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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.
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Alright guys, we got a special guest on the podcast today.
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Her name is Nicole Wilkie, so she is a child welfare researcher, missionary, author and
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marriage and family therapist, and she currently serves as the director of the Center of Applied
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Research for Vulnerable Children and Families, bridging research and practice to improve
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faith-based care for vulnerable children and families around the globe.
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So her and her family currently reside in Peru where her and her husband do a lot of
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different ministry work there, and they are really overall just trying to improve the
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nationwide system for children in alternative care.
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And so I'm really, really excited to bring this conversation to you today because every
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now and then I'll get a pitch for a book or for someone to come on the show, and I can't
1:05
even remember why I originally wanted to have them on the show, but there is a single word
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that was in the subtitle of her book, which here's her book right here, guys, you can
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check it out in the show notes.
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The book is called Overcoming, okay?
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Great, I like Overcoming, Overcomers, but here's the subtitle.
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What scripture and science say about resilience, and if you know anything about me, anything
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about this ministry, anything about the show, you know, I talk about resilience all the time.
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We're here to equip men to push back darkness.
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How do we do that?
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By helping you forge spiritual, mental, physical resilience, right?
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And so I knew I went to get into this, but specifically the day today, I know we talk
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a lot about you guys being resilient, right?
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And I know we have about 5% of our listeners are ladies and a lot of y'all are working
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on your own personal resilience and the resilience of your families, but this conversation is
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going to be like, okay, how can we take those things that we're learning about resilience
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personally and apply that to our children?
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How do we have resilient kids?
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Because look, she had a rough upbringing, Nicole did, okay?
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So she was one of 11 kids, she had 70 foster siblings, she had some early real trauma in
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her life.
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And so how was she able to look at those things appropriately and not be defined by them,
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but then, you know, become an overcomer herself?
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But yeah, in this book, we talk about, you know, what is resilience specifically?
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How do we approach resilience?
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And also, what is trauma?
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You know, we live in a day where people are like, oh, somebody wrote my name down wrong
2:25
on my Starbucks cup and it's like, oh, that's a microaggression somehow and now they've
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experienced trauma.
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And it just doesn't help us put things in the right categories.
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But we do talk about the differences between trauma and early adversity and normal stress.
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And then also the problems with being a snow plow parent, which some of you guys, you just
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got offended, which means you should listen to this episode because some of you guys,
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you're the snow plow in front of your kid or some of you allow your wives because they
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have a dominant personality, you allow them to do it, but that's another discussion, I
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guess, for another day.
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But you want to push all the problems out from in front of your kids.
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You don't want them to experience any adversity, you don't want them to ever be uncomfortable,
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to ever be hot or cold or tired or disappointed and how that doesn't lead to overall strong
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and resilient kids.
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It doesn't lead to kids who have an overcomers mindset.
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It leads to kids that are looking around waiting for mommy or daddy or some other authority
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figure to help them out and keep them from experiencing any discomfort.
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But then we just get into this overall idea about how having particular strategic relationships
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in our lives, that those help us build resilience and we got really practical at different points
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about, okay, well, how does it apply to our kids?
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How can we make sure that we have resilient kids?
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So a lot of dads and some moms in this audience, guys, if you have kids and you want them to
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be resilient, this is one you need to listen to.
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So without further ado, let's get into it.
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Nicole Wilkie, welcome to an Donda life of man's podcast.
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Hey, well, I'm so glad to be here.
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Thanks for having me.
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I'm excited to have you.
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I'm really excited to get into your book, but you've told me off air that you don't have
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the best internet in the world.
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And it's because you're not here in America, right?
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There's never any internet problems, even though I'm like the number one cause of internet
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problems, apparently in my entire neighborhood.
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That's a story for another day.
4:05
But what the heck are you doing in Peru?
4:07
Yeah, well, my, my family and I live here, my husband leads a coalition of churches and
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faith based nonprofits or changing the system for care for vulnerable children.
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Okay.
4:20
And so I've heard your, your husband's also a fan of undaunted life.
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So shout out to Mr. Wilkie, we're a big fan of you now as well.
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But it's interesting for me because obviously you can see what someone's doing like right
4:30
now in their life, whatever it is in terms of, if they're, you know, volunteering or their,
4:34
their profession, sometimes it can tie all the way back to stuff that they experienced
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in their childhood and how that impacts things.
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And there's actually a quote from your book, which we'll get to it.
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Well, I might as well go and introduce it, but then we're going to get into it.
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It's called overcoming what scripture and science say about resilience.
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But there's a quote that I thought was apropos to kind of talk about who the heck you are.
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It says, I, Nicole was raised in a foster and adopted family.
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There are 11 of us kids now 11.
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And I've had over 70 foster siblings in my lifetime, despite multiple advanced degrees
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growing up among siblings who experience early adversity has been the most demanding and
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educational experience of my life so far.
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I had a front row seat to the consequences of hardship and the glories of resilience.
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People will be like, wait a minute.
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That doesn't fit.
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But don't worry guys.
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We will get there.
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But for you.
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Talk about growing up Nicole.
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Yeah.
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Well, I feel blessed to have had a very atypical childhood when that I can look back on and
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although I think the current cultural trend is to say like, oh, I just had the worst childhood
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growing up.
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And some people genuinely did.
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I didn't.
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I had lots of hardship in my life and lots of, you know, exposure to the very dark things
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of this world, but I also had parents that love me.
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I knew the Lord from a young age and I knew this was part of our family's calling.
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And I now believe it's part of our family's generational calling to be part of caring for
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vulnerable children and families and that's what the Lord has done in my life.
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And you know, seeing that growing up and then seeing it professionally as I've become a
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clinician and now I work in research and for the Christian lands for orphans, I have seen
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time and again, both through other people professionally and personally and even in my
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own adversity and trauma that God can take what the enemy means for evil and use it for
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good.
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And that we can hold the dual truths of simultaneously saying, hey, this was not the way that it
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was supposed to be.
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This is not God's original design.
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We're not talking garden of Eden stuff here and simultaneous to that we can lament that
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we can grieve that and we can know that God can take this horrible situation and he's
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going to use it for our good and his glory.
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And for me, that's tremendously hopeful.
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Well, Nicole, I've been reliably informed that if you've experienced any type of trauma
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or if anything bad has happened to you, that that is now your identity.
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And that also is currency in our modern culture because if you live in a victimhood culture,
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which is the modern West capital, W West, if you are a victim, then you have cards to
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play.
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Whereas before it was like, well, if you were a victim of something, we only gave you cards
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if you overcame that, I mean, no pun intended with the name of the book, but we don't live
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in an overcomer culture now where we value overcomers where we're the heroes of the movie
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or the book or the people that overcome were so drawn to those stories, but culturally
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as it pertains to things that aren't happening in the Marvel universe, it's now it's your
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trauma.
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That's what defines you.
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It's your ailment.
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We literally make up ailments out of thin air.
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So one, we can prescribe you pills and make money and number two, so that we can like analyze
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every part of you like now it's called clinical depression, whereas a hundred years ago, it's
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just melancholy and it was like, okay, there are some things here that I think are important
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to discuss, but the ultimate, you know, vision was not naval gazing.
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It was, yeah, you know, this sucks, but do you want to get over it or do you want to
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wallow in it?
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Does that make sense?
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Oh, it totally does.
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And I would say for me, you know, there, I think there are genuine situations in which
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people need extra support.
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There's no question about that.
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Of course, of course.
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So societally different, if you look a hundred years ago, you know, this is one interesting
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example that I think might resonate with you all.
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In the military, guys are seeing absolutely horrific stuff, right?
8:19
Absolutely horrific stuff, but it's really interesting because there was a time in which
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you would have this sort of buffer zone between being in a war, you would get on a ship.
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And so it might take anywhere from a month to three months to get back to your home.
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And you've got this space to consider and a buffer space to process and overcome and
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move to your next space.
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Right.
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Now we live in this era where things are rapidly changing and super quick and people
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are trying to turn on a dime and I think what's happening there is we're not being given
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the space to recognize adversity as normative.
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This in fact is going to happen to every single person.
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And that was understood back in the day, right, whether you were in the military, whether you
9:17
were experiencing, you know, extreme illness, injury, even really hard things like domestic
9:23
violence.
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Everyone was going to experience something really difficult.
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Everyone knew that.
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That was normal.
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And certainly there are situations of extreme cases that this would probably not apply to.
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Okay.
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And we can talk about those at a later juncture, but for the most part, I think what has happened
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now is there is this culture that we're often called collective trauma.
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So we go through a hard thing like the pandemic, it's collective trauma.
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And for me as somebody who works with children who have experienced abuse, neglect, violence
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and exploitation, I think it's important to distinguish that there's a different definition
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of trauma here.
