109. The Power of Being Human for Teacher Burnout Recovery & Connection in the Classroom with Special Guest Jared Scott

[0:00] So often we forget about the power that human connection has and how it can truly be the key to overcoming our teacher burnout or connecting with our students. This shouldn't come as a shock to any educator who's in the classroom, but teaching is not just about imparting knowledge. It's about building relationships, about fostering empathy, about bringing our authentic selves into the classroom. room. That's why I'm super excited to, in today's episode, talk with Jared Scott, who's going to guide us in exploring how embracing our humanity not only helps us stay resilient in the face of challenges, but it also creates this supportive environment where our students can thrive. Jared Scott is a motivational speaker. His movement began at the young age of 15, marking the start of an impactful career dedicated to inspiring resilience and hope. Today, Jared is known as an award-winning speaker that creates legacies and movements wherever he goes. He is also a proud husband, father, author, and counselor.

[1:01] You ever just get to hear somebody who you know just gets it, but they're speaking such inspirational words, like the words you can tell that they needed to hear and that maybe you needed to hear as well? This is definitely one of those conversations. We talk about Jared's past and how he kind of weaves that into his work, how to connect with teenagers and ways to not only improve your own resilience, but create a supportive community in doing so as well. So let's not waste any time and let's get into it.

[1:40] I'm super excited to be here with Jared Scott today. Hi, Jared. Hey, and are you? Good. I'm super excited to be talking with you today. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about you, who you are, what you do, what your expertise is in with education. Yes, ma'am. So my name is Jared Scott. I'm a public speaker. I've been a public speaker since I was 15 years old. So I started this as a high school student. I was just a kid speaking to kids. I lost a friend to suicide when I was in high school and my town didn't really know how to handle that. We didn't have a lot of mental health resources. So it turned into like an epidemic. In one school year, we had 12 students attempt to take their life. And at the time, honestly, I was a shy kid. I wrote my emotions into music. That's what I did. I didn't talk to people about how I was feeling. I just put it into songs. So I wrote a song for my friend that passed away, and I asked the school if I could sing the song. And that was courageous for me as the shy kid, but I just didn't see anybody else speaking up. So I decided to do it.

[2:40] And after I did that, I mean, kids lined up to come tell me their stories. And that's kind of when it clicked for me that if one person can have the courage and the confidence to stand up first and face fear, then other people will feel safe enough to follow. And it's like a chain reaction. Right. And so I just fell in love with that. I was like, I'm just going to go around the country. I'm going to be honest about my feelings, especially as a male. Right. Especially where I grew up. It was like, boys, don't cry like that was Texas. Texas, you know, boys don't cry, rub some dirt on it, just do it. You know, so we did and we suppressed our emotions. It became depression. So I was like, you know what, if I go and I start talking about my feelings, maybe other kids will feel safe enough to do the same thing. And then fast forward 14 years later, here I am 28, about to be 29. I've been in a thousand plus schools, created a program called the culture shift program that basically passes the torch to other kids everywhere I go and tells them like, Hey, look, it's your voice. That's going going to change this school. You know, I empower them to create movements based on the pressures that they're dealing with, the challenges that they're dealing with. They come up with solutions and then they present those to the school. The school gets on board and we present it to the parents and the community. And then we create a big movement and we, we, we shift school culture from the ground up, from the inside out. And so that's, that's what I've been doing the past 14 years.

[3:56] Yeah. You know, you mentioned that you had a friend that committed suicide and I've never ever talked about this on the podcast, but when I was 16 years old, one of my best friends committed suicide too. And I think that was a big, that was a big turning point for me. Like I wanted to make a difference and I wanted to show up in a way that helped support anybody who was dealing with mental health. And, and over time, that kind of, it's interesting that storyline is very similar to kind of what I dealt with because then I ended up working with, you know, teenagers during when when I was a teenager, and then moving into teaching, it just naturally fell into, let me worry about mental health for students, but also for teachers as well. So I think that what you are doing is so needed, and it's just one of those things that's.

[4:47] That's not talked about enough and supported enough. And I love that you say, you know, from the inside out, because I talk about, you know, changing the culture of a school from the inside out as well. So lots of, lots of similarities there, lots of really cool stuff. That's the only way it works. That's the only way that it works long-term. I've been around long enough to see it tried a lot of different ways from the top down, you know, administration down, and you're only going to help so many kids. A lot of them are not going to buy in. Yeah. Yeah. And, and at the same time, like you see a lot of people who will, you know, try to change things politically from the outside in, and that doesn't work. Like it, it puts more stress and pressure. Yes, I agree.

[5:33] So, you know, you talk a lot about, you know, helping teenagers and things like that. I think one of the reasons that teachers can become burned out or have been burned out in the last several years is that mental health epidemic that's happening with our teenagers, with our students. But also, we're getting this gap in between teachers and students where we're We're not really making that connection where we're not getting through to them. And I know that you talk about how to do that, like effective ways of getting our message across to teens. What are some of those ways that we can start to kind of shift and bridge that gap?

