Tag Archives: family values

The Luckiest People In The History of People

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Last month, after three years, we had the final community night for my daughter’s preschool. I looked around the room and smiled at what a varied bunch we were. Big, small, young, old, crunchy and corporate… each of us with a kid attending preschool.

At these gatherings, we do a check in (link is to my 2013 article). We get a chance to share one joy and one challenge of being with our kids. The group is a powerful experience and, because it was the last gathering of this group of parents, many of us were emotional.

I’ve come to realize that these circles are valuable because I’m given the opportunity to not-solve the problems of everyone there. As you’ll see in the 2013 article, I don’t always take that opportunity.

I did better with listening at my 8th gathering. Some parents were saddened by the thought that their time in the community was coming to an end. They shared that their kids were also feeling sad about leaving the community and moving on to kindergarden. Here’s what I took away with me from the meeting.

Sadness about the end is an opportunity to teach our kids, and ourselves, about the realities of life. The reality being that everything ends and that it is ok to feel whatever we want about endings, including sadness.

It’s OK to show emotion.

My children think I’m the strongest man in the world. They’ve also seen me cry. They know I’m real.

When you feel the sadness of the ending, remember the craziness of living with your children. Hold the sadness of the ending against every parent’s fear that “this will never end!”

Hold the two qualities in your heart and look for a chance to teach it to your kids.

This lesson is everywhere – traffic, winter, rainy days, Monday, smog…

It’s seems strange but, when I’m calm, the sadness leads me to joy when I’m back with the kids. There will come a time when my children are not going to be cradled in my arms yelling at me.

The trick is to focus on the cradling, rather than the yelling.

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I was also struck by what a fluke it was that we ended up together – sitting on little chairs, at preschool, in Colorado, on a pleasant spring night.

I know enough about the private lives of the other parents to realize that we’ve all experienced a variation of death, illness, divorce or hardship over the last three years.

In addition to shared hardship, it struck me that we happen to be lucky to have healthy kids and the ability to send them to a place where they are loved.

Lexi's Pillow

Tens of billions of people have lived on our planet and I ended up on my little chair, sewing a pillow for my daughter, smiling to myself.

I’ve been chuckling about that for a month.

Very few people, in the history of people, have the opportunity to live the life that’s available to us.

What are you grateful for?

Moving Through A Depression

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Tropic Coffee

50 is coming and I can feel that I’m spending my ‘middle’ worrying about money and getting yelled at by my kids.

The challenging thing about depression, or any of my other irrational feelings, is my inability to shake them via conscious thought.

Sharing my fears and concerns helps put them into a more rational context but my cure is always based around actions, rather than more thinking.

I smile when I re-read the paragraph above because (of course) thinking about “thinking too much” doesn’t work!

What does work?

Most helpful was the realization that I needed to make my life more difficult, while not adding stress.

I did this by purchasing a light alarm clock and changing my life so I get up two hours before my kids, who are thankfully good sleepers. By pulling the two hours from the end, to the beginning, of my day – I was able to write, exercise and sit without disruption. Writing, silence and exercise are the best antidote to the despair that I feel around kid noise.

In the heart of winter I reached out for help and attended a parenting workshop. The workshop gave me insight on how fantastic my kids are – nothing like listening to other parents to make me grateful for my own kids! However, despite my kids being normal (and desirable), I find their noise debilitating and draining.

What about the noise?

Some families cope by having constant background noise (TV and radio). For instance, the best parent that I know wears a radio walkman while she works in her house.

Other families ‘cope’ by yelling at the kids and emotionally beating them down. Effective, but not me.

I’ve been wearing earplugs to take the edge of the most intense moments, which rarely add up to more than 90 minutes a day.

People that cope well with noise will tend to find my choice of earplugs rude. Their reality is incapable of understanding what kid noise does to my internal life. I ask them for forgiveness and share the story of the great parent with the walkman.