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I'm not saying it's not difficult.
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I'm not saying it's not adversity.
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It certainly is.
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But that doesn't mean that everyone is going to have long term symptoms and negative effects.
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And instead, I think we're missing this piece of the community coming alongside collectively
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recognizing that we can go through difficult things and that that does not lower the ceiling
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on your future potential.
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This does not define your life.
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There's so much more to you.
10:30
One, we're going to get into trauma here in a second because you're hitting on some stuff
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that I really do want to get into because there's no, okay, maybe I'll get into a little bit
10:39
now, but then I'll put it back in the bottle and then we'll let it out again later.
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But it's like, okay, in terms of my background, I like Celtic origin.
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So that's Irish and Scottish, which is very apparent by anyone that looks at me.
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And then there's also Choctaw Indian.
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And so, you know, the Celtic peoples were not treated very well by the English and things
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like that.
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And Choctaws, we enslaved and we were enslaved and we were in slavers, right?
11:07
We murdered people and raided people and raped people and all those types of things and those
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same things happen to my people.
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I feel no connection to those events because I'm not there.
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I wasn't there.
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I didn't experience those events.
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Those things didn't happen to me.
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So I don't have this generational trauma.
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But you said something earlier, Nicole, where you, you talked about you specifically having
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a generational calling, we seem to be pulled culturally towards the generational hurt and
11:33
generational stuff and oh, this thing happened to my great, great grandfather.
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So somehow I'm owed something by society or something else and it's like, okay, calling
11:42
looks forward in the generational trauma looks way backwards.
11:47
And so talk a little bit more about you specifically generational calling and how that's a better
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way to really think, think overall.
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You know, when we think about resilience and we'll get into this in a little bit, but we
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require something called protective factors to help us to be overcomers.
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And there's a lot of things that can be protective factors, but there's kind of a category of
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them that clusters around things like future optimism for the future or having a vision
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or considering things long term, right?
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And this makes sense, right?
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Because if you're in survival mode and you're like only looking at today or maybe this minute,
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it's very difficult to get out of that cycle and that pattern.
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But when we're able to spend our sites and help our children and the generations of our
12:30
family set their sights on long term, what is the story for our family?
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What is our contribution to building the kingdom, right?
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It is not about us as individuals.
12:43
We in the West live in an individual society, but really this is about the church.
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This is about the body of Christ.
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And so when we see our family tucked up under that as a part of that, our family does have
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a specific calling and for me personally, I think I just knew from a young age that my
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experiences were going to, they were a stepping stone to something more.
13:09
So I experienced my own situation of an extreme illness that left me bedridden for two years
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when I was in middle school, like the most awkward time of life, right?
13:19
And I have a distinctive memory.
13:23
We couldn't figure out what it was, it was super mysterious in the end, it ended up that
13:28
my appendix had burst and I was septic for two years.
13:31
And they just didn't find it.
13:33
And I remember laying in bed one night, my mom's laying there with me and I, you know,
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13, 14, just ranting like so upset about this.
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This is unfair blah, blah, blah.
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And I remember her saying to me, I just need you to know that I'm listening to you now.
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And I trust and believe that God is going to use this story as ministry.
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And I was like too cool to say it, right?
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But there was just this teeny, tiny seed of an idea that made me think, maybe this is
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all worth something.
14:07
And when you start to think about purpose and what it can be and how it can contribute,
14:14
all of a sudden it's not just a net loss, right?
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Just can actually, God can take this thing that is no doubt something that I grieve,
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something that I lament, something that I suffer a lot of negative feelings over.
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He can take that and he can use it as a launch pad to something better long term.
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And that is what I hope to cultivate in generations of our family.
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My husband and I talk about this, like our kids are going to experience hard things.
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There's no question.
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This world isn't about to get easier, but they can be known, our family could be known
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for being overcomers rather than being known for our future being dictated by our current
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circumstances.
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Right.
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And as I say this, I know this is going to come off very self-help-y, but you get to
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define you.
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And so you are who God says you are.
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I think that's a great way to comport yourself and operate.
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But in terms of any past trauma or any past success, you get to define that.
15:14
So I recently had a conversation with Wes Huff, and I can't remember if we said it during
15:18
the interview or afterwards, but every time something cool happens for one of us, which
15:22
for him overnight, boom, in an instant, he became the most famous Christian apologist
15:26
on planet earth, perhaps ever, right, maybe, you know, other than C.S. Lewis.
15:29
But anyway, he looks at that as an opportunity to go low, to come low, to humble himself
15:37
because of the success he has.
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Why?
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Because what is the source of the success?
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Where do all good things come from?
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They come from the Lord.
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He didn't manifest those things.
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He didn't look in the mirror and give affirmations to himself, and that ended up giving him on
15:49
the Joe Rogan experience.
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No, but the same thing happens with any bad thing that has happened to us.
15:55
Whether we were a party to it or not, because there are things that people are like, you
15:58
know, my favorite example is my pastor, buddy, Joby Martin says, he's like, people will come
16:02
up to him and be like, Satan's attacking my finances.
16:04
And then they'll describe what's going on.
16:06
It's like, Satan's not attacking your finances.
16:08
You're spending more than you make.
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You're a moron.
16:10
Stop it.
16:11
It's like, you know, you're doing this to you.
16:12
But sometimes you don't get to choose the life that you're, you're leading.
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You don't get to choose what was in your past and all those things.
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And so let's go and get into the book again.
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The name of the book is overcoming what scripture and science say about resilience.
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So let's just start 30,000 foot and then we'll delve in why this book, why now, why you,
16:31
why do it with a co-author who's Amanda Heil's Howard.
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So get into all that.
16:35
Yeah.
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Well, Mandy and I have been working together about seven years and I knew she was just
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a great, the gal for the job here.
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But for both of us, you know, she's worked in, in research in this space and clinical
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work in this space.
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She's been a kinship care provider as well.
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And so have I.
16:55
And, you know, when we look at these things, we were seeing a very different reality than
17:01
what was being communicated largely within kind of the child welfare field, if you were,
17:06
if you will, or a kind of a popular culture, right?
17:09
We're hearing if you experience hard things, that's bad for you.
17:13
There's a limit on your potential.
17:15
You're probably going to end up, you know, homeless or committing suicide or in the criminal
17:20
justice system.
17:21
And the truth is research does say that that is more likely, but that's at a population
17:26
level, meaning if you take a group of people who have experienced these hard things and
17:30
you look at them 20, 30 years later, there's a higher likelihood that's not looking at
17:34
an individual and saying you will necessarily fulfill those outcomes.
17:39
So there was a missing narrative in that as researchers, we were also in the research
17:45
literature reading things around just kind of seeds of ideas around resilience and overcoming.
17:51
And we were seeing this constantly kids who should not succeed were, you know, in the
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Paralympics and we're starting nonprofits and we're living these amazing lives.
18:02
So what is this common denominator?
18:05
And we believe that resilience is a big part of it.
18:07
So for us, we're bringing both that personal and that professional perspective, but what
18:12
we really wanted to do was boil down what science says, which interestingly, like every
18:19
single time good science is going to confirm the truth of scripture, right?
18:23
And we're seeing these, this like thread tying together the truth of scripture, things like
18:29
we're seeing horrible trauma in, in scripture.
18:32
There's no question.
18:33
There are a lot of traumatic things, but we're also seeing God has a plan for you.
18:36
He's created good works for you.
18:37
He's made you to be an overcomer.
18:39
And then within the science, we're seeing things like different characteristics, different
18:44
mindsets, different behaviors that make it more likely that you will have positive outcomes
18:50
long term despite your early adversity.
18:53
So that's the encapsulation that is in this book.
18:56
And then we just get super practical.
18:57
Half of the book is just straight up like do this, not that because I think most parents,
19:04
those caregivers, they don't want to read the research.
19:07
Like they're like, tell me what to do and how to do it better.
19:09
I'm trying to be too, too many needs with too few resources as our hope is just to kind
19:15
of cut to the chase there.
19:17
You really do cut to the chase.
19:18
And that's apparent in the book because I mean, I'm, I'm a very slow reader.
19:21
It's just, you know, I, I talk twice as fast as I read.
19:24
I, I can't get those things to be some patico, but I, I, I, you know, dusted this book off
19:28
in an afternoon because you really just kind of get to the point.
19:31
And so some people love to me and are like, I love Jordan Peterson.
19:34
I love his writings, but sometimes in a chapter, you're like where I don't know where we are,
19:38
where we are.
19:39
I don't know where we're going.
19:40
And I can't remember where we've been, but somehow by the end of the chapter, he brings
19:44
it all together.
19:45
I mean, he's a super genius, but we've, we've used the word resilience a lot in this conversation.
