Funks happen to the best of men. But most guys don't use this super easy tactic to dig their way out of it quickly. Counting your wins is like the secret weapon we all harness but forget to use. Learn why our brains need to be reminded daily of our good deeds, and why we default to self sabotage and and stress without it. Each day arms you with a goldmine of wisdom and motivation. Don't leave it on the table. Acknowledge your wins so you can perform better at work and enjoy your time more at home.
Funks happen to the best of men. But most guys don't use this super easy tactic to dig their way out of it quickly. Counting your wins is like the secret weapon we all harness but forget to use. Learn why our brains need to be reminded daily of our good deeds, and why we default to self sabotage and and stress without it. Each day arms you with a goldmine of wisdom and motivation. Don't leave it on the table. Acknowledge your wins so you can perform better at work and enjoy your time more at home.
This is the Durable Dad podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is going to give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. Alright, what's up? Episode number 39.
Speaker 1:
Today, what I want to talk about is how, this time of year, we can get into funks. We can actually get into a funk at any time, but I think right now, during the holidays, the expectations, the running around can drain us. We want to create a great experience for our kids over the holidays, we have to go to parties, we have to host parties, we want to help around the house, and all of that can kind of bring us down when we put these expectations on ourselves. When we're in a funk, we aren't showing up the best way possible. We're usually more irritable, we're not very fun to be around, we're not taking care of ourself as much and we want to get out of the funk. We want to bust out of it so we can be more productive, efficient at work, get our work done and then go enjoy time with family and have more fun during the holidays, instead of letting it build on us and put pressure and drain us. So how do we get out of our funk? It's a simple, quick, easy way.
Speaker 1:
Most guys don't do it, but all you have to do is start recognizing your wins, chalking up the W's, like, say, chalking up the W's because I'm kind of stealing this from this guy, andy Frasco. He is in a band and Brenda and I really like going to his concerts. If you listen to him on Spotify, it's not as good as his live shows, but he has this Monday motivation reel that he puts out on Instagram and he was talking about chalking up W's and how there's a lot of negativity going on in the world and when there is good to acknowledge it and point it out and I just heard it and think that guys need to hear this message. Maybe you need to hear this message that there is good in the world and there's good in you. You're doing a good job. So, as a practice that I've done for a long time and when I fall out of the practice of celebrating my wins, I start to feel like I'm not doing enough and I start to see all the things that are going wrong and then, when I feel that funk coming on, I notice, oh yeah, I haven't been counting my wins and acknowledging them, celebrating the things that you're doing well, is so effective because it directly impacts the thinking cycle, our mindset, and if you guys listen to this podcast, you know the thinking cycle. If you aren't familiar with it, you can go back and listen to one of the first episodes. I think it's the title, something about the best tool for your toolbox or something like that.
Speaker 1:
But the thinking cycle is that your thoughts create your emotions, your emotions fuel your actions and all the actions that you take start to prove your thoughts true. So this thinking cycle is everything that we have control over our thoughts, our emotions, our actions, everything outside the thinking cycle we don't control. For example, there's this guy I'm working with that was doing really well, crushing life from the outside, but feeling a lot of pressure and anxiety on the inside. And I think this happens to a lot of men. We have it all together on the outside world family looks good, we're making good money in our career but on the inside we don't feel as confident. And this guy I was working with you know he was getting stuff done, he was checking off the boxes, but he wasn't getting great sleep and he had this underlying irritability. He was kind of grumbling around the house, he was annoyed with his coworkers, really easily and just emotionally drained, and he really started to notice it when he flipped out at one of his kids for not putting our shoes away.
