Wise Effort with Diana Hill

We all want our kids to thrive—not just survive the pressure of school, sports, and life. But let’s be honest, it’s not easy. Too often we fall back into the same old habits, even when we know better. That’s why I was so excited to sit down with two incredible people: my friend and co-author, Dr. Bill Stixrud, and psychologist Dr. Diana Hill. Diana’s new book Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters Most shows us that our kids—and we parents too—don’t have to choose between doing well and being well.

In this conversation, we dig into what it means to use our energy wisely, how to recognize and nurture “genius energy” in ourselves and our children, and why psychological flexibility might just be the most important skill we can teach and model. If you’ve ever felt like your family is running full speed but not sure you’re heading in the right direction, this episode will speak to you.

Episode Highlights:

 [0:00] – Kicking things off: why Bill and I created The Self-Driven Child Workbook
[1:08] – Diana’s story of strawberries, watercolor, and the uniqueness of every child
[2:53] – Introducing my guests: Dr. Bill Stixrud and Dr. Diana Hill
[4:23] – Diana explains ACT and Buddhist principles as foundations for Wise Effort
[6:27] – What “genius energy” really means and why it matters for kids and parents
[9:01] – Helping kids see their strengths beyond grades and sports
[10:10] – Practicing “watering flowers”: appreciating kids for who they are
[13:51] – Bill shares how affirming kids’ strengths changes lives
[16:08] – The three-part framework of Wise Effort: curiosity, openness, and focus
[19:21] – Why psychological flexibility is essential for kids and parents
[22:22] – Pain and values: two sides of the same coin
[24:51] – How values-driven goals outperform standard “SMART” goals
[27:51] – Genius + values = the sweet spot of wise effort
[30:17] – Family chores as a practice of genius and values in action
[32:42] – Making the most of limited time with our kids—before the runway ends
[33:21] – How meaningful activities actually expand our sense of time
[35:11] – A moving story of Daniel, a father with cancer, learning to invest in presence
[37:37] – Final reflections: helping parents and kids feel better and do better

Links & Resources:

https://drdianahill.com/ Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters Most by Dr. Diana Hill

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

Transcript

Ned Johnson: 0:50

Hey, folks, Ned here, like me, you want your kids, your students, honestly, all the young people you know, to thrive, and you know how much you can help. But like me, you probably also recognize that you fall short more than you like to, in part, because we tend to refer to old ways. We hear a great suggestion or learn a new approach, but to easily fall back into the same darn things that didn't work before, it isn't easy, which is why I'm really excited to share with you that Bill and I have a new book out this spring, the seven principles for raising a self driven child, a workbook. Our goal is to make it easier to put into practice more of the advice from our first two books, the self driven child and what do you say? Full of reflections and exercises to do yourself, with your partner and with your children, we want to help make the self driven child way your way, so that you can, more often than not, be as effective as you want to be with your kids in ways that we know you want to be if you get a chance, order a copy bill, and I and your kids would be grateful.

Diana Hill: 1:58

My grandma was a great painter, watercolor artist, and she taught me how to paint early on, and I remember her taking me to the garden, and we picked strawberries, and then we brought the strawberries in, and then she filled her palette with, like, cardamon red, and this little, you know, yellow, and, like, all these different colors. And then she mixed them all together, and she said, for this strawberry, I think it's this color, right? Your kid is like that strawberry. It's unique. And there's no one color in any palette that is going to be your kid, and your job is to appreciate the strawberry. We can do that with how we approach our children and not putting them in boxes.

Ned Johnson: 2:39

Welcome to the self driven child podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William sticks, 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 as summer starts to wind down, is the start of school getting you wound up? Is your mind occupied not with vacation reveries, but rather lists of all the things you need to do already wondering how you and your kids will get it all done. You're not alone, and when you find yourself crazy busy feeling like you are both doing too much and never enough, it's easy to squander your time, attention, and most of all energy, on things that simply aren't consistent with your highest values. There is a way out. Listen to find out. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self Tiffin child podcast. My guests today are Dr William stick shirt, my partner inscribe and someone wisely committed to spending as much of his life not wearing closed toed shoes as possible. And Dr Diana hill a source of great insights on how to use our energy wisely. She's a licensed clinical psychologist, international trainer and sought after speaker and leadership coach on wise effort and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, AC T. She's also someone who, like many of us, spent years of her life running full speed to achieve but then experienced a crash and burn that even the most talented and driven people often do. Her new book offers this you and your kids don't have to choose between doing well and being well. Wise effort how to focus your genius energy on what matters most. Hi Diana, Hi Bill. Hi Dad. Hi. Good to be here, sweet Bill and I are such huge fans of your work and grateful to you for having us twice on your previous podcast and once on your new podcast wise effort. So thanks for joining us and let us turn the tables on you a little bit well,

