June 24, 2025 • 11 mins
What if stress isn’t the enemy… but the training ground?
In this sneak peek of our powerful conversation with former SAS soldier and leadership expert Tim Curtis, we unpack the real role of stress in our lives—and how it can actually help our kids grow. Tim reveals the four essential layers of resilience every child (and adult) needs to thrive—and the surprisingly simple shifts that build strength from the inside out.
This episode will change the way you see stress—and empower you to raise kids who can do hard things.
KEY POINTS:
- Stress is not always bad – the right amount (as explained by the Yerkes-Dodson Law) boosts performance and growth.
- Avoidance reinforces anxiety – but action activates growth.
- Emotions are signals, not enemies – they give us guidance if we listen.
- The 4 Layers of Resilience:
- Mind – mindset, mindfulness, meditation
- Body – sleep, diet, exercise
- Social – support systems and connection
- Professional – competence, confidence, contribution (including parenting as a profession)
- Building resilience is less about shielding kids and more about supporting them as they stretch and grow.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
"There’s no triumph without trial."
– Dr Justin Coulson
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- Tim Curtis’s upcoming book: Building Resilient Kids
- Yerkes-Dodson Law (on stress and performance)
- Happy Families resources: happyfamilies.com.au
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
- Normalise stress – Talk to your kids about stress as something useful, not something to avoid.
- Teach emotion awareness – Help your child understand emotions as helpful signals.
- Strengthen all four layers – Encourage routines that support body, mind, relationships, and purpose.
- Model resilience – Let your kids see you navigating difficulty with action, not avoidance.
- Lean into the hard stuff – Gently support your child through challenges instead of rescuing them from discomfort.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
The SAS is a special unit in Australia's military. It's
called the Special Air Service. Mister Tim Curtis is a
senior partner at Metal Global Holdings, a senior consultant with
more than twenty years of leadership a management experience, and
he served in the SAS. He's been on the missions
that we usually only see in the movies.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
He's got the kind.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Of experience with stress and the experience with building resilience
that most of us could never even imagine. And recently
I sat down and had a conversation with Tim Curtis
about stress, about resilience and how we can bring up
strong kids. Why because he's got a brand new book
coming out. The book is called Building Resilient Kids. And
(00:51):
on Saturday, I'm going to play the entire conversation today
a couple of sneak peaks. The insights are valuable and
I couldn't wait to Saturday to share at least some
of it. It's a long introduction, let's get on with it. Hello,
Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. My name is doctor
Justin Coulson. I'm here with my wife, missus Happy Families.
Kylie not feeling great today?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Honey, I'm not feeling great. I'm not feeling resilient, a
little bit of a scratchy throat. So hopefully we can
get through.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
This all right, Real parenting solutions every day. This is
Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. Let's just crack straight into it.
The first thing that I want to do is play
what Tim had to say about stress. Why because so
many parents are worried about the kids experiencing stress. So
many parents I don't want their kids to experience the
things that they went through because stress feels well stressful.
This is what he had to say about the usefulness
(01:40):
of stress.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
We think about stress like it is all incredibly negative,
but Yerks and Dods and two researchers over one hundred
years ago prove that some stress in our life is beneficial.
We can't have too little stress, we can't have too
much stress, but the right amount of stress drives us
to optimize performance. And the second comment I've made so
that is the thing called resilience, which is a big
(02:02):
word that hopefully we've codified in a fairly coherent way.
It varies by degree, not kind. So that amount of
stress in your life my life the life of our
parents should be the same amount of stress in our kids' life,
but it varies by degree, not kind, so it's relative stress.
Perhaps if I can cite one example, my youngest did
(02:24):
not want to go to her year ten school camp.
