The Hangout
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The Hangout
#87 Peter Sciarretta, Educator to Life Coach
Join us for an illuminating conversation with my brother, Peter Sciarretta, who shares his transformative journey from a 30-year teaching career to the world of life coaching. You'll uncover the nuances of life coaching, how it stands apart from traditional guidance like parental advice or mentorship, and the structured paths to becoming a certified coach.
To learn more, visit Peter's website or his Instagram page @Peter_thecoach. To get in touch with Peter, email him at peter@chamisolifecoaching.com.
Welcome to the superintendent's hangout, where we discuss topics in education, charter schools, life in general, and not necessarily in that order. I'm your host, Dr Sharetta. Come on in and hang out. In this episode I sat down with my brother, Peter Sciretta. Pete's been on the show before, but I wanted to have a different type of conversation, because in previous conversations we spoke about education and his 30-year career as a teacher, but in this episode we transitioned to him talking about life coaching, which is the next step in his professional journey, about building a life coaching practice, about what life coaching is, what it's not, what some of the challenges are, what some of the opportunities are, et cetera. We had a wide ranging and very fun conversation and I hope that listeners enjoy this conversation as much as I did sitting down with my brother.
Speaker 1:You've been on the podcast previously and people who listen regularly kind of know that you had about a 30-year career in teaching, but what they might not know is that in the past year or so, you left teaching to become a life coach, and so can you start by telling us, first of all, what is life coaching? I mean you go to a bookstore or you look on Amazon and the self-help section has hundreds and hundreds of books in it. And there's all these books about changing your life, and it's a one thing. Or change your life by being a Genghis Khan leader, or you know. Just say F it, or you know on F yourself, like all this stuff. And so what is life coaching and why does it even matter? It's a great question.
Speaker 2:So I think, in the most accessible sense, life coaching is something that happens really all the time, right, um, uh, let's say I don't know, doctors life coach. They get you in a room, they talk to you about um options you have for a loved one, perhaps for your, for your own health, and and they coach you through it. They give you options, they suggest things. Um, when you go I mean in its most rudimentary form you go into a library which is kind of old school, but the librarian may coach you towards this section or that section, or perhaps these are the kind of books you want to read, read. Police officers do a lot of life coaching calming people down, telling them things they may or may not want to hear, but just kind of, okay, here we go, this is what we got to do. Cesar Millan is a life coach of sorts helping people, coaching them in how to behave so that their dogs work with them, not against them.
Speaker 2:School principals are a really good example of a life coach. Also coaching parents, children I understand you were really upset. Next time, this is what you need to do differently, so on and so forth. So I think life coaching can really show itself in many, many forms. Of course.
Speaker 2:That's sort of in the day-to-day application, and I guess I should say that the difference with formalized life coaching is just that those bits of advice happen in a little bit more of a direct fashion in an office setting, and so coaching about what to do, maybe how to think, so on and so forth, happens a little bit more directly. But we're constantly getting coached in life, right? Especially if you're a parent, you're coaching your children on how to maybe respond, think about something, so on and so forth. So that's a pretty overly simplified definition, but the reality is that life coaching has been around in many forms, in many disciplines for decades, centuries, and back in the day life coaching really came from the wise, oftentimes elder, in a community, maybe the medicine person, oftentimes a medicine man, sometimes medicine woman, and life coaching happened there as well. So it's really been around for forever, in fact. Been around for forever, in fact.
Speaker 1:So if there are all these examples of coaches, whether formal or informal, it sounds like, as you described it, mostly informal, just de facto kind of people who are mentors or stand in at a certain point in someone's life and provide guidance, why do we need a separate person called a life coach, and when did that really start to become a thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. So my, my, my favorite life coach actually is Brooke Castillo, and she's been life coaching for about 20 to 25 years and she has something called the Life Coach School and she formalized it. I would say that the reason formalized life coaching is an important profession is because it's a little bit more. It's one step removed from a parent coaching a child and, just as we know, we can sometimes say something to our children that they may or may not listen to. When it's told in a more formalized setting, perhaps by a school counselor, perhaps by a therapist, perhaps by a teacher, they listen a little bit differently, right, and so because of that you know putting it in a little bit more of a quote unquote, clinical setting, where people are obviously paying for the coaching, they look at it, they view it a little bit differently. It's not the neighbor kind of across the fence saying something, but it's a little bit more formalized than that.
Speaker 1:And so what? What is what? What's the preparation like for to be a life coach? I mean, it sounds like your mentor has a life coaching school. That's certainly not the only one, I'd imagine there are life coaches who have no training. I'd imagine there are life coaches who have no training. Um, I'd imagine, um. There are life coaches who develop their own paradigms and their own methods and um, um, perhaps like an. Anthony robbins was kind of a um, or tony robbins, whatever his name is, um. Both are correct, correct, depending on how name is. Both are correct, correct, depending on how friendly you are. I guess my question is how does someone become a life coach? And then can you talk about how you became one?
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 2:So you're right, there are many, many schools of thought in terms of preparing individuals to become life coaches. There are many schools, most of them are online. Many of them are also in person and they do. They do all have different models that they use for, for educating, for training new life coaches. I think that the life coaches can choose many different things. Some are much more kind of positive-based, like rah-rah-rah, almost cheerleader-like, and, yeah, schools can be attended all over the place. Schools can be can be attended all over the place. Unfortunately, there are really very few credentials needed to become a life coach. In other words, anyone can really call themselves a life coach and start marketing themselves accordingly and begin to see clients etc.
