Dr. Gavoni 

I don't only focus on youth, right? Youth being successful is an outcome. And in order to get the best out of the youth, we've got to get the best out of the employees. You cannot separate the two. And this is what happens. I want to say you got to do it for the kids, you cannot make it about the kids without making it about the youth workers. And the principles of behavior are all the same up the chain. And I feel like people are well-meaning when they say that, but I feel like it's a cop-out sometimes when they say well, you do it for the kids.

Paul Meunier 

Hello, I'm Paul Meunier, the executive director of the Youth Intervention Programs Association, and I'm a youth worker at heart. How lucky am I? I have the privilege to meet youth workers from around the globe and learn their stories and share them with the entire world. I'm glad you're listening because together we'll learn how their life experiences shape their youth work. As you listen, I encourage you to consider how your experiences shape what you have to offer young people. Welcome to this edition of The Passionate Youth Worker. Hi, everybody. For this episode, we're joined by Dr. Paul Gavoni from Florida in the United States. He is a behavior scientist and an educator who has poured nearly three decades of his life into the well-being of our young people. Dr. Gavoni has held various leadership positions in the Education and Human Services space. He's a sought-after public speaker, and a best-selling author of several books. And on top of all that, he's also a former Golden Glove heavyweight champion and a Mixed Martial Arts coach. So, I am going to choose my words very carefully for this episode! And since it's our goal to share Dr. Gavoni's life story in a personal way, he's agreed it's okay to just call him Paulie for the interview. So, Paulie, thanks for being a guest on the podcast.

Dr. Gavoni 

Absolutely, brother. And I encourage everybody to just call me Paulie, I'm fine with that. But I appreciate that, Paul.

Paul Meunier 

You bet. So, you're a driven person. It's so easy to see all the things you've accomplished, all the things you're into. And I'm wondering where all that passion and energy came from? Were you raised in an environment surrounded by people who were just high achievers?

Dr. Gavoni 

Well, thank you very much for saying that. And thanks for having me on. I do love talking shop and I had an interesting upbringing. Number one, I had very loving parents. You know, I had loving grandparents. I have a biological father that had been in a lot of trouble. He was doing drugs. And he was in and out of being incarcerated, he was in some mental health institutions. And even though he had all that stuff going on, he always displayed love to me, right, at least verbally. And so, very supportive. But when I was very young, my mom who had me when she was 15 years old, and her father died, she moved to Fort Lauderdale, and we ended up moving into a pretty bad neighborhood. She was young, she didn't know better. And my one of my most earliest experiences was being bullied, being thrown down in the dirt, sand kicked in my mouth. And for me, I'd never experienced that, I was just like a nice loving kid. I didn't know anything about the world being like that way. And so, you kind of multiply those incidents by a lot. Now, I wasn't bullied the way some poor kids are bullied every day. They are so courageous, you know. But when you come from that type of family, loving family and family that values kindness, and treating people with respect and all that, the juxtaposition was hard on me. And so, finally I ended up getting a knife held in my throat in this neighborhood. And I was like eight years old, and we moved to a new neighborhood and the first day on that block, I got beat up by the neighborhood bully. You know though I don't know what I was doing. And so, I started living in fear of people and being bullied and feeling ashamed of myself. And when I was 14 years old, I was asked to go to, invited to a neighbor house party, the house party was like five dudes, you know, young and 14 years old. I think it was a couple of 18-year-old, you know, like football players there and one of the guys said, and I was always an athlete, well he goes hit me in the stomach or something like that. I don't want to hit you, man. Just do it. So, I hit in the stomach. He's like, aaarrrr. Then he goes well now let me hit you in the stomach. And he hit me in the stomach, I laughed. And man, he didn't like that at all. And so, like he started to throw chairs around the room and he wanted to beat me up and I ran. I remember running out of the house and leaving and trying to run to a friend's house and a parent opened the door and anyways, after that experience, that was very humiliating to me. You know, I thought I feel so bad about myself such a, I felt like a coward. And the next time somebody tried to bully me was that neighborhood bully who was the original person who bullied me when I moved on the block I end up fighting back. I almost felt like and I still kind of live by this motto almost like I'd rather die than and I'm not saying people should, you know risk their life but it felt that way. It felt that bad that I'd rather die than allow myself to be bullied by anybody ever again. So, I fought back, and I won. And I'm a behavior analyst, it's very clear to see why I became a fighter, a boxer. I didn't love beating people up. But what I did love is that people don't seem, unfortunately, they don't give people enough respect when they're kind and they're compassionate, and they're intelligent. They seem to respect the lover and the fighter. And so, when I was in a bad way, at the time, my girlfriend had dumped me and I didn't have the muscles to deal with that emotionally. And I was a stocky guy, and I had moved back to that original neighborhood, by the way. And at this point, now I'm in this original neighborhood and had guns pointed at me and knife held in my throat again. I'd been in gang fights, like crazy stuff, you know. And again, I came from a great family. But I moved back there because I had some good friends that I was loyal to. I ended up going up there to a fight and I won a fight with the guy that lived in the neighborhood. He looked like Evander Holyfield. And somebody had shown me how to throw a jab, and I was out of gas, but his hook that he was throwing bombs at me was just missing me by that much. And my jab was hitting him. And so, I was exhausted, he was exhausted but I won the fight. And when I got out of that ring, to have the adulation and people saying that was amazing and treating me like a person, you know, and respecting me and all these things that I'd probably longed for, it's easy to see how that was such a positive reinforcer for me. And so, fighting became inside of me became like, what I hung my hat on. And not that physically fighting people, but I feel like there's nothing I can't overcome. Because I've learned through this time that you know, like everybody's fighting for something and fighting through challenges. And so, you know, that's kind of like what I've brought into helping youth, helping organizations. You know, there's problems, we need to overcome it, how can we do it, but using positive reinforcement? You know, that was the impetus of me.