She said, Dad, I've got anxiety. I don't want to go,
making me anxious. I'm not going to survive the school camp. Now,
back when we were growing up, that wasn't that's ronical term,
that word anxiety. It was just called nervous. We said, nope,
you're going to go. You'll grow from it. And on
(02:45):
the other side of disturbance and disruption is growth. And
so off she went. She came back, had an incredible time,
and twelve months later she's in the United States instructing
at a summer camp herself. A little bit of st
is useful.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I love this for so many reasons. We talked about
the idea that we can have emotions but not be
the emotion, that we can actually experience things but not
identify as them. And this week a post came up
in my feed that just resonated beautifully with me. The
(03:22):
idea that the emotions we experience as a result of
stress in our lives are actually these amazing signals. Signals. Yeah,
they give us information and if we utilize them, they
actually can bless our lives in amazing ways. So just
a few that came that stood out to me in
this post was anger. Anger is is energy with a purpose.
(03:47):
It builds when something challenges your values, it disrespects your
boundaries or disrupts your sense of justice. Instead of letting
it take over, turn it into change.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Guilt.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Guilt is a sign that you're actions don't align with
your values, so let it guide you, not punish you. Frustration.
Frustration is the feeling of being stuck between effort and outcome.
It's a sign that something isn't working either shift your
approach or your expectations.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, that's a really nice one. The frustration tolerance that
I'm always talking about fits really nicely there. I'm putting
a lot of effort, I'm not getting the outcome that
I want. And if we can help our children to
understand it, the stress that comes from this frustration is
productive that by continuing to work in that zone of learning,
that pit of what feels like despair sometimes will ultimately
(04:38):
strengthen them, help them to build the muscles that they
need so that this thing no longer no longer creates
the frustration for them, Kytie. I want to pick up
on a couple of things that he said as well.
First of all, he talked about the Yerx Dodson law.
I think it was developed in like nineteen oh eight
or something like that. And this is something that I've
used with our own kids, and I've used it in many,
many counseling and conversation situations that I've had, where you
(05:03):
basically draw this camel hump. At the bottom of the
hump on the left hand side. What you're saying is
there's no arousal, there's no anxiety, there's no stress, and
therefore performance really low. But counterintuitively, as stress and anxiety
and arousali go up, performance improves. Why because you actually
care about it, you're making an effort. There's a level
(05:24):
of stress on your body until you reach this peak level.
If you get too much arousal, too much stress, too
much anxiety, then performance starts to drop down the other
side of the hump again. And so that's what the
Erks Dodson law is. I just think he absolutely nailed
it with what he said there The other thing that
really stood out to me was this he said, on
(05:44):
the other side of disturbance and disruption, in other words,
on the other side of anxiety and stress is growth.
So I'm constantly saying this on the pod. Avoidance reinforces anxiety.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
But you know what.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Activates growth is action, action, moving towards it, leaning in,
getting curious, taking that anxiety, that stress, that worry, and
saying all right, I need to learn more about this.
I need to step into it, not step away from it.
I was doing a seminar recently and a phrase just
popped into my head. It didn't pop into my head
so much as it popped out of my mouth, and
(06:19):
then my head heard it and went, oh, that's really good.
I said, there's no triumph without trial. There's no triumph
without trial. And that's really I think what Tim's getting
at here. Well, I know that's what Tim's getting at here.
You don't know you're resilient, so you have to do
the hard things. And so by protecting our kids from
doing hard things, they don't have the opportunity to flex
that resilience muscle.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
After the break, the thing that he said that really
cattured me about the different layers of resilience. Okay, Kylie,
we're talking about Tim Curtis. He's got a book coming
out of the next few days. It's called Building Resilient Kids.
Just check online you'll be able to find at Tim
(07:02):
Curtis Building Resilient Kids. The other thing that he said, Kylie,
that really really grabbed me. He talked about this thing
that I haven't come across before, the four layers of resilience.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
The four truly modifiable layers are the mind layer. It's
the importance of mindset and also the importance of meditation
and mindfulness practices, which yes, you can teach by agent
stage to a toddle of Wadler tween and teen. Then
there's the body layer. Unsurprisingly, sleep, diet, and exercise. They
exist in this healthy trinity. Anything you do on one
(07:37):
of those angles influences the other angle. And I get
no prizes for telling you and your listeners that that
when we're under stress load, what are the first three
things that go inevitably it's.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Exercise, we eat lousies, stoping in our bodies, and get
less sleep.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, totally, that's right. That's right. And then there's the
social layers, so the importance of social support systems, the
people that are there for you, that you're there for.
