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there seems to be so much bad parenting today. I was trying to be kind about it, but it's just bad parenting. It's just wrong. Like, I'm sorry, It's it is it's wrong. The kids are, you know, to have a child who's got you know, we talk about child development. One of the things, as you know, you study is cognitive development in children. When you when you get into our profession, see, people seem to skip those classes because children who are six, seven, 12, 15, 16 generally don't have real good developed cognitive abilities to understand the long term implications of a decision. Yet we still make them make those decisions. What are we idiots like? Why are we doing this to kids? Welcome to Awake at the Wheel. In this Rounds Table edition we're going to be responding to a listener question regarding our episode on parenting. So I'm going to start out by reading the question that we received. So the question was, I wonder your thoughts on striving to be a winner in many situations it is the only thing that matters. I know that this is not politically correct, but I believe, as do many others, that winning is everything in some situations. So rather than Oren and I tackling this question on our own, we decided to have the person who asked the question on with us today. So our guest for today is Dr. Henry Svec. He is a retired psychologist who practiced for 30 years. He is the host of the ADHD Fix podcast, as well as the Invest Like a Honeybee podcast. He is the author of Don't Be a Wimp Race Strong Leader. He is the author of the ADHD Fix book, as well as his most recent book, What Grandpa Learned From His Honey Bees. The Little Book To Be Smart With Your Money. And I'll add most importantly from my end, Dr. Svec is my mentor and has been throughout my career and has become a dear friend over the last almost decade at this point. So, Henry, welcome to Awake at the Wheel. Thanks for having me, guys. Oren, did you want to add anything about Henry as well? Because I know that you guys have known each other for quite some time as well. Well, I'll just say, I don't know if Henry or Hank wants to go into this, but, you know, I knew him in one capacity or a couple. And basically I just saw somebody who didn't like people just talking a lot he wanted to do. And so and maybe it'll come up as we're talking and like organically. But I saw that unlike many of my colleagues, especially those on the board of directors that I was on, they talked a lot. They bemoaned the situation, they wrung their hands and Henry came in or Hank came in and said, Here's how you can fix it. Here's what you can do. He put the money up. He put he put his money where his mouth was, and nobody followed the charge, unfortunately. So that because of Hank. what was that PsychAid you're talking about? Okay, we can talk about that? Okay, so and then and it's because of Hank that I actually I joined the clinic, right? Because as I said, I think on the first podcast, I would have never I've had requests to join these clinics many times before. I always turn them down. It's not the kind of work I wanted to do in this area, but because Hank had asked me, I thought, You know what? You know, I trust his judgment. I trust his his clinical acumen. And if if this is something he started, this something he believed in, I thought it would be a good thing to to join. And I'm so glad I did. Almost three years ago, I guess. Yeah. So, Orin, you're saying Hank I'm saying Henry, it took me several years to start saying Dr Svec. So should I say Hank, Can I. Can I transition to Hank? Please, Hank is good, deal with your anxiety, Hank is great. So being a winner, I think this is something that the three of us share as far as a value and something that drives, you know, the work that we do in our lives in general. But, Hank, tell us a bit more about, you know, why or where this idea came from in terms of being a winner and why it's so incredibly important. And what I also want to touch on through this conversation is why is it falling off in society these days? So the transition for me happened probably in my college days. So, you know, I was undiagnosed ADHD for pretty much my first 40 years, 30 some years of my life. So the winning part, I didn't win much growing up. And in 1976, I was part of a football team and we were national champions in Canada. And so for that moment on that Friday night when we won at Varsity Stadium in Toronto, there's like 30,000 people is really a great experience. I was playing even though I had to do one of those walk on things. Please let me try out for your team stuff. But I was able to start and play and contribute to the team. And that night I was lying in this pool. It's true story. I'm floating in this pool and it's November. It's kind of cold, but the pool was heated. It was a starry night and I'm looking out and I said, At this moment I am one of the best on one. I am on the best team in Canada. And I contributed. And there was this incredible ball thing that made me start thinking about I can do some things and that whole winning philosophy. I mean, our head coach, Darren Simoni at the time now passed away suddenly during COVID. Always said the only thing that matters is winning like. And so that became part of that culture. So when I graduated Western and got on with life, it's kind of like, did I get everything I could out of myself today that I could? And that's the definition of winning for me. And but also winning, meaning if we're going to enter some field, whether it's therapy, chess, golf, the only thing that matters is being the best at that. And the question is, what does it take to be the best at that? And are you willing to pay the price? Because growing up, I was always told it's, you know, you're born with it or you've got all this hidden talent. Well, true, true story. It's not about that so much as are you going to put in the time and the work to be great. And that's what I think winning is. And that's how I got there. And that's that's amazing. And I like that story because it's not like I think people have this misconception that you're born with it. You either you have it or you don't. And I know you say this often, I say this often. No one's going