Paul Meunier 

Fighting sure is a metaphor for how we have to struggle through life and endure things that happen to us and figure out ways to achieve and overcome. That fighter instinct and I don't mean physically, but I mean, just that personality characteristic of you to be a fighter, and now you're fighting for our young people. And we'll talk about that a little bit more. But were your parents fighters too? Did they have that grit and determination and perseverance? Was that instilled in you from them or did you just kind of learn that on your own?

Dr. Gavoni 

Well, definitely, they helped me along the way, right. They were always very supportive when I fell down. But they also let me fall. It's one of the things I think these days that we're not letting people fall enough, because this is how you develop grit. Like, we're not born with grit, you know. What we learn is to delay gratification, right? We learn to assess, problem solve, make decisions, and take action. We build self-efficacy which is our belief in our ability to overcome something. We do that by seeing other people do it, by getting feedback from people to help us do it. But ultimately, by doing it in small doses and seeing that we can do more and more and more and more. I see this with the greatest fighters in the world, that they have this, but it's developed over time. I can develop it, anybody can develop it. But I definitely think every person needs like one caring adult, you know, you need a caring adult. And I had a bunch of them. And I always felt that what separates me from like, say, these poor kids on the street who have nothing, you know, they come from historical poverty. And even though we were my mother was on welfare, she came from a relatively, you know, well-off family. She had made some decisions that separated her, and you know, she'd was trying to go out on her own and do the best that she can. But these poor kids don't have a safety net, which is scary for them, you know. I mean, their stuff is like really life or death. My stuff was like, Hey, I was living in a rough neighborhood rough things happened. But I always knew that when push came to shove, if something went down, somebody was going to help me out. And that gave me courage to keep going, you what know I mean? It's like walking the high wire. You know that net's there to give you confidence to make it to the other side. But if you feel afraid, you end up getting like tunnel vision, you do things that are going to keep you safe. And those things don't necessarily bring you to the next level, because being successful is usually on the other side of fear and anxiety.

Paul Meunier 

Yeah, I agree and you do think about the young people that don't have the support of someone in their world to provide that security and safety net that you so eloquently described. And it's awful to think about that. And that's what youth workers do, whether they're educators or mentors or psychologists is we're trying to provide that support and safety for them. So, you now have a doctorate degree. You do all these international speaking things. You've written books. How was your educational experience for you like, were you a good student, did you struggle or describe that and tell our listeners about your early educational experiences?

