Tag Archives: parenting

Love and Hate

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The first time your kid tells you that she hates you can be traumatic. My wife will never forget when our oldest told her that she hated her. Not reacting is one of my strengths so, when it was my turn, my daughter’s hate flowed through me. As a father, I want to help my daughter accept her emotions and let them go. 

Quite often, people that are good with love (mothers, wives, daughter), close themselves to negative emotions, such as hate. That closure, between mothers and daughters especially, can lead to strange dynamics, especially when an unexpected trigger results in an outpouring of hate.

I have an ability to react slowly. Being slow to react makes me appear cold but has helped me deal with some very abrasive people (and challenging preschoolers).

A couple weeks after my non-reaction to my daughter’s hate, the conversation when like this:

Daddy, I love you

Daddy, I hate you

But, I love you more

There is a tension between the love and hate in our little girl. By acknowledging, and not suppressing, the hate, we helped her avoid making the hate her focus.

The other morning, we were walking into school and she saw a little buddy entering the classroom with his mom. 

Lex beamed and told me, “Daddy, that’s my friend.” 

The little guy immediately screamed, “I am NOT your friend!” Causing his mother to stop cold with a universal look of maternal horror. 

Lex shrugged and said, “it’s OK Dad, he’ll be my friend this afternoon.”

A home environment where we let go of hate is wonderful gift to pass to our children.

 

Two Virtues

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Last week a friend sent me an article about preparing heirs and I asked myself, ‘what virtues do I want to pass to my kids?’

Kindness and honesty immediately came to mind.

Why do these stand out and how does my life demonstrate these traits to my kids?

I have very few regrets in my life but those that stand out are due to a lack of kindness at the end of relationships. The other errors that I’ve made had to do with excess drinking.

I can’t teach my kids about how to treat ex-girlfriends nicely anymore. However, I have better avenues for leading by example. How do I treat the most important person in their life, their mother.

The other area, that’s often overlooked, is how I treat people that can be mistreated with little personal downside, service people and strangers. There’s no better prevention for entitlement than working on humility with strangers. This trait has brought goodness, and good business, to my life.

Thursday’s blog will focus on having skin in the game and touches on the decisions that have brought me the most enduring satisfaction. As you can tell from my most recent book, I’ve received psychic benefit from not “taking the money.” This trait runs deeper than finance and has been tested many different ways.

Rather than tell my kids “don’t lie” I’ve been implanting a mantra of “it’s better to tell the truth.”

Cycling gave me an opportunity to explain why and I’m waiting for when they ask me about my own life.

What am I teaching my family by the way I live my life?

The Antifragile Family

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My family owes a debt to Taleb as applying his books, Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan, enabled me to avoid personal bankruptcy in the Great Recession of 2008/2009.

His latest book, Antifragile, extends his work beyond business and finance. I highly recommend this book – here’s a link to his Wikipedia page for a short-form intro to his thinking.

As a father, I have two heuristics that I apply to my kids:

  • Keep the kids alive
  • Don’t protect from failure

My wife and I have debates about the second point and she’s a good counterbalance to my approach. I’m willing to let my kids get dirty, hurt, sick, upset, cold, hot… especially when I think there’s a chance they will learn by doing. My goal being to teach personal responsibility and put ‘failure’ in perspective.

I’m willing to let my kids struggle because Taleb makes the point that we want to do as much nothing as possible. He makes the point with regard to medicine and I’ve heard Buffett make the same point about investing. Both authors note that “doing nothing” is very difficult to achieve and always open to criticism (because it is difficult to attribute the benefits of no-action).

The authors of Siblings Without Rivalry share that the wise parent acknowledges conflict then gives the kids an opportunity to learn how to resolve themselves. What’s the minimum intervention that will help my kids learn to get along in the world?