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My son goes to school with the child of a social worker, who shared that her professional training hits a wall when she meets the reality of her own children. Her advice: stay two-steps back from the breaking point.

In applying this advice, I dropped lunch time workouts and replaced them with working in an absolutely quiet environment. This change took a lot of fatigue out of the back-end of my day. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday – I was swimming so intensely that I’d be mentally flat in the afternoons and exhausted by the evenings. Swapping my swim training into an early morning forest jog does nothing for my athletic fitness but it makes a huge impact on my overall mood.

Not swimming is complicated (in my head) because my swim coach is my wife and not spending time with her triggers my fear that my marriage will end and it will be my fault!

So…

The other bit of stress release is to tell my spouse the whole truth with how I am feeling, especially my fears (spending concerns, that I’ll act when I feel despair, that she will leave me, that I’m not a good man).

I have persistent themes that build internal stress – these all get shared with her (and pretty much everyone through my blog).

Most of this is article is to remind myself what to do – I had a tough 48 hours and started writing at 5am in a quiet house!

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What makes a difference?

Do something physical and spend a bit of quiet time in advance of the most stressful times of your day. For me that means short, solo, moderate workouts in nature done early morning and late afternoon. Each workout is short enough that the endurance coach in me wants to repeat the entire thing. Physical release and balancing the noise of my home life with quiet periods in my work life.

For the parents that deal with commutes and live in crowded cities – I don’t know how you do it. I’d be at risk for heavy self-medication and persistent deep sadness.

If you’re in that position then wait it out and don’t act on despair.

If I take responsibility for doing what I know works then I always move through a depression. When I’m really beat down it means that I’m very close to things improving.

See the beauty in the good moments.

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Serious athletes might find value in an article I wrote about athletic depression and training mania.

Five Years A Father

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Denver Zoo Spring Break 2014Five and a half years into parenthood, what stands out.

First, you don’t need to make the kids a priority. Babies, toddlers and preschoolers are extremely effective at expressing their needs!

Second, I’d strongly recommend being a binary parent with your core values. If you’re not into physical and verbal abuse – give yourself a blanket no hit and no yell policy. This saves you having to decide if a situation merits abusing your kids or spouse.

It’s surprisingly easy to fall into abusive habits. I’m a lot more aggressive than I realized pre-kids. Part of why I volunteer is to atone for the remorse I feel with regard to my thoughts about my children!

Don’t worry about the difficulties. Everyone deals with the same stuff and our minds do a good job of forgetting about misery. Two practical tips here…

Spend time listening to other parents talking about their situation. It will always make you feel better.

When fellow parents ask how you are doing, answer them “I’m OK now” or “I’m good now” or, perhaps, “I’m great now.”

The second tip is an effective tactic to avoid carrying the past into the future. Only a small minority of moments will be truly miserable. These moments can be high energy and, therefore, easily remembered. I can be bring myself to tears if I focus on my strongest memories of despair. Not a good habit. On the flip side, when things get so bad they become funny, those are the memories that make a marriage.

A Flower For DaddyOne of the most surprising things has been the moments of pure bliss. Sometimes I get so happy that my body tingles. Transcendental experiences.

Christmas 2013Take a lot of pictures. Print out the pictures that trigger joy in you – I can feel my heart as I look at the photos that I share this week.

It’s not possible to have too many positive triggers. There are days, and nights, when you’ll need them!

Screen saverBased on our home life, there are three things that you, and your spouse will be tempted to let slide: sleep, marriage and health.

Further, you’re likely to get so washed out, that you’ll be grateful if your spouse drops sleep or health to make your life easier.

Carving out time to maintain your marriage is inconvenient. However, it’s essential to avoid finding yourself lost. Your kids are going to keep on rolling either way.

Laugh as a family.

