Shownotes:
What the bubbles does gratitude have to do with being brave, smart, and kind? It turns out, quite a lot! American born, Belgian by marriage, and global by choice, PJ has so much wisdom to share as we discuss overcoming the things that scare us, the importance of critical thinking, and ways we can treat others and ourselves!
About Our Guest:
PJ Brady is the father of three daughters and a values-based leadership coach. He is a recently published author of Raising Kids to be Brave, Smart and Kind; sharing his stories of using his leadership content in his efforts to raise confident kids. He is American and lives in Belgium with his wife, kids and Bernese Mountain Dog. After working with leaders around the globe, PJ noticed that all values are about how we overcome challenges, critically think, and treat others and ourselves. Now the BSK Framework is being implemented in organizations, families and schools in multiple countries.
Website: bravesmartkind.com
Twitter: @BraveSmartKind Instagram: @pjbrady_bravesmartkind
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is an educator, international consultant, podcaster, and TEDx speaker. She is the lead author of Evolving Learner and a contributing author of Because of a Teacher. Her latest book, Evolving with Gratitude, was just released. An experienced teacher and district leader, her expertise includes learner-driven design, community building, online/blended learning, and professional learning. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
Evolving with Gratitude, the book, is now available! Purchase here!
You can also get bulk orders for your staff (10 copies or more) at a discounted price! Just fill out the form linked below and someone will get back to you ASAP! bit.ly/ewgbulkdiscount
Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: Good day friends, or good evening, whenever you're listening. I'm so excited to have PJ Brady on the show. How are you PJ?
PJ Brady: You know what I'm doing fantastic cuz all my kids are asleep. No one has cried for me yet at 10 o'clock at night here in Belgium. And that's for me, that's living the life.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. I was gonna ask you, how many hours ahead are you?
PJ Brady: Six hours ahead of East Coast, so...
Lainie Rowell: Oh, then nine hours ahead of me. Cause I'm on the west coast
PJ Brady: Right.
Lainie Rowell: So I mean, what the bubbles friend, how are you? I have had that queued up and the listeners...
PJ Brady: oh my gosh.
Lainie Rowell: If they don't know you, cause I am gonna tell a little bit about you, but the one thing I wanna go ahead and lead with is that you are the author of the recently released Raising Kids to be Brave, Smart, and Kind. I'm holding it up to PJ like he's never seen it. This is an audio podcast.
PJ Brady: Wow...
Lainie Rowell: Have you seen this, PJ? It's amazing. So, for those of you who haven't had the joy, honor, privilege, wonderful experience of reading the book, there's a great, I think comedians call it a callback. Like when you, you kind of circle back to a line and "what the bubbles is?"...
I laughed out loud when it came up in the book actually. Anytime you mention "bubbles" now I just giggle out loud and...
PJ Brady: Right.
Lainie Rowell: ...so fun and we don't need to give it away. They have to get the book to understand that inside joke. But I just thought I had to lead with that cause it was so funny.
PJ Brady: I love it and I have to say it over and over and over to myself.
"What the bubbles?"
Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
PJ Brady: "What the bubbles?"
Lainie Rowell: Oh gosh. I even got you to say. That's perfect. That's perfect. Alright, so for those who do not have the pleasure of knowing PJ yet, you're about to get to know him, he's amazing. He's the father of three daughters, #girldad, and he is a values based leadership coach.
And you mentioned already, I think we heard Belgium. Did we ?
PJ Brady: Yeah,
Lainie Rowell: I think we got that out there. Yeah. So that's why we were talking about the time difference, but American born.
PJ Brady: Yeah. Yeah. Born in Point Pleasant, New Jersey of all places and lived in, I don't know, the 13 homes before I was 16 years old. Kind of jumped around, but ended up in here in Belgium.
Lainie Rowell: Why were you jumping around so much? I feel like I read this, but I'm forgetting right now.
PJ Brady: People think I was a military kid, but I wasn't. My dad just changed locations for his job frequently. He was just a problem solver. And he'd go and so we'd go with him and you know what? Wouldn't change it for the world.
