The Self-Driven Child: How We Got There (aka The Marvel Origin Story)

Today we are talking about the roots of "The Self Driven Child" with my co-author, Dr. William R. Stixrud. Discover how our understanding of autonomy and control transformed our approach to parenting and education. We explore the neuroscience behind stress and motivation, sharing our journey from initial insights to the profound impact our work has had globally. Join us as we recount our Marvel origin story and reveal the science and anecdotes that shaped our bestselling books.

Dr. William Stixrud, a clinical neuropsychologist, joins me, Ned Johnson, as we discuss the key principles of our collaboration. From handling stress to fostering intrinsic motivation, this episode covers it all. Whether you're a long-time listener or new to our podcast, this episode offers valuable insights into creating a supportive environment for children and young adults.

Episode Highlights:

[0:34] - Welcoming Dr. William Stixrud and introducing the topic of autonomy and control.

[1:34] - The global impact of "The Self Driven Child" and the importance of a sense of control.

[2:12] - Discussing stress and its effects on the brain from Dr. Stixrud's early research.

[5:39] - How stress and control relate to motivation and mental health.

[6:28] - Personal anecdotes and professional experiences on stress and motivation.

[8:45] - The concept of autonomy in parenting and education.

[13:17] - The bi-directional relationship between stress and brain function.

[17:07] - Practical advice on supporting autonomy in children.

[20:24] - The impact of test preparation on stress and performance.

[25:38] - Addressing the physiological aspects of stress and anxiety.

[30:02] - Reflections on the journey of writing "The Self Driven Child".

[31:03] - Concluding thoughts and a sneak peek into the next episode. 

If this episode has helped you, remember to rate, follow, and share the Self-Driven Child Podcast. Your support helps us reach more people and create more content that makes a difference. 

If you have a high school aged student and would like to talk about putting a tutoring or college plan together, reach out to Ned's company, PrepMatters at www.prepmatters.com

Chapters

• 7:08 The Self-Driven Child: Sock Puppet of Bill

Transcript

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 0:49

So is that subjective sense of autonomy or agency, and its objective, its sense of I can handle stuff. Because I have in the past, I know how to do this. And that's partly why we don't want to rush in and solve kids problems for them. Because every time a kid solve his own problem, somebody stressful comes up, and Kid figures out what to do, it changes the brain in a way that makes it more likely that next time something stressful happens, the kid will jump into action as opposed to panicking or freaking out or trying to avoid it. So it's that subjective dimension of autonomy and confidence, I can handle stuff.

Ned Johnson: 1:24

Welcome to the self driven Job Podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson, and co author with Dr. Williams pictured of the books, the self driven child the science and sense of giving your kids more control over their lives. And what do you say, how to talk with kids to build motivation, stress tolerance, and a happy home? So much of our lives? Is the stories that we tell ourselves and the stories they remember. And our books, the self driven child, what do you say are chock full of stories that we've experienced and heard from other people? This podcast episode is the Marvel origin story of the self driven child. I'm Nick Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. And of course, any great epic adventure wouldn't be any place without a wingman Dr. William, our sexual action, probably the wing men to him, Well, between the two of us, I guess you can say we're not having wings. They're a little bit batty. But they'll do you want to? Do you want to kick things off with kinda? How did this book come to life?

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 2:24

Well, I think that we decided to focus on a sense of control. And the most interesting thing, the main net, I think, worldwide suffering, childs sold something like Rite Aid somewhere north of 100,000 copies. And it's just says control is such an incredibly powerful idea that exists all over the world. We're doing programs in China and Pakistan and India and Ukraine and Palestine recently. Because people see, it's such a powerful idea. I mean, we, we've been talking about it for 10 years, and it never gets old. And

Ned Johnson: 2:57

that's true. There's always a need. And there are always people who are learning what they need, right?

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 3:02

Well, it's true. And we're working on our third book, when we talk about kind of our realization that really, for many kids, school is the major source of suffering in their life, and that every will be analyzed, and all had to do with that low sense of control. So we think it's a powerful idea. And my understanding, that is, the way we started to get this idea was that first thing for me was, I started reading about how stress affects the developing brain in 1998. And I had hair that, set it on how to set it on fire,

Ned Johnson: 3:35

and give her folks who are new to us, Bill and I both have a face for radio. Yeah.