Dr. Gavoni 

You know, early in elementary, actually, the teacher had to call my mom in because I was misbehaving, you know, I was not, I never cared for school very much. I ended up being in like, gifted classes and but I was like, felt different all the time. You know, we were, I was still doing athletics. And, you know, just my history was different than a lot of the folks that were in there. And so, I did just enough to get by in school and I still squeaked out a 3.1 average or something along those lines. And I went to college because it was always an expectation that I go. And so, the first semester of college, I failed. I got two F's, a D, and like a B, or something like that. And it's because I was surfing. I would show up and I'm like, man, they're not collecting, doing roll. I want to go surfing. So, there's immediate gratification.

Paul Meunier 

Okay. Yeah, it's a college you realize teachers don't care if you're there or not, right? You could go surfing and nobody's gonna give you a hard time about it. Right?

Dr. Gavoni 

Yeah man. That was hard but so there wasn't a lot of meaning to it. And then I got hooked on a girl and I wanted to move back to Fort Lauderdale and the neighborhood I used to live in and, and my folks said, like, look, we will support you in this way, we're gonna endorse it for you. But I still was on my own. But like, I knew what that meant, you know. I mean, if they endorse it, they support it means I got that safety net, but we need your grades up. And of course, next semester, I had the desire, the motivation. I got, you know, all A's. And so that set me on a path to at least staying in school and achieving a level. But I was still doing it not for the love of vision, not because I wanted the education, not because I knew what I wanted to do when I got older. I was doing just enough to get by. And at some point, when I started struggling a lot, I ended up thinking about quitting college. And there was a moment in my life, where I was excited to learn more sports concessions, I was valeting, I worked in restaurants and things like that. And I was giving parking tickets, I did temp jobs. I was giving out parking tickets in the summer in Fort Lauderdale so assume it's 110 degrees or whatever. I remember these people coming up in beautiful cars, and they're going to the beach, and they're going to enjoy themselves. And here I'm sweating, making five bucks an hour or whatever I'm making. I'm like, What am I doing? Is this what I want to do with my life? Right? So, I had to experience this very aversive stuff. Because for me, almost everything great that I've done has come out of something that's been bad, right? Like I had to learn from it, I had to have that motivation. And so, this set me on a path like I need to take school seriously and I'm like what do I want to do you know what I like? And at that point, I had gone to a therapist when I was younger, because I was having breathing problems. And they helped me and I kind of like helping people. And that's a value of mine. So, I ended up pursuing social work. And I got a Bachelors in social work, and I got my Master's in social work. And so that started to have some meaning for me. And then I started working with youth, adolescents with dual diagnosis like street kids that got caught smoking pot. And I loved them, they love me, you know. Like somehow the fighting background, got them to open up to me. I worked in residential treatment facilities for sex offenders. But then in 2003, somebody said, Go, you should go get this training. If you get this training, I'm broke, I have a house and I can barely afford to put gas in my car. They said if you get this training, you can make 50 bucks an hour. And I'm like, Wow, 50 bucks an hour, man, that's a lot of money. And so, I thought it was like a crisis management training because it was about behavior. And it was my first exposure to Applied Behavior Analysis, which is the science of human behavior. And so, I knew that I liked to help people and I'm like this is the science behind helping people. And what I found since then, my actually private consulting business is Heart and Science. The main company I work for Professional Crisis Management, all rooted in the science of human behavior. Social work is very heavy in heart but light in science. What I found is that in our field, we are heavy in science, but light in heart. And so, we're finding our heart, we're finding our compassion more in the field. And that's what I've brought to the table. And that's why my books have been so successful because it's showing a very compassionate approach and putting a compassionate face on how do we bring out the best in people. And so, for our youth, for example, if I go into school, and like, you might want to support the learner, but you can't make it about the learner without making it about the teacher, right? To bring out the best in the learner, you got to bring out the best teacher. So, we have to use the same principles with that. Well, you need the same thing, if you're gonna bring out the best in the teacher, you've got to bring out the best in the school leader. And so, and then we got to bring out the district leader. So, these are called meta contingencies. They're interlocking behaviors, and everybody's engaging in these behaviors, and we pinpoint the right one, we get this result of students being successful. And so, I go into like organizations and schools and help them take a look at what we call behavior systems analysis and values-based behavior system analysis, knowing what shared values are, and then taking a look at what their systems look like right now, what they want to look like, what's the discrepancy between the performance and then engaging in performance engineering of line performance up the chain to ensure that we're getting the best out of people and making sure that we got lots of input from the stakeholders. In these organizations, unfortunately, and this is very important for youth, whether it's a school or any sort of facility or whatever, we got to make sure that people feel safe and comfortable. We're getting social validity data for them, right? We're checking in with them on a regular basis. And in schools, for example, they have something like that called the climate survey. And I love climate surveys. The problem is that they give this at the end of the year. And that's like an autopsy. What are you going to do with all that data? Teachers should be regularly checking in about their leadership, their management with the students. You know, the school leaders need to be doing this with the teachers. And when I went in to turnaround failing schools, I checked in weekly. I needed to know how people were feeling, I needed input from them. I needed to engage the stakeholders. And we took family schools that nobody could turn around and in a couple of months have like the local and the state union president come out and declare a miracle. I'm like it's not a miracle. It's the science of human behaviors as it's applied to organizations. And so, that's where I've hung my hat.

