Tag: Family

Pushover

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She came running inside in tears.

He went running to his home, also in tears.

My 6-year-old daughter was able to give her side of the story, and others who were outside to witness the incident gave their side.

Thank goodness we have cameras out the front where I can re-watch and get the real story.

He had jumped and knocked her over, not through any malice. She was upset and gave him a push back.

How does one handle such a parenting moment?

My message to her was, “I will not be angry with you for standing up for yourself. You can still play together and be friends, and at the same time you can communicate what is okay and what is not. We will work on using your words more.”

It probably wasn’t perfect parenting, but I was trying to give my daughter confidence to stand up for herself and create healthy boundaries. Because healthy boundaries are vital for a generous life. You get to choose what is okay in a relationship and still have the capacity to be loving and generous to someone.

Much of the physical violence in our world is used by those who don’t have the words to communicate what they are feeling. It can be childish behaviour, even in adults. I am hoping to help my kids get the skills they need to communicate what they are feeling in the moment without physically lashing out.

Unexpressed Gratitude is Selfish

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I catch myself in moments of gratitude. Usually I am alone, and a thought hits me,
“Boy, I am so grateful for…”

Usually it is about my wife, but often it is also about my kids. They are all so great, and it feels good to be reminded of that. I then begin to wish I wasn’t alone in that moment so I could share that with them.

“When I see them next time, I will tell them how I feel about them.”

Then I walk in the door to my home and normal life kicks in with the importance of getting people fed, bathed, read to and in bed at an appropriate time.

My grateful thoughts have disappeared and the desire to share them with my family is also gone.

I guess this is how we end up not expressing ourselves to those closest to us.

I know, I’m a cliché.

I think about it often, it’s my version of ‘if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it…’. If gratitude is unexpressed, is it really gratitude?

I’m not sure if it is. I think that if I feel grateful to someone for who they are, especially someone close to me, and I don’t express it, that is selfish on my part. Everyone deserves to have gratitude expressed to them, about them. Keeping that from people is unfair.

Every night at our dinner table, we share 3 things that we are grateful for in that day. It has become a list of things, which is great. Perhaps I can add “1 person that I am grateful to”, as a means to express my gratitude to those around me, and become a little less selfish.

“If You’re Not Enough Without It, You’ll Never Be Enough With It”

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“Someone once told me that I would never amount to anything. I showed them.”

I have heard that statement so often as people have shared their story about how they became a ‘success’ and what fueled them to get there. On the face of it, it appears that some of the greatest inventions, businesses, sporting feats have grown out of strong desire to ‘prove the haters wrong’.

I can’t help by think that maybe I’m doing my kids a dis-service by giving them encouragement and telling them that they can do hard things. Perhaps I should be telling them they will never be able to do it, and they won’t amount to anything, you know, to help fuel them on to greatness.

This idea of doing something in spite of the people who opposed you is more than just motivation. It is about contentment, happiness and joy. Is so called ‘greatness’ worth the sadness and depression that comes afterwards? Because once you achieve what you set out for, often there is a cliff that leads to the depths of despair. It is a common experience for Olympic athletes after they finish competing at the highest level.

The quote from Cool Runnings comes to mind, “A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.”

You can use it for just about any other life situation:

  • A good marriage is a wonderful thing
  • Being a father is a wonderful thing
  • Owning a home is a wonderful thing
  • Getting a promotion is a wonderful thing
  • Landing that speaking gig is a wonderful thing
  • Writing a book is a wonderful thing
  • Earning more money is a wonderful thing
  • Winning that game is a wonderful thing
  • Winning that race is a wonderful thing
  • Being a leader is a wonderful thing
  • Having a large following is a wonderful thing

…but if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.

What does it mean to be enough?

It’s contentment. It’s peace. It’s being able to sit in the stillness and quiet – to seek it out even, and to not need anything else.

If you can find that, then that is worth more than gold.

Will Ahmed on Success

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“Success is being excited to go to work and being excited to come home.”

Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WHOOP, said this about a month before the birth of his first child. I wonder what may change over the next few months and years. Will has spent years working and building his company, I am sure with many long days and weeks working away.

Honestly, I think it’s too early in life for someone to claim they know what success looks like. He may be right, maybe success is being excited to go to work then being excited to come home. It sounds great, and I agree with it.