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 3:41

Podcast. That's right. Yeah, but but in any case, I started studying what stresses the brain, the relationship between stress and anxiety disorders and depression, and other mental health conditions and learned that all the mental health problems that we struggle with and our children struggle with are stress related problems, they all have to do with a dysregulated stress response. And people were talking 20 years ago about depression, scarring, the brain making changes in the brain that can stick with it for a long time. So it just seemed to me that the stress related mental health problems were really, really big deal. And the second thing for me was in 2008, I heard a lecture by Sonia Lupien, neuroscientist in Montreal, who said, I defy you to think of things that make life stressful, that don't involve the acronym nuts, is that the idea? The stress makes you nuts, and it's novelty, unpredictability, perceived threat, physical or psychological threat, and a low sense of control. And I read more about the sense of control. And I learned, that's the most stressful thing you'd experience. Because you can be at a new situation where you can be unpredictable, a lot of people like new situations that are predictable, it's that it's not that stressful, but if a threatening situation. And then there's a million times I can handle this is that low sense of control? I don't know if you feel overwhelmed, we feel helpless or hopeless or just exhausted. That's the most stressful thing and experience. And so that was a big deal for me. Also, I interviewed one of the world's experts, actually the kind of the grandfather of the study of stress in the brain, Bruce McEwen. And he said, read about a sense of control read about Steve Meyer. CS Meyer, who's a neuro neuroscientist at the University of Colorado, who had for 40 years, studied a sense of control in rodents, and basically concluded if young rodents develop a sense of control that can handle stressful situations. It inoculates them from the negative physical called psychological effects of stress. And I think also, I would say that studying intrinsic motivation, and finding out that autonomy is the key to intrinsic motivation. That is, okay. Autonomy is another dimension of a sense of control. And I think what happens, we started lecturing about motivation about sleep and stress and all this stuff together. And then when we sit down to write the book, who talked about writing a book, we said, what should be the organizing principle, and you said, I think that everything we talk about that helps people is related to a sense of control. So that's my understanding of the kind of work you do that

Ned Johnson: 6:29

pretty much clicks with my Marvel origin story, too. And I will add that again, Bill and I became friends 1012 years ago. And as a test prep geek, I'm always interested in what helps kids perform better right because these you know, high stakes tests and they make people anxious and, and knowing that because stress brains don't think or work as well, or even motivate as well as less stress. I was always interested in what what are things the way the weather sleep or exercise or music or mantras that the things that can help kids be in a better headspace they can, they can perform better, and I saw a lot of your lectures, Belen and sort of picking up on a lot of your required wisdom. And there. There were several years there where I felt like I felt like your sock puppet because I said, my friend Bill says my friend Bill says my friend Bill says and you're like, Who is this bill? Guy? I'm

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 7:18

literally your sock puppet?

Ned Johnson: 7:21

Yeah, for people don't know off Oh, put this in the show notes. Our next episode, by the way, we're gonna walk through the overview of our second book, what'd he say? But when we record him that there's something you guys can look forward to, when we were recording that it was summer 21. COVID is of course still raging and vaccines were not yet available for little guys for for children and Bill's grandchildren were the age where they can be vaccinated. And so we had here and I'm planning to go back and forth. He does a chapter I do chapter back and forth. And his daughter and family prevailed. So let's just keep the children safe. So I got to do that. But I actually need a little bill. And so my delightful daughter, who is wonderful and also very artistic is it? Could you make me? Could you I don't have with me. I will bring this next time. So could you could you make a bill structured sock puppet? So yes, yes. Yes, folks, there is indeed a bill stickered sock puppet. And if I dare say it is the spitting image you pint sized mind you but spitting image of you, she did a great job with it. So

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 8:16

I have to agree.