Diana Hill: 4:48

I am such a big fan of your work, mainly because your work is paying off. Now with my 12 year old and 15 year old sons, and I just left to come do this podcast, my 12 year old was making crepes in the kitchen, and I was like, See ya, can you have the kitchen clean when I get back? And so that's a self driven child, right? Wakes up, starts making crates.

Unknown: 5:12

Perfect illustration.

Ned Johnson: 5:13

Yeah, wow, that's delightful. In reading your book wise effort, it's clear that your work and your way of thinking and the advice to give to people is steeped in both A, C, T and Buddhist principles, just to kind of set the framework for folks who don't know those. Can you say a few words about how each of those work and what experiences kind of brought you to writing this book.

Diana Hill: 5:34

Well, both act and Buddhist principles are mouthfuls, right? There's a lot to both of them. So I don't want to, you know, I don't want to oversimplify, but act is an approach that was developed over 40 years ago. There's been 1000s of randomized, controlled trials. It's a It's. Built on cognitive behavioral therapy, but it integrates a little bit more of values based work and a little bit more of acceptance based interventions. And it's not a protocol. It's not like you go through steps one through 10. It's more an approach to a way of being, and that way of being is something called psychologically flexible. And psychological flexibility turns out to be probably one of the most important skills that you can have as a parent and as a human. If you are more psychologically flexible, you're less likely to have stress spill out over onto your kids. You're more likely to have connected and enjoyable relationships with your kids, and then your own mental health is likely to be better off. So psychological flexibility is where it's at, and that's the focus of Act. And then Buddhism, you know, I mean 1000s of years of contemplative practice, it's still around and seems to be also the secret sauce in a lot of our psychological interventions. These days. We've all heard of mindfulness, but the approach that I bring into wise effort is more than just mindfulness. It's an approach of identifying our true nature, our wisest self, which is an interconnected self, not just me. It's an approach to noticing your thoughts without getting entangled in your thoughts, how to be fully present and how to really live from your heart and not just from your head. So that's some of the contemplative, compassionate practices that I bring into the work as well.

Bill Stixrud: 7:17

Diana, one of your most important ideas in this book is the idea of genius energy. Tell us about that? Well, some people

Diana Hill: 7:25

recoil at the word genius. They say things like, Oh, I'm not a genius. What are you talking about, and I'm not talking about stamper Binet scores, or how somebody is an Einstein, but rather the talent, strengths, emotional intelligence, what puts you in flow, what makes you you that if you direct it in a wise way, sort of like the way you and Ned have done it, can really have a beautiful impact on the world. So I think the listeners could, if they're big fans of yours, I'm sure they are, if they're listening to this, they could say, oh, I know what Bill is a genius at, and I know what Ned is a genius at, and it's not the same thing, small overlap,

Unknown: 8:08

small overlap.

Diana Hill: 8:11

But a lot of difference, right? Like, what? What's your Genesis, qua, what's your mojo? What makes you tick? What do you light up around? And the listeners could also think about their kids. Maybe they have two kids or three or one kid, but they could say, oh, yeah, you know my kid that's making crepes right now. He is a problem solver. He's a creator. He likes to make things with his hands. He's always been that way. He's a genius in the kitchen. And when we channel that, when we honor that, when we direct that with values and support it, then beautiful things will blossom from it, like your work, right? What can happen with genius energy, with our kids or with ourselves, is that it can go underground. We can hide it. We can say, Oh, this part of me, it's kind of me. My genius energy is emotional sensitivity. So for years, it was like, I need to hide this part of me. I need to shove it down. I need to put it away. I'm too sensitive with something that I heard a lot as a kid. Guess what? If you're emotionally sensitive, it really makes you an awesome therapist. It's a great genius to have as a therapist, right? Probably wouldn't have been my great thing for me, if I turned into an aer doctor, I would be like, you know, crying on every table of every person that was struggling. So the the nature of genius energy is, is that it's not good or bad, it's just what makes you you. Often it develops from temperament, but it also can develop from life's hardships, and then our work, I think, as parents, is to spot it in our kids, help them see it in themselves, and then really nurture it and help them channel it like create really rich soil for it to grow into whatever it's going to grow into. Yeah, I'd

