# Enhanced Games (and Why Failure Might Be Your Child’s Best Teacher!)

An episode of [Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1082244480), 23 Aug 2026, 15 min.

Audio: https://mgln.ai/e/187/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/b69b2795-5503-4de1-ac91-af460017906e/97447fc4-5f5c-471f-bb7c-b4a00016954d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=a05f1702-0c0e-4b0f-8014-af460017907c

Everyone wants the shortcut. Better results, less effort, faster success. But what happens when the shortcut fails? The Enhanced Games promised superhuman athletic performances through performance-enhancing drugs. Instead, the results offered a surprising lesson for parents and kids. Justin and Kylie unpack our obsession with hacks, optimisation and instant success, and explain why real achievement is usually built through something far less exciting: repetition, mistakes, patience and showing up again. KEY POINTS • Why the Enhanced Games became a lesson in the limits of shortcuts • The growing culture of hacks, optimisation and instant results • What elite athletes understand about boredom, repetition and mastery • Why failure is part of becoming genuinely good at something • How online influencers sell boys shortcuts to looks, wealth and status • Why doing the work matters as much as reaching the goal • What parents can teach kids about consistency when progress feels slow QUOTE OF THE EPISODE “It’s not actually about getting there, it’s about who you become while you’re getting there.” RESOURCES MENTIONED • Atomic Habits by James Clear • How to Live by Derek Sivers • The Enhanced Games • Michael Jordan’s reflections on failure and success ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS • Praise practice, persistence and improvement rather than quick wins. • Let your child struggle with something long enough to learn from their mistakes. • Talk about the shortcuts and “hacks” they see online and what those promises leave out. • Help kids see repetition as part of mastery, not proof that they lack talent. • When they make a mistake, ask what they know now that they didn’t know before. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:05] Speaker 1: It's The Happy Family's podcast. What can doping athletes teach
[0:09] Speaker 1: us about success? What can our children learn from drug cheats?
[0:14] Speaker 1: Why are we talking about this on The Happy Families podcast?
[0:17] Speaker 1: Has it got anything to do with parenting at all?
[0:20] Speaker 1: I think that you might be surprised. Doping, athletics and parenting.
[0:24] Speaker 1: That's next stay with us.
[0:28] Speaker 2: It's been billed as the future of sport, but the
[0:30] Speaker 2: Enhanced Games in Las Vegas has been declared a flop.
[0:34] Speaker 2: Australia's own James the Missile Magnuson bombed out in his event.
[0:39] Speaker 2: I'll just one world record has been broken.
[0:42] Speaker 1: It's The Happy Family's Podcast. Welcome to a brand new week.
[0:44] Speaker 1: We are Justin and Kylie Colson. Parents have six daughters.
[0:46] Speaker 1: This is the podcast where you get real parenting solutions
[0:48] Speaker 1: every single day. Astraight A's most downloaded parenting podcast. On
[0:52] Speaker 1: May twenty four of twenty twenty six, the first Enhanced
[0:56] Speaker 1: Games took place in Las Vegas.
[0:59] Speaker 3: So when you opened this podcast, I thought you were
[1:02] Speaker 3: saying dopey as in one of the Seven Dwarfs.
[1:06] Speaker 1: No, I'm not talking about lacking intelligence. I didn't say dopey.
[1:09] Speaker 1: I said doping. Doping as in drug checks.
[1:12] Speaker 3: Now I'm really confused.
[1:15] Speaker 1: Evidently, And we're not talking about the recently completed Commonwealth
[1:18] Speaker 1: Games that was supposed to be Victoria but ended up
[1:20] Speaker 1: over in the UK either. We're talking about doping, doping athletes.
[1:23] Speaker 1: So did you hear about the Enhanced Games? It's not
[1:25] Speaker 1: a joke. It sounds like a punchline's coming. But the
[1:28] Speaker 1: Enhanced Games back in May?
[1:29] Speaker 3: Did you I heard minimal?