Ned Johnson: 8:20

So one of the things so a lot of folks have heard us talk, they've listened to this podcast, they've read the book and the Marvel origin story of of young, it's always kind of fun to kind of know the backstory of how we came together. And so Bill is a clinical neuropsychologist, typically working with kids where, you know, things are hard learning is hard. And attention is hard. Emotion is hard. You know, self regulation is hard. And I tend to work more with kids who were learning was not as hard but But oftentimes, kind of obsessively driven and so on paper looked really successful, but often weren't without their own struggles, often kind of emotional, and mental health as well. And so coming together has been been quite a fun adventure. And one of the things but I'd love for you to talk about, you know, we wrote this book and talked a lot about the principles and advice that is in it. But there was one kind of realization that that only well, you get to get the credit for this kind of dawned on you kind of a year plus into this that I think you now make more clearly in our lectures, and ideally in this podcast than we did when we first wrote the self tripping child. And it's kind of the idea if I remember if I have this right, you know, the idea of thinking about a sense of control, really in two or two and a half domains that kind of intersect and reinforce one another. Can Can you start to talk us through that?

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 9:35

Yeah, yeah, what happened for me is we talked because we talk about stress, and we talk about, we have a chapter in our first two books about what we call being a non anxious presence. We talk about meditation. And I knew that one of the earliest studies on Transcendental Meditation, which we both practice, found an increased sense of control. And they're also reading about sleep and a sense of control. Obviously, when you're well rested, life feels more manageable, that you're less likely to feel overwhelmed or likely to get really frustrated, like likely to have your emotions out of control. And so

Ned Johnson: 10:11

I need to interject there. You know, think of this as a superhero Marvel podcast. Sleep deprivation is hands down my kryptonite, I had a travel adventure a couple days ago that involves a much disruption and very little sleep. And as I share perhaps too readily, for me at least one night of really, really bad sleep and I go from what I think is mostly sort of shiny, happy kind of a be net to not just cranky but sort of borderline homicidal so yeah, you're what you shared with me about sleep certainly resonates with the way I observed my brain work. Yeah,

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 10:48

it Oh, there's idea that it'll look better in the morning, that look more manageable, you know, you'll be able to compute more data and put things in perspective and like that. So in any case, as we lecture to, you know, night, somebody's time, sometimes night after night about the self-driven child, and about the non anxious presence, and the radical downtime that we talked about in self-driven child, and also about the autonomy, I realized that we can think about this, as you said, two dimensions. One is the subjective dimension. And the other is physiological. And the subjective, the way that we're thinking about it now, is that there's two components to the subjective dimension. And one is that that sense of autonomy, or this is my life, I'm not helpless, I'm not hopeless, I'm not a pawn of the universe. And secondly, is the confidence that I can handle stressful situations. And the way you develop that competence is by handling stressful situations. And the research by Steve Mayer that we talked about before, the paradigm is these rats get shocked. And there's a wheel in the cage, if they turn the wheel, they discover that the shock stops, and rats and have that experience of getting shot. It's stressful, it's not painful, but it's it's annoying, and they want it to stop, it's stressful, they turn the wheel, and the shock stops. And when they're turning the wheel, the stress circuits in their brain get dampened down, because the prefrontal cortex activates, and it dampens down the stress response. And so what happens is that these rats get conditioned. Basically, when something stressful happens, they turn that wheel, and eventually, you can disconnect the wheel doesn't even work anymore. And still, their stress hormones are very level very low, because they have a sense of control. And they're just coping. So it's that subjective sense of autonomy or agency. And it's objective, that sense of I can handle stuff, because I have in the past, I know how to do this. And that's partly why we don't want to rush in and solve kids problems for them. Because every time a kid solve his own problem, somebody's travel comes up, and Kid figures out what to do figures out what to do, it changes the brain in a way that makes it more likely next time, certainly, something stressful happens, the kid will jump into action as opposed to panicking or kind of freaking out or trying to avoid it. So it's that subjective dimension of autonomy, and confidence, I can handle stop it. Second is the physiological piece that shows up in sleep, it shows up in in meditation, it shows up in exercise. As you know, I was very surprised to see during the pandemic, the study on exercise of people in during the pandemic, that that concluded that they're interviewed the people that predictably, people who exercised handle the stress of had more positive mood during the pandemic than people who didn't. And they interviewed the people. And it was all about SS control. And the scientific articles that got written about it was called, it's all about control. So we can help kids really gives us three ways and give schools three ways to help kids. And it gives kids three ways to help themselves, promote autonomy, support them in solving their own problems, and encouraging enough rest and movement activity play. Things that allow the prefrontal cortex to regulate the amygdala.

