Tag Archives: habits

An Illusion of Individual Experience

Posted on by

riverMy buddy, AC, wrote a good article about his athletic journey.

Alan’s article was a reminder of my own capacity for self-harm and a need to remain vigilant against fooling myself. You see, my story is the same with different details.

I make a cameo in the last decade of Alan’s life and my friends have been talking to me about their own experience.

I wanted to share part of a conversation…

A – I could never do that.
G – Never do what?

A – I could never share my story.
G – You might want to be careful with that.

A – Careful with what?
G – Be careful about making affirmations to conceal your truth

When you start to share your truth, you’re likely to discover that it’s really our truth.

Be brave.

Educating A Beautiful Girl

Posted on by

Lexi in MoabAn enduring benefit from working across cultures, races, sexual orientation, body mass indices and beauty is an increased capacity to see myself in other people.

If you look closely then you’ll see that power-seekers have a tendency to focus on the wickedness of “them.” It’s an effective argument employed by the media, politicians and our leaders.

Pointing out “their wickedness” is so common that I search for teachers that are careful to avoid an appeal to wickedness.

A story…

My daughter and I were heading into the supermarket in Moab. People in the desert look different than people in Boulder.

Dad, dad… that homeless guy is stealing all the food.

Sweetie, look carefully, he’s taking his groceries to his car.

With her filters off, my daughter reminded me that I have some work to do.

Another example…

The wealth effect of excessive living is obvious. However, if you look deeply then you’ll discover another, far more subtle, effect. You’ll be able to feel a separation between yourself and other people.

As you separate yourself, you will be prone to seeing “their wickedness.”

The physical separation is in plain sight – education policy, gated communities, exclusive clubs, athletic ability…

In Boulder, we don’t need gates, the price of real estate makes an effective barrier to entry, especially when combined with private school fees (so our children are protected from their children).

If you sit quietly then you will feel a deeper separation. It makes us miserable and allows us to be manipulated.

An antidote…

  • Humility in my own needs
  • Spending time outside my “tribe”
  • Looking inwards at my tendency to hold myself separate

Later in the trip I asked my daughter…

Who gets hurt when you’re scared or angry?

PJs

A Lesson From Richard Feynman

Posted on by

snow_bunnyThe mistake I made was not reconsidering my involvement once the original reason for agreeing to help had been removed.

The quote is Richard Feynman’s. It refers to his role in building the nuclear weapons that killed more than 100,000 people. You’ll find the story of his involvement in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.

One of the most dangerous biases that we’re prone to is consistency and commitment tendency.

Once we start down a path, it takes uncommon effort to get us to deviate, or change our mind. In fact, the harder outsiders try to change our minds, the more we dig in. Think politics, patriotism, corporate policy and religious dogma.

However, it is not all bad news. We can acknowledge this tendency and harness it to make positive changes in our lives.

Write down key decisions and own our errors. I force myself to do this annually.

Force ourselves to look inwards and discover the irrationality and intellectual arrogance that we see in others. My wife is an expert at gently pointing out inconsistencies!

Make a habit of micro-change. Fake it until you make it and give yourself permission to change your mind “just a little bit.”

Making significant changes in our lives is such a hassle that we nearly always wait until a crisis forces our hand.

  • Divorce
  • Health emergency
  • Large scale financial fraud
  • Ethical lapses
  • Criminal behavior
  • Addiction and abuse

These are opportunities to reassess but, in a crisis, I’m too overwhelmed to think clearly!

My solution is to schedule time to consider time.

  • Family
  • Career
  • Relationships
  • Athletics
  • Volunteering

Remembering why I started.

Did my choices today make sense?

An Unexpected Teacher – The End of The Little

Posted on by

ax_fro_yoThe early years of parenting are a blur but two memories persist from the first time I was living with a three-year old.

One memory is hiring a full-time nanny and explaining her job description as “get our oldest out of the house.”

The second memory is trying to generate compassion for our daughter by thinking about how sad I would be if something happened to her.

