The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at Drkenner.com, and Amazon.com.

The Lord didn't make the sun until the fourth day. That is correct, that first day. Well, what do you think it was? 24 hours long?

Bible says it was a day. Well, it was no sun. How do you know how long it was? The Bible says it was a day. What was it? A normal day, literal days, 24-hour day. I don't know. What do you think?

I do not think about things I do not think about.

And that's from Inherit the Wind. And you know, when you're talking with somebody, and they should be setting goals and thinking clearly—maybe it's a parent who is not parenting well, and they just think to themselves, "Well, I don't know how to do it. I'm just—this is just the way I do it, and that's it." It's like this thing, "I do not think about what I do not want to think about," and that's the exact policy that you do not want in your life. You want to be able to set wonderful thinking goals.

And with me today is an expert in thinking. It's Jean Moroney, and she has corporate clients, BB&T, Microsoft, and Amazon.com. She’s got three degrees, two master’s degrees—one in Electrical Engineering from MIT and one in psychology from Carnegie Mellon. She also has specialized training in a rational philosophy, objectivism, which is Ayn Rand's philosophy. And you put that all together with Jean's passion for thinking, and that's exactly the topic we're going to talk about now. Welcome to the show, Jean.

Thanks for having me, Ellen.

Jean, when you talk about setting thinking goals, that’s important. People sometimes go by that—many, very often, go by the seat of their pants. And they don’t know to set a thinking goal, whether it’s in a career or whether it’s the parenting example of, "I don’t know how to parent, but, you know, I'll just go by the seat of my pants. I don’t do this because my mom used to do it, and I didn’t like it, and I pick and choose here and there, but I really don’t have any thinking goal." What would you recommend?

Well, I think in some of these cases that you’ve been discussing, I think maybe even just having regular goals would be helpful. So, in parenting, if you don’t have the goal of being, you know, a respectful parent or nurturing the development of the child, then nothing else falls from that. But if you do have some of these goals, thinking is your means of figuring out what to do. And thinking goals come up because there are specific questions that you need to answer to be able to get your goal.

Okay, so when you say, when I think of parenting, I think—of course, I’ll play a role-play with you—"Of course I want to be a good mother. Of course, I’m motivated. I want to be a nurturing mother. But, you know, he’s always underfoot. He must have ADHD—my son just drives me buggy. And, you know, I do what I can. So occasionally I yell at him, occasionally I just take off for a while and need to get my space. And I don’t know, how would I apply a thinking goal to that?"

Well, let me actually suggest a slightly different thinking aspect to that, which is monitoring. I think that if you have a goal, one of the most important things you need to do is monitor your progress toward the goal. And that is something that does not happen automatically. So that quote you had from Inherit the Wind, "I do not think about what I do not think about," is really true. In this respect, it takes a deliberate choice to stop and say, "Well, how am I doing? How am I doing on the parenting? What is going well, and what is not going well?" Those questions do not ask themselves. And so I think the first kind of thinking skill that people need in these regards is the realization that they need to consciously stop, choose, and reflect on how things are going. And that actually gives you an opportunity to figure out what it is you need to think about here.

So with parenting, if I sat down, I would say, "I don’t know how to discipline," or "I don’t know how to listen to my child. I tune out. He tells me all of these things he’s thinking and doing, and it goes on and on and on, and it’s too long." So maybe I need to figure out how—I need to learn some listening skills with kids, and I need to learn how to delimit it. You know, I might need some skills to be able to say, well, I know the skills because that’s what I do, but, you know, to be able to say something on the order of, "Honey, let’s spend the next 15 minutes together, because I can handle 15 minutes, but I can’t handle a half hour. And then after that, I’m going to be working on a project over here. But let’s spend 15 minutes together, and tell me about your day."

Now, that's very interesting, Ellen, because you have, in fact, applied a thinking technique in your solution to that problem. So let’s just draw that out here. The whole problem of discipline and dealing with children is very, very complex. It’s not the kind of thing that has a simple, clear-cut answer. It’s not like you can go to a one-hour parenting workshop or even an all-day parenting workshop and come out of that and have suddenly all the skills you need to be able to maintain discipline with kids. I assume you’d agree with that.

Oh yes, absolutely. It’s like me trying to learn dance in one lesson. You know, teach me a rumba in one lesson. You can’t do it. But parenting is a lot more complex than that, right?

There are so many interrelated parts. And part of this problem, part of the thinking problem involved here, is that you need to be able to—

Hey, I’ve got to interrupt this, because we’ve got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that’s it. A very quick ad, and then Ellen will be back.

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Hmm. The Selfish Path to Romance. That is interesting.

Part of the problem, part of the thinking problem involved here is that you need to be able to think about all those parts at once. But when you first start learning, you can’t do it. It’s just too much. It’s completely overloading. And so one thing that you need to do in these situations is find a way to scale down the goal. So if you had the goal of having a perfectly behaved child and a perfectly warm relationship at all times with your child, to do that in one step is probably too hard. But maybe you can find some way to scale down, and what you were suggesting were a couple of small, easy things that could be added into the parenting routine and that would make a difference.

Okay, so that I’m making—what I did was I said, "What is—Ellen, name one of the problems you’re having with your son." Obviously, that’s not a personal example. Or, "Susie, name some of the problems you’re having with your son," and it’s that he talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and he drives me crazy and I can’t listen. And finally, I say, "He can tell I’m not listening, so he keeps trying to pressure me more to listen to him." So if I just said, "What skill could I use there?" If I made it clear-cut, and I know you’ve emphasized this, it’s got to be a doable skill, and it’s on something important to me—my relationship with my son. If I say, "If I put aside 15 minutes right when he comes home from school, then he may be more willing—he’ll have my full attention for the 15 minutes, and he may be more willing to go play with friends or play with his Legos or do something else," right?

And so what you did there is—this may not be a full solution to the problem, but it is a small, doable, clear-cut first step you can have that you’re pretty sure is going to contribute to the solution to the problem.

And it’s simple too. It’s something you can implement and yet something you can build on later, right?

And it gives me confidence. Oh my gosh, if I have the 15-minute solution with my son—or, in some cases, it may be a husband or a wife, you know, that you have to listen to for 15—not "have to," but they talk and talk and talk. They need that. And you just listen, and then you go do whatever other tasks or interests you have.

So listen, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. With me today has been Jean Moroney. She’s an expert on thinking skills, and her website is—Jean, you can give your website.

Sure. It’s thinkingdirections.com. That’s the word "thinking" plus the word "directions," all run together. And you offer what?

Well, I offer courses on thinking tactics, where, for example, I talk about how you take a real complex problem and break it down into a series of passes where you can rough it in and get more detailed. And other skills. And I have a free email newsletter, which you can subscribe to on the website, and preview classes and articles and book recommendations up there.

And tips. Thinking tips. There’s so much, there’s a wealth of information on your website, thinkingdirections.com. That’s all one word, thinkingdirections.com. And I look forward to talking with you again sometime, Jean.

Thanks for having me, Ellen.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com.

Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and co-author Dr. Edwin Locke.

Self-esteem is a critical psychology term. It is your evaluation of yourself as a capable and worthy person. Some self-help books tell you to simply accept yourself as you are. That advice cannot work, because who you are or are not at this moment may be the problem. Even if you consciously try not to judge yourself, your subconscious will do it for you. It is essential to know the right standards to judge yourself by to avoid suffering unnecessarily. Self-esteem is vital to your happiness, including your romantic happiness. If you do not respect yourself, you will not feel worthy of being loved.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy The Selfish Path to Romance at Amazon.com.