Speaker 1:
And when we started talking about this, we looked at his thinking cycle and how his thoughts, his mindset were creating the emotion of pressure, of anxiety in him. And the main thought we identified is I should be doing more. No one was saying this to him, but I think this program runs in a lot of men's background I should be doing more, I'm not doing enough, I'm not doing it the right way, and when we think that we feel disappointed, we feel pressure and then our actions start to be the actions that I was talking about the less sleep, not taking great care of yourself, getting anxious and irritable at other people, so this guy telling himself that he's not doing enough, he should be doing more. We get stuck into setting really high expectations for our self and when we're not meeting the expectations and we don't think we're being the best provider or we're not being the best dad that we can be, we start pushing ourselves harder to meet those expectations and we think that's the answer to just work harder, but that leads to the unhealthy behaviors. And then those unhealthy behaviors ripple into how we take care of our families and how we take care of our communities.
Speaker 1:
So once this guy saw that he was creating the pressure, how he was being hard on himself and the funk that he was in, one of the things he started to do was count his Ws Three wins at the end of each day, three things that he did well at and after doing this, just for a few days, he felt the momentum crank up, more energy, more momentum, feeling a little bit lighter, not as much pressure, and it's all because he started thinking better about himself. He started talking to himself a little bit better because he was acknowledging what good was happening instead of just telling himself that he wasn't doing enough. So I don't remember what wins he was chalking up, but I wanna share some with you that I've written down in the past, and I just grabbed this old journal I have. It's called the Five Minute Journal, and this is really when I started writing down my daily wins. Nowadays, writing down wins really just looks like typing it up on a notes app on my phone or writing it down on a scrap piece of paper or these posted notes that I have next to my bed. I like pen to paper more, but if you only got your phone, write down three wins. And so here are some things like they don't have. They don't have to be huge things, so this is back in 2017.
Speaker 1:
I talked to my mom today and had a really good conversation. I posted a blog article on the outbound story I don't even know what that is anymore Played a fun board game with Brenda. I went snowboarding on a work day break. We decorated for Christmas and listened to songs, and it was fun. This was December 2017. Cool. We completed the paperwork that we needed to finish for adoption. I worked from home today and had a good workout. I had a nice chat with my grandma. I ate no carbs or sugar. I got to see a lot of friends. All these just like small wins, and I'm guessing if I look today like yesterday, when I wrote down my wins, my wins were that I took a walk. My win was that I signed a new client and my win was that I got to put my daughter to bed and she laid on my chest and slept for like 15 minutes and I soaked that in and that was a big win. So just a few examples that wins don't have to be big things, but that there are a lot of good things happening.
Speaker 1:
And celebrating our wins isn't a one and done thing. This is something that we want to continually work on, like we're brushing our teeth, because our brain needs to be reminded of the good stuff. We're very consistent about telling ourselves how we're not doing enough, we're not doing a good job and seeing all the things that are left undone. Looking at our kids and telling ourselves that we're doing a bad job. As a dad, our brain's gonna stay there unless we reprogram it, and that's why we continue to celebrate the wins to really reprogram the brain, change some of those neural pathways and have them working for us instead of against us.
Speaker 1:
And this is one reason why I really like doing a year end review, because so much happens in 365 days that if our brain is programmed to look at the negative, we're gonna remember the tough stuff that happened throughout the year. And I promise, even if you've had a tough year, there is wisdom to gain from that. You did more good than you remember. And taking the time to look at your year. I've never regretted spending that few hours to reflect and this is why you see so many high performers do a year end review. We look back. We see the good stuff that happened, the hard things that we actually survived, and it motivates us, it fills us up to go crush the next year.
Speaker 1:
And it's the same concept at the end of each day. When we look at the day and we remember the wins, instead of being irritable and in a funk, you're gonna be feeling better, and when we're feeling better, we perform better. We're gonna take better care of ourself, we're gonna take better care of the people in our lives. And at this time of the year, over the holidays, we want to find the joy, we want to enjoy the moments. If we're gonna plan all these events for our kids and we're gonna take some time off of work, we wanna be enjoyable to be around and we don't wanna be the grumbling dad over the holidays. So try it out. You can do it. You can write down three wins at the end of each day and see just after a few days if it impacts your mood, if it impacts how you're performing. That's what I got for you guys today. Have an awesome week and I'll catch you next week.