The post 5 Personal Power-ups first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

Lee Holden jumped into the air to smash a soccer ball with his head.

Before the young varsity athlete from UC Berkeley could make contact, another player swept his legs out from under him. Lee missed the ball and crashed down painfully on his tailbone.

For a week, he could hardly walk, stand, sit, or lie down without horrible pain. His doctor said he was done playing for the season, and Lee refused to give up. He remembered an old martial arts teacher, a man who once broke through 15 stacked bricks in one mighty blow, and suffered no injury.

If there was some ancient healing wisdom from the East that could prevent this master’s hand from becoming injured, maybe it could cure his lower back, he thought.

Desperate to get back on the field, Lee tried Qi Gong, a series of breathing and movement exercises. His injury healed quickly, he made it back into the season, and he was so impressed with the results that he continued studying Qi Gong for the rest of his life. Now he teaches it to others, on PBS specials, on DVDs, and through online video courses.

“There is a lot more to Qi Gong than meets the eye. Like an iceberg, what you can see and witness in a Qi Gong practice is only the surface of a much deeper and potent internal power. Qi Gong is simple: it requires no equipment, little space, and can be practiced in a short amount of time. Yet simple as it seems, Qi Gong brings an incredible amount of healing power to the practitioner.

– Lee Holden

Qi Gong is the best exercise for busy Dads.

Every year, our joints become more delicate, our bodies don’t heal as fast, and the sports of our youth may not even be good for us anymore.

I’m a good case in point: Parkour is a young man’s sport. I discovered Parkour when I was nearly 30, and today, I’m often twice the age of the kids I run with. They can do tricks easily that require my full dedication and training – I’ve got to work really hard just to match an 18-year-old PK rookie.

As much as I love Parkour, I know that I have to retire soon. My joints need to last for decades, so I can hike into the hills with my progeny. I owe it to them to take good care of my body. I owe it to them to stay fit.

When I first tried one of Lee Holden’s videos, I was surprised at how much clearer I felt in my own body. The tension that I always carried in my neck and shoulders was gone. I felt more centered and balanced throughout the day, especially at bedtime – the kids would be exhausted and grumpy, and I could stay calm and even because I felt relaxed in my body and calm in my mind.

Qi Gong has been called “the Art of Effortless Power.” I think that’s one of the reasons I like it so much; as an athlete, I’m so used to pushing, straining, and exerting effort in order to get results. Qi Gong is a wonderful counterpoint to this, because the more you relax, the more energy and vitality you get from the practice.

The slower you move your body, the more you can relax.

Best of all, the exercises were so simple and easy to learn, it was as easy as pushing play and standing up.

Parents Don’t Learn Very Well

Right now, Dads, you’ve got more obligations than at any other point in your life. Time is your most expensive commodity. If it takes time to learn something, it’s easier to do without it.

Learning new things sucks when you’re a parent, because you don’t have any free time. The learning curve is much too scenic for the get-there-now-before-somebody-cries speed of parenting. Learning a new type of exercise now, at a time when it’s really hard to prioritize our bodies or education, means it’s got to be super easy.

Qi Gong Is Easy To Learn Online

Thirty years ago, if you wanted to learn Qi Gong, you had to go find a teacher and study with them in person to learn the practice. Three hundred years ago, you may have had to journey across a significant portion of the globe (which was not very easy at the time) just to find someone who could teach this to you.

Today, in the Internet age, you can learn Qi Gong at your desk. Type in a few keywords and you can get a world-renowned master teaching you whenever you like.

The practice of Qi Gong isn’t very difficult – it’s just a series of simple movements and patterns that anyone with even modest mobility can follow.

It’s easy to learn, and doesn’t require much time or equipment or exertion. You can learn this online just by watching a video, standing up and moving around.

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Qi Gong Benefits

• Lower stress in your daily life
• Deeper breathing helps you relax
• Reduced tension in your neck and shoulder muscles
• Ease of pain in joints and lower back
• Greater stamina at the end of the day
• Enters you into a state of flow
• Clarity of mind
• Deeper sleep

The benefits of doing this practice become more apparent over time. Like acupuncture, a related form of Chinese medical wisdom, greater benefits can be seen with regular, ongoing treatment.

