Generation What - SoundSage

Every week 'Generation What' talks about how to address common mental health struggles and the disconnect between the older and younger generations and how it affects relationships between teens and parents, young adults and their professors and bosses, friendships, self-esteem, and more. This podcast gives insight and concrete takeaways on how to better manage mental health and how we can improve ourselves individually, come together and better understand one another.
In this episode Doug and Janene discuss how transitions affect our life. They further explain transitions are natural, but also can be self- selected if we are looking to make a change in our life or pursue a new opportunity. Doug and Janene point out how our fears, avoidance of being challenged, and mischaracterizing ourselves can cause us to feel out of control and even miss out on new experiences where we can increase our knowledge and resilience to leave our mark on the world.
1:01- Introduction of subject and the focus of the podcast- normal life transitions, self- imposed life transitions, all transitions for teens, young adults, and adults.
2:09- Doug discusses his personal experience transitioning to a new job and in some ways a new career, and the anxieties that interferred.
3:31- Imposter Syndrome- how shows up in kids, teens, young adults, and adults. How imposter syndrome comes from a place of doubting our own success.
6:00- Doug talks about how imposter syndrome shows up in his son Liam, age 11, when he is challenged in advanced classes.
7:49- How overfunctioning ( spending too much time pursuing "perfect" or "best") wastes time and leads to mental, emotional, and even physical burnout.
10:39-The art of striving for "good enough" in all areas of our life. Changing your mindset to not just being ok with being challenged, but actually craving and seeking it out.
14:50-Doug talks about his most memorable class in college- an Honors Biology class and although challenging, what he learned and why it was a memorable class.
18:34- Figure out the WHY of what you are doing and WHY you are transitioning. Focus on the deeper meaning and life lessons for what you are doing.
21:29- Seek to disrupt the status quo- this is when we seek to challenge ourselves and others around us to create change that can benefit ourselves and society.
24:22- The focus should not be on how smart we are, but instead how we can be creative, think outside of the box, problem solve and produce new ideas.
27:20- Do not get stuck on one identity. There are multiple identities we can identify with and make sure you are incorporating your "loves" into your identities.
31:00- Do not let your doubts or fears be the main reason you avoid and or reject new opportunities, there are many different ways you can be successful!

Every week 'Generation What' talks about how to address common mental health struggles and the disconnect between the older and younger generations and how it affects relationships between teens and parents, young adults and their professors and bosses, friendships, self-esteem, and more. This podcast gives insight and concrete takeaways on how to better manage mental health and how we can improve ourselves individually, come together and better understand one another.
In this episode Doug and Janene interview Soren Pack who recently started college and talks about his experience finishing high school during COVID and some of the habits and skills practiced that have helped him transition to an independent adult. Concepts such as hard work, resilience, independence and mindset will be processed with Soren. He discusses real life experiences that can help any teen start visualizing how they can achieve the kind of young adult independent lifestyle that can lead to success.
1:01- Introduction of the guest, Soren Pack and the focus of the podcast- transitioning from teen to young adult.
3:46- Soren discusses trends like COVID that disrupted teen development mentally and emotionally along with skill building.
7:49- Skills needed such as self motivation that helped in Soren's transition from a teen living at home, to being an independent young adult living on a college campus.
11:00- Soren talks about how skill building started with small goals like working out.
14:00- Talked about cultivating the habit of doing things that you don't want to do, but are good for you especially when you don't feel like it and when self motivation is low.
17:00-Talked about parenting do's and don'ts from Soren's perspective as far as what kind of parenting techniques helped Soren gain skills that set him up for success as a young adult.
21:30-Talked about giving space to teens so they can start monitoring themselves and how to help them analyze what is going right and what is going wrong and how the teen should be a part of the solution.
25:00- Discussed a work place survey where employers identified soft skills such as hard work, resilience, following a schedule, follow-through, self-advocacy, and working as a team as core skills that are needed for success in the work place.

Every week 'Generation What' talks about how to address common mental health struggles and the disconnect between the older and younger generations and how it affects relationships between teens and parents, young adults and their professors and bosses, friendships, self-esteem, and more. This podcast gives insight and concrete takeaways on how to better manage mental health and how we can improve ourselves individually, come together and better understand one another. * In this episode Doug and Janene continue interviewing Michael Pack and they all focus on the common traps that can erode relationships, how to recognize them and what skills to build in order to better understand and connect with loved ones. Some of these common traps are 1- self- deception 2-treating people like objects 3- and entering into a collusion cycle.

The above relationship dynamics are explained through relatable experiences and how to combat these traps by building new habits that strengthen relationships.