19:50
And again, guys, if you've been listening to the show for any length of time, what are
19:54
we here to do equipment to push back darkness?
19:56
How do we do that?
19:57
We're helping you forge spiritual, mental and physical strength, nope, resilience.
20:02
We focus on resilience.
20:03
We are obsessed with resilience, but a lot of people don't talk about that.
20:06
A lot of people don't know how to spell it.
20:08
So Nicole, you don't have to spell in front of me because I don't know what everyone's
20:10
spelling.
20:11
You know, acumen is, it happens, you know, you know, we don't know how to spell anything
20:14
or calculate anything anymore.
20:15
We can't even remember phone numbers.
20:16
But what is resilience from a 30,000 foot perspective, let's stay there and then we'll get even
20:21
farther into it.
20:22
Yeah.
20:23
But well, I'm just going to keep it really short, resilience is the ability to overcome
20:28
obstacles and leave them, not just bounce back from them, but actually leave stronger
20:34
and more capable.
20:38
We love that.
20:39
We love that definition.
20:40
For me, I typically have to elucidate it a little bit further.
20:43
This is how I explain it.
20:44
Typically, when I'm when I'm speaking live, I use it in an athletic frame and I like to
20:49
talk about things that guys are like guys really like watching strength feats.
20:53
You know, strong man competitions.
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Hey, no one's been ever to ever pick up this stone before.
20:57
And then one guy does it.
20:58
Oh, everybody loses their minds, but it's like half Thor Bjornsson, I think is the last
21:03
man to win all three of the biggest strength, strong man competitions in the same calendar
21:08
year.
21:09
He won the Arnold classic Europe's strongest man and the world's strongest man.
21:13
But the way I describe it is, Hey guys, the morning after the world's strongest man competition,
21:19
he's got the trophy in his hotel room, but when he wakes up, is he the strongest man
21:23
in the world?
21:24
No, he's not.
21:26
Why?
21:27
Because he's destroyed.
21:28
His body is absolutely obliterated from multiple days of some of the most insane strength
21:32
feats that athletes could ever possibly do.
21:35
However, half Thor Bjornsson is a resilient athlete.
21:39
So give him a couple of weeks to stretch ice bath, get some massages, kind of recover.
21:44
And he will again be the strongest man in the world.
21:46
The father time and gravity are completely undefeated men and women should know this
21:50
by now.
21:51
And so you will never be as strong as you were at some other point in your life.
21:55
And yeah, dad strengths a thing.
21:57
And some people experience strength gains in their fifties and it's different, but you
22:00
can be resilient until the moment you cross over to the other side.
22:05
But we don't focus on resilience because again, there's a quote from the book.
22:09
I can't remember what chapter building resilience is about progress, not perfection.
22:14
It seems like the pursuit of strength is about perfection because you have a number in mind
22:18
of what you want to bench press or what you want to deadlift or how fast you want to run.
22:21
And that's the perfect standard that you've set for yourself.
22:25
But I don't, I tell guys don't do that.
22:27
Like it's good to have goals and all that type of stuff, but it's those little incremental
22:31
steps you make every day where you didn't want to work out, but you did.
22:35
So your anterior mid singular cortex is going to grow because you didn't want to do the
22:39
thing.
22:40
It's hard and you did the thing anyway.
22:41
You didn't want to run the last sprint, but guess what, you ran it and you ran farther
22:45
than you had originally planned because you realized that inner punk inside of you was
22:49
trying to get you to be weak and you didn't.
22:51
So just go, go even further with this concept of resilience and why it is a better pursuit
22:57
than overall strength.
22:58
Oh, well, there's, I mean, there's no question because I would consider it like, you know,
23:04
really strength is like a snapshot.
23:06
It's where you are in the moment and you can lose your strength.
23:10
You can't lose your resilience.
23:13
Resilience is progressive over time.
23:15
I, I'll take what you were saying around, around strength and, and physical strength.
23:20
You know, one of the things that we know about resilience is it's essentially like a formula.
23:24
You need to have challenge, which can look like stress.
23:29
It can look like adversity.
23:30
It could even look like trauma.
23:31
We're not like prescribing trauma, right?
23:33
But you need something really difficult and you need something called protective factors,
23:39
which kind of set the environment, the mindset and the circumstances for you to have the,
23:45
the healthy effect from that difficult thing.
23:47
It's very akin to lifting weights, right?
23:51
You need the stress and the strain of the weights.
23:54
If you go in and you lift the same exact amount of weight every single day for a year,
24:00
it isn't going to have as much effect as if you have that progressive increase, right?
24:06
You need that challenge, you need that strain, and it actually breaks down the muscle fibers
24:12
so that they can be built back up stronger, right?
24:14
Now, what you can't do is if you're in an unhealthy situation, you're, you're sick,
24:21
you're weak, and you go in and you're like, I'm lifting 500 today.
24:26
It's not going to go well for you, right?
24:28
You do need protective factors.
24:30
You need somebody spotting you.
24:32
You need the right equipment.
24:33
You need, like, you can't do that with like sweaty hands and drop it all over yourself.
24:38
So you have to have some of these things that help you, right?
24:42
And that would be exactly the same with building resilience.
24:45
I mean, you can be, you can build physical resilience, spiritual, as you're talking about,
24:50
social resilience, emotional, cognitive resilience.
24:54
But what you're doing is you're taking on challenges and that is increasing your capacity
25:01
to do progressively difficult things.
25:03
Now, when we think about trauma and, you know, kind of the psychological side to this, here's
25:09
the thing.
25:10
When, let me give you an example that we use in our real life.
25:13
So, glory to God, my kids have not experienced trauma.
25:18
I'm grateful for that.
25:19
I don't take that for granted, given my life and my line of work.
25:24
But as a family, as parents, my husband and I know that it's a priority.
25:29
They need challenge to build their resilience.
25:32
Otherwise, you know, we're like, oh, this is hard.
25:35
It's hard to do the dishes and it's hard to do my math and whatever and I, yeah, we're
25:39
not going to do that.
25:41
So we climb mountains together as a family and we do like one really large hike every
25:48
year.
25:49
Last year, we did a 15,200 foot summit and it was a five day hike.
25:56
Okay.
25:57
Our kids are, they were, they were nine and six and then we had the baby.
26:02
We didn't make her hike that.
26:03
Okay.
26:04
She rode a horse.
26:05
But we're making them do strenuous things and, you know, we had an instance where we were
26:12
at about 40 or 14, six and our oldest slipped and she scrapped.
26:19
She straight up running and she said, oh, I don't want to continue.
26:21
And I said, Hey, babe, listen, I'm not going to make you continue.
26:25
You can go on, of course, if you want to, but I want you to understand that if you,
26:29
if you summit, you're going to say, I climbed a 15er and if you stop now, you're not saying
26:36
that.
26:37
I'm just, I'm, you know, I'm just like putting it out there for you.
26:40
You need to make this decision.
26:41
You've come all this way.
26:42
You're almost there and you won't be able to say that you've done it, right?
26:45
And she makes the decision.
26:46
Now I'm going to do it.
26:47
I'm going to do it.
26:48
Of course I'm going to do it.
26:49
And I'm like, okay, she just needed that gut check.
26:50
But when we are, when we don't have adverse in our lives, we need to intentionally give
26:57
ourselves progressive challenge, progressive stretching.
27:02
It's that, it's that tearing down the muscle fibers and building them back up.
27:06
But here's what I'll say.
27:07
When we come home and she's doing her math facts, her division facts, and she says to
27:13
be like, Oh, that's hard.
27:14
I'm like, excuse me?
27:16
You just like a 15,000 foot month.
27:18
I think you can handle this.
27:20
And she, I know it and she knows it, right?
27:23
And so when we go through really difficult things and we overcome them, other things
27:27
in light of that are less difficult.
27:29
We know we've got what it takes and we can cultivate that in our children as well.
27:34
And I believe that that has generational consequences for our family when we look something difficult
27:40
in the face and we don't think, Oh, it's going to eat me alive.
27:43
But instead we think I have the resources, the support network, the relationship with
27:47
the Lord that I'm going to get through this and I'm going to come up the other side better.
27:51
Well, Nicole, everyone knows you get to choose your heart.
27:54
And so if you don't take care of your body, you don't take fitness or your diet seriously,
27:59
you're going to have some hard things that you have to deal with later in life, all things
28:02
being equal.
28:03
And guess what?
28:04
If you live a very strict life with your diet and you take fitness seriously, you're
28:07
going to have some hardness there.
28:08
Like every time you train, it's going to be hard, but also, you know, you're going to
28:11
have some wear and tear.
28:12
But one of my favorite Michael Jordan stories, don't worry, it'll all make sense guys.
