Great Dad Talks

Jackie and I discuss her experience with Positive Intelligence and she demonstrates a "PQ rep," the mini-meditative moment that is a building block of the Positive Intelligence course.

You can find Jackie at futurelifecoaching.co.uk. She has a new Positive Intelligence group starting October 29, 2022. Her "Mum Boardroom" is also available for group coaching to support moms.

My coaching colleague Bob Loftis talks about his own experience with Positive Intelligence (PQ). He also demonstrates an additional PQ exercise called "havening."

In this conversation, Bill Miles outlines commonsense principles to make divorce less harmful for the kids involved. We discuss five ideas geared toward making this time less painful and keeping relationships strong. Non-divorcing dads will appreciate the reminders of how we can be better dads every day for our kids, our partners, and ourselves.

Bill and his partner support divorcing couples trying to have the most "positive" divorces possible at BestSelfIntuitiveDivorce.com, part of BestSelfMedia.com.

ParentTheirPassion.com founder Jonathan Harris talks about how to use kids' natural interests to develop skills they can use in the marketplace.

You can find more resources at ParentTheirPassion.com.

In this conversation I interview Dubai-based life coach Mazen Edlibi to talk about his personal experience with Positive Intelligence and how he uses it with his clients. He also gives a demonstration of his version of the exercise we use to help rewire the brain to react more positively to life's everyday challenges.

Mazen coaches women to find their life purpose and become more empowered leaders. You can find him at TrueVoiceSeeker.coachesconsole.com

Tim and I discuss how important it is that dads recognize that there are three elements of fatherhood which he has incorporated into his program Dads on Purpose. The three “events” of the DadAthlon are:

* Connecting
* Providing
* Living

You can get Tim's free resources including his Dad Quiz, a family movie finder, and the first three chapters of his book Dad on Purpose for free at www.dadathlon.com/greatdad

In this episode, Dave Baillie, a professional trainer for the U.S. Navy discusses how his coaching experience taught him key skills for connecting with his adult kids after his divorce.

With real life examples, Dave talks about opening up, vulnerability, and a core coaching skill called "Level 3 listening."

Dave specializes in transitions coaching and can be found on LinkedIn.

Life and Executive coach Pete Armstrong discusses his success with Positive Intelligence and his clients. We specifically focus on the changes dads see in their own perspectives and the effect it has on how they interact with their kids and families.

You can find out more about Pete Armstrong and his work with Positive Intelligence at https://marvelous-writer-7336.ck.page...

In this interview I talk to Chris Thurber about the good kinds of parental pressure. Thurber, along with his co-author Hendrie Weissinger, believe that there is a right way and a wrong way to ask for the best from our goods. Their philosophy is perhaps summed up by one of their lessons in the book: "Expect their best, not the best."

Chris Thurber is a board-certified clinical psychologist, educator, author, and father with a BA from Harvard and a PhD in child and adolescent psychology from UCLA. He serves as a clinician and instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy.

Many experts agree that parental pressure contributes to anxiety, depression, and even addiction among children. But according to psychologists Chris Thurber, PhD and Hendrie Weisinger, PhD, pressure itself isn’t bad – the issue is how pressure is applied. Their new book, THE UNLIKELY ART OF PARENTAL PRESSURE: A Positive Approach To Pushing Your Child To Be Their Best Self (Hachette Books; July 2021), is the first to provide in-depth solutions for creating healthy pressure, offering step-by-step advice that parents and care-givers can begin to use immediately with profound long-term results.

“Parents apply pressure because they care, but they hinder progress and create problems because of how they apply it,” Thurber and Weisinger write. “Our goal is to give parents a healthy road map and practical tools to ensure that the instinctive pressure they apply to their children promotes development, not distress.”

The authors have identified eight ways to transform harmful pressure into healthy pressure. In THE UNLIKELY ART OF PARENTAL PRESSURE, they provide multiple, true-to-life sample conversations to show exactly how to adopt these behaviors, which, in turn, will nurture internal motivation, improve parent-child interactions, build deep connections, sidestep cultural pitfalls, and, ultimately, help children do well. “With a modest adjustment today, you can be an even more effective parent tomorrow."

The eight transformations are:

Expect Their Best, Not The Best – How parents state their expectations to their child has an enormous effect on the youngster’s motivation. Unfortunately, when expectations emphasize highly specific achievement or perfection, kids may develop low self-esteem and become pessimistic about achieving goals.

Tame Your Core Expectation – When parental expectations are unrealistic, they can induce harmful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in their children. Parents can avoid expressing unhealthy expectations by emphasizing consistent effort instead of specific outcomes. The authors point out that a parent’s definition of success will always differ from their child’s, and they discuss the insidious and constant expectations established by social media.

Increase Your Warmth – “The difference between warm and cold parenting is not in the emotions that we feel but in the affect we display—how we express our feelings,” the authors write. They explain what parenting with warmth looks like, and how it will change a child’s experience of parental pressure.

Turn Up the Heat – Building on the importance of warmth, Thurber and Weisinger provide a variety of strategies that will enhance one’s ability to parent with warmth. Many of these hinge on demonstrating empathy, and the authors describe how empathy will enable parents to better convey the lessons they wish to teach.

Earn Respect, Not Rebellion – To earn respect, not rebellion, parents need to engage their children in more conversations about thoughts and feelings and not let conversations about expectations and outcomes dominate their interactions. The authors provide examples showing how this works as well as a chart that illustrates the differences between harmful and healthy communications.

Praise, Criticize, and Question Effectively – The authors offer a multitude of tools – including the Six S’s of effective praise: Soon, Spontaneous, Sincere, Specific, Striving, and Stand-Alone. They also address effective criticism and questions, including discussions of rewards and consequences.

Be the Believer – As children age, they demand increasing amounts of independence. The authors offer detailed guidelines for determining the optimum level of parental involvement in a variety of circumstances.

Open Your Mind and Your Heart – Parents are not the only source of pressure on today’s youth. Their book also addresses sociocultural sources of pressure, and how parents can contribute to local, national, and global movements that support children’s healthy development.


Hendrie Weisinger, PhD, co-author of THE UNLIKELY ART OF PARENTAL PRESSURE, is a world-renowned psychologist and pioneer in the field of pressure management, as well as the author of a number of bestselling books. He has consulted with and developed programs for dozens of Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.

In this interview, I talk to fellow Positive Intelligence coach Bill Carmody about his new book, The 3 Rules of Marriage. We go through the three rules together:
First Rule: The ONE Thing You Can NOT Keep
Second Rule: The Most Important Thing To Say To Your Partner (And It’s NOT “I love you.”)
Third Rule: What Ever Else You Do, Never End Your Day This Way

Bill explains how he came to these three rules and why they work. He also ties the insights he gained through his research to the work we both use in Positive Intelligence to help others use proven methods to change their brain wiring to find positive reactions to everyday challenges.

You can find the three rules at ThreeRulesofMarriage.com where you can also
get the first two chapters of this book for free. This book is also available as an audio book on Audible.com.

You can join Bill at a free webinar, Applying Mental Fitness to Relationship Mastery, Wednesday, February 9th at 12pm ET. For more info: www.pqforparents.net/events/bill-carmody-mental-fitness-three-rules-marriage-workshop

You can learn more about Positive Intelligence at GreatDad.com/pq