Then the professional lay. If we suck at our job,
it's likely to bring more stress in our life. This
is about improving confidence and competence to overcome adversities in
our professional life, including is stay at home parents if
(08:15):
that's the profession that you have.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
I never heard of this idea or concept of four
layers to building resilience.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, four different domains where it matters, I guess.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah. I love that the mind is the first layer because,
as we know, the way we think impacts so much
of what we actually do.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
You are what you think. You are what you think,
and what you think shapes your habits, and your habits
shape your life.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
And mindsets at the absolute forefront of all of that.
So I love that. I love the idea and your
acknowledgment that when we're under stressed, the three things that
get just hammered every single time is our ability to sleep,
the kinds of foods that we eat. We crave the
crappiest food when we're stressed.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, it's because our willpower is low and we're just
looking for a quick fix, A quick fix. Yeah, just
got to turn our resources to other things.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
And unfortunately our motivation is low then as well also, right,
so exercise goes out the window. Social supports. This is
just it's so huge. And I think what we're witnessing
so much in our young kids, and I think across
the board all of us, is this lack of social
systems and social support structures because we are so busy
(09:35):
and looking down all the time.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
It's so funny because the more I think about resilience,
the more I think about the conversation we're having now.
It's really simple, like, if you want to live a
happy life, focus on building good relationships, look after your
body and your health by getting enough sleep, moving your body,
and eating good food. Stay off screens, get outside and
be in nature. Like, do those things and you'll pretty
(10:00):
much be okay, you'll be resilient. You'll do enough hard things.
It's just it's what we do for our well being.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
As you can tell, Tim's got a lot to offer.
And I asked him about some of the missions that
he served, what he was doing militarily when he was
in the SAS, and how that taught him about resilience
as well. The conversation is really really intriguing and a
delightful one, and we'll play the entire thing for you
on Saturday. That's it for now. Though The Happy Family's
podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media, Mim
(10:32):
Hammonds provides the research and a whole lot of other support.
We appreciate both Justin and Mim. If you think that
your family will be happier because of this episode, would
you take a minute and share it. Maybe there's somebody
that you know who would also benefit from a quick
conversation about resilience, stress, and doing better in life with
these couple of ideas, Just click a couple of buttons,
(10:53):
shoot it through. It won't take you any time at all,
and it might just make a difference in somebody else's life.
If you like information and more resources about making your
family happier, check out Happy Families dot com dot au
and more details about Tim's new book in the show notes.
The SAS is a special unit in Australia's military. It's
called the Special Air Service. Mister Tim Curtis is a
senior partner at Metal Global Holdings, a senior consultant with
more than twenty years of leadership a management experience, and
he served in the SAS. He's been on the missions
that we usually only see in the movies.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
He's got the kind.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Of experience with stress and the experience with building resilience
that most of us could never even imagine. And recently
I sat down and had a conversation with Tim Curtis
about stress, about resilience and how we can bring up
strong kids. Why because he's got a brand new book
coming out. The book is called Building Resilient Kids. And
(00:51):
on Saturday, I'm going to play the entire conversation today
a couple of sneak peaks. The insights are valuable and
I couldn't wait to Saturday to share at least some
of it. It's a long introduction, let's get on with it. Hello,
Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. My name is doctor
Justin Coulson. I'm here with my wife, missus Happy Families.
Kylie not feeling great today?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Honey, I'm not feeling great. I'm not feeling resilient, a
little bit of a scratchy throat. So hopefully we can
get through.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
This all right, Real parenting solutions every day. This is
Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. Let's just crack straight into it.