I was shocked at how well Qi Gong worked for my aging dad body – but only after I dedicated a few weeks of short, regular practices every day.

Spending 7 minutes doing Qi Gong every day for a month has a much greater effect than taking a weekend workshop intensive for six hours. Or, as Warren Buffet says, “No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

Try Qi Gong and see what it does for you

Like pickles, cayenne pepper, or My Little Pony, you’ll never really know if you like Qi Gong until you try it.

I recommend trying it for 30 days, and see for yourself if you experience any of the benefits.

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How To Start A Qi Gong Practice

• Sign up for the Free 5-Day Mini-Course
• Decide on a time where you can devote 10 minutes to moving every day (is it at your desk? after you get out of the shower? before you go to bed? decide when and where)
• When that time comes up, don’t do anything else but Qi Gong for 10 minutes
• If you like the first 5 days, sign up for the full 30 Day Qi Gong Challenge
• If that works, get Qi Gong AM/PM and practice once a day for 45 minutes.

You will know if this is right for you. Your body will tell you.

Practicing 30 days of Qi Gong AM/PM transformed my life. It was just 2 DVDs, one for AM, and one for PM. They are both about 45 minutes long, which is a big commitment for a dad; but since I was able to be completely flexible on when I devoted these 45 minutes to Qi Gong, I would simply watch for the opportunity, and pounce whenever it arrived.

For 30 days, I tried to do one of the routines every day. If I missed the morning workout, I tried extra hard to make time for an evening workout. I think I probably got to 27 or 28 of those 30 days . It’s not important to practice every. single. day. Because, seriously, there’s no gold stars over here. Instead of aiming for perfect attendance, I just practiced regularly for a month, and found that I handled stressful situations much better, felt more relaxed throughout the day, and was generally calm and happy most of the time.

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Physical stress relief and Mental clarity

This is a type of exercise that works exceptionally well for dads, because we’re getting older, our bodies are deteriorating, and we don’t have a lot of extra time. The reason you see so many old dudes doing Qi Gong is because it becomes more valuable to your creaky joints as you age.

Start now, and by the time you’re a grandfather, you’ll be that cool old dude that gets all mystical with his body every day.

Qi means “life force” and Gong means “practice,” as in a daily practice. By working with Qi Gong you are mastering your own life force energy.

In short, you become a Jedi.

Get started here.

The post Qi Gong – The Best Exercise For Busy Dads first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

That’s why I made the 5-day Father Fitness Program really simple, dense, and distilled – because anything that takes away from your precious time has got to be worth it.

If you don’t spend time to taking care of yourself, you start doing everything badly.

“Recognize that it is not really possible to steadily help others when we ourselves are not in good physical, mental, or emotional state. We may be able to carry on for a while, but sooner or later we end up feeling depleted, discouraged, or weak. We cannot keep on giving when we are running on an empty tank. We need to be solid.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

I don’t know about you, but when I’m super busy and my family and career need a lot of time and attention, I find it really easy to sacrifice the one responsibility that I can cut the biggest corner on – my own self-care.

I’m not accountable to anyone else for how I take care of myself. If I skip that one exercise session, or I cancel that massage because money is tight, or I skip a few hours of sleep to get some extra work done – nobody else calls me on it. Nobody else holds me accountable – except, of course, my own fitness.

The longer I skip out on taking care of myself, the harder it gets to be the better dad, especially in moments of stress or tension.

When I’m not fit, my family suffers. My work suffers. My enjoyment of life suffers.

So I made it really simple to take care of myself.

I don’t devote a lot of time to my own fitness, I dedicate really focused pockets of time to it.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I should do, I select powerful habits and then I stick to them.

You can make it really simple to take care of yourself.

“Our goal is not to ignore the problems of life, but to put ourselves in better mental and emotional states where we can not only come up with solutions, but act upon them.”

~ Anthony Robbins

Before I even started working on BeTheBetterDad.com, I was already developing a program to help working dads maintain balance in their lives.