[6:14] So when I first started speaking in schools, I noticed how hard it was to gain respect from the audience. I was young, so I was a kid. So they looked at me just like another kid. And then the adults looked at me as like a kid, meaning I didn't have experience. So like, what's this kid going to teach me? Right. So I realized over time that in order to gain respect from an audience, I had to be more than vulnerable. I had to be honest, even about my flaws, even about my inexperience. You know, I had to I had to be very vulnerable. And that's what won them over. And so when I look up the definition of respect, it means to admire somebody for their qualities, their characteristics, for their achievements, for who they are. So I was like, oh, you have to know somebody in order to respect somebody. That's not how I was taught respect. I was taught you respect somebody just simply because they are older than you. Yeah. Like period, you know? Yeah. And I think that's how the adults in my life looked at respect. Like even if I didn't know them, they're like, you should respect me because you're a kid and I'm an adult, period. And so when I realized that that was the definition of respect, I was like, oh, it's stranger danger. That's what I'm dealing with. Like they don't know me. So when I I walk into this building, I am a threat.

[7:20] Yeah. I literally, that's why the new kid gets picked on, you know, it's because we don't know how to talk about our feelings. So we go poke at them to see how they're going to react. We see their reaction and all of a sudden we're not so scared of them anymore because there's less uncertainty, which brings the fear. And so that's why we pick on the new kid. I was like, oh, this all makes sense. I'm a new kid. I'm walking up. I'm on stage. Like, who is this guy? But once I start talking about my feelings, my emotions and how I'm dealing with life, I would win them over every time.

[7:46] And so there's a lot of adults that are trying to get kids to tell them the truth, but the kids don't know the truth about the adults. And I'm not saying for adults to go air out all their dirty laundry and give all their problems to the kids, but you have to be vulnerable to a point that you are seen as at least a human being. And I mean that because you go out in public when you're a teacher to Walmart or just to eat in a restaurant, you see your students look at their face. I mean, they're just mind blown that you even shop, that you even eat, you know, because they they only see you as that perfect professional that you pretend to be. Right. But we expect them to be honest and open and vulnerable and come to us when they have problems or feelings and emotions. But to them, we're stranger. That equals danger. That's a threat. And they're going to avoid that at all costs. Right. So after my programs, when I'm honest and vulnerable, kids line up to talk to me. And every time the staff's like, how did you get them to open up to you? It's like, did you see how honest and vulnerable I was in front of them? You know, they feel safe. And we as human beings, we relate to each other through feelings.

[8:48] Our circumstances are always going to be different. I don't know what you're going home to, what you're going through. I don't have your family, your friends, your siblings. I don't have your traumatic experiences. And I could put myself in your shoes to try to shift my perspective and have empathy for you. But I can't put myself in your head. I don't have your brain, you know, so I don't have your worldview, your perspective of life. It's unique to you. You have your own personal reality based on your personality, the way you think, the way you act, the way you feel. Right. So the closest thing that we could use, the best thing that we could use to really connect with each other is if you told me how it feels to be you and I tell you how it feels to be me and we relate to each other through those mutual feelings. So when I'm talking to adults, it's like if they don't know how you feel.

[9:32] Because a lot of adults are like, I told them what I went through when I was a kid. I told them that I dealt with bullying and this and this and that. It's like, all right, cool. Like, but how did it make you feel? Yeah, the truth isn't just what you're going through, what you've gone through. The truth is how you're feeling and how you're dealing with it. So if you're not talking about your feelings, you're not fully connecting with the people around you. And we know this to be true because that's why we can sit in a room full of hundreds of people and still feel alone.

[9:56] That's how we can be on a planet with billions of people and still feel alone because we're We're actually alone in our feelings. Nobody knows how we feel. There's so many people on this planet. You should actually never feel alone, right? But why do you feel alone? Well, because people don't know how you feel. I used to sit in the back of the class. I didn't talk to anybody about my feelings. Everybody knew I came from a split parent home. Everybody saw my parents fighting at baseball games. Like my parents were always arguing. They couldn't get along. They couldn't even go to the games together. If one came, the other one would leave. Everybody in my small town knew this, but they didn't know how I felt. I had friends that came from split-parent homes. I could have told them how I felt, but I didn't. So it felt like it was only happening to me. Right. And if you don't tell anybody how you feel about anything, life will feel like it is only happening to you. Right. Yeah. And just listening to all of that, I think about the times that I really connected with my students. And it was. It was through feelings. But when you're going through a lot at a, at a specific time, it can be hard to even name your feelings. Like when I went to therapy, I can remember like my therapist asking me questions and I like literally could not think of the words that described how I was feeling. I just knew it was a lot. It felt, you know, like, and so sometimes I think we take for granted that we can kind of create these, um.

