach them obviously how to relax, different meditation techniques and mindfulness, and that's incredibly helpful for my young age because obviously if they manage to do it, then it becomes part of their lives. Then the power of compassion. I love that. And that's kindness, empathy, and teach them that actually to make the world a better place, if you can be kind, there's a kindness ripple effect. As you're kind to others, it creates serotonin, oxytocin, others release that too. You feel better, they feel better, and why not? I mean, why not have a better world by just being kinder and having empathy? And we teach them about mirror neurons and the fact that actually because we have empathy as kids and what we tend to do is shut it off. So because it is a natural thing, actually we are connected as a world. And then you talk about Jill Bolte Taylor's beautiful TED Talk about the left brain and the right brain. And if you actually switch off the left brain and you stay more in your right brain, you are going to have so much more compassion, feel much more connected to others. So we teach kids to try and also be in that state of more being. So that is the power of compassion. And the final one, which brings all of it together, is the power of acceptance. Oh, it's the realization that we are unique as human beings and other people are unique, and we might think differently, but we have to accept ourselves first. So self-acceptance, and also accept others for their uniqueness. And that brings— and the unique part of ourselves, that's a huge part, is actually our strength and weaknesses. And embrace all of these, because when we don't, if we don't, we're in opposition. And as we, as we know, if you actually, you're in opposition, you're not managing to transform. So it's essentially a self-development course. For humans. For humans, exactly.

I mean, in an interesting way, none of what you're talking about here. So I'll say this in a different way. If I was asked of all of the bad things I've done as a parent and all of the good things that I've done as a parent, I think the best thing I've ever done is I always dealt with Ali and Ayah as adults. I never really, really positioned them as your goo goo goo goo goo little kitties, you don't know anything. I always dealt with them as my teachers, really. Like they knew things I didn't know. I knew things they didn't know. And I think your entire work is sort of saying, look, this is a relationship between two humans. One of them is a little smaller, but they're human. They need to know mindfulness. They need to know acceptance. They need to have compassion. And you're basically saying, treat them like you would want to treat yourself. Teach them what you would want to teach yourself.

Indeed. And teach them that actually it all starts with them and being to connect with themselves and this self-awareness of what their needs are so they can— once they know themselves better, then they can better connect with others. So what we call it core intelligence. So what we develop, this mindfulness, metacognition, and emotional intelligence, we call it core intelligence. It is the core of understanding basically what our inner, the higher self, and our embodied wisdom so that we can better connect with ourselves and better connect with others. And so this is what we We basically teach it to families and to schools, and that's how we think the system will completely change because it brings that basic psychology to the whole system that we all need, including to teachers. Because teachers also, when I go and present in schools and they actually learn about this, they say, "Oh, wow. We need this first. We also need to be in touch with our— to convert our next thing." So the whole system changes by being— and so that's what we're trying to create, a self-healing, nourishing system where kids themselves support each other. So what we're launching, and actually it's very close to— we have so many collaborations to do because we're launching the Happy Confident Movement. And the Happy Confident Movement is about these 10 minutes a day to transform, but also about making sure that older kids, for example, help younger kids. Because the 12-year-olds will look up to the 14-year-olds, the 14-year-olds will look up to the 16-year-olds. So we've got all these testimonials from kids of different ages talking about how they struggle and how they actually sought support, how they actually got better at different things. And the younger kids just love this. We're also implementing best practices in schools of buddy systems and mentoring systems. So the 11-year-olds will help the 7, 8-year-olds. So instead of the 7-year-olds thinking, oh, I have to go to an adult, I'm not sure, I don't feel safe, they'll go to their buddies, their mentor. And the other— so it creates an incredible connection and a nourishing system that just really transforms schools. We're talking a matter of 2 or 3 weeks and the whole school sees a huge impact, even if they were already doing a lot of wellbeing strategies.