Young Dads are at one of the most difficult stages of their lives, when the demands on your time and attention and resources are greater than at any other time, yet you have the least amount of experience and momentum you will ever have, during this most difficult of challenges.

It is, in short, the hardest part.

You’re only ready to handle the worst when you’re feeling fit.

The Father Fitness program focuses on the 5 areas of fitness that are most important to Dads:

• Mental Fitness
• Social Fitness
• Emotional Fitness
• Financial Fitness
• Physical Fitness

When a Dad is out of shape in one of these 5 areas, it’s a lot more difficult to Be The Better Dad when times are tough. If you’re feeling tired, or cranky, or broke, or hungry, then a tantrum from your child or a misunderstanding with your partner can lead to some pretty ugly outcomes.

But if you are feeling fit, and balanced, and ready, you’ve got a much better chance of being the better dad, no matter how tough things may get.

That’s what I want to help you to do: feel balanced enough to make a good decision in a moment of difficulty.

I also want to help you enjoy your life more. Those little moments, when your children are being adorable, could be completely ignored if you are preoccupied with a bill that’s not paid or a relationship that’s on the edge.

You’ve got a much better chance of being the dad you want to be, and living the life you want to live, if you’re feeling fit.

The Father Fitness program will give you 5 habits to use in each of these 5 areas:

These 25 habits will help you, little by little, day by day, to improve your fitness – and allow you to enjoy those little moments of life.

What Is the Father Fitness Program?

For five consecutive days, I will email you a lesson that contains:

• A short video guiding you through 5 Fitness Habits
• 5 Journaling questions
• 10 Assessment questions
• A list of links to further resources

How much does it cost?

All 5 lessons are available for free.

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The post Announcing The 5-Day Father Fitness Program first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

When making new habits, aim for your weaknesses.

At twelve years old, Theodore Roosevelt lay gasping in bed. His asthma was so bad that he was often left bedridden for days.

“Theodore, you have the mind, but you have not the body,” his father told him one day, “and without the help of the body, the mind cannot go as far as it should.”

This was a Dad who knew that his son was smart, but he didn’t urge him to work on his smarts from his bed. Instead, he built a gymnasium inside the house and told his son, “You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.”

The fragile young Theodore Roosevelt could have ignored his father’s advice, pitied his weak body, and focused on developing his greatest strength, his agile and clever intellect.

But he didn’t. He took his father’s advice, and spent five years building up strong muscles in his upper body, to support his weak lungs. He spent five years exercising in drudgery, and eliminated his greatest weakness. When he grew into a man in his early twenties, Roosevelt had conquered his asthma, and went on to conquer enemy armies and foreign nations as the President of the United States.

We are often advised to ‘play to our strengths,’ and sometimes that’s good advice. However, if all of our strengths are diminished by a great weakness, something that overshadows everything we do in our lives, addressing this weakness can enable all of our other virtues to rise.

None of Roosevelt’s intellectual virtues – his bravery, his shrewdness, his integrity – would have been able to flourish if they were trapped in his weak asthmatic body. By addressing his greatest weakness, Theodore Roosevelt was able to become exponentially greater than he was before.

If you want serious self-improvement, playing to your strengths won’t get you there.

Don’t play to your strengths all the time.

Devote serious time and attention to buffering your greatest weakness.

Think about the distance between your greatest weakness and having normal ability. This distance is much greater than the improving your greatest strength by just a little bit.

Your become much greater when improving a weakness instead of improving a strength.
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What is your greatest weakness? How much greater could you be, if you spent one year working on improving this area of your life? What one new habit could you implement this weekend to mend your greatest weakness?

Even if it’s drudgery, it will be worth it.

“Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.” – George Halas

The post Mend Your Greatest Weakness first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

“If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.”

– Abigail Van Buren

Family time is a rhythm.

The rhythm of your family time is not constant; it changes with the season.

“Do you spend time with your family? Good. Because a man that doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.” – Marlon Brando

Do you have a tip to share on making time for family time?

The post Making Time For Family Time first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

Wearing the Father Fitness T-Shirt has a positive impact on my parenting skills.

