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
077: Unwind with a Net Positive Impact
Can watching Netflix or scrolling through social media really help you unwind? Today's episode will look at common strategies men use to unplug at the end of the day, and you'll walk away with better options.
Imagine you're an archer, and you have a quiver of arrows on your back. Each of these arrows is a strategy to unplug for a moment. Some of these arrows leave you with a net negative impact (aka less energy), and some leave you with a net positive impact (aka more energy.
The struggle is, most net negative arrows are within easy reach. You've got to work a bit harder for the net positives. But the good news is, the more you reach for your net positive arrows, the more you start to crave them.
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 guys? Episode number 77, we're gonna dive right in.
Speaker 1:Today we are going to talk about ways to unwind without a negative consequence, as a dad being stressed and overwhelmed is going to happen. It's a part of fatherhood and these times when we want to unwind, when we want to chill, when we want to just decompress, we all have our own ways of doing it, and what we want to focus on are ways that give us a net positive, not a net negative, and net negative pretty much means at the start of the activity, it feels good, you are getting those endorphins up, the dopamine's hitting high, and then it leaves you in a deficit. It leaves your energy lower than when you started, and if you think of the different ways that you chill out, you can think of it as a quiver of arrows. You are an archer If you're a Marvel fan and you like Hawkeye. He's the badass archer from the Marvel comics, the Marvel movies, and he's got this quiver of arrows that do all different types of things. They blow shit up, they have ropes attached to them, they shoot out really bright lights. All these different arrows, they all have a different purpose and this is how you can think of these ways that we chill out, the ways that we unwind. They're all different arrows. So we're going to think of the arrows that are in our quiver, that we use to unwind, that we use to just unplug, as having either a net negative or a net positive impact, and the things I see a lot of guys doing to relax but have a net negative impact.
Speaker 1:This is like the end of the day, when you've been going, going, going and the kids are finally to sleep and you just want to chill and you just want to turn on Netflix and zone out for a little bit. Totally get this one. The evenings, and even before the kids go down, I just want to check out. And once in a while, brenda and I will schedule nights where I go into Brenda's office with the laptop and watch a movie, right, we have dinner, and then I go and do that while she handles the kids for a night. It's planned ahead of time. We know we're going to do it. It's once in a while. But if watching Netflix is just your go-to checkout method, you always pull that same arrow.
Speaker 1:It's probably not giving you the energy boost that you need. It's not giving your system that time to actually unplug, unwind. When we're unplugging and unwinding, we know we're really doing it. When we're activating our parasympathetic nervous system, that part of our nervous system that is rest, digest, heal. That's the nervous system that we want. And just zoning out to a screen, you have the blue light from the screen. That's very activating on the eyes. It keeps the eyes awake. It keeps your different neurochemicals in an awake state. It's tricking your body. It's not letting your body relax, not letting your body get ready for bed. So that's one arrow that can leave you depleted Phones, the scrolling, the social networks, the mindlessly just pulling your phone out and looking at it.
Speaker 1:Net negative consequence the attention that we're wasting on scrolling. That's draining our energy. We think that, oh, I'm going to step out of the room and just scroll on Facebook for a little bit because I need a break and I want to chill out. We're actually not chilling out when we're on our phones. Another arrow with net negative are substances so drinking to take the edge off right. It feels good, it relaxes you in the moment, but the net negative impact is that you don't sleep as well, you're a little more foggy in the morning, you don't wake up for your workouts. Right, these arrows that give us a net negative consequence? We want to be aware of them so we know when to pull them and when not to pull them. Right, if you're Saturday night out drinking with a few friends, totally might be the time that you want to pull out that arrow to hang out. But are you pulling out the drinking arrow on a Monday night when it's just you and the kids have gone to bed, or you just get off of work and you crack a beer to unplug a little bit? Right, check ourself. That's what this podcast is all about.
Speaker 1:Another one is weed. I mean, weed is probably the one that I've worked on and been more disciplined with in the last couple years. I just can remember this was within the last year, like six months ago that I had a gummy. It was a Wednesday at five o'clock after the workday and a couple minutes later I was like why did I just have that? I just ate it because I wanted to chill out, I wanted to decompress. But now I'm going to be hanging out with my family. I want to chill out, I want everyone to just be quiet and let me hang.
Speaker 1:But that's not how it works being a dad, because, same thing as alcohol, like these substances alter our mind, alter our state of being and are we relying on them too much where we're not ourselves. After we take them, we really aren't our best self. That's the negative impact when we've done the activity to unwind and then later we're not being our best self. It's not contributing to us being a better self man. And then another substance I'll throw on the list that I see a lot of guys turning to is sugar. Right.
Speaker 1:Stopping in the middle of the workday when the pressure's high or you're kind of stressed and procrastinating and go and turn to a snack. We want to hang out with some ice cream to unplug in the evening and we end up not feeling great afterwards. It tastes delicious in our mouth. I've actually heard Joe Rogan call it mouth porn. Right, it tastes good for a second and then afterwards you kind of just feel like shit. So porn is another one. Porn is another net negative arrow that we have. Gambling is another net negative. Your energy is just up, you're spiked, your cortisol is going, going, going. It's not really unplugging. Those are the main net negative arrows that I see being pulled out when guys want to chill.