I definitely think we need a movement. I actually will come to the system in a second because I think the idea is that the system sort of resists that movement in a way. But I definitely think what we need is a movement. I mean, one of the interesting things, just to comment on what you said, is I was with my co-author on the children's books Shelley Lewis in the morning, and we were talking about the fact that those books, you know, they're very colorful and very, very cute and silly stories, really. And one of her early reviewers read those books and said, it feels like you're teaching me. And I was like, that's exactly what it should be. It's the parent reading them for their kids and going like, whoa, I'm doing this myself. Right. And it seems to me that when we talk about the system, it's that entire system of all of us grown-ups that are messing up, right? Whether that's the grown-ups that are the parents, the teachers, whether it's the grown-ups that are the government, the education system, there seems to be a lot of, I don't want to call it conspiracy, but it almost feels like everyone is just trying to say, what can we do to make those kids messed up?

I mean, I both agree and think that it's obviously a harsh way to see a system, because what I see in the system is that we're all trying to do our best in every moment with the knowledge we have and the training we have.

See, he's so much nicer than I am.

But the reality is, unfortunately, we don't have this psychology in the system. So that's what we're trying to bring from an early age, but also to parents, is basic psychology. If teachers, for example, I mean, my big nemesis is the history program. Talking about— because the history program is— we do talk about mega-normalization. Yeah. This is the best— it's basically, we're taught from an early age that the world was created through wars led by men, and women stayed at home, except for the Vikings. Actually, the women were on the boats, they were helping out. But other than that, basically, that's how the world was created. And from age 9, 10, even earlier, you learn that millions of people died in the First World War. And then a second is that— and you can't make any sense of this as a child. Wow.

I never saw that, actually. It's so clear.

It's just we're basically reproducing patriarchy. We're reproducing just, you know, what— wars is normal, violence is normal, and just— but stop. You know, there's simple things we can do to stop this. So that's one of the things is reproducing, how the system reproduces it. So although we're trying every— you know, I must say, I mean, although the pandemic was terrible, and particularly for mental health of children and of everyone's mental health, But there is one good thing that came out of it, is that now we know that mental health is a must-have, not a nice-to-have. And therefore, finally, schools are opening up and asking us, please, you know, what can we do? And particularly when you have results in a few weeks, just, of course, it's a no-brainer. And that's thankfully— so there is this willingness. The problem is, as you say, the system is different to change, which is why 10 minutes a day is the key. Because if they are told, oh my God, you have to change the curriculum and you change your curriculum, because that's I must say I started with that thinking, oh, maybe I want to change the whole curriculum. No way. Good luck. You want to say good luck. You want to start small and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of positive cycle where things change gradually. So I actually promised to my daughter when she was 8, I will change the history program before I die. So that's another chapter. We'll talk about this in maybe 10 years. But right now, just the system is changing by bringing these life skills. And making feelings okay, safety. It is actually— So if we can find safety somewhere, the problem is safety connection. So I loved, by the way, Rangan Chatterjee's vitamin S that he talked about on your podcast. Vitamin social. The problem is we do not always have this social in school. Sometimes it is a lot of— My daughter came back, actually, you know what? Your book was so useful because my daughter came back, 10-year-old, the other day, and she tells me, Dad, I feel a bit of sadness and not feeling very safe. I was like, wow, okay, that's a big— okay, let's— can we try? Can we use the Feel It cards? So, okay, she took the Feel It cards, and she took the I Am Feeling, and she started taking all the different feelings. What I told you about this, what's really powerful, is that you don't think about your feelings anymore. You're actually really exploring. So she came up, she said sad and not feeling very safe. And sad did not even come in the feelings she picked. And safe was like, she put it and then she removed it. And what it turned out to be was that basically she actually felt nervous, worried about things that were coming about her relationship with her friends, because she was having real challenges with her friends. And so I told her, but isn't it, this sounds like there is this little voice in your head that is telling you about this challenge with your, because Are they real, these challenges? And after a bit of coaching, she went, Dad, yeah, I realize if I did not have this little voice in my head, I would be so happy because I actually have everything to be happy. I was like, yeah, you are so right. And actually, in the process, by the way, she told me, I feel like you are in my head. So I was reading your book and I realized that that helped me. Your book helped me. And the reason why it helped me was although I have a lot of psychology, I am very versed into this, is I never realized how bad it can be for other people because my DMN, my default mode network, is not that bad. I don't have a lot of negative chatter. So I'm the lucky guy who doesn't have this.