When I put this shirt on my chest, it feels like I’m suiting up in my superhero costume.

(Yes, I happen to know a thing or two about suiting up in my superhero costume.)

When it’s Daddy Time, my children look to me to set the pace, the mood, and the activities for  a number of hours. It helps to step into a costume that declares, “I am doing my best.”

Fatherhood T Shirt To The Rescue!

The last time this shirt saved me, I was in a parking lot, and my kids were all screaming. My wife was elsewhere, taking a much-needed evening off, and I had a big mess on my hands.

Our plan for the evening failed spectacularly. We had planned to go to the toy aisle of a nearby store, and the four-year-old fell asleep on the way. After I negotiated a different plan with the big kids, to go to the arcade instead (somewhere the little one wasn’t yet allowed to go), I stopped in the parking lot, and just then the youngest woke up screaming. This derailed the big kids’ plans, and everyone was loud and unhappy.

Stressed, frustrated, and out of options, I banged on the steering wheel. I was ready to join in the screaming, too.

Head bowed, my lips parted, and I saw this shirt on my chest. I remembered my commitment, to Be the Better Dad.

Wearing this shirt reminds me to step up my game.

I took a deep breath, and began the calm, patient work of untangling everyone’s frustrations, by setting aside my own.

The man wearing this T-shirt wouldn’t scream and yell and throw a tantrum with his kids. This is the shirt of a man who can handle the worst moods of his own children, and remain calm and present.

That’s what I told myself, and it worked.

After fifteen minutes of gentle, calming words, I finally got the cries to subside, and we made a new plan that worked for everyone. All the kids got quiet, and we went to the toy aisle together, with a date for the arcade planned for the morrow.

This is my costume for being a great dad, and by wearing it, I can respond intentionally during times of stress.

Do you want one of these shirts?

You can buy one right here.

The post The Father Fitness T-Shirt first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

A Simple Hack To Keep Kids Happy

I can’t even count the number of things I was juggling at once.

Standing in the kitchen – well, standing might be a generous word – I made a lunge for the dinner boiling over on the stove. I was also trying to grab a clean lid out of the open dishwasher, and snatch an oven mitt off the wall. I was doing this all on one leg, to hold up a warning foot to keep my 4-year-old from getting too close to the hot stove.

“Dad,” he crowed in that whine I’ve come to recognize as the opening to a potential tantrum, “I want to watch a movie.”

The rules that govern when my kids are allowed to watch movies are complex and shifting, and at that moment, they were not in favor of my son’s desire. It was not movie time, and he knew it, but he was bored, hungry, and a little tired.

Shutting him down with a straight answer of “No, it’s not movie time,” would send him over the edge. Then I would have a crying toddler on my hands in addition to everything else I was acrobatically managing in the kitchen.

So I just said yes.

Did I give up my power?

Did I give up control?

Did I roll over and let my child have something just to avert a tantrum?

No, I didn’t. What I said was, “Yes, let’s talk about movies.”

This bought me a few seconds. In one sprawling move I got the bubbling disaster into quarantine, shut the dishwasher with my foot, and started mopping up the mess. “Is there a movie you really want to watch?” I asked my son.

He spent the next five minutes telling me all about the members of the Super Hero Squad. No tantrum, no blowup, no movies, all because I used this simple hack for happiness:

Just say yes.

When your child asks you a question, the easiest answer is No.

Saying ‘no’ is usually the wrong answer to give a child – even if it’s what you mean.

If your child wants something that you don’t want to deal with, then you may know that this decision is a ‘no.’ It may have too many difficulties to overcome, and you can see them all, and you might be right, they can’t do or have this thing they want. But you don’t need to let them know that right away – draw it out.

“Yes, we should think about that – how could we keep the floor from getting messy?” is a lot different for your child to hear than, “No, I don’t want you to make a mess on the floor.”

The latter answer negates their desire, and gives their emotional energy nowhere to go. The former answer involves your child in addressing your concerns.

Negative Answers Stop The Conversation

When you are asked a question, answering with a “No” doesn’t leave your child with any options.

