Tag Archives: family

Getting My Affairs In Order

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In March, I shared a family legal structure. Even with that structure in place, there will be significant admin for your family to sort when you pass. This admin will hit your spouse and children when they are least equipped to deal with it.

Given that people are useless at administration when they are grieving, how can you make life easier for your family? 

Simplify possessions, portfolios and personal legal structure. Almost everything we have will be sold, donated or disposed. Streamlining yourself, in advance, is an act of love that will save your kids days and weeks of effort. If you have mementos that are special to you then sit down your kids, and grandkids, for storytime. Use the pictures and personal effects to make your history, their history. Without this effort, your memories will end with your passing. Your kids will treasure their memories when you pass. 

Brief your successor(s) – consider the roles that you play in your family (financial, administrative, emotional), who’s backing you up? Do they know it? Have you explained their role to them? Do your successor(s) have written plans and checklists to work through? It’s far easier to update an existing plan than to create one when you’re under the stress of an unexpected event.

Establish A Joint Operating Account – Start with a joint operating account with your spouse. As you age, consider a joint account with your most reliable adult child. In my family, at least half of us have bodies that outlive our minds. It’s very likely that I’ll need to hand off to one of my kids at some stage.

Consider Medical and Financial Powers of Attorney – These roles require different skill sets – consider splitting. Have an honest conversation with the individual you’re considering to help you out. Are they willing, and able, to fulfil their role.

Consider Probate – If you died today then would your estate require probate? What are the costs, and disclosure requirements, associated with probate in your locale? Are you OK with that? What are the steps necessary to avoid probate?

Clear Instructions – make your Will crystal clear, simple and easily available when you pass. Brief your executor, and personal representative, well in advance.

Proactive Disclosure – Hold meetings with your financial/admin attorney, your medical representative and your spouse. I’m 44 and have a quarterly state-of-the-family meeting with my succession team. Not because I expect to die anytime soon, rather as an insurance policy to lessen the blow on my loved ones if I’m taken out at short notice.

Sorting the above doesn’t make coping with death easy, but it does go a long way towards reducing the chance that your survivors are overwhelmed, or ripped off.

Be very careful with financial powers of attorney and signing rights over your assets. I’ve seen fraud within families and between lifelong friends. Establish structures that limit the ability to one corrupt individual to hurt your family. Remember that even competent people make mistakes.

When you think you’ve got everything sorted – try explaining it to a trusted friend. Once you’ve explained it to your pal, have them explain it back to you. I guarantee you’ll learn something.

Three tips for estate planning:

  1. Say what needs to be said, today.
  2. Be a hero now, not when you pass.
  3. You’ll get the greatest satisfaction from sharing gifts (in person) with the people you love.

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Denver Bar Association: what to do when someone dies

Colorado Bar Association: personal representative and trustee under probate

Grannie’s Bystander Problem

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I played a central role in managing my grandmother’s care over the last two years. Here are some thoughts that might help you and your siblings.

It’s better for everyone to have ‘the conversation’ before it is required. Most families lack plans, or skills, to deal with their elders’ passing.

A – each elderly person needs a champion. By champion, I mean a leader, not an owner, of a situation.

B – the champion’s role is to co-ordinate care by the family, and outsiders. In our family, reflecting different skills, we split the financial/admin support from the emotional/medical support. This split works very well.

C – be careful not to ‘own’ an elder. Use caution with commitments that might impair your ability to meet the needs of your spouse and kids. Don’t become a casualty, emotionally or financially.

The highest achieving, or most emotionally giving, can be tempted to move the elder into their house. This can be great, or a disaster, we’ve seen both outcomes in our family. Often from the same situation, but different perspectives (grand kids vs spouse).

D – be open with what needs to be done and ask everyone to contribute a little bit.

E – geographical spread costs time and money. My family lives all over the world, there is a large, mostly hidden, potential liability due to our spread.

Because the problems of the elderly (health, loneliness, death) are difficult to resolve, many people don’t bother to try. That’s a shame because you’ll never regret a small kindness but you might regret not making any effort at all.

A friend shared with me that, in death, she didn’t have anything to offer her parent. The earlier relationship had been unhealthy and she’d decided to end the cycle of pain in her family. She was getting push back from her family to engage but couldn’t bring herself to do something that lacked authenticity.