But that's neuroplasticity.

Yes, yes, totally. But she's a worrier and she has it. So it allowed me to be a lot more empathetic with this little voice. And while she just expressed it, and then I thought, good luck. And I also showed her one of the episodes of the life skills that we filmed. About the power of optimism. And she came out, she said, wow. And when I told her I had written this, she thought, oh, wow, Dad, it's amazing. The next day she comes back from school and I say, so did you use your power of optimism? She said, no, not really. I said, oh, okay. And then she started expressing a little challenge she had with her friend and said, oh, but did you do anything about it? She said, yeah, actually, I went to see her, I talked to her, and I said, you know, basically she expressed herself. And I said, so how did that turn out? She said, "Oh, it was really good. She actually accepted and we became super good friends again." I was like, "Wow, but my love, this is exactly what you did. You used your power of optimism. You brought courage and vulnerability to be able to express yourself and it turned out so well. Maybe it wouldn't have. Maybe she would have rejected you, but at least you really had the courage to be able to be vulnerable." That's what we want to bring in the system. We want basically kids to be able to have this social interaction and convert these challenges into moments of connection. And learning. And that's what we need to bring more into schools, and that's what the program does. Because otherwise there's a lot of tension, there's a lot of competition. So, and this is not going to disappear because unfortunately the system is based around competition, but we can really help smooth it out.

So that's, I mean, in a very interesting way, you're giving me so much optimism, but you're also highlighting the level, the depth, the depth of departure from where we want our kids to be. I mean, that idea, honestly, I never thought about it this way, Nadim. And I actually have to say, I'm willing to rally behind you. History in education has to change. And especially because history is really up to how you write it. One of my favorite, favorite moments in my entire life, I hosted Edith Eger on this podcast. If you have not heard this episode, you absolutely have to go back and hear Edith Eger. Edith is a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor. And she tells you the story of the Holocaust. She was drafted to Auschwitz, but she's telling it from her point of view as that beautiful angel that she is. And it blows you away. It completely blows your mind that this perception of the Holocaust from someone who lost her mother in front of her own eyes, who had to deal with her sister and hug her all the time with her shaved head and remind her that she's beautiful and so on. And you hear the story from Edith's words, and it's a very different story. Isn't that supposed to be the way we write history? Isn't the idea of optimism the way we should teach our kids? Isn't the ability to communicate and express our emotions while we actually tell them the opposite? We tell them, go to school and shut up, right?

Don't speak. You're so right. Because history, if it was taught from a perspective of what was going on in the other people's minds. So, you know, what was going on in the Germans? I mean, obviously had a tough time too. What was going on there?

Edith said that. So Edith, at the end of like 5, 10 years later, she went back to Auschwitz, right? And I was like, what are you doing? You know, who does that? And she said, I wanted to to understand, to close, to have closure on this. And then she said, I realized that if I was born German and they told me in my mind, like this little girl, now today Germany and tomorrow the world, I would have rallied behind them too. And that beautiful moment of empathy and connection and compassion to the soldiers. She basically, at a point in time, goes like, they suffered more than me. I suffered physically and now I am free. They're the ones that are like—

Amazing. Describe the power of acceptance. This is exactly what the power of acceptance is, is actually being able to realize that they're all, you know, someone else's compassion and acceptance, which is true.

But you see, this is— it saddens me. I mean, I will say, yes, let's you and I start a rally behind you and leave everything that I do and just change history by changing history books, right? But the idea is our, as parents, we need to make that our priority. We need to start telling our children that there was this meme going around. I don't know if you've seen it. It's shocking. You know, this little child who is on a TV interview in America and she asks him, what do you want to do? And he goes like, I want to kill people. And yeah, it's really shocking. I want to kill people. And she asks him why. And he says, it's very, very cool. You know, It's like what I see on TV. And we have to find a way to disrupt that. It's just—

