[00:00:00] Christian Moore: She taught me a different type of psychology. She showed me what to do with negative emotions, and I was at the right place at the right time where someone was showing me what to do with sadness, what to do with hurt, rejection, anger, failure.

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[00:00:24] Gretchen Roe: Welcome, everybody, to The Demme Learning Show. It is my great and privileged pleasure to welcome Christian Moore, the author of The Resilience Breakthrough, to come and talk to you all today. This book is just so radical, and Christian has such a powerful message. I am so excited to welcome him today. I’m so excited for the conversation that we’re going to have, because without resilience, we don’t accomplish anything. I am so excited to have Christian here to talk about his personal journey, because I think you’ll find it inspiring. I’m going to let Christian introduce himself, and then we’re going to see where we go with this. Christian–

[00:01:06] Christian: All right. Well, I’m excited to be here with you guys today. My background is I’m a licensed clinical social worker. I’ve spent the last 27 years traveling 7 million miles across America, across the world teaching resilience. People always ask me, what’s the number one thing a person has to have to be resilient? We know resilience is the ability to bounce back, we know resilience has never showed up without suffering, and so suffering is definitely the first step in being resilient: some type of opposition, difficulty.

I’ll just tell you a little bit about my background, how I became interested in resilience. I grew up between DC and Baltimore in a family of 12 kids: five brothers, six sisters. My mom had social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder. My mom had a fear of leaving the house. You have to leave the house to go get food, so there wasn’t a lot of food to eat in my house growing up. There was usually pickles, olives, and tuna fish. I might write a cookbook one day, 101 ways how to eat those three things.

Next person to tell you a little bit about is my dad. My dad graduated from high school two years early, went to work for the US Postal Service sorting mail. The US Postal Service could tell you he had a tremendous talent with numbers. A little while later, a white car pulls up and two gentlemen get out, and they drive him to a place called Fort Meade, Maryland, and have him go to work at a place called NSA, the National Security Agency, as a cryptanalyst, as a code breaker. He’s one of the top mathematical people in the world– We didn’t know that at the time, but they figured out he was a mathematical genius, and became a GS-16 code breaker. That’s the highest level spy, highest level cryptanalyst that you can become.

I’m going to write a book one day, Son of a Spy, but I don’t know if you’ve ever been around a genius before. They usually lack two things: common sense and social skills. [chuckles] Now, I realize my dad’s autistic, so I have an autistic dad who’s a code breaker at NSA, a mom with social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder. As a child, I was diagnosed with ADHD, conduct disorder, and severe learning disabilities, so that led to a lot of academic struggles. I failed the first grade, found myself struggling with basic reading and writing, sixth grade math level, seventh grade reading level, and just really, really struggled.

When I was 17 years old, I was illiterate– Long, crazy story. I’ll make it a little shorter. One of my best friend’s mom is an African American lady, who I endearingly call Mama Jackson, took over and started raising me, and she really planted the first seeds of resilience in me. I remember her saying to me, “Look, Christian–” She’d pick me up in the morning, she’d have a plate with warm food on it, she’d pull over in front of my elementary school, and she’d say, “Look, Christian, I can’t get rid of your parents’ divorce. I can’t get rid of your parents’ mental illness. I cannot get rid of the challenges in this neighborhood. I can’t get rid of the problems you’re having in school. You have every reason to be angry.” She just acknowledged my anger and said, “Christian, you have to use that anger today. Instead of punching Mike in the nose, use that anger as a reason to turn in your homework, to listen to that teacher. Use that sadness as a reason to become a greater human being, as a reason to become a man.”

She started teaching me, but it was interesting, because I spent eight years in college studying social work, and they taught us something called positive psychology, but she taught me a different type of psychology. She showed me what to do with negative emotions, and I was at the right place at the right time where someone was showing me what to do with sadness, what to do with hurt, rejection, anger, failure. I realize, now I know a little bit about African American history in the United States. She told me her ancestors worked in the fields, and so they were angry working in those fields, I’m sure. I’m sure they felt a lot of fear, a lot of loneliness, a lot of hopelessness, and so she comes from generations that had to channel negative emotions.

So, she literally– I was at the right place and was influenced by her culture. They’re from a little town in Virginia, in Petersburg, Virginia, and I think carryover from that culture really influenced me. Those were some of the first seeds of resilience. That’s my background. About 27 years ago, a professor came to me in college and said, “Look, how did you do this? How did you make it this far in school?” And I just wrote down, I had to realize my decisions had consequences, I had to tear off my labels, I had to learn how to control my defense mechanisms. Then I took 10 different evidence-based mental health tools and made them visual for kids, so if I’m talking to a student about getting out of a gang, stop doing drugs, I would draw a picture. I’m from Maryland, Maryland’s the crab state. If you put a bunch of live crabs in a pot, why can’t the crabs get out of the pot? And a kid would say, “Well, the other crabs are reaching up and pulling them down.”

[00:06:24] Gretchen: That’s true.

[00:06:24] Christian: Then I wrote questions written around the visual metaphor. Like, what will my future be like if I stay in this pot? What are the reasons for staying in this pot? If I’m a kid in a gang, that gang gives me money, it gives me protection, it gives me prestige, it acts as a surrogate family. Then I would reinforce that visual metaphor with music, physical activities. That’s what originally took me around the country, is I would share these 10 visual metaphors reinforced with music and activities, and that kind of became the start of WhyTry.