It reminded me that sometimes our role might be to take the blame as others deal with their grief. Being a father gives me many opportunities to chose what I think is best, rather than expedient.

As a parent, I hope to teach my kids to improve a little bit on the legacy I pass to them.

With powerful emotions, write down how you’re feeling. Time will reshape your memory and you may want a record of why you made your decisions, especially if you have a habit of regret.

The following were central lessons:

As the end nears, small kindnesses have large impacts.

Everyone contributes based on their own capacity.

Don’t keep score.

Your community likely has resources to help you manage. Ask for help.

Our actions train our families to manage our own decline.

Preserve dignity as long as possible.

When You’ve Made Your Money

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By the time I was 32 years old, I had created a life where I had the option of working parttime. For the most part, I got that opportunity “right” and enjoyed my freedom.

My errors came from from the thought (perhaps the lie) that spending yields happiness. That belief, shared by most my peers, pulled me back into fulltime employment twice over the last decade.

The first time I was pulled back, it was to help a friend start a business. There was huge equity upside and I loved the work. It was a good decision but I ended up over-extended financially. Thankfully, I started selling down in 2005 and, in the Great Recession of 2008, “only” lost 2/3rds of my net worth.

The scale of the losses was equal to what wiped out my grandfather’s generation. In the four generations of my family tree (that end with me), we’ve lost enough money for the entire family to never have to work a day in their lives. The bulk of my current job description (father, teacher, administrator, spouse, brother, uncle, trustee) is trying to reduce the frequency, and consequences, of these bad decisions.

When I took my big financial hit, my cost of living (2008) was 5x higher than what I spent in my first year of “freedom” post-college (2001).

Due to the bankruptcy of the business I’d been advising, I was under a tremendous amount of stress. Reflexively, I chose to cut expenses and replace income. My family’s 2009 expenditure was half of 2008, but remained 2.5x higher than what I spent in 2001. I focused on my back-up career of coaching (always have Plan B!) and managed to cover 50% of what I was spending.

At that point, 2010, I didn’t know what to do. Inside my personal business plan, I have a heuristic “if in doubt then wait.” So I repeated the year, with a couple exceptions, Axel (2011) and Bella (2012).

Gradually, across 2011 and 2012, I realized that preserving the status quo (large house, dad working to pay bills that don’t make him happy) was insane. Despite being complete insanity, I was following a path that had universal support in my peer group. As my kids popped up, I noticed that I was getting less and less fun to be around AND I was actively working to create a life outside my house.

The family readings that I shared, and my family history, show that it’s almost certain that we will wipe ourselves out (perhaps more than once) in the next seventy-five years.

What should you know about your money?

  • Most of any financial legacy will be gone a couple decades after my death, or spent by people I never knew
  • The greatest pressure I experience is preserving wealth that I’m unlikely to spend
  • I know I can live in peace on a fraction of my current spending

What do I truly need? Easy to answer day-to-day: exercise, love, service and health.

For the long-term, I like to have a mission. Why not make the people I live with part of my mission? Then I’m surrounded by meaning, and success. If that’s the case then what does my family truly need?

Empathy – it’s easy to find people to do stuff. It’s a lot tougher to find people to listen and care.

Learn To Teach Ourselves – my writing is about sharing how I teach myself. Tools that I want to pass to my kids: write down insights and blindspots, make errors visible, replace habits that hold us back and share stories of what you’d like to become.

Cope With Loss – More by accident than design, I’ve been on a self-guided education of the major faith traditions, neuroscience and behavioral psychology. This has led me to believe that loss is an opportunity to learn by experience. Until life deals us a major setback, we will not understand impermanence and the nature of existence. Create a daily practice that let lets you process, release and recharge from the challenges we all face. Deal with loss by continuing the good that you’ve learned.

My kids weren’t around for for the first 40 years of my life. Common sense means I won’t be here for the last 40 years of their lives.

What’s your legacy?

Good memories and a skill set that let’s the student surpass the teacher.

A Tale of Two Brothers

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A story that’s true across cultures and time.

Consider two brothers…

If, under pain of death, you were given a week to get a task done then you’d be wise to call the older brother.

However, if you were told that you only had a week to live, irrespective of what you did, then you’d be wise to call the younger brother.

Two brothers, two different sets of skills.

It’s important to learn from all aspects of our families and respect our differences. There’s much to learn from people that are different from ourselves.