28:16
One of my favorite stories that came from the last dance documentary was there was this
28:19
famous story of a particular guy on a particular team on a particular night.
28:23
I can't remember any of the circumstances, but Michael Jordan said that this guy said
28:27
something to him like that was pretty, pretty bad, like some pretty bad trash talk.
28:31
And then that guy, like, you know, Michael Jordan just decided, I'm going to go at this
28:35
guy.
28:36
I'm going to absolutely destroy him.
28:37
And, you know, famous game scores a bunch of points.
28:40
Absolutely embarrasses the guy will come to find out the guy never said anything, right?
28:45
Michael Jordan made it up, right?
28:46
And I'm not advocating for lying guys, but Michael Jordan made up that this guy said this
28:50
thing that gave him the edge.
28:53
And so I am all for manifesting more hardness and difficulty.
28:59
This is not going to make sense to well-adjusted people in this audience.
29:01
So there's your PSA, but there have been several times, Nicole, before I put my hands
29:06
on the barbell, whether it's for squad or deadlift or something like that.
29:09
I'm like, all right, if you don't lift this, your whole family dies and you die in a fiery
29:14
car crash and people are like, you shouldn't motivate that way.
29:17
I'm like, guys, it's not real, but I for 10 seconds during the exercise, it's as real
29:23
as real gets.
29:24
Hey, if you don't get to that mailbox at full at full speed, you know, your church is going
29:29
to, you know, be set on fire like it's just any of those types of things.
29:32
And I'm fully okay with manifesting some of those things, but I did actually want to ask
29:36
you a question because this is not indicative of a lot of guys in my audience, but there
29:41
is kind of a, you know, I want to keep talking about resilience and suffering.
29:44
I want to keep talking about trauma, but I operate and I feel with negativity.
29:50
So I just kind of talked about it a little bit.
29:51
Like those are, that's negative stick, right?
29:54
What if my family really was going to die if I didn't do this max deadlift, right?
29:58
But there was a counselor buddy of mine, licensed family therapist, he was trying to make a
30:02
point, Nicole, and he said, Kyle, you don't walk into every jujitsu tournament, assuming
30:06
that you're just going to, you know, get beat, do you?
30:08
And I was like, well, yeah, that's exactly what I assume.
30:12
I assume that the very first match that not only is this guy going to break my arm, he's
30:16
going to drag my unconscious corpse and drop it in front of my weeping mother.
30:20
That's what I assume is going to happen.
30:22
So I train and compete like a lunatic to make sure that that doesn't happen.
30:28
And he's like, dude, that's insane.
30:29
And I'm like, I don't disagree with you, but it's how I fuel.
30:32
And I've had a lot of mentors that have expressed a lot of concern.
30:36
They're like, Kyle, you can't fill your gas tank with that.
30:38
But I'm like, it seems to be working like rocket fuel at this point.
30:42
So so what are your thoughts?
30:43
What are your clinical thoughts on something like that?
30:45
Because I know I'm not unique in my audience.
30:47
There are a lot of guys that operate based on negative fuel.
30:51
You know, it's interesting.
30:53
There is actually research that essentially says somebody who has more anxious tendencies
30:57
like that tends to be more successful long term.
31:02
And I mean, I have my own anxious tendencies, so I read that and I thought, oh, great.
31:06
This is another God taking the what the enemy means for evil and using it for good, you
31:11
know.
31:12
But I think I think there's a line, right, where when we're using it in the context of
31:17
this creates functionality, it can be really healthy.
31:21
It can be valuable when it gets to the point of, you know, rumination or obsessive thoughts
31:28
about that, that then we maybe need to think about talking to somebody to offer some support
31:33
or even just, you know, a difference, a different perspective.
31:37
But I think that again, this is a situation where we get to decide how we leverage this.
31:44
It's all about leverage, right?
31:46
It could be something that it's a bull that rolls over you and kills you as it's rolling
31:50
down the hill or it could be something that you like, you know, you use it for like building
31:56
something really important.
31:58
And it's all about how you're going to shift your perspective, how you're going to put
32:02
it to use.
32:03
And then what guidelines and guardrails you put around it to make sure it doesn't get
32:06
out of control.
32:08
But I think that my cultural lens on this is that I think there are people that could
32:19
be served well by being more motivated by potential consequences.
32:24
Because the truth is there are also legitimate situations in which we have, we have these
32:30
concerns and we're preparing and we're planning, we're not just worrying about it, we're doing
32:35
something about it.
32:37
And so again, it comes down to functionality.
32:39
Hey guys, real quick, a consistent question that I am asked is Kyle, what is your diet?
32:44
People want to know if I'm tracking macros or if I'm doing keto or something like that.
32:47
But I track one thing.
32:49
I try to get one gram of high quality protein for every pound of body weight.
32:53
And so for me, I eat red meat every single day, pretty much for lunch.
32:57
I eat a pound of red meat every single day to get over a hundred grams of high quality
33:02
protein.
33:03
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34:17
Yeah, and I think for a lot of people, guys, you're right to say that there is a line because
34:28
that, what I've noticed, because I've got a almost five year old and almost three year
34:32
old, some of that negativity and some of that negative juice rolls over onto the boys.
34:38
And I don't want to force that on them because I'm kind of, I feel like it was forced on
34:43
me a little bit.
34:44
I'm choosing to use it whenever there is other fuel available.
34:47
But that doesn't mean that James and Eli need to fuel in the same way.
34:51
And I'm also not going to be the one that say that this is healthy for the majority
34:54
of people.
34:55
I just think I'm wired a little bit different, right?
34:57
We're gingers anyway, we don't have soul.
34:59
So we're going to be different from the beginning, but then there are some things that go even
35:02
further than that.
35:03
But I want to back up and let's talk, let's talk about trauma some more.
35:06
So there's a quote from the book here that I want to get into.
35:09
In the past, the word trauma was typically used as a description.
35:13
It conveyed that a person had experienced something very painful.
35:17
Today, quote unquote, trauma is often applied as if it were a diagnosis.
35:22
At times, it has even grown into a destiny, a label guaranteeing a dismal future.
35:28
Okay.
35:29
So there are some very important words there description, right?
35:33
Now it's diagnosis and then it's destiny and future.
35:37
And so let's talk a little bit more about, you know, because there is a difference between
35:41
trauma, early adversity, normal stress, you go into that in the book, there are differences
35:46
for those categories.
35:48
But I feel like we've, we've removed all the separations for the different categories.
35:52
And it's like, uh, someone asked me where I was from because they didn't, uh, recognize
35:56
my accent.
35:57
Microaggression.
35:58
That person was racist.
35:59
I'm a victim.
36:00
And then we also have this person that's like, oh, I stubbed my toe when I was five and look,
36:04
there's wisdom in the statement, the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst
36:07
thing that's ever happened to you.
36:08
So, you know, in my childhood, my parents got divorced when I was 13.
36:11
That was terrible.
36:12
Other people I grew up with, they were raped by their uncle when they were five.
36:15
Okay.
36:16
Not the same level of trauma, but the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst
36:19
thing that's ever happened to you.
36:21
And so talk a little bit more about how, how to delineate between real trauma.
36:26
And again, I want to be very careful because it feels very real to you, but categorically,
36:30
it may be outside of what you're describing, but real trauma, early adversity and just
36:35
normal stress.
36:37
Yeah.
36:38
Okay.
36:39
So, I think this is such an important conversation.
36:41
I don't claim to have all the answers, but everyone's going to experience stress, normal
36:47
stress, right?
36:48
Difficult things, stab in your toe, yep.
36:52
There's positive stress like scoring a goal or giving a speech or, you know, asking somebody
36:58
out.
36:59
There's negative stress like experiencing bullying, experiencing health issues, injuries,
37:06
things like that.
37:08
We then get to adversity.
37:10
Adversity requires a child when it's early adversity and requires a child to respond
37:15
in a way that isn't developmentally appropriate.
37:17
So example is divorce.
37:20
You're having to navigate things that a 13 year old really isn't intended to navigate.
37:26
So that's an adversity and adversity is always objectively identifiable.
37:32
So we can see it, we can know it, it is obvious, no, it might be in secret, right?
37:39
But something has happened.
37:41
And if you tell listening to somebody, they're going to say, oh, yes, I can understand what
37:45
that is.
37:46
Trauma is a little different.
37:48
Trauma requires both adversity and then the perception of threat.
37:51
So this could be anything from, like we were talking about earlier, military situations.
37:56
It can be situations of violence, abuse, neglect.
37:59
It can even be things where if a child sees their mother, their primary caregiver, and
38:07
you know, experiencing domestic violence or something like that, and they believe that
38:11
she is at risk, life or limb, they can experience trauma from that as well.
38:16
But usually there's this perception of threat to my well-being and it is an instantaneous
38:22
perception.
