[00:00:00] Cameron Watson: Well, good morning. How are you this morning? Doing fantastic. How about yourself?
[00:00:04] Kyle Jetsel: Doing pretty good. This is all just fake because we’ve already been talking for the last 10 minutes, just so everybody knows.
[00:00:09] Cameron Watson: Yeah, but we’re really authentic in our fakeyness.
[00:00:12] Kyle Jetsel: Yes, we want to make sure we’re authentic in our fakeness.
Good morning. As if we just saw each other. Yeah, we’ve been well,
[00:00:18] Cameron Watson: you know what? Actually, I take it back. I take everything I said back. It wasn’t true. It’s not a good morning.
[00:00:25] Kyle Jetsel: It’s always a good morning. Is that a NW root beer, Cameron? Let’s be clear. It
[00:00:29] Cameron Watson: is a NW root beer. It’s my favorite root beer because it’s
[00:00:31] Kyle Jetsel: looked like the same color as a Coors can.
Not that I would know the differences in different beer cans, but you know,
[00:00:37] Cameron Watson: really want to make sure Coors. Well, when you with your
[00:00:40] Kyle Jetsel: roots. With your big giant hand over it. Yeah, it
[00:00:44] Cameron Watson: makes it look like a mini can that’s a shot can
[00:00:48] Kyle Jetsel: it kind of does Yeah, it looks like Shaq drinking a
Yeah, so here’s where we’re gonna do what we’re gonna do today I’ll just start because I saw a picture And you want to, you can pull the picture up as, as I talk, if you want. I saw this picture and I liked it because it said, here’s the, the caption with it said, here’s the picture I showed my kids today.
And I thought it was pretty good, right? It was, you can see that it’s easy decisions as a child will slide you down into this, into this gully where it becomes a lot harder to climb up to an, what they call an easy life. Now I I’d probably change that easy life to something else, but let’s not talk, let’s not do that just yet.
Cause there’s, I don’t think there is any such thing as a real easy life. Yeah, but it got me to thinking about where I, where, where I went with this was that. As parents raising kids. If we take the easy way out when it comes to our kids, we’re going to slide down into this chasm where we’ve got to work a lot harder to help our kids get where they need to get and us, right?
I guess my point being, it’s going to be hard raising kids either way, even if you Even if you, uh, you got to choose your heart. Let me just put it that way. Okay. Right. And let me, let me give you an example. So pull that, pull that picture down, Cameron, and maybe this will, we’ll do a, uh, because just recently I was chatting with a parent.
who had a little girl who was very, very, very challenging. And this little girl here was their biggest challenge. Okay. I talked to the mom and dad and they said she will not put her clothes on to go to church and for school, or I’m sorry to go to school. And she fights us and argues with us and fights us with every stinking morning.
It’s like this big, nasty fight. And then by the time we finally get her, force her to put her clothes on, she’s mad and my wife is mad and I’m leaving for work mad. And then I get to work late and she’s late for school and my wife is ticked off and it ruins our day. Right. And I said, you know what? I might have a strategy that works.
Right. And so I have a son that’s been diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder. And I worked on a strategy for about a year. I mean, I really worked on creating something to help me. Manage that part of him, uh, he was so bad, I would ask him if he wants to do things that he liked and he would say, no, I would say, hey, Eric, let’s go get ice cream and he would say, no, and I’d be like, well, how would he say, no, he loves ice cream, right?
And so I had to really figure out how to work with him to work within the parameters that he needed to get him to accomplish things in a reasonable amount of time. And so I did a lot of work and I created this strategy and my strategy worked tremendously well with. And so I shared the strategy with mom and dad and I said, here are the steps.
Here’s how you do it. Follow these steps, right? You know, my cost formula. What’s the challenge? What’s the objective? What’s the strategy? The tactics. I said, follow these tactics to the letter and see what happens. Well, in response, the dad says, You know what? I’m the dad. It’s my house. That’s, it sounds like a lot of work.
First of all, it sounds like a lot of work. And I said, well, it sounds like you’re spending about an hour fighting every morning. That sounds like a lot of work too. I said, try this work instead. It’s still work, but try this work and see if it works better than that work. Cause right now you’re working like a maniac and you’re failing and you’re mad and your wife’s mad and your daughter’s mad and you’re late to work.
Your daughter’s late to school. Your wife is upset. I said, that’s work. I said, what I’m proposing is different work. And so in response, he said to me, you know what? I’m the dad, she’s the daughter. She’s going to do what I say, as long as she lives in my home. And I said, how’s that working out for you? And immediately he realized that attitude was getting him nowhere.
And he had to either, he was either going to keep doing the same things he’s always done and be mad, his wife, mad, his daughter, mad and fight for an hour every morning. Or try this and see, just see what happened. Try these tactics. Well, the very next day he calls on my hotline. I have this little phone hotline where people can leave messages and it’s pretty early in the morning and I could hear his voice in his voice.
He was really excited and he said, you can’t believe it, Kyle. It took about, we followed the tactics. It took about 20 minutes. She’s happy. My daughter, my wife is happy. I’m on my way to work on time and it worked. It’s work, but it’s. It’s different work. It’s work that actually gets us to the objective we want instead of just screaming and yelling and fighting and angry.
