Tag Archives: habits

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.

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!

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?

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

 

Ten Hour Transformations

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A practical example of why the only way to change everything is to focus on changing one thing.

Thinking through my relationship with my daughter, I came up with the following for a minimum commitment to see results…

Ten hours per week:

  • An hour per day as 30 minutes AM/PM;
  • Twice a week do a trip together for 90-minutes (go swimming, ride bikes, trailer ride or park visit)

This structure has me focus on making the small interactions (first each morning, last each night) quality.

With my kids, where I fall short is working on the quality of the little things. I didn’t notice this until last month when we suspended TV, iPad, electronics. To stick to my guns with the electronics ban, I had to interact with my daughter and she had to learn other ways to fill her time (drawing, stacking blocks and playing house).

I learned a lot from the process. Our daughter’s behavior improved and I was forced to face my laziness with engaging with her.

Just like bedtime routines, maybe acting out was driven by a need to get my attention.

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Another area for applying ten-hour commitment might be improving health. You might apply as:

  • An hour per day as 40 minutes walking/cycling in the AM and 20 minutes eating a mixing bowl of salad in the PM;
  • Twice a week – stock the house with healthy options – an hour each time
  • Twice a week – strength training – 20-30 minutes each time

That’s going to capture nearly all of the health benefit from my current lifestyle. I like to exercise more than an hour per day but that’s for mental wellbeing, rather than physical health.

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The above makes it clear, at least to me, why I can only work on one thing at a time.

  • Wife
  • Three kids
  • Amateur sport
  • Job
  • Reading
  • Writing
  • Yoga
  • Spiritual Development

If I seek to change everything (~100 hours per week) then I’ll become overwhelmed and lose the consistency required to achieve anything!

Choose Wisely.

Changing Everything

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A favorite question:

What one thing, if it happened, would change everything?

It can be uncomfortable to acknowledge that our current life experience is a result of the (mostly mental) habits that we’ve created to date.

When I ask myself the above question, I compare my answer to where I spent my time over the last week. I often find myself lacking focus.

Creation of Habits + Time = Life Situation

With the above equation, I consider my habits of thought, action and speech. Listen quietly to any person and they will tell you what they think of themselves (by the humor they share about others).

Because we are mostly operating on autopilot, Free Will is found at the margin of our lives. So, to change EVERYTHING, we need to figure out our ONE THING and focus our Free Will.

Some things:

  • Getting fit
  • Family income and expense balance
  • Gaining control of my schedule
  • Losing weight
  • Being able to ride outside in good weather
  • Being able to eat and drink as much as I want
  • Finding love
  • Publishing a book
  • Winning a special race
  • Finding a sexual partner

I’ve had many “one things.”

So many that I joke with my wife, “Honey, I think I’ve finally found THE answer.”

I joke but there have been several things that have proved transformative:

  • A kind spouse that motivates self-improvement
  • Capital to support freedom of occupation and location
  • Weight loss and exercise leading to wellness
  • Shedding disharmony – in my own mind and in my choice of peers
  • A willingness to own, and share, my errors
  • Living in a beautiful place where I enjoy an outdoor life

Right now, I have two things:

  • Reducing the fatigue that I experience from parenting
  • Achieving income/expense balance

What’s your thing?

Awareness is the first step towards transformation.

Sustainable action consists of building the habit of one small action, done first each day.

Less Misery, More Efficiency

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It’s been over 1,000 days since I realized that my relationship with email had to change. Not only was my inbox making me miserable, it was consuming my life.

What follows is a summary of how I spent three years changing my workflow and improving my life.

#1 – Reduce the fire hose of inbound flow by:

  • Using inbox-zero techniques
  • Making your default reply not more than two words long. For example, “got it” or “ok” work well. What works even better is my preferred response – “can I delete this message now.” Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete
  • If you’re in management at company that doesn’t use a threaded email client then you should be fired. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then switch yourself, and your company, to gmail.
  • Let others reply for you – wait a day before you dive into mass email threads.
  • Unsubscribe as much as possible – if it’s important then you’ll track it down. Once you unsubscribe to everything, you’ll realized that most of the internet is waste and noise.

