Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And welcome back everybody to another conversation in the Parenting with Impact podcast. I am super excited for this conversation. My guest is Dr. Andreas Krafft, and when I was at the European Congress on Positive Psychology this summer this is being recorded in the fall of 2024.

This summer, I had the privilege of speaking at this conference, and I had the great privilege of hearing and getting to speak with one of the keynoters, Andreas this. So first, we met on a bus on the way to an event, and we had this lovely conversation, and then the next day, he turned out to be the keynoter on hope.

As you can imagine, I was just taken by this conversation and the research he shared, which is just extraordinary. And what really struck me about it was how resonant it is for our audience for our community, because we often say parents come to us in a place of desperation, and my job is to help parents find inspiration and find hope and to connect to the possibilities. Because these complex kids are challenging, but they're also extraordinary beings, and they have extraordinary capacities.

And so this conversation about hope is super resonant, because we parents need to see the hopeful potential for our kids, and our kids need us to see it for them so that they can find it for themselves. And it turns out there's research on this and so I invited Andreas, and he's been so generous to join me for this conversation. So Andreas, thank you, welcome.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Thank you very much, Elaine, for inviting me, and it was a pleasure meeting you in Innsbruck, and now here again. So I'm very pleased to talk with you and to share our experiences and our research findings from almost 15 years of science and research on the topic

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And global research. This is very what struck me. It was the research talks about all these countries all over the world, I think, except for the US, if I recall.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: We're working on that. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So why don't you introduce yourself and do a better job than I could of helping people understand what makes you a wise voice to speak about hope?

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Well, I don't know if wise, but at least experienced. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Okay.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Thank you very much. Elaine, yeah. I mean, hello, everybody. Yeah, I'm living in Switzerland at the moment. For the last 30 years, my wife and me come to Switzerland from another continent, from another country, from South America. We are both Argentinians, so we grew up in Buenos Aires, and there I studied my college and university, and then we came to Switzerland, especially for my PhD at the University of St. Gallen, where I teach and I do my research.

I'm, on the one hand, a member of the Swiss and the European Association of Positive Psychology, and at the same time, I'm president of the Swiss Society of Future Studies. So what I do, basically, is to integrate the individual psychological level. That means what happens with the person, with the individual, but looking at it within the framework or the context of what is happening in our society, that means I integrate social issues or the topics that very much are challenging us nowadays, in society or in our planet at large, with the impact, but also the resources individual people might have in order to cope with that. So we have.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: The term that's often used to describe you as you're a futurist. 

Dr. Andreas Krafft: I'm a futurist. But maybe people think that futurists know something about the future, and I don't anything about the future, because the future doesn't exist and never will exist. Just the future is something that happens between our two ears, in our brains, in our minds, especially, and what we study especially me, is how people think about the future, about the future, or the future in plural, also.

And the way we think about the future impacts very strongly how we live in the present today, and this connection between what we experience now, not only individually, but also collectively in our society, and how that influences our view with regard to the future and vice versa, how this view of the future impacts and influences our decisions, our way of living, our quality of life and so on. That is the main topic of my research over the last 15 years.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: As a coach, we talk a lot about the value, or the importance of understanding perspective, and that when we change perspective, we actually change outcomes. And I think what you just described was the explanation that when we understand how we think about something, it's going to change how we act in respect.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Exactly.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And that what you're saying is changes the future. 

Dr. Andreas Krafft: That's exactly the topic because the future is nothing that is personally given. Secondly, is nothing that just happens to us. If, or let's say it another way, we look into the future or at the future, thinking that this future is something that will happen to us, we are just passive. We are just sometimes helpless. Maybe we are also just waiting for things that happen.

But we have another way of thinking about the future, and this is not that the future will happen to us, but we will have we will do the future. We will go into the future, and we are going to shape the future and to construct the future and to, yeah, and not only me myself, but we together, because it's not only about myself, but it's about how we just, yeah, shape at a future together.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, I'm so struck. We've been having this conversation a lot, because here in the United States, obviously we're going through some turmoil, and.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Not only the US.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Not true around the world. And I've been talking about my kids are now young adults, and so I've been having this conversation. One of my kids is very much a philosopher in his mid-20s, and talking about how the world shifted after 9/11 and in 2001 the ways in which fear became an integral part of people's daily life, in a way that it wasn't for many before then.