[1:31] Speaker 1: Okay? Great? And what did you? What do you know
[1:33] Speaker 1: about it?
[1:34] Speaker 3: Just that they were allowed to use drugs okay to
[1:37] Speaker 3: enhance their performance.
[1:38] Speaker 1: Pretty much. According to the organizers, and this is a
[1:40] Speaker 1: direct quote from their website, the Games are ushering in
[1:43] Speaker 1: quote a new era in athletic competition that embraces scientific
[1:47] Speaker 1: advancements to push the boundaries of human performance. So that's
[1:51] Speaker 1: pr speak. Four. Our athletes are doped to the gills
[1:54] Speaker 1: and we're encouraging it. Right, That's that's the whole box
[1:57] Speaker 1: and dice. It's the Olympics.
[1:58] Speaker 3: But the cheats, it doesn't makes sense at all. And
[2:02] Speaker 3: I'm still confused why we're talking about it today.
[2:05] Speaker 1: All right, Well, I'm going to get to the parenting
[2:06] Speaker 1: thing in just a sec. But I just want to
[2:08] Speaker 1: be really clear. The promise of the Enhanced Games was
[2:10] Speaker 1: We're going to see a whole lot of world records,
[2:12] Speaker 1: We're going to see a whole lot astonishing performances, and
[2:14] Speaker 1: a whole new world of limitless potential.
[2:16] Speaker 3: So what I'm hearing is that if parents had access
[2:20] Speaker 3: to hallucina genics or I don't know, psychedelics, that we'd
[2:26] Speaker 3: actually enhance our parenting. Is that where we're coming, we're
[2:29] Speaker 3: getting anywhere near that.
[2:30] Speaker 1: I was thinking, where are you going? What have you been? Anyway,
[2:35] Speaker 1: the more chilled we are, the better. No, no, no, no,
[2:37] Speaker 1: no no no. But that was the promise of the
[2:39] Speaker 1: Enhanced Games. The reality of the Enhanced Games was very,
[2:41] Speaker 1: very different. Here's what happened. There was a whole lot
[2:43] Speaker 1: of drugs. It was a woeful competitive spectacle, and essentially
[2:49] Speaker 1: there was zero enhancement of anything.
[2:51] Speaker 3: So no world records broken even with the enhancement of drugs.
[2:55] Speaker 1: Let's just say that the East Germans of the eighties
[2:57] Speaker 1: and the Chinese athletes are the nineties doped more successfully,
[3:02] Speaker 1: and they were doing it illicitly, right, So let's talk
[3:07] Speaker 1: about the records first. The swimming is the one that
[3:09] Speaker 1: I'm most interested in because I used to be a swimmer.
[3:12] Speaker 1: One world record was beaten, and in the write ups afterwards,
[3:17] Speaker 1: it seems that it was much more to do.
[3:18] Speaker 3: With wasn't there a massive controversy over the swimming.
[3:22] Speaker 1: Well, they were wearing a supersuit. The supersits were banned
[3:25] Speaker 1: in the twenty tens. Yeah, and the write ups basically
[3:29] Speaker 1: say it probably didn't have anything to do with the
[3:31] Speaker 1: with the banned substances, with the steroids. It was probably
[3:34] Speaker 1: the supersuits because they give a boost of about five
[3:36] Speaker 1: percent to your performance, so probably they're On the athletics
[3:40] Speaker 1: track results were shabbier than the results in the pool.
[3:44] Speaker 1: The men's times, get this, the men's times on the
[3:47] Speaker 1: athletics track were closer to female world records than male
[3:51] Speaker 1: world records, because there's quite a difference, right, So the
[3:54] Speaker 1: men were running much closer to female times the male
[3:56] Speaker 1: times even though though I'm doping.
[3:57] Speaker 3: So basically, even after they still didn't perform any better.