Love you bro.

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?

Seventh Generation Thinking

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This week’s theme is decisions that benefit our children’s children. Put another way, what are the most important choices I make as a parent, uncle, son, cousin, nephew and grandson.

The books of Hughes, mentioned in Readings To Strengthen Your Family discuss the concept of Seventh Generation Thinking. The idea being to make decisions that benefit citizens (or family members) 140 years down the road. Given that my life takes unexpected turns every decade, thinking 50/100/150 years in the future isn’t meaningful to me. I needed to reframe the question.

Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Antifragile, recommends thinking backwards to gain clarity. So, to learn what might really matter, I ask myself “What choices of my great-grandfather continue to echo in my life?”

The themes that I came up with:

  1. Location, citizenship & community
  2. Agreeing the role of family and renewing that covenant each generation
  3. Creating, and sustaining, traditions
  4. Teaching and facilitating good daily habits
  5. Teaching and facilitating financial wellness
  6. Teaching and facilitating effective interpersonal skills
  7. Initiating family strategic reviews and following up

While I left Canada in 1990, way way back, members of my family made a decision to emigrate and that was a key choice. Likewise, my wife’s parent’s decided to move to Colorado when she was a newborn.

Despite my respect for Canada, and occasional desires to move to Palo Alto, being American and living in Colorado provides my kids with the stability and opportunity for a successful life.

Are we in the right place for my children’s children to have a chance to live the life I wish for myself? Here in Colorado, the answer is yes.

Interestingly, up in Vancouver, my great-grandfather would have answered yes in the 1940s. However, Vancouver grew so fast that the city is a little crowded for me.

Over the last 20 years, the place that most felt like home to me was New Zealand. However, putting 12,000 kilometers between my wife and her family doesn’t make sense. Given that I searched the globe (!), to find the right woman, I should respect her roots.

So the first question to consider is, “Are we where we need to be?”

Living in Asia in my late-20s, I began to suspect that I wasn’t where I needed to be. Eventually, in my early-30s, I left Asia and moved to New Zealand. There I found a home, and people, that suited my values. As fate would have it, I met a wonderful American lady and ended up in Boulder. In my life, it’s been easier to see where I shouldn’t be, than where I should.

Giving Men Feedback

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A correction from parent, or spouse, always has the potential to be emotionally tough for the recipient. In my own life, I need to be aware that I will want to push back or withdraw. So I need to be conscious of my tendencies.

Being aware of my automatic responses gets my head straight for feedback. Next, I acknowledge that I want feedback, particularly ‘bad’ news. Why? Because my goal in life is gradual improvement. I will never be perfect but I can strive for the best version of myself. The most useful feedback will always be slightly painful.

I also know that the people to whom I am emotionally vulnerable accept me and think I’m terrific. So feedback is never designed to pull me down, feedback is meant to make me even more fantastic!

NOTE: many people get caught in a habit of making “jokes” that are based on undermining the target of the humor. This is poison to a relationship and a sign of our own insecurities manifesting in a desire to pull people down.

While I want to improve, feedback needs to be limited. For example, in our home we got into a pattern of constant correction with our daughter and that spilled into everything else. We saw the problem and attacked it by removing gossip from our house and carefully picking where we want to offer correction.

I also think that time spent with other couples is useful. We had dinner this week with a man that had an arranged marriage in the 1950s. He talked generally about the tragedy of marriage without love, but he was talking about himself. Then we chatted with a couple that had a son my age and the husband was bragging about his wife, after 45 years of marriage! Heart warming. The combo made me grateful, then inspired.

My tactics to influence change…

  1. First and foremost, I need to be willing to offer my time to a situation. If I don’t want to spend time, then I forget about having any ability to influence.
  2. Next, I need a long period of building trust via serving the other person’s needs. By helping people achieve their own goals, I learn about their values and their approach.
  3. Gradually, I might offer one or two tips that might help the individual achieve their own goals.
  4. All the while, I acknowledge our individual right to live our lives the way we want and the fact that my ‘way’ isn’t best. There is a wide range of successful lifestyles in the world and my choices are no better than other people’s.