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Every week 'Generation What' talks about how to address common mental health struggles and the disconnect between the older and younger generations and how it affects relationships between teens and parents, young adults and their professors and bosses, friendships, self-esteem, and more. This podcast gives insight and concrete takeaways on how to better manage mental health and how we can improve ourselves individually, come together and better understand one another. * In this episode Doug and Janene introduce Michael Pack who has experience being trail staff for the troubled teen program Anasazi. This program has a high rate of recovery, but especially a reputation for parents and teens creating long term habits on how to better deal with relationship struggles and misunderstandings. Michael explains how this program is different and more effective than others because it focuses on helping teens heal in nature through learning survival skills and even meeting with psychologists in nature while their parents participate in a mandatory 3 day seminar. The theory behind this program focuses on repairing family relationships for long term individual growth and relationship healing.

1:00- Introduction of Michael Pack- trail guide for teen program Anasazi-wilderness program for teens
2:00 Talk about programs that can repair relationships between teens and parents.
4:25- Real focus is relationship repair between teens and parents
7:20-How the program focuses on the concept of how to connect with your teen and break the power struggle cycle.
8:50 Real life examples of struggles with delayed gratification.
14:00 Michael talks about what brought him back as Anasazi trail staff every year, even during Christmas.
15:00 Michael's profound experience becing the trail guide for an all girl's group.
19:00 The experience of parents joining their teens on the trail, seeing what they learned and planning on how to apply concepts learned on the trail to their lives.
22:00 How the new strengthened relationship helps both the parents and teens better tackle common struggles without treating each other like an object.

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Every week 'Generation What' talks about how to address common mental health struggles and the disconnect between the older and younger generations and how it affects relationships between teens and parents, young adults and their professors and bosses, friendships, self-esteem, and more. This podcast gives insight and concrete takeaways on how to better manage mental health and how we can improve ourselves individually, come together and better understand one another. * In this episode, Janene and Doug break apart the concept of Love Languages- how they can be misunderstood and misused, and how they can be simplified to create sustainable habits of showing love to others but also recognizing when others are showing us love.

1:00- Introduction of Relationship topic pertaining to how to simplify the love language concept to strengthen all relationships.
4:00-Real life example of how to better understand the love languages so we can recognize when people are showing us love.
10:00-Going against our natural process of how we show our love language can be exhausting.
13:00-Is your expectations about how your love language is show reasonable?
16:00- Expectations get in the way of recognizing efforts.
18:00- Keep your expecations and what you want in balance and make sure it is reasonable and accurate.
19:00-Takeaway 1- Be aware of your love lanaguage and what the natural love langague is of those around you.
22:00- Takeaway 2- What specifically do you want to see or hear when someone else is showing you love with your love language.
23:00- How to use love languages to better understand and relate with your teen.
26:00- If your are are showing someone their preferred love language, don't mess it up by using it to lecture and correct someone.
28:00- Sum up- Communicate what you want, be specific, check your expectations at the door, appreciate any effort.
30:00-Introduction of next topic- Guest Speaker who has experience with the Arginger Institute.

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Every week 'Generation What' talks about how to address common mental health struggles and the disconnect between the older and younger generations and how it affects relationships between teens and parents, young adults and their professors and bosses, friendships, self-esteem, and more. This podcast gives insight and concrete takeaways on how to better manage mental health and how we can improve ourselves individually, come together and better understand one another. * In this episode, Janene and Doug welcome their guest, Kara Kaufman- certified health and fitness coach. In this episode Kara talks about how anyone can incorporate body movment, self care, and fitness in their every day routines in a way to mitgate, and manage stress and anxiety. Have you ever found yourself looking for the drastic quick fix to manage stress and anxiety? What if there was a way you could analyze how your time is used, and you created a space for every day routines that anyone can do and can be practiced in your own home that would prevent anxiety and stress from interfering with your life. Listen to find out how you can make a change in your routine today!

1:00-Introduction of topic and guest Kara Kaufman, health and fitness coach
4:00- Mental Health affects all generations, how can our routine help-overview of specific take aways
6:00-Tip 1- Create the Space for physical movment and wholistic fitness
10:00-Tip 2- Make the Time for deliberate self care instead of giving into distractions
14:00- Specific examples of how to create better self care opportunities
18:00-Tip 3-How to incorporate this level of self care into all aspects of your life (included is an interactive activity)
23:00- Mental health tip- you can change thoughts and emotions
25:00- Doug talks about specific changes he has made in his everyday life to better manage anxiety and stress
36:00-Kara shares the final take away-Coping Skills vs. a Distraction

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Every week 'Generation What' talks about how to address common mental health struggles and the disconnect between the older and younger generations and how it affects relationships between teens and parents, young adults and their professors and bosses, friendships, self-esteem, and more. This podcast gives insight and concrete takeaways on how to better manage mental health and how we can improve ourselves individually, come together and better understand one another. * In this episode, Janene and Doug discuss two common responses to anxiety: procrastinating vs overfunctioning. Procrastinating is putting off tasks we don't feel like doing and tend to avoid. Overfunctioning is putting in extra time on tasks because you are striving for perfection or what is best. Which one do you identify with? Both tendencies can be deceiving- procrastination seems like giving yourself extra free time, overfunctioning seems noble and hard working. Tune in to better understand the anxiety trends and how to create awareness of what contributes to anxiety and how to deal with it.