Ned Johnson: 9:51

love for you to talk a little bit more about that, because you have some really terrific exercises in the book about how we as adults can identify and pay attention to and honor our talents, character traits, all the things that are personal geniuses. But my observation is that, particularly for kids in high achieving spaces, the idea of what matters, like what is true genius is really narrow. So it's your grades, your math, your English, maybe soccer and a few sports, right? But really, really narrow sense of kind of what, what, what matters. And that a lot of kids, to your point about emotional sensitivity, there are a lot of things that kids that are that are skills or traits or geniuses, that one, they may not think matter because they don't show up on a test, and two, that they may poo poo because this, well, that's not that big a deal. It's easy for everyone. With that said, are how. What are some of the ways that parents can help young people, their children, pay attention, take note of their skills, and have them not dismiss them or say, well, that's no big deal, Mom,

Diana Hill: 11:00

I take my kids on retreat. This year, we went to Deer Park monastery down in San Diego, and one of the practices that we do on retreat is a practice of beginning anew. And in the practice of beginning anew, the children and their parents, teens and our and their parents in this setting, because we're teenagers now, sit in a circle, and we start with turning to our family in front of the everyone in the circle. So maybe there's 12 families in there, and we start with something called watering flowers. And watering flowers is a practice that Tai Thich Nhat Hanh taught, and he taught at first to the monastics to do to each other, and now he's teaching us to do it as families. The way that you water flowers is you express appreciations for who the person is, not what they do. But what kind of flower are they? You know, I have a garden, I have sunflowers, and I have Zinnias, and then I have a few little tiny blue flowers that are just little volunteers. And what do I appreciate about this little blue flower? How does it impact me? How does it impact our family? What do I see that's different about it? And when you water a flower, especially one that's growing, guess what happens? It grows stronger, it opens up. It perks up, right? It's able to receive the next part of beginning anew, which is actually we start to talk about, here are some things that I'm hurting around, you know, and, and so if we want to have kids that are resilient and strong and, you know, all the things How are gritty and whatever we we need to do it more with our partners. We need to do it more with each other. I watered your flowers last time we met, I was like, let me tell you about you. Bill all the things that I appreciate about you, and I saw you perk up. You remembered those things because sometimes it's hard to see our geniuses in ourselves. We don't see it, we don't feel it. So day to day, we water our children's flowers, and we water the things that are truly, authentically, that we see about them, not that society tells us we should be, you know, rewarding. It's just, you know, I walk in, my kid's making crepes, and he's wearing this little bathrobe, and he's just cheery as can be. And I say, I just love this about you. You wake up in the morning and you're just like, pulling out the eggs. You're whipping them up. There's something about you that is so I could use the word self driven. And when you reward something like that, you appreciate it, strengthens it, and it's more likely to happen again. So we can do that on a day to day basis, and then we can also think about our genius and our kids is also developing as interests are developing. I love the work of Cal Newport, and he has a great book How to be a high school superstar that I read with my eighth grader before he was starting high school. And in it, he talked about having enough space to just explore interests. You know, a lot of our kids are on these super highways where we've taken them off the back roads, and we put them on a highway to college or a highway to this sport, or if you haven't played baseball by your by the time you're 12, you're out kid, no chance for you don't even get on that field, it'll be an embarrassment, because all these kids have been playing since they were six, right? What is going on there? What if the kid, he had no idea, or she had no idea, that she liked baseball, because she never got a chance, right? So another aspect of exploring genius with your kids is really that it's still developing. Their interests are developing just like you keep on putting lots of variety of foods on their plate and keep on trying until you know, maybe they figure out what's what are their interests. Continue to do that for your kids, continue to explore, continue to be open, and don't channel them too soon into one super highway, because, um, don't maybe miss out on something that they didn't know would put them in a space of flow.