The first thing that I want to do is play
what Tim had to say about stress. Why because so
many parents are worried about the kids experiencing stress. So
many parents I don't want their kids to experience the
things that they went through because stress feels well stressful.
This is what he had to say about the usefulness
(01:40):
of stress.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
We think about stress like it is all incredibly negative,
but Yerks and Dods and two researchers over one hundred
years ago prove that some stress in our life is beneficial.
We can't have too little stress, we can't have too
much stress, but the right amount of stress drives us
to optimize performance. And the second comment I've made so
that is the thing called resilience, which is a big
(02:02):
word that hopefully we've codified in a fairly coherent way.
It varies by degree, not kind. So that amount of
stress in your life my life the life of our
parents should be the same amount of stress in our kids' life,
but it varies by degree, not kind, so it's relative stress.
Perhaps if I can cite one example, my youngest did
(02:24):
not want to go to her year ten school camp.
She said, Dad, I've got anxiety. I don't want to go,
making me anxious. I'm not going to survive the school camp. Now,
back when we were growing up, that wasn't that's ronical term,
that word anxiety. It was just called nervous. We said, nope,
you're going to go. You'll grow from it. And on
(02:45):
the other side of disturbance and disruption is growth. And
so off she went. She came back, had an incredible time,
and twelve months later she's in the United States instructing
at a summer camp herself. A little bit of st
is useful.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I love this for so many reasons. We talked about
the idea that we can have emotions but not be
the emotion, that we can actually experience things but not
identify as them. And this week a post came up
in my feed that just resonated beautifully with me. The
(03:22):
idea that the emotions we experience as a result of
stress in our lives are actually these amazing signals. Signals. Yeah,
they give us information and if we utilize them, they
actually can bless our lives in amazing ways. So just
a few that came that stood out to me in
this post was anger. Anger is is energy with a purpose.
(03:47):
It builds when something challenges your values, it disrespects your
boundaries or disrupts your sense of justice. Instead of letting
it take over, turn it into change.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Guilt.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Guilt is a sign that you're actions don't align with
your values, so let it guide you, not punish you. Frustration.
Frustration is the feeling of being stuck between effort and outcome.
It's a sign that something isn't working either shift your
approach or your expectations.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, that's a really nice one. The frustration tolerance that
I'm always talking about fits really nicely there. I'm putting
a lot of effort, I'm not getting the outcome that
I want. And if we can help our children to
understand it, the stress that comes from this frustration is
productive that by continuing to work in that zone of learning,
that pit of what feels like despair sometimes will ultimately
(04:38):
strengthen them, help them to build the muscles that they
need so that this thing no longer no longer creates
the frustration for them, Kytie. I want to pick up
on a couple of things that he said as well.
First of all, he talked about the Yerx Dodson law.
I think it was developed in like nineteen oh eight
or something like that. And this is something that I've
used with our own kids, and I've used it in many,
many counseling and conversation situations that I've had, where you
(05:03):
basically draw this camel hump. At the bottom of the
hump on the left hand side. What you're saying is
there's no arousal, there's no anxiety, there's no stress, and
therefore performance really low. But counterintuitively, as stress and anxiety
and arousali go up, performance improves. Why because you actually
care about it, you're making an effort. There's a level
(05:24):
of stress on your body until you reach this peak level.
If you get too much arousal, too much stress, too
much anxiety, then performance starts to drop down the other
side of the hump again. And so that's what the
Erks Dodson law is. I just think he absolutely nailed
it with what he said there The other thing that
really stood out to me was this he said, on
(05:44):
the other side of disturbance and disruption, in other words,
on the other side of anxiety and stress is growth.
So I'm constantly saying this on the pod. Avoidance reinforces anxiety.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
But you know what.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Activates growth is action, action, moving towards it, leaning in,
getting curious, taking that anxiety, that stress, that worry, and
saying all right, I need to learn more about this.
I need to step into it, not step away from it.