38:23
So you can't go up to somebody who's just experienced something really hard and say, hey, it's not
38:26
that bad and just convince them to not be traumatized, right?
38:29
That being said, in our society, it's bad number one, extremely overused.
38:35
You know, I went to my favorite restaurant and they didn't have my favorite meal and
38:38
I'm traumatized.
38:39
I'm sorry.
38:40
That is not trauma.
38:42
Okay.
38:43
It's become very common in our lexicon.
38:47
It is also often looked at as though it is the defining characteristic of your life.
38:54
Can you imagine this?
38:55
But imagine you're a child and you're in a family school setting, church setting, whatever.
39:01
And what people know about you, what they believe about you, what they think about you
39:06
when they think about your name or your face is that you experience trauma.
39:10
How horrible would that be?
39:11
You know, that's like the only thing that you're known as.
39:15
And increasingly that is becoming common that my trauma defines me.
39:19
And that is so contrary to what scripture and science say.
39:24
You know, we look at the Bible, we see that Joseph and Daniel and David and on and on
39:31
and on experiences really challenging things.
39:34
These things where they're crying out to the Lord, they have no other supports.
39:38
There is no hope by human standards, right?
39:42
And yet God took what the enemy means for evil, meant for evil and used it for good.
39:47
And I think, you know, going back to this idea of a destiny, trauma, we describe an
39:53
experience, trauma is a response, an instantaneous response to a horrible experience.
40:00
And it could look different for different people, right?
40:02
Somebody might experience a car accident.
40:04
You've got two people that experience a car accident.
40:06
One is traumatized.
40:07
One is like totally able to move on.
40:09
That being said, consider it more like an injury than an illness, okay?
40:14
This doesn't need to be something that determines the course of your life, rather something
40:19
that we can heal from.
40:21
And of course, when a child is experiencing trauma, after trauma, after trauma, we need
40:25
to step in.
40:26
We don't just, you know, it's not like when my toddler like eats dirt and I go, she's
40:29
building her immunity or whatever, like we do need to step in.
40:33
And like to men, man, we need you to use your like protective warrior side that I know is
40:40
not always celebrated, like I'm celebrating that in the space of caring for kids, like
40:46
men are needed to do that.
40:50
And we don't want to give kids the impression, even if they need to be removed from their
40:53
families or we need to step in and support them.
40:56
We don't need to protect them from everything in their lives forever, right?
41:00
We're protecting them from those things that are harmful, not those things that are hard
41:04
and there's a distinctive difference.
41:05
Okay, let's dig into there because I really wanted to get into that next.
41:09
But as you were talking, you know, even just recently, I saw something in terms of, I mean,
41:14
there's hormones and all kind of neurology behind it.
41:16
But when there's been research done, when a baby cries in the middle of the night, the
41:22
odds of mom waking up are way higher than the odds of dad waking up, dad can sleep right
41:26
through it.
41:27
But if there's a bump in the night, if there's a leaf that moves, you know, a hundred yards
41:33
away outside the man's root, the man will wake up and the woman doesn't.
41:36
Why?
41:37
Because women are more naturally nurturing and men are more naturally protective, right?
41:42
If things are all in the right order.
41:43
And as you were describing, everything you were just talking about there, Nicole, I was
41:46
thinking about Yomi Park.
41:47
And so like, yes, is she known as the gal who escaped North Korea, right?
41:53
So she lived under that terrible regime and she ended up escaping.
41:56
Yeah.
41:57
But if you read her book and if you listen to her talk, it's one of the most impactful
42:00
interviews that we've ever had in the history of this podcast, it's like she at one point
42:05
was walking across, you know, it was a desert, but there was like a snowstorm.
42:10
She's like in a light jacket and crappy shoes, and she's walking to just have the chance
42:15
to get through this country so that she can eventually get to South Korea so that she
42:19
could eventually maybe even make it to America.
42:21
And here she is going to NYU eventually in America and she's talking to some of her classmates
42:26
who are experiencing relationship issues or they have daddy issues or something and they're
42:31
paying thousands of dollars to go see these, you know, fancy professional, you know, therapists
42:35
and things like that.
42:36
She's been, she would go out into the field to try to find crickets to, you know, put
42:42
over a fire to eat, to get a little bit of protein.
42:44
She weighs about 80, 85 pounds and that's all she'll ever weigh because of the malnutrition
42:49
she experienced growing up in North Korea.
42:51
And these people are sitting there drinking $7 lattes and you know, they're about to go
42:56
get in their Range Rover to drive to their next appointment and they're talking about
42:59
their trauma.
43:00
Now again, you could have nice things and still have experienced legitimate trauma.
43:03
I'm not trying to minimize it, but it's like guys, we've got to really understand what
43:07
type of things that we're experiencing, but that gets into this conversation that you
43:10
teed up about, I would say adversity and snow plow parents.
43:14
So everyone has kind of heard about the helicopter parents.
43:17
So the parent, you know, they're kind of hovering around the kid like, oh, let's make
43:19
sure things don't happen.
43:21
But I remember this distinctly, I used to work at a university, the university I graduated
43:25
from, I worked in the president's office at that university.
43:28
And that's when I first felt like I experienced snow pal, snow plow parenting.
43:33
We had someone that called the office, they called the front desk.
43:36
This person on the other line is demanding to speak to the president of the university.
43:40
And it's like, well, they're, we have like three layers of assistance to make sure that's
43:43
something like that never happens, like, no, they don't need the president.
43:46
But the person's, you know, banging on the table, like, I want to talk to him.
43:49
I'm not going to talk to you, blah, blah.
43:50
And so we had told them like, look, you're, you're a student worker, you don't get paid
43:54
enough to do this, like give the phone call to us.
43:56
And so we take on the phone call and this person is demanding to speak to the president.
44:00
We finally asked why they said, my kid got a parking ticket.
44:04
It's like, okay, well, have you talked to anyone in the parking department and they're
44:07
like, well, no.
44:08
And then it was actually my coworker that said this and it was brilliant.
44:11
This was at the time when Steve Jobs was alive and iPad, iPods were still a thing.
44:14
He's like, ma'am, do you have an iPod?
44:17
And she's so confused.
44:18
She's like, what are you talking about?
44:19
He's like, if you had a problem with your iPod, would you call Apple and demand to speak
44:23
to Steve Jobs?
44:25
Is that something that you would do?
44:26
Or would you work with someone else that could maybe help you?
44:29
But ultimately, their kid knowingly parked in the wrong parking lot.
44:33
They didn't have the right badge.
44:35
They were late for class, which was also their fault.
44:37
And now the parent is calling demanding that this be taken off of their kids, burst our
44:42
account so that they can enroll next semester.
44:44
And it's like, look, we're not going to do that.
44:45
So that's guys, if you'd never heard a snow plow parenting, that's what that is.
44:49
You were the snow plow in front of your kid and you're taking everything that could possibly
44:53
happen away from your kid.
44:55
So short quote from the book, and then I want to get your feedback.
44:58
Adversity can become a minor footnote amidst an epic novel that is the story God has for
45:04
your child.
45:05
But Nicole, a lot of parents are taking away the opportunity for overcoming from their
45:10
kids by being a snow plow.
45:12
Ready, set go.
45:13
Yeah.
45:14
Okay.
45:15
So, so many thoughts on that.
45:16
And I want to start with something that is in the book.
45:19
We talk about the here extensive model, which is essentially a half circle.
45:23
And on opposite ends, you'll see people who have too little stress or too much stress
45:28
in their life.
45:29
They're going to achieve very little.
45:32
And those who achieve the most tend to have a certain amount of stress and adversity in
45:38
their life.
45:39
Now, if you're experiencing extreme trauma all the time, if you're, you know, living
45:43
in a ward as a child or, or in an extremely abusive situation, obviously those, those
45:49
situations come with consequences, unlikely to be super successful.
45:53
But if you're over here and you're not actually able to call the parking office and saying,
45:59
sir, why did I get this?
46:01
Oh, how can I pay for this?
46:03
Because I have a consequence, you're not going to be successful.
46:08
So we as parents have an indelible role with a high and holy calling to empower our children
46:15
to be successful in this world and to fulfill the role God has for them.
46:19
Because, you know, it's interesting, I'll share a little story here.
46:23
I was sharing with a group of people in, in the orphan care space, the careful vulnerable
46:28
kids.
46:29
And then I shared about this and this mom comes up to me and she says, you know, I've
46:34
adopted six teenagers from horrible situations.
46:38
They all experience horrible trauma.
46:41
And I've made it my job to make sure that they don't experience any more hard things.
46:47
They've experienced enough for a lifetime and I said, you know, I love your heart in
46:51
this.
46:52
I love your intention in this, but you're not doing them any favors.