Ned Johnson: 14:07

Things that are good for the brain are good for the sense of control. Yeah. And one thing that is coming to mind for me is really the bi directional on this, of that, because if you go back to Mayer and the rats, that this, this subjective sense of it, you know, I can spin this wheel, okay, making things better, this is still hard, but I'm getting through this. And then damage zone, the stress response, then wires, that brain and then as you know that, they can then disconnect the wheel. And now that the experience has wired the brain, he can go back in the same experience when the wheel is turned off. And the brain is now shaping the way he experiences it. Right? So goes both directions, and what I can continue with their superhero motif here, which I'm a beat right into the ground, but what the heck I'm having fun, is the most clever version of that experiment when they have rad a who spins the wheel and he saves himself and he feels great, right? He has a wheel that spins and nothing happens ends up in this basket case, in this clever wrinkle mayor and his colleagues yoked to the two rats, meaning that when rat a spun the wheel, he stopped the shock for himself and for the other rat rat beans, and I'm sure rat D was like your time so grateful. Thank you so much and getting saved, but they had the exact amount of being shocked. The difference was that they had a sense of control and B did not. So a was the you know the epic hero and the adventurer, and B is the the sort of damsel in distress. And rat B despite having no more adverse experience than did rat a remains a basket case because he's always looking to the sky or whatever to his side for someone to save him and this is a point that we make repeatedly that the hard part for us as parents as loving adults. says brothers and sisters, as teachers, as educators that when we see kids struggling, we want to jump in and help, right. And I have a dear friend who is a master educator in upstate New York, and he said, Please don't deprive children of the opportunity to struggle and even fail. Because when we, you know, we think that A's protect kids from bad things. And obviously, they'd rather get an A than A, B, but to your point, and a when they feel that someone else has done it for them. That is because of someone else's effort, rather than their own. They've got these beautiful grades and trophies on the shelf. But inside they have the sense that someone else is responsible for my success, someone else is responsible for keeping me safe. And it looks shiny and happy on the outside and inside. It's not it's not the it's not the brain state that we want for children. Yeah,

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 16:38

that's a really good point, is it for me, this is shows up everywhere it is every day, just yesterday, I work with parents of a failure to launch young adult, the parents are working to try to motivate the kid. But this kid has a lot of problems. He says autism, it's learning problems. And all along, the emphasis has been on supporting him so that he's successful. With the idea of what we say in our book, it's more important that kids have a sense of who's responsible for what, then they do that they're always successful. Because so many kids I see, they're supported a lot in school, and they get through high school, okay. But then they really struggle to make it because they don't work very hard. They're still resisting other people's attempts to help them like that. And so and also, I was talking to my, my 39 year old boss, who I sold my practice you guys, you know, I sold my practice 2018. And one of the people who bought it the majority owner now, just turn 39. And I just love her. She's fantastic. She's brilliant. And I was talking to her yesterday. And she said, I just I just apply the sense of control. In my management work either as managing a staff of 90 neuropsychologist and other people, I'm always thinking about how do I increase their sense of control, you