Paul Meunier 

Hard to believe, but we have to take a short break. But we'll be right back. And I have a few more questions I want to ask you to get to know you a little bit better. So, we'll be right back.

Jade Schleif 

No matter how you support our young people, The Professional Youth Worker powered by YIPA has your training and learning needs covered. Visit training.yipa.org, that's training.yipa.org to see for yourself, and then join the 1000s of youth workers around the globe who learn from our easy to access exceptional trainings. From our blogs to our podcast, The Professional Youth Worker is your go-to resource for tools to help you keep going, keep learning, and keep growing. Members enjoy free unlimited access to Live Online and On-Demand trainings, and a preferred discount pricing for one-of-a-kind certificate course. Annual memberships are ridiculously affordable for individuals and organizations. Visit training.yipa.org today to learn more. That's training.yipa.org

Paul Meunier 

Paulie, right before the break you were talking about your evolution into working with young people. And when we choose a career, we decide something want to do, often we get something out of that. It's not just a paycheck, the kind of work you can do I can tell is much more than a paycheck. What do you get personally, what kind of emotional satisfaction I should say do you get from working with young people and helping them succeed and watching them grow? What drives you?

Dr. Gavoni 

Well, so you know, I actually teach. I go around and teach a lot of people, my colleague and I, Nico, how to use this thing called the ACT Matrix, the ACT Matrix I think everybody should learn how to do. It's really the science of human behaviors. So, figuring out our values, figuring out what shows up inside of us, like the science of mindfulness, right? What thoughts and feelings show up when we think or feel this way? How do we behave? And are those behaviors aligned with our values? And if they do not align with our values, what should we be doing? But what I find is that people don't know their values, right. And I think that everybody should learn how to use the ACT Matrix, because it can teach us how to cope and be more aware of our behavior and the impact of our behavior on the environment. So, it starts with our values. Now, I didn't know what my values are growing up. Nobody said, What are your values, what's important to you?

Paul Meunier 

Right, right.

Dr. Gavoni 

I started to have to reflect on like, when do I feel the best? What was I doing when I feel the best?

Paul Meunier 

Sure.