Bill Stixrud: 14:41

That's such great advice. Every, every kid that I test is neuropsychologist, every, every kid who's over 10 or 11, I write out my own hand all the things they could do better than most people, and all the nice qualities that I observed with their parents. Told me about other teachers, I write it out, and the last kid I saw, I've written out for him a year ago. And the parents came in, they said, we have it framed in our house. And I just think that letting kids know that I appreciate this in you. And because so many kids that I see that figure, well, if I'm good at it, it must be easy. There must be everybody must be good at or there's somebody better in me that I'm there's, there's a class that's above me. I must not be good at this. And it's helping people really understand what they can bring to this world, what they have to offer this world. I just love this idea of genius energy, that this broader than just IQ, right?

Diana Hill: 15:32

My grandma was a great painter, watercolor artist, and she taught me how to paint early on, and I remember her taking me to the garden, and we picked strawberries, and then we brought the strawberries in, and then she filled her palette with, like, cardamon red and this little, you know, yellow, and like all these different colors. Dollars. And then she mixed them all together, and she said, for this strawberry, I think it's this color, right? So with kids, we want to put them in these boxes. And I even hesitant. You know, when I talk about genius energy and wise effort, I talk about these five primary ways you can start to explore it. What are your interests? You can take a test. What are your character strengths. You can go on via.org and figure out what your character strengths are. What is your emotional intelligence? What is this kid's personality? More extroverted, more introverted, more ambiverted. You know, there's all these boxes, like colors of the palette, but your kid is like that strawberry. It's unique, and there's no one color in any palette that is going to be your kid, and your job is to appreciate the strawberry like see it, appreciate it, point it out. And that is what is going to feel so good to them. And also gives them freedom to have the ultimate goal, which is to be themselves, to be one life. I just want to be myself. Can I just be me and and, and, you know, this is the kind of strawberry I am. So we can do that with how we approach our children and not putting them in boxes.

Ned Johnson: 16:58

Wise effort is lay down really kind of three big pieces of, kind of the three parts to foster our genius energy. Can you walk us through that?

Diana Hill: 17:06

Kind of, yeah, well, the first part is getting curious. So we know that curiosity is actually very rewarding, and the type of curiosity that we're talking about is questions that lead to more questions, and we want to just learn more. And when we approach ourselves with curiosity, it helps us with the tendency towards self judgment and self criticism and comparison. That's not what we're in the you know, work of so we're getting curious about what is our genius, but then we also get curious about, how is our genius our problem? How has our genius gotten ourselves sometimes off track? So the person that is great at problem solving, their genius can be their problem if all of a sudden they're trying to problem solve their wife, right? The person who's a genius at making everything light and humorous, that genius can become a problem if you're making everything light and humorous, and you're never actually really feeling the depth of sadness or the complexity, and you're just using it to avoid your emotional sensitivity, in my case, can become a problem as you could imagine. You know, if you're taking you're so poor as you're taking in everybody's stuff, and you're not able to, you know, sort of protect yourself from that. So I do a bit on how your genius becomes a problem. And we get curious in sort of the three primary ways that I really draw from act, from the science of psychology, as well as contemplative practice, that lead us to our genius becoming a problem, which are we get stuck in a story. We hold on too tight, and we're avoiding discomfort. So that's the first part. And we get curious about our values, a lot of curiosity, a lot of questions. That whole part of the book is just open questions, questions, questions, questions. And then the second step is about opening up and opening up our minds, opening up to feeling, opening up our sense of self and opening up to change. And then the third step is about focusing our energy. How do we want to focus it more wisely? You talked about summer coming to an end, school starting. There's a menu of options. How do you choose? And part of that has to do with what is your genius? What are your values? Where do you want to put your energy, and are you willing to experience the feeling of letting something go in the service of living more effectively and more values driven? There is loss in focusing. There's loss in choosing, and we actually need to get better at experience that loss because our plates are too full. We're unwilling to say no, and then we suffer the consequences of our too many yeses, and we complain about it.

Ned Johnson: 19:39

This is hitting close to home,

Bill Stixrud: 19:40

yeah for both of us, probably, yeah. You know, Diana, you talk about the importance of flexibility, psychological flexibility, and about things that can support that kind of development, flexibility and things that don't. Can you talk a little bit about why flexibility is so important. I mean, you mentioned it a little earlier, but tell us a little bit more about why it's so important and what parents can do to support their kids, including neurodivergent kids, who might necessarily be as flexible as most people.

