The most important relationship there is

This blog post is a transcript of Episode 97 of my podcast/YouTube series. Because of that, it is not written to be grammatically/syntactically correct.

You can listen here and watch here.

Once upon a time, there were students who struggled with the most important relationship there is. This affected their self esteem, which caused them to be more vulnerable to depression and anxiety.

Sometimes these students were willing to be friends with anyone, just because they wanted a friend.

Sometimes they engaged in unhealthy habits for the dopamine hit, like eating unhealthy food or binging video games.

And some students made negative comments about themselves, which they almost always hear from someone else first.

I created this lesson for all of these students.

In this lesson, our students learn about the most important relationship there is: The one that we have with ourselves. Students learn and discuss their needs and challenges across eight areas when it comes to our relationship with ourselves.

This lesson has a secret puzzle hidden inside of it, and I tell the students that from the beginning. Some of the things from the lessons I keep a secret from you guys that are watching and listening and reading. They're just for the students in my groups. And the secret puzzle in this lesson is one of those things, so I'm going to keep that one a secret. I tell the students in the group that there's a secret puzzle in this week's lesson.

This is the last lesson of my program, the SC3 Academy. This is lesson number 32. It is the eighth lesson in module four. Because I teach this program aligned with the school year in the US, this is our last lesson at the end of the school year, which falls at the end of May. In this module, in module four, it's all about relationships. We have already covered seven lessons about seven other types of relationships. By the time we get to this one, the students don't know where I'm going with it. They don't know what the topic is going to be, because we have covered every relationship they can think of.

I then let them know that we're going to talk about the most important relationship that there is, and I share that if they're struggling with this relationship, they will probably struggle to make friends. Some of my more savvy students pick up on it and understand what I'm talking about. And sometimes they will say, 'it's a relationship with us. It's with ourselves.' Absolutely. That's what this lesson is all about: Our relationship with ourselves.

I ask the students if they've ever heard that adults traveling with children on an airplane are supposed to put their oxygen mask on before they put a mask on their child. Usually about half the group is familiar with this, they've heard this before. I ask them why. Why would an airline pilot or a stewardess tell an adult to take care of themselves before they take care of a child? Doesn't that seem kind of wacky?

In some groups, I don't have any students who really understand why that would be the expectation. And sometimes I have a couple students who do understand. We talk about how it's the concept of being able to take care of yourself so that you can help take care of other people. I tell everybody to pretend (we do a lot of pretending and imagining). Pretend that there's a parent with a child on an airplane. Something's happening, and the oxygen masks come down, and the parent tries to help their child first. And while that's happening, they run out of oxygen and they pass out. Their child can breathe, but what if their child is only three or four? And this helps students understand that, if the parent loses oxygen, the child can't help them. But if the child loses oxygen, the parent can help the child and themselves.

So we use the oxygen mask. There are definitely some cliche concepts in this lesson, but a lot of things that are cliche are popular because they're wise. Just because they're widely shared and widely known doesn't mean they're not wise. The oxygen mask metaphor is a pretty wise cliche, and it helps me explain to students why sometimes we need to be able to take care of ourselves first, because that's the only way we can take care of other people in certain circumstances.

In this lesson, I have multiple categories of things that we talk about. The basic gist of this lesson is we talk about things that we are doing that might not be the best choices for our bodies and our brains, and what we might consider doing instead.

There is nothing in Starfish Social Club, there is no circumstance where I tell my students what to do. In the entire 32 lesson curriculum. I am a guide, I'm a facilitator, I'm a teacher, I'm a coach. I am never there to tell them what to do. I am there to share information that they typically don't have, haven't learned yet, and then they get to decide what to do about it. But the cool thing that happens along the way is we have some really amazing conversations. We have some great conversations about all the things that we talk about throughout the entire 32 weeks that we're together in these courses. And so that's what I share.

We talk about sleep, we talk about what we eat, we talk about exercise, we talk about hobbies and how we spend our free time. It's all built around helping students recognize that there are some choices that we make that aren't the best for our brains and our bodies.

We also talk about the real challenges of dopamine and of impulsivity. So many of the students in my program have ADHD, as do I, and so it's helpful and easy to talk about these things, because almost everybody can relate to them. For example, when we talk about the things that we eat, a lot of students who have ADHD really gravitate toward carbs. Carbs give you a dopamine hit. So it's the things that are processed, things that have sugar, the chips and the candy. It can also be things that are just easy. Especially if you're a kid, what's easy for me to eat right now? The chips are easy for me to eat. If I think about what goes into kids' lunch boxes sometimes, it's what's easy, especially if they're packing their own lunch boxes.