[11:22] These ways of describing feelings without using feeling words like I feel, like you could say. A lot. That's a good one. Yeah, just a lot. Like it's coming down. Overwhelmed. Right. And being vulnerable enough to tell your students that can be difficult because you want to be seen as that expert. You want to be seen as, you know, somebody to be respected. But like you said, the people that you respect, you have that connection with. You're able to see and be in their shoes by hearing their story. And I also think about my own children at home and how I have used those. Well, I dealt with that before. I was bullied, but how did it make me feel? And telling them how I felt would have made a big difference in recognizing, okay, she really has been through the same things that I have. Without the feelings in that story, it comes off as a competition of pain.

[12:28] It's a comparison. So if I don't tell you how I felt and we don't connect through mutual feelings, it just sounds like I'm trying to one-up you. I dealt with that too. You should just get over it. We all go through it. My son not wanting to go to school. And if I just told him, we all had to go to school, man. Get over it. I had to go to school too. I never wanted to go to school. I used to fake sick too. What if I told stuff like that? Little bit of connection there. But look, man, I know how it feels, bro. Like, I know you really don't want to go today. I know you're nervous about the test. You know, like, I know you have fear. I know you have anxiety about certain things, but it always, you know, it always works out for you. And just explaining it through emotions is a totally different story. We're on the same page now. We're not on opposing teams. Right. And, you know, like just kind of thinking about some of that, talking about emotions and that vulnerability and all of those types of things. Are there ways, let me say this first, like. I think there's a big disconnect also in between SEL in classrooms. Like we talk about that a lot, but at the same time, we don't recognize that SEL is also for teachers. It's also for administrators. It's for the community. For everyone.

[13:44] We sometimes think of it as like an add-on curriculum, and that's just not the way that it is. Do you have any like specific ways that you've maybe talked to teachers or administrators about how to express maybe how they're feeling, because I think that that's a big area of, because lots of men specifically, or, you know, people in general have often seen that as like, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Like, um, I can't make it the word. Like a taboo subject? Like, yeah, like feelings are, right. Like personal, yeah. Yeah. Like, how do you go about starting to share your feelings?

[14:28] So in our program, what we do is we do it's basically trauma focused therapy. Right. And so we get small groups of kids and we do the same thing with the adults, but we just do it separately. And we go through a process because I've learned that showing people a road map, is the best way forward, obviously, because it's a pathway forward, literally, and it's been laid out for them. Not expecting them to do it right then in the moment. I remove all expectations. They're probably not going to do this because just like you said, feelings are personal to them. So I just need to educate them to a point where they know what to do when they get home tonight or what to do when that next experience comes and they have emotions and they just want to bury them like they've done in the past. You know, they know, oh, I can do this, this, and this to remove the negative emotions from this experience, learn from it, shift my perspective, replace the lies with the truth. So I'm just gonna walk you through this process because it's pretty simple. It's great. It's trauma-focused therapy, but this is like the quick version of it. So first you have to remember a traumatic experience.

[15:31] So when we're in these small groups, I have the kids write down on a piece of paper like a brainstorm, like as many traumatic experiences and challenges and pressures that they deal with on a daily basis. since they were kids, as much as they can remember. In about 15 minutes, these kids will fill up poster boards, huge poster boards. It looks like an anxiety attack, which it is. It's what they're dealing with every single day, right? And these are negative emotions. So these negative emotions are clouding their vision. This is why these kids cannot see tomorrow.

[16:01] Like you tell them, hey, you know, kids turn to drugs and alcohol abuse, right? For lack of better relief. They want instant relief now. But if you told them that five years from now, Now it could literally ruin their life or maybe even tomorrow, you know, if they got a DUI accident or something like you try to tell them the dangers of this and they can't see it because they're just thinking about right now. Right. So when they write all of this down, I tell them, look at this piece of paper. It looks like an anxiety attack. No wonder you can't focus. No wonder you can't see future you and take you into consideration all the decisions you're making right now. Like it makes sense. And once that makes sense to them, they're like, oh, it makes sense why I'm doing the things that I'm doing. Okay. That's first step. It's a little bit of clarity there, why they do what they do. And then I make them write down the emotions that came out of these traumatic experiences, just web them out. Now this paper is even full. It's full of negative emotions. So if they said fighting parents was their main challenge, parents fight every day. How'd that make you feel? Oh, it made me feel like I'm in the middle. That's how pretty much every kid feels, right? Middle of mom's emotions, dad's emotions. I got to deal with my own emotions on top of that. You know, I just feel like I'm drowning.

[17:08] Okay. Well, how's the middle field? Well, well, it's a lonely place because there's nobody to help me. You know, mom, dad fighting, I'm in my room alone. And in the alone, when you're alone in your room, I'm asking them, what's the story that you told yourself?

[17:22] There's always a story. After every traumatic experience, there's always your version of that experience. And what do you believe is the reason mom and dad fight? Human beings are searching for purpose. So don't think a kid's not sitting in his room thinking to himself or herself, well, maybe I'm the reason mom and dad fight.