And so I'm curious about this notion of what are the conditions that have people feeling stuck like the world is happening to them versus feeling capable of creating change. Can you speak to that a little? 

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Well, yeah, basically what? First of all, I wanted to say that we also have two children, and they are all in their mid-20s. So are we experienced with our children, not only during the last few years, but all the trajectory through childhood and then adolescence and so on, was very important to me, not only for studying hope, but living it with these two young adults now and we are, for sure, living in a time in time in history where so many things are changing, and where we feel challenged and also threat, threatened by the crisis, the conflicts and so many things that we receive every day, through the social media, through the news, in TV, in the newspapers, and especially children.

I mean, not only young children and youth younger adults, but everybody has been, let's say, influenced by all these things. I mean, in your case, in the US, it was 9/11 something terrific, but so many other things happened during the last 10 years in so many countries. And when we are confronted with all this negative information, what we used to do, most people used to do is to project all these negative experiences or negative news into the future, so we are not or it is very difficult for people, for everybody, for us to say, Okay, now it is a bad time or a very struggling time, but we will be able to improve. We will be able to change something and so on. That means that what we have to transmit to people, in general, and especially to young people.

I also work not only at the university, where my students are also in their 20s, but I also, I'm also at high school level with young people between, I would say, 15 and 18, 14. And 18 is to tell them that the future can be and will be different than the present. The question is, how different would it be worse? But also it could be better? So the question is, we have it in our hands to change something for the better.

The question and this is the paradox of our times, is that, on the one hand, let's consider that our children and our young adults have more or less everything they need for a good living. I mean, this generation has much more in terms of material goods, in terms of possibilities, also education, and maybe also new jobs. Then so many generations before.

That means, on the one hand, our young people do have a lot of resources and things, but on the other hand, they are confronted with so many negative experiences and news and what they lack a little bit, and I can see it with our own children. It's not something that they have to live for, but in terms of material goods, but the perspectives of a better future for themselves and their own children and grandchildren, and that's it.

And that is a little bit of paradox on the one hand, but it's devastating on the other hand, because if they don't feel that, I mean, we are living in a time that is called dystopian. Dystopian I don't know if you know the term it's this is bad, and topos is the place that means many people think that the future will be a bad place to live in. And if that's the basic attitude and the basic condition of our lives.

The question is, why are we living at all? I mean, should we? I mean, there are so many young people, maybe not young children, but young adults that don't want to bring children.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Into the world.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: In children, into the world.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Because they believe that would be something not suitable or not good for them. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So is this different Andreas? Because I think back, like when I was 19, I wasn't gonna have kids, because I didn't want to bring them into this world we were in so I had that, teenager fear for the world, but I, clearly, I grew out of it. I think, we understood growing environmentalism and concerns about the planet in those days, but not the way now we're hearing what the damage we've done to the planet is irreparable, and so can you speak to what's got kids feeling like they can't improve things?

What's different between when we grew up and we saw the potential to make things better and there that tendency to look at it and say, Well, we're screwed. 

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Well, at that time.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: For my kids, a lot.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Exactly. At that time, we didn't have any research on hope and on other topics. But, I mean, what I experienced and was looking I mean, as a futurist, I don't look only into the future, but I also look back to the past, and what I realized is that every generation has like a task or something that a challenge to cope with.

I mean, last century, it was not only about the environment and sustainability, but it was about the topic of equality because we had developed so much wealth at least in our wealthy countries. It's not over everywhere, over the world, but in many Eastern Countries, we had so much wealth, but it was so unequally distributed, so many young people at that time.