Dr. Gavoni 

And what I've found is that and I know this is part of this podcast is that I love inspiring people. I didn't realize that until about eight years ago, when people were coming up to me and say, You said this, and it's changed my life or change what I did, and whatever. I'm like that felt so good to hear that. I’m like this is a value. I knew I valued being kind to people, I knew I'd value treating people with respect. Like, I don't care if you're the CEO or the maintenance person, I'm going to treat you all the same. But I will judge you by how if you got the most power in the room, by how you treat the person with the least amount of power, right? So, that's a value to me is that treating people with respect. So, I had to really think about that stuff and be aware of those things. But also, I need to with that think about, you know, what I was doing and am I behaving in alignment with those values. But it starts with my values. It does feel good to help but it's just not youth, I don't only focus on youth, right? Youth being successful is an outcome. And in order to get the best out of the youth, we've got to get the best out of the employees. You cannot separate the two and this is what happens when I say you got to do it for the kids. You cannot make it about the kids without making it about the youth workers and and principles of behavior are all the same up the chain. And I feel like people are well-meaning when they say that, but I feel like it's a cop-out sometimes when they say we do for the kids. Well, you know as a good leader, leading can come from anywhere. It's not about position, I actually do a keynote speech called Positional Authority Ain't Leadership. Anybody can engage in leading behavior because it's about inspiring people towards a common goal. In our field we call it a motivating operation. So, anybody can engage in this kind of inspirational behavior. But too often, people wield coercion or fear of consequences to get people to behave, and you're not going to serve the youth the best that you can if your people in your organization and your school, are behaving out of fear. That's going to trickle down. It's going to have a ripple effect. They're going to you know, it's like they get tunnel vision, they can't innovate. They can't focus on building relationships, they can't focus on engaging and all these really important skill development strategies or whatever that they're doing if they're behaving out of fear. It's that tunnel vision. So, did I answer the question with that?

Paul Meunier 

Yeah, I think you did. And I think it's really important that we understand what we get out of our work and where those values lie. And I think that's really important. And I do think you got into that. And it's clear to see you love to inspire people, and you love to push people and make them see that they have better in them so that they can achieve and do what they want to do and become the people that they want to be. And one of the things I'm getting from you is you have wonderful advice to give on a regular basis, any topic I could bring up, you have something really cool to say about it. But I want to turn the coin upside down a little bit and look at the other side. What's the best advice somebody ever gave you about being a worker in the human services field, whether it's with adults or kids? What kind of life lesson did somebody tell you that you just went Yeah, I get it. And I'm gonna incorporate what they said?

Dr. Gavoni 

Yeah, it's not about intent, it's about impact. And so, we need to be better observers of our behavior, better observes of the impact of our behavior on the environment, and better observes of the impact of the environment on our behavior. And that means the environment inside of us and outside of us, in the behavior inside of us and outside of us. If you do this, Paul, and you're part of my environment, and I think this way, as a result of that, and I behave that way. Are those behaviors in alignment with my values, right? And if not, what do I need to do? I really need to accept that stuff, I need to commit to doing something else, right. So, that awareness piece becomes really important. We know there's like 1000s of years’ worth of people supporting mindfulness. I'd look at is as the science of mindfulness. We need to be aware of those things, right. I bring it back into our behavioral lens. Does that make sense?

Paul Meunier 

It does. Yeah. And it sounds like that was solid advice that somebody gave you. And I think as youth workers, we have to be open and receptive to learning and growing and hearing what people have to say so that we can expand our knowledge base and understand both the art and the science, as you so well described, about the ability to have an impact on people. So, I think you said that really well. What do you think a common myth is in our society, or maybe societies around the globe, that people have about youth workers and people who support young people?

Dr. Gavoni 

Well, I don't know if it's a myth. What I want to say here's what's common. I feel that people who support youth workers are typically underprepared. They're not given the training that they should be getting. These are our frontline warriors.

Paul Meunier 

That's right.

Dr. Gavoni 

They're not trained well, and they're not coached well and when something goes wrong, they get blamed, that finger gets blamed a lot. And from my perspective, I've talked about the impact of our behavior, if the person I am supporting is not performing to a standard, I need to hold up the mirror and I need to look at myself and think about what am I going to do more or less differently. When my fighters lose, even though they could have trained better or ate better, I think about what I could have done to inspire them to train better, to inspire them to eat better. If they lost because of a technical mistake, what do I need to do to help them be better the next time? Too often, people are blaming the learner, right? And all these youth workers are learners who knows it all. And so, I believe this requires good leading, good managing, good training, and good coaching. These are hats that we all need to put on, they all serve a different function. Again, leading is about inspiring behavior towards a common goal. Managing is about leveraging existing contingencies to ensure they get there effectively and efficiently. Training is about skill acquisition. And coaching is about supporting the transference of learned skills into natural environments. So, they all serve a different function. And we've got to make sure we put on the right hat at the right time. And so, we need to support our youth workers. And I mean the outcome, you know, the outcome on our youth, like in education, for example, man, if we want to reduce incarceration, if we want to improve upon poverty, if we want to improve mental health and quality of life, we need to educate our youth, which means we need to educate and support the people who are supporting them. And we don't do that. We're dropping them into the classroom at the school environment the same way that I was dropped into the ring the first day I walked into the boxing gym and I took a beating from the professional fighter. And I was wondering how many potential world champions walked into the beating that I took and never came back thinking they didn't have what it took. But it didn't, I should never been in an environment I should have been developed more systematically faded out, so I could be successful. And if I can be successful, anybody can be successful. I know that they can, but we got to prepare them better and they'll save money. They're like it costs money. How much do we think turnover costs? How much do we think the impact of our youth costs, right? It's costing us billions and billions and billions of dollars. We can be better but we need to stop looking at this, we need to zoom out and reflect on our own behavior and the behavior up the chain.

