Tag: Parenting

Week In Weak Out

Posted on by admin
Blog Post Cover - Week in weak out text over car on road.

Now that we’re through Christmas, and with 2021 firmly in our sights, I wanted to reveal my guiding phrase for the new year: Week In, Weak Out.

A Quick Year in Review

For many of us, 2020 has provided some tremendous growth opportunities. The changing world of remote work has given us commute time back while adding the stress of working around children.

The political discord in our country has given us the opportunity to listen and empathize with others.

The ongoing quarantine has revealed just how much we were wired for community, social gatherings, and physical contact.

Along the way of each of these national and global issues, have been the individual issues of our own stories.

Some of my personal notes from this year include:

  • Helping business owners transition to the quickly changing world of HR needs in the midst of a pandemic and forced shutdowns.
  • The selling of one house and the purchase of another.
  • Home renovation projects (here’s looking at you broken water pipes!).
  • Cancelled vacations, family visits, and social gatherings.
  • Kids entering puberty and leaving toddlerhood.
  • Elise starting a new job and her master’s program

All of this has revealed to me some of my next growth opportunities. As a success-oriented high achiever, I need my life to be at peak performance.

My guiding phrase for 2021 to help me achieve that is to get better: Day In, Day Out, Week, Weak Out. Blog Post Cover - Week in weak out text over car on road.

Future Growth Opportunities

2021 presents the next great growth opportunity.

Already, my coaching schedule is filling up. The new year always brings new challenges, HR laws, marketing campaigns, and growth strategies. Business owners are looking to turn the page on 2020 and start fresh in 2021. To help them (and all success-oriented leaders) I need to be at my best.

Leaders are hurting. Many are hurting. Most are facing burnout. All are tired.

Helping leaders stay healthy is why I started coaching in the first place, for me to do that well, I need to be healthy myself.

Here are some of my next growth opportunities in the new year:

  • Read and implement the knowledge from 100 books.
  • Take an extended work-free family vacation.
  • Help 100 business owners grow and expand their businesses.
  • Take Elise on a date at least once a month.

Some of these goals are continued extensions of daily habits, some are drastic increases in my thinking and mindset.

One personal project, however, is consuming a large portion of my time and mental space. It is the main thrust of my idea to grow Week In and Weak Out.

Parenting Well

One of the biggest failures American society has done for men is to provide significant and meaningful markers for manhood. We’ve largely left our boys to figure out puberty, manhood, emotional maturity, and personal development to themselves.

I decided to do something about it, starting with my own kids.

Starting at age 8, and continuing every three years until age 21, each of my boys will take a trip with me where we talk about growing into responsible manhood.

For my oldest son, that starts this year. We’re taking a trip to talk about his coming puberty, self-care and hygiene, service towards others, mindset, and selfless love.

Each and every trip will build on the last. We will spend time in the wilderness, examining what it means to be a well-rounded man.

The only way I can help him do that (and any others that join our journey) is to first work on myself.

Habits, routines, and discipline are built in the daily execution of small, repeatable, success steps.

Day In. Day Out. Week In. Weak out.

That’s how we grow. Every day, do something to get better. The next day, repeat that task and do something else. Next week, you’ll notice a small improvement. Soon, you’ll notice your weaknesses leaving.

Mindset improves.

Grit is stronger.

Compassion is amplified.

Love fostered.

Maturity achieved.

But only through consistent and deliberate attention. Done every day.

Day In. Day Out. Weak In. Weak Out.

 

I’ll be posting about this journey constantly. To keep up to date, find out more, and be a part of the journey, click any of the links below.

Subscribe to my newsletter and receive a FREE 5-day course on productivity: 

https://mailchi.mp/0b828bba9f13/emailsignup

Leadership’s “Secret Sauce”

Posted on by admin
Leadership's Secret Sauce

“I Have No Idea What I’m Doing!”

In April of 2009, I became a father for the first time.

My wife, more than a week past her expected due date, was ready to burst. We tried everything that was supposed to help induce labor: drank strange teas, ate spicy foods, gobbled down pineapple, applied special lotions. You name it, we had tried it.

In intense pain and ready to not be pregnant in the warm California spring, we started walking.

We walked.

And walked.

And walked.

Late at night, on the campus of my master’s program, we created a half mile loop from our tiny apartment to the fountain at the center of campus. Over three miles into we finally collapsed into bed. The night was warm. The air was muggy, and after a full day of school and labor-inducing hacks, we were tired.

We got ready for bed, drank some water and tried to lay down. Roughly thirty seconds after I fell asleep she woke me: “It’s time!”

We hurried to the hospital, got admitted, and eight hours later had the joy of seeing my daughter born into this world.

Newborn Baby
First-time fatherhood is scary.

After the doctors were done running all of their tests, one of the nurses turned to me and asked, “Do you want to hold her?”

Call it naivete but that thought had never actually crossed my mind.

I stared at the nurse with a panicked expression on my face and said something along the lines of, “Uhhh….But she’s so little, what if I break her?”

Leadership’s “Secret Sauce”

As a first time father, I was overwhelmed at all of the things I was “supposed to know.” I’ll be honest: I didn’t know any of them.

I felt overwhelmed, under-prepared, emotionally fragile, and unsure of myself.

Thankfully, a decade and three additional kids later…..I’m still all those things (but with many more chances to doubt myself and screw it up).

Leadership, as it turns out, is often the same.

We have these grandiose ideas about our favorite leaders and how they make it look “easy.” The truth is that they have had to learn about leadership under pressure.

Great leadership happens, not because people are innately born with super-human capacity but because they committed themselves to show up, admit their inexperience, learn, try, fail, and try again.

Leadership's Secret Sauce
Leadership’s Secret Sauce

Growing as a leader has a fairly simple (not easy) formula:

Show up.

Commit to learning.

Progressively challenge yourself.

Fail.

Try again.

That is the secret sauce to leadership. It is about showing up, every day, in all situations, with our full selves, to be fully present in service to others.

 

What are you committed to learning as a leader? Chime in below!