But I don’t know if that is the marker of success or not. In 20 years time when his first child has potentially left home will this philosophy hold up?

I can guarantee that if he wants to create a strong relationship with his son that is loving and supportive, then his time allocation between work and home will need to dramatically shift. By the time he is old enough to understand, his son won’t care about WHOOP. He won’t be impressed by Cristiano Ronaldo’s investment in the company. He’ll just see his dad with some dude who used to play soccer. Harsh but true. What does success look like then?

I think the only person who can claim to be successful is one who has lived the life and come to its end, looking back with gratitude recognising that they have lived it according to their values.

Success is less about the numbers and the profile and the opinions of others than it is about the family and culture you build around yourself…I’m pretty sure. I don’t fully know. I’m not there yet.

What if I don’t get anything back?

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I have become overprotective of my energy levels. It’s happened slowly, over time, but I have found myself calculating how much energy a task would require before I say yes to do it. Especially if it’s something my kids have asked me to do. Here are two real life examples:

“Dad, let’s go play cricket outside.” Quick calculation of time it would take, energy required, weather conditions, what else I have on for the day, how I could push it off to another time or day, who else could I suggest he play with instead, energy required to say ‘no’ in my most polite and encouraging way.

“Dad, can you read me this book?” Quick calculation as to how long the book is, how much writing is on each page, how small the writing is, whether or not I enjoy the book, what time of day it is, how many other books have I read recently, is there another time that I can push off the book reading to, is there something else I can get them to do instead, who else is around that could read the book, can they read their own book.

Why do I do this? Why not just play some cricket or read a book? Who has ever regretted doing that with their kids?

My problem is that I worry it will never be enough. My kids always want more than I feel I can give. If I play cricket for a bit, they always want just a little bit more. If I read one book (or part thereof because it is super long), then they always seem to want more and it just leaves them disappointed and me annoyed because “they should be grateful for what I give them”, or so I think.

But giving of my energy is just the same as any other part of generosity. It’s not a zero sum game. It’s not about me pouring out everything and the kids taking everything, leaving me with nothing and them with all. Whilst energy is finite (meaning it does run out eventually) the impact of it is not. The relationships, memories and love that it creates compounds over time, which fuels me and gives me energy. It probably takes more energy to calculate why I can say “no” to something than just saying “yes” and doing the thing. But it’s still a struggle.

Breaking News!

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Sometimes the best headlines don’t make it to your feed or in the final edit of a news broadcast. So, here are some of the latest headlines from our family which you have probably missed.

Family gets ready in the morning, arrive at school on time, kids are happy and the environment was supportive.

Dad makes his kids laugh, again.

Kids arrive home from school happy, and ready to eat more food.

Kids have a shower and get ready for bed without complaining.

Bedtime story ends and no one loses their mind because it wasn’t long enough (or too long).

5-year-old says “Thank you” to mum for making her lunch.

These don’t happen every day, and certainly not all the time, but they are genuine headlines from my household. I am sure that there are similar headlines from other households in our neighbourhood. Most likely it is the same in your neighbourhood too.

There is no way you have seen them before because they are not eye catching nor ‘newsworthy’, but they exist, they are good and they are everywhere.

Good news stories exist. You can find them if you look hard enough. Seek them out to make your day better.

You don’t know what you want

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If you had no financial restrictions and could have anything you wanted in the world, what would you do?

Buy a massive house, maybe a mansion? Cars. Cars for sure. Expensive ones, fast ones, colourful ones, ones that make other people look. Clothes as well. The nicest suits, or dresses, or whatever people wear.

How great would that be, living the dream?

But would it be great?

If you have ever moved from a small home into a larger home, you will know that, whilst it is probably nice to have more space, sometimes you will miss the smaller, more intimate life you left behind.

There are always unintended consequences for the decisions we make.

I have talked about lottery winners before, and Adrian Bayford is another example. After winning almost £150m in 2012 he bought a seven-bedroom luxury mansion with his wife. Now, with his new fiancé, he is moving back to live with his mum in the 4-bedroom house he bought for her. He longs for the simple life, how things were before he was mega rich.

We think we want more and bigger. But what we really want is family and love. You can’t buy those things. When faced with unlimited options, we don’t know what we want, but I can guarantee you that money doesn’t change you, it only makes you more of what you already are.

Or as Notorious B.I.G put it, “Mo money mo problems”.