Speaker 2:And you mentioned my, my 30 year, almost 30 year, um work in education and I I actually attended a three-year course, uh, specifically to become a life coach, and that was something that was was incredibly helpful, because there's a lot of work one needs to go through in order to recognize one's own shortcomings and areas of strength, etc.
Speaker 2:And then how to how to utilize that with clients in order to to help and support them. So yeah, and you also asked, dave, if, if you know what, specifically why I wanted to do this, or yeah. So basically, you know, after almost three decades of working with groups of individuals, I realized a lot of my work, especially with with students in the elementary school setting was with the parents. School setting was with the parents, and that really required quite a bit of informalized life coaching, which I realize is what it was. And so I thought this is something I really enjoy working with adults to support their children. So I'm going to go get trained and then transfer some of those, those skills and that experience in that realm to more specific direct life coaching with, uh, individual clients, and and that's what I did and it's been been a fantastic transition. I've really, really enjoyed it. I I loved education, but I won't go back to it in that form. I'm going to stick with life coaching.
Speaker 1:So, you know, you bring up the formal training and it's a little bit analogous to, perhaps, a therapist although I think people probably use the therapy title loosely as well. There's probably. I know that there are certain licensing bodies for for therapists, and then you could probably just someone could just hang a shingle and call themselves a, you know a something therapist, a goat yoga therapist or whatever the case may be. Uh, but for most therapists and mental health professionals, um, there are ethics that that practitioners abide by. You know, privacy and um, things like, um, you know, letting clients know that you know you won't divulge things except if they're going to be a danger to themselves or others. You know, if you see your therapist or the therapist sees the client in public, they're not really supposed to acknowledge that they know them, those sorts of things. Right, there's a, there's kind of a code that they know them, those sorts of things. Right, there's kind of a code. What exists in the area of life coaching for the protection of both of the client and the life coach?
Speaker 2:Excellent question. So I mean, when I see my clients in public, I usually offer to buy them beer, which is probably against the ethical code.
Speaker 1:We're going to put that in the show notes that there's a QR code scan for adult beverage.
Speaker 2:So, actually, because of the informalized requirements for credentialing for life coaches, there really isn't that same level of ethics connected to life coaching.
Speaker 2:However, in order to maintain the competence of clients, life coaches do need to be mindful of that, you know, area of not disclosing what goes on in a life coaching session. I think there's two little kind of maybe tangential but probably informative points I'd like to make. One is that my focus is not to kind of analyze the past that people come in with and share. My focus is really to look at where the client currently is in their lives and what strategies to impart to encourage them, to help them, to support them with in order to move their lives from that current point forward, where therapy is much more about what, what has occurred, how that has impacted you, so on and so forth. So it's a slightly different um, uh application, I guess. Um and so if I do, if I were to see my, my clients out and about, I would certainly say hello, um, and that's okay, um, but, but that's probably where it would stay and we'd greet and go on our way. I hope that answers the question a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm thinking too about that. Well, you marked the line between life coaching and therapy in your mind. Does it ever happen that you're in a session with a client and they start to rely on you as a therapist and a chalice to deposit their deepest, darkest secrets in? And you got to be like whoa, whoa, let's focus on some actionable steps, or do you let them go? And how does that? How does that dynamic work?
Speaker 2:Excellent, excellent question. Yes, I have been in that situation and I'll tell you I don't have any firm guidelines for that. In terms of my coaching practice, what I usually do is allow for some of that to happen and then look at how that may be impacting my client and then what we can do about that right, there usually wouldn't be too many interrogatives from my part following a sharing of something pretty deep and traumatizing. I would probably look at it from that moment and see how we can move, how we can move forward. Again, it really depends on the client and how much they, you know, are still sort of holding onto that they want to share. I will say that the majority of my clients also have therapists as well, and that is something that I really strongly encourage because of what I've shared in terms of focusing on the past, looking at trauma, so on and so forth, whereas my job is really to find how I can help someone move into the future.
Speaker 1:Do you think that part of the rise of life coaching as a formal profession has to do with societal changes that have happened in terms of, like, the nuclear family being spread out as people get older? Or you know communities that might have, in the past, been centered around place of worship, or you know, going back centuries or maybe even millennia, hunter gather well more than millennia for hunter gatherers but you know groups of people who had a clearly defined social pecking order and and, as you say, the elders, men or women, um, who could impart advice and guidance, um. Do you think that this, that life coaching is kind of a has sprung out of that vacuum?
Speaker 2:That's an excellent question. I haven't given that a tremendous amount of thought, but I would say that is a very good, that's a really, I would say, legitimate and realistic picture that, yes, indeed, because there has been that breakdown, that coaching is something, something that has really you know that has really kind of risen to the top and I mean, it's a little bit anecdotal, but I always think you know people are like well, you know, why would you need a coach?
Speaker 2:Well, look, if you think about it in the most literal sense, I don't know why they call it Hamburger Helper.
Speaker 1:Tastes mighty fine by itself. Yes, it does. Yes it does the original vacation interjection there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Great movie. Vacation interjection there absolutely great movie. So what you know, if you think about someone like lebron james um, who I don't talk to every day but on a weekly basis. Lebron is right, was at the top of his game and yet he still needs a coach, right, the whole team still multiple, multiple coaches, absolutely.