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And the thing is, so that's the history, but when you bring more kindness and empathy and compassion and acceptance in the system, you're already changing that. Absolutely. Because you're— So even without— before changing the history program, it's one step at a time. That's what I believe in is really take— I mean, and movement is very important because people have to rally, feel that. And so So when you tell them 10 minutes a day, oh yeah, actually we could do that. And bring self-nourishing system and actually getting older children to help younger children, amazing. And that is what every— it is completely free. Every school in the world should have this. Because then it empowers the older kids and it really helps the younger kids. And it is a self-nourishing system, self-healing system. And another topic I am really big on, which is a whole chapter in my book, is being versus becoming. So I love how you go, you know, it is be, learn, do. But the biggest problem in the system is how much it is geared towards becoming. So being is the more right brain. Becoming is really the, okay, I have got a goal and I have to. And everything is about becoming. If you think about it, we are just constantly told. So that is why we feel as human beings that we are not good enough. Because we are constantly said, there is always something else you are supposed to do to be this better person. And so of course we are not being, we are not feeling. So my biggest challenge is, so the happy, confident me that I was, basically, and then I created a whole brand around it, was I did not actually, although I was so confident outwardly, I was not actually, had so much self-worth internally. Because a lot of my feminine qualities I did not respect at all. Because they were not part of my culture. They were not acknowledged by my parents. Certainly not my father or my uncle. And therefore, that is what I learned, is actually to acknowledge, to accept, to not accept, but actually to be proud of these more right-brain qualities and how I can bring them and actually have this really great balance, this yin and yang. And so this being and becoming. And what tends to happen as parents is we are constantly telling our children how we want them to become. And therefore, we kind of do not make them feel that they are really allowed to be, and that they are not just allowed, but that they are loved for who they are. Just for who they are today, just right now. They feel they have to become all of these different things to really be loved. And therefore, and actually, if I may, I'm sorry, I'm going to use— what fucked up the world is basically all these alpha males.

Yes, you may, by the way.

Is these alpha males who actually wanted to be loved, who still want to feel loved. The problem is they don't know how to feel loved because vulnerability is not an option. Therefore, it's intellectual superiority that they use to feel love, to feel respect. The closest to love is being appreciated through their intellectual superiority. Oh yeah, you wrote books and you did this, you're amazing. The problem is everyone's competing for intellectual superiority, and then you just end up with a messed up world where everyone's competing instead of being loved for who they are. They're just doing and trying to be other people that actually— and putting a But then how does a parent strike that balance?

Because you do want your child to become, right? I mean, in an interesting way, you know, my mom, I love you, mom. She always used to tell me, if you didn't score an A in school, you're going to end up being a garbage collector.

Thank you, mom.

And I love that. By the way, I don't see what's wrong with being a garbage collector to start with. But also, you know, I did. Miss a few A's, like a few times, and here I am. I'm not a garbage collector, right? So what needs to change?

This is, I must say, this is a million-dollar question, and I have not finished the chapter yet because it is very much about, it's the small things. It's actually when you be, it's like the hygge, like the Danish hygge. It's basically you get moments as a family of being, of not, because I used to do so much as a family, always organizing stuff. So very much in the becoming, in the doing. And I realized how important it is to just let go and just be. So it's kind of finding this right balance and telling them that when we are teaching them to become, that it's not that we don't love them in this instance. So it's about the language that we use. And that's where the feelings and feel it and using this as a gateway to self-express and to really be and to feel, to have this body-mind connection. Is a very important aspect of it. So you're being, you're teaching your kids to be and to appreciate where they are. And then you do work on the I want to feel and what you want to feel and actually happy. And actually what's really interesting is when you give this call to kids and they start with, oh, I want to be happy and hopeful and optimistic and proud and ecstatic and motivated and that. And then when you tell them, but can you choose just 3 of them? Often they'll come back to safe, loved, and sometimes it's satisfied. As simple as that. They want to be loved, and they don't want actually as much as we think they want. We all want to be loved, be grateful, actually, obviously, very important aspect, as we know. So it seems simplistic, but it is actually, at the end of the day, it's once you go from the perspective, which really took me years to get to, of we're all doing the best we can in every moment with the knowledge and the information we have and the energy. Sometimes we lack energy, we're not going to do much. And our kids are in the same situation. So instead of seeing kids as malicious and suddenly being, oh, you're so annoying me, you make me angry. But no, you're not doing anything. You're actually trying to express something, a frustration or an emotion or whatever in this moment in the way that you do as a child. When you take this perspective, suddenly you have so much compassion for this little child who is screaming. We heard earlier, child screaming for an hour. Yeah, thankfully not anymore. But the thing is, if we bring that compassion, but with the tools, because the problem is if you do not have the tools, then you are just like, okay, what am I going to do? Just listen to them for an hour? No, of course. So you need to get them to—