The name of my organization is WhyTry, because I wanted to make sure that all students, all kids know why they should try in life. Because if they don’t have the answer to the question, why try, you’re not going to see a lot of effort in life. We believe the answer is, if you try in life, you’ll have more opportunity, you’ll have more freedom, you’ll have more self-respect. Anyways, that’s how I got interested in the subject matter of resilience. That’s my background. A little side note, Mama Jackson, a couple of years ago, got the National Rosa Parks Award. We’ve reached over 3 million students across the country, and we’re working in over 30,000 schools. We became one of the largest mental health programs in America’s education system, and it was nice to see Mama Jackson– It was Martin Luther King’s close friend who gave her the National Rosa Parks Award, so that was one of the highlights of my life.

[00:07:51] Gretchen: You know what? I love the fact that she was willing to sow into your life. They say what doesn’t make you bitter makes you better. The fact that she was able to use that as motivation and teach that to you is just so remarkable. It’s really an amazing skillset. I’m so glad she did, because look how many people you have influenced because you were willing to try.

[00:08:19] Christian: Yes. Thank you.

[00:08:20] Gretchen: Christian, can you talk a little bit about the feelings? In your book, you talk about being told by a professor you shouldn’t have been in college, you shouldn’t have made it there, and that was no place for you to be. But you said, “These are the reasons why I should be here.” Can you talk about how you were able to, at a 20-year-old’s age, reframe that to prove that you were where people thought you shouldn’t be?

[00:08:51] Christian: It kind of lit a fire under me. I actually have named it even, I call it street resilience. That’s when people say you can’t do this or that, you feel disrespected by someone, you feel judged by someone. We as humans naturally try to one-up another human being: I’m more superior because of my education level, because of my socioeconomic status, because of maybe where I live. We live in a world that naturally does the opposite of what I call surrendering the one-up relationship. When you’re in a position of power, when you surrender that, that’s real leadership.

What’s interesting to me is, I had that professor say, “Christian, if you can get a college degree–” He actually said to me, “My degree is worth less.” He said, “If someone as dumb as you can make it this far, my degree is worth less.” I literally walked off that college campus in tears. I had to go back and let him know that I had value, and I just said, “Look, if I can graduate, this is what I’m going to do with my life,” but I knew a lot of those doors were not going to open up unless I had that college degree. Knowing what I wanted to do with my life and the impact I wanted to have, I had to have that education, so I just kind of put my foot down.

My favorite part of that story is, a couple of years later, that professor had to lecture on my theories. Two introduction to school social work textbooks, we got in the textbooks– there’s something called evidence-based RTI, PBIS, positive behavioral support, and the behavioral plan for the IEP, so they actually had to lecture on my theories. That might sound like I’m bragging, but I’m really not bragging. It’s a principle I teach called street resilience, is where you use any type of disrespect as fuel. I looked at thousands of kids who had high trauma that were thriving, all of them talked about using disrespect in a productive way, that that became their motivation. They might have been the first generation in their family to go to college, the first person to get a job that paid over $50,000 a year and stuff, just things like that. That’s street resilience. We live in a world that is going to show disrespect, and to use that– Highly resilient people, when we study them, it’s very common that they take the judgment of others and use that as motivation, and that’s an attribute of the resilient.

[00:11:19] Gretchen: Well, you were such an inspiration to me. We met last year in New Orleans, and it was humbling to hear your story and sit in the audience and think, “Wait a minute, this fellow had every reason to just withdraw from society.” And instead, what you did is you turned around and served society to make it better for hundreds of thousands of kids. That, to me, is really remarkable. What is the thing that has surprised you the most in this journey as far as going from where people told you couldn’t, and you have proved that you can? What’s been the biggest surprise?

[00:12:00] Christian: Man, the biggest surprise to me is– Right now, for example, it’s 2026, and we know what a child needs to thrive, that debate is over. Get about 20 clinicians in a room, 20 therapists, social workers, psychologists, the top experts in mental health in a room, people are going to see it from different angles, but I’m pretty sure we can agree. And I’ve done this in different forums, but we’ll agree on the main things that a person needs to thrive. We know–

It’s funny, we just did a worldwide study during COVID. Whether we knew we were doing a worldwide study or not, we just did one. For example, for years, I would teach the most important thing that human beings need is social interaction, and for years, people would kind of roll their eyes. That was a little too simple of an answer that they would say, “Well, that’s coming from a bleeding heart social worker. There’s bigger things that humans need besides human interaction.” Well, then COVID hit–

[00:13:00] Gretchen: And sent us all home. [chuckles]

[00:13:02] Christian: Yes, sent everybody home, and everybody sat in isolation, and what happened? Mental health issues went through the roof, and so today, the debate is over. 99% of therapists will tell you the number one thing– A human better have access to is clean water. After clean water, and some basic food, and to feel productive, the next most important thing a human being has to have is a connection with another human being. Me talking right now to Gretchen is probably one of the most healthy things I could possibly do, and for her to talk to me, it’s literally oxygen. You could argue it’s just as important as oxygen.

That debate is over, so to me, the most shocking thing is that we know what resilient kids need, we even have evidence-based resilience, we know how to teach it. We know all this information on what enables a child to thrive, and that information is not being disseminated. That is my biggest shock. That is my biggest shock, that the experts know it and– It’s interesting, I think mental health, we’re not marketing experts, we’re not– I’ll be frank with you. I might get myself in trouble for saying this, but to sit down with me in therapy or a clinician like me, it’s expensive. It’s $150, $200 an hour. Most people cannot afford that, and so if your kids don’t get access to this information and education– That’s why I put most of my energy and effort into not doing one-on-one stuff, to do macro social work, because to meet with me one-on-one, or any clinician, it’s $100 to $300 an hour.