[4:03] Speaker 1: They're literally high schoolers that are running faster than these
[4:06] Speaker 1: drug sheets. Like I'm not even I'm not exaggerating, it's
[4:09] Speaker 1: not hyperbole. They actually are. And the problem is this,
[4:14] Speaker 1: the organizers believed that if they could rope in some
[4:18] Speaker 1: of the best athletes in the world, or at least
[4:20] Speaker 1: some of the former best athletes in the world, and
[4:22] Speaker 1: then fill them with steroids, that they become Superman or
[4:25] Speaker 1: Captain America or whatever. But that's not how it works.
[4:28] Speaker 1: And that's where I want to bring this back to parenting.
[4:31] Speaker 1: So what's going on here is we've got this cult
[4:34] Speaker 1: of optimization that the world runs by. Now, steroids will
[4:37] Speaker 1: enhance performance, there's no doubt steroids will enhance performance, but
[4:41] Speaker 1: so will things like sauna, and so will things like
[4:44] Speaker 1: magnesium or peptides and whatever other fad that's out there.
[4:48] Speaker 1: Although do you remember do you remember about twenty years
[4:51] Speaker 1: ago everyone was running around with those power bands on
[4:53] Speaker 1: their wrists. No, No, they were a really big deal.
[4:57] Speaker 1: But they don't enhance performance, there's no anyway. The reason
[5:00] Speaker 1: I'm sharing this in today's pod, it's been on my
[5:02] Speaker 1: mind a lot because we saw the Commonwealth Games and
[5:04] Speaker 1: a whole lot of records and a whole lot of
[5:05] Speaker 1: brilliant athletic performance from people who weren't doping, and yet
[5:08] Speaker 1: the people who were doping thought they were going to
[5:10] Speaker 1: get the records and they didn't, And The thing that
[5:13] Speaker 1: I kind of wanted to push on is this cult
[5:17] Speaker 1: of optimization, this society that says there's a quick fix
[5:22] Speaker 1: for everything, and we keep falling for this idea that
[5:24] Speaker 1: there's a quick fix, that there's a shortcut everywhere. And
[5:29] Speaker 1: like James Magnuson, who has just been one of Australia's
[5:31] Speaker 1: best swimmers, was very very public that he was going
[5:34] Speaker 1: to go out and win a million dollars because he
[5:36] Speaker 1: was going to dope himself as much as he could
[5:37] Speaker 1: and swim faster than he'd ever swum, and he looked
[5:41] Speaker 1: like the whole I mean, he looks so strong at
[5:43] Speaker 1: the Enhanced Games. But the reality is that the athletes
[5:47] Speaker 1: at the Enhanced Games just weren't training as hard as
[5:50] Speaker 1: they did when they were training for the Olympics. And
[5:53] Speaker 1: if they're not, if they've only got a handful of
[5:55] Speaker 1: months to prepare for the Enhanced Games, and if most
[5:58] Speaker 1: of them are not full time athletes, we have a
[6:00] Speaker 1: problem here. And so I want to talk about what
[6:02] Speaker 1: that means in relation to life and specifically in relation
[6:05] Speaker 1: to what we teach our kids next, because I want
[6:08] Speaker 1: us to get away from the idea that there are
[6:09] Speaker 1: shortcuts there are quick fixes, that there are band aid solutions,
[6:13] Speaker 1: that the injectable or whatever is going to be the
[6:16] Speaker 1: right way forward because too many of our kids and
[6:18] Speaker 1: too many of us are falling for it. That's the
[6:20] Speaker 1: whole point of bringing the enhanced games into a parenting podcast,
[6:23] Speaker 1: and I'll explain why. Next we're back into the Happy
[6:33] Speaker 1: Family's podcast. Okay, if you've stayed with me during my preamble,
[6:38] Speaker 1: my preamble, here's what I'm getting at. So we've got
[6:42] Speaker 1: James Clear. Atomic Habits sold something like twenty million copies
[6:47] Speaker 1: of this book, now one of the world's best selling
[6:49] Speaker 1: books kind of ever. And in the book, he describes
[6:53] Speaker 1: in an interaction that he had with an elite weightlifting
[6:56] Speaker 1: coach who visited the gym where he was doing some training.