They come to you, their representative of authority and justice in the world, carrying this overwhelming desire. They can’t think of anything else. They bring this desire to you and hurl it at your feet, with their mind fixated on its attainment.

• Can I have a sandwich?
• Can you open this for me?
• Can you make this paper airplane?
• Can we play at the arcade?
• Can I fly on a spaceship?
• Can I eat this nut I found?
• Can I drive the car?

Oftentimes, I want to answer ‘no’ just because I’m busy with something else. I could be hanging upside down from the rooftop, digging into the circuit breaker box with a screwdriver and covered in green goo, and one of my kids could wander up with a book in their hands to ask me, “What does this word say?”

Children have little consideration of what else you might be dealing with at the moment they want an answer from you. To them, whatever else you are doing is not important; they have this big, all-consuming desire that they can’t pull their focus away from at all.

To your child: whatever you are doing doesn’t matter.

It may matter to you, or your boss, or someone else in the world, but it doesn’t matter to your kid.

Long ago, I learned it was perfectly fine for my children to act so inconsiderate, because they are children. Getting testy with them for not allowing me extra space to handle my own difficulties, that just makes it worse for everybody; so, I sidestep these situations by just saying yes.

Just say yes. Even if the answer is no, rephrase it and just say yes.
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When I am distracted or multitasking (which is, come on, really often for dads) I have limited brainpower for answers. If I am busy, asking me a question won’t get my full consideration. My natural impulse is to give any answer that seems mostly correct, so I can get back to what I was doing.

With children, that’s doesn’t work. Kids don’t care why something can’t be done; they want to do/get/have something, and anything else is a distraction.

So, distract them.

Saying ‘Yes’ gives you the chance to redirect.

“Yes, let’s talk about that,” is what I often say to my kids when I can’t pay much attention to their question, or when I know it’s a flat-out-no.

Sometimes, my kid wants a toy that I know (for sure) they will be bored with in a day. They don’t ask me if we can afford the flashy toy, they don’t ask me if they think it’s a good purchase, they don’t ask me if it will be a durable toy that will last longer than a week.

They ask, “Can I have this toy?” And when I say ‘no’ to them, I am answering the other questions that I am asking (is this a good purchase? will this last or break right away?) but these questions haven’t been posed to the kid.

Answer the question they want, with the answer they want, and lead them where you want the conversation to go.

Creative Ways To Be Positive When you Want To Say No

You can say, “Yes, we should do that sometime,” and suddenly you aren’t talking about whether or not your child is allowed to do something – they’ve received implied permission, and moved on to negotiating when it can be done.

You can say, “Yes, let’s talk to Mommy about that,” and defer the time for the ultimate decision to be made. (Also known as ‘passing the buck,’ use this one sparingly or your kids will look to Mommy as the ultimate authority, instead of you.)

You can say, “Yes, let’s talk about how to do that,” and lay out the qualifications. If your kid wants to eat ravioli in front of a movie, there will need to be towels and blankets to catch any mess they make, and if that’s really why you want to say ‘no,’ bring it up.

The Conversation Beyond The Question

Think of the questions as a game, and if you are the one that stops the conversation, you lose.

• Answer their question with another question.
• Offer another option, and ask if they would rather do that instead.
• Tell them why you think something is a bad idea, and ask them for a solution.

As soon as your kids are old enough to argue with you about your decisions, they deserve more than a one-word answer to their requests. You have all the power and authority in your relationship with your child, and if you use that power to get your way all the time, they will find a different way to win power from you.

“The more positive power you give your children, the less they’ll try to get it in negative ways,” says Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions. “Find opportunities for your kids to assume some control of their own world.” This can prevent emotional arguments that stem from a child’s inability to feel heard by a dominating parent.

Think about it: if you shut your kids down with a curt ‘No’ all the time, how are they going to handle the delicate and sketchy situations that will come up later?

Will you be someone they can puzzle things out with? Or someone who just tells them what to do?

Avoid saying ‘no’ to your #kids by giving them a different #positive response.
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The post Just Say Yes first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

I have been taking cold showers for the past few weeks, and it’s been AMAZING.