[17:39] You see, because if they're not comfortable coming to you talking about their feelings because you never talked to them about your feelings, then they're going to avoid that conversation. And they're going to create their own story within their own head about why their parents are fighting. And nine times out of 10, the easiest way, the easiest route, the easiest story, reason is just to say, it's all my fault. Look, I'll take responsibility. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not this, I'm not that. Maybe if I wasn't here, they'd be happy. And this is personal experience that I'm talking from right now. This is a story that I told myself, and that was a lie, right? So the lie became that I'm not good enough. Parents fighting all the time. I thought if I was a better kid, maybe they wouldn't. But the underlining lie that was the label and identity of my life at this point was that I'm not good enough. So when opportunities came for me to prove myself worthy to myself, I had this little voice in the back of my head that said, remember, you're not enough. And so I wouldn't even try. And when I tell you, when I make the kids web down all of their traumatic experiences, write down the traumatic experience, the feelings that came out of it, the way that they responded to it, the story that they told themselves, and the lie that is now their identity, a part of their identity, nine times out of ten, it does come down to, I am not enough. Enough.

[19:04] It first starts with, I'm not smart enough. I'm not strong enough. I'm not this enough. I'm not that enough. But eventually they just get to the point where I'm just, I'm just not enough. And that's what all these kids are carrying around. And if you label yourself, you limit yourself. I don't know what your labels are, but most people get to the point where they're just not enough. And if you're not enough to yourself, then you'll never be enough to yourself until you remove that label. You have to think about it like it's a lid keeping you boxed in that little cage called the comfort zone, I would say, because now these kids are comfortable just not being enough, doing just whatever to get by, just floating through life, right? Every time they try to step outside of that and grow, fear hits, they freeze up and they fall back to what's comfortable. And what's comfortable was just not being enough. You know, every time I'd want to speak up, I'd feel uncomfortable. I would go back to being the shy kid suffering in silence by myself, telling myself that I'm not enough, right? And so when you get to that point, you wrote down the traumatic experience, you felt the emotions, you've identified the lie, you have to replace that lie with the truth. But the only way you can remove the lie and remove the negative emotions to actually see the truth as true about you, you have to forgive the people that hurt you. You know, you're going to have to forgive your parents, right? And then here's the kicker. You have to actually forgive yourself for believing that lie.

[20:24] That's the one that everybody forgets. Like I forgave mom and dad. And a lot of times you You didn't really forgive the person that hurt you. You actually just justified the wrongdoing, which took away the need for forgiveness in your mind. But the way I put it to kids is like, imagine I'm talking and then somebody comes in here and they bump into me accidentally. They're still going to say sorry. And if they don't say sorry, you guys would say that they're what? And everybody's like, they're rude. So now there's negative emotions attached between me and a stranger that accidentally bumped into me. But because they did not say sorry, I feel a certain type of way. And now I'm holding on to negative emotions until they say sorry or I let it go and forgive them.

[21:04] So it doesn't matter actually they're not. It doesn't matter if mom and dad didn't have a mom and dad and that's why they didn't know what they were doing. It doesn't matter. It still happened. You can have empathy for them and understand why they did it, but you still need to forgive them because the negative emotions that you're carrying around are real. And if you're thinking about the past and you feel it in your chest you feel this lump in your throat that means that you're still holding on to negative emotions because to your nervous system the traumatic experience that you're remembering in your head is happening right now to your body it doesn't really know the difference right so they hurt you one time but you hurt yourself hundreds of times afterwards thousands of times afterwards because a lot of kids are like i'm never going to forgive the person that hurt me maybe it's a really traumatic experience where they were physically abused, right? They hurt me when I was a kid. I will never forgive this person. It's like, look, they're still hurting you right now because you're choosing to hold on to these negative emotions for them. You see what I'm saying? There's a difference there. That's why people say forgiveness is for you. And that's very cliche. And people just kind of wipe that off. They're like, whatever. Everybody says that. But it's true on a physical, cellular, genetic level. Traumatic experiences change your DNA. They change who you are. The same thing that made you who you are today is the same thing that made me who I am today, and it's trauma.

[22:27] Even in the gym, it's trauma when you're breaking down your muscle fibers and they rebuild stronger. Everything that makes you who you are is a traumatic experience. So that's why we have to actually write them down and feel them again in order to change from them mentally and physically because we have to re-experience that traumatic experience. And people are like, oh, I don't want to do that. And I'm like, you're doing it every single time you think about it. Yes. But the problem is you're reacting the same way you've always reacted. And that is through distraction. You're doing everything you can not to think about the way that you feel. And that's your current reaction, which is suppression, which suppressed emotions over time becomes depression. And over more time becomes sickness, illness, and disease because it causes inflammation from all the stress. There's a physical repercussion to living in a lie because remember, that's actually what you're doing. Traumatic experience, emotions, what you told yourself, the story. If that's not true, then now you're living in a lie. Part of you is living in it.