Speaker 2:But but so on the floor, as we see it on tv oh, I see right, they do need a coach to to help help them right, even though he's the top of the top and you're right, and they also have people who help them with their thinking, help them with positive thinking, so on and so forth, and they do. They have multiple coaches on the floor and then also quote, unquote head coaches, so you can really see how it's kind of. You know, with the proper coaching you can go from wherever you are and hopefully raise that up. And yes, I would say that you know, right now one in five families in the United States is headed by a single parent, and blessings to those single parents doing that work, but that's a pretty high number. So what that means is, you know, hopefully there is another role model, another parental figure outside of that family who can lend coaching, right, literal coaching, maybe on a team of some sort, but also just somebody who's there as a mentor and a guide, absent an actual formalized coach, as I am.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was thinking about in preparation for today that you know well, in case listeners didn't realize uh, you and I are related, uh, uh, it's probably pretty rare that we have such a two people with the same last name. That's uh so common. Uh are related now, but, like growing up, we, you know, I think you and I both had mentors who we weren't biologically related to. I certainly remember Johnny Reban, for example, who, when I was a freshman, I think in high school, he hired me to do some tile work. I didn't know it was a test. It was a test to see if I could do the work. But I worked with him on a Saturday. We started seven in the morning by 10 at night. We're still working and I'm dead tired. I never worked that hard ever. But I went back on Sunday and then that turned into a multi-year job and I mean $10 an hour back in 1986 was a lot of money. But it actually wasn't about the money. It was about learning from this guy and his wife, maya and I know you did too and just life lessons about everything from how to manage money to how to wear a suit and tie and go to the uh, the japanese steakhouse where you needed to have a, a jacket, otherwise they would hand you one at the door, like all those things. And you know, I think you and I received mentoring from our parents too, but it was a different. It's a different dynamic right at that age. You're kind of like you. Our parents are never a prophet in their own land, and so we're. We see this other person too, and that's just as a young person, you know. So I'm not debating the importance of coaching at all. I think it's important and I think successful people in any profession will tell you that they have, even at very, very high levels, they have, you know, thought partners to use another overly used cheesy California type of term, uh, or just someone to bounce things off of Right, right, um. So I think the coaching piece is a real, is really a, an interesting perspective.
Speaker 1:I want to kind of segue a little bit into kind of what were your biggest surprises coming out of a career in education? You know you worked in the, in a private school. But education, being a teacher, um, while every year and every student, every family presents some kind of unique challenges after a while, it's kind of like, um, it's like the cycles of of. You know it's the seasons in the, in the, in the year, or the or. Uh, you know the innings in a baseball game. Like seventh inning stretch happens in the seventh inning. You know it's the seasons in the, in the, in the year, or the or. Uh, you know the innings in a baseball game. Like seventh inning stretch happens in the seventh inning. You know this happens then, like this is the deal. But then you go into a private practice and you have clients who come from all over for different reasons. Uh, they show up or they're recruited or someone sends them to you. What was the biggest surprise for you as you segued into this private endeavor?
Speaker 2:Yeah, dave, that's a. That's a great question. I think the biggest surprise was that every time a new client walks through the door, the door and although we are all human beings, there are very, very different and disparate needs that that client has present listening and also to be able to pull from your experience to guide that individual towards, um, you know, a healthier life in general. So, and and with with the same client, it is not always the same things week after week, right, something may really be motivating them or inhibiting them one week and then the next week. That's not the focus. So it's a question of sort of building on what you have worked on together or what you've coached them to work on. I mean, really the work is really on their part, so that's part of it, and then it's also blending that with the new things that they bring in.
Speaker 2:And how can you kind of synthesize those together?
Speaker 2:Right, with with children in an educational setting, they usually present the same or similar things week after week, month after month and perhaps even year after year, week after week, month after month and perhaps even year after year.
Speaker 2:So you're not really seeing one child doing this and then doing that. That are very different in the way they present, and so I think that's the biggest surprise that I encountered was that the same client can show so many different facets of themselves and really kind of be focused on one thing one week, the next thing the next week, and you have to, of course, find threads that tie those things together. So hopefully you can kill many birds with one stone, but but that's what I'd say. The biggest difference is and at the same time, that's been the most exciting aspect to my work as well Right, there's really so much that comes toward you and you just you receive it, and then you think how you can uh, have it work or have the client work on what they're sharing with you in order to move things forward what about the the business side of things?
Speaker 1:because when you're a teacher you know you're typically that's not how you're oriented right trying to get clients, or right in billing invoices. Taxes, keep staying organized. You know even down to like what tools you use to to take notes. If you do, and and are you required to keep notes like. Talk us through all those things.
Speaker 2:Great, excellent question. So I will just you know full disclosure. There's been a really big, large learning curve in those areas that you just mentioned right, and so that's been something I've had to really work on in order to stay focused. I have a very old school method of note taking and that is something that I do either during the session and or following the session, between sessions, and then I look back over those notes in order to see where we've, what material we've covered, where we've gone, where else we can go, so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:And yeah, it's true, you have kind of a ready-made clientele in an educational setting, but now I really have to go out and recruit and the majority of my clients have come through word of mouth of my clients have come through word of mouth, and that has been wonderful, which means that I'm doing something that is worthy of people talking about and not only trash talking about. So that's a great thing. I'm really grateful for that. But, yes, there are so many things out there from a business perspective that one could do in terms of advertising and so on and so forth, and in terms of those things, like I said, there's a steep learning curve and I'm still working on those and right now the majority of my clients are coming from word of mouth through word of mouth, I guess I would say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I put in a big plug for FreshBooks. They're not a sponsor of this show, but maybe they want to Hint, hint. Freshbooks is a super cool, inexpensive way. On your cell phone, with a super easy platform, you can create invoices, you can track expenses and for your taxes it's a pretty powerful tool and for your taxes.