Speaker 1:So how about some arrows that leave us with a net positive? And that net positive is going to be feeling more energy or feeling well rested and you probably already know a lot of these, but I'm going to go through them Working out, exercising, getting the heart rate up. That's going to leave you with more energy. Getting a good night's sleep. Not choosing the Netflix arrow and instead choosing the brush teeth early arrow. And we're dads. We can't always get to sleep super early. Nighttime at my house is crazy. We do not have that super structured sleep schedule, so I get that sleep isn't going to be eight plus hours a night with the same exact routine every night. If you are at a place where maybe your kids are a little bit older and you do have that solid routine, heck yeah, I can't wait to get back there when the sleep arrow hasn't been pulled in a while. You know, brenda and I will communicate and one of us will try to like get to bed early, even if that means going and sleeping in the guest bedroom, cold showers another net positive Walks.
Speaker 1:Not sitting, it's kind of like working out, but it's really just moving, it's just taking walks All these things that I'm listing here. What I'll hear a lot of guys say is well, I don't have time for this stuff, but then we take the time to scroll on our phone or zone out to TV. These arrows that give us a net positive impact, they're not as easy to grab out of the quiver the ones that I listed before that have net negatives. They're usually like longer arrows. They're easy to grab. These other ones, you got to reach a little bit further. If you want to start taking more walks, you're going to have to stand up from your desk and walk outside and move. It actually sounds pretty easy when I say it like that, but it's a lot easier to just stay at your desk and turn to your phone and start thumbing through on the phone. Another way to unwind that will leave you with a net positive is hiring a coach or hiring a therapist, though that kind of support is always going to give you a net positive on your reflection, on your nervous system's ability to rest for a little bit and step away from the hustle and bustle and I'll just throw out some other arrows meditating, read a book yoga For yoga.
Speaker 1:If you've never done it before or you haven't done it for a while, that's one of those activities. I hear a lot of guys say oh man, I used to do yoga, I need to get back into it. Or I've never tried it. But there's this yoga studio near me and I've always thought about going in. So my suggestion is to pull the yoga arrow. Find a studio near you, book a class, talk to your wife, make sure it's at a time that's going to work for both of you, and go a few times.
Speaker 1:Being in nature is another one. I've talked about it on the podcast before. Just sitting on a park bench and listening to the sounds and feeling the air and looking at the scene is a way to fill your cup up. And the last one I'll talk about are retreats day retreats, multiple day retreats and these are the opposite of party weekends, right? Not a bunch of dudes getting together, drinking, smoking. A retreat is a place where you're going to totally fill up, like these durable dad days that I host. It's, I don't know, four or five hours of time where you're going to learn some of these tools, right. You learn how to do some yoga, we learn about meditation and you get in nature, we take some walks, we move, right.
Speaker 1:This is like taking a stream of net positive arrows and just firing them one by one like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Or if you're a really badass archer, like Hawkeye, you can like shoot four of them at the same time. That's what a retreat like the Durable Dad Day. You can find different retreats online where you go and you unplug for an extended amount of time. And what these type of activities do is they switch you from your sympathetic nervous system right, that fight, flight, go, go, stressed nervous system to your parasympathetic nervous system rest, digest. That's where we want to spend some time. We don't want to spend all our time there. We got to take action, we got to get shit done, but we get out of balance. And when we're not ever in our parasympathetic nervous system and we don't pull the arrows that put us there, that's when we start getting really reactive to the people in our life and we're frustrated more often or we get into down modes where we're bummed.
Speaker 1:This one guy that I'm working with we were talking and he was just like I don't know. I've just been feeling bummed the past couple of weeks, not really sure what's going on, just feeling burnt out. And my question was how's your self-care been? And this is a guy that I know. We've been working together long enough that he works out, that he journals, that he prioritizes sleep. And when I asked him this he's like I've totally fallen off my routines, which pretty much means that when he's had slices of time to chill out, to unwind and unplug, he hasn't been pulling out net positive arrows.
Speaker 1:And we want to pull these net positive arrows out preemptively, before we're super stressed out, before we're overwhelmed with everything that's on our plate. That's why a morning routine is really helpful. Right, it's before the day starts. We can do one or two small net positive activities to open up some space to calm down, to unwind a little, before the stress of the day comes on. And that's why we can have an evening routine, even if it's just winding down for five minutes, with, like I said before, five minutes of stretching or foam rolling.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of guys have foam rollers, but don't use them. Get on that foam roller before bed. It activates your parasympathetic nervous system. It helps you sleep. This is our choice. All these arrows are on our back and we get to choose which ones we pull. And when we start choosing net positive and you start feeling more calm and in control, you feel empowered and it's a freaking awesome feeling. You realize that you're in control of that. So when you are noticing that you've worked hard, you're ready for a break, you feel like you deserve a break. I just want to chill out. I just want to unwind. Acknowledge what arrow you're going to pull. Make a conscious choice. The easy choice are the net negative arrows, and I know that if you just start testing out the net positive arrows, you'll start to feel more excited about them and you'll want more and more of them in your life. So start small, move in the direction of net positive and have an awesome week. Catch you next time.
