Monthly Archives: April 2021

Connection

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Paul’s tweet gave me a nudge to dig a little deeper.

My relationship with my kids started before they were born.

It started with how I approach my marriage:

The “no secrets” policy can be inconvenient but it has big benefits.

#1 => it makes it difficult for creeps to enter my life.

#2 => it’s an effective technique to lower stress and anxiety – especially when combined with daily movement in nature.

This openness applies in all areas – phone, email, opinions.

Sitting in a car with a kid – we all do it.

Sitting in a car with a kid, and a culture of openness… that’s different.

Sharing a meal with a 4 yo at Boulder’s Walnut Cafe – “Dad, sorry to break it to you… you need to try a little harder.”

So there is the culture my kids were born into – openness and a willingness to hear uncomfortable truths.

Then, before there was much to talk about… we went on short 1-on-1 trips. I started this around the time of our oldest’s 3rd birthday.

There wasn’t a master strategy. I simply wanted to give my wife some relief. Later, I wanted to offer her a chance to get to know our younger kids (our oldest has had a strong personality from the get go).

The trips worked. Not just for kids, by the way – we do Couples Retreats and, as a young man in London, train trips with the partners were GOLD.

I like to connect in my best environment. Do you know yours? Mine is mountain forests.

Hauling a 4 yo up Colorado’s Independence Pass – iPad, pillow, water bottle, lunch box, favorite blanket

Some other forums that work:

  • Walking together
  • Driving home in the dark, after exercise
  • Somewhere disconnected – we did a five-day trip without screens/phones
  • Looking at a campfire
  • Floating on water

Phone in airplane mode, turn off the music, expect nothing to happen.

The moments of connection are a tiny piece of the actual time I spend with my family.

I need to be there, and I need to be open to whatever happens.

Wanting to lead from a position of integrity is a motivator. I’ve been setting up the teen years since our oldest turned 8.

It’s helped me make positive changes with regard to my relationship with alcohol, social media, email, bedside phones and anger.

The phrase, “you will need to decide what sort of life you want to lead” is far more powerful when my kids don’t need me to explain my choices in words.

The process of positive change isn’t a whole lot of fun but coaching a winning team is deeply satisfying.

Everybody wants to play for a winning team!

Parenting June 2013

The View From 52

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This was the 4th take – I was trying to smile but, I guess, the pack was a touch heavy – Call me, “happy on the inside”

After a year of COVID-training, I’m in good overall shape. As a high-performance athlete, it would be time to ‘sharpen’ and race a bit. 

At 52, I chuckle at the thought of spending my summer tired and moody… while chasing external validation.

I’ve had enough winning in my life.

Instead, I’ve been asking…

What aspect of fitness might I miss at 60?

Stamina – capacity to tag along on outdoor trips with my grown kids

Strength – but go deeper and be specific!

  • Overhead capacity
  • On, and up from, the floor capacity
  • Eccentric load tolerance (downhill and soft surface loading)

Agility – the ability to move skillfully under light loads, and balance under heavy loads

Sex Drive – it’s more than sex, it’s overall hormonal status for recovery, mood and life experience

Looking at the above, none of what matters is easily measured.

That’s athletically.

It’s gets even more obvious when I step into my “real” life.

#1/. We overweight metrics that are easily measured

#2/. We combine these metrics with our most salient memories

#3/. Our most salient memories are the joys of youth and the recent past

Beauty, pace, VO2, VAM, race placing, net asset statement, followers, likes, segment timing… hang around long enough and all will decline.

What I’m trying to say…

The stuff I can measure doesn’t have much to do with where a wise person would take himself.

+++

A question I asked my 40-something wife, “Where do you want to be five years after menopause?”

I asked the question to create mental space between (a) the memories of the past and (b) the actions required for a desired future.

Each of us will have a question that helps us make the split and see more clearly.

+++

For me?

Older is going to be about three things.

Patience, always patience – In March, I caught myself yelling at my Alpha Tween. Not the best way to enter the teen years! So I made an offer, “$100 to any kid that catches me yelling.” Haven’t had to pay out so far.

Small incentives can have large outcomes.

Cultivate the kindest girls/women in my life – The last year has had a strong bias towards up-skilling my son so he can hang with me, in any terrain, in any month, in the mountains. We’re there – all that remains is load shifting from my backpack to his.

The next 12 months my focus will shift to our youngest and continuing to have fun with my spouse, who’s been talking about Rim-To-Rim at the Grand Canyon. I’ve started negotiating for Rim-To-River.

Keep on keeping on – Radical change isn’t required.

Take time to enjoy 2021.

Adventure Novelty Exploring

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Indian Peaks Wilderness Area

Ticked the box on my first post-pandemic adventure this past weekend, a little earlier than expected (my second shot is mid-April).

Snow camping.