Yeah. And so as I, as I looked at this little picture, right, it reminded me of that specific event, which is some, you’re going to work either way, right? You’re going to, you’re either going to work hard and be angry and frustrated and discouraged, or you’re going to have a plan that’s going to get you the objective you want.
And you’re going to work. Happily and joyfully, and it’s gonna long term be better for you, for your kids, for your spouse, all those people, right? And it’ll keep you in a better spirit as you do things, right? So, so, in that picture it says easy life at the top, and I don’t really think that’s a good representation of what life is.
Cause if you’re after an easy life, then you’re not in the, you’re in the wrong game, right? This life that we live in right now, I don’t know that an easy life is ever going to be accomplished. There’s always going to be challenges and difficulties and struggles, right? But I think that does a good job of saying, making, doing the right kind of work is going to lead you to, uh, better outcomes and better results in a more loving, kind world.
You’re still going to have challenges, but making, but just doing things by default, which in my mind is easy decisions is going to make it twice as hard. You’re going to be frustrated. You’re going to be angry. You’re going to be, you’re going to be climbing upside down, right? To try to get out of the hole that has been developed because you’re not doing the right kind of work.
Does that make sense?
[00:06:53] Cameron Watson: It does to me. Um, let’s give a shout out. Okay. So let’s give a shout out to, it says at visually needed. That’s the little thing on there. Whoever that person is great. I love this simple. It’s so simple. I love the representation. That’s that, that is that simple. So my problem with this image is actually hard decisions versus easy decisions.
Which is funny because you, you picked up on easy life is not necessarily what we’re going for. That’s the wrong game. But, uh, making decisions, that doesn’t do anything. My favorite little example that I use, uh, way too often, I’m sure my kids and employees are sick of it. It’s like, all right, two or three frogs are sitting on a log.
One decides to jump off. How many frogs are left on the log? And, you know, they’re like two, I’m like, no, three, three frogs are sitting on a log, one decides to jump off. How many frogs are left on the log? They say two, like, no, because making a decision doesn’t cause anything to happen. You have to act, you have to choose to get engaged.
And so I, I love that. And so for me, if I was going to change this, I would say doing hard things. Versus doing easy things
[00:08:09] Kyle Jetsel: that, that, and that it’s action. Yeah. That’s a great distinction. I think you’re an overthinker. We’ve talked about this.
[00:08:17] Cameron Watson: I don’t know about overthinker, but I am a thinker. But,
[00:08:21] Kyle Jetsel: and I’m a thinker too, but I’m a simple minded thinker.
Maybe that’s, maybe that’s the difference. So I think many people, when they look at this, would, would assume that easy decisions means, like you said, the action that goes with those decisions, right?
[00:08:35] Cameron Watson: I live in a household where my kids decide all the time to be good. My wife decides to follow your program every day.
That doesn’t mean they actually do it and they don’t get the reward for making the decision. I’m sorry. This is not overtaking anything. Nobody gets credit for making a decision. They only get credit for following through and doing the decision. I decided when I was a young kid. I wasn’t going to drink alcohol.
Well, that’s great. You know what? The action of me being drunk all the time kind of outweighs that decision. Of course, I choose not to be drunk all the time as I drink my A& W root beer, not the Coors, whatever you thought it was.
[00:09:18] Kyle Jetsel: You know what, Cameron? I appreciate that because you and you’re, you’ve just identified a distinction for me, which is.
It’s intentions, right? We all have the best intentions. And I think, I think this we’re, we’re barking up the same tree here. You know, one of the things in my program that’s really that I think is interesting is people read, you have to take action in my program. And by action, I mean, you have to sit down and you have to think through and write out some things, right?
It’s kind of required that you write out things. Because that is an action step, right? And it requires you to think and take that action and then go back and review, right? And here’s what I would suggest is the reason why I do it the way I do in my program is we’ve all read hundreds of books probably and we all know what we should do, right?
Can we do it when We’re supposed to do it when times get harder, when difficulties arise, right? Can we, and do we do it? Do we take those correct actions? Right. Uh, I was, uh, I was at the basketball court last night at the Y and I shoot a lot, I shoot almost every night. I probably take 500 shots a night for no other reason than it’s my exercise.
Okay. I love to shoot the basketball. I love the feel. I love the sound of it going through the net without even hitting the rim. I like the, right, I just love that. That whole thing is my thing, right? And because I shoot so often, I’m reasonably good at it. And by reasonably good at it, I mean to a point where people go, people that are basketball players will say, come up to me and say, holy crap, you’re a good shooter, right?
And I’ll say, hey, thanks. And occasionally one might even say. How do I shoot like that? Right? And I can identify the steps for them pretty quickly. And not only can I identify the steps for them, I can identify the steps and show them what to do right now. They’re at the gym with me. They’re in the same gym.
And they could start that moment. And 99 percent of the time they don’t. They go back to what they were doing. Now here’s what’s interesting. One kid did. Right after we talked, I watched him and he went over and he started doing. What I said to do just basic stuff, not nothing crazy, still fun. And a couple of weeks later, I saw him again and he said, you got, I can’t tell you how much better of a shooter I am already.
It’s only been a couple of weeks, but the simple little things you told me. Are working. And my coach is like, you’ve been practicing. I’ve always been practicing, but I haven’t been practicing on the exact right stuff. You know, it’s interesting. It’s not, it’s not rocket science. It’s very, very simple, but nobody wants to do the very, very simple things in that moment.