[7:01] Speaker 1: And this was a coach who had worked with thousands
[7:03] Speaker 1: of athletes during his career, including Olympians, and Clear, who
[7:07] Speaker 1: was into bodybuilding and weightlifting, asked to asking me a question.
[7:10] Speaker 1: He said, what's the difference between the best athletes and
[7:12] Speaker 1: everyone else? What did the really successful people do that
[7:17] Speaker 1: most don't.
[7:19] Speaker 3: Put more effort in? It's practice, practice, practice.
[7:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's so. The coach talked a bit about genetics.
[7:25] Speaker 1: He talked a bit about luck, he talked a bit
[7:26] Speaker 1: about talent, but then he said this, and this is
[7:28] Speaker 1: a direct quote from what James Clear says. At some
[7:31] Speaker 1: point it comes down to who can handle the boredom
[7:35] Speaker 1: of training every day, doing the same lifts over and
[7:39] Speaker 1: over and over.
[7:40] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[7:41] Speaker 1: So James Clear when he's writing about this, he says,
[7:44] Speaker 1: the only way to become excellent is to be endlessly
[7:47] Speaker 1: fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You
[7:50] Speaker 1: have to fall in love with boredom.
[7:53] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really curious. I remember reading something from Michael
[7:56] Speaker 3: Jordan and him talking about the fact that he wasn't
[7:58] Speaker 3: the best player out there. He was willing to miss
[8:02] Speaker 3: a thousand hoops or whatever it was to get the
[8:04] Speaker 3: one hoop, Like I'm totally botching it up. But I
[8:07] Speaker 3: remember when I read it thinking he actually misses, Like
[8:12] Speaker 3: he's so famous because of what he's capable of doing.
[8:16] Speaker 1: Jr. I want you to play the clip.
[8:18] Speaker 4: Miss morning nine thousand shots. In my career, I've lost
[8:22] Speaker 4: almost three hundred games twenty six times. I've been trusted
[8:25] Speaker 4: to take the game winning shot and missed. Have failed
[8:29] Speaker 4: over and over and over again. In my life, and
[8:32] Speaker 4: that is why pros succeed.
[8:34] Speaker 1: How good is that?
[8:35] Speaker 3: It's so good? But when you think about Michael Jordan,
[8:38] Speaker 3: you don't think of someone who's failed. You think of
[8:40] Speaker 3: somebody who's succeeded. And if they've succeeded, clearly they're not
[8:44] Speaker 3: making mistakes, they're not stuffing things up. But the fact
[8:47] Speaker 3: that he acknowledges the only reason he's capable of doing
[8:51] Speaker 3: what he does on the court is because he was
[8:53] Speaker 3: willing to keep doing it even when it looked like
[8:56] Speaker 3: he was making a mess of it.
[8:57] Speaker 1: Yeah, and every study of it, astonishing world class success
[9:01] Speaker 1: points to the same thing. Mary ma who was a
[9:04] Speaker 1: three time Olympic gold medalist at the nineteen eighty four
[9:07] Speaker 1: LA Olympics. I know we're going back away here, but
[9:09] Speaker 1: this is what she said, direct quote. She said, people
[9:12] Speaker 1: don't know how ordinary success is. So the whole thing
[9:16] Speaker 1: that I wanted to share in today's podcast was this,
[9:19] Speaker 1: Everyone wants the shortcut, everyone wants the secret like we
[9:22] Speaker 1: want it. Kylie, you've been on a what are we up?
[9:26] Speaker 1: We're at the end of August. You've been on a
[9:28] Speaker 1: full eight month weight loss journey now, and it would
[9:31] Speaker 1: be really nice if there was a shortcut. I know
[9:32] Speaker 1: that there actually are some shortcuts out there, but you're
[9:35] Speaker 1: doing it the old fashioned hard way. And it would
[9:37] Speaker 1: be really nice if there was some special secret. But
[9:40] Speaker 1: the secret really is consistency.