Recently, my daughter was having trouble playing with older kids. Lex is the first born and defaults to total domination in relationships – the older girl (also first born) yelled at her and Lex came to me to ask if I would intervene…

  • Lex – tell her to play with me
  • Dad – it made you feel sad when she yelled at you
  • Lex – yeah
  • Dad – you want to play with her and her brother
  • Lex – yeah
  • Dad – I could tell her to play with you but kids don’t like being told what to do – why don’t you act a bit more calm and see what happens

Total time investment – ten seconds – kids worked it out over the next ten minutes without any adult intervention. An intervention was required a little later when she nearly slammed a toddler’s fingers in a door (that was a chance to teach “do no harm“)

The message that tinkering leads to adverse outcomes is repeated in many fields. So what to do? I think Taleb would advise:

  • Remove fragility – child-proof the home
  • Limit the effects of asymmetric negative outcomes – seat belts, health insurance, long term care insurance
  • Gain exposure to positive asymmetric outcomes – have children, change careers, meet new people
  • Then stand back, let it ride, avoid noise and spend your time learning

Asymmetric means that the outcome is much greater in one direction than the other. For example, my friends tease me because I always drive the speed limit, or less. I drive slow because the cost (time) is tiny compared to the benefit of less fatalities. An avoidance of negative Black Swans is why I wear seat belts, helmets and don’t run lights & stop signs. It’s also why I don’t yell at strangers, especially in America.

Because Taleb shares stories of multi-million dollar investment profits from applying his knowledge, it’s tempting to consider how we can make a lot of money from his advice. For example, a reader sent in a question about “barbelling” a small portfolio. My advice would be to barbell your life. There is far more upside for a young person to focus on asymmetric outcomes with their human capital, than their financial capital.

I’ve been thinking about my family’s exposure to positive Black Swans and my children keep coming back to me. Little people require a lot of change in the lives of parents but their lives provide the opportunity for positive events to enter the family system. 

How can I help my family benefit from positive asymmetric outcomes?

Live Long and Prosper

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Getting this book out is a form of life insurance for my kids. While I hope I’m around to teach them, ideally by example, there are no guaranties.

The book isn’t perfect but will point them in the right direction. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to improve over the years to come.

You can download for free here.

All my best for a successful 2013.

gordo

 

 

Keeping It Real

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My various careers have provided insight into the men and women that have significant influence over our societies (our leaders, our elites, and the very wealthy). Over time, contemplating their lives has made me grateful, rather than envious.

If I could choose one trait that protects me from envy, it is a desire for freedom over consumption. My key family finds living beyond our means painful. These feelings run deep and across the full socioeconomic spectrum we have in our family tree.

Separate from being biased towards “free and frugal”, I’ve been careful to set my life up with daily “wins” 

  • in my school days I had favorite subjects
  • in my early business career I worked with passion on project after project
  • as an elite athlete each training session completed was a small victory
  • as a father, there is pride from creating a life where I work towards being a world-class parent

Arriving at my mid-40s – I see how one can create a deep satisfaction from the basic goodness of one’s life. Service to my marriage, my kids, my family, my athletic team… is deeply satisfying.

It wasn’t always so.

+++

In 2006, I was advising a friend who was having trouble fitting his triathlon training into a busy life. He was a partner of his firm and had a long commute most days. The solution seemed obvious, I recommended that he hire a driver. The driver would enable him to start his work day when he got in the car, rather than when he arrived at the office. I figured that it was worth at least 9 hours per week and I recommended that he add that time to his triathlon training.

A couple months later, he got back to me and said that he had applied my advice with one slight adjustment…

…he was taking the bus!

He thanked me for getting him thinking. His reply got me thinking… …somewhere between 28 and 38, I had lost my real-world perspective.

When I started my career, I was the most efficient employee in the firm.

How did I lose my way?

+++

The Great Recession of 2008 was extremely useful to me as it highlighted (somewhat embarrassing) inefficiencies about the way I was living. 

I spent twenty years in the financial services industry. A polite way of describing our role to society is that we are excellent at extracting the value we create for ourselves. A less charitable observation is that chronically overpaying people detaches them from reality. A recent US election provided numerous examples of this point.

Like my friend, who takes the bus, the recession provided me with a wake-up call.

+++

At four my daughter is showing encouraging signs with regard to understanding what I’m writing about this week. 

She has developed a habit of picking up spare change and sticking in her piggy bank (which is actually a bunny bank). Putting “money in the bunny” makes her, and me, happy. 

The other skill is saving ice cream “for next time” – when I eat ice cream with her, we can make a single pint last over a week vs 12 minutes when I’m left alone!