Ned Johnson: 17:57

know, and if I may jump in, I have this student I think I've told you about, I'll give you the update on it. So lovely, lovely kid. Learning is hard for him. He's very, very ADHD, he has a parent and his older sibling who both went to the same Ivy League school, and he would desperately love to go there. And that's, I don't think the cards are in his favor there. He doesn't have the grades to support it, so on and so forth. But he still wants what he wants. And I just I mean, I love the kid to pieces, and his mom is understandably concerned and sometimes frustrated, because occasionally adolescent ADHD, boys do things that are a little bit hair raising. And she would always respond to refer to him as, thank you for working with my stubborn child. And, you know, I see her point, it's not wrong, I see it a little bit differently. And somewhere along the line, she said, we have set a set him up with so many tutors, and you're the only adult you're the only teacher he respects. And I said well, I'm it's very kind, I think thank you for sharing that, from my perspective, is probably just because I make him feel respected. Because like one, I don't have characteristics, what what else? What else would I do? And so he started out with test scores that were like 40th percentile and state, you know, he's trying to get into combos, that's not quite, you know, Ivy League level yet. He takes the test, he gets close to 85th percentile. We're making some progress here, right. And from my perspective, no instant ADHD brain back to your point about motivation. It's, you know, which which kid shows up, one who's like, this is stupid, I hate the people are making me do this, or one that wants to do this. And so he wanted to take this test, and it was just the test in June, I was thinking I'd really rather do this later, because we got tied up in schoolwork. And we basically did almost no practice of the of the content for this for the standardized test. But he really wanted to go out and like, well, obviously, the you know, it's your call, as we say, in the book, and just the score came back, and he was 93rd percentile on the second and I'm sort of like, I'm like, we didn't do anything. We basically, we spent an hour of content in the last six weeks since each of the tests before but the difference was the brain state that he showed up with and when he when we you know, like any of us, when we want things more, and we have more brain activation and those executive functions come back alive, he pays better attention, the inhibition is better the problem solving is better though cognitive emotional flexibility is better and on and on it goes and so this is kind of smelt steaks, you know, example of, you know, a silly test to to get into college. But you know, but I think it's really the same thing that you're talking about with, with this, this family you're working with and brains work better, people are more motivated, and we simply get better outcomes. When as parents as educators, we do everything we can to support young people and feeling that hey, this is your life. I know this matters to you. I'm confident you're working hard because you know Again, your life.

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 20:52

Yeah, that's why I've always respected your work so much the way you work with people, you know, the content, you know, is test strategies brilliantly, where you're just so good about about understanding and appreciating and respecting kids for who they are, and making them feel understood and respected. And also helping them to keep up the importance of standardized testing and perspective.

Ned Johnson: 21:15

Oh, can I tell you one more story? This is delightful. Yeah, there's a local psychologist who is new to me who reached out to me, he was telling about a kid he's working with, and you can go into junior and high school, incredibly anxious, incredible test anxiety. And so we talked on the phone to the family came over, I suppose, was supposed to be an hour conversation, we're here for like two hours, I had to like read the kitchen and feed this poor child snacks. Just the loveliest kid really has a good head for math, but was just getting killed on her exams. And she would demonstrate mastery at home and then fall apart on the test at school. And so we're trying to try to talk through some things that might be helpful. And then, at one point, I said to her, I said, Listen, you know, is asking about kind of what the stress is. And, you know, I've got to get A's and did it. And I said, Do you want to go to college? And she said, I do. And I just did your parents? And are these characters? Are they do they want you to go to college? I think so. Are they going to pay for it? Yeah. Then Then you're gonna go to college. So I said, if you want to go to college, and you have the support, that means that you're gonna go to college, I can't say what college, right, it may not be Harvard, but if you want to go to college, you're gonna go college. And respectfully, as much as you want A's. I care a whole lot more long term about your long term brain than your short term grade. I mean, come on.