Sometimes even just the act of eating is a dopamine hit. It's very common for people to eat because they're bored or because they're anxious or because they're upset, as opposed to actually being hungry. So just the act of eating itself can be a big dopamine hit.

I was thinking about this today, I was driving and I got this craving for a salad that I sometimes get from Chick-Fil-A. It's fried chicken and it comes with the ranch dressing, which I don't consume ranch dressing anymore because I don't do dairy. We eat things because we want to, but then they make us feel crummy. Dairy is one of the things that makes me feel crummy. I had actually just left the gym and I got this craving for this salad, and part of it was the ranch dressing. And I thought, 'That's really interesting, because I don't even consume ranch dressing, and I don't want to.' I am now at the place where I'm no longer willing to consume things that make me feel crummy, so I don't drink coffee in any form, I don't drink soft drinks in any form, I don't do dairy. But it's taken me a very long time to get to that point in my life, because I have ADHD. I am impulsive. I seek dopamine.

But my point being, it was interesting for me to have this craving for something that, number one: I don't even consume, and number two: I don't even really want. If I had gotten it, I don't even think I would have eaten the Ranch. I did some thinking into, 'Wow, I wonder what's behind this craving?' And I figured out I was probably craving salt. When I think about the fried chicken that's in that salad, and I think about Ranch, both of those have salt, especially Ranch. So I thought, 'Okay, well I can eat something that has salt in it. That's much better for me than ranch dressing.'

So that's really the big part of this lesson is, sometimes I refer to it as our future self, which is a difficult concept for kids, but it's even things like brushing our teeth. The little things that our 'right now self' doesn't want to do and doesn't want to take the time to do, but our future self will benefit from it. It's definitely a difficult concept, but the older my students are, the more they can see that concept. If you're listening, watching, reading this as an adult, it's definitely a helpful concept for those of us who are adults, because by the time you're an adult, you have most likely experienced the ramifications of not making decisions for your future self, and so you have a much better idea of what that entails.

We talk about sleep. I am a big advocate of students being as independent as possible, as soon as possible. In the building that we have our classes in, we are upstairs, and I encourage students who are 10 and older to come in the building on their own. I think they are capable of doing so. There's not anything in the building that's going to be a danger to them. I really encourage students to be as independent as possible.

Our frontal lobe, our executive functioning skills, aren't fully online until we're in our mid 20s. Which is the reason why rental car companies don't rent to people under 25, by the way. But I think sometimes, in our effort to help kids be independent, they are in situations that they just don't have the capacity to handle on their own. I think things like cell phones, smart watches, when there's not a designated place for them to be overnight, I think it's pretty impossible for kids and teenagers to regulate their use of technology. I just don't think it's something that they have the capability of doing independently.

I see students in my in my class, students are welcome to bring phones and watches into my groups, we just keep them put away. But over the years, I've had several students that have an unconscious obsession with their phones. They don't even realize that they do, but every time it makes a noise or vibrates, or even if there's a five second drop when nobody's talking or saying anything, just that little hit of boredom, and their immediate reaction is to take their phone out. It's surprising to me how common that is among students in my group that they're not able to go an hour without being immediately responsive to the noise of their phone or to take their phone out just out of five seconds of boredom.

So I do think there are things that we as the adults need to support our students with for as long as possible, because they just don't have the regulation skills built into their brain yet. Even us as an adult, I am absolutely guilty. My goal is to put my phone in my kitchen every night, because I know that if I take it into my bedroom, I'm going to stay up for hours. My brain doesn't really have a concept of time, and so I don't really have a concept of bedtime. I just have a certain time in the evening that I think this is when I should be going to sleep so that I can have enough sleep and I can get up and be productive the next day. But if I don't pay attention to what time it is, my brain doesn't really have a shut off, it's time to go to sleep mode. So I know if I take my phone into the bedroom at night, I will be up for hours just scrolling on my phone doing whatever, and so I put my phone in my kitchen at night as a way to support me in making decisions for my future self.

It's the same with food. I intentionally don't buy ultra processed food. I intentionally don't buy high sugar food. Because otherwise I will eat it! If it's in my house, I'm going to eat it. So the best option for me is to just not bring it into my house.

We have a conversation about how we spend our free time. We use the word leisure, how we spend our leisure time. And even with this, there are ways to spend our free time that are healthy for our bodies and our brains, and ways that aren't. And again, we can all choose to spend our time however we want to. I don't ever tell anybody what I think they should be doing.

We talk about how, even things that are really enjoyable, are only enjoyable for a certain amount of time. You may really enjoy playing video games for an hour, maybe two hours, but after that, it really starts to stop being enjoyable. Often we keep doing things like playing video games because of the dopamine hit, because we don't want to lose our progress, because we think we're really close to solving something, not because we actually want to keep playing, but because there's other things triggering our brain. Maybe we're really close to the next level, and we just want to get to the next level.

