Category Archives: Uncategorized

Letter To My Kids

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Sitting here at 45 years old, I realize that my kids (5, 2.5 and 1.25 yrs old) will never know the man that I am today.

What can I pass along today that might be useful to them tomorrow?

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Choices

Don’t waste energy worrying about decisions. Most of the choices that you will face are win-win in nature.

  • The school you attend.
  • The major you choose.
  • The clothes you wear.
  • The company where you work.
  • The city where you live.

The above influence our lives but they aren’t mission critical.

What’s mission critical? Well, there are some choices that have life changing properties.

Choices that move us away from severely negative outcomes.

An obvious example is “stay out of prison” – drunk driving, chronic speeding and theft have a high risk of a felony conviction.

More subtlety, the best decision that I made in my 20s/30s was replacing drinking with exercise. At the time, I replaced one excess (drinking) with another (elite endurance sport). If you find that you’re obsessive (and many people in our family are) then replace your negative habit (promiscuity, alcohol, addiction, anger) with something less toxic (meditation, nutrition, exercise, yoga, work).

You’re unlikely to be able to transcend your drive. That’s OK. If you can get yourself into your 40s without too many mistakes then your body will naturally slow and you’ll find it much easier to live in your skin.

In our family, moving away from abuse, addition and promiscuity has been a way for us to improve life for everyone that follows us.

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Your Relationship With The Truth

I can catch myself wishing that you’ll be doctors, leaders and externally successful. To the extent that I lay any of that on you know that I’m projecting my own values.

What’s most important?

Remember that truth is relative and pay attention to:

  1. How do the people around you make you feel?
  2. Are you tempted to lie because of your actions, your friends or your work?

Who, and what, ever your become, I promise that you’ll see the world differently at 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90 years old.

So what endures across time?

  • Taking action for what you believe in.
  • The internal peace that comes from living truly, inside ourselves.

Be aware the certain fields have a high risk for poor decisions. I’ve worked in a couple (finance and elite sport).

How will you know if there are risks? Pay attention to the lies. You will see lies in others before you start telling them to yourself. Small lies matter because they can be a symptom of corruption that you’re unable to see.

It will be a huge hassle to change direction when you discover lies – it always was for me. However, it’s the right thing for you to do. Ask me for stories and I’ll share.

Move away from people and situations where you can’t speak openly about the truth.

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Exercise Is Medicine

You have a body that is a high-responder to exercise.

Do something active every day of your life and stop doing whatever prevents you from achieving a daily streak of exercise.

Taking my advice from the start of the letter… Don’t worry about what you do.

Remember that the benefit comes from the doing.

Families in Divorce

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A friend asked for advice about his parents getting divorced.

Remember that extremely tough situations can lead to good outcomes. The darkest periods in my life have been part of my path to a great life.

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The couple:

a – don’t focus on right/wrong – focus on desired outcome and not adding to the pain of the situation

b – if there isn’t abuse/addiction in the relationship then work to save it – the NY Times has a great series about baby-boomers getting divorced that says it better than me. The series is called Unhitched: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/booming/lessons-learned-when-its-all-over.html

c – if things are truly over then don’t fight – you never get the time and emotional pain back.

d – people waste tremendous energy worrying about money – if you fight then large sums of money will evaporate. Be willing to settle to avoid pain and suffering.

e – never ever give bad news in writing

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Friends and Family – your #1 role is to listen, not to fix.

Help the couple focus on what matters: (a) not fight; (b) end the cycle of pain; and (c) achieve a mutually desired outcome.

Families waste huge amounts of energy seeking to fix other people’s marriages. It’s not your problem to fix. The family’s role is listening and emotional support.

Specifically as a child, or younger sibling:

a – it is embarrassing to fail in front of our ‘youngers’ – can change a family dynamic. Youngers should be very sensitive to the embarrassment the elders are likely feeling.

b – parents often want approval as much as kids do – many adult children aren’t aware of this need for approval. That’s too bad as it can be a rich source of self-knowledge.

c – it’s better to use outside sources (counsellors, books) to influence change – many elders are closed to direct advice from youngers. If you get hostility then you may have triggered pain in the elders arising from 1 and 2.

d – if you can’t help yourself from giving advice then chose your best stuff (not more than three points) and say as little as possible. Better yet, you could say something like… “hey, I see my role is to listen and support your decisions. However, if you ever want a couple ideas then let me know.”

e – people in highly stressful situations often show cognitive impairment – lapses in memory and reduced ability to reason. Your elders might be stressed, rather than senile.