I was doing a seminar recently and a phrase just
popped into my head. It didn't pop into my head
so much as it popped out of my mouth, and
(06:19):
then my head heard it and went, oh, that's really good.
I said, there's no triumph without trial. There's no triumph
without trial. And that's really I think what Tim's getting
at here. Well, I know that's what Tim's getting at here.
You don't know you're resilient, so you have to do
the hard things. And so by protecting our kids from
doing hard things, they don't have the opportunity to flex
that resilience muscle.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
After the break, the thing that he said that really
cattured me about the different layers of resilience. Okay, Kylie,
we're talking about Tim Curtis. He's got a book coming
out of the next few days. It's called Building Resilient Kids.
Just check online you'll be able to find at Tim
(07:02):
Curtis Building Resilient Kids. The other thing that he said, Kylie,
that really really grabbed me. He talked about this thing
that I haven't come across before, the four layers of resilience.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
The four truly modifiable layers are the mind layer. It's
the importance of mindset and also the importance of meditation
and mindfulness practices, which yes, you can teach by agent
stage to a toddle of Wadler tween and teen. Then
there's the body layer. Unsurprisingly, sleep, diet, and exercise. They
exist in this healthy trinity. Anything you do on one
(07:37):
of those angles influences the other angle. And I get
no prizes for telling you and your listeners that that
when we're under stress load, what are the first three
things that go inevitably it's.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Exercise, we eat lousies, stoping in our bodies, and get
less sleep.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, totally, that's right. That's right. And then there's the
social layers, so the importance of social support systems, the
people that are there for you, that you're there for.
Then the professional lay. If we suck at our job,
it's likely to bring more stress in our life. This
is about improving confidence and competence to overcome adversities in
our professional life, including is stay at home parents if
(08:15):
that's the profession that you have.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
I never heard of this idea or concept of four
layers to building resilience.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, four different domains where it matters, I guess.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah. I love that the mind is the first layer because,
as we know, the way we think impacts so much
of what we actually do.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
You are what you think. You are what you think,
and what you think shapes your habits, and your habits
shape your life.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
And mindsets at the absolute forefront of all of that.
So I love that. I love the idea and your
acknowledgment that when we're under stressed, the three things that
get just hammered every single time is our ability to sleep,
the kinds of foods that we eat. We crave the
crappiest food when we're stressed.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, it's because our willpower is low and we're just
looking for a quick fix, A quick fix. Yeah, just
got to turn our resources to other things.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
And unfortunately our motivation is low then as well also, right,
so exercise goes out the window. Social supports. This is
just it's so huge. And I think what we're witnessing
so much in our young kids, and I think across
the board all of us, is this lack of social
systems and social support structures because we are so busy
(09:35):
and looking down all the time.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
It's so funny because the more I think about resilience,
the more I think about the conversation we're having now.
It's really simple, like, if you want to live a
happy life, focus on building good relationships, look after your
body and your health by getting enough sleep, moving your body,
and eating good food. Stay off screens, get outside and
be in nature. Like, do those things and you'll pretty
(10:00):
much be okay, you'll be resilient. You'll do enough hard things.
It's just it's what we do for our well being.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
As you can tell, Tim's got a lot to offer.
And I asked him about some of the missions that
he served, what he was doing militarily when he was
in the SAS, and how that taught him about resilience
as well. The conversation is really really intriguing and a
delightful one, and we'll play the entire thing for you
on Saturday. That's it for now. Though The Happy Family's
podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media, Mim
(10:32):
Hammonds provides the research and a whole lot of other support.
We appreciate both Justin and Mim. If you think that
your family will be happier because of this episode, would
you take a minute and share it. Maybe there's somebody
that you know who would also benefit from a quick
conversation about resilience, stress, and doing better in life with
these couple of ideas, Just click a couple of buttons,
(10:53):
shoot it through. It won't take you any time at all,
and it might just make a difference in somebody else's life.
If you like information and more resources about making your
family happier, check out Happy Families dot com dot au
and more details about Tim's new book in the show notes.
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