Jason Blau

what uh what time tilt up i know why they broke it up before it's upset what's that but disappointing the big group and we'll fly you'll see i know no i guess this is good i'll be prepared for the next uh my speeches [Music] hello everyone welcome thank you so much for joining me today this is just about 30 minutes of what they're calling an icebreaker so i'm going to give you a little introduction of who i am uh have a longer introduction of who i am tomorrow i think about uh 3 o'clock or so when i give my first speech about called suffering to salvation and hope to shed some light on the child's perspective of trauma and how they can lift themselves through that and i'll share a lot of the details of how i was able to do that for myself but for right now let me introduce myself to you my name is jason balau i reside in right outside of philadelphia pennsylvania with my beautiful young daughter lexi who is eight going on i think 18 maybe even a little bit older but those of you with children know she's the light of my life and a true inspiration for everything that i've done i've become balchuva over the last year or so and she's by choice doing the same and it's been a blessing to see her learn and study his kite and become really connected to hashem in a beautiful deep way with the wonder and the curiosity and the beautiful questions of why dad why uh so here i am standing here representing the both of us having said that i am a mindset coach what does that even mean right well the way i see it is like this everything everything that we experience in our lives starts right here starts in the mind what we think translates to what we say translates to how we act in our lives right and so what i've done over the last couple of years is i've built this business around helping people to go inwards to get an understanding of what's happening in their mind you know most of our thoughts are unconscious they're we're unaware of them all right in fact 99 of our thoughts are unconscious they're just running in the background you know what i'm talking about those ones that are constantly depleting us making us feel really low and down or depressed yeah everybody's shaking their head of course only one percent of our thoughts are conscious right most of us will have lunch with a friend and we can't recall what outfit they were wearing because we're just going through the motions right here's some alarming facts about the unconscious mind of the 99 of our thoughts that are unconscious you want to guess how many by percentage are negative in nature how many 98 you're close it's about 89 on average let's say the majority of your thoughts are negative just about 90 right of those unconscious thoughts that are negative 50 of those things that we think about they'll never happen they'll never transpire and 90 of the things that we think about today we also thought about yesterday so think about this our minds without our awareness are just going into these patterns of negativity of worry right of you know these repetitive thoughts about things that have already happened and will probably never happen and it is driving us crazy insane right so what do we do about that right what can we do about it what we can do is we can pause slow down create some space in our mind you can only have one thought at a time right but those thoughts feel like they are coming at you like a freight train right it's one thought two thought three thought fourth thought one after the other after the next we can't stop our minds we cannot clear our heads in any way or even turn off the thoughts not even on shabbos okay in fact sometimes they speed up do you ever notice that yeah because you have time yeah you have time to sit around all right and play into that mindset right of negativity but if we pause if we learn to slow down to take a breath to create some space in between those thoughts we gain clarity right we can gain peace of mind and that gives us some understanding our minds are literally trained to teach us one thing what we don't want okay if you're interested in the it's a hard talk i'm sure a rabbi's giving that down the hall but for now the idea is we are literally going a mile a minute after these thoughts about things that we don't want we don't want to be estranged from our children we don't want to see our children this way or that way we don't want to feel pain or suffering my question is what do you want right what is it that you do want because only when you know what you want when you are clear and specific you can take what action who said action without action without doing something you're stuck in fact that's the definition of being stuck right if you don't know what to do if you're wishing and hoping although prayer works but without gestatis there's nothing you actually have to show up and do something and how do you know what to do we sit around thinking should i shouldn't i what if what might be what could be what should be what if we pause and we got clear as to what it is that we do want and then slowly take action if we take action deliberately consciously right we can measure our actions as it pertains to our idea of success are we moving closer are we going further away right and only then can we begin to see our progress right there's progress always we're always moving a lot of people like to resist change right i don't like change very much everything's changing even this pain i bet you is coming off the wall right the chairs are falling apart even the body's breaking down everything is changing when you resist the natural flow of change resistance when something has resistance when you tighten tighten something up or you try to force something that doesn't fit guess what it's harder okay i'm sure we're gonna have so many stories of the pain and the suffering and some great stories of the miracles and the beautiful changes that are being made within our families but this is really hard work it's hard work to heal okay really hard it takes a strong mind a strong body it's very difficult to make any change at all you're depleted feeling depressed and really low so unless we build ourselves up right stand tall be proud gain a sense of confidence in who we are and our ability