Everyone will be tempted to take sides – remember that (absent abuse/addiction) there’s rarely a clear right/wrong. A smart person can always make it seem like it’s the other person’s fault. Emotional truth is relative.

Focus on outcome, break the chain of pain and listen.

To be a partner in a successful relationship (after my divorce), I needed many years to improve myself. I was also comfortable with being alone. In other words, I was able to improve myself to the point where I didn’t expect another person to complete (or serve) me.

The person that seeks to fix everything can become a focal point for blame. Personally, I’m ok with that as a leader’s role is to take the blame but I need to remember my goal/role in relationships is not to fix anything.

People thank us for love, listening and being there. Years after my divorce, I remember who was there for me – I don’t remember specifics and the searing pain is completely gone.

Faced with a lack of trust, my decision was to end the marriage. I have good friends that decided otherwise and have enviable marriages, that continue today.

Why is that?

If my marriage works for me and my spouse then that’s enough. We don’t need to justify our love to other people. This keeps us focused on what we control – our actions towards each other.

Values Game

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I came across a free eBook from Tony Robbins. In the book, Tony asks the reader to rank pleasure values. His suggested list: love, success, freedom, intimacy, security, adventure, power, passion, comfort, health.

I took the bait and ranked things:

  • Freedom
  • Success
  • Adventure
  • Health
  • Love
  • Power
  • Passion
  • Security
  • Intimacy
  • Comfort

Tony then shared that we will do a lot more to avoid pain than to attract pleasure. So he asked the reader to rank aversions to: rejection, anger, frustration, loneliness, depression, failure, humiliation, and guilt.

Once again I mapped it out:

  • Failure
  • Anger
  • Frustration
  • Depression
  • Rejection
  • Humiliation
  • Guilt
  • Loneliness

In the book, he gave examples on how values conflicts can set up misery. For example, do we know our spouse’s rankings? Do our (more powerful) aversions operate to sabotage our desires. For example, see Success vs Failure in my lists.

Having done the work to rank my pleasure/pain values, Tony recommended writing down the rules associated with our top drivers. I didn’t think too hard and wrote quickly…

  • Freedom – when I control my day and have space in my schedule
  • Success – I am already successful
  • Adventure – when I have new experiences
  • Health – vanity, use my body for adventure
  • Failure – when my kids don’t behave or yell at me
  • Anger – when my kids don’t behave or yell at me
  • Frustration – when my kids don’t behave or yell at me
  • Depression – when my kids don’t behave or yell at me

Pretty clear how my rules are creating periods of parental misery! As well, my rules are completely impractical for living with young kids.

When my oldest was young, she could quickly bring me to tears by crying. I got past that pain by borrowing my mother-in-law’s rule that “babies need to cry.”

I also created my own rule, “when they’re crying, they are alive.” My rule addressing my fear that my kids might die (!) if I didn’t cater to their every whim.

Some mantras:

  • I am free when I breathe through the energy of strong emotions
  • I am successful when I let my actions be the lesson
  • The randomness of life is an adventure in itself
  • Let go of outcome, be the brand

All of the above are lessons that I taught myself in athletics and need to relearn inside my house!

I had a wry smile when I realized that I was closed to Tony’s teaching because of his happiness!

Athletic Errors

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I have come to realize that a focus on athletic performance makes me more likely to make mistakes.

What sort of mistakes?

Getting caught in a cycle of beat down and amp up to compensate for excessive load.
Taking unnecessary risks with my orthopedic health

The sustained load and intensity associated with ambitious race goals pushes me towards poor decisions. In my peer group, it’s accepted, and strangely admired, when speedy athletes push themselves to orthopedic breakdown. I’m surrounded by pals that will trade their feet, joints and teeth for a little bit more.

Separate from wrecking myself, fatigue makes me too tired to participate in my marriage, family and community.

As a single young adult, I laughed at the concept of relationships. The world existed to provide me with opportunities for sex, wealth and achievement. There was too much to get done (to worry about anyone’s feelings). My identity was tied up in what I could do, and I did a lot.

So if I can’t outwork the world, then what’s next?

I’m not sure.

My random ideas of the last few years: change my sport, move to Cali, go back to school, volunteer at hospice, write my second book, an Australian sabbatical, move house… These might be explained by a search for a new identity.

In my personal strategic plan, I have a slogan, “if in doubt then wait.” As most of my ideas have proven impractical, I’ve been following my own advice and waiting. Other tips I give myself:

Create space
Keep what works
Share the passions of your favorite people
Say no to non-core activities

It’s always inconvenient to change my situation but it’s better than having an inappropriate situation change me.

