By: Matthew Gonzalez, Ph.D., CMPC
“Alright bud… two Blueys and then we have to head off to school…”
“Okay Dada, twwwwooo Blueys.” Holds up twoish fingers
Like most parents of real young ones right now, I have become exceptionally familiar with Bluey. My wife and I have even dialed in a routine that gets most of the day’s prep work into the 15 minutes of two episodes of Bluey. With my kid pinned to the couch, we can go about that time relatively unimpeded.
Honestly, I am not complaining at all. In terms of children’s programming, Bluey ranks up there as one of the very greats and in my opinion, it has well-earned its near-universal positive reputation.
I once read somewhere that Bluey is a parenting show masquerading as a children’s show and that honestly isn’t too off-base. So, using that as a frame of reference, let’s talk about some of the most important mental performance lessons in Bluey that we all would be well-inclined to be reminded of. As Bluey says, “Let’s do this!”
A brief note: I am using the current Disney+ listings as of the publishing date of this post for the episode and season listing. If there is a discrepancy where you are, my apologies for any confusion, please use the title to guide your navigation.
A Lesson on Patience Bike (Season 1, Episode 11)
“Hmphh… It’s not fair… Why can’t I just do it straight away?”
The episode opens with Bluey expressing her frustration at being unable to immediately master riding a bike on a basketball court at a park. Bandit (Bluey’s dad) tries to assure her that learning new things takes time.
But as anyone familiar with children well know, expressing something outright doesn’t always land upon listening ears.
Amid her grumpiness, Bluey retreats to a bench where she looks out to the park and observes other children attend to their own tasks.
She notices that Bingo (her younger sister) is struggling with drinking from a water fountain. Bentley is struggling to master the monkey bars. And Muffin is entering into a challenge of trying to put her backpack on.
As this unfolds, Bandit encourages Bluey to see how others are trying over and over to meet their challenges. Each child (puppy?) tries various tactics, but largely to no avail.
After different attempts, each of the kids emotionally expresses their frustration at being unable to meet the demands of the task; some with anger, others with tears. All the while, Bluey recognizes that this process she is watching is similar to what she just experienced in trying to ride her bike.
In the most important moment of the episode, Bluey expresses a desire to help Bingo with the water fountain. Bandit restrains her and implores her to wait to “see what happens next.”
By waiting, Bluey is able to watch each kid give one final go at their challenge; each of them trying a brand new strategy to surpass the barriers. Bingo realizes that she can overfill the water fountain to drink off the ground, Bentley figures out how to climb a support post to get to the bars, and Muffin adorably slinks on the ground (on her back) towards her backpack so that she can put both straps of her backpack on at the same time.
After feeling inspired, Bluey gets back on her bike and starts to ride once again.
It’s a classic and often retold story of growth through problem-solving. Moreover, it’s a story of learning to change your relationship with mistakes. For all of us, I think this might be the single most important mental performance lesson to learn early on. Making mistakes is essential for the growth process. It might be frustrating for sure, but each mistake is a learning opportunity.
Many of us also experience the urge that Bluey had to help Bingo. I’m not stating that a helping hand is necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes, it can interrupt the learning process. Unknowingly and without malice, you might actually be robbing someone of the opportunity to stretch their problem-solving capacity.
What I appreciate most about this episode, is that it shows that the growth process also requires patience. The answers often don’t come immediately and typically take multiple attempts. This episode pulls no punches in celebrating that process with a blissful interlude of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy at the conclusion of the children’s challenges.
Patience can be something that many of us will struggle with at one point or another. As you ponder patience in your own life, ask yourself these questions in reflection:
We all experience frustration during the mistake-laden process of growth, how can you make sure to limit the impact that frustration plays in your development?
In what ways could you stand to allow those around you to make more of their own mistakes in the service of their growth?
A Lesson on Comparison
Baby Race (Season 2, Episode 47)
“Just… run your own race.”
This episode starts with Chili (Bluey’s mom) handling Bluey’s questions about whether or not she is better at the monkey bars than others.
Chili deflects the questions, encourages Bluey to focus on her own experience, and urges her to resist the urge to get caught up in comparison. To illustrate the lessons, Chili sits Bluey and Bingo down for a walk down memory lane.
As it turns out, Chili herself once got caught up in a bit of parental comparison; specifically about Bluey’s physical milestones as a baby. She recalls her early days of parenting as being a bit full of herself after Bluey learned to roll over early. But then she recalls noticing Judo at a mother’s group…
Judo is a child who is a similar age as Bluey. And she, to the disdain of Chili, “beats” Bluey to achieving most physical milestones (sitting, crawling, walking, etc.) throughout the course of the episode.
This puts Chili on a parental warpath of trying to get Bluey to keep up with Judo’s development. We watch as she seeks assistance from books and has multiple consultations with doctors. This process is comical for the viewer (Bluey learns to “bum shuffle” at one point), but we recognize the frustration that Chili is feeling.