Got an incredible childhood and got to see a lot of places, meet a lot of people, and determine who I wanted to be all the time.
Lainie Rowell: That's a great experience.
PJ Brady: American born Belgian by marriage. Global by choice.
Lainie Rowell: I do love that, especially the global by choice because I like to be global by choice. I try and connect with people abroad. I try and do work abroad and during shutdown I got to do more international work remotely versus actually getting on a plane and going places. So it's been kind of nice to have that opportunity.
PJ Brady: Even in that time, we wanted to travel, right?
We were like, okay, if I could just get outta my house and/ or my city and/ or my country right now, that would be fantastic.
Lainie Rowell: I'm like, my go bag is collecting dust. I have duplicates of every toiletry. I have duplicates of all the essentials because I travel a lot just like you do. And so it's like when that go bag is collecting dust, I'm like...
PJ Brady: Something's not right. Something's wrong.
Lainie Rowell: Something's wrong. It's been nice to get back out there. Okay, I barely scratched the surface cuz you do a ton of amazing things. So please fill in the blanks as far as letting people know what makes you so awesome.
PJ Brady: I'll say what I do and then other people can determine whether it's awesome or it's like, oh, it's that guy again.
Lainie Rowell: Fair enough.
PJ Brady: So yeah, founder of the Brace, Smart, Kind company. So I used to travel around the world and I worked with entrepreneurs for 12 years and my wife ended up bringing me over to Belgium, but then I was working with entrepreneurs in Europe, Middle East, Pakistan, and Africa. Traveling around doing leadership workshops, and we worked a lot on values. We worked a lot on corporate values, a lot on personal values. And then what I realized was, as I was talking with all these leaders was if we talked about their values, we realized their values are shaped at a very young age.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
PJ Brady: Values are shaped at a young age, but we don't talk about values until people are 30, 40, 50 years old in leadership positions. And then at the same time, I was becoming a father. And I was like, if we know values shift at a young age, why aren't we talking about values with our kids? Why don't we raise them with a little bit more intention?
Why don't we think about this stuff? So that when they're shaping those values, then we can have those relevant conversations. So later in life it just makes a little bit more sense.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
PJ Brady: Right? So in that, I started experimenting on my kids. I was experimenting with my content on my children, and I'm like, let's...
Lainie Rowell: Focus group
PJ Brady: ...let's see how they turn out.
Yeah, exactly. I got three live in , members of my focus group, and then all of a sudden I, I don't know if I was pre-programmed or I just stumbled upon it, figured out that the three most foundational values in our world are to be brave, smart, and kind, or how we overcome challenges, how we critically think, how we treat others and ourself.
And when you look at values, there is not a single value that you can find. And I've tried this for years. If you find one, let me know. That doesn't fit into one of those three buckets of how we overcome, how we critically think or how we treat others and ourselves. So I started using that with the kids.
I started using that in my leadership sessions and keynotes and workshops, and then all of a sudden schools started picking it up and running with it without me knowing , which is fine. It not only fine, it's encouraged.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
PJ Brady: That teachers, these amazing, amazing humans who are responsible.
Educating the world started to pick up this content and say, if you're doing this in your families, we could do this in schools too. And then from there, I'm here just trying to support them. They're going faster than I am, and I'm just trying to catch up and say, yeah, with this framework, tell me how I can help you out in getting this into your classrooms, getting into the minds of the kids.
So that's been, that's the journey. So far, it's lots of twists and turns, but it's a blast.
Lainie Rowell: I think as an and a parent, I love the framework and it's so nice to have these three powerful words to kind of center yourself around. What I really appreciated taking a deep dive into the book was the way that you define those three words.
and especially, and this is gonna be like my educator hat the smart being about critically thinking. And I think there's a lot of us who we are often tasked with, make sure you cover these standards and do this and be ready for that test and all that. But what we are all really passionate about, I think I speak for most, if not all educators we're really passionate about preparing our kids to be successful and have fulfilling lives and...