Some final bullet points about coaching your husband in life…

  • When I’m truly beyond reproach then criticism falls away. Therefore, when it triggers a reaction, I pause and search for the information embedded in the info.
  • Most men crave acceptance – constant low-level correction sends a message that your man is fundamentally not OK.
  • I get more of a kick from honor but that’s probably because I’m deeply accepted by my family. Maybe there’s an insight there – to free your man to become honorable, accept what’s best in him.

Remember to aim for nine positive interactions for each correction you offer. You’ll find this discipline improves your effectiveness and how much people like you! It also gets you focused on creating a habit of enjoying your man, rather than spotting his imperfections.

Finally, if you really want to change the world then focus on improving yourself. When I overstep the boundaries of trust, I’m reminded of this truth.

Acceptance and self-improvement are powerful forces in a marriage. In many ways, my wife and I create the person to whom we’re married!

Look inward with your own desires and your actions in your marriage. If you are driven by acceptance then correcting your spouse can set up a pattern that works against your emotional needs.

Why I Declared Victory In My Relationships

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I have a men’s group that tries to meet once a quarter. Recently, we were discussing ways to strengthen our marriages by improving ourselves.

The discussion centered around:

  • being better men for our wives
  • more effective communication with our kids
  • ditching our most damaging habits (anger, overeating, excessive drinking, smoking)

I shared that, while I’m far from perfect, it was effective for me to declare victory on all fronts. For the guys, I interpreted my family mantras in light of my closest relationships:

  • I’ve already won – so I never need to “win” with my wife
  • I have more than I need therefore I don’t expect my wife (or kids) to serve me – at an emotional level, I am my own source of happiness
  • My ultimate goal is to live in a peaceful house that’s full of love

Combing all of the above, I find that there’s nothing left to fight about. If I get irritated then it’s because I’m (blindly) projecting an inability to change myself onto my spouse.

There may be areas of disagreement but, when the family has a goal of harmony, I find that the resolution to any conflict becomes apparent. Sometimes the resolution is simply – we’ll have to deal with this for a while.

Within my marriage, my goal isn’t perfection. My goal is continuous gradual improvement and being part of the overall solution.

Related to my earlier piece on guilt, if I deeply believe that I’m “part of the solution” then I’m able to bring a calm perspective to bear. I don’t need to fix anything, I simply need to help make myself, and our home, a little bit better each day.

How I Cope With Change, Setbacks and Success

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One of the things I’ve found with transitions, whether they are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ they can trigger depression. I’ve built a routine to cope and I’ll share that routine.

Thinking through the changes in my life, I can group them into categories

Moving transitions – I’ve lived all around the world and each move can seem like a big deal. However, because my daily life stays the same, these are easy to navigate. As well, I feel like I’m in control because these transitions happen due to a new opportunity that I want to pursue. The key to enjoying moving is maintaining the ability to move without hassle. Until I was 25, I could move with a single taxi ride – after that wasn’t feasible, I subcontracted the packing, moving and unpacking. If you strip out the “move” the moving transition (when you’re single) is fun. Perhaps that’s why I still harbor romantic notions of easily moving between residences with nothing but an iPhone and a toothbrush. While moves are fun, owning geographically dispersed assets is a hassle.

With kids and a spouse, moving can become stressful because you’re creating an involuntary transition for others. This reality is why I’ve been hesitant to ask my family to move from Colorado. Besides, Boulder is a great place to live and it’s easier to change my attitude than my family’s situation.

New life transitions – This type of transition might involve moving, but it might not. These shifts means your daily routine is going to be completely different. Examples are:

  • Going Pro – recreational athletes deciding to become fulltime athletes. This is called living-the-dream in my peer group.
  • Athletic Retirement – making a decision to let go of elite athletics
  • Joining The Workforce – after University, living the dream, a sabbatical or maternity leave. Big shock to the system because you’re not in control of your work schedule any more
  • Boyfriend/Husband – having to consider the needs of another in decision making (I failed spectacularly for years at this)
  • Wife/Motherhood – the transition from single woman, to wife, to mother, to mother of adult children, to grandmother. Each phase potentially resulting in a new routine, and often, a new self-image.

These transition, even for “good” reasons can act as depression triggers. The trigger being the need to let go of an existing identity.

In 2000, during a year long leave of absence, I can remember sitting in an Aussie hotel room wondering, “why the hell do I feel so depressed? I have an opportunity to vacation for a year.” The trigger likely being my loss of identity as “finance guy.” I navigated through that transition and, from 2000 to 2002, changed my identity to an athlete.