Why snow camping?

The #1 forward-looking reason is regret minimization.

There’s been a lot of accidental death around me.

The best way to deal with my son’s love of adventure is to teach him everything I know about the outdoors. It’s a fun project and fits my view that “skilled is better than safe.”

What do you remember about your life before COVID?

My main memory is spending a lot of money, time and effort for a life that felt pretty similar to the last 12 months.

The feel, inside me, is very consistent.

My baseline satisfaction is resilient to setbacks, and doesn’t move much with luxury.

Time in nature (with family), writing and teaching are three things that move the needle for me.

So the question I asked myself is “how best to allocate my time and effort going forward?”

Bring back the experiences, and people, that I missed.

Adventure, novelty & exploring => the best experiences of the last 12 months had this in common => so I’ll be aiming for a quick fix every six weeks.

Quick trips, back to my normal life quickly… because I’ve learned that more isn’t better.

I bought myself a monster pack (105L), which lets me carry everything for my partners and removes any temptation for me to pick-up-the-pace on my team.

With people – same game plan.

Who did I miss?

Write a list of the people I didn’t see during the pandemic then do whatever-it-takes to have a quick visit with them.

Spend time, and effort, on connection.

I’ll end with a fun story from the overnight trip.

We started at 6am on Easter Sunday.

By noon, we had skied, skinned and set up camp. Both our feet were shot but there was eight hours until darkness!

What to do?

Hey buddy, let’s go on a water hunt.

First Attempt, nothing
It’s still deep up there
Second Attempt, under a bridge – in a couple weeks there will be water RAGING through here
Just like a pioneer, amigo. Keep digging!
Hey, do you hear water?!
Jackpot when he kicked through the final ice layer.

My son got a huge kick out of using a shovel “for something real.”

Staring at a screen during homeschool… not real.

Nature, water, snow, cold, wind, mountain lion tracks… real.

Let’s bring back the real.

Enjoy 2021

Writing and Publishing

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My writing brought this woman to me – the highest ROI of my life

I’ve been publishing for 20 years and wanted to pass along what I’ve learned.

Giving away good information for free is effective marketing, and good karma. It works best if you start by going to where the clients are and always write to your target audience. Only engage those who bring out the best in you.

Related, there is huge option value in creating a higher personal profile, but beware the costs (links to Tim’s blog on fame). The higher profile part of my life worked best when I was tucked away in a small town in the Southern Hemisphere.

Once I realized I had much more success than I needed, my reasons for continuing to publish changed:

Catharsis – if an idea stays with me for a long time then the easiest way to clear my head is to tell the whole world about it. It’s my version of Crocodile Dundee’s Just Tell Wally (link is YouTube clip from the movie).

If publishing doesn’t do the trick then it’s a sign my values aren’t aligned with my life situation. I’ve made two big changes using this test (leaving finance and elite competition). Taking the time to “think-write-publish” is as a reality check on how I’m living.

When my tone turns negative, it’s a sign I’m not living right. It has nothing to do with the subject of my writing.

Legacy & Mortality – Leaving lessons for my kids’ future selves gives comfort. Each of us learns a lot as we move through life. I’m grateful to the writers who came before.

Publishing started around 1999.

Before 1999, I wrote.

35 years and counting.

My published material generated, and led me towards, money. As a young man, it also forced me to get-my-story-straight about who I was and what I believed worked.

My unpublished material generated wealth, connection and greatly improved the quality of my life.

Worth repeating – my most useful stuff has an audience of one, maybe two.

Writing is the quickest way to flush out my blindspots (COVID, the future, how I’ll feel next Tuesday). I need constant reminders of where I’m clueless.

It is also how I identify where I have the capacity for good judgement (fitness, finances, family).

If you’ve had success in any area then your mind will try to fool you into thinking you have been successful in every area. I’m told this is an occupational hazard for great surgeons in the mountains, or markets. It certainly applies to me whenever I stray outside my core competencies. Talking to a surgeon about medicine for example… 😉

Writing is my system to counteract this feature of human misjudgment (link to Munger’s famous talk).

While I forget most of what I write (Catharsis is real), I have access to a valuable record of what I was thinking at each key decision point in my life. I spent this past week reviewing budgets and financial projections from the last decade.

With searchable email you have the same thing. Make it even better by writing a one-pager before key decisions, or simply jot down ten thoughts to start each week. 500 thoughts a year. You will see patterns, you’ll learn about yourself.

My older material teaches me to be cautious with personal memories. My memories change over time and are magically back-fitted to actual events. The principles of a decision are much more sticky in my mind.

What you’re looking for is principles that work and remembering how often reality surprises us.

The act of writing is a step, on a journey of daily action, that creates incremental improvement.

Writing isn’t magical but the continuous compounding of small daily actions will appear to be.