Nobody has any idea…

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If event A happens right before event B, does that mean that A caused B? It’s hard to say that it doesn’t.

That’s why so many professional athletes have ‘lucky’ items of clothing that they wear – they played a great game once and decided that it was partly because they were wearing a specific pair of underwear. Now it makes up part of their pre-game ritual, even though it stinks and has holes in it.

This philosophy has birthed thousands of ‘experts’ who can share the ‘secrets of their success’, and if it has worked for them, you can do it too and it will work for you, guaranteed*. But somehow their secrets seem to fall short for most people.

At best, the greatest advice anyone can give you is, “Here’s what I have done that has worked for me…so far.”

But luck, timing, and other things outside of our control make up about 90% of all success.

Where you were born, your access to education, meeting the right person at the right time, being the in the right place and the right time, none of these things have anything to do with your ability.

Sometimes success comes in spite of what we did and who we are, and looking back we are not sure how it happened because we did everything ‘wrong’.

I’ve often heard it said, ‘no one has any idea what they are doing, they are just making it up as the go along.’

If that is true, it’s an uncomfortable reality because surely someone knows what is going on and how to do this life thing, someone must be in charge of it all? Maybe not.

Does this mean there is nothing we can learn outside of our own experience? Of course not, but it is important to have the perspective that nothing is guaranteed, and what we think is the ‘silver bullet’ may not be.

It is possible that right now, the thing that you are most sure about in life is based on an incorrect assumption. Whilst that seems unlikely, what is more likely is that the thing you are most sure about in life is based on a partial truth.

So, what do we do with this, seemingly, pessimistic perspective?

I always bring it back to the knowledge that some things are always good for us. Sleep. Eating well. Family/relationships. Generosity. Spiritual endeavours. If we do those things we know that if everything else if life falls over because of something outside of your control, you will still have everything you need.

*not a guarantee

How to ‘Success’

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Success.

What the heck is it? Is it winning? Being the first to do something? Achievement? Is someone else’s failure the cost of your success? Is it a destination? Does it disappear?

I’ve talked about it before, but it keeps coming back to me, Bob Dylan’s take on happiness and unhappiness being ‘yuppie’ words. Words for people who already have alot in life.

It’s the same with many definitions of success. I have heard people talk about the job, the car, the house, the boat, the influence that they want so that they would be considered a success. These are yuppie words. These are words used by people who are so entitled they don’t even realise where they are.

There is nothing wrong with striving for these things, but if they don’t come and you feel like a failure as a result, then you are drastically lost in life.

About 80% of people worldwide don’t own a car. Does that mean that 80% of people are not achieving success?

There are about 33 million recreational boats in the world. So, at best, 99.5% of people in the world don’t own a boat. Are they all not achieving success?

These measurements are so ‘first world’ that it is painful to watch.

The beauty of success is that each person gets to define it for themselves. No one can tell you what your life must look like to be successful. You get to create your own path and that path is much more than the things you accumulate on the way. It includes things like quality relationships, the positive impact you have on others, what you can create.

I think that any successful life starts with a sense of gratitude. A true understanding of what we already have. If I have a roof over my head, food on my table, a family who loves me and a job with purpose, then that seems pretty successful to me.

Happiness Comes

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“You need to give him some space.” I don’t know how many times I have said that to my kids over the last couple of years. They love our dog so much. Too much sometimes. They smother him with their affection and occasionally it will get too much for him and he will stand up and move away. He never gets upset with them, but in his patient, caring way, he communicates that he has had enough of their love and requires some space.

The kids don’t really understand and get upset about it, to which I reply, “Just wait. He will come back when he is ready, and when you have settled down a bit. But the more you chase him the more he will avoid you”.

It got me thinking about happiness and a quote from Viktor Frankl:

“Happiness cannot be pursued. It must ensue. One must have a reason to be happy”.

What I think he is saying is that happiness is not the goal of life. The pursuit of happiness is folly. If we pursue meaning, that will bring about happiness. Happiness will come after we find our meaning.

Meaning, for most of us, is usually based around the people in our life. Our families, friends, people we serve in our career, or in the community. If we can find it, then happy moments will appear, even if there are challenges and difficulties.

The more we chase after happiness, the more it will avoid us. Once we find our meaning, and have settled down a bit, happiness will come to us.