I mean, in our generation, they wanted to work to engage themselves for more justice for more rights for many people. And I think that was one of the main hopes of the 20th century, and that was that at the end of the century, what we achieved is to have a little bit of a more equal society in terms of ethnicity, in terms of human rights, in terms of rights for women or children, for well, the United Nations and so on. So, I mean, we're not we're not done.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We're not there.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: We're not there. Not there yet. So the topic of the environment, I mean at that time, people in young people engaged in demonstrations, in different events, and so on. And I think that at that time, it was very impactful because the awareness of general society started to increase however, maybe we were much more focused on our material wealth and so many, yeah, on earnings and everything and or on maybe, yeah, getting or having more equality in our society that we a little bit forgot, yeah, that issue of sustainability and environment, and at that time, what we have achieved is at least compared to the 19th century and the previous centuries, was huge.

I mean, we have done so, not our generation only, but the generation before. But now we are facing a little bit of these challenges where children or young adults don't know what to do because they feel help. But the same thing happened 100 years ago. Let's consider we are now in the year 2024 let's go back to 1924 at the beginning of the 20th century, I think at that time, I was not able to speak about the US, but from my point of view, women, black people, and other people with other ethnicities might be they were at that time, as frustrated as our generation is today about the challenges that we are facing today, and this is some it is a little bit a repeating pattern that we can see that consider, I mean living in Switzerland.

I mean Switzerland is one of the wealthiest countries in the world 100 year ago, Switzerland was a poor country with people emigrating to the US, to South America, to Australia, and to other countries, because people were poor here in Switzerland, and at that time, they were not people were not able to imagine how wealthy the country would become at the end of the same century. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Understood.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: The same thing is happening now. We are facing the big challenges. One of, I think the biggest challenges in the history of mankind is that, well, we are facing these challenges about peace, sustainability, and health, these are the big three issues in the 24th century, and we are experiencing exactly the opposite of what we hope for.

We are experiencing conflicts. We're experiencing pandemics, and we are experiencing, well, ecological and climate catastrophes and crises. I think we are not able, and we should be, because we should do something about that, and not only something but a big deal about that, but we are not able to imagine that at the end of this century. And for some, it might be too far away and too late, but we should be able to imagine the things that are.

Not imaginable. Now could be possible in that period of time our child, we are not able to change. And this is, I think, what hinders us from engaging ourselves. We are used to engaging ourselves with short-term profits. Profits in general terms, not only economically speaking, it positive gains.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: So we think that everything that we do must be rewarded in a short period of time. That means in a couple of months or a year, the big challenges in our times are not we are not able to solve them within one or two years.

These are engagements and projects that will last for the next 30, 40, 50 years, but we have to do something now. That means that we have to transmit to the young generation, but to people, and also in general, that we must have this hope that we will be able to improve and change our world for the better.

Because if we don't believe that what we wish for is possible, what we will do is just keep our hopes, our wishes, and our desires, and we will focus not on something that we will achieve, but we will focus on things that we don't want to lose. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. So that's explained so much of the totalitarianism happening around the globe. Is that?

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Exactly.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We are losing what we have. I want to pause for a quick moment. We're gonna take a quick break, and we'll be right back. Welcome back, everybody. My guest is Dr. Andreas Krafft, and we are having an existential conversation about life change, and hope.

And you were just saying that we must have hope, that things will be able to improve or change and without that hope, we end up getting stuck in this world of fearing our loss. We get very focused on ourselves.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Sometimes I think we do have not an incorrect definition of what is hope. Maybe some people think hope is just wishful thinking or when we don't have the possibility to change anything, then we just, yeah, have to hope, and that's not the case. Hope is the condition for action. If we don't.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: If the condition for action.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: For action, consider, if you are, for example, looking for a job, but you're not hoping to get any jobs. You won't apply for any job. That means, if you don't believe that what you are hoping for or wishing for would be possible, then you will just be frustrated, and you're not gonna do anything about it. For example, a person that is maybe wishing to find a new partner, just to, yeah, to have somebody to share his or her life with.

And maybe this person has lost hope for, yeah, finding somebody, the natural consequence is that this person wouldn't do anything to find and to meet other people in whatever the person is that means hope is, on the one hand, the condition for action, but at the same time, the recognition and or the acknowledgment of our limits that we are not able to do it alone.