Diana Hill: 20:11

Yeah. Well, psychological flexibility is important, in part, because everything is always changing. So if you are inflexible and you are holding on too tight, and things are changing right, so you're holding onto a rope that's moving, you're going to get rope burn, right? So we want to be adaptable. The one guarantee about life is that we are in a constant state of flow and change. We don't we want our kids to be able to know how to adapt. I just want to we just this end of our summer trip, I was taking my son up to Canada to see my good friend. End up there. Who's she is a world champion mountain biker, which is terrible. My son is a mountain biker, which is rad. And he's 15 year old, and I barely get any time with him. And this was our end of the year trip, and we get on the plane to go to Canada, and I had three days with my son, so I've been looking forward to this all summer. I get on the plane to Canada, and we get pulled off the plane because there's a problem with his passport. And what ends up happening is the trip is canceled. If you want to see somebody very psychologically inflexible, you would have seen me in that moment on that plane. Something is happening that I don't want to happen. I really want to go on this trip with my son. I was so upset. I was I was like, yeah, no, we're gonna make it happen. Okay, we have to make it happen. I was forcing it, forcing it, forcing it. We were in the airport for five hours. I'm trying to force this trip. And finally, my son says to me, Mom, you gotta let it go, because I just spent five hours fighting something when I could have spent five hours with him, which is what I really wanted. Psychological flexibility is about knowing your values. What were the values that were driving that trip? For me, it wasn't about mountain biking. It was about spending time with my son, one on one. I just wasted five hours of it fighting the United Airlines people. So we all are psychological we all move in and out of psychological flexibility, even people that are experts in psychological flexibility. I show psychological inflexibility at times, but then we catch ourselves. This is a choice point, right here and now. Is a choice point. Do I want to be inflexible in my thinking, inflexible in my behavior, inflexible in my attention? Or do I want to flexibly move towards what I care about, what's most important in this moment, and when I do so, life opens up, and I actually have more of what I want. I am more of who I want to be. I am proud if someone videotaped me in that moment when I let it go and I looked at him and I said, let's just go to the guitar shop and play some guitars together. We took an Uber, we went to the guitar shop in our hometown, and we just, I just watched him jam for a few hours, and that was as good. It was about something he loved. It says genius, and it doesn't have to be in Canada on a mountain bike, right? So we can. We need to let things go, but we also need to know what's what our values are, and that's what psychological flexibility

Ned Johnson: 23:12

is all about. You share in the book that act has a motto, the pain and values are two sides of the same coin, and that feels, if I'm hearing you correctly and understood the book correctly, that being more mindful of our values is the one of the key ways to avoid or get our pull ourselves out of that psychological inflexibility that we so often find ourselves

Diana Hill: 23:37

right remembering that our pain points to our values. Yeah, if I didn't care about that time with my son, I wouldn't have been so upset. Yeah, right. So the the upset isn't the problem. The upset is an arrow. It's what we do when the upset shows up. Do we do we close off to it and try and control it? Or do we see it as an arrow pointing to, oh, what do you care about here? Whatever the feeling is, whatever the listener is having. Same thing with frustration and anger. You are only angry about something because you care about it, right? So you're angry, you're frustrated. You can act on that anger and have unwise effort, you know, or you could have wise effort, which is having the wisdom to look inside, ask in your heart mind, what is it that matters to me here and act from there? And usually, what matters to you, what flows to the surface are things like, Oh, I care about presence. I care about being in relationship. I care about justice. I care about self respect. I care about adventure, whatever it is, whatever floats the surface. Okay. How can I act on self respect or adventure or justice or whatever in the here and now? And so the what I often will do with clients is I'll have them write that write the painful thing on one side of a note card, and then I'll have them flip it over and write the value that it connects to on the other side of the note card. And I'll say, you can't have one without the other. You see that like I could take away what's painful to you, but in doing so, I'd also have to take away what is important to you. So we need to make space for the pain, but we need to make it a big enough space, more flexible space, so that you can act from your value. And that is the key to psychological flexibility. And also think the key to wise effort. That's what makes us wiser in our efforts. Sometimes the wisest form of effort is is the capacity to open up, to do something different, to feel the feelings that you need to feel, because we know our comfort zones keep us in the sameness.

