Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
The Durable Dad podcast gives men the skills and tools they need to be rock solid for their family, their work and their community.
Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
069: Halftime Strategy
Use this podcast episode when you’re part way through any course, season, or year of your life, and you want to regroup and make the second half a win.
It’s a strategic pause. A time to huddle at half time so you can plan out the second half and finish strong.
Currently, we’re halfway through summer – We only get 18 of them with our kids.
And often, we let it blow by and realize we didn’t make time for most of the stuff we’d hoped to do.
Listen to today’s episode and leave with specific tactics to follow so you can end summer (or whatever journey you’re currently in) with no regrets.
This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is gonna give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up? Episode number 69.
Speaker 1:It is a holiday week, it's the 4th of July, so hope you are doing well, getting ready to take some time off, chill. I feel like this is one of those holidays where the whole country kind of slows down a little bit because it's a long weekend and it's hot. It's the summertime and I hope you get to have some chill time. It's the summertime and I hope you get to have some chill time. I also think this is an opportunity to pause. It's kind of the halftime of summer. If you think of summer as a football game, we've gone through the first half and now it's halftime and we got the second half to play and for us, I feel like the first half in my family, like the first week or two out of school, is a little all over the place and we're kind of figuring out the pace of the game, what this summer is going to look like, and then, as we move into halftime right now, I think it's an awesome opportunity to pause, to huddle the family team together and be like what do we want the second half to look like? And that's what I want to talk about today, because summer can go by really quickly and the days can just kind of fly by and all of a sudden school year's starting again and dang it. I didn't do this, that and the other thing that I really wanted to do this summer, and I don't want that to happen to you.
Speaker 1:Summer is a time when kids are around more often and there's an opportunity to really build stronger relationships with your kids, have some fun with them. One guy that I work with said it's an opportunity to just build a reservoir as a family to attack the school year, like by the time school starts in August or September, whenever your school starts. If we can make this second half of summer about our families, at least part of it, then we're going to be set up for more success when the winter comes and, I think, even further along. Like these kinds of summer, the memories we can make, the time we spend with our kids and together, like those are what impact our relationship way into the future. So what I see happening is our calendar gets filled up with plans, family reunions, we have trips with other families or we have trips with extended family and cousins and things like that, and those are awesome trips, awesome experiences, but it's not with our core family the one that lives under the roof together, family the one that lives under the roof together. And the other stuff the things with extended family, the things with neighbors or other families those end up on our calendar and our calendar can get filled, and what can get lost is immediate family experiences. So I know there are things you want to do, right, last winter, last spring, you're like, oh, when the summer comes around, I want to do this. Or things that were fun last summer, that you wanted to repeat this right now.
Speaker 1:July 4th weekend is the opportunity to get ahead of it. Right? Use our prefrontal cortex to plan what we want the future to look like and, in this case, the next six weeks, what we want it to look like. Use our brain to do that and then we can start executing. So I'm going to give you the step-by-step here what to do over the next couple of days to have a freaking awesome summer with your family, and we're going to sprinkle in some things for yourself, too. What do you want to do this summer? If we're thinking this is halftime of summer, we're bringing the team together in the locker room, our family team. What does a win look like the rest of the summer? So the first thing you're going to do is you're going to make a list Now. You can type it up on your phone or you can write it on a piece of paper, but you're going to make a list of everything you want to do to win the second half of summer and you're not going to let your brain stop you with. We don't have time, that'll never happen. Just write down everything that you want to do and I'll give you some examples.
Speaker 1:One of the big things that is important to a lot of dads, I think, is one-on-one time with each of the kids, and you can write that down. But get specific. Like one guy, he wanted to see a specific movie with his son and his daughter was learning how to ride a bike and he wanted to ride to an ice cream shop with his daughter. For me, with Nell, I want to take her to this bike park. There's this bike park with little features and everything. We went to it earlier this summer. I want to do it again because it was a blast. I want to get a night camping with Nell. Brenda just did a one night camping trip with Nell last week and I got some one-on-one time with Marlo, who's our one and a half year old. So one-on-one time with kids. Get specific. Think about what your kid likes to do.