Lessons From A Year Of Giving

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In 2013, we decided to give away a small percentage of our taxable income. We’re going to try again in 2014. Here’s what I learned…

To make giving happen, I need a budget. Having the budget also makes me more willing to give because I don’t get caught in a cycle of thinking I “can’t afford” to help or thinking that our giving is too small to make a difference.

I need to remember the giving makes a greater difference to the giver than to the recipient.

The process we used was:

  • Decide on an annual amount
  • Split into monthly allocations
  • Give monthly

Small gifts offer the most satisfaction. This surprised me. The easiest way to describe the positive sensation is…

  • The spirit moves me to give
  • I’m open to that feeling
  • I give
  • I feel good (by not having to close myself to not give)

The size of the gift isn’t important for the “feel good” and I try to always have dollar bills with me. Here’s The Dollar Game that my wife and I played.

What seems to be most important is being open to receive a call to give, then heeding that call.

Giving is a learning process. I had some gifts that didn’t work out from my end and I learned from them. I can group them into categories…

Facilitating something I don’t believe in – giving money to alcoholics so they can buy booze, for example. That didn’t work out well for me. Sitting here now, I don’t regret those gifts but think it was a good decision to keep them small.

Some people, and institutions, don’t need help. An example, might be giving money to a wealthy alma mater, a for-profit corporation, or an inefficient charity. With individuals, struggle is what gives meaning to life, and valuable feedback. I’ve had a poor hit rate with individual sponsorships.

This year, 90% of the money and 100% of the time that we gave away worked for us. That’s an outstanding return for the first year. So I want to remember…

  • Have a budget
  • Keep it small and frequent
  • Stay open to helping
  • Learn from the process

Your Son Thinks You’re Superman

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Some observations I picked up from watching five male generations interact within my own family.

You Are Superman – all reality is relative and, at least in a preschooler’s world, adults are endowed with super powers. We make food appear, we are HUGE, we can lift heavy objects with ease and we hold sway over every aspect of our young children’s lives.

When I admit that my son thinks that I’m Superman, certain positive outcomes flow.

  • I’m more patient with him
  • I can see how shattering it is when I don’t have time for him
  • I treat him better

In making a habit of treating one person better (because, well, I’m Superman), I create a habit that helps me treat everyone better.

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What happens when we look up the family tree?

Part of becoming an adult is creating an identity separate from our parents. The teenage years are all about the push-pull of this transformation. If you’re struggling with your teenagers then I’d encourage you to remember that somewhere in their psyche, you are still Superman!

The bizarre anger and rejection that we see in our families. The behavior makes more sense if you remember that your kids are trying to cope with the impossible task of defining themselves separate from the most powerful people they have ever known (their parents).

Some of us never let go of this habit of pushing away.

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Just like the Easter Bunny and Santa, at some stage, my kids are going to figure out that I’m not Superman.

But somewhere in their psyche, there will always be a seed that says otherwise.

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.

Creating Personal Prosperity

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I’ve been watching my happily self-directed pals.

I’ve noticed common elements that bring them satisfaction.

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Convenience – my self-directed pals create this via simplicity, routine and living in a beautiful location. I need to watch myself because I tend towards complexity, travel for its own sake and constant variation in routine. All of these add stress and increase the probability for hassles to pop up.

Mantra: everything I need is at home

Remember: explore locally, travel less, create space in my schedule

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Control – Related to convenience, in my first career, I tried to outsource as much as possible. This “worked” but if carried it to its logical conclusion then there’s nothing left to do other than “be happy,” “be rich,” or “be fast.” The “being” that we long for is usually a reflection of our values.

I’ve been lucky to realize that achieving my goal of “being” didn’t bring much satisfaction.

It was a mistake for me to believe that happiness lay in getting rid of everything (jobs, responsibilities, obligations) that wasn’t “fun.” I’m more satisfied with the un-fun items in my life.

Remember: satisfaction comes from the opportunity to do my best work while serving others

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Quality – It is interesting to watch families that have no limits on their spending. The families that get it “right” don’t focus on prestige. Instead, they focus on achieving value with a solution that is fit for purpose.