46:54
Because here's the bottom line.
46:57
It's harsh, but true, that your child's future professor, their future boss, their future
47:04
spouse, they can't accommodate them.
47:08
Their future boss doesn't care that they had drama or that they had adversity.
47:12
As much as, you know, it would be nice if they did.
47:15
We are tasked with preparing our children to be able to live independently and interdependently,
47:22
to contribute, right?
47:25
We don't want them to need us long term.
47:27
Our job is to raise them up.
47:28
So they don't need us.
47:29
I mean, I want them to want to be around me when they're, when I be my old age, but at
47:34
the same time, I don't want to create a dependency.
47:36
So part of my job is helping them to the right perspective on the hard things they experience
47:41
in life so that they understand it really doesn't define them.
47:44
It does become a footnote for me to give them enough, good, positive, healthy relationships
47:49
and experiences and ways of thinking and resources so that they don't see their trauma, their
47:58
adversity as the dominant factor in their life, but rather amongst the large consolation
48:03
of all the different factors of their life, it's just one.
48:06
It becomes that footnote, right?
48:08
That jumping off point.
48:11
I think you're absolutely right.
48:13
But again, we never look at it in terms of the things that we're taking away from them.
48:18
We're looking at it in terms of the things that we think, we think we're protecting
48:22
them from.
48:23
And there are legitimately things that you should protect your kids from.
48:25
And then there's some things that are uncomfortable that you need to let them experience.
48:29
Like I think I told you last night, my son was kind of, he's four, but he's kind of getting
48:33
bullied a little bit by a, by a rougher kid, that's his age.
48:37
But the thing was, is I never once thought to myself, I need to go intercede.
48:41
And I want to kill the kid and beat his dad up and all the things and right, guys, I'm
48:44
being funny.
48:45
But it's like, you never want to see your kid going through pain, but he needs that.
48:49
Because if he sees me swoop in and say, hey, stop being mean to my boy, young man, give
48:54
him some space, then my son's going to assume that any time bad, something bad's happening
48:58
to him and making him uncomfortable that dad's going to be there to protect him.
49:01
But there's a little thing that I keep on the background on my phone because maybe people
49:05
will understand this.
49:06
I can be a little bit aggressive.
49:07
I could be a little bit default aggressive.
49:09
And so the lion comes out a lot.
49:12
But as it pertains to my wife and kid, I need to be lamb with them, lion for them, right?
49:19
And so because the thing is, is if the kids don't know that the lion is available, they're
49:25
going to be self conscious, they're going to be anxious because they're like, if something
49:29
bad happens, like, I know some, some guys are really, really, really soft.
49:33
And if someone broke into the house, like they're going to be hiding behind their wives just
49:36
because they're pathetic men, I love them, but they're pathetic.
49:40
But like if the kids don't know that the lion's available, that's not a good situation.
49:44
But if all they ever see is lion, and they don't see lamb and they don't see the nurturing
49:48
side, they're going to be anxious and like constantly ratchet it up.
49:52
And so that's what I kind of have to remind myself.
49:55
But you kind of get into this a little bit in the book when you talk about confounding
50:00
variables.
50:01
And so here's a quote from the book.
50:03
It almost doesn't make sense, the facts that both early adversity is associated with negative
50:08
outcomes largely, and that less commonly highly successful people have experienced early adversity.
50:16
This is true across the board.
50:18
This is why when people talk about how the 1% is evil, it's like you dope.
50:21
The 1% changes all the time, because most of the millionaires and billionaires that we
50:26
see in modern day are self made, which means they didn't get millions and billions inherited
50:32
from mommy and daddy or grandma and grandpa, like the Rockefellers and all these types
50:35
of things.
50:36
A lot of these people are first generation, the richest man on the planet and the richest
50:40
man ever, you know, in terms of what billions of dollars mean is Elon Musk, his parents
50:45
were not independently wealthy, right?
50:47
People are like, oh, well, he got a, you know, loan from his dad to start his first business.
50:50
The loan was like $30,000, it's not nothing, but it's like, it wasn't like he was handed
50:55
a billion bucks and it's like, all right, son, don't mess up.
50:57
And he turned it into 70 billion or whatever.
51:00
But that is the interesting thing is I want to talk a little bit more and put a finer
51:04
point on how if you live in the suburbs, if you make a good living, if you have enough
51:10
money to completely insulate your kid from any levels of discomfort, they're never going
51:14
to be colder hot.
51:15
They're never going to be hungry, all those things.
51:17
How can we infuse adversity into their lives?
51:21
And I mean this practically not philosophically.
51:23
How can we do those things because I always encourage parents, they've got to play sports.
51:29
Don't pick them and don't force them into one sport and make them specialize in golf
51:33
or football or baseball from the age of four or something like that.
51:37
But they've got to learn adversity in a team setting.
51:39
They've got to want to quit at some point during the middle of the season and you say,
51:43
that's just too bad.
51:44
Thompson's aren't quitters.
51:45
And so if you want to never play again after the season, we can do that, but we don't quit
51:49
in the middle of it.
51:50
We're not going to quit on our teammates, but also they need the individual side.
51:53
They need wrestling.
51:54
They need jujitsu.
51:55
They need something like that to where it's like, I'm constantly getting killed by people
51:59
that are better than me, but I'm better than all the people that aren't training, right?
52:03
So how, you know, maybe outside of the world of sports, can we make sure kids are in these
52:08
situations that cause adversity?
52:09
Yeah.
52:10
Well, I think that, well, I want to cause stress, right?
52:14
I want to cause stress for them.
52:16
And I would say that I think athletics is a great place.
52:19
I think anything that requires discipline, practice, evaluation, for example, our girls
52:25
are dancers and we chose a teacher, I guess, I'm thinking in Spanish here, who is very
52:33
disciplined.
52:34
She's very nurturing, but she will call you out and say, that wasn't good, do it again.
52:37
Or she'll tell you we can't move up to the next level.
52:41
I like that.
52:42
I want that.
52:43
Now, I get to be the nurturer on the back end where they're upset or they're sad and,
52:48
you know, part of what we need to help them do, though, is there's so much that's modeling,
52:52
right?
52:53
So my daughter was upset that she was pulled from a particular dance a few years ago.
52:58
And so we sit down and I said, okay, like I'm not calling the niece.
53:02
I'm not going to do that.
53:04
I said, what do you think you need to do?
53:06
And she said, well, I'm not sure.
53:08
And she said, I think I need to talk to her.
53:10
Okay.
53:11
Well, what do you want to say?
53:12
I'm coaching her part of how you can build resilience in your child is through coaching
53:18
them through difficult things.
53:19
So you're talking about your son.
53:21
And you said, you know, you're talking about the lion and lamb and part of your job then
53:25
as the dad is to cultivate in your sons that same paradox, right, those same characteristics.
53:33
So that they have the capacity to do that for their own families and their own circles
53:36
of influence.
53:37
And, you know, I think that the tendency is to step in, like you said, you want to swoop
53:42
in.
53:43
But what does that tell your son, hey, I don't think you can do it.
53:47
That's the implicit message.
53:49
And so instead we're going to let our kids, we're not going to step in and fight for them
53:52
for everything, right?
53:54
Like we're going to let them learn how to do the practical skills of life, how to handle
53:58
the relational size of things.
54:00
And guess what?
54:01
They might mess it up.
54:02
But I really rather that my seven year old messes up talking with her teacher at this
54:09
age when it's like, oh, yeah, she's seven, it's understandable that I don't give her
54:13
the ability to have these challenging experiences.
54:17
And when she's 25, 30, 40, she's, she's still calling me saying, mom, be the snow plow parent
54:23
for me.
54:24
That is not going to happen.
54:26
So I think it's, it's giving more freedom, more weight, you know, when they're at the
54:30
park and it's like little kids are taking risks and you're like wanting to say, be careful,
54:35
be careful.
54:36
You're letting them take risks.
54:37
You're letting them learn what their capacity is, right?
54:41
I think also showing them what it looks like to persevere.
54:47
We are very, very quick to give our kids an out.
54:51
We're very quick.
54:53
If we're not careful to say, I want to make this easy for you.
54:56
I, you know, the ideas around success now are around things like, oh, I need to, you
55:02
know, I'm going to help you with your homework so that you can get good grades.
55:06
That is not going to work well for your child long term.
55:09
Okay.
55:10
We're going to sit alongside.
55:13
We're going to support.
55:15
We're going to, you know, if it's three hours at the kitchen table, we're there.
55:18
We're bringing tea, we're bringing snacks, but we're not saying, oh, you don't have to
55:22
do this.
55:23
Oh, we're going to talk to the teacher and make sure that you do less.
55:27
I mean, there, there is a time and a place for accommodations.
55:30
Okay.