I’m telling you, I can barely afford that. When my kids needed therapy, that was an eye-opening thing when I saw the cost for me to put my own children into counseling, into therapy. I was able to do it, but I was like, “Man, this is expensive,” and that’s an interesting thing. I know that lawyers can make all the money they want, doctors– I don’t know. It’s so impactful to a person’s life, having the right information, the right education. I don’t know, I can’t believe that we haven’t been able to come up with a better way to make sure every child has access to the skills that will enable them to thrive. That’s why I continue to travel, that’s why I continue to speak out, but that is by far my biggest– That’s one of the best questions I’ve ever had anybody ask me, by the way. That’s a great question. That’s my biggest shock, that that information is not more readily available.

[00:15:48] Gretchen: We have the information, we know what to do, and we’re not doing it.

[00:15:51] Christian: Yes. That just blows my mind. That blows my mind.

[00:15:58] Gretchen: If I were a parent, how would I apply the principles that you have here? I mean, because it’s not just kids in public school, or private school, or parochial school, or kids who are individually educated. I talked to a mom two weeks ago in St. Louis. I actually told her about WhyTry because she had a teenager who has just withdrawn from the world because he said it’s not worth it. Everything is hard, everything is difficult, and he does not have that yet– I said this to her in that way, he doesn’t have resilience. He doesn’t know how to be resilient. Everything, he takes so personally, it hurts him so much, so he’s just sort of withdrawn. Resilience is almost something that you have to practice in order to have.

[00:16:51] Christian: Yes, and it’s even more complicated than that. Resilience isn’t a destination. You don’t land on resilience. Like, I’ve never reached resilience. Resilience takes place in the striving, so resilience shows up in the effort, in the effort effect. It’s kind of confusing to people because they’re like, “Well, how do you know when you’re resilient?” It won’t be you land on it. It’s not a stopping place, if that makes sense. It’s like you get on a bus and you know there’s a destination. Resilience is the bus ride. It’s the journey and stuff.

To answer the first part of your question, I think because of my learning disabilities, I don’t like anything to be complicated. I like things to be really simple. Again, I was saying earlier, I guess I started out the presentation talking about the key ingredient to resilience is some type of difficulty and opposition. The second– I have a really simple model of resilience, because I wanted to make sure kids, even young kids, could learn the model really easy. The second step to being resilient is, after that suffering shows up, you have to ask yourself a really simple question, how do I use that suffering as a fuel source? How can I use that suffering to create a positive outcome? How can I use that suffering to be kinder, to try to be a better human being?

I’ll give you an example. Last year, my house flooded, and I was like– I call this the flipping-the-switch question. The house flooded, my son accidentally flushed the toilet, that backed up, and just caused like $40,000 worth of damage. Water’s coming down into the basement through the cam lights, and the emergency crew shows up to work on the water situation. My son’s in tears, everybody’s in crisis. I’m looking around the room, and I’m like, “Well, I’m the resilience guy, I better figure out– let me see if I can apply this right now.” And so I take off my [crosstalk]–

[00:18:55] Gretchen: It’s tough when you’re tossed into those situations, though, where you’re like, “Oh, now I got to put my money where my mouth is.”

[00:19:01] Christian: Yes, so I stood underneath the water and acted like I was taking a shower, and everybody started laughing. I took my shirt off, just being funny, acting like I was taking a shower. I told the guy, “You got to get the electricity back on.” They knocked out the WiFi, so I was worried about my kids not having WiFi for five minutes. Just making jokes about that saying, “Hey, so you got to turn that WiFi on. My kids, their entire lives, they’ve had WiFi. I don’t know if they’ll function. They might just turn off if they don’t have WiFi.” Just being funny, and everybody’s laughing and joking. The guy who is part of the cleanup crew, he’s like, “I’ve gone to hundreds of houses, I’ve never seen anybody respond this way.”

The reason I tell that story, sometimes being resilient is being unorthodox, is doing the opposite of what a person would normally do in that situation. It’s interesting, that company reached out to me and said, “Hey, Christian, will you come teach our employees this mentality? How did you do that?” They wanted to know, how did I flip the switch? under that level of pressure, $40,000 worth of damage? How could I even find humor? How could I even make a joke? That was a conscious decision, that wasn’t casual. Does that make sense? Like, I had predetermined that when life gets hard, I’m going to flip the switch. I’m going to say to myself, “How can I use that challenge as a reason to be a better human being, to be kinder?”

You know, I’ve flown 7 million miles, so I’ve been on several emergency flights. I was on the biggest bird strike flight since Sully. Flew out of the Great Salt Lake, and we hit some birds and knocked out one of the engines. The plane couldn’t land because it didn’t have enough thrust to land, and everybody on the plane starts freaking out, screaming, crying. I just went into social work mode and just started talking to the people next to me, calming them down, saying, “Hey, these Delta pilots are amazing.” If it wasn’t an amazing pilot, I wouldn’t be talking to you, but we were able to come back in and land. I had to flip the switch in that situation too, and so flipping the switch is something we really got to teach our kids. That when you feel anger or you feel fear, there’s no law in the universe that says you cannot use that in productive ways. It’s just that you have to have the awareness that you can. Once you have the awareness, you’ll see hundreds of situations where you can practice it. It’s all around you.

To be really frank with you, I tell kids, “What I’m about to teach you, I got to warn you, because 90% of adults do not know how to do.” Most adults do not have the skill, so it’s kind of cool. It’s kind of this partnership between me and this kid, we’re learning skills that the adults around them do not have, and that’s very empowering to kids. I had a kid in Baltimore the other day, he taught his dad how to flip the switches. His dad had applied for like six or seven jobs, didn’t get the job. Dad was burned out. The kid learned this mentality of– it’s like a battery. You can’t charge a battery with just a positive connection, and you can’t charge a battery with just a negative connection. It’s the positive and the negative coming together. The positive represents your positive emotions, and the negative represents your negative emotions.