Recognize that your subconscious mind is terrified of being out of the loop!

Until you remove it, you won’t see how the noise in your life is ruining your capacity for effective thought AND making you miserable.

If you can’t see it in yourself then look around. Most people are not informed – they are filled with useless, and ever changing, noise.

If you find that describes everyone around you then what makes you think you’re different? This was a powerful, and painful, realization for me. Email, social networks and constant connectivity were making me miserable AND clueless.

Once you’ve created the space to think…

2 – Improve your ability to retain information by:

  • Take one slow breath (in and out) before reading any email that you can’t delete, or unsubscribe.
  • Take two slow breaths before any reply that will extend beyond one line – you’ll find your composition is better.
  • Give the sender what they need and no more.
  • Take one slow breath and re-read every reply before you send it. You’ll be amazed at the number of type-os you catch.
  • Take an honest inventory of your productivity across an entire week. At best, you’ll be productive for three hours per day (broken up into 2-4 segments). Once you realize that you’re spinning your wheels go for a walk.

If you think the above sounds hokey then pay attention to how much you hold your breath when working, driving and waiting in line.

Walking is useful to consider, and compose, your best work.

3 – When you must do your best work:

  • Exercise early
  • Eat a healthy meal
  • Wear earplugs
  • Close the door
  • Shut the internet browser
  • Write it out by hand
  • Review when you transcribe it into your computer

Let’s review…

A – reduce the fire hose of inbound to create space for thoughts that matter and reduce the misery you’re experiencing with email

B – stop holding your breath and triggering irritation with your current habits

C – with a less cluttered mind, create a routine for producing high-quality work

The above will make you FAR more happy with your work life and this will make you a better employee, spouse, parent and person.

Living behind a screen, and the back-and-forth nature of email, reinforces habits of inefficiency. Once you start to increase your own free time, be proactive about not wasting other people’s time.

  • Schedule a telephone call for any email that will require more than three replies
  • When you set a call, specify two choices and a preference
  • In advance, send a written agenda
  • Take notes
  • Write (or review) a summary of the call

What I tell myself:

  • It’s incredibly hard to say no and reduce the background noise in our lives.
  • Keep chipping away.
  • Change is difficult but worth it.

Start to pay attention how your current work habits are making you feel.

Even if you are the only person that changes, it’s still worth it.

Be grateful that you had the courage to change!

Cyber Strikeout

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Consider why you are on the internet.

I’m on because it is an effective way for me to share my writing, communicate quickly and learn. I need to remember these reasons because the internet, like certain people, can be an emotional drain.

In cyberspace, I operate a one-strike-you’re-out policy. When I come across a source of discord, I block it. Following a decade of pruning, this only happens once a quarter and keeps my mind free of clutter.

I’ve noticed that many of my pals take Facebook quite seriously, with posts and comments impacting their mood. I’ve heard…

  • Did you see that…
  • I can’t believe that…
  • Why did they…
  • I wish I had less friends…

Most people struggle to break free from tabloid journalism – we’re all hardwired for voyeurism. The way I started was to eliminate one site for a month – I started with a chat forum that I used to check hourly. It was tough but I told myself that I only needed to last 28 days.

Because our brains are wired to notice negatives, more than positives, it only takes a small trigger to adversely impact our mood. Within your online life, it might be worth considering your strike rate.

How often does a site, a person or a situation trigger negative thoughts?

In my life, Facebook and chat forums had a strike rate of once per login. It was easy to see an immediate benefit from breaking their hold on me.

Similarly, because they have a low value-to-noise ratio, there aren’t comments sections on any of my websites. My sites exist to share useful information and free my mind via publishing.

Leaving a habit behind forever can seem daunting. As humans, we’re very attached to our habits, even those that hurt us (smoking, abusive relationships, toxic people, media sources that generate fear & anger).

Take a break for 28 days then ask yourself if you miss it.

This habit will change your life.