[9:43] Speaker 3: It's day in, day out. Yeah, and you've said it
[9:48] Speaker 3: many times on the podcast. It's okay to miss a day,
[9:52] Speaker 3: but just don't have two days in a row.
[9:53] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeap. But the hacks fill our feets, and there's
[9:57] Speaker 1: so many I'm going to use a really uncharit. There
[10:00] Speaker 1: are so many grifters who will sell you the promise
[10:03] Speaker 1: of an easy answer to help you to feel a
[10:06] Speaker 1: little less insecure or a little more optimized, and to
[10:10] Speaker 1: shift you towards whatever it is that you think your
[10:13] Speaker 1: dream is, or the dream that they're trying to sell you.
[10:16] Speaker 1: And so, whether it's as falling for the latest fat
[10:18] Speaker 1: or our kids clamoring for clout, human nature keeps on
[10:22] Speaker 1: dragging this into thinking that there really is a pill
[10:24] Speaker 1: or a course or a solution that's going to get
[10:26] Speaker 1: us there faster wherever there is. And I'm thinking about boys, right,
[10:30] Speaker 1: I've written this book about boys that's been doing really well.
[10:33] Speaker 1: Androgenic and clovicular. Have you heard of androgenic and clivicular. No, okay,
[10:38] Speaker 1: so these are two looks maxes. Looks maxis you're looking
[10:41] Speaker 1: at me. Funny, you didn't read my book.
[10:44] Speaker 3: You're talking. It's a different language.
[10:46] Speaker 1: So a looks maxer is somebody who believes that if
[10:47] Speaker 1: you maximize your looks, then you're going to maximize your life.
[10:50] Speaker 1: The better looking you are, the more opportunities you have.
[10:53] Speaker 1: It's not even about having the conquest anymore. It's about
[10:55] Speaker 1: knowing that you could have the conquest if you wanted
[10:57] Speaker 1: it because you look so good. And so these guys, wow,
[11:00] Speaker 1: these are the names that they've given themselves online because
[11:02] Speaker 1: their influences and they need to have very strong names.
[11:05] Speaker 1: So androgenic and clivicular are two examples of this. They're
[11:08] Speaker 1: telling our sons to pump themselves for testosterone and peptides
[11:11] Speaker 1: and toxins so they can look looks max. They're they're
[11:16] Speaker 1: they're hitting their faces with hammers to strengthen, to break
[11:18] Speaker 1: their bones down, but to strengthen their bones up. You've
[11:21] Speaker 1: got the Andrew Tates and Myron Gains of the world
[11:23] Speaker 1: and others. They're just sewage peddlers offering all of these
[11:26] Speaker 1: shortcuts to wealth and status via their crypto scams and
[11:31] Speaker 1: their leadership inverted quote those scare quote leadership programs and
[11:36] Speaker 1: literally hustler universities. And I just think the Enhanced Games
[11:40] Speaker 1: is another version of this. It promises what's the word
[11:42] Speaker 1: on superhuman results through chemical shortcuts, and what the Enhanced
[11:48] Speaker 1: Games actually delivered was embarrassment. There's no other word for it.
[11:53] Speaker 3: What was the follow up with the athletes that were involved.
[11:57] Speaker 1: Like, well, it just went very quiet. There were not
[12:00] Speaker 1: a whole lot of news releases. There was not a
[12:02] Speaker 1: lot going on in the media because it's just such
[12:04] Speaker 1: an awful failure. The real lesson and the reason that
[12:08] Speaker 1: I wanted to do this podcast is just a reminder
[12:11] Speaker 1: the shortcut might sometimes get you there, but more often
[12:13] Speaker 1: than not, it probably won't get you there at least faster.
[12:15] Speaker 1: And even if it does, the shortcut is going to
[12:18] Speaker 1: hollow out or maybe even arrays the only thing that
[12:23] Speaker 1: actually matters, and that's the person that you become on
[12:28] Speaker 1: the way. It's not actually about getting there, it's about
[12:30] Speaker 1: who you become while you're getting there.