He drew out the battery for his dad, and he said, “Dad, I know you’re angry right now. I know you’re sad, you’re feeling rejection. Dad, you got to use this like a battery. You got to use those negative emotions as a reason to apply for 10 jobs tomorrow. In the last couple of weeks, you’ve applied for 6 jobs, but tomorrow, I want to give you the goal to apply for 10 jobs.” His dad applied for 10 jobs that next day and got one of the jobs, and was hired. He called the school and said, “I can’t believe what my son taught me. He taught me how to flip the switch. He taught me that I could tap into both my positive emotions and my negative emotions,” and so this is very empowering for kids to learn these skills. This stuff is not rocket science. It’s actually really simple stuff, and I think, being someone with learning disabilities, I don’t like stuff to be complicated.

I’ll be really frank with you, I read hundreds of books on resilience, and they all taught me skills of resilience, hard work, determination, perseverance, but I wanted to know, where does it come from internally? I couldn’t find a book that taught internal resilience, and that’s where I came up with those four sources of resilience. Anyway, the two simple things I try to teach children is: one, recognize the suffering. Number two, ask yourself the flip-the-switch question, how can I use that suffering as a reason? Just like what Mama Jackson taught me to turn in my homework, to stay in school. If my mom’s yelling at me, to not yell back at her. Does that make sense? Just because mom’s yelling doesn’t mean I have to yell. It’s really empowering.

Dad’s yelling, or my sibling’s yelling at me– do the opposite of what other people are doing. If they’re yelling, you don’t yell back. There’s a power in that, and so a lot of what I’m doing is I’m teaching kids at a very young age, they all have– All human beings have autonomy. We have control over ourselves. We really do, it’s just that we don’t know that we have control. My whole life, when I was young, I was impulsive. If someone hit me, I hit them back. You know, I grew up in a home with 11 siblings. If someone yelled at me, I yelled back.

[00:24:33] Gretchen: Where were you in the birth order there?

[00:24:35] Christian: I’m number eight.

[00:24:36] Gretchen: You’re number eight. Okay.

[00:24:37] Christian: Yes, I’m number eight, so I have four younger than me. That was empowering to me to be able to– When Mama Jackson started saying, “Christian, you’re not a puppet. You don’t have to respond to other people how they’re responding to you.” In resilience, I have a really simple– The first three steps is, the first thing, they got to recognize the pain. The second thing they have to do is flip that switch. Then the third thing is the battery. I want them to maximize both their positive and their negative emotions, because you have twice the fuel source. Think about that. A child has twice the fuel source to be resilient if they’re using positive emotions and they’re using negative emotions.

If you have to wait for positive emotions to show up, feelings of peace and comfort before you put one foot in front of another, you might have to wait. Think about it– If you have suffering, you’re usually going to have negative emotions. When I speak to 2,000 people, I’ll say, “How many of you, when you’re suffering, you have negative emotions?” Every hand goes up. I spent eight years in college only learning about positive psychology. If you went to Harvard, they’re not going to teach you what to do with your negative emotions. Harvard is only going to teach you positive psychology. I think it comes out of Harvard, so– [chuckles] They’re only going to teach you what to do, usually, with your positive emotions. It dominates mental health.

I believe positive psychology is 50% of the equation, but the other 50% is negative emotions. The greatest music, the greatest film, the greatest art, the greatest plays, the greatest literature is all rooted out of negative emotions. It’s interesting, the greatest comedians have had the hardest lives. That’s why they’re so funny. You know, Robin Williams, everybody knows his story. The greatest comedy is out of tragedy. It’s out of pain that we know that comedy comes out of. It’s that yin and yang of everything.

[00:26:38] Gretchen: I wonder if you would tell the story that you tell in the book about taking the kids bowling, and about the kid that was keeping you all from leaving for bowling and his negative reaction. I want you to tell the story, so I’m trying not to tell all the details, but his negative reaction, and how you could have responded, but how you responded instead. Because that was wildly powerful for me. I sat and cried, because I could see your emotions there, but I could also see that child’s emotions and understand how he was responding there, and the fact that you were different than any other adult in his life in the way you responded to him. I think that’s super powerful. I wonder if you would talk about that a little bit.

[00:27:36] Christian: Yes. By the way, this story– For every success story I could tell you, I can tell you another 100 failures. This is the one time I did it right. [chuckles] I mess up more than I succeed, let me be really clear on that.

[00:27:47] Gretchen: Yes, but you got to try a lot in order to find the wins, right?

[00:27:51] Christian: Yes. This one– It’s funny, I kind of did a traditional authoritative approach in the beginning. I kind of backed this kid into a corner. I told him, “Hey, you can’t go bowling until you clean your room.” Everybody has to do their chores, and this kid’s fighting me, and I just said, “Hey, we’re all going to be out in the van waiting for you, so no one’s leaving until you finish your chores.” So I kind of boxed this kid into a really tight situation. I’m climbing up into the van, and all the other kids in the van say, “Mr. Moore, turn around. Turn around.” Right as I turn around, this kid goes, “Ahhk-ptooey,” and spits in my face a ton. I mean, snot is dripping off my nose, it hit my mouth–

Now, I grew up in the hood. If someone spits on you, you can hurt someone for doing that. I’ll be honest, I made a fist out of my hand, my natural reflex. I felt rage inside, but I had looked at this kid’s psychosocial history, I knew a lot about this kid. This kid had been severely emotionally abused, physically abused. This kid had no shortage of reasons to be angry. I mean, I’m in this residential group home working with kids that grew up in really difficult circumstances. So I just said, “Look, I understand why you spit in my face.” Something came over me, and I just sat there and repeated to that kid why he did it. I said, “I know life is painful. I know you’re hurting. I understand why you spit in my face,” and the young man just started shaking like a leaf.