We can feel not only her frustration, but her questioning herself as a parent. Chili even notes that her primary internal dialogue at that time was “I am doing everything wrong.” It’s a place many of us have found ourselves, not just in parenting, but across the scope of our multi-dimensional lives.
Chili decides at one point to not attend her mother’s group as usual and the absence is noticed by another mother. This mother, Coco’s mom, reaches out to Chili and lets her know about her extensive family and mothering experience. From that experience, she reassures Chili that she, “Is doing great.”
Chili is touched by the outreach and the message and begins to shed her concern with comparison. She re-engages with the present moment, finds the fun in the chaos of Bluey’s development, and feels empathetic joy (more on this later) from the more straightforward development that Judo is displaying.
The topic of comparison is rife with cliches (e.g., “Comparison is the thief of joy”) for good reason. It can really mess you up when it gets unbridled in your brain as it can cause you to question everything from your competence to your life’s paths and passions.
Comparison in and of itself isn’t actually the evil that people have made it out to be. Certainly, the first step is to appreciate your own journey. Once that step has been taken, you can begin to compare yourself to others (who are worth comparing to) from a position of curiosity.
It isn’t the act of comparison that is the problem; it is the way in which we center ourselves in that process that can become the problem.
Often, comparison is experienced from a position of judgment.
“Why can’t I be more like that?”
“Why do I suck so much?”
Or, as Chili stated, “I am doing everything wrong.”
In this position, comparison with others is corrosive. I feel like I am “less than.” But, with conscious effort, comparison can come from a position of curiosity.
“I wonder what he did to get that good?”
“How did she do that?”
Or, to help Chili with the reframe, “I wonder what I could do differently?”
I think that this particular topic would be excellent to break down in a larger post in the future. But for now, I leave you with these questions for you to ponder.
Like patience, difficulties with comparison is another near-universal experience for all of us. Think about the following questions as they pertain to your life:
Where in your life have you noticed that you struggle with maladaptive thoughts and feelings of comparison?
How can you take a step towards doing a better job of “running your own race?”
A Lesson on Empathetic Joy
Pass the Parcel (Season 3, Episode 13)
I have a suspicion that this episode was made specifically to pay a tongue-in-cheek tribute to anyone who has ever uttered the phrase “back in my day…”. The episode starts in earnest when Pat, Lucky’s dad, decides that he doesn’t like the modern version of the party game, Pass the Parcel.
In the modern version, rules state that every kid who gets a turn gets at least some small trinket. But Pat remembers that it used to only be one kid who would get a prize at the end of the game.
He contends that this version of the game contributes to “raising a nation of squibs.” Due to his beliefs, he decides that during the next birthday party that he hosts, they’ll play by the old rules.
This goes about as well as you would think at first; leading to a cacophony of crying children which causes Pat to panic. He even tries to pay the crying children and even give away some of his own kid’s presents to placate the madness.
However, as the episode progresses, something begins to happen. The kids who win begin to ask if they can play with Lucky’s dad’s rules at their birthday parties.
This episode begins to centralize on Bingo’s experience. She is not necessarily keen on the new rules and struggles to cope with the experience of playing the game consistently; only to come away empty-handed.
We see over time though, that Bingo begins to warm to the new format of the game. Bingo is starting to learn a mental disposition that most of us can stand to improve upon.
Empathetic joy.
In general, empathetic joy is the experience of joy brought on because of the good fortune that is experienced by someone else. Bingo even says at one point, “When Lila is happy, I’m happy.”
This isn’t lip-service, golf clap “joy” that we are talking about here. This is a genuine and fulfilling sense of joy that one experiences even though they are not the subject of the event causing the joy. Joy experienced this way is not a zero-sum game.
What I most appreciate about this episode is that it doesn’t just leave us with the standard lesson that “only one person can win and the rest just have to suck it up.” It’s more a sense that “only one person can win, and we can feel genuine happiness for that person while simultaneously experiencing disappointment.”
If you are interested in developing your capacity for empathetic joy, I encourage you to seek out opportunities to engage in an excellent meditation practice called Mudita that often centralizes on developing this disposition.
The nuance presented here is a masterclass in teaching young kids about the complexities of emotion. Unfortunately, it is often a lesson glossed over or forgotten by adults.
While empathetic joy is not often considered in the realm of mental performance training; increasing your capacity for it certainly can make the long process of mastery more enjoyable for you and others. Think about the following questions as you consider empathetic joy in your own life:
Where areas in your life would be most positively impacted with the addition empathetic joy?
How might you intentionally practice empathetic joy more often?
A Triple Lesson on Passion, Grit, and Connection Cricket (Season 3, Episode 47)
I apologize but it’s soapbox time y’all. I honestly think this episode is one of the single best eight minutes of sport psychology programming that a child could witness. And I truly believe that it is likewise worth a watch for all of us.
The episode begins with the typical Bluey families in the park, who are enjoying a pick-up game of cricket. Bluey asks Bandit if they can do something else, to which Bandit replies that they can once he gets Rusty, Bluey's schoolmate, out.