Consider: before spending money I ask, will this make a difference? Before spending time I ask, is this my situation to fix?

Mantra: if in doubt then wait

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Under the radar – I have a craving for recognition that’s subdued in my wise buddies. Perhaps they have learned the danger of being skewed by unearned admiration?

Mantra: work to be worthy of respect

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One final thing that I’ve noticed that correlates to happiness, independent of income: near daily outside activity in beautiful surroundings.

Mantra: live the life I want for my children

Remember: base my family in a location where we don’t need to leave

 

Vanity And Victory

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Kids have an amazing capacity to reflect and absorb the world around them.

I can see this ability, most clearly, in how they pick up the phobias and idiosyncrasies my spouse. With regard to my own traits, I see my strengths reflecting in the kids. By the way, my wife sees the same thing – just reversed.

There is a great scene in the movie, Parenthood, where Steve Martin exclaims, “I just can’t figure out where he gets this obsessive behavior from!” I think about that quote a lot and smile at myself. I own obsession in our household.

As an elite athlete, I valued physical power, domination and winning. You can see these characteristics expressed in other fields (finance, business, perhaps the military). These values have strengths and weaknesses. For a young person, they help you get a tremendous amount of work done (good) but they can leave you blind to the feelings of others (less good). Lacking empathy isn’t always a bad thing, say if you’re combat infantry. However, when that value flows up the organization, it can lead to harassment and corruption.

Over the last two years, I saw the risk of maintaining my values of vanity and victory. I became aware of corruption and scandal throughout the lives of my peers. We always tell ourselves that we’re different but the evidence was so overwhelming that I had to admit that I was fooling myself. Elite performance is a high risk field for ethical strength.

Most athletes sort the world into fast/slow and fit/fat. This differs from business, expressed as rich/poor and beautiful/ugly.

I get resistance when I point these splits out of people (they are obvious in my own thinking). If you can’t see them then listen to other people talk about individuals with mixed characteristics. For example, fast/fat and slow/fit create confusion in athletic populations.

Back to the start of this piece – my children learn little from what I say but they learn most everything from what I do. Bringing them up in a household that prizes winning, and looking good, above all else might not be the best way to play it. They’re going to get plenty of that in the local Boulder community.

Widening the net, consider an individual that achieved the difficult task of creating a lot of wealth. If your #1 value (expressed in peer admiration) is wealth then you are setting up a conflict with your kids, who crave your admiration. If they reject you then they might be protecting their self-image from realizing that they can never be successful on the terms you prize. Look outside your family for examples, they are easy to see.

Millionaire, Champion, CEO… these are difficult to achieve – you deserve respect for the work required to achieve.

  • Achievement become identity
  • Identity becomes values
  • Values become skewed
  1. Remember that the value lies in the work, not the achievement
  2. Goodness requires neither beauty nor money
  3. Listen to how your friends speak about others
  4. Consider if you may need to adjust your friends

As always, I’m talking to myself, not you.

Family Habits & Traditions

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In our family, we have been working on creating habits that benefit the individual, the marriage and the family.

Individual Habits

The greatest change between my first and second marriages was improving my individual habits. To marry the right woman, I had to become a better man.

As you stack on the commitments of career, marriage and children – make time to sustain habits that give your life meaning. Interestingly, I used to think that five hours of exercise per day gave my life meaning – it was a relief to discover that I do just fine on far less. That realization makes me wonder what additional aspects of my current life will fall away over time.

Another observation is my wife gives me total freedom to entertain my fantasies. Specifically, since my teens I have had a recurring desire to escape. My wife is willing to cover the family for 2-8 day stretches. The gift of time alone gives me perspective on what my family brings me (love, companionship, and an opportunity for service).

Marriage Habits

Set these habits up before the kids arrive!