I said, “Look, every time you did this in the past, you got what you wanted. You got into a fight, you escalated things. I respect you– I’m always going to disagree with what you did to me. It’s not okay.” I made it really clear, “It’s not okay that you spit in my face, but this time, I’m going to do something different. I’m going to treat you different. We’re going to start over,” and me and that kid connected after that. It was a life-changing moment for him, it was a life-changing moment for me. Again, I wish I could tell you I did that in every situation as a therapist working with kids, but that one time I did the right thing, it really made a huge difference with that kid. I think sometimes working with kids with my background, we’ve had the authoritative approach 1,000 times, and it’s– In my book, I have 27 boosters, just some other ways of seeing things in the book, trying to do things a little bit unexpected.

I’ll give you another example. My son, about a year and a half ago– he’s 19 years old. He got off of work, he was texting his girlfriend, wasn’t looking up, and ran into a pole in the middle of a parking lot. He just totaled his truck, just being totally irresponsible. I was like, “Man, I could– there’s a lot of options I have,” and so I decided to– He’s pretty responsible 90% of the time, so I thought, “All right, I’m going to take a risk here. Instead of–” I could have told him, “You’re not going to have a car to drive until you earn the money to get that car,” but I did something a little different. I gave him the most valuable car we had and said, “Look, I want you to drive this car now.”

I knew he also had some fear of driving. I could tell he was really shaken up from it. I put more trust in him, gave him a more expensive car, and you could argue, that was the dumbest thing a dad has ever done. Now, a little bit of time later, he’s way more responsible as a driver, he pays attention. It’s funny, we were driving as a family in three different cars on the freeway, and he got back to the house last. He drives on the freeway in the slow lane, he’s really careful. I was like, “Wow.” And so, sometimes doing the unexpected has the most impact sometimes when you’re working with kids, and especially when you’re teaching kids resilience, but it’s got to be simplified. Complexity for me is very frustrating.

[00:31:58] Gretchen: Now, you wrote this book in 2014, so it’s been a hot minute, and you’ve applied the lessons. We had a question that I thought was great: In the ensuing years, what would you change?

[00:32:12] Christian: Man, there’s several things. I gave you the example of the battery. The battery is not in the book, and I wish it was in the book. I would definitely have the battery in the book. The other thing I would change is the ending. I would probably emphasize a little bit more– I talk about self-grace, but I would spend a little more time in the book talking about what it is to be human. To be human is to make mistakes, to mess up. What separates us from artificial intelligence is– Artificial intelligence is about to take over the world. It is taking over the world, but I think we’ll see a rubber band effect from it, that I would rather– On any topic sometimes, I would rather hear what Gretchen has to say about a topic because I can hear a human perspective if I ask Gretchen a question, versus if I asked AI a question.

[00:33:11] Gretchen: Right. Well, AI is also a sycophant, so it’s going to tell you what it thinks you want to hear.

[00:33:17] Christian: Yes, it’s going to tell me what I want to hear. There’s something in the book I wish I could emphasize. I wish I would have emphasized that our resilience is increased by having more human experiences, because we’re human beings. When I say human experience, a human experience is flawed. A human experience isn’t going to be completely accurate. A human experience, you might find the mistake in it, you might find the inaccuracy in it, but I think we’re going to crave that, believe it or not. I think it’s going to come full circle, because it’s a need, and it’s what makes us human. The fact that we make mistakes, I think it’s important.

I guess I’d want kids to know in this book, and adults when they work with kids, that what’s special about all human beings is that we mess up. If we didn’t mess up, we may as well be a robot, we may as well be a machine, we may as well be AI. That fact that we mess up, we make mistakes, that’s what makes us so human, and I think we’ve got to get back to celebrating that. We live in a world of perfectionism, that I want to be superior to you, that everything needs to be perfect. Again, I’d rather have a piece of art hanging in my house that maybe Gretchen created, or my child created, that might have some flaws in it, versus the perfect picture that AI can create.

I’m very pro-AI, don’t get me wrong. I’m not against AI. I think AI does some really powerful things, but I think in my book, my book about resilience, that as we celebrate the human experience and our flaws and what makes us imperfect, that is going to become really special. I hope that happens over time. I think we can lower suicide, I think we can lower depression, I think we can lower anxiety if we can put an emphasis on celebrating what is human. To be human is to be imperfect. I think that’s what makes us most special, is our imperfections.

I grew up in a culture where it was highly important to be the best, to be as perfect as you can possibly be, to be dominant, to be the best at everything. What’s more important? Is it cooperation or winning? Is winning more important, or is cooperating more important? I know the older I get– I’m 55 now, I start realizing, “Man, I think it might be cooperation. Working with people, than working against people or dominating people.” For some reason, humans, we get off on dominating another human being. Cooperation, I think, will play a bigger role. I think with AI, over time, I think the ability for humans to cooperate with one another, to be able to forgive one another, to give each other grace, to smile at each other’s flaws instead of using them to hammer another person.

[00:36:23] Gretchen: Well, you know, one of the things– I think one of the downsides of that COVID isolation was the fact that we have lost some degree of social acuity. We’re very quick to tell others where they have wronged us, or tell others where they have misbehaved, or where we have perceived they have misbehaved. I would love to see resilience push us in another direction, which is to seek that in other people. To seek the tenacity in other people that drives them forward in a positive way instead of a negative way, because I think that makes it powerful.