Happiness from saving and a desire for delayed gratification. These two points reduced the scale, and negative impact, of the mistakes I made in my 20s and 30s.

+++

In Boulder, we live in a bubble (fitness fanatics), inside a bubble (Boulder socioeconomic level), inside a bubble (Colorado’s limited diversity), inside a bubble (U. S. A. – U. S. A.).

Our life is separate from the reality of the rest the planet – you have to experience the Boulder Bubble to appreciate just how different it is. One of my local role models, makes frequent efforts to get his kids (and himself) out of the bubble. I’m starting to make these efforts with my oldest daughter.

Fortunately, we don’t have to leave the continent for a dose of reality, we merely have to drive to the mountains. We don’t go to Vail (the 1%), or Aspen (the 0.001%). We’ve been going to Leadville – real people, working daily to take care of their families. Some making ends meet, some struggling and some not making it. By way of example, there’s double the level of foreclosures (and far less homes) in Leadville than Boulder.

I’m not sure what they think of us – the guy that’s always wearing bike clothes and his hyperactive little daughter. The locals are welcoming and Lex loves them as much as I do. In fact, she’s working on getting all the guys (coffee shop, bike shop, pizza place) to know her by name.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I love Leadville:

  • sits high in an open valley 
  • looks down on water
  • trees, but not dense forest
  • bright light and blue sky, backed by mountains
  • the thin air making me a bit high
  • a traditional, conservative population
  • the fact that I’m so busy with Lex that I severely limit my time online
  • a simple routine with a kid that’s giving me hugs all the time

I think about the perceived drawbacks (guns, violence and drunks). Looking deeply, I realize that conditioning is creeping in. We have all those hazards in Boulder and a lot more sexual crime.

In Leadville, our routine is swimming, picnics, pizza, playgrounds and riding. We spend all day together. In some ways it is far from life in the bubble (Buddhist preschool, yoga, swim team, babysitters and gymnastics). In other ways, it is exactly the same – eat, sleep, play, love.

An older buddy, with teenage kids, shared a central truth about family – kids want to spend time, not money. 

I think that a more accurate description would be that his kids want to spend his time, not his money. My pal has done an excellent job of passing along a love of the outdoors to his children (while living humbly in one of the wealthiest zip codes in the world).

I’m unlikely to override the influences of Boulder peers, the media and a toxic popular culture towards young women. However, I can lead by example and share alternatives to what may seem to be a fixed reality.

(Trying to) keep it real.

 

Aiming For Elite Parenting

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Monica and I tell our friends that we are former elite athletes that are seeking to become elite parents. Life with three young kids is simple (do no harm), but fatiguing. The constant noise has a big impact on me:

  • reduced creativity
  • increased fatigue
  • impaired hearing
  • reduced capacity to focus

Providing I get my exercise, and daily quiet time, it doesn’t seem to mess up my overall life experience. It does, however, have a productivity cost on my “external” life. I’m already thinking about what I’ll do with myself when our youngest goes into elementary school. I’ll need to start a fifth career!

As a writer, morning is most most creative time. Thing is… with a new baby in the house, 7-10am is a valuable parenting time for me to assist. Add some exercise, a meal, clearing urgent requests… and my work life has been significantly compressed. Productivity becomes key and I’m grateful that I reduced my consulting workload in advance of the birth of our third.

On our hard days, I joke to Monica that it is scientifically proven that we won’t remember much of this phase of our lives. Already, we both have zero recall of the first six months of our eldest daughter’s life – just a few photos remain!

If you are feeling overwhelmed by preschoolers then remember that this is a temporary phase and you’re unlikely to remember much. Hang onto your health, your marriage and your personal sanity.

Here’s a tip for those of you with multiple youngsters in the house: every other weekend, I take our most energetic kid away for the weekend. This lets me teach her and gives my wife a ‘break’ with ‘only’ two kids. When I started doing this, I would be wrecked afterwards. However, I’m getting used to the routine and my recovery times have shortened.

Coping with change is a personal strength but change is never easy. A coping mechanism that I’ve been using is seeking to optimize for what is best for the entire family, rather than myself. More about that next week.