to outwork us, and that's what contributes to being a winner. And I think that there's a lot of, I'll say, misconception about how one gets there, because people seem to think that, you know, you have to have motivation. Motivation doesn't just come out of nowhere. You have to build the habits first, and then maybe the motivation will come. But in those habits, you're going to be able to develop the work ethic that's going to make you a winner. I wonder, too, though, I was thinking about it this week, You know, when my parents came, my dad when they came as refugees, my dad was a butler. My mom was a maid for the ambassador and in Montreal. And then they came to this community and they were migrant farm workers. And so for $0.40 an hour, my dad's grinding away. And so I'm a product of that. So there is I don't know you guys, you can comment. Is there something about that chip on the shoulder thing or, you know, not supposed to make it thing, But of course now people look at that and go, yeah, of course you're doing well because you get all this whatever. But I got to tell you, that's how we started $0.40 an hour. And so, you know, and I think you've heard me say people complain to I said, well, when I graduated Michigan State, I had five jobs. The interest rates are 18%. I had three kids. I had no money. So what do you do? You keep working. So I don't know. It was just sort of a way to do things. It wasn't exceptional. It's just what you do. And I don't know, some of that came from what it what maybe was handed over from my parents. I don't I don't know. That we can ever rule out genetics. I mean, genetics have some, you know, role in it. But a couple of things. One thing I heard years ago, they said the worst thing you can ever tell your child is you're really smart. Okay? I tell my kids you're smart, but I say, that's not enough, Right. Because because kids think they can just rely on that. And we see this in university kids, they cruised through high school because they're smart. They can ace it, but they never learn those habits. And they never had that. Sometimes fear or that, you know, when you don't have something, you know, either you're afraid, you're afraid to lose it. Yet the little bit and that drive and you said about the you know, if someone tells you you can't do it or its implied, I call that the power of spite. I tried to teach that to my students and my patients where I say, you channel that. And somebody had interviewed a lot of leaders years ago, a lot of successful people, and they all had a story of somebody in their life usually in their childhood who either directly or indirectly had, you know, suggested that they could not do it. And instead of, you know, instead of falling backwards saying, oh, you know, poor me, why would they think that about me? They were like, F-you, I'm going to show you whether they said it to them directly or not. Okay. They were like, you know, I'm going to show them that it lit a fire inside of them. And I say to people, if if spite is the only thing that drives you, you're going to die a bitter person. But if you're able to channel it in that moment, rather than succumb to sadness and feeling, you know, attacked or, you know, belittled or something like that, you know, if you use that to drive you and then you and you build the habit, you build the wherewithal, and you get a taste of success, a taste of fulfillment that'll keep driving you. So it's a good starting point. Let me ask you this, though, because I can remember I mean, it happened through most people's lives, but in grade two, I was kept in at recess because I wasn't a good I couldn't color between the lines. Right. And all I kept thinking about is this teacher's an idiot. And that didn't change. I was at Western and a guy told me, You can never be in my faculty because you're too stupid. You're just a football player. And I thought, you're just an idiot. And I actually, because I was older, I told him, I said, You're just a blank-ing idiot. And so I kind of but I think I did internalize all was negative stuff because the hardest thing I have today is accepting success. I Can-- you throw any crap at me, I'm good. Let's roll up his sleeves, let's deal with it. But if things are good, I get nervous. So I know your both shrinks don't do too much analyzing on me here, but my point of all that is what is it? If you recognize early and then when you do make it, you don't give them any credit. You just say, Well, I just did what I had to do and that's it. I got lucky, whatever. But I don't like to give any of these people any credit because they're frankly idiots. They're losers and idiots who say to kids, You never do that. I can't tell you how many teachers told me. Even my graduate committee in my master's program said, We'll let you do a thesis if you promise us you'll never do a Ph.D. because you're embarrassing That’s horrible! Like, I was an adult guy. This is a group at Western, right? These elites at Western will let you do the math, but you don't embarrass us. Don't do a Ph.D. Anyway, so I had I actually told them I was lying because I knew I was going to do. I said, Oh, yeah, for sure. I'll never do a Ph.D. or anything. That changed. I believe you. Well, they're just they were idiots. And I think I told you the ultimate revenge they forgot, and then they hired me to lecture when I did get my Ph.D.. So I only did it to prove that, you know, you guys are so stupid, you can't remember. I'm the guy who's stupid. And it's it's it's just it's it's. Tricky because and I've shared this story, obviously, with the two of you in our conversations and on the podcast as well, that the situation that stands out to me was when I was nine and the doctor said to my dad, they didn't think I was listening. If she if her vision is as bad as she says it is, she's not even going to graduate high school. And, you know, in my nine year old, had I had a foul mouth as a kid. So that probably was this actual word, but it was f ing watch me. So I would say that, you know, to to touch on what Oren said that lit the spark for me. But certainly that idiot doesn't get any credit for what I've done. But I think it highlighted, okay, well, if people aren't going to believe in me, I have to believe in