Speaker 1:it's a pretty powerful tool, and Dave the word fresh used to be pretty cool back in the day. The modern version would be called cool books. Yeah, yeah, fresh. I'm not sure where that is part of the vernacular anymore, but yeah, fresh was the thing I always wonder about, kind of how it doesn't. It's not only with life coaching, but therapy as well. Right? So in some ways, the better the professional is, the better you are at your job, the sooner you work your way out of a client.
Speaker 1:So I one time had a dentist tell me that if people followed my advice meaning him as a dentist he'd go out of business, because you know, floss regularly and get your teeth cleaned every six months and don't eat candy, and you know, don't smoke cigarettes and don't chew tobacco and whatever all these different things. He would basically just be cleaning teeth and that would be it. But people don't follow the advice and so that's or you. Sometimes other things happen, but largely behaviorally based, right? People kind of get, get lazy, or they. Other things happen, and then, of course, they got to go to the dentist. So how is that dynamic with life coaching? Like, are you ever sitting there with a client going? Wow, I realized that they're doing so well with this plan, they're advancing so well that pretty soon they're not going to need me. And then the second part of that question is at what point do you tell them, hey, sarah, or hey, billy Bob, you probably don't need to come to me every week.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny because Billy Bob, he's right behind you. Well, it's funny because Billy Bob who's behind you. So so that's the yeah I mean. So you're right. Here's the thing it is very challenging to take advice, coaching and implement it in a consistent way, right. So the chances that I, that I will coach myself out of clientele, the chances are pretty, pretty low.
Speaker 2:What I'd say is that you know, if you do a good job right, then that client will want to be coached on other things, because there are many facets of our lives that we could receive coaching on. And it's a little bit like right, like an objective or relatively objective, as much as we can be as human beings, because any relationship is somewhat subjective, it's a, you know, it's a relatively objective relationship. So I think because of that, there's never that fear, I will say. Interestingly enough, two weeks ago I spoke to one of my clients and I said look, there's no need for you to come every week, in my opinion. And the client said but I really, really want to. I know I'm doing well, but I really want to because it's going to maintain, it's going to help me maintain my progress forward. And I said, ok, great, no problem, but I did, I did posit that as as an option, and my client just said, no, I really want to keep going, and I said, fantastic, so. So that's really interesting.
Speaker 2:But, um, you know, I think, if, if I may, dave, I wanted to just quickly like throw this model out at you that Castillo uses. And so her whole thing is that you have circumstances which are are right your car breaks down, that's neither good nor bad. Then the circumstances kind of trigger thoughts, right, so your thought about that is, um crap, yeah, that's four thousand dollars exactly. And then that thought produces feelings, inform your actions, inform your results. So that model is something that she uses and it's something that I utilize as well, in large part, and it's really a very, very helpful model.
Speaker 2:And you can hit any one of those. You can look at your feelings and then work down or up from those, you can look at the results and then work backwards to what you're thinking. You're thinking is, and so on and so forth. And the reason, the reason I bring that up, is because in any situation, right, we can always change our thinking in relation to it, our thinking in relation to it, which will then inform our thoughts, our feelings, our actions, and that will produce a different result.
Speaker 2:So I mean honestly like it's.
Speaker 2:it's it's endless what we can do with that, and so if somebody feels like, yeah, I'm done then great, you know, but, but it hasn't happened yet and and that's a but, it's a really really good, uh good question, because even with a therapist right, you um usually feel better after a therapy session or you realize what you need to work on after a therapy session, and to consistently do that without support and for an extended time period is really challenging that, without support and for an extended time period, is really challenging.
Speaker 1:Have you had to discontinue work with a client and or, even if you haven't, could you imagine a scenario in which you might need to? Absolutely and like why?
Speaker 2:I guess would be yeah, so I'd say reasons for that. You know my work is it's based on relationships. So if someone walks through my door and for some reason, they are not relating to me well and or vice versa, right, then we would recognize that. Just as with a therapist or, you know, even with a mechanic, you walk in, you don't like the way they speak to you, whatever, you want to change mechanics. So if someone comes in and they want to have a session and then they realize, wait a second, peter's not right for me, no problem.
Speaker 2:And by the same token, it's the same thing for me. I mean, after all, same token, it's the same thing for me. I mean, after all, I am a human being and I am listening to what they say, working with them, and if I don't feel as though they are invested in helping themselves and or taking the coaching advice I'm giving, then I would be forced to really have a pretty clear conversation and say look, in my professional opinion, this is not working the way it needs to and I believe you should find a different coach and or therapist, et cetera.
Speaker 1:What role do things like social media and people's cell phone usage play in the support they need from you? I mean, it's certainly and I don't know what age your clients are but certainly since 2010, approximately, when the iPhone became ubiquitous, and soon after it's not really the iPhone so much as what the iPhone has on it the app store and social media and the algorithms that are designed to keep you on there. We know that it's looking more and more like young people. People who came of age after 2010 or so. Um are pretty deeply affected by by that Um. Are you seeing that in your clients, like people coming to you with anxiety or talking about oh, someone yelled at me the other day and then? And then you actually find out that they didn't yell at them. It was all caps, oops or something.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, so it's interesting because I just today recorded and I'm working on the final recordings of a very brief Instagram post about this very issue, which is a virtual versus real connection. And what happens is that there's so much conversation, so much communication that can happen between people, virtually right, but that person is not in front of you, they are not feeling your emotions, your warmth, your antipathy, so on and so forth, and so it's very, very disconnected. And then there's them reading into what the message may say All caps is somebody yelling or emphasizing, et cetera. Whereas when you're there with another human being, it's a very different experience, and I have found and I've observed that people's ability to interpret and respond to the interactions with other human beings has been compromised. And I don't. I think it's like anything right.