An interesting thing I've noticed about myself: I love to play Sudoku, which is the number game in the grid where you fill in the missing numbers. I love that game. It's one of my favorite things to do. If I'm if I'm feeling kind of emotional, I've actually found Sudoku is really good because it moves me out of my emotional brain and into my logical brain, and so it helps me transition through difficult emotional moments quicker. But man, I love playing Sudoku.

What I found is that I do a lot of the puzzles in the New York Times, and that's usually the last one I'll do is I'll do all three levels of Sudoku. But what I realized is I would usually do them before I went to bed, like the last thing at night, and the dopamine hit that I would get from solving the hard puzzle made me not want to get off my phone and not want to go to sleep, so I've had to stop playing the games at night. I do them in the morning now. It was just this interesting realization I had that I felt really proud of myself for solving the hard level, and then I don't want to go to bed now. What else can I do to keep this feeling going?

So even for leisure time, working on the concept of moderation, which we've talked about in other contexts before, but just talking with the students about moderating what we choose to do during our leisure time. And we talk about: What are some things we can do during our leisure time that are good for our brains and our bodies? We talk about this for all the categories: What are things we can eat or drink anytime because they're good for us? What are some ways we can spend our leisure time that are good for our brains and our bodies?

Anything we're doing that's physically active, anything that is creative, so drawing, writing, building. So many of my students are fans of LEGO as a creative activity. Things that we do where we are engaged with other people. There's also usually a limit on that, but that is a mentally healthier way to spend our time than in our room binging YouTube, for example.

This lesson, I don't know that it changes anybody's habits, but my goal is always to plant seeds. I just want my students to think about all of these categories.

We talk about our conversation style. I talk to the students about what it means to be an introvert versus an extrovert, and why that's important. Typically, when I explain what those are, I'll ask the students, "What do you think happens if an introvert and an extrovert spend a lot of time together?" And what's funny is that the students recognize that both of them will probably get a little bit annoyed with each other, and that's absolutely right! It's not because one of them is right and one of them is wrong. It's because they're different, and the person who's more introverted will probably get annoyed after a while with someone who talks so much, and the person who's more extroverted will probably get annoyed after a while with someone who doesn't respond and engage.

I went on a trip a few years ago with a friend of mine, and we had never traveled together before. We just knew each other casually. There was this thing I wanted to go do and we have a shared hobby, and so he agreed to go with me. I am an introvert. I love being by myself. I spend the majority of my time by myself. I'm very content by myself. When I do engage, I need time to decompress. Even at Starfish, when the evening is over, I am quiet and I am done, and I'm going home.

So we went to New York City for an event, and we took a lot of Ubers around New York City. And obviously there's just people everywhere. And I did not know this about my friend until we were in New York City: He talks to everybody. I also talk to everybody, to be fair, I'm a very friendly person. But he has in-depth conversations with everybody. Sometimes we would be in an Uber and I just wanted to sit and look out the window and just be quiet and that was never an option. Everywhere we went to eat, he's talking to the wait staff, he's talking to the people next to us, and I just kind of wanted to have dinner.

Back to building awareness, it's important for us all to be aware of different aspects of our personality. They help us think about: Who are the people that we might really like to spend time with, and who are the people that we might like to spend maybe less time with? Not that there's anything wrong with either one of us. Neither one of us are doing anything bad or wrong. It's just that our personalities are not a match for everybody, and that's okay. Now I just travel by myself, but if I were to travel with someone else, I would just be more conscientious about that person's personality type, because I really like quiet and downtime and being on my own. So it's just important things for students to think about.

Next is our activity level. This is an important one when we're thinking about who we might want to be friends with and hang out with. I have all the students talk about: What do you think your activity level is? I say, "Imagine that it's the weekend. Do you prefer to just hang out at home and chill, maybe play video games, be on the internet, read, get up when you want to get up in the morning, and just chill? Or do you prefer to go places and do things and be around people and do things on the weekend that you don't get to do during the week?"

I am an active person. I love traveling because it means I get to go to new places and see things I can't see when I'm at home, and do things I can't do when I'm at home. I'm a very physically active person, and so when we talk about this, I am active. While I like spending time by myself and I like being at home, I am doing things when I'm at home. I am recording podcast episodes. I'm working on things I just finished writing the book. I am doing things when I'm here.

So the students get to think about: Are you more passive or are you more active? One of the reasons that's important to think about is when we are considering people that we might want to spend more time with, if there's a mismatch in our activity level, it doesn't mean that we can't hang out with them. It just means it might be more difficult for us to find things that we can do together. One person is probably going to want to go out and do things out, and the other person is probably going to want to stay in and do things in, and that just might not be a match when it comes to how we spend time together.