myself. Right? Well, again, it really goes back to framing. That's why I want to see the power of spite. Yeah, there's not power of giving Credit is just again, I'm not going to let you. I'm not going tolet your idiocy or prejudice or whatever else dictate my reality. It's a perspective is how you frame it. And again, other people, they hear that and they do succumb to that person's views of the of them. And they think, well, you know, I can't do it. Or if they don't believe in me, why even bother? It's really and why do we frame it one way or the other? I don't know. I do believe it's resilience, it's hardiness, It's you know, and I do think it's seeing our parents are having parents who model. They don't just lecture, they model. They show through their own actions, you know, how to be. And Henry, I mean, with your or Hank story, with your parents, you know, where they they basically show we can raise a family. We can, you know, raise we can we can we can support no matter what it takes. I think that's what you know, you don't give in. You have a you have something greater than you. And I don't know your parents, so I'm not sure what drove them, but at least to raise a family, Right. That there was something there. They had the why they had the why as to why they're doing it. Let me let me tell you a real quick story, if I can. In 1992, when the wall came down in Europe, Mary and I went over to the Czech Republic and my dad was there and my mom and my dad said, We're in Velké Karlovice, which is a small town where he was brought up and where he escaped. I had gone just to see where he had escaped communism. I wanted to see the spot where they were going to chase him and stuff. And he said, You know, I think we should have a party. And we're all looking at him like, What kind of party? Well, we should get all the Svecs and we should have a party. And we said, Well, half the Svecs were communists during the communist thing. And half the Svecs were hated by the Communists because they were always fighting communism and they didn't talk. So you could not talk to a relative who was on the other side or you'd lose your position in the party. So for 30 some years, these people never talked to. My dad had this brainstorm where he was going to have a party and invite all of them to get together and eat and dance and drink after the wall came down because the Communist Party was gone. So he organizes this party, we;re all going “Man, no one is going to show up”. This is going to horrible. 100, Svecs, 100-plus Svecs show up. It's really weird, right? Because there's none in Canada. You look right. That guy looks a bit like me. Like, that's weird. And they all started to get along. And it was this room of forgiveness. At the time. I didn't know what it was. It was this incredible feeling of love and energy from a group of people that you thought would be scrapping You know, when we were getting set up with 100 plate dinner, I thought, they're going to be throwing dishes. Are these breakable? Like what's going in it? I learned so much that day about what people do to one survive because some people had to be in the party to have a job, to survive. But how other and didn't make others better than others. It just made them different. How others sacrificed for their belief system that they were. They had menial jobs, if any. They had a hard time making ends meet because they wouldn't buy into the party. And so that was an incredible day. And I don't know if that means anything, but I think that was part of where all this come from and always this. And we can talk about my mom declaring Judaism soon because that's a crazy story, too. But that whole thing of learning, I think, made you realize that there's there's a lot to this. It's not just, you know, your parents. It's this whole history that's behind it. Right. Well, again, it's I will go back to the genetics saying what makes some side of the family, you know, say we're going to give in to communism and what makes the other say, hell no, we're going to resist and so on. There's something there. And again. But but if you're born with that, but you don't see it. If you don't have people again modeling it for you. If it doesn't, if you don't somehow integrate that, internalize it into your own belief system, into your values, then that that great thing, that human spirit, whatever it is, is lost. So luckily you maintained it. And what about the poor children, though, who don't have that thing to say? Like Malini you said, this guy's an idiot or what? I said in grade two or in college. Like, what is it you think people can work on? Or kids can have to be able to be strong no matter what. Garbage is thrown at them. And I'm not going to directly answer the question, but I think that that's part of what the problem with what we're seeing today with this widespread victimhood mentality is that perhaps people don't have a parent or an adult in their life that says, no, don't listen to that crap. You know, be the best that you can be a winner. Strive for excellence. So I think that should exist, but I don't think it exists at the degree that it should to be able to support kids through things like that. Right. And we also have a drink. I always say there's a drinking game where there's a word I'm going to just latch on to. And so it's going to be framing. We know like even with a traumatic incident, there are other factors that that will predict whether someone is more or less likely to have to develop PTSD. But one of the biggest ones is how does the person frame the incident? Do they blame themselves? Were they terrified? Do they feel helpless? You know, and that framing doesn't come from themselves, usually come from the people around them, whether it's at the time or afterward. So, yes, to Malini's point, if you have parents who if there's a bully or if there's someone a bad teacher or whatever, if the parent either does nothing or suggests that they're helpless to do anything or they feed into that terrible, you know, narrative that the kid is hearing, then the kid's going to go one way. But if the parent says, wait, wait, wait, no, that's not true, don't believe it. And here's why. There's another narrative. And if the parent goes, I'm going to show that teacher, even