[00:37:13] Christian: Yes, well said. I wish I had some of that in the book right there. Actually, when I do the next version, I may quote you on that. Yes, that’s the stuff– if I could do the book over, I would emphasize more of that. I’ll be really frank with you all, I literally see the weight of the world come off of people’s shoulders when I help explain to them, it’s okay to not be perfect, it’s okay to make a mistake. It’s okay. You think about it, it’s in making mistakes is where we learn and we go different directions and we shift. I just wonder how much human learning can even take place with AI if we don’t adapt, if we don’t change from our directions and be able to work through some questions ourselves. I think we all have compassion– I think we should never overlook human compassion. I think human compassion is– I know I’m more resilient when I’m with people that have more compassion towards me versus judgment towards me. If I’m around judgment, my resilience goes down. If I’m around compassion, my resilience goes up.

[00:38:28] Gretchen: Would you say then compassion is the greatest single resilience?

[00:38:33] Christian: Yes– I mean, it’s interesting. We know the single greatest resilience is a relationship. We know relationship is the biggest– The foundation of resilience is that relationship. I would say it’s within that model. Definitely, compassion is what comes out of people, and so compassion influences that relationship in a beautiful way. I think compassion is one of the attributes of that relationship that needs to be there. Especially, I would say to the parents, if you can– It’s hard, but to create a non-judgmental environment as much as you can with your child makes a huge difference.

When I was doing family therapy full-time, I would often tell parents, find a time– It could be a code word. The code word could be ice cream. If you take that child out for ice cream, if they tell you anything during that time, it’s a safe space. They can tell you anything they’re dealing with, and they’re not going to be punished for it, you’re going to work with them on it. Because I’d rather the child turn to the parent for whatever they’re going through, whatever pain they’re going through, whatever suffering, whatever mistake they made. I’d rather them negotiate that and work through it with their parent versus their peers sometimes, but they have to feel safe to do that. So definitely, I encourage all the parents out there to find a time. Say, “Hey, if you say the word ‘ride’ to me, that means that we can jump in the car, and you can tell me anything you’re doing, any mistake you’ve made, anything you’re going through. I’m not going to yell at you. I’m not going to get mad at you. We’re going to work together as a team. I’m your parent. I’m going to help you get through what you’re dealing with.”

[00:40:15] Gretchen: I love the messages that you have put here because you’ve made them simple, and you’ve made it in such a way that it doesn’t matter your education or your age or your background, you can still understand those messages. Like you said, you’ve made them simple enough that children can understand. I was actually looking at the Harvard Study of Adult Development because I don’t know whether you’ve seen lately, it’s swirling around on social media that chores are the number one indicator.

[00:40:46] Christian: Yes, I have.

[00:40:50] Gretchen: Actually, if you really dig into what they said, human relationship is the number one indicator of success. Chores were a close second, but human relationships, and you’ve just personified that here in this conversation.

[00:41:06] Christian: It’s just in chores, you’re serving another human being when you’re doing chores, usually. There could be some relationship ties, I could argue, to even doing chores. When I clean up the kitchen, it helps my relationship with my wife. It does.

[00:41:20] Gretchen: It does. Happy wife, happy life, right? [laughs] One of the parents said, “I’m deep in the dumps and behind on everything in life, and I just want to give up.” What would you say to that person to be able to reframe that thought process that keeps saying, oh, you should just give up? How do you stop that?

[00:41:46] Christian: It’s funny. I end my book with something called self-grace. Usually, grace comes from something outside of ourselves, but I started realizing wherever you get grace from, if you give it to yourself first, it’s going to last longer. If you get it from a third party, you get it from somewhere else. If you give it to yourself first, you can actually access even more of that grace, because if you don’t give yourself grace, it usually doesn’t last. You have to give it to yourself first. I would tell that person that, hey, one, you can only start where you stand. Sometimes all you can do is take control of the next five minutes. I’ve been so low. I’ve been through hard things in life. I’ve been laying in bed, and I’ll just say, “All right, I’m going to sit up in bed.” Sitting up is my accomplishment. All I did is sit up and put my legs next to my bed. Then I’m going to say a prayer or something like that. I’m going to get on my knees. The littlest thing in the world can be the biggest thing when you’re rock bottom. It’s just putting one foot in front of another and just literally taking control of the next five minutes.

A couple months ago, I had to do that. I was on the road. I was lonely. I was burnt out. I was tired. I was really sick on the road. I just said, “Okay, I’m going to get through the next five minutes. That’s all I got to do. I’m going to get through the next 10 minutes.” Then I realized I made it through the hour. I didn’t do anything dumb. I wasn’t selfish. I didn’t snap at anybody. I just say, “Hey, I’m going to slow everything down.” It’s almost like you got to put everything in slow motion. You’ve got to show an increase in love for yourself during those times.

I even tell people, “Man, give yourself a hug, hold yourself, lay in bed.” I’ve been so rock bottom before I’ve had to give myself a hug. You’ve really got to give yourself grace. That self-love is so important, especially when you don’t have any desire to give yourself that love. You’re beating yourself up. You got to make a rule. When your head hits that pillow, you got to say to yourself, “I’m going to focus on what’s right with me, not what’s wrong with me.” That’s a act of compassion for ourselves. We can get compassion from other people.

I was just talking about how important that is.

Compassion for ourselves can start with just focusing on what have I done right today? How can I do more of that tomorrow? It’s like a snowball rolling down a mountain. That snowball will get bigger and bigger and turn into an avalanche. Sometimes it has to start with just five minutes.

[00:44:30] Gretchen: One of the things that you said in here that I thought was so cool is you were talking about having a growth mindset. That has become the current platitude that we hear, oh, you should have a growth mindset. What you emphasized in here that I thought was terrific was something I often say to parents is if I ask you to tell me the toughest thing that happened last week, you could tell it to me in a heartbeat. If I ask you to tell me the most joyful thing that happened to you last week, you probably have to think about that a minute or two. If we teach ourselves to seek to remember the things that are joyful, then when things get hard, we have a store of things where it was good that we can recall.