PJ Brady: yeah.
Lainie Rowell: ...that isn't necessarily reflected on a test.
PJ Brady: No, and here's the thing is even with some of the teachers I've spoken with, sometimes they feel uncomfortable even using the word smart because in their worlds and what a lot of people in their world define that as is good grades.
Lainie Rowell: Mm-hmm.
PJ Brady: Not the teachers themselves, but they say, if I go and talk to a parent about their kid being smart, they think good grades. And if that means, that they're not getting good grades, that means that they're not smart.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
PJ Brady: And I deal with that as a parent too. Like my daughters have come home before and said, dad, I am not smart because they failed a math test.
And I'm like, oh my love, let's revisit what this means. Smart is not getting good grades. Smart is thinking something through. Understanding it and then making the right choice from that. So if you know you're struggling with math, what's the smart thing to do? Well, maybe I should ask more questions.
Yes. Maybe we should spend more time on this. Yes. Maybe we should focus on other things where you are smart, like your creative side or your music side, or. Your problem solving side or your funny side, your quick wittedness. There's so many ways to define smart that it's, that it's like that quote that's actually misattributed to Albert Einstein
But it says if we're how's it go? If we judge all animals by their ability to climb trees, a gold fish will think it's stupid. That is not the quote.
Lainie Rowell: That's ok. That's ok.
PJ Brady: That is not the quote.
Lainie Rowell: I don't have that one left and loaded. PJ, sorry.
PJ Brady: No, I apologize. I butchered the quote. Anyway, it's, if we're saying, if we're judging all the kids by the exact same criteria, there's kids who are gonna walk away thinking that they're stupid. And that's not the case. It's just finding your smart and focusing on that so we can talk to them on their level.
Lainie Rowell: Sometimes kids have some strengths that don't get shined a light on all the time, and they might have some areas of challenge, areas that they need to improve upon, but those are the ones that are front and center. And so they're not just getting honored for all the things that they're doing well.
And I think it's an occupational hazard that as educators, we want that continuous improvement. We want people to be better, so we tend to focus on all the ways that we can tell people to grow.
PJ Brady: Right.
Lainie Rowell: We need to spend more time, I'm putting this on myself. I'm not putting this on other people. I need to spend more time pointing out, I'll say even with my own children.
The first thing in my mind when I wake up in the morning, the task master kicks in and I'm like, the beds aren't made. I have to take a breath and stop myself and go. , what is something kind I can say to my kids first thing in the morning?
PJ Brady: Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: Then we can get to other things later.
But I don't wanna start the day that way.
PJ Brady: I find myself doing that all the time, and it's like this, maybe we got that from our parents. It's just a cycle of it to say, all right, what do I need to correct?
Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
PJ Brady: Let me look for all those things and it comes from a loving place.
Lainie Rowell: It's the best of intentions.
PJ Brady: I want my kids to be well adjusted citizens of the world and do things in a brave, smart, and kind manner. And as soon as we start giving the negative attention around the things that they're not doing, their motivation is not to do the things that we want them to do. All of a sudden there's shame around it and there's guilt around it .It doesn't all of a sudden just create this great child.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
PJ Brady: It's like, all right, now I'm gonna even listen less and maybe go into some other negative patterns because my mama and dad are paying attention to that. And once they get that attention for negative things, they continue to do negative things. But if we kind call 'em out for their shine, then they do the shiny things too.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. I mean, I think I've said this on the show before, but when I was a psych major, I was taught six positives to one negative and if you do a tally...
PJ Brady: Yeah, shoot.
Lainie Rowell: It's tough and the experts don't actually even agree on the ratio.
I've heard four to one, five to one, but I think the, the takeaway is to overwhelmingly notice the good, and that's how we can nurture these brave, smart and kind kiddos who turn into brave, smart, and kind adults.
PJ Brady: Right, right. And even in, in their uniqueness of it all.