if the kid's a little brat and the teacher comes, the parent comes in and says, no, no, no, you can't pin that on my kid. Even though they got a security camera showing the kid burning the school down, whatever the case, then the kid learns that, you know, I'm invulnerable, I'm untouchable, I'm entitled. But the child doesn't learn to, you know, to to advocate for himself. So it really depends, I believe, on the framing, the lens through which the child learns to interpret these experiences. And that comes usually from parents. there seems to be so much bad parenting today. I was trying to be kind about it, but it's just bad parenting. It's just wrong. Like, I'm sorry, It's it is it's wrong. The kids are, you know, to have a child who's got you know, we talk about child development. One of the things, as you know, you study is cognitive development in children. When you when you get into our profession, see, people seem to skip those classes because children who are six, seven, 12, 15, 16 generally don't have real good developed cognitive abilities to understand the long term implications of a decision. Yet we still make them make those decisions. What are we idiots like? Why are we doing this to kids? Why? I don't understand We brought you on because you wrote the book. So I'm going to ask you, Hank. I mean, what do you think? I mean, we have our ideas. We've talked about it, but what do you think is one of the biggest factors, if not the biggest factor that has led to this shift over the years of how parents are, you know, dealing with their kids? Well, I think our profession is significantly responsible. We have people believing that, you know, any type of discipline is bad. And I think that came out of the whole reaction to behavioral B mod and all those things that, you know, you're too young to remember. But behavior modification was was a bad thing because you're punishing people for bad behavior and you're rewarding them with extrinsic rewards that have nothing to do with the intrinsic beauty of what they should experience and all this crazy stuff. And so we're really, you know, swinging back and forth. And I think we forgot the job of parenting is a job. It's hard work, It's thankless. Kids don't give you anything back usually. And it's what you do to raise children. And parents today seem to want everything from their children. It's like, I need to be around my kid as long as possible. Well, what's wrong with, you know, the job is for them to move away and be independent and take on the world. And maybe once in a while you get to comment on it or you get to visit and have a steak and talk about life. But generally speaking, the idea is when you're ready to die, they don't need you so and so. Today people are like, Oh, they're my my best friend. No, your kid can't be your friend. You're the parent for God. So even if you're 40, I get flack sometimes. I have three adult children and sometimes they wonder. And I said, No, you're not my friend. You'll never be my friend. That's crazy. And so that's a hard thing today because the world is inundated with that. Right. And I think we've lost our way. We forget it's a profession. Parenting is a profession and it's hard work and it's thankless. And that's probably why no one's having kids. Didn't story you asked for ot, it’s Hank now, right? I don't have to worry about the college doofus coming to visit me. But nevertheless. It's important, though. I mean, it's important for people to recognize it didn't just happen. It didn't there's not something in the water that suddenly made children to be so less resilient, to have so much less motivation. You know, there's something is going on in the parenting. And and you're saying that the kids are people aren't having kids. It's interesting. I'm having so many patients today in the age range where, you know, you'd normally be considering kids who are terrified of that at least are showing some reflection, like they're showing some insight saying, we're not ready. Usually because of finances. You know, they're afraid that they have this image. They have to have a house, whatever. So but, you know, there's far more anxiety around that than than before. I, I agree with you on that. but but like today I heard that it let's say I go to my doctor and I say, Doc, you know, I go up the stairs, I can't breathe. I'm not sleeping well. I'm snoring at night. And the guy looks at me. And meantime, in the three years since I've seen him, I've gained 180 pounds. But he can't reflect on that with me because that's fat shaming. So my doctor can’t even say, Hank, are you eating like Twinkies all day? Like what the hell are you doing? The old conversations you had with doctors and people are gone. You can't say the truth. You have to say, Well, here's Ozempic or here's another med. You should take because now you have a disease. Baloney! I don't do anything. And I go to McDonald's. He's like, Come on, I'm fat, I'm out of shape. Give me something. So. So I think it's an overriding culture with kids and everyone that we just say, No, that's okay. Well, it's not okay. Your art sucks. You had it. You had a bad day on the on the playground because you didn't practice. That's it. Is. And it's interesting to go back to what Oren was saying that people are having. I guess both of you said people aren’t having children or as many. Each of you have three. I only have one, and that is on purpose. Honestly and truly it is 100% on purpose. And you guys know, you know how highly I think of my son and what a wonderful child he is. But it's crazy out there right now. You know, there's there's and I'll be general in my commentary here, but the other kids out there, holy shit. Like they are not disciplined. No ambition. And I know my son's only 12, but I feel that there is a developmentally appropriate level of ambition and that is completely lacking with kids these days. And to be quite honest, my husband and I did speak about having another child and we're like, No, absolutely no. I can't bring another kid into this world. And, you know, maybe I'm a little bit nutty for having that view. But I figured since you guys brought that up, I'm an example of that. we should vote. I think you should have more children I think you