Speaker 1:Other things on the list when you think about families like one guy was saying that his family loves to go to the pool and at the end of summer they always think about how they didn't get to the pool enough. So one time to the pool every week. He thought that was achievable. He thought that would satisfy them. That went onto his list. Think about what you want to do with your wife. Is there a concert that's coming to town? Is there a play that's going to be in town? A certain dinner or experience that you want to check off this summer? Put it on the list.
Speaker 1:So this list is also going to include things you like to do in the summer. One guy is a bike rider and he wants to make sure that he does this one bike ride on a Saturday morning that he really wants to do. I actually have this one bike ride that I want to do that I'm scheduled. It's on the calendar for Saturday this week and I've never done it before in the last two summers. I thought about doing it and I haven't made it happen. So this Saturday morning I'm waking up early and I'm going to go get that bike ride done.
Speaker 1:So, on that list one-on-one time with each kid get specific what you want to do as a family, what you want to do with your wife and what you want to do for yourself. I gave you some ideas there. Don't overthink it. Keep it simple. You got your list. It's either written down or it's on your phone. Next thing you're going to do is discuss it with the family. So that's why I think this podcast is timely.
Speaker 1:Right before we go into a holiday weekend. We're going to have some chill time with our family. Maybe you're traveling, but if you're traveling, do it in the car together or do it on the airplane together. Find 10 minutes to discuss as a family. So you've made this list. Maybe you start getting pumped about this list. You love your ideas. Maybe the family doesn't agree with all of your lists. Maybe they have some of their own ideas, so you bring it to the family as a discussion. You tell them why you're thinking about doing this, why it's important to you, and get their buy-in. What do they want to do? What do they like on the list? What would they add to the list?
Speaker 1:When I was making mine, one of the things was bringing Nell to this climbing wall at this park that's downtown. I wanted to go downtown, have some coffee, then go to this climbing wall. She loves climbing. It's something that I want to do together, learn more together with her. And when I told her about it hey, we're going to go on a dad-daughter date and we're going to go to this climbing wall she was like I don't want to go to the climbing wall and I was like, huh, I didn't even think she might not want to go. I thought this was like the best idea ever. And she ended up wanting to go to Sky Zone, which is an inside playground, and I was like, eh, I don't want to be inside. And we kind of hashed it out. Brenda actually had this idea to go to this cool park that's also downtown and Nell's been there before and she likes it, and she bought into that idea. So it became a win-win, but I was totally pumped and excited about this climbing wall and that didn't happen. But what was really important was the one-on-one time with Nell.
Speaker 1:So just an example of get your list, be excited about it and don't hold on to it too tight. Listen to everyone else, all right. So you got your list, you discussed it with family, then get a few things on the calendar. Now you have this long list. You don't have to get every single thing done to make the summer a win. Maybe you just get three or four things on the calendar. You block off a couple days of work in the afternoon or in the morning, so you know that you're going to spend that time with your kids or with your wife. So those are the three steps Make a list, bring it into the locker room with the family, discuss it at halftime and then get some stuff on the calendar.
Speaker 1:And then you're going to play the second half of the game and one of the things that will come up for guys is that their wife is the planner. She does most of the planning. I'm not really a planner. That's cool. Maybe you have to bring her into this list a little bit earlier, but don't let that stop you because she will be pumped if you put some thought into this, if you come to her with some of these ideas, letting her know that it's important to you that the family spends time together and you build these relationships, she'll be pumped about that, these types of activities with our family. They're going to strengthen our relationship. It's going to build the relationship now to make our future relationship that much better, starting to make some memories right now for the future.
Speaker 1:We only have 18 summers with our kids in the house. I think there's a book called 18 Summers. Our time is short and we don't want to live with any regrets. So I know there are things that are in your head that you've been thinking about doing that just haven't been executed yet. What are those things that you've wanted to do for the last few summers and it just hasn't happened? Take this weekend to think about it, to bring it to your family. Maybe you just start making the list with your family. You don't even do it on your own. Get ahead of the game, get ahead of the second half and enjoy the family weekend. That's what I got for you. Happy 4th of July and I'll catch you next time.