Now that our middle kid is three, we’re in familiar territory. However, this time it feels different.

I wasn’t able to see what follows until I was taught to look for it.

++

We have a mixing bowl that has each of the kids’ names in it.

We draw a name from the bowl and the kid that wins is Kid-of-the-Day.

Kid-of-the-day gets to choose where s/he sits in the car and what shows we watch.

When we drew Bella’s name out of the bowl, my three-year old (Axel) was jumping for joy because it was his sister’s “day”.

The capacity to experience joy for another person’s good fortune.

I’m grateful to be able to see that in my house.

++

I don’t meditate about my kids dying anymore but I often think about my own death.

Through my contemplation, I can see the transient nature of my little boy. He’s arrived at the end of being little. The “little” phase is nearly done.

It was awesome.

I miss him before he’s gone.

I’ve been working with that feeling to get a better appreciation of life.

As the bumper sticker says, these are the good-old days.

++

When things were very difficult with my eldest, I would assign motive and intent to her behavior.

…she knows what she is doing to me…

In speaking with child development experts, they assured me that it was impossible for a little kid to have intent. Possibly, the kids are picking up on my internal struggles and reflecting them right back at me.

Most likely, my experience is dictated by the turmoil in my own mind.

++

One of the most amazing things about three-year olds is their capacity to switch between emotional states (tears – to joy – to tears – to laughter – to tears),

I remember one time my son had me on the edge. It was the second hour of putting him to sleep, I was exhausted and he was making request after request after request…

I was spending considerable energy not acting on my frustration, and feeling like crying, he says… Daddy, I love you.

…and reminded me that we will never regret not acting on our anger.

Handling Criticism with Grace

Posted on by

2015-03-14 11.37.55

I was dropping my kids at school and overheard a conversation between a parent and teacher.

The parent was running through a shopping list of needs for her little one and explaining how the teachers had been falling short.

As I listened to the parent, I could feel myself digging in on behalf of the school and the teachers.

…don’t you know how long we’ve been doing this

…do you really thing you know better

…does any of this truly matter

Instead, the teacher listened carefully and let the parent talk herself out completely.

She replied,

Those are good ideas and I want to thank you for your patience with us.

Absolute brilliance!

The reply took the energy out of the situation and the parent was grateful that she was heard.

I took the “thank you for your patience” and have been working with it.

I use it with myself – stay calm be patient.

I use it with my family – I am working to improve, thank you for your patience

And, I use it when people offer correction – those are good ideas and I want to thank you for your patience.

 

What I Wish I Knew Four Years Ago About Fatherhood

Posted on by

Lexi_2011I’m told that 2010-2013 were often awful. I wouldn’t know for sure because I have ZERO memory. It’s amazing. Aside from the photos, the early years of my kids are gone.

My wife carries emotional trauma from these years and will flashback when something triggers her. She tells me it’s a really unpleasant sensation.

The memory I have is wondering why I couldn’t transcend my daughter. I used to carry around the difficulties of parenthood. Even when I was away from her, I would hold the difficulties in my mind.

My wife’s the same way – both with her 2010-2013 experience of our daughter as well as with her own childhood memories.

I suspect we’re all prone to carrying around the past.

This might help.

The first step in letting go of an image isn’t letting go, snapping out of it, or moving on…

…my mind doesn’t work that way.

Lexi_CuteWhether you’re coping with an unpleasant emotion, an addiction or a compulsion…

…far better to give your mind something to grab on to.

Lexi_surfDecide on a series of images that you can feel in your body. The feeling you’re looking for is one that mimics joy and love – in my case the sensation in an opening of my heart.

Lexi_FlowerI walk in the forest and contemplate my favorite images.

When I started, I struggled to generate the feelings with the images of my daughter. I kept coming back to the pain image at the top of the page.

Ax_HippoSo I would start with images of my son and transfer the feelings over to my daughter.

It didn’t work well at first but I stuck with it.

I also spent a lot of time with the source of my discomfort.