Ned Johnson: 25:41

One last point that you made there in your book is that values help us do hard things. You know, one of the things. Things in in our second book, what do you say? We have a deep dive into values as well. So I think we're on the same we're on the same page. There you talk about research about goal setting versus goal setting with values.

Diana Hill: 26:07

Oh, well, so smart goals. We've all heard about smart goals, right? Specific, meaningful, you know, timely. The study that I mentioned was a study by Steve Hayes where he had college students at the beginning of a semester set SMART goals for themselves, academically, right? And then another group randomly assigned to Smet, to set SMART goals, plus write about the why behind it. What are the values that are driving this academic achievement that you want to have? Like, what does it matter to you? Like, deep down in your heart? Why do you want to show up in this way? What matters to you about it? What's important to you personally about it, not just what's important to your parents or your teachers, but for you, like, what do you care about here?

Ned Johnson: 26:55

And I'm gonna jump in for a hot second there for just for folks who don't know, smart, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time bound. And so that sounds super operational, but what it lacks in just the ways you just shared there, there isn't values, meaning heart. It's all Excel spreadsheet and org chart,

Diana Hill: 27:17

right, right? It's all behavioral without Yeah. So we know that behaviorism is really effective, and I'm not throwing behaviorism under the bus here. It's actually really important, but when it's behaviorism without a heart, when no one's looking. You don't engage in the behavior, you know, so you got to have the heart in there. And then the behaviorism is what helps you make sure that you're clarifying the goal, like making it specific. Not just, I want to get good grades, but in my algebra class this summer, I want to raise my, you know, a minus to an A or whatever it is, like I want to complete all my essays on time, whatever it is, making it specific. So what they found in the study was the folks that just set SMART goals didn't see any academic improvement at all, and the folks that set SMART goals, plus having that values work showed significant academic improvement. And makes sense. If you you can have the roadmap, but if you have no heart in it, you're not going to you're not going to

Bill Stixrud: 28:13

take it. It's so interesting. One of the things that that caused, that caused Ned and I to get into kind of focusing on values in our work with parents and kids, is that the research where you got these very anxious high school students preparing to take a test, if they take 15 minutes to write an essay about their highest values. They're much less anxious, and they do better in their test because it puts things in perspective. And I think that kids like talking about what's important to you.

Diana Hill: 28:40

Yeah, the sweet spot of wise upper I mean, really the argument that I'm making is that it's the combination of genius and values. So genius is what comes easily to you. It's what comes naturally to you, what you're great at, your strengths. Kids need that. But there's also sometimes we have values that aren't our genius, you know? And I really care about it, but it doesn't come easily to me. Things like Courage, risk taking, patience, isn't one of my geniuses, but I really value in right? But if I, if I can, I put them together, then, like the the values are like the banks of the river that help that genius energy flow and direct it. And when our kids can figure that out for themselves, and all of a sudden they're making wiser decisions. I mean, if you think about deciding what classes to take in college, deciding your school schedule, deciding our fall schedule, when there's too many extracurricular activities on your plate, you know, are there areas where you want to explore some things, explore some geniuses of yours, you know, have that those interests, you know, kind of be new and different. Try something different to figure it out. And then also, what are your values? What's important to you for you know, for my son, that is, could be an completely over scheduled son. He he's going to super academic school next year, a ridiculously academic school. And he really values his friends. He values surfing with his friends. On Thursday morning, they wake up at 645, and they go surf together, try and get a teenager out of bed at 645 for anything other than surfing with friends. It's his genius and his values. And let me tell you, I will get up at 630 and drive him there, because this to me, there's richness there, and it's not academic, it's not the and it will make his school life so much better, right? So we want to support that in in our kids. And when you see that, you start it, it paves the way for self driven kids

Bill Stixrud: 30:40

for whatever it's worth. Diana, if I met your if science consulting with your kid, and he was sucking in school, and he told me, I get I get up at 640 Five to go surfing. I don't worry about you. I'm not worried at some point you'll probably want to pay a little bit more attention to school. You probably want to get an education, but I know you're sculpting a brain that knows how to go pedal to the metal for stuff that's important to you. And I'm not worried at all.