Paul Meunier 

I couldn't agree with you more about the need for better training, better onboarding, and better preparation. This is hard work. Human connection and human relationships are difficult and it takes a lot of skill and training to get to be effective at this. I always say it's a lifelong skill, you never get to the point where you say, Now, I'm really good at it. You're just always perfecting your craft. And I'm sure that's probably true in your fighting as well. Given all that, what do you think like, and I know, there's a lot of traits and a lot of different hats that people have to wear when they do this kind of work and their job is to help others succeed. What do you think is a common trait or maybe the most important trait that people have to have that they bring to this work?

Dr. Gavoni 

Well, I want to go back to the four things I just said there in the leading, managing, training, and coaching. I think those are all very important. What I find is that everybody needs to know how to engage in some sort of coaching behavior. Training from my perspective, and onboarding, and competency building, and all those things; telling, planning goal setting, they're what we call antecedent strategies, and they're intended to get behavior moving the right direction, right. Remember, I'm a behavior scientist. But what we know is that it's consequences that maintain behavior, right. And, for example, if you value helping youth, and you see that by engaging in this behavior, they're being helped in some way. There's a metric that you can tell that they're being helped.  Your behavior is going to get in touch what we call naturally occurring positive reinforcement. But a lot of times, we don't see that outcome right away. So, we need people to coach, we need to help others behave well enough and long enough, and help them see the impact of their behavior on their environment, those things that they value, right. So, they need to recognize their value and we make those things salient to them. They need to understand that the grind that you're doing now is in service to a bigger good, right? That shared value, the thing that is important to us all. And good leaders unpack that path for them. They make it very clear for them. And they look to shape behavior. They realize that you don't go to A to Z, you go from A to B and C and D, and you reinforce approximations towards that desired goal.

Paul Meunier 

Yeah, well said. And I think that's really important. And I like your distinction about coaching. And I think that if youth workers all had a coach or somebody supporting them, or a mentor along the way, we'd all be better about that. Why do you think that our industry in general, and you know, that's a really broad brushstroke but why don't we do more of that coaching and onboarding and developing them as a person?

Dr. Gavoni 

Very simple. I think we're like addicted to training. And we think training, like I can make sure that we throw training at everything. And if anybody looks, if they want to go look at Joyce and Showers 2002 data it's a beautiful visual, just click on the images on Google and you'll see that giving somebody theory results in 0% transfer into the classroom. This is research they did on youth.

Paul Meunier 

Yeah.

Dr. Gavoni 

I can give my fighter theory, they're gonna take a beating, right?

Paul Meunier 

That's right.