So this is a very important point. I mean, in a very interesting way, kids are sometimes very difficult. They are very demanding. They are very energetic, and I think parents will go through times where I've been at work, I have a problem at work, your father's annoying me, and now you're running around like a maniac. Can you please sit down? What does a parent do in that situation?

So that's obviously, first, expressing it. So when you manage to express your children, so using nonviolent communication, for example, like, so right now I'm so tired. When you behave like this and you're so energetic, etc., I actually, it makes me be, you know, be very frustrated or angry or whatever. So you actually— children, when you teach them, suddenly they have empathy for you too. So it's basically—

so it's not what we see all around us of, Jonathan, I told you to sit down. That doesn't work, does it?

So it depends, because, well, I told you to sit down on this way. No, because actually often when we raise our voice, we put them into fight or flight, so we make it more difficult for them. Often what's really— I find fascinating is we hold our children accountable to more than we can actually do. Absolutely. So we do not want them to be angry, but we are showing them that. So it is about being realistic and actually bringing this into the family. So for example, there are new rules. So you can be quite firm, but that is the new rule in the house. And we teach to give kids consequences, but not punishment. It is consequences that they decide. You should see how difficult my children can be with themselves. If you give them a consequence, for example, a simple one, if you did not brush your teeth, what would be the consequence? They will tell you, oh, no sweets for a week. It is like, are you sure you can do no sweets for a week? Let us say 3 days. Let us say 3 days. But they can be so much harsher with themselves because they realize they want to do well. So when you take this precept and you completely change the system, you go in a family meeting and you tell them from, I am talking from 3 years.

Family meeting. What is a family meeting?

The number one tool to have a good family time is you every week, you do one family meeting initially when they're younger, from age 3, it works. You do 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and then it grows to half an hour. And in the family meeting, you actually express your needs. First, you start with gratitude.

You set targets and then have the kids go out and sell or whatever.

A bit less left brain, a bit more. So you start with gratitude and compliments.

So what are we grateful for?

I love that. So we complement each other. Siblings, often very difficult for them. You have to practice. They need to practice to actually tell each other because they know after comes the express their needs. Oh, yeah, I don't like it when you take my stuff, for example. That comes after. But initially it's gratitude and compliment. And now we actually introduce also what you're proud of. And so the kids, because what they don't— It's all positivity. But it's like a sandwich. You start with positive, then you go into the more difficult, and then you finish with negative again. Positive again. Because that is the best way to give feedback. So then the feedback comes. And that is where everyone expresses their needs. So you ask the children first, what are your needs? My daughter, when she was 4, said, Daddy, I would like you to shout less.

I love her.

Yeah, you love her. But the problem is I was like, what? I was shouting. No, but in my mind I was like, but I was already a parent. In my mind, do you realize how much effort I am making already to shout less and you want me to be this with you? I didn't feel good enough. My reaction was one of a little child going, "But I am trying so hard, why don't you acknowledge it?" But I actually knew, I calmed myself, I said, "Oh, wow, but I hear that you want me to shout less, but have you noticed at least that I made a lot of efforts?" He said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, Dad, yeah, we all made—" The whole family goes, "Yeah, yeah, we noticed, but not good enough." But the starting point— I was so annoyed. It took until she was 7 in a family meeting for her to say, oh, Daddy, you know, I want to say, you know, I'm impressed. Well done on the shouting. Yeah, 3 years. But thankfully, that at least you can acknowledge, you can follow the whole process.

Hey, baby, we need to start family meeting. I never— we never had family meetings.