[23:25] A false identity. Yeah. Right. And then how many of those have you created through every traumatic experience that you've ever experienced? Like how many versions of you are there? I tell kids all the time, this is school you, but you're a different person at home, different person around your parents, different person around each friend group that you have. You're a different person on social media. Like how many versions of you are there? And do you know the true you? And when kids are honest, they're like, I don't. I'm like, that's, that's actually like, that's That's your job in your childhood. So for kids, that's fine. We're here to figure it out, right? But when I'm talking to a 30, 40, 50-year-old that's like, I've been living a life for a really long time, and they start having all of these weird health problems, and they start having all these weird allergies, food allergies, autoimmune diseases, like the body's literally fighting itself. I'm like, look, this is chronic stress, which is causing chronic inflammation, and inflammation is the beginning of every sickness, illness, disease ever, okay? So a lot of the times when we heal mentally, we heal physically because we get rid of the underlining lie that was causing a stress hormone response, cortisol levels, norepinephrine, adrenaline pumping through your body, constant fight or flight mode. This is why lie detectors work, right? They can measure the physical repercussions to lies. So if you're living in a lie, eventually your brain's going to start sending you a signal like, hey, get rid of the lies because they're causing us physical harm. As a kid, we misinterpret that message. And it's like, get rid of yourself. You're the problem.

[24:50] Because remember, your identity is in the lie. So you think that you actually are the lie.

[24:57] So you think you're the problem and the brain sending you a signal to get rid of this problem is causing us physical harm. You think I just got to get rid of myself. I'm the problem. And sometimes it doesn't end with a suicidal ideation or thought. It ends with isolation.

[25:14] That's what, you know what I'm saying? So they think they're the problem. It's like, I'm just going to stay away from people because when I'm around, there's a problem. You see what I'm saying? But the truth of the matter is that you actually, by definition, you can't be the problem because you are the only solution to your problems. Like I could try to help you, but if you don't help you, you'll still be helpless. So at the end of the day, you're the only solution to your problems. So therefore, by definition, you cannot put your identity in a lie. That's not who you are. Right. You see what I'm saying? So once you replace that, once you identify the lie and you detach from the negative emotions through forgiveness, if you do forgiveness correctly, you may actually be able to see yourself in the truth, right? Right. I think people skip forgiveness. People skip forgiveness all the time. So they still have negative emotions attached. So when somebody tells them how amazing they are, they can't believe it because the negative emotions won't allow them to believe it or see it. And for most people, seeing is believing, right? Right. So if you're blind with anger, you're not going to be able to see that you're actually a happy, joyful person on the inside. You're not gonna be able to see that. You're like, that's not true. Yeah.

[26:27] Negative emotions cloud. Have you seen the movie Soul by Disney? Yes. I love that movie. That's the one that I use. That's the one I use in my speech. I'm like, it's perfect. You know, the part where she's a lost soul and there's a black cloud swirling around her. Her friends go into the cloud and see that she's in the middle saying, I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. Nobody loves me. She's saying the negative things. She's clouded by the negative emotions. She can't see that she's surrounded by people that have been trying to help her for thousands of years. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? Yes. And, you know, you were talking about all these different things and I've done a lot of research. So when you were talking about norepinephrine and, and all of the cortisol, all of that, that is speaking my language. But a lot of, a lot of what you're saying is not just feel good things to say to somebody, like they're research back. There's a book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. And a lot of these things that you're talking like they're research back. Like this isn't just like, oh, well, your body's keeping it in. No, like these are legit things that are real.

[27:29] And like when I'm listening to you about these stories and the ways that we can kind of break all of this down, the story we tell ourselves as teachers is the same as students, like that we're not good enough, like that we are so overwhelmed that we are broken down by the system because we're not good enough as teachers, that we're not making a big enough impact that we're not, you know, able to reach our students because we're not good enough. But if we start to kind of really break that down and notice our students feel the same way, that's where that connection kind of happens, where we're able to make that impact. And we recognize we can't do it all, right? We're not, we're humans. So we can't keep taking on all of these different pressures. We can't keep, you know, expecting ourselves to.

[28:25] Do and be everything, but we can be human. And then once we're making that connection with our students, we see this huge progress happen in the classrooms. And then again, like both of us say, you know, we're healing that system from the inside out. Yeah. And you're not good at pretending to being perfect. You're great at being a human though. Yeah. Oh gosh, I love that. I love that. You know what I'm saying though? It's like, we're trying to be something that by definition, we can't be, first of all. But also, you're great at doing exactly what you were put here to be, and that is a human being. And the way that my mentors put it to me, it's like a human doing, a human all this. It's a human being for a reason, because it is who you are, right? And if you're present and you accept who you are, that's living in your true identity. This is me, right?