I’ve already written about how taking cold showers strengthens your willpower.

Beyond the Hardening, there are some serious health benefits, too. Here are my top 5:

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Jesse Jacobs – The blast of cold can be a shock at first, but after a while it feels completely natural.

I’m so accustomed to the jolt of energy and mental clarity now, that I crave the cold finish.

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Stefano Ganddini – I learned to relax and control my breathing.

I eventually started taking cold showers that lasted just as long as when I used to take hot showers. And even though my body had adjusted to the cold, every cold shower still had the same invigorating and energizing effects that carried into the rest of my day.

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Dr Joseph Mercola – I now go into the shower without allowing it to warm up.

I have found that if I hold my breath it really helps adjust to the shock and I rapidly acclimate to the cold. I have come to enjoy it and now view it as a healthy stress very similar to exercise.

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Todd Becker – The effects are apparent with the first cold shower.

If you continue the practice for several weeks, you’ll find the psychological benefits are even greater. I find that cold showers are great for the mood. Not only are they physically invigorating, they make you feel alive, vital and ready to take on the day. They stimulate thinking early in the morning.

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Rik Panganiban – There may have been screams and yelps involved.

I definitely had mornings where I had to grit my teeth and force myself to get into a freezing cold shower. In general, any morning where I didn’t start with a workout was hard. It’s so much easier getting into a cold shower when you are sweaty and hot from a run.

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Jason Shen – I’ve trained myself to calm down and overcome this natural response.

I no longer have the panicky feeling that a ton cold water on your skin gives you for more than a few seconds when I take my cold showers – And I’ve noticed this ability to temper my response overlap into other areas of my life.

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“If you are willing to do only what’s easy, life will be hard, but if you are willing to do what’s hard, life will be easy.” – T.Harv Eker

Can You Take A Cold Shower Every Day For 30 Days?

All you gotta do is step in, son.

The post Top 5 Health Benefits of Cold Showers first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

After a hard day’s work, you get home late in the evening. It’s past bedtime, but you’ve had a really successful day. Your boss is proud of you, but your wife is pissed. Working hard at your job has cost you at home, so now it’s time to make it up to your partner.

What can you do? Spend extra time with your kids, by skipping out on the office regularly? That can put you in trouble with your boss. Even if your family appreciates the extra time spent with them, spending too much time with them (because you’re unemployed) doesn’t help anyone.

(Unless you’re a SAHD, you lucky gent. Then your work is ALL at home, and you have a whole different set of problems.)

Let’s say you strike the perfect balance between work and family, spending all of your waking time between the two.

Where does that leave you?

Dashing from the office to the house and back again, with no time to do the things that make you (as an individual) feel fulfilled and happy – that’s a recipe for burnout.

Too much focus on any one of these areas is not balanced.

You need time for Work, Family, AND Play in your life.

You can’t focus all your time on any of these 3 areas exclusively, but you need all three of them, working together.

• If your Play interferes with your Work or your Family, it doesn’t matter how much it rejuvenates you.
• If your Work keeps you away from your Family 65 hours a week, it doesn’t matter how much money you make.
• If your Family requires all your time and attention, you could be very fulfilled and responsible and miserable.

The real problem is with our brains. We aren’t actually that good at multitasking (says science), and it turns out we can only really do one thing at a time. Since you need all 3 of these areas of your life, Work, Family, and Play, you need to schedule and partition plenty of time for each, every day.

You need time for Work, Family, AND Play in your life.
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Take Time For Family, Work and Play Every Day

To make sure you are tending to all 3 of these pillars of your life, make sure some of your time is spent on your Family, Work, and Play…every day.

Below I’ve listed 10 ways you can balance each of these 3 areas in your life.

Making The Most Of Family Time

1. Eat together once a day

Share a daily meal with your family.

There will be exceptions now and again, but they should be rare. If you’ve gone through the whole day without eating with your family, make an extra effort to eat dinner (or a late night snack) together as a group.