In 2002/2005/2008/2011, same crisis but different trigger! I had dark patches when I wasn’t able to train at the level of an elite athlete. At first the trigger was fatigue from extreme training. However, when I turned 40, the inevitable decline of physical capacity made itself felt.

Having learned to separate my self from my emotions, the transition seemed bizarre. I remember riding up St Vrain Canyon on a beautiful day and wanting to cry the entire time. I turned around early on the ride and suspected that my elite career was over. Strange, or extreme, emotional events cause me to pause and look inwards.

I consulted with a athlete-doctor, now our team doc at Endurance Corner. He observed that extreme exercise, and variable training load, can have outsize effects on an athlete’s neurochemistry. Seeing the link between my physical choices and my inner mental state was an “a-ha moment” in my life.

The way I experience stress, exercise, alcohol, sex and many other experiences is different than most. I can make myself drunk with exercise – a strong sustained effort will get me “high.” I joke about fatigue intoxication but it’s real (and a lot of fun to get completely blasted in a socially acceptable manner). In my case, the same effect that makes me high, can also make me depressed.

Below, I share how to keep the buzz a good one. Whether you are an athlete, or not, the key to managing life transitions is have a core daily routine that you repeat. This core daily practice is universal – if you look for it then you’ll find it everywhere (religion, spiritual practice, bloggers, self-help gurus, success literature). Everybody has their secret recipe and, often, something they want to sell you.

Unexpected change – With a move, or a new life, I can see it coming and I feel like I have a choice. A sense of control, even via illusion, is comforting. There are some transitions that arrive on their own. They might be negative: unemployment, divorce, infidelity, fraud, injury or illness. They might be positive: financial windfall, promotion, fame or unexpected victories.

The negative surprises can get us stuck in a cycle of blame and anger. The positive surprises can trigger feelings of guilt and lack of self-worth.

Both types of surprise can fool us into thinking that we’ve earned the right to cover up our pain by following false gods. You can take your pick of the seven deadly sins – in my family we “soothe” ourselves with with anger, alcohol, sex, food, and my favorite, fatigue.

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I have dealt with all these transitions, good and bad, around the world, on multiple occasions. There are four techniques that bring me out of the depression that results from a serious setback.

Give yourself time to mourn – I give myself 48 hours to feel awful. I let myself feel really sorry for myself. Then it is time to get back on track.

Getting Back On Track – keep it simple. One hour of exercise, low sugar diet, no booze, bright light and one positive step per day. This works every single time.

When I’m depressed, I’m fearful that my game plan won’t work and I’m tempted not to start. The dialogue goes… it probably won’t work this time, this time I’m really depressed. However, the simple steps have never failed me and is similar to what others report working.

The hour-per-day of exercise is flexible. I give myself a “win” if I start the hour. For example, I broke a few ribs at the end of 2011 so had to walk slowly around my neighborhood. In a particularly tough month in 2004, my wife staged an intervention to get me going by walking me around the block. We joked that she was walking-her-gordo; it worked and I got going again. The big thing for me is getting out of the house and into natural light. Having restarted myself a zillion times, I don’t mind the dark weeks. They make me appreciate the majority of my life, when I’m rolling along just fine.

Create Space – when I have no idea what I’m going to do. I give myself time to figure it out. I used to find an open schedule terrifying until I noticed that I enjoyed those days tremendously. Remember that we don’t need to quit our jobs and move to the Himalayas to find space. Simply block out time where you unplug from technology and chill out. To chill, I like being near water, or walking in a forest. Here in Boulder, I’ve been known to stare at the mountains – sometimes I need to drive there, but I prefer to ride.

Gain perspective – the best part of these setbacks is the realization that they aren’t fatal. Eventually something will prove fatal. However, it’s not going to be a broken marriage, a bankruptcy, an act of white-collar crime or some guy cutting corners to race fast.

Two books that helped me feel my Family Mantras: The Last Lecture and Tuesdays with Morrie. Those situations were fatal and I aspire to show the protagonists level of courage.

Learning to cope with serious transitions makes us useful to our friends, families and employers. An ability to continue to move forward under duress is a valuable life skill.

Start by overcoming the small setbacks that appear in daily life.

I can get through highly charged situations so long as I remember to breathe!