Sometimes. Right. Nobody wants to do the right work. Everybody thinks about going to the gym and shooting a thousand shots. You’re practicing. Well, practice doesn’t make perfect. It makes perfect. Yes. Perfect. Practice makes perfect. Right. Right. Okay. Yep. And what I’m saying is, yeah, if you’re, if you’re gonna, if you want to, if you want to do something, you should do it as correctly as you can.
Again, nobody’s going to be perfect. Right. Yeah. I mean, even with nobody guarding me, I’ll never shoot better than 80 percent just because of the variables in life. Right. Sure. But 80 percent to most people when they’re watching me is like, holy crap, this old man can shoot. Right. Yeah. You know. And people stop regularly once a week or so, somebody will walk over to me and just fist bump me.
And I know what it means, right? They’re, they’re seeing me shoot and they’re like, this dude can shoot. Right? So, and the, the, the point is the right, it takes the right work, right? And we’re still never going to be perfect. You know, I mean, we’re still gonna, but I think, I think, are you willing to do it and can you do it?
And are you willing to do it when you’re supposed to do it, even if it’s not the funnest thing or the easiest thing or the most glamorous thing or Right. All those things that don’t, that don’t give you that feeling, so to speak.
[00:13:18] Cameron Watson: So, uh, and I heard a, I heard a, um, definition of character from Hiram W.
Smith and it might be like he, he was quoting someone else. So maybe he was quoting Stephen R. Covey because this sounds like a Stephen R. Covey thing. But he said that character by definition is the ability to act after the emotion. Which, er, to act upon a decision after the emotion that caused you to make that decision has passed.
And I, you know, it stuck with me. I, I’m a big fan of Hiram W. Smith, just so you know, I, I enjoy his style of teaching. I love the things that he teaches. I also enjoy Frank, uh, Stephen R. Covey, but, uh, when I was younger, I think I was probably 21. Maybe 22 when I, uh, heard that I, it, it made me think about how hard it is for me to continue to follow through after the emotion that caused me to make the decision is there more importantly, for me, after another emotion is introduced, so it’s not that the original emotion fades, I still want to be healthy.
But it’s the other emotion that gets in the way of wanting that, whatever it is, for me, it’s steak. I don’t care about ice cream, but you get, you know, I would rather have another sandwich than a piece of cake. I would rather have a steak over ice cream. So for me, it’s that. So while you’ve been talking, I’ve been drawing a little bit.
And so let me share, show this with you. And let’s, let’s get this look in the way that we can agree upon.
[00:14:58] Kyle Jetsel: We might never agree upon something, right?
[00:15:00] Cameron Watson: Yeah. So you do have to decide. And I think maybe we should have a, like a planning session, uh, in there. Uh, you know, before we get to that part, maybe. You know, because you’re right.
You kind of need a plan,
[00:15:15] Kyle Jetsel: even, even if you don’t have a plan, even if you act, you can, you can, the action alone will give you feedback. Correct. Yeah. And we got to pay attention to our outcomes. Right. And so maybe, maybe, maybe as you’re acting, you’re paying attention to the outcomes. And adjusting your action, right? So, right.
Because you can act, for instance, you know, let’s go back to basketball. The kid that I told how to do it, he could continue to do what he was doing. And he’s taking action. He’s practicing, right? He’s just practicing on what he’s already doing. And, you know, that may not that, and if he doesn’t adjust. To the fact that he’s not getting the outcome he wants.
And let me, let me, maybe I can describe this.
[00:16:00] Cameron Watson: Yeah,
I am. Yeah,
sure.
Sure.
Just a little bit so that ball barely goes in. Right. Yeah.
Yeah. Much higher arc. Yep.
That. That’s going to really help with your fundamentals. Your follow through is going to be much nicer as well, just because, you know, you have to do a higher arch. Oh, and interesting. So just by doing that one thing, your whole body is going to get into a better mechanical position, interesting. And so then you force your body to develop the muscle memory of being precise.
Yeah, yeah, but
not about basketball. I I’m thinking, so this comes back to how, you know, every interaction that we talk about, we want to have the spirit of love that’s missing the rim because you can do the right thing with the wrong attitude and you get the point. It went through the hoop. Your kid got to school. You got to work.
But, if you do it with the spirit of love, it forces everything else to align. So that then it’s a clean shot. It’s a swoosh. And it snaps that bottom of the net and it’s very satisfying. It, and then when you might be drained because of life, just beating you down. And when you’re presented with something that you have not anticipated and you could not have, because it’s brand new, something, a new behavior, a new, um, uh, horrible, tragic event, this, if you can.
Have been practicing and practicing the spirit of love in those times where you’re able to plan and decide and then act when that thing hits you, your body and your mind hopefully will have developed the memory so that then it responds in the spirit of love and you do not damage the other person or yourself through your instinctual response.
That is interesting,
right?
When you’re tired, yeah,
sure.
Yep.
Mm hmm. Yeah.
This is, you just said something earlier that the idea that when you get tired and you’re, uh, you’re ready to throw in the towel, uh, you know, okay, so here’s, I learned something after my car accident a year ago, uh, last April. And that is if we, if you do not move, if you are, if you go to in action to allow healing.