Living Young

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As an elite athlete, I spent a lot of time grumpy, sore and tired. If you wanted to see me happy then you’d need to join me on a workout. The rest of the time, I was at home feeling oh-so-tired.

I took pride my grumpiness – it was a sign that I was doing what it takes, what others couldn’t do.

Yay me! 😉

I held onto elite athletic performance into my 40s and had success at it. Via coaching and participation, I was able to see under the hood of elite amateur racing and didn’t like that version of my future self. It seemed that I was destined to end up admired, yet grumpy and living a solitary life.

Grumpy and alone is how I saw old people when I was young. Serene and connected seem more attractive but will require a big change of attitude. You see, I trained a mental habit that it was OK for me to be grumpy because I was doing what it takes.

My “what it takes” was athletic performance but we can see the pattern with achievers in all areas – sales performance, work performance, academic performance…

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At the end of December, I’ll be closer to 60 than 30 (yrs old). Knowing that too great a focus on performance might cause me to make mistakes, how can I help myself make good choices?

This picture, of Quality vs Time, shows one way to define success:

Quality of Time

The goal line shows a high quality of life for as long a possible.

  • How do I define quality?
  • How might I define quality 10, 20 and 30 years from now?
  • What am I willing to change to maintain quality?

In defining quality, a trap that I’ve fallen into is looking backwards to what I remember as high quality. Two problems with that:

  • I’m not great at remembering backwards in time – I forget the grumpy!
  • I’m optimizing for a younger self that no longer exists – even if I was happy, I can’t handle the protocol anymore!

What’s my definition of living young?

  • Lift my kids to my shoulders – Dad’s most functional strength move
  • Healthy and appropriate sex drive
  • Vanity
  • Orthopedic health – being hurt is horrible
  • Manage blood pressure, blood sugar and cardiovascular health
  • Avoid damaging addictions
  • Capacity of share outdoor activities with my wife and kids
  • Read, write, teach, learn, explore

Ideally, I’d like to manage all of the above without pharmaceutical assistance. Long before I started sports, I was adverse to drugs and I’ve had a lot of positive reinforcement with that decision. It will be interesting to see how, and if, my current views change. Nearly all my older friends (and fellow citizens) have different views on drug use than I do.

What’s your list?

How are the choices you made today impacting that list?

Sweet Little Lies

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It’s the time of year when I speak with friends at the giving, and receiving, side of the athletic sponsorship industry – athletes looking for money, and companies looking for an edge.

Over the long-term, it pays well to remember to “always be willing to make a little less money to maintain your values.”

Avoid athletes, sports and companies that have a track-record of broken promises and lying. Relationships with these types of individuals rarely end well.

Remember that we share a psychology that enables beauty, speed and charisma to overwhelm our good sense.

Fraud (by people that checked out) has been my largest source of loss, and mental anguish.

When faced with a situation that doesn’t check out you’re best to take the pain of not doing a deal. Far cheaper in the long-run.

Do you remember the anointed successor to Warren Buffet that got caught dealing for his own account? Huge news at the time and faded from our collective consciousness. Buffett took the pain early. In sport, a year along from the Reasoned Decision, we continue to fool ourselves. The latest revelation is hundreds of new positives uncovered at the Olympic level. Is any elite sport clean? I doubt it.

If you deal with frauds, and get burned, then make yourself a note so you don’t repeat your mistakes. We have a collective memory that goes back three years, at best.

For my entire adult life, I’ve been watching rascals reinvent themselves for love and profit – each reincarnation leaving upset partners behind them.

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A good book to understand the personality type of frauds is How To Love by Livingston.

What I Learned This Year

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My daughter and I have been dancing together all year. It seems we are on a six-week cycle that ranges from love to despair and back to love. During a week where I was heavy with anger and misery, I reached out to friends. Their best advice:

  • Love your children for who they are.
  • More than being right, or justified, remember that you must preserve the relationship.

Remember that you just might want your (adult) children to repay your kindness down the road. With three kids, I figure one will come through for us. I have a lot of advantages to help make that happen.

With that in mind… Being a great student, a successful investor, an elite athlete… all of these have NOTHING to do with being an effective parent. To live happily alongside young children requires new skills and different approaches.

What’s my source of education and new ideas? My best advice for you is to read – The Happiest Toddler on the Block by Karp. The book took me 90 minutes to read and removed half the meltdowns in my life. My son (2.5 years) and I have a fantastic relationship due to the application of Dr. Karp’s advice.