Dr. Gavoni 

I can do theory and modeling great, still resulting in 0% transfer in the classroom right? Now, I can get them to engage, rehearse things and give them feedback to make sure they have the skill. Wonderful, right? So, they learned 60 to 70% of the skills, great. But when you go look in the classroom, the teachers are still only performing about 5 to 10% of what they learn. So, that doesn't work. And so, what does work, again, is getting people to behave well enough and long enough to see the impact on the environment. The reason, folks aren't doing that, because they don't understand the science of human behavior. And that's the simplest I can put it, right. It's consequences that maintain our behavior. People think it's self-agency. And of course, like you make decisions, you're doing it, the decisions that you make, are based on your history, right. And they're based on what you've learned is important and what you value. So, you're behaving in ways that allows you to get things and get away from things. And the problem is that people engage in what we call negative reinforcement of the use of negative reinforcement or fear of consequences to drive behavior. And they do it because they see it works. Do this now or you get fired, whatever it is, they try to force behavior. The problem with that is that people do just enough to get by and only when you're looking and you're modeling all sorts of bad behavior, and it has a ripple effect on emotions. And anybody that's listening to this does this. You got to think about, Paul, when's the one time you definitely do the speed limit? If you thought about it, you're gonna say when the cop's looking, right? And you're doing just enough to get by and only looking because you fear the consequence. That's not what we want an organization that does not get the best out of people. We need to get people in touch with positive reinforcement, particularly naturally occurring positive reinforcement. And that's why to your point we need to know their values. And they need to know that by engaging in this behavior, it's going to move me towards those values. So, we need to understand shared values and we make that progress salient to them. I think this is how we move things in the right direction. But to come back to the why, my field has done a really poor job of disseminating the science right, of helping people to understand and they've been very judgmental and holier than thou and that's why I've written you know, six books I've written, you know, because I want to equip people. I love helping people do the science. And I love inspiring people to help themselves using practical behavioral principles, and especially to help others, right. So, it disseminates the support that's being provided.

Paul Meunier 

It's amazing that you are talking about bringing all the behavioral science and the explosion of knowledge that we're gaining with all the great studies and things that we're now learning about human behavior. And you're right, I don't think we talk about that hardly enough. And it isn't exposed and people aren't looking at it. But yet the industry as you know, and the field and the science behind it is just exploding in our understanding of why people do the things that they do. So, thanks for bringing all of that into the realm of supporting young people and being a person that's willing to champion whatever needs to be done and bringing your fighter mentality to make sure that things happen for the benefit of other people, and certainly, for the benefit of our young people. So, I'm really glad that you're doing the work you do. I have zero doubt that you are either directly or indirectly impacting a lot of young people. And for that, we value your work very much. So, thank you for everything you do. And thank you for being a guest on the podcast.

Dr. Gavoni 

Thanks for having me, Paul, love talking shop. And hopefully somebody was inspired somewhere. That would, that would be getting me in touch with my values.

Paul Meunier 

That's perfect. And that's our goal, one person being inspired to go and deep inside and figure out how they can be better at what they do. That's what we're striving for. Dr. Gavoni, before we go I always give the guest the last word. What words of wisdom or inspiration, would you like to leave with our listeners?

Dr. Gavoni 

I'm gonna go back to the one I said earlier, and there's nothing wrong with being repetitive here, because it's so important. Do your best to be a better observer of your behavior, a better observer of the impact of your behavior on the environment, and a better observer of the impact of the environment on your behavior. And this includes what you do, what people can see you do, but also your behaviors or covert behaviors, the things that only you can see. Because when you behave certain ways, when you think certain ways, they might serve as precursors to the way you behave. And that might make you feel good in the moment. And that's great, because we all think about how it feels to escape, maybe anxiety. But if you're doing that, and it's pulling you away from your values, this becomes a problem, right? So, you need to be aware of that. You need to accept that you feel that way. Because if you're trying to get rid of that feeling, it can be like holding a ball underwater. And, you know, just changing our thoughts sometimes becomes very hard. What's most important is that we engage in behavior. When we engage in behavior, it moves us towards our values the same way I used to be very afraid of public speaking but when I accepted that I felt anxious, and I realized that I was trying to avoid it all the time. And I committed to learning about public speaking, and I began public speaking more, I saw people inspired, I saw people happy, and I saw people having a better life. And all those feelings of anxiety began coming down and down and down. I couldn't focus on getting rid of those, I had to accept it, I had to focus on the behavior that's going to move me towards my values. And that's probably the best advice I can leave here.

Paul Meunier 

If you would like to share your passion for youth work, we'd love to spotlight you as a guest. If you have feedback about the show, please let us know. Just visit training.yipa.org That's training.yipa.org and click on the podcast tab. This podcast is made possible in part due to a generous contribution from M Health Fairview. I'm your host, Paul Meunier. Thanks for listening to The Passionate Youth Worker.