And that's the thing, I'm never under the assumption that my kids are gonna be brave, smart, and kind. It's, what's the language we start to put around that so that we notice when they are and they do more of that. And sometimes, like all of us, they're gonna make stupid choices. They're gonna make selfish choices, they're gonna make fearful choices and great, what's the language we've put around this?
So then we can actually deal with those things as opposed to coming from a place where we're punishing them for that or making them feel terrible about themselves.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. I wanna shift into making the connection to gratitude. I see a lot of connections, and I wanna give you the opportunity first to say, what does gratitude mean to you?
PJ Brady: The cool part about the framework is a lot of things keep coming back full circle, but yeah, gratitude for me is the balance of these three things.
It's where they start to come together, right? Where you get to be courageous for something, and that comes with a certain amount of difficulty. It comes with a certain amount of fear. And once you have those things in your life, the fear and the difficulty, when you find that courage, you're like, oh, thank God. it's there. It was in me. Great. And the same thing happens with having your brain on and the ability to critically think about stuff because when you don't have that, there's a feeling of uselessness.
Lainie Rowell: Mm-hmm.
PJ Brady: There's a feeling of being lost. And then once you find that, find your own.
Like if I define gratefulness, I'm gonna define it with a sound effect and it's gonna be
Lainie Rowell: That's a great sound effect.
PJ Brady: And then the same thing with being kind is not only you being that to others, but also when you find that in others. The people that I choose to surround myself with are incredibly kind individuals. I, again, different definitions of kind. They're not all the exact same, but when you find those people, wow, that's a hold on to them tight and realize how privileged you are.
I think gratefulness and privileged go very hand in hand. To be thankful and grateful for what you have, but also to see the good even when sometimes it's hard.
Lainie Rowell: I can totally make the connection to all of the brave, the smart, and the kind.
One of the frameworks that I talk about with gratitude, Dr. Hussong and her team out of University of North Carolina, they talk about notice, think, feel, and do. So you would notice the goodness in your life. Think about how it came to you, how does this make you feel?
And then, you should do something. Doesn't necessarily mean direct reciprocation. It could be you know, an act of kindness to someone else or something like that. I wonder, cause I hadn't really teased this out in my mind yet, but maybe you can help me think through this. What do, what do you connect that noticing to?
Would it be all of 'em brave, smart, and kind?
PJ Brady: I would say most of the time, when I go into organizations or I work with teachers, the notice part is much more the critical thought aspect of it. Cuz you've gotta have your brain on to be able to notice those things. And so frequently our brains On because of stress, because of focus on other details, because of lack of sleep, because of other relationships that we're trying to deal with because now we've got standardized tests that we, we've gotta focus on, or now we've got whatever, whatever it is.
The notice part for me is you've gotta have your brain on and do that with very specific. intention and when you say, this is what I'm looking for, or it doesn't have to be specific, but once you start paying attention, your brain's on and, and you see it.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. So the think is the going deeper with it, right?
So still tying that to that critical thinking that makes total sense. I mean, I'm really putting you on the spot here and I hadn't even thought through this, but I was just like, this is kinda interesting. What if we went through all the notice, think, feel, do and how that would connect to brave, smart, and kind?
And I was thinking for the feel, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I almost feel like that's a brave thing. Because a lot of times it's hard to acknowledge that we're feeling this way because of something that someone else did, or maybe even just something that we did.
PJ Brady: Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. Especially being male and look, I've got three daughters. My wife, I was raised by my mom and my sister. A lot of females in my life. So I would say especially males, there's been such a stigma around feeling all the feels, you know, and then being able to vocalize that. So being able to come to terms with that, it's not just a feeling part.
Everybody feels. To be able to recognize what you're feeling and be able to discuss what you're feeling and be able to be open to those feelings. Because how many times in our life do we just shut ourselves down because, oh, I'm not supposed to feel that because that's not the right thing. Yeah. Or if I'm feeling that, then it means I'm weak.