 

 

Talk To The Hands

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…because the head don’t want to know!

Consider how you move your body when you are nervous.

+++

We had a meeting with my daughter’s preschool teacher to chat about whether she was ready for kindergarten. Lex is big for her age and her default approach is physical. We wonder if bumping her forward a year might give an incentive to negotiate a bit more. I was always the youngest in my class – not great for my physical self-esteem but it worked well for my academic drive, which carried through to my adult life.

Separate from fretting about the academic track of a three year old (who’s going to be fine whatever we decide), I wanted to get tips about managing anxiety in kids.

An anxious young woman, growing up in Boulder, with two former elite athletes for parents… I’m smart enough to see that our daughters will be at a high risk for eating disorders. Equipping them with the capacity to relax is one way I can help them prepare for young adulthood.

So I was holding forth with great pride about how I explain behavioral psychology to my (three year old) daughter. The teacher was patient and said that was a useful approach. However, something else I should remember is young kids don’t have the capacity to connect their body to their heads.

Oh yeah, she’s three, not thirty-three!

+++

When Lex is anxious she does one of three things:

  • bites nails
  • pulls fists inwards to her body
  • grinds teeth

My own markers are:

  • shoulders rise
  • tightness in my jaw
  • turn body away from source of stress and look upwards

Rather than speaking to the head, help the child (and yourself) by releasing the physical tension.

Literal Dad: Sweetie, remember that you have a choice about how you feel. Choose to be happy and relaxed.

Effective Dad: Sweetie, have a look at your hands. How do they feel? How do they feel when you open them up?

As a coach, using physical pathways to effect psychological change immediately hit home. Much of the value I receive from coaching comes from watching a physical pursuit improve an athlete’s internal life.

I wanted to pass this tip along, as my change in approach was immediately effective at helping her, and me.

Look for the physical expression of anxiety, release the body, the mind will follow.

Family Values

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As part of my annual review, I finished a book on managing families across generations (recommend the book, regardless of financial position). 

Annually, I consider my values but I hadn’t formally considered our family values. My daughter is coming up on her 4th birthday and her behavior can mirror what I remember from my teens and twenties:

  • Compete with everyone, all the time
  • Near total focus on desired outcome
  • Random acts driven by impulse
  • Goodness with an element of cruelty, due to a limited capacity for empathy

Keeping in mind the lessons of last week and letting her learn by experience. My wife and I have been asking, “How should we treat this spirited young lady?” We decided to consider what we value within our own marriage. We came up with:

  1. Fair
  2. Truthful
  3. Train daily
  4. Golden Rule
  5. Always Polite

Even in childbirth (!), my wife has never raised her voice at me. How do I stack up when I consider the way I treat my own kids?

The goal of being polite provided an opportunity for insight – am I always polite to little people that are whining? Are there times when I fail to try?

As a parent, I want to hold myself to the same standards that my wife expects of me in our marriage. Because they live with me, my family will know my absolute truth.

As I improve myself, I gain empathy for others and find it much easier to handle emotionally-charged issues. My capacity to say no, discuss difficult issues, accept disagreement, let protests flow through me… all are enhanced by consistency within my own life and harmony in my marriage.

Holding myself to high standards requires effort when it is inconvenient. The payoff for this effort is internal harmony. Read the middle of this interview with Bassons for a practical example of the value of peace of mind.

I have work to do, especially when I’m tired and my daughter is melting down. Still, Monica has noticed a clear shift in my capacity to enjoy fatherhood. As an elite athlete, I took pride in doing what was required, rather than what I wanted to do. I’m tapping that trait to become a better parent.

Am I willing to teach my kids by setting limits on my behavior, my consumption and my choices? 

Nine years until my oldest is a teenager – I need to start working on my credibility now!

 

Mr Fix-It

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Three years ago, I was meeting a buddy to ride our bikes across New Zealand. He brought me a gift of books (Courage to Change and One Day At A Time). The books contain many of the observations that I had learned from practical experience, as well as studied in Eastern philosophy.