1:00- Introduction-Anxiety causes a tendency to procrastinate or overfunction
4:00-Personal examples of what procrastinating looks like
10:00- Coping strategies for procrastination- activation energy
15:00- What does overfunctioning mean
20:00-Personal examples of overfunctioning
25:00- It's not all about the grade- grades are subjective
30:00-"Perfect, Best is the enemy of good"
34:00- Main takeaways on how to avoid procrastination and overfunctioning

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Every week Generation What talks about how to address the disconnect between the older and younger generations and how it affects relationships between teens and parents, young adults and their professors and bosses, friendships, self-esteem, and more. This podcast gives insight and concrete takeaways on how we can improve ourselves individually, come together and better understand one another. * In this episode, Janene and Doug tackle why anxiety has become more prevalent in our society among all generations. The following questions will be discussed: What are we doing to address anxiety within ourselves?How are we inadvertently enabling anxiety in our own children vs helping them gain coping strategies? What happens when what we believe about ourselves is in direct opposition with what we do? How can we deal with obsessive thoughts so they don't interfere with our quality of life? Tune in to better understand the anxiety trends and how to create awareness of what contributes to anxiety and how to deal with it.

1:07-Becoming antifragile and how avoiding contributes to anxiety and depression
5:00-Gaining resiliency and specific scenarios that apply to all generations
8:11-First Takeaway-anxiety is created when we overvalue thoughts
12:04-Second Takeaway-Most anxiety is self-created
16:07-Bulldozing parenting vs Helicopter
19:15-Cognitive Dissonance- Definition and examples
22:44-Living your life from a lense of what you can gain vs. what you can lose
24:10-Third Takeaway- What do I want and how do I want to feel?
27:57-Fourth Takeaway for young adults-How to validate and empower yourself
29:08-Battling obsessive thoughts

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Every week Generation What talks about how to address the disconnect between the older and younger generations and how it affects relationships between teens and parents, young adults and their professors and bosses, friendships, self esteem and more. This podcast gives insight and concrete takeaways on how we can improve ourselves individually, come together and better understand one another.

This episode introduces the familiar struggles with anxiety. Why has there been such a seemingly increase in anxiety over the last couple of years? Why does it seem to be affecting the younger generations the most and what can we do about it? The next 3 episodes will cover data points and correlations, trends to be aware of, and concrete coping strategies to address the way anxiety interferes with the quality of life.
2:50- younger generation trends with anxiety and stress
4:00-Teen's fight or flight behavior
5:59-Younger generation wants to learn how to fix their anxiety
9:22-Younger generations seem more open to therapy and support v.s older generations
12:39-Younger generations are more involved with social issues and politics- how it can contribute to anxiety
16:26-Benefits of understanding differences in opinion to alleviate anxiety
19:50-The balance between empathy and being a people pleaser
25:07-Introduce the drive to avoid anything that causes stress and anxiety- intro to next podcast

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In part 2, we discuss the 4 ways parents and teens can make a plan together about how to manage the phone as a team. Teens are motivated when they feel they have control and autonomy. Parents should be motivated to support teens by building proactive phone habits for themselves. "I'm taking your phone away" or blocking every bad choice is the easy way out that breeds resentment on both sides. More importantly, it is not helping teens develop the life skills they need to manage the phone successfully on their own.

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In this episode, we share some data and statistics illustrating the correlation between the arrival of the iPhone in 2011 and the increase of anxiety and depression in not just teens but also its effect on adults. Some of these effects also include shortened attention span, difficulty forming meaningful relationships, and struggles in managing emotions. The smartphone is not going away but it's important to know how it can be abused to create maladaptive behaviors in our lives. (Excuse Doug's mic. Fixed in part 2)

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This episode introduces the overarching goal of "Generation What,"-To talk about the disconnect and divide between the current older and younger generations. These relationships are arguably more at odds with each other than previous generations and have created pronounced struggles with mental health, parent/teen relationships, emotional regulation and so much more. We talk about the starting point in how to bridge the gap of understanding.

Generation What: Recent Episodes

Janene Pack and Doug Kaufman