[00:45:22] Christian: Yes. That’s why you see all that research on gratitude is because there’s massive research on if you’re rock bottom, the best thing you can pretty much do is focus on gratitude. I was able to eat today. I got some coffee right here in front of me. It could be the most simple thing in the world. I had a warm shower. I’m going to talk to my child tonight after school. It could be just something to look forward to. It could be something really, really simple. Having that gratitude is so powerful. It really is.

[00:45:59] Gretchen: The other thing, Christian, that I think is a powerful message from your book is, in a lot of places, like you have said, Harvard is only going to teach you the positive psychology, we know the negative things that happen. Not acknowledging them can be a frustration. What you’re saying is acknowledge them and use them as a force for good to move yourself forward.

[00:46:25] Christian: They’re already going to show up. I’ve been on this earth for 55 years. There’s never been a time in my life that I haven’t had a relational issue. I haven’t had my child is upset with me, someone at work is disappointed in me, or whatever the situation is.

[00:46:42] Gretchen: My husband says we had six kids because at any given time, we could find at least one that liked us.

[00:46:48] Christian: Yes. I don’t know. I just keep showing up. I don’t know. I try to put a smile on my face. I try to find humor in it. I already know I’m going to let people down. That’s not a question. What’s today? Today is Tuesday. I already know Wednesday or Thursday, something is going to go wrong. I already know that. I really, truly know that. Isn’t that crazy? The reason why I know it is I’ve been on this earth for 55 years. I already know some hell is going to go to hell to hand basket in the next 24 hours. I already know that.

I literally am preparing myself for it today. I’m going to say, “No matter what happens, I am going to keep showing up.” Now, it’s going to be hard. I’m not saying there’s anything easy about this, but I do know it’s going to happen. There is something about, I remember learning that kids who are more likely to go to college, they’re more likely to deal with peer pressure, they’re more likely to make good decisions, they don’t make that decision in the moment. They make that decision in advance. Because if you make that decision in the moment, we already know the research, peer pressure will win out more times than it won’t.

I think one of the greatest things we can do, when my kids were young, I did two things with them. The best advice I ever got to say to my kids actually came from a taxicab driver in Louisville, Kentucky. He’s driving me back to the airport, he said, “Every night, I tell my kids, I’m the luckiest father in the world that you’re in my house. I cannot believe I’m this lucky that I get to live with you, I get to parent you, I get to be with you.” I used to go to bed at night with my kids, I’d lay there by them for a few minutes, and I would say to them, “I’m the luckiest dad in the world. I can’t believe I get to live with you.”

Then, funny, if one of the nights, I forgot that, I remember my oldest son Cooper would say to me, “Dad, you forgot to tell me how lucky you are.” I would be like, “Oh, yes. I’m the luckiest dad in the world.” Think about it. All of us want to be where we’re really wanted. I don’t enjoy being anywhere I’m not wanted. I know when I’m in a place– Oh, trust me, I wish I didn’t know. I wish I had some naivety. I wish I didn’t know that I was in a place I wasn’t wanted. I wish I didn’t know. Again, we all have that human need to be wanted. That taxi cab driver, he knew that. He said both his kids became medical doctors, and he said that someone told him that. He said that’s the greatest advice. I’m telling you, I started doing it. When I got home that night, I said to my kids that, and it changed everything. It was powerful. Then the second thing I do is I would talk to my kids about what’s going to go wrong the next day. My wife bought my son some funky-looking shoes. I said, “Cooper, man, those kids are going to tease you tomorrow about your shoes.” He came home and goes, “Dad, how did you know they’d tease me? I didn’t get mad.” He was already prepared. My parents both have pretty severe mental health issues. They never laid in bed with me at night and told me what was going to happen the next day.

Now, I study human behavior for a living. I’m fascinated by human beings. I’m in a unique position to be able to tell my kids, “Hey, tomorrow you’re going to be teased for this. This could go wrong. You might have a hard time in your math class. Don’t beat yourself up. There are more important things than math. If you don’t know how to do math, your world is not going to fall apart and stuff.” I would literally prepare my kids for what was going to go wrong the next day. Those two things were really, really powerful. Just letting them know they’re the most wanted kids in the world.

Then number two, “Hey, the human condition is going to show up tomorrow. You’re going to deal with this, this, and this.” Mama Jackson did that for me. I realized she wrote them all down for me. She knew what I was going to be dealing with. She was not naïve. She was highly aware of what other kids were doing, what I was going to be teased about. She told me, “Hey, you got to keep your head up, Christian. You got to keep that head up.”

[00:51:13] Gretchen: I think it’s really remarkable, Christian, that often we are taught as parents that we shouldn’t acknowledge the things that are negative. We should keep it positive. Our kids know when things don’t go according to plan. I think the frustration for them comes when they don’t have an honest outlet to weigh that and figure out how to address it and move beyond it.

[00:51:44] Christian: I would add to that, I also want my kids to know everybody is going through it. Everybody is going through it. It’s funny, we don’t talk enough about that. I do an activity when I work with kids that are in gangs that want to kill each other. I go over to a whiteboard, and I’ll write down, “What do you do before you go to bed?” “I watch my favorite show. I’ll eat some ice cream.” Then I’ll say, “What do you do before you go to bed, or what do you like most? What’s your favorite sports team? What’s your favorite activity? What’s your favorite car? What’s your favorite motorcycle? What’s your favorite whatever?”

I’ll just fill up the board with everything that both people like. Then I’ll say, “You’re going to kill each other over skin color. You have everything the same. Your mom is the most important person in the world. You’re into sports. You’re into girls. You’re into this. You’re into that. You’re going to kill each other because you think you’re different. There’s not a damn thing different about you guys.” I get so worked up. I think people understanding. I think your resilience is increased when you understand everybody is in the same fight. See, human beings are so similar, it’s comical.