Or if I'm feeling that it means that I need help when I shouldn't need help or whatever that is. So being able to get in touch with that is a very courageous act. And you know what, most of the time. We don't do it by ourselves. Most of the time we need someone to teach us to do that, or we go talk to a therapist about that, or there's somewhere where that we get that from.
And if society has told you to close that part of you down, well then you're just facing this uphill struggle for so, so long. Are you a Brene Brown fan?
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. Yeah.
PJ Brady: I'm gonna go out on a limb and be like, you're like me and you're a Brene Brown fan. And she has a great story where she always gives these lectures and this man, this very big man came up to her afterwards and he said, you're only talking about women.
And she took a little defensiveness to it. Look, took a little bit defensiveness, and I forget her response to him, but his response back was, people don't let me be vulnerable. They don't want vulnerability outta me. They want strength. And if I give them anything less, then they think less of me.
And she almost just like crumbled in her own skin to think, and that's as soon as she took her, her research going away from just women into men and women very specifically, because that man was able to be courageous enough to talk about his feelings.
Lainie Rowell: I think one of the things I truly appreciate about her work is that she has reframed that no, it's not vulnerability is weakness. Vulnerability is strength. And so for us to be able to understand that, internalize that...
PJ Brady: and have the language to talk to people. And then that "do" part too. Yeah. All right. Now go do it. When you start talking about that, that is interacting with the world, that is going, interacting with others, that's able to interact with yourself and make those right choices for your life. There's also obviously a level of courage to that, but, that part where it's like, yeah, this is how you treat others and this is how you treat yourself through action.
Lainie Rowell: I think we could probably weave brave, smart, and kind. And I appreciate that you do this in the book, so well, you know, how I define brave might be different than how you define brave and all that so coming to the consensus on, when we're having this conversation and using those three words, well this is what it means to me.
I think we could probably go through the whole "notice, thing, feel, do", and see elements of brave, smart, and kind in all of them.
PJ Brady: Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: That's pretty cool.
PJ Brady: That's part of the, I don't wanna say genius, because that makes it think like, I thought about this before it actually popped up.
It's part of the fortunate outcomes of Brave, Smart, Kind is, is that piece of it where you can put all your actions into it and it's, it's not the justification of action, it's the understanding and the reasoning of it. Because once you do that, once you understand it, you can do it with more intention.
You can do it with greater purpose.
Lainie Rowell: Okay. I'm like such a rigid person sometimes that I go, I haven't asked him the second question yet. Now I have to ask him the second question. I'm a work in progress. I'm trying not to be so rigid, but I still have to stick to my three questions.
PJ Brady: I love it. I'm, I'm here for it.
Lainie Rowell: Okay. Thank you. All right I am very curious to your answer to this, and I think we've probably already touched on this in some ways, but I wanna know, is there anything explicitly that you wanna share about how you are experiencing, expressing gratitude, you know, professionally, personally, as a parent, you know, where you're seeing that fit within the framework?
And we've talked about that a little bit, but I just wanna open it up a little further.
PJ Brady: Sure. Well, and I think mine has been a journey to get here and a journey that I started late in life because probably. Shoot. Up until I started having kids , it was probably, oh, let's talk about gratefulness. And it's like, why is it Thanksgiving?
Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
PJ Brady: Do we, do we have to go around the table and say like, what we're grateful for, is that, is that what we're doing here? All right, fine. Yeah. So for mine, it's started to become a theme that people were talking about. Just to be able to be grateful for the things around you is a shift in your mindset that allows you to approach a day with different energy.
It allows you to see certain things where some people would be like, oh crap, I can't believe this happened. It's like, all right, let's slow it down for a second. Because this is happening because you have gotta pay energy bills. It means you've got a, a roof over your head. Like, let's be thankful for the things that we have and, and approached life like that.
And it took me a while to even come around to understand why gratitude is something that's important in life. Luckily, it happened with the early ages of my daughters, so that I can weave that into our definition of being brave, smart, and kind. And part of that is, yeah, I understand that things are hard in your life.