Listen, since I'm here and I've been included in this conversation, I think there's something that needs to be said that is really incredible, which is is the power structures that you're breaking through this and how the power is being distributed to everybody now. So at every level, and no one's the big boss. And I think that when you, when you discuss the leadership and linking it to leadership, it's really mind-blowing to think that we're following and we're being told, following our parents, following our teachers. And by breaking that down and giving everyone responsibility, it's really powerful.

It's so interesting. This is really interesting. So I don't know if people heard my daughter's comment on the conversation, but so she was saying, but in those meetings, are there power structures?

So there is a chairman and a secretary. Okay. And often the kids want to be the secretary because they take notes. Notes? Yes, absolutely. Because they want, oh, the secretary takes notes so that everyone knows what's happening in the family meeting and what has been decided. Because once they express their need, So we did not talk about the parents' needs. The parents' needs is, well, I need you to listen to me, or I need you to— Basically, it is actually we are talking about the things that are really getting us frustrated, and we find solutions as a family, and we decide what the consequence is as a family if this does not happen, because we can all fail. Permission to fail. But there are consequences in life. When we fail, it can be a very simple thing. It is related, respectful, reasonable consequence. So it can be very subtle things. But very importantly is how do we remind them, particularly when they are younger, 3, 4, 5, 4 or 5, we tell them, so how would you like to be reminded? And it is a fun thing. For example, my kids, when we were in Japan, they were a bit older, and I had to be listened to because we were taking trains and tubes and all of that, and they were all behaving, they were getting excited. With Japanese, it is like, oh, you have to respect. They said, you are not listening to your names anymore. I shout your name and you are not listening to me. We came up with just say team. I would be like noisy train coming, so I would say, "Team!" Boom, they would all be, "Yes, Daddy!" Which is great, but don't ask why they would not hear their names anymore. But that is what they just start shutting us off. So when you find these really little things to connect, to reconnect with them, they love it. And they are empowered, as Aya said. They feel empowered. It is all about— that is what leadership is. You are empowered because you have also decided, you have participated in the decision, and you know that it is best for you. So basically no kid thinks that— well, a lot of kids think that we're just imposing on them and they hate it. As soon as they participate in realizing, well, actually that's good for me. So okay, I want that, but okay, but it comes with consequences, etc. But here's what I choose.

Would you ever let the child be the chairman of the meeting?

Great. Thank you for the question. Absolutely. When they're old enough, they can be the chairman and they can actually say— the chairman, the only role is make sure that everyone has has speaking time and that it's not all, you know, well, actually not just the parent. So, and so, so totally, yeah.

I mean, honestly, AI is always the chairman of my life.

She's shaking her head and saying yes, it is true. I see today with the setup, I, I did see that. Although there is still the, the power, it's something clear about. But so it's, it is absolutely about empowering, distributing power. However, It is not about being friends with kids. It is not about— well, unless obviously when they grow up and they are beyond you. But it is really about keeping still the respect and the realization that actually we know— so I went out of parenting for a few years because I used to have the struggle of tweens and teens. And I thought, who am I to give this advice to parents when I am struggling as much as anyone else? And not think I see the good benefits of every technique I use, but It is hard. And it is only recently, so I received the most incredible Father's Day card from my 15-year-old. I wept. I cried for, like, I just could not believe what she wrote. I did not even imagine. I was hoping that one day she would write it because for a couple of years she did not write cards to me. I just thought, wow, I am really failing. I failed as a dad. So I did not feel that I could give advice to others. And now I am like, And I went to cry in her arms, actually. And she cried with me. Oh, do you want me to read the—

I mean, if you don't mind. Really?

No, actually, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever— It's short. Yeah? Yeah. Okay, wow. So this is my father's Descartes. Hopefully I won't cry. It's not too long. I know you well enough to know that you will. Well, and actually, this is something I want to talk about in connection with the purpose. Okay. Happy Father's Day. I love you so much. You bring adventure, excitement, and joy in our lives. You allow us to fulfill our desires and guide us to conquer our dreams and fears. You are such an incredible father and person. You bring light and a party to any room you walk into. Oh, that's true. You bring love and wisdom to everyone you touch. We might fight from time to time, but who doesn't? You teach me so many things about myself. We were meant for each other, and I couldn't be more happy with the person that the world has paired me with. Happy Father's Day to the dad who's put so much effort in to be the best he can be. Happy Father's Day to the dad who is generous, full of energy, and full of life. I love you with all my heart, and we love you forever.