Everything else gets worse. You might be protecting that thing. That’s hurt. But everything else gets worse. And then looking back in with my son, when he was suicidal and dealing with, you know, the, the self, the, the fact that his cousin ended his own life and his two friends died and his sister broke her back and then his other sister broke her back and they thought I had lung cancer because I started coughing up blood and all of these things started to happen.
And we tried. To remove all the hardship from his life. So the stimulus that was difficult and hard for him to deal with, we just tried to remove it because it was, I was taught that to do that in the crisis cycle, when someone’s in crisis, you remove the stimuli so that they can, you know, as they’re starting to escalate, remove, remove stimuli.
It’s great. When they’re in crisis, have the least amount of interaction possible. I was taught all of these things. And I totally confused the life with crisis. And so for my son, I did him a lot of harm by removing all stimuli from his life, trying to make his life as easy as possible. And it probably helped that one or two things that he was struggling with, but it made the rest of his life horrible and listening to you when you’re tired and you’re fatigued, you don’t want to injure yourself more.
So you stop doing the extreme things. But you go back to the fundamentals and you do that routine that helps you improve. It’s what you warm up with. It’s how you, you stabilize. And, uh, let’s, if you don’t mind, can we talk about some of the things that we as adults can do to To stabilize ourselves without shutting the bathroom or, you know, without going into the bathroom and locking the door.
Cause that’s the only time I swear. My wife has a moment to herself is when she’s in the bathroom. And even then it’s probably going to get interrupted. Somebody’s going to be asking something. If we could talk about things that parents can do specifically. Parents of highly, uh, high spirited, strong willed and, uh, challenging kids so that we can have some defaults to go to when we’re exhausted, but we don’t want to stop because then we will get cold and coming up off the bench to an extreme situation, we will strain a relationship.
We will hurt ourselves. We’ll hurt someone else. And I’m, I’m talking emotionally. I’m not talking physically. What are some of the things that we can do? Day to day that we can go back to when we need to recharge ourselves.
The reason, the reason I’m smiling, Kyle, is because it, your, your philosophy is, uh, moral, uh, No one gets hurt too bad? I’m like wondering now where the line is for no one gets hurt too bad. That’s why I’m smiling.
[00:21:39] Kyle Jetsel: Let me tell you what had happened. It was partly my fault. Cause I had discovered if you take pool noodles and you glue them to PVC pipes And then you tape the handle up. You can make a lightsaber in different colors and they could beat on each other with the pool noodle, right? That’s not hurt too bad.
Well, glue gives way sometimes when kids beat on each other a lot or the end, you know, and I would cut the end of the pool noodle to be, you know, three or four inches beyond where the PVC pipe was so they could whack on each other. You should have seen them on the trampoline. My kids on this trampoline would beat the crap out of each other on the trampoline with these pool noodles.
Stuck to these PVC pipes, right? And, and you talk about joy. These kids are having a great time until they swing and the pool noodle comes off and they don’t stop. Right. Then you got kid hits another, he gets mad. First one, he rips his off. Then you got a real serious sword fight and you got cuts on the, on the face, you know, knees have, right.
And, and so, you know, these are, I’m laughing because, Yeah. Yeah. When we tell stories of these things in the past tense, right, nobody got hurt too bad. Certainly there are children with scars, you know, that’s, I mean, my boys are, but all kids have scars. Don’t, not just mine. Right. My point is though that she was able to face that challenge, you know, and say, Hey, we, it’s really not a great idea to hit each other.
Let’s glue these back on, try to be calm and then come inside and instead of escaping when I got home, she would go look at her list of things that made her happy and do one of those things, right? Or one of the things she had worked at to get good at and do that. And I would come home and my kids would be happy.
And my wife would be in the kitchen, you know, sewing or painting or, you know, um, whatever it is she did that was on her list because it was stuff that she could do in her own home and make herself happy. It was her going back and shooting those playing around the world in in that. right? She would leave that state, go in and, you know, play around the world and go inside and paint wood or, you know, make, create something on her own.
That’s one thing she did. The other thing that I thought was genius was she told me one time I came during the summer, the kids would all be home at the same time. And that’s a challenge too. How do you keep all these suckers busy all day long? Cause they’ll drive you crazy. So she would plan with the kids.
There was five days in a week and she would say, Monday is park day. We’re going to the park on Monday. Every Monday we’re going to the park. And she would take them to the park and she would engage with them, right? As they played at the park, she would engage. And on Tuesday, it was craft day. And I’d come home and the kitchen table would be covered with paint and all this stuff.
And she said, you know what I realized, Colin? I said, what’s that? She said, if I focus on all the kids for like an hour, They really tend to leave me alone the rest of the day. They, they just want my attention for a certain amount of time. Now, what normally happens to what’s happening to Shelley is they would just pester her all day long.
She wouldn’t have an activity and they would be mom, mom, mom, you know, all of them coming at her at different times all day long and it was overwhelming. Right. But when she started playing Tuesday is craft day, Wednesday is bake day. We’re going to bake all day or for an hour. All the kids are in there baking together on Thursdays.
And again, she came up, uh, we have a chalkboard on one of the doors in our house. You’ve seen it, I’m sure, Cameron. Yeah. It would be covered. Summer fun is what she called it. It would be covered with stuff they’re going to do during the summer. And she would sit down the kids and they would plan all the different things they could do.