Diana Hill: 31:06

We do something in our house where with our chores, this is like a great genius and values exercise for folks, we share in a household, we are many second you know, we're sort of what we I see. I call us the family body has two arms and two legs, right? And we need to work together to make this family body work. And so what we do with chores is we write down all of the tasks of living that need to happen. The compost needs to go out, the chickens need to get fed, the dishwasher needs to be emptied, we need to vacuum. These are just the things that need to happen for our house to function. And I put them on post it notes, and I put all the post it notes on the counter. And then we get to go in and choose which ones do we want to do right? And then we also get to choose, how do we want to do that? Love this. So for my 15 year old, who's learning how to drive, he chooses compost. Now the compost pile, we live on this shared lane with all these houses, and the compost is like an acre, okay, down the road. Okay. So he takes the compost. He said, Yeah, I get to do it how I want to do it. So for him, it's putting the compost in the car and driving it down the lane, like just down the lane, getting out of the car, dumping the compost, getting back in the car, driving it back. My 15 year old with his permit. So here we go, right. He's doing it his way. He's getting the job done. He's using his genius, and it's his values. Guess what? A teenager really values independence. So I step back and I say, that's that is wise effort, right there, Simon, just don't put any banana kills.

Ned Johnson: 32:43

I think you've just given us our newest book, self driven composters, right?

Diana Hill: 32:49

So wise effort is is putting energy and effort into things, into things that matter, and less energy and effort into things that don't matter, like fighting over chores. You're lying bill like I love you more than you know I love you too much to fight about your homework. I love you too much to fight about chores. Why are we spending our energy in our family body on this? This is such a waste of our family body energy. And so I want us to think about, how are we using our family body energy, especially, you know, these kids are, they're going, they're on their way out. You know, how much more time do I have? The runway is short, so let's make it not about fighting with her as much as we possibly can.

Bill Stixrud: 33:31

It's so beautiful. Ned and I read that by the time your kids leaves home, that age 18 or so, they'll have spent was 95% of the time,

Ned Johnson: 33:40

90% of all the time they will have ever spent with us, on average. Which makes it go, yeah. But one would one would suggest, when you have a family, body wise energy, process the way that yours is, the Wiser it is, the more time they're likely to want to spend with you later, you know, because I always think about, you know, for even kids 12 and 15, right? I'm trying to build towards the adult relationship that I want to have with them, you know, later on in life, so that there's so that they will want to spend time with me when I'm, you know, old and, you know, crotchety well.

Diana Hill: 34:11

There's also perception of time, which we know there's a researcher, Cassie Holmes, out of UCLA, that studies time perception and and actually, specifically time poverty, the feeling that we don't have enough time. And what some of her she has done a number of different fascinating studies, but what some of her research shows is that when we are engaging in a meaningful activity, we feel like we have more time when we are being generous with our time and giving it away. She actually did a study where she had people donate their time to helping college student that was like a first gen college, college student work on their essays or something like that, the folks that donated their time felt like they had more time in their day. What is that about? Right? So when you're engaging with things in a meaningful way, in a values based way, when you're engaging with your kids in a values based way, you will feel like you have more time with your kids. Because most of the time we're just rushing through and we feel like we don't have enough time. We're not slowing down to pick the strawberry, like my grandma did for me that probably 10 minutes or 20 minutes, I'm talking about it 40 years later, it was in a meaningful time they had stuck with me, right? So we can create those types of moments with our kids, when we use our energy wisely, when we make it more meaningful, more values based, we drop the stuff that needs to be dropped. And that sadness, if you just had a little thing in your stomach that turned upside down when you said 90% of the time you're spending with your kids, is now that sadness points to what you value. So use that sadness as a guide for how the choice. Choices that you're making and how you're spending your time today. Can you finish that

Ned Johnson: 35:53

point by telling the story about Daniel and his daughter, someone who had limited time, and we all do, but his was more,