to make an effect change it's going to be really difficult so this is all about you remembering that healing it's a starting point it's not an end point okay there's a lot of work to be done when you get present with what's actually happening rather than what your mind's telling you may happen could happen you have an opportunity to influence everyone else around you your confidence gives other people confidence it gives our children and our loved ones the ability to feel safe so they can also do the hard work ahead right i know that we've all experienced trauma right because all of us have been through some level of trauma in our lives trauma means right the mind's perception of fear worry and danger later on in the weekend i'm going to talk about fight or flight has anybody ever heard that term right fight or flight this body's reaction to this perception of fear worry and danger but in addition to that and i think the talk is going to be uh after shabbos at 8 30. in addition to our minds perceiving fear worry and danger sending us into this fight or flight this natural reaction to respond in a way that we always have usually from a standpoint of negativity when we don't feel loved or we don't feel heard we won't feel validated right for the way we feel and when we don't feel safe our body also goes into fight or flight okay when your body one sixty fit of a finger snap goes into this physiological stress response it's pretty hard to stop it so what we're going to be talking about over the next couple of days is and where i focus really a lot of my attention is being able to pause long enough so that you can get a little bit of control over your mind so you can think what you want to think right i learned some great rappers i studied with over the last year and i've been so blessed with so many people have supported my journey and i learned a couple of things recently i heard this uh that the gates of horror as uh we're all born with the yatzahara right we don't develop to get your toe until age 13. so uh the yeah has the 13-year running start and some reason somehow we're always running after it okay the question is how do you invoke the it's your tongue right if the natural habit is you know inner voice of fear can't won't shouldn't how do we get the yetzer tov to show its face how do we do it we have to gain control of the mind we have to think about what direction we want to go into this is not about just thinking positive somebody said that should we just think positive somebody said that no we shouldn't just think positive we should think positive for the purpose of moving in a positive direction you are not likely to receive a positive outcome if you are succumbing to your negative beliefs right self-limitations it will never be better the definition of suffering is just that right pain is inevitable right we're all experiencing it's the pain the pleasure this sort of like you know life cycle right but the suffering is a result of the belief here the pain will never end it will it certainly will all right and so i want to pause in just a few moments to give you an opportunity to ask me questions all right i would love to hear from you and know what's on your mind and see if i can help in any way i hope you'll approach me over the weekend and come to some of my my speeches tomorrow as i said earlier i'm going to give a little share on a child's perspective a lot of trauma that i experienced in my life i want to share my story in the details and give you a general sense of how i think i was able to pull myself up with it through the depths of the darkness uh with the help and the support of a lot of people what time is your thing i think on thursday what's today today today's thursday tomorrow i believe at three o'clock is uh from three to three somebody knows you'll look you're looking in the player and then 2 45 okay and then on um after shabbos at 8 30 i'm giving an incredible workshop with role plays all right it's all about communication how are we effectively communicating with others most of us are asking the wrong questions and then wondering why we're not getting the answers that we want and so we're going to get in there we're going to use some people as role models or role plays to really get deeper into the idea of asking what i call open-ended questions and techniques that will help validate somebody all right if i want you to come closer to me meaning give me information meaning tell me how you feel i have to create safety in your mind because you may not be empowered with the tools to do so i'm referring to maybe a loved one or or a child i have to show you through my example i can actually help get somebody's fight-or-flight mechanism to defuse i can give you a subject to work on i would love to hear from you i have a daughter here as babysitter i think for when she was born she was always worrying about at age five she wondered why i'm not nervous i don't know who her husband is going to be okay and i cannot tell you the worries that she can come up with i don't think that i think she's like brilliant at it she happens to be yeah great student but she's brilliant at this picking up worries she always tells me that if not for her she that i would be bankrupt already she helps me watch my money and that uh and and because she worries that's why things are happening you know she i can't make it anymore she worries and worries i'm worried i like to say if we're going to worry we should worry about everything so so i have to connect the two of you and and i think that she'll be a good subject example great fantastic so uh and then on sunday i believe in the morning right before we all leave uh we'll be talking about uh changing right the way you think so i have the i believe it's called uh change your thoughts transform your life we might do a little exercise depending on time and how you can actually get clear as to where you want to go so that you can move in in an actionable direction right otherwise it's sort of uh like a sock blowing in the wind it's very passive there's nothing for me to do and if i don't feel like i can do something i feel out of control right and then the mind feeds into that so let me take a few minutes to pause we have about 15 