55:31
There's a time and a place way over, way over use because what's going to happen is if
55:36
you want your child to be successful in the workplace, to be successful academically long-term,
55:41
they need to know how to do it.
55:42
And so we're creating in them, we're helping them to know, hey, remember you did this last
55:46
week.
55:47
You can do it.
55:48
The more they do, the more they can do.
55:50
Um, you know, one example that we give is tours.
55:52
I am a real big fan of tours and sometimes I feel sorry for my kids because when you're,
55:59
you're a child of a researcher who studied these different things, like you're just not
56:03
going to have a coddly little childhood.
56:07
But I think they're going to be fine long-term.
56:09
I'm not going to worry too much about it, but you know, let's say you get a kid.
56:12
You've got a kid in your family.
56:13
And now I'm working a lot with foster and adoptive families, but this could be your
56:17
biological family, right?
56:19
And you're going to do tours with your kids.
56:20
You've got a, you've got a, you know, 10 year old and you say, hey, your responsibility
56:24
is going to be dinner dishes.
56:27
And this kid is like, excuse me, I'm not going to do that case.
56:30
But you have a choice, you can either be in a power struggle, which is just never going
56:34
to go well, or you can come alongside and build their capacity.
56:37
We're going to build scaffolding for them.
56:38
So we're going to say, you know what, good point, I'm going to wash and you're going
56:42
to dry.
56:43
And as you're doing that, you're building this bond with your child, right?
56:47
And you do that for a few days.
56:49
And as they build their capacity, you say, you know what, you're doing great.
56:53
You're going to wash.
56:54
I'm going to dry your building, their capacity.
56:57
And of course, you're saying like, Hey, I think you're doing a great job.
56:59
You're getting this.
57:00
I'm going to go over here across the kitchen to the refrigerator.
57:03
I'm going to organize the refrigerator tonight while you wash and dry.
57:06
Look at that.
57:07
Your kid is doing the chore.
57:10
You didn't have a power struggle.
57:11
You didn't destroy the relationship.
57:13
But now, you know, you're saying, Hey, you know, someone so is taking over this and he's
57:16
doing a great job.
57:17
You're making sure to brag a little bit about them to, you know, whoever.
57:22
And all of a sudden you through just a few days have maybe a few weeks, if you got a
57:28
stubborn kid have, have created that ability.
57:31
And now when they say, Oh, I don't know how to mow the lawn, you're like, Oh, remember,
57:35
we know how to do this.
57:36
You're letting them understand that some of life is boring.
57:40
Some of life isn't entertainment.
57:42
Some of life is hard.
57:43
And you just do the thing even when you don't feel like it.
57:47
We say in our family that feelings are indicators, not dictators, I'm not anti feeling.
57:52
But also we we sometimes say like, don't always follow your heart.
57:57
Sometimes your heart's a liar.
57:59
So you know, your heart might say, I don't want to do the chore.
58:01
I want to watch TV.
58:04
That's not what we're going to do.
58:05
What needs to be done right now is what needs to be done and not just for today and not
58:09
just to make it easier for mom, but for the entire family, the vision of our entire family,
58:14
not just now, but for generations.
58:16
So helping them to understand this is how you contribute to the much bigger story beyond
58:20
yourself. I think it's also valuable. I'll pause there.
58:23
Well, no, Nicole is doing some guys have parents that have done that on accident for them.
58:29
But you need to be doing it on purpose. So I'll use an accidental example.
58:33
So my dad was he was like my biggest fan. He came to every practice, every game, but he
58:37
wasn't, you know, a guy that, you know, spent a lot of time reading the Bible or at all.
58:41
I never saw him work out, never saw him crack a booking, those types of things.
58:44
So a lot of the wisdom I got from him was more accidental. And so I was on a baseball team
58:48
and you could pick out parts of the starting lineup by the dad's businesses that had sponsored
58:55
the team and they were on the outfield panels. And I was like, I felt like I was getting
59:00
looked over. I felt like I was getting passed over and I was really, really mad about it.
59:04
And my dad was like, well, looks like you're going to have to figure it out. Like I was
59:08
expecting my dad to go talk to the coach, right? And my dad was going to go give the
59:11
coach a piece of his mind and all that. And my dad never did it. So I was like, huh? And
59:15
so there was a particular tournament where I was on this team. And I think I was hitting
59:19
sixth. And I was normally like a, like a three or four hole hitter. So those are, those
59:23
are very important positions. And so after the first game, I hit six, I go up to the coach.
59:28
And again, this, I'm like a punk kid, right? And, but I tried to do it as respectfully
59:31
as possible. I was like, Hey coach, um, I think I've been then doing well. I've been going
59:36
well in practice. I've been hitting well. I think I should be hitting higher in the lineup.
59:39
And he kind of sits back, crosses arms like really, you think you should be hitting higher
59:44
in the lineup. I was like, yes, sir, I do. And he goes, okay, thanks for your input. The
59:47
very next game he puts me at lead off. I've never hit lead off in my entire life. I was
59:51
a more of a power hitter, you know, lead off, you need contact, you need, you know, speed,
59:56
you know, all those types of things. He put me at lead off now for the rest of the tournament.
59:59
I was at lead off, did very well in that position. And then we kind of got back to the normal
1:00:02
schedule of things later on that week. But if I had thought this is my dad's responsibility
1:00:07
to talk to coach, that's a different mindset. This is my dad's responsibility to earn me
1:00:12
more playing time or to, you know, to convince the coach with his wordsmithing that I should
1:00:17
be getting more opportunities, then I would always look at that as that's dad's responsibility.
1:00:21
But it's kind of the same thing, Nicole, with modern day, with my boys, like I'm a brown
1:00:25
belt and Jiu Jitsu, I'm not terrible. But when he's in practice, I'm not his coach, right?
1:00:30
His coaches are his coaches. And boy, I tell you on the way to practice, I tell them, if
1:00:34
you do not listen to your coaches, if you mess around while they're talking or something
1:00:38
like that, oh, boy, you will never get to come back. And those are the consequences.
1:00:44
But you would think like, oh, Kyle, you might know more than the guy that's even teaching
1:00:47
the class. That's not the point. I get to be dad. That guy only gets to be coach, right?
1:00:52
That's a way better thing, right? Kind of the same thing with people that they want to be
1:00:55
their kids friend. It's like, bro, your kids are going to have friends that come in and
1:00:58
out of their lives. Like, I don't even talk to three of the four guys that were in my wedding
1:01:01
at this point. Like, you know, things just happen in life, but they get one dad. They
1:01:06
get one dad. So just be dad. And so here, now I'm preaching. I need to get back to the
1:01:10
book. Chapter eight of the book. The title of the chapter is relationships, build resilience.
1:01:18
Now I would like to suggest a change to the chapter title. I think it should be relationships
1:01:24
that challenge you build resilience because there are a lot of people that have relationships
1:01:30
that, you know, that are hard because they have sluggers or dumbards that are friends
1:01:34
of theirs. And so, but they love them. And so that's my slugger. And that's my dumard.
1:01:38
And so you stay in this stupid, you know, friendship with this moron because like you
1:01:43
think that somehow you're going to fix them or help them. It's like missionary dating when
1:01:46
a girl's like, I can fix them. It's like he'll never be cleaner and more polite than when
1:01:50
y'all are dating. So if he sucks, now he's going to suck worse later. But like in this
1:01:54
exact scenario that we're in relationships that challenges on a regular basis, that's
1:01:59
what builds resilience. We talk about a foxhole on this podcast all the time. Like do you
1:02:03
have guys that aren't that impressed by you? Do you have guys that are willing to interrupt
1:02:07
you regardless of how much money you make? And to tell you, Hey, brother, what you said
1:02:11
to your wife at dinner was kind of off color. And I don't think she really appreciated it.
1:02:14
And if you do it again in my presence, we're going to have issues. And it's not just going
1:02:17
to be words. Do you have guys like that that are willing to put relational chips in the
1:02:21
middle of the table? And they're going to, you know, risk hurting your feelings to make
1:02:25
you better? Let's talk more about relationships, the challenges.
1:02:28
Yeah, well, you know, we did a study of about 1,100 adults who have care experience. They've
1:02:36
been in, you know, orphanages, adoption, foster care. And we wanted to look at what helped
1:02:43
them. So kids who have adults as kids had extreme adversity, right? We're like, what
1:02:48
helps you to have resilience? What are the protective factors that that most seem to
1:02:54
be effective? And what we found is that more protective factors is more better. Okay, we
1:03:00
want more equals more. But, but what we also discovered is there were certain protective
1:03:07
factors that unlocked a whole bunch of other ones. And they always evolved or involved
1:03:12
relationships. Okay. So they revolved around relationships. And I would say for kids. So
1:03:17
going back to, you know, you talking about being a dad in the role of that, like kids
1:03:22
need mom. And dad, I know that is some that has somehow become a controversial thing to
1:03:29
say in the West, but I'm just going to like say it out. Kids need mom and dad. Science
1:03:38
shows definitively that moms and dads just bring really different things to the table.