We’re going to go to all the different pools, public pools in the valley. Right. We’re going to go to the one in Meridian, then the one over by downtown, then the one in Boise, and then we heard there’s a public pool here and that, so the hit all the public pools that summer. Right. And she said, once she spent time with them for an hour or hour and a half, they had a tendency to then to just go do their own fun and really be satisfied with their, with her time with him.
Now, it doesn’t mean they’re always going to be like that. Some kids have extra. Needs and I did my, my kids did, but she did tell me it made a big difference for all the kids and for her because they didn’t require, it wasn’t them coming at her all day long, right? Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, all day long. So those are two of the things that my wife did.
And I’m curious if you’ve, and I, and I’m just going to, I’m speaking for her because I wasn’t at home with them all day long, all the time, you know, Sure. But I, but when I was, I’m, I like to play catch with my kids. I do that regularly, either with a football or baseball. We, we shoot a lot, a lot of, a lot of this stuff has just taken, you know, I think a lot of parents say, well, I don’t have a lot of time with them, so I’m going to make it valuable time.
Right. You’ve heard that it’s got to be called. Quality time. I don’t agree with that at all. I think kids spell love T. I. M. E. I just think I think you got to spend as much time as you can. And guess what? It ain’t always fun. I think you just have to, right? Yeah.
[00:26:48] Cameron Watson: So I’m gonna, um, I don’t, I understand the philosophy of Love being spelled time, but I think it’s actually more important to have shared experience than to have, um, time.
So, and when listening to what your wife did, she created an opportunity for shared experience on a regular basis. And that sated or fed whatever that need was. So, um, and I know this sounds weird, but I can be physically present with my kids, not having any type of experience and it doesn’t count as soon as I have a shared experience, whether that’s driving to.
Uh, school or stopping by the Maverick to get a soda or, um, having my young boys help me build something where they’re just in the way, but, you know, for them, it’s a shared experience when we built the bunk beds, right. They take, that’s a shared experience. That is what really solidifies that, um, the, the relationship or the connection.
And for typical kids, this is a pattern that every parent should know that the typical kid doesn’t know. That what they want when, once they get what they want, they usually discover that is actually not what they want. And so with listening to how you describe what your wife did, the kids were wanting her time and attention.
So she created shared experience. And then in the same way that the kid wants to mow the lawn until they do. Now they don’t want to mow the lawn anymore. In the same way they got enough of what they, they realized, okay, that’s not filling. it is. I’m going to try something else. And I, I think, uh, as parents, we forget to sometimes give the kid what they think they want.
So they discover quickly. That’s not the end of the, that’s not going to fill them up for the rest of their life. And, um, having shared experience though, planned shared experience is even better. Because then you can look forward to the shared experience that creates even more shared experience. And then looking back, the reason you journal and document with photos and talk about it is so that you then have even more shared experience and those, all of those things build connection.
So it’s a beautiful, it’s a beautiful way. To approach being overwhelmed by your kids, which is to create a schedule and create a planned shared experiences so that they know what’s coming up. And for some reason it is just, it takes away the anxiety. It’s like if you’re, I, you know, you grew up kind of, uh, let’s just say your fridge wasn’t always full.
And I remember growing up in a similar, uh, we had a similar period of time where. You know, we, we would eat, uh, powdered eggs for our meals cause that was what we had in our food supply. Uh, we didn’t have a whole lot of variety of food, uh, for, you know, periods of time. And then we would heat our house.
We’d all sleep in one room with a cold, with a fireplace that we burnt coal in. And that’s how we heated. We didn’t have electricity for periods of time. We didn’t have hot water for periods of time. Um, I think we always had water, but you know that there are that looking back, that was some of the best times ever because we had the shared experiences of sleeping in the family room next to the wood burning stove that we’d put coal in because it would last longer and.
You know, the powdered eggs. Those were nasty. Powdered eggs are terrible. I don’t like them, but I remember the creative ways that we would kind of dress them up and you could do really fluffy. You could do crazy thin, make them almost like crepes. And there’s all sorts of things you could do to get creative shared experiences.
So the shared experience can also remove anxiety of about the unknown. And when your fridge is empty, Or you as a husband and a wife or a couple are looking at things trying to figure out how you’re going to make ends meet. Do a shared experience, keep the date nights going that alleviates anxiety, not being in something alone.
And if you’re, if you happen to be single, figure out ways to connect with others on a regular basis where it’s planned, shared experiences that will do more for that overall peace of mind moving forward in life. And I recommend three areas of connection, connection with deity, connection with others. And connection with self and the connection with self is the one that people get wrong a lot So you got to be careful and that doesn’t mean you isolate that means you improve yourself It means you’re working on yourself.
It doesn’t mean you isolate and you avoid everybody else you you start shooting the free throws Again, when you’re tired, you do those fundamental things to help innovate you. It’s was that, uh, week two of your wife’s program that you look for things. So give me the first weeks again. So week
[00:32:10] Kyle Jetsel: one was, um, and there’s 12 weeks, by the way.
So week one was right. 10 things that make you happy and then take one of the items and see how you can turn it into a daily practice. Week two was, uh, write down some of the things you do every day. Um, X out the things you don’t like, write down why the things you underline and underline the things that make you happy.