Do we have a Happy Child Day? What would you answer that with?

Sorry, I'm not in my mind anymore. Sorry, what was the question?

I mean, how would you answer this?

I just went and cried in her arms. And she just felt so— But that's a child who for several years thought that she was never good enough and that she would never— she was so demanding of herself and she would never be— she would never basically reach the level I wanted for her. So it took a lot of work to actually get to this. And now I'm— now I feel about, you know what, okay, yeah, I can talk about parenting again because that's what I hope that every parent will get one day.

Nadim, two comments. First of all, every parent wants this. That's the truth. And I think all of the struggles and all of the fights and all of the tension is because we feel that we're failing at this. And, and what you're really saying is you have a responsibility as a parent to re-parent yourself, to really go through your own challenges, work on them, become the parent that you wish you had, but become the person that you wish you would have been parented to become. I think that's really key. And I think the idea of, in an interesting way, I hear your work. I've of course gone through every single one of the books that you've given me when we first met. And they're so colorful and bright and kiddish and playful. But in reality, now that I hear you describe them, it feels like you cheat and you basically take the MBA textbooks and just turn them into coloring books, or you take the meditation books of the world and turn them. Which I believe is such an interesting way of looking at it. Treat your kids like humans, not like little skilled things, right, that need your protection and orders. Have meetings with them, teach them what meditation is, teach them what emotions are, teach them what compassion is, and you'll create humans basically as a result of that. I see that you have a million books, so I'm almost certain that any parent listening to you now will go and try to find your work.

Where should they start? Our website, happyconfident.com, is the best way to start for all things related to children. And then Amazon for the parents' book.

And if I were to close with happiness, if you had one tip to raise a happy child, if you had one tip to be a happy parent, because actually, before we go there, I believe that the best way to be the best parent you can be is to appreciate the incredible gift that you've been given. Not to think of them as a chore or hard work, but to realize that you've been blessed with something that so many would die to have and some actually don't. And if you become that happy parent, you would actually be more likely to raise happy children. So your one tip, if you had one tip to raise happy children, and if you had one tip to be a happy parent, Wow.

I usually go for 5 or 10, so that's a really— yeah, it's a rule of 3, at least. Um, I'll let you do 3. Okay. Because I think that for kids, one sense of agency, of control over their lives, so important. We all need control and sense of agency. So you want to allow the children to feel that, and they don't have enough in the system, basically. So change in the system, the easiest for parents is give limited choices to things that work for you. Do you want to do this or that? Do you want to leave in an hour and 5 minutes? Or questions. Just ask questions rather than repeat ourselves all day long, which is, oh, I told you to brush your teeth. Even to a teen, it's just like, oh, have you done what you're supposed to do before you go to bed? Then at least most teens will go, oh no, I forgot. And it's totally okay that they forget, but at least they'll rewire the brain, and in the end, they're going to do it naturally. And they don't shut you off. So sense of agency is super important for children. The feelings bit that we spoke a lot is so important, is actually allow the feelings to be the gateway to self-expression, to feeling safe, and to connection. So share sometimes what you feel, even if you feel angry or you feel happy. Share these things because they don't know. You're expecting— it's like you expect your kids to know you or to, but no, they don't. So the— this communication around feelings is so important. I think that's actually good for a top 2, really. That's, uh, you don't have to have a top 3. And I think that for, for parents and for equally for sure that that works for the 2, you know, it's, it's really feelings, connection through feelings, this communication. So it's all about communication at the end of the day, but, but the, the— and using feelings and the sense of agency and control really can change. Actually, just these 2 things will completely change the dynamic in a family. Then the third is clearly the family meeting, the empowerment, the really— the change, as Aya was saying, change the structure to make it one where everyone feels like a team. That is actually definitely the third, super important, feel like a team. Because ultimately, when we feel like a team, when we had a big bust, I mean, we just disagreed, we scream at each other. It happened actually, I was so ashamed of myself, just yesterday, in the— like, my daughter wants to to take my phone to put something, and I say, no, I'll do it. And she just still does it. And suddenly I just lose it. And that's the problem is it's a bit of PTSD, basically. I just go, I set a boundary, she didn't respect it, I explode. Typical, came from my dad, direct line. So thankfully, before it would, I mean, it would take us maybe a few hours. In just a matter of a minute or two, So she was expressing, you know, how could you scream at me like this for this or something like that? It was like, okay, you're right, I was complete fight or flight, but can you please take responsibility right now for the fact that actually I set a boundary, you didn't respect it? We both took responsibility and we reconnected. She was crying, she felt it, and in a minute she was done and she went to a birthday party. So we reconnected and I apologized, she apologized, and that's the beauty. So feel as a team.