minutes i'd love to open it up listen to you uh just raise your hand say hello uh give me your name and then give me your question what's on your mind my name is uh marion muller my husband over there the really tall handsome man is the biggest guy in the room so can i have your phone number so i can text you and really set you up with my daughter yeah you know what i'll do is i have a few cards i can give you it says the website and the phone number on it as well and i really want you to talk to her great absolutely thank you so much for that thank you nice to see you thanks for being here who's got a question something on their mind so how do you change your child's mindset isn't that funny we all want to change somebody else right like i had a giant mirror here you know what i would do what would you do what would i do i would hold it up right i would face you i could tell you that i have a son who is 23 i have a very colorful family and everybody keep whatever you hear in this room he's 23 now he went through hell on earth because he was brilliant but adhd that was not diagnosed he kept telling me that it's behavior so he kept being sent out of class because his mind would wander luckily they sent him either to the library so he read which he loved or they sent him to the computer which he figured out 10 seconds how to get in in any case he came out very traumatized from school he was really really really good he decided he's never getting married he's never getting married because just in case he has a child like him he it's going to be his fault his child is going to suffer this means mindset so he's getting therapy and he's thinking already that maybe he could get married yeah nothing i said to him really helped except when he had success of his own like he he he took a computer course he finished it he took an emt course he finished it but really i don't know yeah but how does a parent give i guess i did a good job pass me on the back but how does appearance i'm sure you did the best that you could yeah but really i'm learning on the job yeah i think we all are right your question was at least the way i heard it was how do we help our kids change their mindset when they're negative about themselves most kips are negligent when we learn the tools on how to change our own mindsets we can show them in the same way our children are a product of our learned behaviors right so i'm going to act the very same way my father and mother did and their father and mother did and so this is why the work that you're doing as amazing parents which i will talk about tomorrow okay most of our kids had incredible childhoods everything that you gave them they accepted and really enjoyed right these are really positive experiences most of us had the resources and we lived in nice places we weren't you know dodging bullets in west philadelphia or anywhere and then the kids go up and they say you know i'm not going to follow this path of my parents or i'm going to you know my son is from that's not the problem i'm not even talking not from i'm talking children that just their positive thinking yeah yeah like i said it's very difficult to change somebody else we have to show them small consistent actions i like to say change equals right consistency over time we have to do the same thing over and over and over again people get it i like to say i like to train my ex-wife to move in a different direction right i always ask her different types of questions and years later she asks me the same questions that i've been asking her she got used to it okay i'm gonna if you'll come to some of the talks i'm to show you actionable tools how do you actually do it a lot of therapy is incredible it teaches you why is it happening what's happening the idea of the work that i do as a coach is really about taking you forward it answers the how a lot of it has to do with getting clear and specific as to what you want understanding what your unconscious mind is telling you right being present with what's actually happening rather than allowing your mind to be triggered from past experiences that relate or are similar to the ones that are right now so we're talking about the tools as we go through the weekend and looking at the lineup it looks like there's tools everywhere and i hope you gain from that are you also like a career coach or teenager i'd like to say the work that i do i follow a very specific process in the work that i do something called a mindset shift blueprint it's a six-step process that gets somebody to pause to get present with what's actually happening rather than what their mind is tricking them into believing then it helps to gain what we call perspective like the glasses you're looking through right what lens am i looking through we always think people are seeing the same thing that we're seeing that's not the case everybody's seeing stuff differently from their eyes when we understand how to gain perspective meaning what it is that i'm seeing we can better understand and be in a position to understand somebody else's perspective step four is all about getting clear and specific as to what you want so then you can take action in a step five right real action steps that bring you closer or further so you can evaluate at any given time and every time you take action you know what pops up fear right so we teach how to overcome fear so that you can keep making progress and keep moving forward this dumps you back into the process like a car wash it makes it all squeaky clean and what comes out the bottom is the gold really the little stuff that you need to kind of keep moving yourself and your loved ones forward all right there's no perfect model there's no um one size fits all there's no answer to your question directly each case is a little bit differently everybody sees the world there's different ways that people learn and understand and so i think over the next couple of days you're going to gain so much let me go over here for a second you have a question yeah yeah welcome um question like this let's say you're okay hypothetical hypothetical let's say your six-year-old child comes home yeah from school and he had a horrible day he's totally fast he's totally like crazy yeah like you can't even