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 22:33

Yeah, that's fantastic. And it was just reading, we just turned in, kind of revised manuscript for a third book. And in it, we mentioned that I was just talking to somebody yesterday, who was who I mentioned the book, because somebody I know, I've known a long time. And I never tested her kids. But I met her. She she worked for me for a while. And I met her kids. And she sent me an email and thanked me for encouraging her to support her kids in finding their own way. And not having a plan for their life, not thinking that she necessarily knew better what was right for them than they did. And she said, My son is 35 years old. And he's literally the happiest person I know. She said, he's a rock and roll musician. And he has he does these service jobs to make enough money. And he's engaged to a wonderful woman. And she says, It's not the life I would have chosen for him. It's not it's not an easy life. But he's happy he is so fulfilled. And she said, I was talking to his fiancee the other day. And she said, He's the most confident person I know. And she says, because he trusts his own decisions. And the mom said, that's because I've been encouraging to make his own decisions and supporting him in expressing confidence in his ability to make his own decisions, since he was 15 years old. Wow. You know, and so I just think that we talk in both, you know, all of our books about how do we do this? How do we support that sense of control? And I continue to feel, you know, after 10 years of talking about that there, I don't know if there's anything more important in terms of how big of an impact that has, if you focus on how do we support autonomy? How do we help kids support them in their problem solving, and not try to protect them from any kind of danger or failures, you're saying, then how do we help them maintain a physiological state in which the prefrontal cortex regulates the brain and the rest of the stress response system? And I'd mentioned that I was just talking to a kid yesterday, I explained to him it was always had an ease as an anxiety. So he's always been anxious. Yeah. And I say what that's about is the part of your brain that senses and reacts to threat. The amygdala is just more sensitive, like a smoke detector, like but as a threat detector, you could you could be an engineer. And you could you could program a smoke alarm to be so sensitive that you could light a match in the basement, it would go off, or he could program to be so insensitive, that the whole room would have to be filled with smoke and fire. In order to go up. I said, You got to kind of imagine the basement and Maitland and so what do you do? Well, we work on increasing that sense of control. COVID are often the physiological peace, the sleep, the meditation, the exercise, help to calm down that stress response and allow the prefrontal cortex to regulate it. And when the prefrontal cortex regulates, it can think clearly. It puts things into perspective. It can integrate the past in the future, it can prioritize it can hold a lot of information in working memory that all that stuff. Yeah, I think it helps kids to understand even even kids who are who get pissed easily misled. You know, we get pissed so easily, because you're a really sensitive person. Because a lot of kids who get angry usually they think that there's something there a bad seed or something, you know, it just helped me understand. It's just because you're so sensitive, that part of your brain that sets is reacts to threat and starts your stress response. Yeah, it's more sensitive, and the stress response is flight, which is anxiety and avoidance. Yeah. And fight, which is getting angry. Yeah. And resisting, you're going after people, you know, it's I do think that it's over the years, it's really been helpful to explain it to people that way. This is just sensitivity and there's things you can do to make your stress response less reactive. The

Ned Johnson: 26:28

same chart I was telling you about. I my friend Bill says, so basically, tell that same thing in a talk about well, the smoke detector in the, in the intensive care unit, you know, if a mouse goes off, you want your smoke detector to go off, because otherwise you're gonna blow up your elderly grandparents there. But the smoke detector in a commercial kitchen, you know, forget, you know, food being on fire, because it's all fun beige, you want like a person to be on fire before other otherwise, you know, we have a lot of soggy entrees. I asked her and I see this with a lot of kids. I love your thought on this bill. I asked her I said Are you pretty socially adept? I mean, do you can you walk into a room and figure out you know, she likes him? He doesn't really like, you know, like her lawyer back, you know, this person's having a bad day? Are you pretty good at picking up? And she's Yeah, I think I am. I said, That doesn't surprise me, I noticed that about you. I said, one way to think about this is that the same sensitivity that makes you just really aware of kind of everything that's going on around you, is the same thing that makes you really vulnerable to anxiety. So that if you pick up easily on when people are angry or frustrated or stress near you, there's a decent chance that your brain has start started to think that they're angry or frustrated or stressed about you. And so if you were just oblivious, if you're if you're oblivious to what was going on around you, it might affect you last?

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 27:47

Well, you know, it's a really interesting point. And a related point is a lot of kids that I see who are artists or artistic. You know, we used to think that that autistic people lacked empathy, which is completely and utterly wrong. And many of the kids, there's something wrong with mom, they instantly know it. Yeah. And because the parts of their brain that see mom's little upset that middle activates or something threatening here, there's something wrong here, make them feel a little stressed as a mom, what's wrong, they have trouble interpreting whether the mom's mad or anxious, or guilty or whatever. But they sense the emotion because they're sensitive.

Ned Johnson: 28:26

And I said to that child, as I've said to a lot, I said, your reactions, you know, of stress, they're completely normal. Yeah, I mean, I assume you have a human brain, right? They're completely normal. It's just that probably for you, they're just more intense than they are for someone who's got, you know, a different smoke detector in their head, it's got it was wired a little bit differently. And exactly the point that you made bill, that my interest is over time, to help you be less anxious, you know, you're always going to be a sensitive, good Joe is going to read the room well, but to have you be less vulnerable to, you know, the kind of hard feelings or hard stuff that's out there in the world. And the good news is that anxiety is is the most treatable mental health challenge and mental health disorder that people can have. And so there's a ton of stuff that we can do. Because just as you've described, Bill, there's a ton of things that we can do to increase children's perceived sense of control, and the brain state that supports that.