First, let's focus on what we do have. Let's focus on the things that we get to have gratitude for, which gives us strength and energy to go attack the things that we need to overcome. And why are you doing that? What is your motivation? If your motivation here is a relationship that you need to save, well yeah, be thankful that you have that and that should give you some motivation to go and take care of it.
And if not, if you start to break it down into helping you achieve those goals, then it's such a powerful tool to have in your, in your tool belt. Right? But without it, and I've seen, there's, man, I hope I don't get a lot of Belgian listeners here on this. The culture here in Belgium isn't one of gratitude primarily, and that doesn't mean there aren't Belgians who, who do have this. In general, it's more of a low context, very realistic. I'm saying realistic in quotation marks for people who are listening to the audio, obviously. Where there's a gray cloud over a lot of things. Yeah. And so sometimes here it's a struggle. It's like, just try to turn it around, turn it around and, and see it from a, from a different angle.
And I noticed that in my girls too. So as soon as I noticed it in my girls, I was like, whoa, I better step up my, my gratitude game here, because they're gonna be learning lessons from me. And I need to make sure that in my journey of understanding this, that not only do I understand it, but then I put it at the forefront of our conversations, which.
I try to do, and again, they're like 12, 10, and six. We'll see how it goes.
Lainie Rowell: I'm totally relating to you because I would love to say I have been a deeply grateful person my whole life, but no, that is not even close to it. There have, there have been waves of gratitude when I was maybe younger, maybe.
I'm gonna say in college I was probably the most entitled of my entire life and helps to get you out there in the workforce and understand a more things to be grateful for, but what was really lovely is, like I said, I relate to you because I feel like I went on the gratitude journey with my kids.
And we know developmentally that birth to six years old, roughly. That we're just trying to nurture those positive characteristics, trying to, you know, teach them to do the, the good things. And then it's seven to 10 roughly, we can actually start to see them reliably experiencing and expressing gratitude in a much deeper way.
And then by the time 11 up, if we have nurtured this grateful disposition, that's when we're seeing all the payout we're seeing stronger social connections, it's actually been researched better grades, we're seeing just an overall optimism. I feel like I've been on this journey with them, like, I have to be a good person to teach them to be good people.
And then once getting out of having like really littles, being better at a more deep appreciation for things, more deep gratitude. And now I'm just, it's, it's a contextual thing. You know, if you ask me what does gratitude mean? It might change day to day because it sometimes depends on what's happening in my life.
PJ Brady: Yeah, I wonder what kind of research is out there from a cultural perspective on this. And the reason I'm asking this, I mean, I brought up Belgian, but the reason I'm asking is because I'm thinking now to my daughter, my eldest daughter who's 12 years old, and thinking to some of her friends and the ones that I noticed the most gratitude in, there's one who, she has Greek and Albanian parents, and then there's others who are Belgian, but she was born in Kenya and lived in Kenya, just came back to Belgium more recently, and some of these other cultures that just have this more optimistic outlook on life and those ones very much express gratitude in different ways than I've seen some of the others. I hadn't even thought about that until right now, but I wonder, I wonder.
Lainie Rowell: The science of gratitude has only been around for about 25 years, you know, where they like started actually doing like the gold standard of research and all of that.
And then in the last five to 10 years it's gone exponential. They have actually done a little bit of research on the culture aspect of it. But there's so much goes into who we are, you know, it's our values, it's our family situation, gender, culture is a piece of it. But it's not the only piece of it.
When the scientists are looking at it, they're noticing that in some cultures it's more about the connective gratitude spending time with you, but they also notice it's by age because a lot of times the concrete is what they go for.
Like, you give me a toy, I give you a toy. There's like so many layers to it. It hurts my brain almost to think about it. But culture is a definite factor.
PJ Brady: Now my interest has peaked. Now I'm gonna have to go study more about, more about gratitude.
Thanks a lot Lainie, I get on this and like I get more work all of the sudden.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, I know you're a busy guy. I don't mean mean to give you more, but I'll talk gratitude anytime you want.
PJ Brady: I love it.