Diana Hill: 36:01

yeah. So Daniel was a medic who had cancer, and he had this scar that went down the side of his neck, and he had a reoccurrence of cancer. And if you are a cancer survivor, you know that every single test is a waiting game, right to hear back whether or not what's going to happen this time. And he, he actually came into my office and he, he would never touch his neck. He was so avoidant of this thing. He was like a medic who could, like save lives, but couldn't touch his own neck in the shower, right? Because the neck touching his neck, he associated it with loss of his kids. He was so terrified of dying and leaving his kids in the pain that it would bring him. And so one day, he was off. He was in between. He was waiting for a PET scan to come back and spoil alert. It came back positive. So he was waiting for this PET scan to come back, and he wrote to me. And actually what he wrote is what I put in the book, but he wrote to me about how all of a sudden he realized that the thing that he was so afraid of touching was right there while he was rock climbing with his daughter, and his daughter looked up to him while they're on the face of the rock, and was like, Daddy, and he saw her, and in that moment, he had the very thing like life. He called it life at its most, lifey is right here and now, independent of what that test is going to have, like, what's going to happen a week from now, or a year from now, or three years from now, he had it, which was to be present with his daughter and connect with his daughter, and then it all shifted for him is that that's how I'm going to invest my time. I'm going to touch my neck in the shower, because I need to touch it to see if this thing is growing. I'm going to go to the appointments, and I'm also going to be with my kids. And it was a it was life at its most likely that sometimes, going back to the impermanence that we talked about before, sometimes getting close up against impermanence and knowing that things aren't going to be this way forever, helps us make decisions and choose to use our energy in the here and now, really in a much more aligned way. And for Daniel that was being with his kids and continues to be so as he's, you know, continued with love blame, I see this as a journey that we get to cycle back in over and over again, get curious, open up, focus your energy, and then do it again. So it's beautiful,

Bill Stixrud: 38:27

and I'm so grateful that you did. There's so much wisdom in this book, and really is and I think, in terms of our mission of helping parents and kids feel better and do better, there's so much that parents can use in their own lives and through which they could help their own kids. This is beautiful Diana.

Ned Johnson: 38:46

Thank you for such a wise and wonderful book and for gifting us with more of your time.

Diana Hill: 38:51

Thank you for having me, and thank you for all that you've taught me. And over the years, my kids are, like I said, at the tail end of that runway of my 90% and your work has really influenced me as a parent. It's been, you know, I think the what do you say book, the nuts and bolts of that one, were really beneficial to me as a parent, but then also me as a therapist in coaching parents, because sometimes we just need to know what he said. And I love having the two of you as coaches in that and we'll continue to return to that one. And then the foundational principles of the self driven child have been just, sort of like just saying that. I mean, it's sort of like wise effort. All you need to say is the self driven child. And people get it, you know wise effort, you kind of get it. You kind of know what unwise effort is. You know what you know wise effort is, you kind of know what it unself driven child is, and you don't want one

Ned Johnson: 39:38

of those. They're not making you crazy.

Diana Hill: 39:40

I love it's a good term. Yeah,

Ned Johnson: 39:43

beautiful. Love it. Thank you. Thanks. Here are four things I hope you take away. One for kids in high achieving spaces, the idea of what matters like what is true genius is really narrow. There are a lot of skills, traits and geniuses that kids may not think matter because they don't show up on a test. And we can help our kids by noticing and appreciating the things we truly authentically see about them, not the things that society tells us we should be rewarding and express appreciation for who your child is, not what they do. Two your kids interests are developing, continue to explore, continue to be open with your children. Don't channel them too soon onto one super highway, because they may miss out on so many other things that matter. Three, help your kids think about the values that motivate their goals, the why behind it. What are the values that are driving. This, say, academic achievement that you want to have, not just what's important to parents or teachers help your kids think about the values that motivate their goals, the why behind it. For example, what are the values that are driving you for this academic achievement you so want to have, not just what's important to us as your parents your teachers, but for you, like deep down in your heart, why does it matter to you four, when we feel that we are engaging in a meaningful activity, we feel that we have more time so we can create those types of moments with our kids, when we use our energy wisely, when we make it more meaningful, more values based when we do so, we drop the stuff that needs to be dropped, and we put our time and our attention and our values in things that matter most. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Hey folks, over the past 25 years, I've talked to countless parents of high school age students who care deeply about their kids' education and how they deal with stress and the pressure to succeed. It 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 stixfruit reflect our company philosophy and approach to helping students. If you have a high school age 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 you.