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 29:21

I was telling parents yesterday that when I was 23, I flunked out of graduate school, because it's so anxious. Three people told me I was the most nervous person they've ever met in their life, and effort and then meditating. I started meditating right away that really helped him but after I've been meditating for 25 years, and sometime around 19 or 20 years ago, maybe I went down to the nurse, University of Tennessee, and it did a three day tutorial program in brainwave biofeedback. And the first the first day, the professors showed me do the assessment program. Do you put some EEG leads on a person's head to pick up their brainwaves? said, Bill, I'll demonstrate it on you. So the first thing that people do is close your eyes. So Bill, go ahead and close your eyes. And I close my eyes. And after about three or four seconds, Jesus Christ, I said what he said the second you close your eyes, this big, beautiful burst of alpha, these very peaceful brainwaves. That's the one that meditated for 25 years and said, obviously, and I'm inside thinking, this is pretty cool. Because Because 25 years ago, three people told me I was the most nervous person I gotta be. And so I'm simply that there's a lot of things we can do, especially kids get older, they can exercise more, they can really focus on sleep, they can learn to meditate, they can do yoga, they can get massage, there's so many things that if kids want to and young adults want to it's this period of this is at and probably maybe more imperative for young adults now who are twice as miserable as as teenagers. So

Ned Johnson: 30:52

all right. Forget the radioactive spiders people. There's the Marvel origins. Yeah, yeah. So Bill, I'll wrap this one up with I was I was reflecting on a podcast conversation that you and I joined the guy who did this podcast for kids and really around the idea of being a superhero and developing superpowers. Balaji ovo je de it's a lot of letters. It's hard for me to pronounce. Really, really, I mean, just boy talking about exuberant guy he was, but at the end of it, and if you remember this, he asked us who our personal favorite superhero is. Do you remember? Do you remember what you said?

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 31:26

I think I said Batman.

Ned Johnson: 31:28

And why Batman? Let's watch this because this I love this. Yeah, there's

Dr. William R. Stixrud: 31:31

nothing superhuman about it. I love spider man too. But I think my my personal favorite is Batman. Because he had experiences that were very, very stressful, very painful, a lot of loss. And he grew from it made me strong and courageous. And there was nothing superhuman about

Ned Johnson: 31:53

Yeah, and then perhaps because I'm Bill's wing man. I said the same thing. And I think it's I forget which Batman movie is I think it's Batman Begins but I'm not sure. And there's a scene in the movie where a young Bruce Wayne is walking along. And he falls in a hole in the ground that proves to be the entrance of his discovery of what becomes the Batcave. And he breaks his leg and the Alpha his butler comes in, finds him and you know, takes him in patches him up as it were. And as you carrion and younger is when he says Do you know why we fall down, sir? And he says, so we can learn to pick ourselves back up. Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful, which I love. All right, folks, for for people who enjoy the self driven child book. Hopefully this is a little bit of a peek behind the curtain, the Marvel origin story worth an hour, Belinda got together and started this book. In our next we're gonna we're gonna dive into talking about what he's say our second book, which many of you may know or may not know, also super fun, what'd he say? How to talk with kids to build motivation, stress tolerance, and a happy home. I'm Nick Johnson, and this is the self driven Job Podcast, the bell. Hey, folks, Ned here. Over the past 25 years, I've talked to countless parents of high school aged students who care deeply about their kids education and how they deal with stress and the pressure to succeed. He can help parents to work with a team they trust won't just pile on more pressure to achieve better scores and grades. That's why I founded prep matters in 1997 to create a different kind of experience for test preparation and academic tutoring. This podcast and my books with my friend Bill structured reflect our company philosophy and approach to helping students. If you have a high school aged student and would like to talk about putting a plan together, please get in touch with us, visit our website at prep matters.com. Or while your kids may only text you might want to actually talk with a person. If so, you can reach us at 301-951-0350