We're working on this together. Yeah.

And actually, we take responsibility, we acknowledge, even so younger children can acknowledge from an early age, not say sorry to, you know, no, not say sorry. It's like, wow, what are you feeling first? What are you, so what's going on? Then you can finally, you get to a point where you can go, wow, that was not, yeah, sorry. And so if you're coming from a beautiful—

I find that quite empowering actually for the parent to be able to say I'm sorry, right? For the parent to be able to say I'm sorry actually acknowledges the child as a human. Finally someone respected, someone that deserves when you do something wrong to acknowledge that you did something wrong, because then that's the only way for them to learn to acknowledge when they do something wrong.

And it's not easy for Middle Eastern. Oh man. Because they're not—

that's not their group. What is also not easy for a Middle Eastern, and you still dodged the question because you still don't want me to dance better than you, is what is the best tip that you would give to a Middle Eastern man to shake that booty?

What would you do? You know what, actually, I love the fact that now Now I see men coming to me and wanting to dance and really feel they love the fear. So I'm seeing a change in this world. Yeah. So I go to Mykonos, for example, I start dancing and you have men— before it was mainly women coming around and now it's men who go, wow, this is so good, man. Oh, can I get you a drink? Can we jump in? Can we do the thing? How you feel? And I get stopped in the, like, the middle of me. Oh, you're the guy from who I saw. It's amazing.

I think what I'll do is part of this podcast, I will probably find one of our, our videos of you dancing.

No, no, I'm speaking in conversation. No, no, I want teachers to believe it. No, no, none of this. We're trying to change the world. Actually, funnily enough, sometimes with seriousness, you associate change the world with seriousness, etc. But actually, it is very much about play too, particularly with kids.

I love you so much, man. You're the best. I really, really loved having you around. You guys have, I hope, enjoyed this as much as I did. Nadim and I do that all the time. It's really weird. And I have to say today, just because we were stuck to talk about it for an hour and a bit, I understood so much more about his methodology and his work. And it's really, really incredible. If you're looking for ways for you to make your children happier, to make them complete and human, remember to look at the 10 powers and all of the skills and life skills and journaling and feeling your emotions and all of the work that we've discussed today, I hope you will actually reach out to happyconfident.com and hopefully raise happier children. And as I always say, it's even though Nadim and I will do this every time I'm in London, it's been such a joy to have him on the show. You give me the reason to invite him and have that conversation. So keep listening, keep spreading the message on SloMo. Yeah, if you haven't rated, I think we've reached 1,000 5-stars already, but maybe we need 5,000 more. So please keep doing it. And remember, we're now also on YouTube if you want to watch us. We'll have the video of Nadim dancing. No, we won't. But you'll still see how excited he is about what he's expressing. And if you want to go to Mo Gawdat Official on YouTube and subscribe and hit the notification button so that you get notified every time we release a new episode. While you may have noticed that Nadeem speaks a lot faster than I do, which was quite an interesting pace for this episode, I encourage you to speak slower than him. And regardless of how busy you are today, please do find a little bit of time to slow down. I love you all for listening, and I will see you next time.

Thank you, Mo. Thank you.