And then focus on the things that make you happy. Right. And realize how much makes you happy. Week three was what you’re good at. Write down 10 things you’re good at. Uh, underline the ones you had to work for to get good at and circle the ones that come naturally. And I think this is all about just focusing on, like you said, self, you know, looking at it’s really counting your blessings is really what it is, right?
Is writing down. And I think that’s a huge part of it, of the writing down part. Right. Because when you can write down and look at something every day and she had worksheets, she, she made worksheets and everything, you know, our, in our family, we do that kind of stuff pretty regularly. And she showed me her worksheets and I’m like, Oh my gosh, you are good at that.
Oh, I see you had to work at that. I thought it came naturally. Oh, you know, right. There’s, there’s different ways, but yeah, she was being kind to herself. And focusing on things that made her happy and, and made her feel blessed in her life. Nice. And so I think that was the one, the one thing that I would add to your shared experiences is, well, two things.
One is, you know, you shared a shared experience that should have been suffering together, right? You all slept in the same room in front of a fire and you had to feed it all night long. That does not sound like fun. Right. But years later, you, you’re telling me that with a big old grin on your face, right?
And, and the point to that is, is, you know, the mood, we set the mood in our homes as parents, right? And my wife used to say specifically moms, cause moms can, she would say, ah, it’s my responsibility to set the mood. That’s what my wife used to say, but I always. But I always, I always felt like I was going to do it no matter what, right?
Sure. I, I, you know, whatever I could do, but I, um, doing things, realizing that, you know, we got to go rake the backyard. There’s a couple of ways we can do it, right? We can do it happily, or we can do it with dread. And you can pump your kids up and say, Hey, let’s all do it together. Let’s work hard. We’ll knock it out quick.
It’ll be fun. Afterwards, we’ll go get ice cream. Right? Some sort of reward or whatever the case may be to create a Something that’s not fun into something that’s fun and my dad and my dad was I’ve told you this story but before but when we Were kids we used to drive to Beaumont Six hour drive in the heat every summer with no air conditioning in a car that would break down every year.
Yeah, right After about the third or fourth time we broke down halfway, I said, dad, why do we keep doing this? You know, we’re going to break down. And my dad said, you know what? It’s just life until something goes wrong. Then it’s an adventure. Is what he said to me. Right. And I’m looking back when we were broke down on the side of the road.
I don’t even remember the trips, most of the trips, what we did, but I remember every time we broke down exactly what we did and what my brothers and I did to pass time. We went fishing illegally in a pond one time with sticks and string. And one time, uh, We, we chased cows. I’m sure that was illegal too.
I mean, and another, you know, I mean, I could, I could make a list of all the things we did wait when things went wrong. And so, you know, it became my, my, my idea was, you know, what, when the things we remember in life are outside of the normal, really. It’s kind of monotony, right? But when something goes wrong, that’s a chance to create an adventure in our life.
If we look at it with those eyes, right, right. We broke down on the side of the road. We’re stuck. Oh, this sucks. Or now it’s an adventure. This is something we’ll remember. How can we make it memorable in a way that’s fun or exciting or what, what kind of games can we play? Can we write, who knows what we can do, but now we get creative and this is a memory we’ll remember.
Yeah, my kids will remember this. Are they going to remember it with dread or like my dad did? He set it up so that we remembered it with joy. Something that shouldn’t have been good. And so, and that goes back to making those decisions, right? Our little scheme there, things are going to go wrong. It’s going to be hard.
How do we, how do we go through the heart and continue to climb instead of sliding into the depths, right? Oh, you can put water in there now, so we can drown
[00:36:45] Cameron Watson: too. That’s right. If you stay there too long, you’re going to die.
[00:36:50] Kyle Jetsel: Well, and the thing too, is if you, you know, with, with my more severe son on the spectrum, what we found is that the depths were so low.
Sometimes, you know, I see a lot of parents that say, You know, when you’re your child, who’s a nonverbal says, I love you, you know, you feel it, right? It’s this over what you cry and it’s such a high, high, but there can be so many low lows that you feel like the low lows get deeper and deeper and even getting back to the level becomes a challenge, right?
Sure. If you’re not facing those things in the right spirit. Right? Because if you look at that chart, you slide down into that water, getting back to level to normal is now a challenge, right? You’re, you’re climbing to even be at ground level now. Yeah. And because you’re focused on the difficulty and the pain and the suffering and how do I keep from drowning, right?
And all those things that are, that come with that sliding into that. What is the little word in there in the middle say? Outcomes. Outcomes. There you go. Yeah, there you go. I like that. There you go. Outcomes. I love it. Yeah. So, um, it’s, it’s important to, again, it’s important to remember, I think that your shared experiences, some of my very best shared experiences in my life.
Involved pain and struggle and right. And, uh, fear and doubt and right. Losing basketball games, all these things, missing the winning shot. I think I probably missed more winning shots than most people have taken, right? Cause if it was winter, if it was win or lose, I was taking the ball from my teammates because I decided I wanted to take that shot.
And I would live with it. Yeah. You know what I’m saying? And, and, and that, that became kind of my attitude towards just working at it. Right. And knowing, Hey, if I got to miss, I want to miss the shot. I’m not leaving my success or failure in your hands. You can’t shoot. Like I’m the one doing the work. I’m the one playing around the world.