Speaker 2:You work out, you you go to the gym and you're lifting tires and dropping them and whatever. Then you, you get stronger, right, that's, those are muscles. You're using full body muscles. If you socialize and interact with people and talk with them directly in, in whatever setting that is, you learn to do that. You learn to read eye movements, so on and so forth. And they also say that you know, we usually form an opinion within a nanosecond with other human beings, and so we can sort of read somebody and find out whether we like them or not sympathy, antipathy, so on and so forth, and that happens almost instantaneously forth. And that happens almost instantaneously.
Speaker 2:And people are constantly on their phones and they're using those as their mode of communication. And I think the anxiety piece that you brought up is really interesting, because we have the ability now to communicate in a way that we've never seen as a society, ever right, there's more communication avenues than ever before, and yet we have some of the highest rates of depression, isolation, antisocial behaviors, you know, unfortunate social ills like increased school shootings, et cetera, et cetera. And these things exist in our lives at a time when we have the ability to communicate more than we ever have before. So I guess my question would be amidst all this communication, are we actually really meeting other people and really connecting with them, or are we just communicating with them through the tools that we have available to us today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I'm so glad you brought up those points because I've just finished reading this amazing book called the Anxious Generation. I don't know if you're familiar with Jonathan Haidt I think that's how you say his name H-A-I-D-T. That's right. I tried to get on the podcast, very unsuccessfully because he's super famous. But how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. And he talks about just that very thing that because especially young people are socializing in quotations, are socializing electronically and on screens, and because we have we have by through a number of different reactions to beliefs although they're not statistically, they're not backed by reality but beliefs that the world was so dangerous and that kids would get kidnapped and we can't let our kids walk to the corner store and all those things. That, oh, and, by the way, kids can't play on playgrounds, where they're at risk anymore. So I don't know when the last time you saw a playground that had a seesaw or a swing or one of those carousels they're all padded ground and monkey bars that you really have to try really hard to get injured on those right. And we are always intervening on behalf of our kids and I'm sure you saw that in teaching and I see it all the time in my job right when something a student, two students will have an interaction and they're in a conflict and then, before you know it, now two sets of parents are in a conflict and they're each advocating for their student. Now they want to fight each other, they want to fight other parents, they want to fight the school, they want to sue, and what we're losing and missing in that is that we've pretty much handicapped those kids from figuring some of their own stuff out.
Speaker 1:I had an interesting conversation with mom, our mom about one of our family members, I'm just going to say one of our younger family members, who had been involved in something in school, like in middle school and elementary, younger family members who had been involved in something in school, like in middle school and elementary, and my mom was saying can you believe that?
Speaker 1:They were there at lunch and they were pushed and shoved and then, boy, they turned around and they sucked them and they handled it. Anyway, we were talking through this whole thing and so I was listening and I was kind of chuckling and the supposition was that the world on school campuses is just so much more dangerous than it was. And can you believe all that stuff's happening? I'm like you know I must have hit it from you really well, mom, because the number of times that I was in confrontational situations, from about kindergarten through, you know, 10th grade, you know it was something out of like gladiators or something Right, but we didn't necessarily go tell our parents all the time but, you know, we figured it, we.
Speaker 1:We figured things out, sometimes more or less effectively, but I think that's something that isn't happening right. Where kids are not able to, we're not allowing them to exercise those muscles. In Haight's book. I highly highly recommend this book, even though I don't get a commission. He talks it's so interesting. There's some data and I can't now I'm going to not be able to find it. But he looks at emergency room. Oh my God, let's see if I can see this hospital. This is listen to this hospital.
Speaker 1:Admissions for unintentional injuries. So In the year 2000, so 24 years ago. For anyone who's reading along and millions of listeners, this is page 183. In the year 2000, so let's call it 25 years ago. Just to choose a round number, 100,000 people in a population, males, age let's make sure I get this right age 10 to 19. So you can imagine, like fourth grade through high school graduation, right? Males age 10 to 19 were the highest group in terms of incidents per 100,000 population. So 15,000 per 100,000, okay, admitted for unintentional injuries, right? What you could imagine.
Speaker 1:The playground kind of stuff 25 years ago, of stuff 25 years ago, that line now, all population you know, males, females, different age groups has decreased dramatically and been more than cut in half over the last 25 years. Wow, that particular group I don't know if you can see this. So this one here, yep, there we go. A dark line, this dark line here, yep, that dark line. And that dark line. This is boys and this is girls in that age group of 10 to 19. They've both gone from the highest risk to the lowest risk of all of them. And so his conclusion to that is like screens have taken kids indoors, we're preoccupied and nervous about what happens to them outside, but we're actually not worrying about what happens to them indoors on their screens. But that's just it, right? Is that? The ability to, you know, fall and get back up and figure things out? That's all going away.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, dave, that's, that's such a such an important point and I can't wait to get my hands on that book, thank you. And then, you know, get hate on your podcast at some point I'll give him a shout out and see if he's willing. But I think that that one of the things. I actually'm working on a post for that as well, basically the whole idea of risk analysis, right? So? And my the subject, the core subject of what I talk about, is actually merry-go-rounds, how we used to get on them and fly off them, and they don't exist on playgrounds in this country anymore because of the lawsuits and so on and so forth. And what happens is that that's the whole. The whole problem is that, right, Everything goes indoors, everything is safe, everything is, you know, no physical injury, so on and so forth. And then you don't realize how to analyze the risks that exist in the world. And the reality is that there are a lot of risks in the world, but physical and emotional. And you're right, if you're stuck on your phone, the emotional risks skyrocket. Physical risks are reduced drastically. But it all comes down to being able to learn to independently think through whatever you're faced with and make good decisions right according to what you perceive and how you govern yourself. So I think you know.