anyone in the room with him yeah and so he does something that you're going to like you're about ready to like do something because oh my gosh so according to your mindset so what should you do to okay get him in the right place yeah yeah let me ask you give me an example son comes home what's his name uh moshe okay moshe so moshe comes home he's six and he says dad i had a horrible day no he doesn't say that but uh you can't like you can't even sit at the same table with him because okay so he's having a little temper tantrum right okay because yeah so what do you do together okay okay are you related no okay but you understand the situation okay okay so let's let's back up a little bit yeah this is hard because kids are young at that age don't have the tools they don't have the ability to really express themselves which is why they're throwing the temper tantrum right if you had the tools you'd be able to say dad look you know i had a frustrating day at school and you know uh simcha you know took my lunch and he would be able to express themselves right so this is a technique that i've learned and i'll add a lot to this this is sort of just a little icebreaker get to know each other but just to give you something that you might be able to take away we're always trying to press upon our experience under our children right it's our perspective so instead and again maybe not in the moment is it the best way to do that but what i like to do is implement three questions for my young daughter okay this has proven to be very effective i'd like to say what is in your mind right what are your thoughts right tell tati what's in your mind give them the space to tell you to articulate the next thing is some some of you in the back should know the answers to these questions right what's your emotion how are you feeling what's in your heart right tell tati what's in your heart now at six it's very difficult we teach our kids just a few basic emotions right happy sad excited frustrated angry fearful i think i mentioned that one so what we can do as parents is we can give a little bit more context to how they feel right my daughter comes home she says dad i'm i'm so dumb i failed my math test right what do we usually say to them no you're not you know what we just did in that moment thank you we invalidated them wow you guys all should come and sit in the front row to the multi chavez speech right yeah we totally said think about think about it this way we tell our kids all the time mommy i'm hungry no you're not you just ate i'm cold no you're not no you're not right we're always sort of pressing upon the way we feel the way we're thinking on to them right that's our experience onto them so the first question was what's in your mind what's what are your thoughts the second question what's in your heart you can help them you can facilitate that sounds frustrating to you right it sounds like you didn't receive the love that you were looking for right and we'll talk more about the validation techniques about that and then the third one is any guesses what's it feel like in your body right because most of the time they're gonna have a belly ache right or a little headache or they'll feel jittery or nervous if you practice before the meltdown then you'll be able to help your child potentially express themselves clearly by doing these things you create what's called safety right your child's in fight or flight like we had talked about a couple of minutes back right their mind is perceiving some level of fear or worry or danger they don't even know it especially at age six there are many many many books uh about this that are written in fact uh the one that i'm thinking of is the one that you recommended in the back what's uh it's how to speak so kids will listen listen who is the author of that oh that's ellen just an incredible book it it it basically allows the parent to not only validate a child in the way that we had just spoken about that like if the kid comes home and says you know i failed my math test i'm i'm a big dummy dad and you say so you failed your math test and and you feel dumb you know how does that make you feel right or i could see how frustrating that would be knowing how much effort and time you put into studying and then the kid starts to go on and then what you can do is you can listen um okay yeah and then you can reframe it you can help them switch that that yatahara mechanism to the answer to if you can get them thinking differently here comes the positive reframe let's just set that test aside for a moment let's say you had your your wish how would the test have gone that way this is fun especially for a six-year-old my daughter likes to say um she comes home to matt just a side story she comes home she says dad i failed the math test but the real issue is the teacher asked the wrong questions i got all the answers right she would have asked different questions i would have been fine so i said well what's your wish lexi what is your wish i wish that all the answers were a right what else and i wish that i got to pick the questions oh yeah come on tell me right and you start to refrain that you raise up their energy level their vibration and you get them thinking we did this when they were kids remember babies uh yelling and screaming so we take the keys and we say look over here you know we distract them or what we call it divert their attention to something else the best time to deal with frustration and sadness is not when you're frustrated and sad it's when you feel empowered uplifted strong happy peaceful calm and so that's the that's the change okay the question is what does your child need what does he need we like to say do you want food do you want this do you want a snack no what do you need i'm not going to tell you i'm going to listen to you creating a safe space for you so that your fight or flight goes down and you feel in a position to want to communicate effectively there's a million resources online i love these little flash cards that have emotions on them smiley face surprise face angry face sometimes even a magnet where you can put okay the more proactive you can be rather than reactive you're going to be able to see that you'll help the child to reframe