should. I'd like to see more of you folks taking on the world, because I think your kid’s going to be a litte shit disturber that I think that-- or a big shit disturber, a lawyer or something. And hopefully we can hire him. I'll be alive when his lawyer, we’ll need him. But I guess, I don't know. I guess I'm you know, one of the things you get afraid. You know, when you have children, your life changes. And then when you have grandchildren, I've got grandchildren. You get psycho crazy about certain things because, you know, it affects the well-being of everything around. Right. So things have a different purpose and urgency because you're in the fourth quarter of life. You know, every day you wake up, it's a good day because you woke up so so there's this urgency to try to make things better. And what's gets frustrating is when you see people who can have children who don't, or politicians like we could stop people living on the street tomorrow and help them if we wanted, but it's not a priority. So we don't. And there's an industry behind it and all that stuff. So it just gets to be more and more frustrating when the resources are there. But people choose not to make it better for other people and that's a hard. And actually it's something I think when you say about like having grandkids, you know, like the idea of, you know, being an elderly, an older person in their eyes, that's actually that's one of the I think the one of the greatest. And when I say greatest I mean, the most significant but negative changes in society in the West today, which is kids are being taught by their by their, quote unquote, educators or parents or, you know, influencers to disregard the what the accomplishments, the views, the knowledge, the wisdom of their elders. They're being taught, oh, no, they're dinosaurs, they're colonialist, they're terrible people. They don't think about what they did in the context in which they did it. They're like, If I were back then I would be the one person who would liberate all my slaves back then. Obviously, I'm not saying slavery is good, but so many young people. And again, that's why we have the podcast awake at the wheel, because the educators, the parents, the people who have fallen asleep at the wheel haven't told their kids. Yes, you're right. Historically, we did a lot of shitty things, not we the people before us, and we learn from that. But we can't pretend that we would have done any different back then because that was the mindset and it took a collective. It took or a leader or somebody to show the way. And that leader, you know, that that leader has taught us certain things. So we can't just ignore all that. We just can't say, Oh, all these old people are bad. So I think that's one of the again, one of the worst developments in our modern history is to lose respect for our elders, the ones and I'm not saying that everyone's perfect, obviously, and there's a lot of elders who don't deserve respect, but you know, but but it's almost like a blanket shit all over them or disregard what they say. The now is what counts. And unfortunately, the people in the now, many of them are not people that I would think are inspirational, or admirable even. I was going to comment on, you know, every day I feel guilty when I turn on the TV and in the practice we we as you know, still today assist many Aboriginal folks. And I learned so much from that population about elders and the term elder in the Aboriginal world. I was always learning more and more and I think today I was thinking about, you know, I'm not Catholic, I'm not really Jewish, what I really am. I think you think of nature. I really been influenced by the idea of the great spirit nature balance. We have so much to learn from Aboriginal people, but I feel guilty every day because I mean, hit with all this. You did this to Aboriginal people, you know, I'm thinking, man, I didn't, I wouldn't a not iand Justin, your old man did it. Why don't you speak up about the schools he supported. But I think it's horrific and I feel horrible about it, but every day I feel horrible about it and then I feel guilty for not feeling shitty about it. So I don't know. I think there's if we would just you talk about Elder. I mean, I know in the Japanese culture, elders I think, are handled a different way. We need to learn, get out of our box a little bit and listen to Aboriginal people and listen in a positive way. Not around abuse or anything. And I and I think you're right. I mean, I think I just I just speak when asked to I don't tell and I don't tell anybody anything because, you know, what do we know? Like when I mentioned interest rates going up, people laughed at me. Five years ago, bankers were telling me all you know, I said, Well, we stress test our properties at 14%. And they go, Well, you're stupid. Why would you do that? And I go, Well, because I live through 22%. They are too negative. Interest rates will never get above 4%. We're at a 20 year high, so here we go. I don't know. So. So I guess, Oren, long story short, I don't know why we don't pull in from other cultures how how solutions are found to problems with children. And I know there's an arrogance, you know, and it's the arrogance, ignorance combination that I think in itself often just like this, the leaders, quote unquote, the leaders today are doing that. Or there's a mindset of and I've said that so many times. I mean, my whole book is around this where they believe that apologies are weak as like, no, no, that's the sign of strength to say, you know what, I screwed up. I recognize that I'm going to try to make it right. I'm going to shift course. I've learned something. You know, now we call it flip flopping, rather than saying learning from mistakes, learning from experience, learning from, again, other cultures, wiser people, whatever. And again, this is all about it's a perspective. Once again, story framing is how people are being taught to frame it, and it's the educators and the parents whose responsibility is to teach children how to frame their internal and external experiences in the most adaptive way. And people have fallen asleep at the wheel. And I think a huge part of that too, to add to that often is that it's not being learned. It's not being taught.