Lainie Rowell: It's interesting cuz there are some cultures where it's considered an insult to say thank you because this is an expectation.
PJ Brady: Yeah. Yeah. And even that, it doesn't mean that there's not a feeling of gratitude, it's just the way in which you express gratitude and respect and all of those things. That is a whole nother nuance, isn't it?
Lainie Rowell: A hundred percent.
Yeah.
PJ Brady: Hmm.
Lainie Rowell: We're going deep. Okay. , I know I gotta let you go pretty soon. I am so grateful for your time. I don't use that word lightly. I do truly appreciate you staying up a little later. You know this is like your quiet time in your house, potentially with all three girls asleep.
PJ Brady: This is work time because they're asleep and I work with America all the time.
I'm like, oh, no, I'll just schedule that. My quiet time is when they go to school in the morning. I'm like, all right, I'm going to the gym. I'm gonna read a little, I'm gonna relax.
Lainie Rowell: Well, I'm gonna get you back to work then. You're, you're middle of the night working and who would you like to give a shout out to?
PJ Brady: You know what, from this, it actually goes back to our introduction, Michael and Maureen Crawford. Maureen is a partner of mine. She works with me here at the Brave, Smart, Kind company, and Michael is her husband. And just from the minute that I met both of them, they have been ridiculously giving and kind of their time and their energy and their perspective and everything.
And even getting the boys, they've got two sons who I, I know them. I talk to them like on , on, on video calls and stuff. Talk about two people who just kind of go out of their way to help others, and I couldn't be more grateful for, for both of them.
Lainie Rowell: Well, I now, know, both of them. I actually knew Michael, you know, part of my P L N, and then Maureen and I got connected. And now we're connected. So I'm grateful for them too, and I do genuinely see that in them, that they're just great people who want to help other people do amazing things. Those are good people to have around.
PJ Brady: Yeah, they're good. And, oh, one other thing is I'm grateful that I do have some sort of memory that recalls this, that "if you judge a fish by its ability to climb trees, it'll spend its entire life thinking that it's stupid". That was the quote, and I needed to redeem by myself. for messing it up the first time.
Lainie Rowell: Does that count as a callback?
PJ Brady: We're gonna make it into one.
Lainie Rowell: Okay. Perfect. Perfect. All right, my friend. People are gonna wanna connect with you. I highly encourage them to grab the book, Raising Kids to be Brave, Smart, and Kind. And what else would you say for them to connect to you and your work.
PJ Brady: Oddly enough, as popular as those words are, if you Google Brave, Smart, Kind, all of our stuff comes up. So it's the leadership content and the school stuff. We've got BraveSmartKind.com and then all of our handles on social media are @BraveSmartKind, and you will connect and I don't know, I don't know when we're airing this, but if anyone's at South by Southwest edu it's my first time going. I'm still new to this educational space cuz my background is leadership. I'm still getting into it and so I love it. And I would love to, to connect with any of your listeners.
Lainie Rowell: When is it again? It's March, right?
PJ Brady: Yeah, beginning. The sixth through the ninth.
Definitely hit me up on the website, on the socials and love to have these conversations with especially educators right now. I mean, I'll talk to anyone about this if you're in leadership roles or organizations, but educators, if you want some support in getting Brave, Smart, Kind into your classrooms or your schools, give us a holler and we'll do everything that we can to help you out.
Lainie Rowell: Oh, that's awesome. Thank you so much for your time and I'm gifting this book to some of my friends who they saw me post about it on the socials and they're like, Ooh, tell me about this book.
And I'm like, I'll get you a copy. It's a really good book and I hope people get a chance to check it out whether your parents are not, we're all trying to raise these kids and teachers spend a lot of time with kids.
They sometimes spend more time than their parents do, especially during the week.
PJ Brady: That's for sure. Thank you so much for having me on and for just the work you do and what you're putting out in the world. I mean it's a better place because of it. So thanks so much.
Lainie Rowell: I say the same to you.
Thank you my friend, and thank you all for listening.
PJ Brady: Thanks everyone.