how they react in these in these situations i know it's a tough situation i guarantee you're doing an amazing job it's just a matter of trying to not react i'm sure there's a visceral response like you know what am i gonna do here he goes again and that's a really tough place for you to start from as well right so maybe before picking you up from school you make sure that you find some joy in your day you feel that you've been lifted up right and see if you can uh find some additional resources and you'll learn additional tools this weekend not only from me but from all the great speakers so i hope that helped just a little bit for you all right who else i answered all the questions fantastic all right just talk more to create more what's that i said you need to you need to speak i'm going to be doing if there's no other questions i could just add a few things yeah yeah please hello tell me your name oh no i tried to see them up here give me your questions hey hello yeah hello so you take everybody out of context and you have to put yourself back in there you get like the advice to say up to like right before the kid who doesn't want to go hide give him a kiss a hug and then send him and the kid answers your krishna okay which means don't kiss me and don't send me okay i don't want you staying i don't want your honey got it okay thank you i'm gonna learn so much this weekend i'm to keep asking what does that mean tell me he says don't don't give me that love that you understand you just learned okay and don't send me great what do you want in that situation right you don't know what is it that you want let's start there what is it that you want in that situation what do you want you want him to feel the love that's what you want for him and he should that's what you want for him what do you want that's what you want for him you want for him to go for him to feel differently and that comes through what does he want to not go why do you think he doesn't want to go we've learned all the reasons but no no in this case why do you think he doesn't want to go he knows he's not going to have a good productive day so he knows he's not gonna have a productive day so he's a crystal ball right but it's like in the middle of the whole process yeah these are tough situations to change in the moment like we were just saying over here right right if you can get clear on what you want right which is to be a calm right communicative parent then you can take a certain set of actions for that right you can do there's a million different things that you can do right whether it's bending down into their level right like to get on their their page maybe taking a few minutes setting it aside you know really you know trying to understand for example if he's having this worry of bad day what is it that you think he needs in order to change this day how does he want his day to go right that's the reframe i hear you telling me that you don't want to go and you're going to have a bad day that's the validation you're going to learn more about that through this weekend what is it that you'd like your day to be like how would you like to show up for you and your friends at school what would you like to learn i think sometimes we get afraid of hearing the answers no some kids don't answer some kids don't answer yet they don't answer until we ask them the right questions okay just some kids don't like school they don't like data they don't like it okay probably there's somebody's reason for that i understand so for good reason how are we just not to send them or send them and they don't want to go yeah don't say that why should you send them you can cause more trauma then you have to become a coach and each other and then you gotta yeah i know you know it's a perpetuating business yeah you undo the damage i never somebody to stand here and say you should or you shouldn't right it's always what do you want do you want them to go do you want them to enjoy their education now look if if the school is not appropriate that's a whole different topic there's probably uh people who are more qualified to answer those questions i think the idea is that first you have to know what you want all right we're going to talk about i am statements later on in the weekend probably on sunday when you put yourself in a position right i want to parent calmly gently and compassionately right there may be a day or two that they don't want to go but ultimately the reasoning shouldn't be probably and i'm not the parenting expert at all i don't claim to be um but this is about just communicating with your child in general maybe when they're feeling really great right when they've had a great meal or you just come off the playground would be a good time to sit with them and say hey look i've seen that you've been pretty frustrated in the morning that you keep resisting wanting to go to school like what's going on for you right what's in your mind right tell mommy what's going on how are you feeling what's happening in your body so that you can get them to express themselves the truth of the matter is i don't know if they don't like school or there's something else going on by saying i don't want to go to school they may mean that they don't want to go to school they also might mean i'm being bothered or bullied at school where i don't like my teacher or i can't i can't learn right like for some reason mom everybody learns the parsha and i just can't get it but we got to create that space in the moment probably isn't going to be the best time for them and when we're reacting great when we're reacting so quickly like okay just fine it doesn't really help the situation if that makes sense okay all right one more question throw it out okay good all right so we'll start to wrap up thank you for coming this is an icebreaker so i appreciate all of your help and support in this i hope you'll visit me throughout the weekend come chat with me enjoy yourselves this is all about you the message of this weekend is united we all have to be feeling good moving in the right direction right feeling empowered that we have tools and that we have a positive mindset for growth all right thank you thank you all so much and we'll see you i like what i've heard