And this is something in our profession: 28:53

distress tolerance, people's distress tolerance is pathetic these days. You know, back to what I was saying before, that everyone is falling into this world of victimhood because the slightest distress, the slightest inconvenience, people throw their hands up and don't know what to do. And, you know, distress tolerance is something that we work with, obviously, with the clinical population. But I think in general, this is a skill that needs to be taught to kids at a pretty young age because everything is into reason to fold into ourselves and die. Without it, without a mistake. How do you ever learn anything like without being open to vulnerability and bombing? How could you ever be like the failures? I don't know about you guys, but I got a pile of them and I don't know if you're not allowed to make those failures, how do you succeed? And I think when parents think they're protecting children, they're they're encouraging future failures because these kids will not survive. Like the other day, Mary and I, I think like if I died tomorrow, two weeks later, it's like, yeah, yeah, whatever. It's always good, you know, because everybody everybody sort of has skills and so on. And I think the problem we have today is when most parents are gone, the children are going to be in trouble, they're going to be vulnerable. I read in the Globe and Mail over a million Canadian parents move in with their kids and buy them a monster house as their first house. So little Johnny and Susie can afford it. I don't want to live with my kids! I love them, but I don't want who the heck wants to do that and who would be so stupid to do that and not have them have to grind and achieve and fail. And then events like I always go back to this in 1988. No, I'm sorry, 1985. I'm at the Foodland grocery store the day I got paid, because back then you'd get cash and take it to the grocery store. So I go to the bank CIBC, and I say, I'd like $100, please, to buy groceries. And she says, Sorry, sir, you have $0.29 in your account. And it was the first of the month I got paid once a month. And Mary and the two kids are home and I'm supposed to bring home groceries. I had to use a credit card to buy groceries. Now, I learned from that. Obviously, it still has an impact on me today. If if dad or mommy gave me 100 bucks to buy groceries every week, I wouldn't have had that experience. That motivated me to to try to take care of my family. So by denying people pain and suffering and I don't mean pain and suffering as in the clinical sense, I meant inconvenience, needing to strive not. And the big word I say no one knows today is wait, wait. No one will wait for anything. If you make people wait and life is so much better. But we're denying people that opportunity, right. And the ability to delay gratification. And we know this research showing the famous marshmallow test. I don't know if I talked about another podcast, but yes, that is the number one or one of the top predictors of success. And you're right. Exactly. It's instant gratification. And it goes back to parents. You want to shut up the child. You don't want the child to go through, you know, suppose it distress at not being given what they want right then and there. Yet we're not teaching that we are. But you know, others are not teaching that. And again, I hate to use cliches, but, you know, we talk about this bubble wrap generation, but we're doing and I remember I've I've spoken to so many people in various industries and I asked them and this has been for the last 15 years, and if things only got worse, I say, what's your biggest complaint with having new employees, young employees at every single one bar? None has said the exact same word. They're entitled that sense of entitlement. Okay. what does that mean, Oren? They feel that they deserve whatever. It's it's kind of a narcissism almost like that, that they think that they should be able to come in when they want. They shouldn't be forced to do something they don't want to do. They shouldn't be talked down to. And I'm not talking about, you know, inappropriate talking down to they shouldn't be course corrected or, you know, or told, you know, fixed. They should have their problems fixed. And the things that happen in the workplace. Yeah. Yeah. They just expect everything and they have that attitude and it's that attitude. And the attitude is, you know, it's correlated with behaviors and and you know, it's and they've said again, I said it for 15 years at least and it's only got worse. I haven't heard anyone say you know that oh hey this new crop of young ones, they really are ambitious and they've got drive in everything. I'm hearing people saying, I've got it. You know, I've got new employees who say, Well, I'm going to come in at 11 and I'm going to leave at three because I want to avoid rush hour stuff like what? What world, what fantasy world are you living in? And as Hank, we talk about hardship. So the blow is cushioned because if they say, screw this job, I don't want it, well, they can afford to look for another job because they live at home, a lot of them. And they have their parents, you know, doing everything, paying for everything. And so they don't have that sense of urgency. They don't have that fire under them. They don't have the fear that tomorrow I'm not eating. And again, I'm not advocating unnecessary, struggling, you know, But I think the struggle is important. That's how you learn to adapt. That's how you learn to survive and then to thrive. I can say that reminds me of a there's a viral video that's out there right now and people are actually taking this seriously. It's this I'm going to say a 20 something year old woman who's just, you know, so upset sharing this story about her workplace that they are not accommodating of her time blindness, meaning she's late every day. She cannot get deadline, means she cannot get her work done. And, you know, it's not her that's the problem. It's that the employer doesn't recognize that she has this disorder. And for anyone listening to audio only, I'm quoting because it's not a disorder of time blindness, rather than taking accountability for herself and saying, okay, well, what mechanisms can I put into place to ensure that I'm doing my job properly, but instead I'm the victim and everybody needs to accommodate me? And what I'll add is, you know, time, blindness or difficulty with managing time, estimating time that can be a factor of some disorders, but in and of itself is not a disorder. We're all like, what the hell, right? When my mom was getting well, my mom was getting care at home. I don't know if I told you this story, but we had a few government hours a day. The rest were private pay. The government folks would always show up late. Like we're talking 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour. My mom needed a lot of care near the end, so the private staff would say, look, I don't appreciate staying, you know, later because you people keep you. So I shouldn't say you people, but you folks keep coming late. And so I kept getting called to meetings because they said my staff were harassing the government workers. So finally I said to the supervisor, The government workers, what is on time mean to you?