Speaker 2:Another indicator that I've noticed just from my life is that, you know, pharmaceutical ads used to only be targeting kind of for a while. They were targeting sort of the elderly right, people who need medication and so on and so forth in the later part of their lives. Then it really moved to middle age and now you're starting to see pharmaceutical ads that are targeting teens and even younger right. So that market has gone from 60, 70, 80-year-olds down to 30, 40, 50-year-olds, down to teens, 20-year-olds, etc. And that's just an indicator that I mean it's increasing the market for the farmers for pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 2:But it's also looking at the fact that you're talking about antidepressants for 10, 12 year olds, whereas that's something back. You know that really didn't exist in quite the same the same way when we were growing up. And one more quick point about risk analysis. I mean you know you and I were. You know we were walking a cable that was four feet off the ground between two trees, and when you fell on that thing and you didn't fall left or right and you fell with it in between your legs, you know you learned a lesson fast and that's why I mean I'm amazed I have two children.
Speaker 2:Amazed, I have two children. But the point is that at that moment you, you, we really hurt ourselves and we could have, I mean, goodness knows, there was no helmet, there was no oversight, nobody was guiding us, we weren't, our parents weren't watching us, they weren't videotaping us. We were out there just working, trying to get across from one side of the cable to the other without hurting ourselves, right. But you learn about the limits, physical limits of your body and balance and so on and so forth. So yeah, those things have really been stripped of children. Luckily, in my education, educational experience, there were still swings, there were still seesaws, and guess what? Children got hurt quite a bit on all of them. But guess what? They also learned how to navigate subsequently to make sure they didn't get hurt the next time. Or they got hurt a lot and finally figured it out. And then they gained confidence from being able to act responsibly and accordingly in the physical world, to act responsibly and accordingly in the physical world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's really. It's really interesting, as you mentioned those things that and this isn't, this isn't just this isn't a criticism of, of of schools. That's not my purpose. You know, you and I, you and I worked for for so long and in education, I think combined the two of us have, you know, 60 years of experience or something like that, but it's more. It's more like, when I think about the forces at play, that kind of compel okay, this is what I was.
Speaker 1:Just I found this, I'll read this to you in a minute that kind of compel schools to set up environments, also with less and less and less and less risk, less and less and less unpredictable activity, less and less and less and less risk, less and less and less unpredictable activity, less and less and less disorder, because there's an efficiency component that dates back to the industrial revolution. There's a quiet component like loud means you're not doing your job, kids aren't walking in line, means you're not, you don't have good classroom management. These are I'm saying this tongue in cheek. If somebody gets hurt, then a teacher feels vulnerable. I understand that. You know, is someone going to come and go? What the hell are you doing in your classroom. So as a result, we paint lines on the ground that tell people where to go. We, you know, very, only very rarely let kids do a lot of unstructured play. A lot of recesses are, you know, there are very few times that kids are not under direct adult supervision. But this is from Haidt's book, page 90. This is from an elementary school in Berkeley. I don't know what year this is, but he must have gone and visited the school, or someone sent him this photo and this is hanging on a sign right or hanging on a visit to the school. Or someone sends this photo and this is hanging on a sign right and it or hanging on a fence rather it's a vinyl sign and it says tag rules include everyone.
Speaker 1:Resolve disagreements with rock paper scissors. Practice good sportsmanship. One finger touch, no ball tag. If a player doesn't want to play tag, then another player must respect that. Tag games stay outside on the yard. Tag cannot be played in out of bound areas or through other games. When the bell rings, all play stops and students freeze, then walk to your line, and that's very common. So I'm just going to let that one sit there, right.
Speaker 1:And then you wonder if a student had that experience in third or fourth grade? Where are they going to be when they're 30, right, and they're having a disagreement with a spouse, or even just trying to find someone to date, right, or something at the work where they don't, where something's not going their way, you know? So I was thinking, are you familiar with the book Atomic Habits? I haven't read it, but, yes, I know it. I recommend that one too. That's by James Clear, I think it's his name.
Speaker 1:And he because, as before when you were mentioning the kind of the setting of goals for clients and coaching them, that may be useful for you. Cause he, he kind of, he kind of takes on our, our societal urge to try to make massive leaps forward and they often fail, which is why we keep getting more and more obese. But more and more gyms spring up and they make money, but nobody can stick with it long enough. And so he's got this whole thing where he says if you tell someone you need to exercise four to five days a week and you need to do this and limit your calories to 1800 a day, they never can hang with it, right.
Speaker 1:But if he says, if you tell someone, you know, for the first week, just stand for five extra minutes a day and jot it down, just stand. That's, that's doable, right. Set your alarm, stand, walk around, go get a cup of coffee and whatever. And then the next week you do it for 10, right, the effects of standing as opposed to sitting on blood pressure and all these other things are. They're measurable, right, and over time you can build those habits. So it's like the difference between between you know the way that you know people want to innovate and like go from like I'm going to build a tesla truck and it's going to be bulletproof and crossbow proof and have rocket boosters and all this stuff too, and in a short time right, just a couple of years too what Toyota did with their manufacturing. That follows the Kaizen Japanese philosophy of small, incremental change. That builds on it 1% change a year, you do. 1% change a year. In 30, 40 years of sticking to it, you have a masterful amount of innovation.