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There is no denying the segments of deep misery that I have experienced this year. However, when I step outside my life, I can see how easy I have it. However, it’s near impossible to “will” a change in attitude. To change, most people need a crisis.

To help myself shift my attitude I’ve taken the lead with emotionally difficult situations. To date, I’ve had more success outside my house. However, I’m going to stick with my efforts through 2014. My misery could be a catalyst to let go of my desire to force change on my kids. It all comes back to being happy with the way things are (and if I can’t be happy then at least accept it).

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A wealthy friend of mine has to deal with a lot of people that have massive egos. Some of these folks are extremely difficult to handle. I asked him for advice on dealing with fraud. His secret is to be grateful that he doesn’t have to be like others. By acknowledging his freedom to choose, he decides to be a good guy (and that makes him grateful). So I’m working on a good-guy at-home sabbatical for 2014.

On the gratitude side, working with the dying is effective. Some of the folks I work with would love the opportunity to swap into my “problems.”

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Be a hero rather than a bystander. Remember that being part of the solution doesn’t require owning, or solving, the problem. In serious situations, it takes surprisingly little to make a difference.

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Resist the urge to judge other people’s involvement with their families. There is an air of superiority between parents that spend a lot of time with their kids. We wear our involvement like a hair shirt. I need to remember that, often, less involvement is better for everyone. When I over-do-it (even by a couple hours per week), I set the kids off and make everyone miserable.

Too much parenting and I become the problem, rather than part of the solution.

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I have a negative pattern of responding to noise with anger. Now that I can see it – I can work to respond to noise with calmness.

I will share a tactic…

In each of our lives we have moments where we transcend ourselves. For me, it might be the feeling of my son resting his head against me and giggling. A feeling of peaceful openness where the two of us are relaxed and together. If I am aware then these moments are easy to remember. I breathe into those moments and save them for later. When I feel the seed of anger, say tightness, I use the same breath-feeling to open the resistance that creates my anger. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Any reduction in suffering is a win.

By the way, the above is a technique that I used a lot in endurance training. I would breathe into my training “highs”, attach a word to the feeling, and save for later. I’d use my power words when racing became difficult.

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I will be 45 at the end of the year. A lesson that stands out with achievement and success…

The years where I focused on self-improvement, and made progress, resonate more strongly than the years where I focused on beating others.

Excellence defined relative to peers brings resentment, especially when value systems aren’t shared.

In all areas, let go of the constant desire to be right.

Insight Through Action

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Sometimes after school, my wife hangs out on the playground with the other parents and kids. A few weeks back, one of the young boys (4 yrs old), picked up a handful of stones and threw them at his mother.

Watching from a distance, Monica had two thoughts. At least our kids aren’t throwing rocks at us (so far) and “this is going to be interesting.”

The boy’s mom walked up to the little guy, took his hand and kissed it. Completely defusing the situation and getting the kid to settle down.

What is the hardest thing in the world?

Not reflecting my daughter’s energy (right back at her) when she rages at me.

I have a slogan to help me overcome myself… it is ALWAYS ok to comfort my children.

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Constructing Reality

I drop the kids off at school.

I always drop my son off first because he’s easy.

The other morning his teacher comments that it’s so nice to have him in the class because he rolls with everything.

My reply, “you need to be easy, if you have a high-energy older sister.”

Her reply, “actually, it’s nice, just-for-him.”

BOOM – it hit me.

I’ve constructed a reality that views everything through the prism of being the parent of a “difficult child”.

My daughter’s principle “difficulties” being the way she mirrors my inner dialogue!

I have been letting a single relationship color every aspect of my day.

It’s exhausting!

I need to practice letting go. Here’s a great poem about what’s required – it was given to me during hospice training and is exactly what I need for parenting.

Since my daughter was born, we have been on a mission to track every pee, poop, meal and nap. Knowing this data was essential to prove we care!

I’ve come to realize that letting go is required for my personal sanity.

  • Say “yes” as much as possible
  • As little involvement as possible
  • Don’t leave my mind with my kids when I drop them off

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Changing My Attitude

Finally, I don’t want to change my situation, and become a part-time Dad, so I’m going to need to change my attitude.

I have a hunch that my hospice volunteering (13 hours so far) will prove transformative. My practice involves:

  • Breathing through intensity
  • Serving without any ability for reciprocity
  • Being the most junior teammember
  • Walking out the door at the end of the shift

It’s such a contrast to being in a role of complete authority with my kids.