1:03:42
Very complimentary, very important, layered and interwoven things. But yes, I would say
1:03:48
for, for everyone, we need those, those relationships. Yes, that challenge us, that grow us, that,
1:03:56
um, that help us to have everything we need to achieve our full potential. That's where,
1:04:01
you know, for kids, parents are so important. If you have a loving engaged parent, you're
1:04:05
going to have food. You're going to have shelter. You're going to have safety. Somebody's looking
1:04:12
out for you. Somebody's helping you to think about the future. Somebody's helping you to
1:04:15
see your identity, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Relationship with God. Absolutely key for those
1:04:21
people who might be listening, saying, Hey, I am the kid who experienced trauma and I'm all
1:04:26
grown up now and I don't have a mom or dad to come in and rescue me. I'm really sorry. That's
1:04:32
really hard. That's really hard. And also still trauma does not define you. And God can come in
1:04:42
and heal those wounds. He can, you know, he heals the broken heart. He binds up their wounds. There's
1:04:48
promises in scripture about this and relationships are going to be an absolutely key factor. I can
1:04:56
tell you this much. You will not heal from trauma by yourself. You will not overcome your early
1:05:03
adversity by yourself. You will not get through hard things by yourself. We can do extremely
1:05:10
difficult things. Even for a long time, if we have the right people to go through them with us,
1:05:16
our relationships help us to be overcomers, except like you're saying, if you have these kind of like
1:05:24
enabling people around you or, you know, people that are just going to say, Oh, yes, let us sit
1:05:32
around and define ourselves by the difficult things in our lives. Those relationships won't
1:05:36
help you, right? But if you have the right relationships, if you have people that really are in it for
1:05:42
your long term good, if you have a relationship with the Lord who created you as an eternal soul
1:05:49
and his image, like he's not giving up on you. Okay. This is not a waste. If you have those things
1:05:56
in your life, there is no limit of hope for overcoming. Well, Nicole, one of the things I like to do,
1:06:05
okay, my style when I'm invited to co-speak at a church or typically men's conferences, burn it
1:06:09
down and walk away because I live it, right? So if you invite me, if you invite me to Who's
1:06:14
This What's It Ohio and I go in there, guess what? I don't live there. And so I don't have to deal
1:06:18
with all the consequences of the things that I've said and all the stuff that I've burned off.
1:06:21
But I tell guys all the time, I was like, what is this? Why have we colloquially agreed that men
1:06:26
should kind of seek to be this lone wolf? It's like, have any of y'all watched the nature channel?
1:06:31
What happens to lone wolves? They die alone, right? So they were typically an alpha and then they
1:06:39
aged out of the pack and then they were dispelled from the pack and they died alone. They froze to
1:06:44
death, they starved to death, or they were predated by another animal. Okay. And so that's not a good
1:06:50
thing. There's this guy online and I follow him because I think there's part of me that thinks
1:06:54
he's awesome. But it's this old man, he looks like he's in his 70s because he's got a long white
1:06:58
beard. He is tatted all the way up on his, you know, his neck on his, on his knuckles. And he does
1:07:03
these videos where he's in this garage. Like it's like this little shop garage thing and it's got
1:07:08
stuff all over the place. He's got just enough space on the floor to deadlift. And this old man
1:07:14
has like 600 pounds on the bar. He throws a sock in his mouth and he just grabs the bar just
1:07:19
and then sets it down. He says some sort of piffy thing to the camera, then he moves on.
1:07:25
That's what would happen to me if I didn't have a foxhole in a family, right? That's what I would
1:07:30
do. I would be the guy with a long beard in the tattoos. I would just be deadlifting with a sock
1:07:36
in my mouth. And as, as, you know, aspirational as an identity, as that might be for some other
1:07:41
people, I like the idea of having guys in my life that whenever I'm grabbing the bar,
1:07:46
they're also grabbing the bar with me. Because guess what, guys, there are just some weights
1:07:50
in this world that are too heavy for you to lift on your own. This lone wolf, pick yourself up
1:07:54
up by your bootstraps, American male, John Wayne BS, like John Wayne wasn't an actual tough guy.
1:07:59
He was a tough guy on television. That guy had a bunch of people that made him look tough
1:08:03
on screen. And here's the thing with you, you are going to run into a situation. It is going to be
1:08:07
your dark night of the soul. It's going to be the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And if you don't
1:08:10
have guys that are ready and available to pick up that bar, you are screwed. And there are no two
1:08:16
ways about it. But Nicole, we do actually have to bring this conversation to a close at some point,
1:08:20
because I don't have you for the rest of the day. But I want you to put a bow on this overall
1:08:26
idea of overcoming because yes, does this apply to adult males and adult females? Yes, all these
1:08:31
things certainly apply. But there are so many guys I told you this off air that they're working on
1:08:36
resilience for themselves, but then whenever you tell them, okay, now apply this to your kids,
1:08:40
they look at you like you're speaking Mandarin. And so help guys practically think about this in a
1:08:45
way to where, okay, I want resilient kids. I want kids that are overcomers. Here's how we do it.
1:08:49
Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Well, I would say firstly that if you're in a situation where you're
1:08:57
caring for kids, it is a high and holy calling and sometimes something that we just like
1:09:02
stuff into the margins of like, yeah, I'll get to that there. No, it is actually
1:09:06
so impactful. And it's going to be impactful, whether impactful for good or for bad. You get to
1:09:14
make that decision. I would say when thinking about building resilience in your children,
1:09:20
I would argue that this is going to be one of the most the most pivotal investments you can make
1:09:27
in your progeny, okay? Like I said, this world is not about to get easier. And there are a lot of
1:09:34
people right now that are thrown by challenges that are happening just like devastated. We don't
1:09:41
want that for our children. We want them to see the challenge, address the challenge, move through
1:09:47
the challenge, and move on from the challenge. The challenge cannot define them. So thinking about
1:09:53
how you're going to cultivate this within your family is going to be important. I would encourage
1:09:57
you to choose probably three things. Choose a way that you're going to get your child involved
1:10:04
in something that is going to challenge them physically. Choose a way that you're going to
1:10:10
involve resilience in your relationship with them. Where are you going to cultivate that? Where are
1:10:16
you going to challenge them? Whether it's with chores, whether it's with climbing a mountain,
1:10:21
whether it's with challenging them with character habits. And then finally, I would encourage you
1:10:27
to really think about how are you involving them in faith? I think that for me, understanding my
1:10:36
relationship with God, which is an evolving process. No one ever arrives there. It's always
1:10:41
evolving. I cannot imagine having gotten through some of the difficult things that I've gone through
1:10:48
without knowing that I have a heavenly Father that loves me, even when I don't feel like he's
1:10:52
good or he's loving. I know from the truth of scripture that he is, knowing not knowing he's on
1:10:58
my side, knowing he has created me for eternity, having an eternal perspective, knowing that something
1:11:04
that lasts for a year or two or five or ten is a blink in the context of eternity completely
1:11:10
changes my perspective of my own suffering and the suffering of those around me. And I think that's
1:11:16
a real gift that not only can we give to our children, we must give that gift to our children
1:11:22
if we want them to be overcomers long term and overcomers when they're not in our home with our
1:11:29
hand to hold theirs. So those would be the things that I would think. And I would just say, listen,
1:11:34
there is so much hope. There are countless ways to build resilience in your kids, but you must,
1:11:39
you must be strategic about how you're going to do that, which is why we wrote the book.
1:11:45
All right. Amen. And amen. We've weaved in and out of a lot of different subject matters. I
1:11:49
appreciate you being with us the whole way, but that's all for me. Is there anything else you
1:11:53
want to get off your chest? No. Thank you so much for having me here. It's been really fun.
1:11:59
Thank you, Nicole. There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with Nicole. But before we let
1:12:03
you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost at Undaunted Life. Our mission is equipping
1:12:06
men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
1:12:10
So the only link I've got for you today is a link to where you can buy your copy of overcoming.
1:12:14
Thank you for listening to this podcast. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe,
1:12:18
rate and leave us a positive five star review. If you want me to come speak live at your event
1:12:22
or on your podcast, shoot me an email to info@undonton.life. That's i-n-f-o at Undonton.life.
1:12:28
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else,
1:12:32
including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undonton.life.
1:12:37
And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for our
1:12:40
content. The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut
1:12:45
album on Face Down Records. The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:12:50
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience,
1:12:57
keep seeking the lion of Judah.