[12:33] Speaker 3: Colonel Sanders, right, how many attempts? No, it's a numbers game, right, right?
[12:41] Speaker 3: He went through this recipe. I think it was like
[12:44] Speaker 3: a thousand times before. He wasn't the recipe, no, it
[12:49] Speaker 3: was trying to do it, was trying to sell it.
[12:51] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So while you're saying that, I'm just
[12:52] Speaker 1: looking up. And apparently, if the record is correct, Colonel
[12:57] Speaker 1: Sanders was reportedly rejected one thousand and nine times times
[13:00] Speaker 1: before he found a restaurant that agreed to use his
[13:02] Speaker 1: secret fried chicken recipe.
[13:04] Speaker 3: And look at him now, right, There's just so much
[13:07] Speaker 3: that we learn as we go through different experiences. Our
[13:12] Speaker 3: twelve year old she's decided she wants to learn to sew.
[13:15] Speaker 1: And a big thank you to everyone. Over the last
[13:16] Speaker 1: couple months he's been putting their orders in. She's been
[13:18] Speaker 1: NonStop sewing it sewing machine and getting really good at it.
[13:22] Speaker 3: And when we first started, we did a couple and
[13:23] Speaker 3: I was right there beside her, and she decided that
[13:26] Speaker 3: she felt really confident she was going to do it
[13:28] Speaker 3: all on her own. And the third time round, she
[13:31] Speaker 3: did do it all on her own. And let's just say,
[13:34] Speaker 3: we couldn't sell that one, right, right, And she came
[13:37] Speaker 3: to me and she said, this is my worst one yet.
[13:39] Speaker 3: She said I'm like, I'm really bad at this, and
[13:43] Speaker 3: I said, but you're not. I said, because you've actually
[13:45] Speaker 3: made it. You've done all of the steps, but there's
[13:47] Speaker 3: a few little tweaks. And because you're new at this,
[13:51] Speaker 3: I said, yeah, you just didn't remember a few of
[13:53] Speaker 3: the things that I talked to you about. I suspect
[13:55] Speaker 3: the great thing is now that you've actually made the mistake,
[13:59] Speaker 3: you'll be more aware of what needs to happen next
[14:03] Speaker 3: time so you don't make it.
[14:04] Speaker 1: And that's why writing an essay with AI doesn't work,
[14:07] Speaker 1: because you don't have the learning. We need to wrap
[14:10] Speaker 1: it up how time is done. But I'm going to
[14:11] Speaker 1: share a quote from a book called How to Live
[14:13] Speaker 1: by Derek Sivers, because it's really the encapsulation of the
[14:17] Speaker 1: whole point of this podcast. Mastery, Sivers says, is the
[14:22] Speaker 1: best goal because the rich can't buy it, the impatient
[14:27] Speaker 1: can't rush it, the privileged can't inherit it, and nobody
[14:34] Speaker 1: can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work.
[14:39] Speaker 1: Mastery is the ultimate status. When our kids understand that principle,
[14:46] Speaker 1: their lives are probably going to be harder, but they'll
[14:49] Speaker 1: be vastly richer. Sound and audio engineering for the Happy
[14:52] Speaker 1: Families Podcast, Justin Ruland from Bridge Media, Mim Hammond's looks
[14:56] Speaker 1: After admin and additional support. If you like this podcast,
[14:59] Speaker 1: please join for the rest of the week. We've got
[15:01] Speaker 1: so much great stuff to talk about, including kids who
[15:03] Speaker 1: are lying. We're going to be talking about the new
[15:05] Speaker 1: threat to our daughter's pornography and how it's affecting girls,
[15:10] Speaker 1: and some brand new science highlighting that screen time can
[15:13] Speaker 1: damage the development of our undertoos. All of that and
[15:16] Speaker 1: more this week on the Happy Families Podcast. We'll talk
[15:18] Speaker 1: to you tomorrow.

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