We, in this, more very much individualistic societies have been, let's say, raised up with the belief that, or maybe the ambition we should change or cope for ourselves in every situation. But this is not possible, and it's not possible, especially with these big challenges in our society.

That means to be to have to not to lose hope, implies that first of all, we have to have a wish. We have to not we have to be aware of what is important to us. And never forget that, and if sustainability or equal rights or health or peace are important to us.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: For parents of complex kids what really resonated when I heard you speak this summer was how resonant this was for our community, and you understand.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Exactly.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: World of complex kids, when a parent can't see the potential for their kid when they stop hoping that's possible. Can you apply to this community? 

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Yeah, and this is exactly the point where we have as parents, we have different duties or tasks, and sometimes we can do something for our children, and sometimes we are not able to influence what they do, but we never should lose hope.

And what does it mean to hope for our children? And this is in our case, we experience it with our children, because our children at least our son, he was also one of these.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Complex kid.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Different person, a little bit different than we have to change school. And we had so many different, well, looking for many different people to help us, what we learned is that we should continue believing in our children's, children once they are not able to believe in themselves anymore. And.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Can you say that again? Because this is something I say a lot. And so when I heard you say it, I went, Yes.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We as parents.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: So our children, our kids, they go through so many challenges during their years the lives, and there are many points in their lives where they lose self-confidence. They lose sometimes the belief that what they wish for is possible.

They lose their belief, in the end, themselves, and our task, our duty, is to transmit to them that even though they don't believe in themselves anymore, we will keep believing or we will continue believing in them because we know that there is a new possibility, that there would be always new possibilities to them, and also that they will have the resources or the capabilities, the competencies, to, yeah, to move forward, maybe not the way we wanted to at the beginning, maybe not the way we thought it would be the best for them.

But my experience now, looking back to what our kids experienced during the last 10 years, is that there is always a positive path, or many positive paths, where they will that they will discover and they will go through. But the most important thing is that they feel themselves empowered.

They feel loved because in the end, to hope for them and to tell them that we are hoping for them is an, It's just a manifestation of our love for them. But the next consequence is if we wouldn't be able to hope for them and to believe in them.

What we are doing is giving up our own role as parents. I don't know if that's clear the concept, because our role as parents is to give our children the best point of departure for dealing with their lives and for growing and for flourishing and so on, and we are, and if we are not able to do that, or to believe that they would be able to do that, then what we are not only giving up our children, but we are giving up ourselves as parents, and this is, can you? I don't know if that's clear.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I understand, because this is so resonant with our approach. And what really strikes me about what you're saying is that parents do give up hope. They don't give it up, they lose hope. And then part of it for us, part of our work, is to help reconnect them to the hope of what's possible.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Exactly.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Their children, because it could, it's scary and it's demoralizing and it's frustrating, and it's all of these things and I think what I hear you saying is that we as parents, we have to reconnect to that hope.

We have to hold hope for our kids, to help them see it for themselves. And this for you, is coming not only from your experience as a parent but also from the research you've done around hope.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Exactly. And we have to be aware that hope and our own expectations could be something completely different.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yes.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Because sometimes we have some expectations on our kids and might be maybe these are not exactly what they need at this moment or in the future, to hope for our children is basically to wish the best for them and what is the best for them.

We do not always know that as parents, sometimes they have or not only sometimes, but I think they have to discover what is best for themselves. But we have to, yeah, be with them and observe them and say, tell them we I mean, I can give you one example of our son.

This was two years ago. He was studying at the University and was very, very much frustrated, and he had a crisis, very a strong crisis, at the and he didn't know if he should leave the university and just, yeah, change whatever. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Or to continue and what I and he, well, he was really very, very sad and frustrated and struggling. And then we had a conversation, and what I told him at that moment is, regardless of how you are gonna decide, which decision you will take, both are correct.

If you continue with the university, then that's a sign of your perseverance, of your persistence, and so on. And if you skip the university, or you have leave university, then it's a sign that you are, yeah, looking at your heart, what your heart is saying and in both cases, it's fine, it's okay.