Like, if it's a 1: 35:38

00, what time should they be there? I said 5 to 1. She goes, Well, that's early. I go, Well, ten after one she goes, That's not bad. I said, Quarter after one, she does pretty good. I said, 130. She goes, Well, that's pushing it a bit. But we still because I said, No quarter to one is on time. Anything after that sucks. So don't. And then of course we got into it. But there is this and these were the supervisors, these were the expert, what you would call elders who were training this population. And so, you know, and this is where we had cameras and electronics. We knew exactly when people came and left and what they did, people sleeping on The coach was mom sat there and watched television. And so you look at this and you go, that's why we have a million immigration files not processed because these people don't work yet. There's no other reason. If we had a million trees that needed to be planted and we weren't planting them, we're not planting trees properly. Find another way. But there doesn't seem to be that urgency to be the best you can when you show up for that job or when, if you were winning, would be doing your job the best you can today. That's it. But no, we can't. But I'm going to give credit, Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, the Dilbert creator. He has a podcast. He drives me crazy because he's he's quite he admits that he's a narcissist and he called himself an altruistic narcissist. And he doesn't actually understand what narcissism is. He comes up a grandiose he's called himself a grandiose narcissist with pride, not understanding. So I'm going to put notwithstanding my criticism of his lack of knowledge of narcissism, he has this phrase. He has a great way of framing things. And he maybe earlier this month or the month before, he has this phrase called design is destiny. And what he means by that is if in any system or any any, let's say, any type of system, if something is designed a certain way, you can predict the outcome. And the fact is, as you're describing, if people are being paid, regardless of how how well they work, regardless of what time they show up, well, that's destiny. You can predict that. They're not going to try that hard if a person's job is contingent or if their continued job is contingent on working hard on doing well. If you only get paid if the people are happy, if you get paid, you know, for the quality of your work and so on, you know, that will predict that the person's going to work harder and to succeed. So to the point that we started with today about the whole idea of success, right, the system, whether it's at school, whether it's in the families now, whether it's at work, we're not designing systems. We're not inculcating people with a mindset that says this is how you succeed. And more importantly, this is why you want to succeed, goes back to the why we are doing that. Why do you want to succeed? For most people, too young people, especially males, I think we talked about it before, females less so, but males, they are just they're not looking to succeed. They're looking for sustenance. They just want the bare minimum. They just want be able to make it through the day because they don't have that greater why of why should I push myself harder? What's at the end of this? What's the goal? They just want they're looking at the now they're not thinking about five years from now, ten years from now, 20 years from now, they're not getting a sense of fulfillment from success. And that's again, the system is broken. We have to design a better system. Well, if you're an outlier, I mean, so we're outliers, the three of us, and Dan too, If you're an outlier and you're in that environment, it's brutal. I was at an internship at a hospital and I was there only a month, and the chief psychologist comes in, closes my door, opens the window, lights up a cigarette because that's the only way he could smoke and says, You got a problem. I said, What's my problem? You don't read enough newspapers. He said, You come in in the morning, get a coffee, get the globe, get a bunch of papers, close your door and don't leave your office till noon. I said, Why would I do that? He says, Because you're making too many changes around here. No one's comfortable. You're always pushing. I go, Well, that's what I and I was getting paid by the hour and I just I couldn't see incompetence. It drove me crazy. And they called quality of life units places where people had no quality life. So I said to them, I said, this is the quality of life. You know, you live here for a week and tell me how you're feeling after a week. Well, you got a problem. So I hear you learn. But there's outliers everywhere. The outliers in government. I feel sorry for it. There's people going at work today in government who care, who can't work because the colleagues are telling them, Stop it, stop trying to fix this. Let's just get through it. And I don't know how we change it. I don't know how we empower the outliers who are brave. I was not brave enough to stay in government, but if there are outliers and there are in government, how do we get them to stay? Or educators who who fight for what's right? How do we empower them to keep? It's hard. It's so hard and that reminds me of a contract work that we did with a someone in the public sector. And I remember having that exact same problem where I tried I pushed to make some real changes because I found this as an opportunity to make some changes with the system that we knew there problems with. But the pushback for, again, working too hard and trying too hard, it was such a puzzling and upsetting experience. And as you guys know, previously I had aspirations to go into politics and I just I don't know. I don't know what the answer to your question is because I've stepped back and I don't know if I could do something like that, because there are far too many people who push against doing the right thing. And it feels weird even saying that out loud. But that seems to be at least my perception of people pushing against those who want to do the right thing. And those outliers who are doing that. Well, I've been saying this for quite some time, and if you look at the history of humanity, okay, like from the beginning of a document history, you take 100 people, statistically, you're only going to have maybe one or two real leaders. And historically, if someone who wasn't a real leader was a leader was to nepotism, you know, and they usually, unless they had some good people around them, they were a disaster. So the real leaders in any tribe, any group, you know, again, they would emerge through strength, through intelligence through, you know, through team building, whatever it was. But again, it was a tiny percentage. And then with technology, so many people who would have normally been a follower, they got elevated to a place of leadership. And this has been over the last however many hundreds of years, especially the last hundred years, I would say. And that's what I think you're seeing. If you had only the top leaders in these positions, like real leaders, then when someone has some innovation, when someone is willing to break the system to fix it again or to make these changes, people go, yes, that makes so much sense. But because there's such mediocrity being, you know, elevated to a position they didn't attain by, you know, by actual ability, they're terrified of change, you know, because it's going to take effort. Again, they don't have that. Why for them, they want comfort. They want the paycheck or whatever else