My daughter’s school teaches that it is important to pause and remember our basic goodness. That lesson hasn’t proven effective when I’m under pressure and running on automatic.

What’s been easier is to focus on being a “good guy” through action taken when I’m not under pressure — volunteering, driving around town, dealing with strangers.

There are plenty of opportunities to create a habit of goodness.

 

Touching Fear

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The first time I heard about touching fear was from Mark Allen, six-time Ironman World Champion. Mark talked about overcoming his fear of the wind, the heat and his competition. It was powerful and inspirational stuff. Years later, I was fortunate to spend time with Mark and learn more about the man.

Scott Molina once observed, “What if you do everything right and it’s not enough?”

I know that pain well – it lives on in me, and might be why doping gets me so wound up. Perhaps, that’s the price one pays for not living with regret.

We rarely share our deepest fears. The only way I can see my own is to pay attention to my triggers of irrationality. I defuse the triggers by publishing. Another method is via forgiveness. The path of forgiveness is a difficult one – there are times when I struggle to console my children (for what they’ve done to me in the past).

What our deepest fear?
The fear of being found out.

What if they really knew me?
We might realize the similarities of our inner lives.

I’ve been asking friends and family about triggers that have made them fly off the handle. Tell me about the last time you really lost it…

Athletes get excited about nutrition, training protocols, drafting and doping. Citizens might get excited about religion, politics, gun control, abortion and taxation.

I react to these topics but they are surface triggers. Want to see me deeply irrational, you need to reach deeper, past the filters I’ve carefully built.

  • Disapproval of a child
  • Disapproval of a parent
  • Loss of control over a child
  • Loss of dignity
  • Death
  • Financial loss
  • Criminal sanctions
  • Being alone
  • Infectious diseases

Hands down, the worst form of loss I can conceive is the death of my son. Strangely, that fear triggers love. I’m so grateful that the little guy is here, even as I’m aware that someday his perfection will change and he’ll be just like the rest of us. I share my love for him so I remember how sweet he was as a youngster.

Another fear is that I might fail my daughter. She fatigues me so completely that I get to the point where I (almost) don’t care. I’ve been reducing all forms of stress to give myself more energy to parent.

When I hear people talk about my kids, my efforts are working. When I ask myself about being a parent, I feel like I’m failing my kids. The difference is I hear my inner dialogue, and it isn’t pretty.

A friend in a similar position advised me to “live the life that I want for my kids.” There are weeks where that implies seeing a lot less of my kids.

I haven’t figured out the balance but I know that sharing my fears reduces their hold on me.

Five Questions from Hospice Training

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As part of my hospice training, we were asked to consider five questions. Considering the questions made me realize that I had done a lot of death awareness work while managing the end of my grandmother’s life.

The hospice training was rich in observations. Two that stuck with me:

  • In response to “when are you going to get over it?” I’m still in pain because my loved one is still dead.
  • We never know the first day of the last year of our life.

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The questions…

What will cause my death and why will this be true?

An interesting one for me – my physical self will die from heart failure, my mental self may die from Alzheimer’s/Progressive Dementia and my spiritual self will live on through my wife, children and writing.

I’m not sure of my cause of death, simply looking at my family tree and guessing.

In terms of life after death, it seems obvious that I’ll continue via every interaction I’ve ever had as well as my writing.

While I can’t touch them, my dead friends and family continue to influence and live inside me. It will always be that way.

Who will be impacted by my death?

I suspect that the longer I live, the greater my circle. However, there is a paradox in that sudden (and unexpected) death can have great impact. I continue to think about my good friend, Stu McGavin.

My friends and family will be impacted – I seek to make their grieving more bearable by letting them know that, notwithstanding how I die, I had a fantastic life.

What do you want your funeral, or memorial, to be like?

I wrote a previous article – invite my friends and family to a memorial service that is set up as a memorial weekend, rather than a funeral. Focus on helping the living process my death and create a schedule of support to my spouse and kids (for two years after my death).

Use the opportunity of my memorial weekend to plan ongoing grieving support for the living.

Start a letter to say goodbye to one of the special people in your life.

Monsy,

I love you very much, thank you for your love and sorry I was grumpy at times, you were perfect for me.

To honor the memory of our love, take one aspect of our relationship… teach it, live it and pass it on.

What is the most important thing for me to do or complete before I die?

Ideally, live long enough to have a positive impact on my kids in a manner that they will remember into adulthood.

If that’s not going to be possible then I’ve left enough writing to point them in the right direction.

Above all else, be kind.