And I experience it with this, with our son, that at that moment, all the pressure, all the, yeah, all that negative that worries and preoccupations and everything vanished, at that moment, and then he decided to continue. And everything changed for the better.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Because his perspective on it shifted. You gave.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Exactly. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: To see it differently.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Correctly.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I hate to end this conversation because I could talk to you for hours, but we do need to start wrapping the conversation, why don't you tell us how people can find out more about you? I know there's a book, there's a great deal of research.

Where do we want to direct people? I know there will be links in the show notes everybody, because there's too much for him to say. 

Dr. Andreas Krafft: We have several books in English. One of those, it's called, it's for the general public, not very not only for the scientific community. And the title is. Our Hopes, Our Future, by Springer at the Springer, publishing house.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And we'll find the show notes everyone.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Yeah. And we are working on a new website that I will share with you during the next week. So I think you can contact me as well. And we'll.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Have everything there for you that you need. 

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Exactly.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Why don't you? As we wrap this conversation, I want you to identify what have we not talked about, that you feel like you want to share, but I want to point you a little bit to indicate because one of the things that were so striking as you shared your research was this conversation about people moving forward or moving towards something, and which I thought was so relevant for this audience, what is your research have to offer parents of kids, whether they're children or teens or young adults with complex issues. What does the research tell us?

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Basically, that future is open. If we despair, what we are doing is we are closing up our future. Hope is about opening the future again, looking at the possibility, maybe not at the moment, because sometimes we are captured or struggling with the future, with the present.

Sorry, but imagining a better future is a task that everybody can do, and we have to open up our minds or our attitudes toward the future and never lose, not only hope, but the belief that even though it will be difficult because going towards the future is not just a Sunday walk, it's a very difficult, a very risky hiking, let's say, but it's worthwhile doing it because it's our lives.

I mean, we are living in the present, but the rest of the world, the rest of our lives, will be in what we call our future. That means we are we have the responsibility for ourselves and also for our children to never lose the belief that the future could be better, because if we lose that belief, we are giving up hope, and we are giving up our children.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Beautiful. So what's the message to the children of this generation who hear that and feel like it's too late? You've already ruined the planet. You've already screwed it up. For us old people.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: It's never too late. I mean, when, if we live our lives, if we value our lives and if we value our planet and we are in love with, let's say not ourselves only, but self-love, it's something positive in it not egotism, but it's yes, self-confidence and self-esteem if we don't want to lose the love that we feel towards other people and the love that we could feel to this whole creation, our planet, then it's never too late. It wouldn't could be. It couldn't be too late, because we are still able to change something for the better.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Beautiful. What a lovely, lovely message to end on. Thank you. Andres.

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Thank you too.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I am so honored to know you. Thank you for the work that you're doing in the world. It is, I encourage everybody to look for the book and look for the website. It is so hopeful and inspiring and uplifting to see what happens when these researchers, these scientists, are exploring these conversations with people all over the world, and to see all the different countries and how they tend to approach the thoughts about change and thoughts about the future, it's quite fascinating, and it's important. So thank you. 

Dr. Andreas Krafft: Thank you very much. Elaine, your work is also very, very inspiring and important too. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Thank you. I appreciate it to those of you listening, thank you for tuning in, for this somewhat more existential conversation than usual.

I appreciate your listening, your engaging, and your thinking, as you've heard me say so many times, the change you want for your kids starts with you. And very, very often our kids need us desperately to parent from a place of inspiration, instead of desperation, to hold belief in what they're capable of, even when they can't see it for themselves. So I invite you to take a moment to think about the conversation that you've just listened to and ask yourself, What are you taking away from this conversation? What's one gym? What's one insight? One Aha, or awareness? What do you want to take with you and bring forward with you into your future?

Maybe it's a conversation you want to have with one of your kids or with your co-parent. What are you aware of in this moment as always, thank you for what you're doing for yourself and for your kids. As Andreas has pointed out so clearly today, what you do makes an extraordinary difference. Take care, everybody. See you on the next one.