that happens to be, or the little glory, the sense of glory that they get for being in this position, this, you know, control power, whatever illusions they're holding. But again, the true leaders, you just need a few of them in in each system and then would make a change. But when there's one leader of true leader surrounded by ten people who are not leaders, but they're in those positions, it is it's discouraging. And they will do everything in their power to break that person. And then they go screw it. It's not worth it. So I just we need more leaders and we need more people not I don't know how we change. I don't know what the change, what the answer is. But really, technology has allowed so much mediocrity to rise to where it shouldn't be. And if I can make one quick story about that, to back to parenting. You know, I my my wife was mortified because she's old school Japanese and she you know, she's and I don't know if I told this on another podcast, but my middle daughter, she's such a high achiever. I mean, she just like we're talking about high nineties even university like just amazing. And from a young and I don't know where it comes from because I was not like that. I got good grades, but I did not have this desire to do so well. But actually I did when I was younger than I just got lazy and did other bad stuff. But anyway, so my middle daughter in grade school, she couldn't believe that these kids were like, you know, they were slacking off. They didn't do their homework, you know, And and I told her from the youngest of ages, I said, Hey, I said, don't be upset with me cause you got upset because why aren't they you know, why, you know? And she was and I said to I said, No, no, I said, Be happy every time you see one of those kids. I said, They're your competition. And I said, You're going to step all over them. And I said, And just every time you see that, and it shifted her and, you know, and she did that junior high school, high school, university. She hasn't quite learned, I have to keep reminding her. I say, you know, they are your competition. And my wife is saying, Oh, that's so bad because you're telling her that her friends are lazy or incompetent or whatever. I said, No, no, it's good. You know, like, I don't want her to be distressed over, you know, her peers. I want her to be encouraged, motivated. It's going to be, you know, you're gonna be walking on clouds when when the rest of the people are, you know, swimming in the mud. So I'm mixing metaphors here, I think. But anyway, I think it's really important for parents. Again, it goes back to framing to make sure that the children know once again why why should they do what they're doing, you know, whether it's intrinsic, whether it's some kind of reward, whatever it is, give them the why, and don't be afraid to call it like it is. And by the way, I think we've talked about this before. I told my child of the lost wages. Don't say it to them. Don't say that my dad says this because they you're going to be hated. Have that social savvy. Right? Smile gently, be nice. Okay. Let them let them just, you know, waddle off into mediocrity or worse. Okay. And you yourself know that you're going to keep pushing yourself because you are going to succeed and it's going to be fulfilling. But we can define it for people by saying today, when you woke up, did you do the best you can to get the most out of what you've been provided? So if you have a house over your head and you had food today, then you have privilege and you need to take advantage of that. You're responsible. You have to do more than just survive or just be a taker because you have a house. There are people who wake up today on a landfill dump somewhere in a middle Eastern country who have to find enough food to recycle, to buy food, and they're going to die when they're certified from disease. And there's millions of people like that. We woke up, we're doing a podcast, We had something to eat. We have great dinners waiting. We have all this. So the question is, what did you do with that opportunity? And I think if we teach children that and we define that to get the most out of what they've been given, we'd be far. But I think today that's not the the message. The message is, you know, get away with what you can. The government owes you. And people forget communism. I mean, I went to the Czech Republic. It was pathetic. Under the communist system, there were wealthy people, but they were all high up in the Communist Party who did nothing for it. They never earned anything. They never did anything. And if you spoke up against them, the only people with guns when I got to the Czech Republic were the old communists. They had pistols they'd walk around the community with with open carry. And I'm looking, What are these guys? Oh, that's a communist. Well, they should be out of power. And that was the most horrible situation. It was worse than anything we're talking about. So when people talk about we need more government control, they should go visit some of these countries. We're so sheltered here and we don't recognize what it's like elsewhere. And Oren and I have spoken about this in many of our other episodes that, you know, it almost seems like people are manufacturing problems. But I want to segue a little bit, Hank, into a. Sorry Malini. So before you segue, we just got something that Hank said. Just want to just bring back to one more point. Sorry, because everything Hank said about like, you know, again, what are you doing with that privilege? That you didn't earn it, but now how are you going to capitalize on it? If I can just say two things. One, what kids are being taught is if you have privilege, then you should feel bad about it. And you know, because you know, because other people don't have it. So instead of, you know, trying to elevate yourself and then one day maybe you can, you know, give it a four hour, pay it forward, it's like, no, no, you know, you should feel bad about that. So they're being taught not to strive. I think it's such a damning shift in perspective and way that whether again, whether it's the parents or the teachers, they're saying it's guilt, guilt, guilt. And it's a race to the bottom. It's like instead of trying to elevate everybody's No, no, no, there's people down here, so let's bring ourselves down there. And now that's what they say. Of course, they're happy to live where they are. As you say, the elites are where they are. But these average people and it's just it's it's such an unhealthy perspective. So I just want to just add that that that's one of the changes in parenting and education that we're seeing. Join us for the continuation of this conversation. Next week on Awake at the Wheel. As much as we love listening to ourselves speak, especially me, we would love to hear from you as well. So our emails are in the description below. If you would, please write to us with your questions, feedback, comments, topics that you'd like us to cover. We can do this together. The two of us, but it's much better if we do it together. So we look forward to hearing from you. And we are going to have a segment called Roundtable where we're going to discuss the the feedback and the questions and so on from our audience. And we will we will take it to the next level. We're going to help you be able to deal with some of these issues that you might be bringing us or it's going to be a topic for us to explore together. And we really look forward to building a community, a community of like minded people who want to do right by others, not just for themselves.