Speaker 2:I mean. So, dave, that is. I definitely, definitely going to read Atomic Habits, thank you. I have to say. I mean you bring up so many great points and one of I mean the one that resonates that you just with me the most you just ended with is the kaizen philosophy, because that is something that also in life coaching right, you're not looking it, it's not like, okay, all of a sudden I'm going to go to the gym seven days a week and I'm going to work out 45 minutes a day, and of course you're not going to do that. Of course you're not.
Speaker 2:And and you know the I, I this might sound a little bit conspiracy theories, theory oriented, but, um, the reason so many gyms are popping up and the reason we have an epidemic of obesity and lack of movement is because everybody's trying to make these massive instantaneous gains, right, or changes, and the whole thing with with, with coaching. I mean just let's just take this for a second. Let's look at the idea of let's say, you look in the mirror at yourself and you think to yourself I don't like what I see, I am overweight, okay, so that thought will then inform your life and that thought is going to inform your feelings about yourself, and those feelings will inform your actions. And probably there'll be inactions in this instance, like why would I even go to the gym? I'm overweight, I don't feel good about myself anyway. And then you don't get any results right, and on top, or the results you get are negative emotions and so on and so forth, which, by the way, negative emotions are not a bad thing at all, but in certain contexts they can really hold us back. So when you look in the mirror, instead of saying I am heavier than I want to be, you just tell yourself I have a body, that's it. I have a body, I'm grateful for my body and that I'm alive.
Speaker 2:So that goes from a negative thought to a neutral thought, right, and that neutral thought then can inform your feelings and so on and so forth down the ladder, and then it can be a whole different ballgame, just by changing that initial thought. And so that is that what you say of the Kaizen philosophy that Toyota implemented. It's just that it's this little tweak and then everything else falls out from there and you just have to do, do little things Right, and and it makes a big difference. So that is really, really important in terms of coaching as well. I'm not coaching on. Ok, so you're not happy with this aspect in your life? Let's totally switch it and do this, because the chances of success are going to be incredibly low. You've got to change your thinking first, and that might just go from like self-loathing to some kind of acceptance and then down down the line it goes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting how what you're saying is not reflected in a lot of what you see online or on social media TikTok, instagram, especially a lot of reels and a lot of like or youtube shorts, something that's 30 seconds a minute, two minutes, right. You see someone and they're like lifting and they're ripped and they're this and then that, and then there's like click this link for more on how to be jacked at age 60, and all this stuff and like and you know how are you jacked at age 60? Uh, very slowly, and you know how do you get? How do you? You know how do you lose weight? Well, it took years of putting it on, so it's going to take a while, I mean, and absolutely you, dave.
Speaker 2:I mean even, and so on. The opposite end. Right, here's the, here's the reality. If you gain two pounds a year, which is not a lot, right, I mean, I don't know what that is. Maybe a cup to hold two glasses to 15 ounce glasses of water, one in each hand, maybe that's equivalent. Okay, so you put on that weight, starting at, let's say, 38, when your metabolism starts to slow or close to 40. So you're just holding those things in water, and then that's what you do the first year, and then the second year you add the same amount, and even if the rate of weight increase, doesn't change by the time you are 48, right, you are.
Speaker 2:What are? What is that two times? You're 20 pounds heavier and you're like what the hell? And so so nothing in life is immediate and I think this notion, especially with the, the advancement in technology and the exposure to screens, information, so on and so forth, everything that's that's really hard because we expect everything with immediacy. I mean, I was even thinking about this the other day. I was kind of like come on, pete, I was expecting a package, I'm tracking it and the whole thing, and it's like it will be delivered prior to 10 pm on such and such. And I'm like, oh man, I wanted it when I got home from you know when I was done working for the day.
Speaker 2:Ok, so even that, like I'm impatient about that. Back in the day somebody said they sent you something. It may or may not arrive to begin with, and then you didn't know if it was going to be midweek, end of the week or next week, and so you know even that you had to. There was like a built-in patients component that we don't even have anymore. So even we want everything immediately.
Speaker 2:The other thing I'll quickly say about when we look at reels is that you're right, you look at some jacked 60 year old. First of all, that 60 year old has been working their entire lives to be able to be jacked, or they're taking something that the FDA has not approved yet. And the other thing about that is that everybody, you're not going to present your worst self when you wake up in the morning and you're groggy and your hair's all a mess and you're going to be like, let me put this out into the world. No, so you always put your best foot forward, and then people see that, and it's always the your best foot forward. And then people see that and it's always the oh, wow, that person has this or that, and they will say this, and then I'll pause.
Speaker 2:But you know, brooke Castillo says the following, and she is a woman who, I believe, last year generated $50 million in income just last year. What I like about Brooke is that she says this my life is still 50-50, with all this money and success and privilege and ability, for, you know, influencing others and impacting others. You know, 50% of the time she's struggling and not happy and 50% of the time she is happy. And she said it doesn't matter who you are or what station you have in life, income levels, et cetera. Life is 50, 50. And the problem with Instagram reels is that they're either showing the ills of the world or they're showing something amazing, beautiful, right and and and. So you don't see the work behind it and you don't also get a realistic picture of that person in a situation which is not glorified or trying to make a point yeah, it's now to the.