I’m the one shooting on half a goal, right? I’m not giving you the ball in the, in the, in those key moments. Um, I want the ball. Right. And I got to be, I got to be willing to take it in those moments. And if I’m willing to take it, I got to be willing to live or die with the outcome. Right. But again, preparation is, is kind of the key to it is to, I like what you said is, is to, is to work, is to work at it on a consistent basis.
Right. And so that when it does happen, we we’re prepared or we, we feel. Like we can manage those difficulties. And again, we’ll come across challenges that are shocking and we won’t believe how, how hard the storm is. I faced a lot of storms in my life, but I faced some storms that I thought, Oh my gosh. I didn’t realize that the storm could get this bad, right?
This is a bigger storm than I’ve ever faced. I thought, I thought wrong. I thought I was capable. And then this,
[00:39:51] Cameron Watson: yeah, Sarah’s given a talk in state conference. Uh, so she’s doing it Sunday and it’s on the topic is waiting upon the Lord. And, uh, she is a phenomenal speaker and I’ve listened to all the different versions.
One time she, she woke me up, she goes, Hey, I think I’m done and woke up complete. I’m like, give it to me. I want to hear it because it’s, it’s really, really good stuff. But it’s, it’s amazing how, if you think it can’t get any worse. That’s just cause you don’t, you don’t have that creative of a mind cause boy, howdy does, can it get worse?
[00:40:29] Kyle Jetsel: Yeah. And you know that that’s, that’s where you talked about. That’s when you have to really lean on, you know, deity and others and others want to see you succeed worse than you do sometimes, I think, right. And we can beat ourselves up. We can attack ourselves. We can, we can brutalize ourselves. I think we treat others kinder than we do ourselves sometimes.
Yeah. And the only way to receive the grace that we deserve in those moments is to is to go to to deity, right, is to turn to deity. But it’s tempting to turn away and say, how could you let this happen? How wasn’t I doing everything I was supposed to do? How could you write, but it’s important for us to remember that it’s, it’s, uh, if you’re going to be faithful and things are going well,
you can’t wait. It’s not right to turn against. To turn on your faith when things are going wrong, right? It’s really when you need to lean into it even heavier and realize it’s much more, it’s, it’s much more powerful of an assistance in those real tricky moments. Right. And that’s part of it should be part of everybody’s plan.
In my opinion. I like what you said. Part of your plan should be connection with self connection with others in connection with deity on a consistent basis. Yeah. And whatever that means.
[00:41:42] Cameron Watson: One thing, um, This is a little tactic that fits well with our family, um, for it accomplishes several things. Number one, it gives us a shared experience.
Um, and it came out of my wife started going back to school and. I would tell her, Hey, no, I support you going to school. And finally she says, what does that mean? Cause all it really means is I have to add more stuff to my plate and I’m adding more stuff to my plate. How are you supporting me? I’m like, I’m supporting you, adding more stuff to your plate.
And she goes, can you take something off? I’m like, yeah. Um, I will, while you’re going to school, I will take on cleaning the house every day with the family. And she was like, great. And, but I told her, I was like, if I’m going to do this, I’m doing it my way. And she’s like, okay. Yeah, because I I wanted number one.
Let’s identify What it means to have the house clean number two If i’m doing it i’m doing it and you can’t then add more because that’s you know She get my wife is so awesome. She gets excited when success happens. She wants more of it. And so I can get the kids to do their chores. And then she’s like, well, let’s, let’s do the backyard.
Let’s put a garden in. And it’s like, no, we, I got them to do the thing that we had to find. We’re going to stop. And so I instituted a thing called the daily blitz. The Saturday Deep Clean and the Sunday Straighten or the Sabbath Day Straighten. So, um, 15 minutes on blitz days, Monday through Friday, we all clean at the same time and we quickly go through and clean at the same time.
And that’s important. It’s not that they individually can choose 15 minutes here or 15 minutes there. It’s the whole family all. 10 of us, if we’re all at home, we get in and do the work for 15 minutes. And no matter what they’re doing, when 15 minutes hits, I make them stop. That means if they have a dust pan that is full, they have to leave it because 15 minutes is over.
And, uh, uh, it, it is really fun to see how hard. Little kids, teenagers, and young adults can work for 15 minutes and how much they can get done because they know that at the end of 15 minutes they’re done. And it’s kind of a team type of environment. So we would do that every day. And then Saturdays is deep clean day and they have, basically we’re going to work for a couple hours and it’s get it done.
Now, if someone’s room is not clean on a regular basis, guess what? All 10 of us, or 8 of us, or now 7 of us who are home will go into their bedroom and help them clean it. Guess what? They keep their rooms clean. Because they don’t want everybody else in there cleaning their room. Now the little kids, they’re like, yeah, come, come clean my room, that’d be great, thank you.
You know, they don’t realize what the older kids know. But And then on the Sabbath, we, um, it’s just straightened, right? We don’t do any hard work. We don’t try and make anything better. We just straighten up. We put some things away, you know, we put, uh, the, we, we don’t, uh, we’re not actively cleaning to improve.