[29:15] And And that's the only place you can find your true purpose. A lot of people are taking on responsibilities in the world that they never chose because they delayed responsibility in their own lives. And if you delay responsibility for too long, responsibility is going to come find you. And responsibility is just another word for purpose, meaning of your life. So if you're not taking on your purpose and your meaning of your life because you have have no identity and you have no idea who you actually are and what you're here for, then the world's going to tell you who you need to be. And you're going to take on labels that limit you and you're going to be something. I was speaking at a convocation the other day, a guy, maybe 50 plus years old, he was between his fifties and sixties, came up to me afterwards because this is how I talk in my programs. And he was in tears. And he's like, Jared, I never wanted to be a teacher. He said, I wanted to be an artist.

[30:08] And he's like, and I quit, I quit painting maybe 30 years ago. I mean, he's in tears. He's just realizing in this presentation that he did what at the time his parents thought he should do. He did what he thought he made his grandma, what at the time would make his grandma proud. His grandma had been gone for a couple decades at this point, and he was like, I just kept doing it because it was just what the world told me I was.

[30:33] He's like, I wasted decades doing something that I never even really wanted to do. You know, and you find people like that in fields all the time. Some people are in other fields that you're like, you would clearly be great over here, but they can't see it because, again, negative emotions, other people's voice, labels, limits. They can't see it. You can tell kids all the time, you're good at this. Why don't you try this? Like, nah, I can't. Because the underlining voice is saying they're not good enough. You see what I'm saying? Right. There's always some sort of subconscious level. And I love that thing. Yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead. You're good. I just think that there's always some sort of... My bad. My bad. Go. I'll let you go. I'll let you go. No. Your turn. It's just like there's a little delay, I guess. But there's always just some underlining story that you told yourself after every experience. The reason why that happened. Yeah. You really need to make sure that those are positive. You really need to make sure that those don't hold resentment and bitterness towards the people that were involved in the experience. Because if you're holding on to negative emotions and unforgiveness, and eventually it is going to cause some physical response.

[31:41] Yeah. Is there a way, you know, like when we talk about you got to frame it positively, I think a lot of people will sit there and be like, I can't frame life positively. I can't do that. that? Do you have a way that maybe you tell students and parents, teachers, how can they start to see the positive when life has been so negative? So my saying is that actions are evidence that we have what it takes to be the person that we want to be. So the problem that a lot of people have is they don't take action, so they don't actually see any evidence, therefore for, they can't believe it. So you can tell them that something could be great, right? And they're like, nah, not for me. You see what I'm saying? And you can tell them, here's the way that I like to put it. Positive thoughts create new neural pathways in your brain.

[32:39] Negative thoughts destroy those neural pathways. So in an overdramatic type of way, you could say that negative thoughts are are causing you brain damage. Ooh. Really? I mean, you think positive, you're creating new connections because you're problem solving, right? You think negative, you destroy those connections and eventually you don't have as many connections as a positive person would have. And you can do this experiment with anybody in your life if you know that they're a positive or negative person. Go to a positive person and ask them to solve a problem. They will come up with a million different ways to solve that problem. Why? Because they have more neural pathways, so they have more ways to think around that problem. They have clarity. It's almost like a Wi-Fi router with a better connection that has more bandwidth. Think about your brain like a Wi-Fi router. It's going to have faster speeds. It's not going to lag.

[33:34] But if you're a negative person, you take a problem to a negative person, and even if it's a clear problem with a clear answer, you can even give them the answer, and they'll still say, no, I can't do it. Why? Because they lack the neural pathways necessary to see themselves actually fixing that problem. They can't see it, so they don't try. You could even tell them how to fix it. They still won't believe that they could do it.

[33:59] Yeah. It's the way that it explained to me is like, imagine there's a heel of stone and you're on top with a sled and you go down as a positive person. When you go back up to that heel, you're pretty optimistic and you like to try new things because that's learning. That's creating new connections. So you're not going to go down the same way you went last time. You're going to go down a different way in a different way in a different way. So the heel of a positive person, the brain of a positive person has a bunch of different connections, a bunch of different ways to get from the top to the bottom. of routes to take, a lot of options. A negative person is going to go to the top of that hill, go down the sled one time. The next time they're going to go down the exact same way. Why? Because that's the safe route. There's no unexpected twists and turns on that route. But what they're doing when they go down that same path over and over again is they're making the rut deeper and deeper and deeper. So it gets harder and harder to deviate from that path over time. And usually Usually this path of least resistance is not trying because I can't, I'm not good enough, right? So I'm not even going to try. And so they just take this safe route. That's the comfort zone. That's the comfort route. Positive, optimistic person's going to go down a bunch of different ways and they have more options. So you put both these people on top of the hill. Who do you think more likely to get down? You see what I'm saying?

[35:11] One of them has a million options away to get there. Yeah. One of them has one. Yeah. And the person who's going down that same route is never going to get down faster, is never going to see the stream at the other end of the hill. The optimistic person could have found the best way down through trial and error, the fastest way.