“You’ll never get Rusty out,” quipped Bluey. And thus begins the real start of this episode.
As Bandit works through trying to get Rusty out in the present day, the episode cycles through Rusty’s past, exploring how he has gotten so good at this sport.
It starts by showing that Rusty has an intrinsic love for the game. He plays consistently with those in his family and, when they aren’t present, he plays a cricket version of wall-ball on his own.
As Bandit’s frustration increases in the present, the dads get together and try to strategize about how to get him out. They plan a way to get Rusty to hit into an easy catch.
The episode flashes back to how Rusty learned to work through the difficulties of that particular strategy; particularly how he practiced aiming that swing to avoid the ball going into his kitchen; as to avoid the ire of his mother.
Predictably, when it flashes to the present, Rusty makes contact and the ball sails past the other dads who were hoping for an easy catch.
The dads reconvene and determine that the next best way would be to bowl into a crack in the ground, thus making for a much less predictable bounce and, by logic, a much harder ball to hit.
The next flashback occurs and we see that Rusty had to acclimate to less-than-ideal conditions at a friend’s house and learned to hit unpredictable balls just fine with time. And so… this approach isn’t successful in the present.
The next dad figures that he can just overwhelm Rusty with speed. Cue the next flashback.
Rusty is playing with his older brother and his friends when he is called to bat. Rusty’s older brother encourages him to bat, but warns him that his friends won’t go easy just because of his younger age.
Rusty is immediately hit by a full-speed bowl and hobbles home. His brother suggests that maybe he should wait until he is older to play at that speed.
Rusty is determined, but not making progress. It is then that Rusty’s family receives a letter from his father, an often-deployed service member in the Army. Rusty’s father leaves him a special note offering Rusty encouragement and advice.
We see Rusty finally contact with the older kids pitch. As such, Rusty handles the fast pitch easily enough in the present moment.
As lunch is called, Rusty is given one more pitch to hit. Rusty easily handles this one as well. Except… he finesses a pop fly to land directly where his little sister is. His little sister makes the easy catch, and they share the celebration.
It’s a wonderful episode with, what I see, are two main lessons. First, it outlines the difference between learning and mastery. As I see it, learning comes from repeated exposure to mistakes which then leads to a general sense of proficiency. True mastery of a craft, however, comes from repeated exposure to adverse conditions.
Bluey was learning to ride a bike in the episode we discussed at the beginning of this piece. Rusty is mastering the craft of cricket.
We see clearly that Rusty was frustrated through all of those less-than-ideal scenarios be it, having to avoid hitting into the kitchen, or hitting off an uneven surface, or striking out repeatedly against pitch speeds outside his current capability.
It was Rusty’s tenacity to work through all of that, that then catalyzed those struggles into tangible and reliable skills.
The second lesson here is that passion for an activity often shows up in two ways. First, as above, it often results in higher levels of grit and persistence. Second, passion shows up as a bonafide emotional connection to the activity. And, like with many things we have emotional connections to, we want to share that with others. We want others to experience that thing in the way that we do. We often hear about this in sports termed, “the love of the game.”
The love of the game is doubled when shared. Rusty’s story is layered with connections between his family members, friends, and the game of cricket. That last ball, Rusty intentionally hits to his little sister so that she can have a special moment that they can share now; and then remember forever.
Upon seeing this, Bandit nudges Bluey and says, “That’s what cricket’s about kid.” I’d offer that’s what many performance pursuits are about.
There's so much good stuff in this episode that it was hard to boil down to two main questions. As I see it, here are two of the most important things to contemplate after watching this episode:
How can you be Rusty’s dad for others? Who in your life would benefit from hearing your heartfelt encouragement as they persist in the performance pursuits of their lives?
How can you continue to promote the love of your own performance pursuits by sharing it with others?
Wrap-Up
The lessons of performance psychology are everywhere. And while it might be easy to pass off children’s shows as less serious, the insight of some of them can be awe-inspiring. Here are just four brief examples of how a children’s show can remind us all how to be better performers by getting better at patience, comparison, empathetic joy, and passion. I hope you spend thirty minutes to watch these episodes and drink deeply from these lessons.
As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read this piece; I sincerely hope you enjoyed it! If it resonated with you, I encourage you to share it with others who it might also resonate with. And, I’m always happy to hear comments and feedback at matthew.gonzalez@greenpeakperformance.com.
P.S. A quick note about some honorable mentions!
For the sake of some brevity, I limited this article to just four episodes, however, there were several others that I think are just as powerful in their own ways. Muffin Cone (Season 2, Episode 39) provides an excellent lesson on creativity. Hide and Seek (Season 1, Episode 42) and Relax (Season 3, Episode 40) introduce kids (and their parents) to the benefits of present-moment thinking. Lastly, Obstacle Course (Season 3, Episode 2) is a great reminder about the satisfaction that comes with winning through hard work. Enjoy!
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