Lexi_boom

…and my daughter grew up

…and I got better at it

Lexi_science

…and I realized that what I was doing was training my mind to be able to conjure up a sensation, a feeling, an emotion

…that was different to my prior habits of anger and frustration

Ax_scary

The difficult moments remained challenging but I was no longer carrying them around with me.

It was a form of freedom.

I found myself laughing more often and I had a bit more patience, which can be VERY useful when dealing with a cranky three-year old!

Anyhow, if you find seeking dominance to be an ineffective strategy then I hope you remember this post.

Replace your suffering by thinking about things that make you smile.

Bonus points for making the effort while walking in nature!

Lexi_Elsa

The Fountain of Youth

Posted on by

2015-02-10 16.55.59When I was a student at McGill University, I took a course about insurance. Our teacher worked in the life insurance industry. He had us fill out a lifestyle risk assessment.

I was surprised that my risk was off-the-charts.

Of course it was.

It’s adaptive for young men to be clueless.

As I tell my wife…

Men under 30 lack the capacity to access risk 

Some of us grow out of it.

Some don’t.

To make it easy for the guys, the teacher gave us three things:

  1. Don’t speed
  2. Wear a seat belt
  3. Don’t smoke

All three became life-long habits.

What’s that have to do with aging?

My professor was recommending that we eliminate choices that kill students early. He was speaking to lifespan (don’t smoke), and what kills teenage men (speed and seat belts). He knew that telling us to drink less would have been futile.

I have been reading about healthspan (links to Washington Post article).

Healthspan means optimizing my choices for independent living and being able to share experiences with the people I love.

If you’re smoking and/or speeding without a seatbelt, then focus on those first.

How do we extend, and protect, our healthspan?

Treat being mortal like heart disease

Via diet, stress and exercise

My recipe

  1. Identify and jettison stress
  2. Move my body in nature
  3. Eat real food
  4. Sleep enough that I often wake up before my alarm

Keep it simple.

The Beer and Rice Noodle Cleanse

Posted on by

valentineOne of the most poignant memories of my childhood is being a “fat kid” and wishing that I could have a second chance with my body. I’m certain childhood pain drove a lot of my ambitions as an adult.

Across my life, I’ve been given second, third, fourth, fifth… chances at health and fitness.

It’s only been the last eleven years that I’ve managed to hold a stable weight.

++

Towards the end of January, I noticed that I had edged over my “winter ceiling weight.” I have a range that I move between (165-170 pounds).

Because my weight can move 4 pounds in an hour, I watch trends over time. For example, I need to be over 170 pounds for a couple weeks before I’ll take that weight as real.

Typically, when a little heavy, I will schedule a week-long cycling trip and sort myself out by adding a ton of exercise. However, that’s not possible this year so I needed to come up with something different.

I start by looking at the low-hanging fruit…

The week before I decided to take action, I had eight beers and four dinners of Pad Thai noodles. So I latched onto that and came up with the cleanse.

The fact that I was choosing a lot of beer and noodles told me something about all of my choices!

Keep everything the same, ditch two things that are holding me back.

The game is..

  • Little changes, early, before I need them
  • Microchanges are more of an inconvenience, than painful

The result => I’m highly likely to make the changes stick

Then sit back and see what happens.

This leads me to the next stage and I’m reminded that…

Good things happen slowly => I thought I’d be off this thing in less than a week but, absent excessive exercise, my body changes slowly.

Look at the why => week three of living without the “comfort” of beer and Pad Thai showed me that they really weren’t comforting at all. I feel the same. Maybe a little better!

These two “facts of life” are obvious from the outside but I’m prone to fooling myself and need reminders.

This cleanse is relatively easy. The tougher changes are the one’s that touch on our spiritual, emotional and intellectual nutrition!

Siblings Competing For Love – Living With Kids

Posted on by

peace2When my family is tired, our filters come down and the raw emotion flows freely.

With six, three and two year olds under the same roof it can get crazy at times.