You see this even in romantic relationships. The activity level between two people is important, because it really dictates a lot of how we spend our time. It's helpful to think about things like this, our conversation style, what we like to do during free time, what our activity level is. It's important to think about these things when we're considering spending time with other people. The more of them we have in common with someone, usually, the more we will enjoy our time together, because we are more similar. But again, it does not mean that you can't be friends with someone who has an opposite communication style to you. Sometimes they complement each other. It just means that it's something for us to be aware of. It's something for us to think about. It's something for us to pay attention to.

We talk about emotional regulation in this lesson. We talk about why emotional regulation is so important. One of the things I share with the students is that, when it comes to making friends, keeping friends, getting a job, keeping a job, being married, the things like this in life, so much of it comes down to things like emotional regulation. A lot of people who end up getting fired from jobs, it's not usually because they're not good at their job. They got hired because they had the skill set to do what they were hired to do.

If they get fired, it is usually for soft skills. They are not able to work with other people in a team environment. Their communication skills are are not where the employer needs them to be. Maybe their social skills are struggling. If I were to think about one of the quickest ways to be fired from a job or to lose a friend or to have a romantic relationship break up, in my mind, it's emotional regulation struggles.

As we talk about a Starfish, it's always okay to feel the way you feel. It's okay to be angry, it's okay to be annoyed, it's okay to be frustrated. It's always okay to feel the way you feel. It's the choices we make when we feel that way that we have to be mindful of. So I feel like emotional regulation challenges are one of the easiest ways for people to not get what they want in life, because they're not able to regulate when they're frustrated, when they're upset, when they're annoyed, when they're bothered. And so when I think about times that people I know have lost jobs, have lost friendships, so much of it is these soft skills. It's their inability to kind of process what's happening and and how they respond to it. So that's the last one that we talk about is emotional regulation.

Everybody gets to share their favorite emotional regulation strategy. We try some of them to give everybody an idea, maybe some things that they haven't thought about or heard of before. For a lot of my older students, it's common for them to say listening to music, which I really love. It's so easy to have portable music now. Almost all my older students have their own phones, and so it's so easy for them to have music readily available to them. I think there's a lot of cool strategies that people have that are just really helpful. And mine's Sudoku, like I said.

Anything that's logical and requires you to think and process takes you out of your emotional brain. You cannot be logical and emotional at the same time. They are two different parts of your brain. When I find myself feeling more emotional than I would like to be about something, I will find a way to get myself into logic mode so that I can become less emotional about it, and then I can decide what I want to do about it. Even asking kids to run an errand puts them into that logical part of their brain. Asking them to help you solve a problem.

There's a strategy related to 54321... I don't know I'm going to get it correct because I just now thought about it, but it's name five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can smell, for example. The whole point of that strategy is you're taking that person, usually a child, out of the emotional part of their brain and plugging them into the logical part of their brain by doing things like that. I also heard on a podcast the other day that you can't drink water and cry at the same time. I used to use bubbles. You can't blow bubbles and cry at the same time. So if you want to cry, it's absolutely fine, perfectly fine to cry. It's if you don't want to cry right now, drinking water, blowing bubbles, things that are incompatible with the physical act of crying or yelling. It's hard to blow bubbles and yell at the same time.

So that's what this lesson is all about. A lot of different choices that we have and things to think about when it comes to how we take care of ourselves. Being able to think about our future self. What choices would our future self like us to make? And for kids, future self could be an hour from now. You've been playing video games for two hours. How do you want to feel an hour from now? Do you want to feel burnt out and frustrated because you keep dying in the game and you're just over it? Or do you want to take a break and go color, go build, go outside for a bit, go play with your dog, and an hour from now, be in a much better mental state? The same with food: Do you want to eat some some cheese sticks and apples, or do you want to eat some Doritos and jelly beans and think about how you'll feel an hour from now?

Okay, let's see what our number generator has in store for us next time. It says 24. Twenty-four would be the last lesson of module three. Module three is all about communication. The last lesson of module three about communication would be asking for help. I actually added this lesson after I had created the whole program. I added it in later because I had a parent request it, and I thought, 'That's absolutely something that we can talk about and we should talk about.' So that's a beautiful thing about the program is I can add anything I want to at any time. Sometimes if a student asks a question and I'm like, 'Oh, we've never talked about that before!' I'll find a lesson to plug that that topic in.

So lesson eight of module three, which we'll talk about next time, is all about asking for help. How do we ask for help? Who do we ask for help? When do we ask for help? I'll see you next time.