We’re just straightening and we’re trying to keep the Sabbath day. Holy. And that, uh, That has worked really well for my family and I know you do it different, but, um, what, what we gain out of that is number one, I get to support my wife and going back to school. So that’s a win. Number two, we have the shared experience of daily.
Blitzing the house and we just do it. We just bombard the house as quickly as we can and get as much done as we can. And then we stop. And by the way, the dust pan that’s full of the dust, I’ll go and I’ll dump it. Or Sarah will go and dump it or the kids will sneak. And dump it. And you know, but the point is, okay, stop what you’re doing.
We’re done. That’s all that’s required. And then we go and we do scripture study or eat or whatever else is the next activity. But it’s a shared experience that they can count on. And it’s, it’s a lot of fun.
[00:45:54] Kyle Jetsel: I really, I, I, I really like the blitz specifically. And I think I might implement that. And that’s for a couple of reasons.
Um, one is, Kids have a limited, you know, younger kids, especially now have limited attention span and it’s, you know, the quicker we can, you know, I’ve, I’ve noticed this about, especially my youngest is if somebody starts talking to him for too long, they start to glaze. Even if they’re talking to him about stuff they want to know about.
Right. Yes. I call it a QC process, right? QC. You need to be quick, and if you can, make them curious. Oh. Right? Because what happens is if you’re quick with it, and you make them curious, they want to know more, and they’ll come to you for more. But they, most of the time, they won’t. Right? Yep. But quick is key, because if you sit your kid down and start talking to, to him for too long, they’re just glazing over, and, and they said, hey, I heard you in the first five minutes.
The rest of it, I’m just sick of listening to you now. And I don’t really want my kids listening to me. Right. But so you, so if you’re thoughtful and you say, okay, how can I be quick with this and make them a little curious and you sit down and you say, okay, here’s the deal and leave them with a nugget that they can be curious about, then it changes everything.
Right. And so, you know, QC is, is not a bad one to do, but I love the blitz because it really fulfills. The quick part of it, number one. Uh, but number two is, you know, the millennials these days want connection. They want to feel like they’re a part of something bigger. Yeah. Tell them go clean your room.
They’re only cleaning their room. It’s selfish. It’s personal. It’s theirs. Hey, we’re all doing it together. The whole house is going to be clean in 15 minutes and you’re a part of something bigger. Right. You’re going to save the world in 15 minutes quick. And we’re saving the world in 15 minutes. Right.
Well, it’s really powerful because you hit on a couple of things that I think millennials need. These younger kids need is to feel a part of something bigger and you know, It just can’t last too long. I need to be able to scroll. Right.
[00:47:52] Cameron Watson: Yeah, that’s
[00:47:53] Kyle Jetsel: fun. And by the way, not a bad tip for marketing these days either.
QC be quick, right. And make people curious. If you can do that with, with your posts, with your, I know our, our podcast is a little longer than that, but that’s just the way it has to go. Right. Because it’s long term. We’re going to discuss a lot of things.
[00:48:11] Cameron Watson: Yeah. And out of this maybe, so I’ve, I’ve been thinking about this, having our podcasts, Uh, actually shortening it down and releasing three of them out of the hour and a half that we typically do.
Okay. So, uh, and it’s. I’ve noticed a couple of things. It’s rare for someone to watch all the whole time, but those who do identifying, they say, you know what? This was the perfect podcast. I wish I could have someone start here and end here. I’ve had that type of feedback. I’m like, oh, that’s a, I could
[00:48:44] Kyle Jetsel: have done that.
In that case, Cameron, what are your closing thoughts on this?
[00:48:48] Cameron Watson: Shared experience, whether it’s cleaning the house or going to every pool in Boise, Idaho. is what will feed the, the need to be long to each other and have connection. And if moms are overwhelmed by their kids, plan some shared experience that is scheduled.
And out there broadcast to the world to your kids. This is what we’re doing for our shared experience. And then just like the mowing the lawn, they’ll realize it’s not as what it’s not what they need. They don’t need 100 percent of your time after all. And they’ll get satiated if they’re typical. Now that’s unfortunate.
I
[00:49:27] Kyle Jetsel: love that. I think that’s a great concluding statement and it kind of plays into that little map you had. Right is action and, and planning, you know, there’s statistics that say people enjoy planning more than they actually enjoy vacations, right? And there’s, there was some old statistics and some, uh, people did some work on that.
And that, and I noticed that in my wife. Yeah. So it’s the, is planet and it is going to be hard. That action is going to be hard. Doing things with your kids consistently is not going to be easy. But it’s going to, it’s going to save you from the near impossible task of just constantly battling. Yeah, right.
Yeah. So, and you win, right. And your kids will talk about it for years. I mean, my kids talk about things we did and I’m sure your kids do too. And if you’re not sure about it, go ask your kids. What was one of the favorite things we did together? Let them tell you about it and then make it a point to say, you know what, I’m going to create some things like that for my kids and our family, and it may not be easy planning things and acting out on them and doing it is not easy, but it beats the heck out of just fighting and arguing and all the, in the frustration and discouragement and that, right.
And we can really, you got to, you choose your heart is my takeaway from this. Yeah. Shoot
[00:50:43] Cameron Watson: plan and choose your heart. It’s going to be hard no matter what, why don’t you choose the most productive hard there is.
[00:50:49] Kyle Jetsel: There you go. Love it, Cameron.