[35:36] I've never heard that analogy, but I really, really like it because it's a visual that you can see in your head. Like you start to see the erosion of the person who is just going down that same path over and over and over, you know, like, and I love that. It's F. Scott Fitzgerald who says the path not take. I don't even know what the actual saying is, but I love that saying. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing about it is it only takes about 21 days most of the time to create a new neural pathway that turns into a habit, you know, repeated over time. I know it's different. I know the science is different for people that are older. Like once we get to 28, 30, it turns into maybe, you know, closer to 120 days to create habits. That's why they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

[36:24] It's not, it's not true. You can change your brain up to the day you die, but it is harder for the old dog to be consistent long enough to make that trick a habit, right? Right. It can learn a new trick in a day, but to make it a habit and a part of your personality and who you are as an older person is going to take about three months of doing this every single day. But kids, man, young kids age one to seven, that's why they watch a movie and then they are the character in the movie because subconsciously their subconscious is wide open.

[36:55] And so they're being programmed. They're in beta mode, the imagination mode, right? And then seven happens and they start to gain a little bit more consciousness and takes about 21 days of repetition before they'll change completely. And, but, but 21 days is nothing when it comes to like going to the gym for 21 days. Now you do this. Now this is who you are eating healthy for 21 days. Now, if you eat bad food, it's going to taste bad to you because it's not who you are anymore. You know, when I show kids the route and it's like 21 days of this, doing this right here, telling yourself this story, 21 days, and this is your new identity. It's not that hard. Right. I just don't think it's ever been laid out for them like that. Yeah. Because if I tell you. I don't think that I ever had that laid out for me like that. But listening, like over time, I learned it, I guess. But hearing that at a young age and making those connections with a teacher in that way is transformative for our communities, for our schools, for all of that. And so that's just really powerful.

[37:59] Powerful. People just need the tools and the information. Yeah. Everybody's trying to fix the problem right now, but really they just need to be equipped to fix the problems in the future. Day after day after day of living in continual forgiveness through this process. Like that's what I'm telling these kids. I don't expect you to do it right now. If you want to do it right now, I'll do it with you. We'll cry together. Like that's fine. But I want you to write this down and you have this process right here. I want you to take a picture of it. I want you to save it in your phone. I want it to be a background. Like I want this process of how to be free from negative emotions to be something that is just second nature to you. Because if that's something that you get equipped with at 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, I mean, you don't have to carry around baggage for decades before you finally have this mental breakdown in your 30s and 40s. You get to constantly unload a little bit day after day after day, just shedding the world off of you, basically. And you get to remain in your true self. So therefore your purpose, all the responsibilities that are meant for you, they're going to come to you clearly. Now you'll actually accept them.

[39:03] See kids, kids, when we do these leadership classes, they're handpicked by the school. So the school picks them because everybody sees leadership qualities in them. But when I get them into this room, they're always asking, are we in trouble? Like, why aren't we here? And I'm like, why do you think you're in trouble? And they say, cause we're the bad kids every time. Like it almost never fails. Yeah. Like who told you you were the bad kids? Well, nobody told us, but I'm in here. He's in here. She's in here. Like we always get in trouble. And that might be true because they're leaders. They're going the opposite way of everybody else. So they get out of line and that gets them in trouble in a school setting. Right. Right. So I explained that to them and I was like, well, no, actually you were handpicked to be here because everyone sees you as leaders.

[39:40] But they can't believe that. They will literally laugh because they get in trouble. So they think that everybody else sees them as the bad kids. So they label themselves the bad kids. And now there's certain things that they have to do and certain things that they can't do. I mean, these kids literally feel like they can't get good grades because bad kids don't get good grades. I can't hang out with that group of kids because I'm in this group of kids and we're bad kids and they're good. You see what I'm saying? They can't even ask for help from authority because bad kids don't have relationship with authority.

[40:07] You see, so the leadership kids of the school, the ones that everybody's watching, but they're not ASB kids, they're not avid kids, they're not leadership Hope Squad kids, they're not those kids, right? These are different kind of leaders that I have the school pick. They're not getting good grades, but they're the kids who everyone is watching. So they're natural leaders. They're natural leaders. They're just leading people the wrong way. They're leading themselves the wrong way, right? Right. But they can't see themselves as leaders until they go through the process of removing some negative emotions. And by the end of this class, some of them are just like, hey, I guess I am a leader. You know, like they really start to like, wait, wait a second. I have tons of people that look up to me, people that ask me all the time. Like if we go out to do something or we're going out to eat, like people are asking me where I want to go, what movie I want to watch. Like they start to put it together like, oh, my gosh, my friends do look up to me. Yeah. And I and I've been leading them the wrong way. And they start to take responsibility for that and forgiving themselves for that. I mean, it's a beautiful process. I had a kid one time get up in the middle of the class and talk about how his brother had been murdered two years ago in a drug deal. And he was on the fire squad, like in this small town, he was on this volunteer fire department. He got a call in the middle of the night and he ignored it. And it was his brother. Oh, gosh. He was going to get called out to this emergency. It was his brother.