  • Communicate before you have issues – if you’re fighting, or angry, then you have issues – get professional mediation with your issues
  • Weekly date night – two hours per week, every week
  • Time without agenda – in 2013, we’re weightlifting together each week
  • Couples Retreat – some of our favorite memories (an article from early in the marriage, and an article with kids swarming)
  • Cooking healthy food and splitting household chores – efficiency from specialization

Maintain these habits after the kids arrive! It’s easy to lose yourselves.

Family Habits

We’ve stolen best practice whenever, wherever possible!

  • Daddy trips – since my daughter was toilet trained we’ve done trips together
  • Easter egg hunt – we missed this year but want to bring it back – we invite our friends’ kids and friends without kids
  • Matching pajamas at Christmas – these make great family pictures and provide fond memories across the year. I have a “Daddy G” set of PJs that make me smile every time I look at them. Participation is optional, we’ve had a feisty three-year-old opt out!
  • Sunday breakfast – we’ve stopped and started with this one because it’s tough to get a toddler to sit still for long. For summer, we are thinking of trying a picnic so the little ones can run around.
  • Rings – on both sides of our families, there have been family rings used to symbolize coming of age – we’ve thought about maintaining this tradition
  • Parent / Kid Events – with three kids, we’re thinking about doing events with Mom/Dad and just-one-kid – perhaps on their quarter birthdays (5.25, 5.50, 5.75 for example). The goal being some time with both parents when the kid gets to choose what we do.

Deciding on religious education is an area that we’ve been considering and I’ve been educating myself about my wife’s family’s tradition. In terms of making a choice that has the potential to resonate for 100 years, this is one of the more important.

Exploring The Role of Family

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Despite a life spent on the road, I see an end of life benefit to having family established in one location. I’d like my family to maintain my dignity for as long as possible. I think this is a key role for family, and tough to subcontract.

What are other areas where family can help?

Supporting family members to take risks that enrich their lives. The investor in me always brings this back to helping somebody start a business. However, my family tree shows that backing family members can be a poor investment. There is a far greater return from the family offering emotional support for the courage to make a change designed for self-improvement.

Considering some bad decisions that have been made by myself, friends and family, I note that they tend to be made by cutting corners in an effort to make a little bit more money, get some more sex or gain additional status. Family plays a dual role here: (a) strengthening moral resolve through clarity in family ethics; and (b) teaching each other how to enjoy life without spending excessive money, overeating or getting loaded. Specifically, the family as a role in teaching attractive alternatives to the false gods we are taught in a consumer society.

I often socialize around food, alcohol or spending. However, when you ask my brother and I about our fondest memories of growing up, they center around exciting challenges, with good friends, while living in nature. For a decade of my early life, I spent 4-12 weeks a year at camp. A question that I’ve been asking myself is how I can create “Camp Dad” in Colorado. Learning to appreciate nature is one of the greatest gifts I can give my kids.

Last week I visited India. When you fall through the cracks in India, you fall a long, long way. The social safety net in Canada gives comfort that you’re never going to be totally screwed. Here in the US, health care costs can wipe out a family. Access to healthcare could be another role for family, particularly if you live where isn’t universally available.

Some members of my family feel that education is an appropriate area for the family to help. As you can read in earlier article, many families waste valuable capital by over-educating their kids. That said, I’ve been thinking about when educational spending makes sense and will write about that in the future. In our family, we have successful case studies that balance where we wasted money.

How does a family, or organization, get to the point where the membership is comfortable enough with each other to contribute?

Within my own family, we’re working towards the above by agreeing how we will interact with each other:

  • No taboo topics (facilitated by sharing our own life lessons)
  • Everyone talks
  • Build trust via respect, honesty and avoiding unnecessary pain
  • Have an open discussion of commitments
  • Have clear mission (we’re still working on this – for now, we have a general statement to strengthen human capital)

What’s your family seeking to achieve and what do your interactions say about your values?