My pal shared that when you’re in a relationship with an alcoholic there are a number of tendencies that you need to watch:

  • a desire to protect the individual from the negative implications of their choices
  • a desire to cure, or save, the individual from the outside
  • mistaking excitement for the drama, and chaos, that surrounds an addict

Because addiction becomes so extreme, it is easier to see these tendencies in highly dysfunctional relationships. Easier to see but far from easy to fix.

The books got me thinking and I started to look for milder examples of these tendencies. In looking deeply, I realized that a desire to ‘fix’ the world runs strong in me.

Consider when you feel stress about another driver, your kids, a co-worker, a customer – often the source of the stress is either: a fear of what will happen if they don’t change; or conflict between what you want them to do and what they are actually doing.

Last week, I gave an example of how I counter this stress. I publicly acknowledged that it isn’t my place to save the dopers; that I don’t have capacity to change their world; that my time is better spent on my own mission; and they don’t need my help in any event.

I’m close to making the above thought process an automatic habit in all areas of my life. The reduction in stress is huge and well worth the effort required to change. If you are a parent then consider how much of your effort to ‘fix’ your kids is wasted. Far better to “be the brand.”

The change in attitude frees my mind to focus on accepting the people I love; teaching them when the opportunity presents itself; and letting them learn by experiencing the full impact of their choices.

The most effective way to influence others is to combine love with a good example.

 

It’s Complicated

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Last weekend, the New York Times published an article by Jonathan Vaughters (JV) sharing his thoughts, and experience, with doping in professional cycling. If you’re interested in a deeper review of cycling then get a copy of Willy Voet’s book, Breaking The Chain.

JV talks about his choice to get the last 2% performance gain through doping. That had me thinking about my record in Ironman (2nd, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 10th). I think a more accurate description is JV received a 100% performance gain from doping. Cheat and he receives a pro contract, victories, trips to Europe and the exposure that, ultimately, brought him to his current position, working at the top of the sport.

JV is a stranger to me. However, something makes me like him (must be his fashion sense). My positive feelings towards JV, and others that have doped, are widely shared. Recently, I witnessed an exuberant standing ovation for an athlete with a similar background. Many cheaters are, and will remain, extremely popular figures in our society.

What to do? 

First up, I don’t waste energy trying to fix the situation. I have been gradually withdrawing from professional sports – I watch very little on TV, don’t follow the pros and spend my time with a small group of amateur peers. This frees up my mind for what’s important to me (wife, family, serenity, writing).

Second, I teach my kids that athletics is a journey of personal excellence and self-discovery. Professional sport is focused on winning. JV’s mission is winning clean but it is still winning. While that might generate value for sponsors, winning is what drives young people to cut corners. I wonder if my participation, at any competitive level, is part of the solution.

Once your goal is personal excellence the desire to cheat (on your spouse, on your taxes, for an insurance settlement, for another title) is greatly reduced. It is a wonderful filter to apply.

Two arguments that I hear a lot: we need highly-effective testing; and we should welcome the dopers because they enable us to make more money.

We want to be very careful about creating a police state in any segment of our lives. Once we accept total disclosure of an athlete’s life/location/biology, what’s to stop that spreading into areas of our society that actually matter! The world rolls along just fine with professional wrestlers and bodybuilders. 

The second argument, that charismatic dopers are good for the sport, rings hollow. Folks with charisma should not be rewarded for making poor choices. Good looking, charismatic athletes do not need our help. A quick review of human psychology will show that life is heavily stacked in their favor.

I ask myself where it would be appropriate to draw the line. It is important for each of us to think this through. Ethics in sport, finance, politics, business and matrimony are identical. In my own life, I remember the advice of Charlie Munger to stay a mile away from the line!

Now that I have kids, I understand the parable of the Prodigal Son and have become much better at forgiveness. It’s too hard to hate and the inspiration the dopers gave me was, and remains, real. Solo stage wins at the Tour continue to fire me up when I’m riding long in the Rockies.

Against that, I contemplate future races alongside ‘retired’ athletes with elite careers that used the best medical technology available. If I can perform close to their level then it might help my motivation. I’m not sure. It certainly is complicated. 

When I’m exhausted, and my daughter is melting down, I remind myself that character is defined by what we do when it is inconvenient. I love my kids and will focus them on personal excellence.

It is never too late to choose a life with honor.

Chapeau to JV.