[41:31] And so he got up in the middle of class. I've been to the school two times in a row. I knew this kid. He'd been our leadership two years in a row and he just never talked. He would just sit there with his head down and he would just tap on his desk. And he finally stood up and he was like, after two years of me going to the school, I've been there three or four times during those two years. He finally was just like, this is what happened. And I forgive myself. He said, there's no way I would have known. There's no way I would have known. I didn't know. And he said, I even forgive the man that's sitting in prison right now for murdering my brother. And people in that school, because his brother didn't go to the same school, they didn't know that he was related to that kid. They didn't even know that this was going on in his life.

[42:14] And he broke down. He cried. And then after that moment, every kid in that room was being honest and open about their traumatic experiences. And that school actually ended up coming up with an idea they called Time for Truth. And all those kids wrote their stories into a chapter, and they're putting it into a book. Isn't that cool? That is so cool and so transformative. It's crazy that it just takes one person to just transform an entire culture. And I think that that is a really great way to just describe how we as teachers, we can be that one, the one that shares, the one that is vulnerable, the one that does that. Because not only is it transforming our students, right, but it also transforms our co-workers, our administrators, being open and honest and just being that one light just can pass on through the entire school. And that's just really amazing. It's amazing. Most kids have one adult, one teacher at the school that they really respect. And the reason why is because they know that adult more than anybody else. That's it. Like respect means admire somebody for qualities, characteristics, for achievements, for who they are. So that one adult that you really liked growing up in your school was just the adult that you knew the most about.

[43:40] Whether it was positive or negative, most of the time, like they didn't have to be the best teacher. They didn't have to be the best coach, but they were the one that you knew the most about. So there was less uncertainty around them. So there wasn't fear surrounding that person. So you felt safe enough to go to them when you had a problem. And that's as simple as it really is. If you are the most vulnerable, you will get the most respect, period. Period. I love that. Even when people are vulnerable about their flaws, you respect them. Mm-hmm. You know? Even when people mess up and they admit it, you grow in respect for them.

[44:15] That's how powerful vulnerability is. I say vulnerability is the key to set you free. It's what connects us.

[44:23] It is. So Jared, I really appreciate, I think I could talk to you probably forever. I could listen to these same types of thoughts over and over and over, and I'm sure the other teachers could too. Can you tell the teachers where they can find you, where they can learn more about your programs, how they can maybe have you come to their schools. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yes, ma'am. A couple of things I want to say about that that makes us different than everybody else is we've really focused on helping schools find the funds. Because not only do we know how hard it is to get SEL and mental health programs into schools, we know how hard it is to get funds for anything in schools. You know, over 14 years of being in the schools and having a lot of the The teachers and principals and superintendents become my mentors and friends and stuff like that. They're honest with me. We're constantly losing funding. Some of the funding, if you take it, the government takes more control over your school now. We understand that. So we've focused really the past five, six years on coming up with ways and partnerships within nonprofits and communities and then global nonprofits and bigger companies like that just love what we do with the Culture Shift Tour. And so when a school's like, hey, this sounds great, but a lot of people won't call me and I'll end up calling them and they'll be like, Jared, we didn't call you because we saw the website, we saw all the amazing things you're doing, and we just knew we couldn't afford it. And it's like, no, no, no, no. Like we, this is what we do.

[45:45] We will help you go find the funds and we will make it a big deal. We had a school in Michigan the other day, their student idea turned into a nonprofit and that nonprofit's already raised over $50,000 for mental health. And we've already gone into other schools in their districts with that money. And we didn't even, we didn't, me personally did not take any of that 50K. It's for the programmings that are going into the schools. So we're, we kind of just become somebody that helps plant movements and helps them grow. And then it becomes a revolving door and that's what shifts the personality, the culture over time. So no matter what, we would love to have a call just to see if we can help. And the way you do that is you go to my website, site, um, jaredscottspeaks.com.

[46:30] And just fill out an intake form. And after you submit that form, it'll prompt you to book a call on our calendar. And we'll do a FaceTime call just like this, and we'll go over our options. Other than that, everything on social media is Jared Scott Live. Jared Scott Live on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, everything, Jared Scott Live, YouTube, everything. Try to keep it simple. So it's Jared Scott Speaks and Jared Scott Live. Awesome. So we're going to put the links for all of that down in the show notes. That way, teachers who are interested and want to learn more, can go to your website, can go to follow you on social media, because I'm sure that they're all like, wow, like this could be really transformative for my students. But I want to listen to him talk a little bit more. I want to hear him speak, you know, obviously. But thank you so much again for being a part of this. I just know that this is going to be just an amazing transformation for a lot of schools. And I just thank you for taking the time out to talk to me today. Yes, ma'am. Absolutely. Thank you for having me on. I I appreciate you. Absolutely.