Speaker 1:On the topic of instagram, we are going to link some of your videos in the show notes because, uh, they are comedy. If for no, if for no other reason, um, we were definitely going to link some of those, thank you, yeah, uh, but but we're not recommending that people just sit and not relate to each other all day and watch them. Just watch them and then go outside and get on a merry-go-round and try not to sprain your ankle.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I just have a couple more questions. You've been really generous with your time and I really appreciate it. Really generous with your time and I really appreciate it. Where, like, if you're looking ahead in 10 years, where do you want to be in terms of your practice and and what are some things you're doing? Now to try to get there.
Speaker 2:It's a great question. I think in a decade hence I would like to be able to work with larger groups of individuals, kind of in a workshop format, and maybe even earlier than that format, and maybe even earlier than that, to share what I have learned in my life, right, and what I've learned through my life coaching. And because I'm relatively new to formalized life coaching not new to life coaching as a aspect of my life I think it's going to take a while for me to be able to provide that service in a meaningful way, and so I'm kind of working on that and thinking about how I can replicate what I'm doing on a little bit of a larger scale. And in the meantime, I do really enjoy working with individual clients and I really enjoy working one-on-one in the same space with those clients.
Speaker 2:It's a very different experience being on the phone, and I have coached over the phone and I have coached over using a video platform as well. It is completely different and there's really no comparison right. You pick up on the feeling of the other in person and it's really hard through video. In fact, I actually prefer just the phone over video, because the video can be distracting, even though you can read body movements. You can also determine a lot through tone of voice, cadence of speech, et cetera on the phone. So I would like to be able to serve more people on a little bit of a larger level down the road, and that's something that I really look forward to achieving.
Speaker 1:Where can people find you? I mean, you know your online platforms and where do they go to find you?
Speaker 2:Thank you. So I have two Instagram platforms. One is Peter underscore the coach, and that is really content that is aimed at, I believe, my story. There is just for fun and I really I'm kind of poking fun at myself and just human beings in general, and I really enjoyed creating content for that. The other one, which is soon to be housing or holding quite a bit of content that I've been working on now for weeks, is called Chamiso Life Coaching.
Speaker 2:That's it, and then my web, my I, can also be found at peterchemisolifecoachingcom and yeah, those are the ways to find me and I really, you know, I'm really excited because, because people are starting to to appreciate what I'm trying to bring a little bit of humor to the life coaching, um profession.
Speaker 2:It is a very serious one and and I sort of I just want to say I have to be careful and my intention is really only to kind of provide laughter, um, and I'm poking fun oftentimes myself and and and the.
Speaker 2:The reason for that is that you know, having worked in education, I know statistically through through google, and I also know through my experience that children laugh I don't know by a factor of seven to one, seven times more than adults do. Laughter is just something that that emanates from them and as adults right, we we're burdened by so many aspects of life and we don't laugh enough, and so I'm really trying to bring that laughter to people and, at the same time, through Peter underscore, the coach, and then also Shemiso Life Coaching, my other Instagram platform is really aimed at providing content particularly for parents parents, but really for anybody but it is geared toward parents in order for them to be able to consider some of the things especially in this information age that we are trying so desperately to navigate in order to bring health and joy to our children and future generations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for for those and and on the. You know, I think it's appropriate to end our conversation on on that topic of the power of the sense of humor, where we're in an interesting time, where, where um, the role of a comedian is is, um, you know, oftentimes a controversial one, um politicized, politicized, banned or not banned, or which side you're on. And so you know, the role of a court jester historically was a pretty important one, and it was really the person who could point or poke fun at the king without losing their head, who could point or poke fun at the king without losing their head. And we have that tradition today where where the president, for example, hosts a roast every year, that the press corps roasts the president, right. So those are the kind of things, but even just poking fun at selves and kind of bringing some levity into things, and and so I I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:I think your videos are hysterical, so we're going to try to get those out there. You have the. You get the last word today before we, before we end. So is there any last piece of information or thought or wisdom that you want to leave the audience with?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean thank you. Thank you, david. I mean this has been a wonderful, wonderful moment or moments to share with you this time. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this. I've learned a lot already.
Speaker 2:I guess that I guess I would say we need to embrace both aspects of ourselves, kind of the dark and the light, as it were, and know that we are fallible human beings and yet we also learn from our foibles. And then we take those and we kind of shine light on them or bring light into the world, world because of them. And and again, you know life I don't know if it's 50 50, but I think it's pretty darn close things we can give ourselves is forgiveness and understanding for the things that we don't do and should have, or the things that we did and feel that we should not have, and that is that notion of looking at ourselves, trying to improve and truly giving ourselves forgiveness, I think is very, very important. And I don't think that is something that that you know you were talking before that that is recognized as important in our culture necessarily. You were talking before about lines in school and structure and don't talk out and be quiet, and so on and so forth and so many people have so much within themselves that they would like to share and get out there, and they express it differently, and so we have to be flexible inwardly to welcome all of the different people, the ways people interact with each other, with themselves, and we have to understand that.
Speaker 2:That's just kind of the human condition, and the human condition is something that we all share and should really be celebrated. And I think, ultimately, life boils down to intention, right? Whatever the final result is, what was our intent? Were we trying to bring joy, goodness into the world, or were we trying to harm and slander others? Right? And I think that's really an important element in this. And also the idea of transformation right, we're all trying to get better, or we should be, and transform ourselves.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, pete. It's been great chatting with you and we'll have to do this again soon.
Speaker 2:Thank you, David. It's such a pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Superintendents Hangout. You can follow me on Twitter at DVS1970. Please be sure to share this show with friends and family on social media and in the real world. Thank you to Brad Backeal for editing and production assistance and to Tina Royster for scheduling and logistics. Thanks for hanging out and have a great day.