Here are three simple techniques we use to give the kids the comfort they need and maintain our sanity.

#1 – the one-on-one play date

You’ve probably noticed that little people can struggle to play with more than one person at a time.

For play dates, and PARENT dates, we aim for one-on-one activity. This is particularly useful for the relationship between my wife and my oldest daughter. They do things together, they acknowledge that they are together and my daughter gets to choose the activity.

The conversation might go…

L: It’s not fair, you’re always spending time with the baby.

M: Well Sweetie, remember that Tuesday afternoon is YOUR day. We will be swimming together and going out to dinner where you want.

This technique won’t solve every issue but it will cut them in half, while making you feel better about your allocation of time.

#2 – is it true?

A family member screaming “you’re not giving me what I need” is an extremely effective, and painful, appeal.

Adult children, and parents of adult children, can continue to use this tactic.

As a parent, understand that the child is programmed to make the appeal and you’re programmed to feel pain.

It’s nothing personal.

But is it true?

The pain is coming from a sense that I’m not doing what I should. So I ask myself, am I giving my child what she needs? Usually, I am.

If not then am I able to give my child more? Some times things get worse (for me AND my child) as I give more of myself.

Is my child correctly identifying her issue? Most meltdowns are an appeal for love and understanding. They have very little to do with my child’s current obsession and can be overcome with a hug, recognition or the passage of time.

#3 – failure is an option

As I wrote in A Necessary Failure – the relentless demands of our children are designed to break both of us down. It’s an essential part of growing up.

Remember to hold onto the good times.

Here’s a picture of my children not fighting. It happens more often than I think!peaceOur minds have a habit of remembering pain more than serenity.

 

The Body You Want

Posted on by

When my wife was a teenager, she really wanted curves.

coach_monsyThings worked out.

My teenage desires were different, but common. I wanted to be jacked.

gordo_crunchThat worked out too.

By the time we both got exactly what we wanted, we wanted something else.

We wanted to be whippet skinny so we could run fast.

We wanted to look like tall, but ripped, 14-year-olds!

G_WhipThat worked out, again.

I spent twenty-five years only to get right back where I started.

I noticed that there is an enduring feeling of my body being slightly unsatisfactory.

Once I noticed this pattern with my body, I saw it elsewhere.

Personal safety, other people’s driving, my house, my finances, my life situation… In many situations, there is a slight feeling of unsatisfactory.

I’m always striving to attain satisfaction that’s is just-out-of-reach.

As a young man, I might have seen striving as a good thing. My drive for improvement, my competitive urges, a desire for self-improvement… we have lots of names for the feeling.

Some cultures call it misery.

See what it feels like for you.

++

When I work with others, we use a simple technique.

  • Write down what will make you satisfied.
  • Write down what will make you less afraid.
  • Write down what will make you feel secure.

Out of your list, choose one thing and work towards it.

Work slowly, pay attention, write things down.

Give yourself at least 1,000 days.

Ten years might be better.

You might get there quicker.

With my body, I didn’t start to notice my pattern until I’d been at it for twenty-five years!

With finances, I was lucky, I saw my pattern after a decade, took a leave of absence and enjoyed my first retirement.

++

The fact that the lesson took a long time was helpful.

Good things happen slowly.

It’s tempting to short cut the process via cosmetic surgery, performance enhancing drugs, or cutting corners (fraud, tax evasion, deception).

Short-cuts rarely work because we fail to notice the slightly unsatisfactory feeling is following us everywhere,

My victories didn’t work, either. My successes left me wanting more and the feeling followed me around.

++

So I tried enjoying myself…

Pleasure can temporarily mask the unsatisfactory feeling and many use drugs, alcohol, fatigue and other techniques.

The trouble is… the associated hangovers are increasingly unsatisfactory as I age.

What to do?

If you can see the unsatisfactory nature of things then you might ask “who’s not satisfied?”

Once I could see the “unsatisfied person” it was easier for me to decide he wasn’t going to run the show.

At least, some of the time.

😉