We go out of our way to be different. I think when we’re teenagers, we figure out that we’re exactly like everybody, so we start dressing different. We start going to extremes to be different than other people, but it comes full circle. You’re going to get back to realizing this human condition is not a lot different. I’ve done over 10,000 hours of therapy. I’ve worked with the wealthiest people. I’ve worked with the poorest people. I have worked with religious leaders, political leaders. I have worked with the most educated, the most uneducated.

I’m going to let everybody in on a secret. The differences are minute. They’re so minute, they’re hysterical. I think that understanding, the faster a child understands the human condition, that we’re all battling depression, we’re all battling anxiety, we all have our own personal fears, we all have relationship issues, we all are dealing with whatever we’re dealing with, that right there is a freeing feeling. Then you also see other people different. For me, I get to meet a lot of new people. I know I really see another person when I understand they’re dealing with the same things I’m dealing with.

As a speaker, I speak to thousands of people. I just speak about my truth, what I’m going through. I can’t tell you how many people walk up to me and say, “I’m dealing with the same thing.” I already know they are. Again, this thing called the human condition is real. We think we’re different. That is the lie. The lie is to think you’re different than other people. Our similarities are massive. We’re just more similar than we’re all different. We all need water. We all need sleep. We all need exercise. We all need the same things. We all need love. Again, COVID proved this. COVID definitely proved that.

[00:54:55] Gretchen: I love how you have framed this because what you have just done is personified the fact that what we perceive as societal differences are not. They are just our perception of difference. What a powerful thing to teach the next generation is to teach them that the differences are not nearly as important as the similarities.

[00:55:23] Christian: Yes, it’s interesting. I was raised in an African-American home. Being a White kid raised in a Black home, of course, I was told I was different, that we were different. Then, as science advanced and we looked at genetic diversity and genetics, that all human beings are 99.8% the same genetically, that’s a scientific fact. Anybody can look that up, that we’re all 99.8% the same. It’s comical. It’s actually sad. I use the word comical in more of a metaphorical way. It’s sad that we see the differences in one another when we’re much more similar than we are different.

If you want more money, you want more power, you want more control, focus on differences. You’ll have more money, you’ll have more power, and you’ll have more control. That’s the great human condition. That’s why people do it. It’s a great lie. That’s not true. That’s just not the truth. The truth is we’re all the same. Until we understand that– I appreciate you talking about this next generation. It might sound like we got off topic. I’m telling you, it’s exactly where resilience comes from. When you understand that you’re just as powerful, you’re just as good as the person standing next to you, you can get through a lot of pain.

You can overcome a lot of stuff. It’s when our self-esteem goes down if we think we’re different. This person is better than me, or this person is more superior than me. That’s the great lie. We really need to see ourselves as unique individuals, but we’re very similar.

[00:57:05] Gretchen: Absolutely. Christian, we’re almost at the top of the hour here. This hour has gone too quickly for me because I have enjoyed it so thoroughly. What would be the final words you would love to leave with our audience today?

[00:57:21] Christian: I don’t know. I guess, probably because we live a little bit in a divided world, I would like to just leave a simple concept on how we can get along with anybody, how we can connect with all people. The first thing we have to do to really connect with everyone is lead out with unconditional love, over conditional love. Unconditional love is I love you with all your flaws, your mistakes. I talked about we got to give ourselves that grace first. We have to have that unconditional love. If you have that, that’s the first step in getting along with anyone.

The second step in getting along with anyone is to realize that we could be wrong. Again, I was not perfect in this. This was a human. This was not an AI podcast today. This was a human podcast. There might be flaws in this. There might be mistakes. I’m very proud of those mistakes. I’m very proud of those flaws. That’s what makes me human. I think that’s going to be the most valuable thing on the planet in the next few years.

[00:58:18] Gretchen: Absolutely.

[00:58:20] Christian: It’s okay to be wrong, because if I can’t be wrong, then I can justify my actions towards another person. If I can be wrong, I got to put that mirror up to myself. There’s research. I sit on airplanes all the time, so I ask human beings all the time, I’ll say, “Are you more right than wrong?” 99% of human beings will say they’re more right than wrong. That’s another great lie. The research shows that humans are wrong all the time. That’s why we’re craving this AI stuff so much. Then the third thing we have to do to get along with another person is we got to be able to see things from four more perspectives.

See this tree right here. You’d have to stand in four places to see this whole tree. There might be rotting on the backhand side of this tree, but you can’t see that unless you stand in that fourth position. To see this whole tree, I got to stand in front of it. I can stand on the right. I can stand on the left. I’d have to see behind it. When you can see any topic from four or more perspectives, you usually can’t hate, and your resilience will go up. When you can see things from four or more perspectives, you will have massive resilience. To get along with anyone, you have unconditional love.

It’s okay to be wrong. To be human is to be wrong. Then to see things from four or more perspectives, you cannot hate, you cannot discriminate, you cannot hurt. If I only have one perspective, I can hate. If I have two perspectives, I can still justify my hate. When you see things from four or more perspectives, you usually see the big picture. That’s what increases your resilience.

[01:00:01] Gretchen: Amazing. Christian, I want to thank you so much. You are so wildly busy. The fact that six months ago you said, “Yes, I’ll come on your show and have a conversation with you,” I’m grateful that you were willing to fulfill that. I think for our audience today, you all can see how special I knew this conversation was going to be. Again, Christian’s book is called The Resilience Breakthrough. It’s probably one of the most powerful books I’ve read in the last five years. I thought it was tremendous. I really appreciated it. I appreciate you. I’m going to say thank you to our audience for joining us. Thank you for trusting us to come into your living rooms today.