“Studies indicate that dinner conversation is a more potent vocabulary-booster than reading,” says Dr. Anne K. Fishel, co-founder of The Family Dinner Project, “and the stories told around the kitchen table help our children build resilience. The icing on the cake is that regular family meals also lower the rates of obesity and eating disorders in children and adolescents. What else can families do that takes only about an hour a day and packs such a punch?”

2. Family night once a week

Make a regular family ritual.

Pick a weeknight that is just for the family, and do something fun that you all like to do together!

Game night at home, or a movie night for older kids, can give a rhythm to the week that ensures the space for the family to breathe together. Anything that needs to be said, or done, can come out during family night, when everybody gets together. Your family is important enough to merit a weeknight out of your life, right?

3. Cook breakfast on the weekend

Be the family chef.

Especially if you work a 9-5 job, you need a break for the weekends when you can just be with your kids, as their Dad and nothing else. A family feast is a wonderful way to do this.

I find that cooking breakfast is a good way to reconnect with the refrigerator that I’ve only seen in passing during the week, and to cook the kids some of my favorite foods. Unfortunately, now they hate omelettes, since it’s my favorite breakfast food and I really overdid it.

4. Plan a weekly date with each child

Dedicate special time to each one of your kids, individually.

Go on an adventure together, even if it’s just for half an hour. It matters to them. If you haven’t done something with one of your children for a while, ask yourself, “What could I do with this kid that would be fun for both of us?”

It doesn’t even matter what you do. Getting exclusive ‘Daddy time’ is special to your kids, and it will make you special to them. Listen to Nigel Marsh describe how his son had ‘the best day of his life’ in his TED talk.

5. Leave work at work, whenever you can.

Don’t bring the office home with you.

Even if you work out of your home office, don’t work during family time. When it’s time to be with the family, don’t be working. If you try to do them both at the same time, you will do them both, badly.

6. Optimize your chores

Be smart about your housework.

Participating in a household takes a lot of work. There is plenty to do, and you do a lot of it. The more you can do to take care of your home, the better life your family lives.

Is there a chore that takes too much of your time, or puts you in a bad mood? Fix it. Make it easier, hire it out, or find a way to do it better. (The Dad Balance Workbook has a few tricks on improving your chores.)

7. Just Say Yes

Respond to every question positively.

Whenever your kids ask you a question, Just Say Yes. For anything. Just Say Yes, first, and then modify.

• “Yes, let’s talk about that.”
• “Yes, I can see that’s important to you.”
• Even, “Yes, maybe.”

If you don’t start your response with “No,” then they won’t feel blocked.

8. Embrace imperfection.

Let the little things go.

If someone in your family does something wrong, and does it wrong all the time, you can always fight it, or you can just love that about them.

“The little things are exactly that. Little,” says Rosanna Casper. “Someone cutting in line or answering their phone in the middle of a movie can be particularly infuriating, but it’s not a big deal.” If you don’t make it into a big deal, then it doesn’t need to be one.

9. Celebrate each other.

Be the family cheerleader.

Your family is your team, and they count on you to cheer them on.

When you talk to your kids and your partner, really describe what you like about them. Applaud them when they deserve it (and even when they don’t), and be the biggest fan you can. Compliment your kids. Compliment your wife. Make everyone think you really like them.

10. Combine or eliminate your errands

Do more in the same time.

When you have to run out to the store, bring a list of everything you need to do while you’re out.

This means you need some way of organizing the errands you have to do, like the Remember the Milk app or the Getting Things Done system. Have a mechanism in place for collecting the ideas as you think of them, and when you are at the store, get everything you need to get.

“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” – David Allen

Balancing Work And Life

11. Work all the time you are at work.

Make every moment count.

Get everything done you need to get done, while you’re supposed to be doing it. Be a grown-up about managing your time.

If you waste your work time, you will resent your family time, because you didn’t get enough work done.

12. Get defensive about your time.

Say no to unimportant things.

Your time is really valuable – if you’re not with your family, and you’re not even getting playtime, then anything you do is keeping you away from the things you love the most. Don’t waste your time on things that don’t matter.

13. Commute when you’re done.

Transition between your roles.

It takes time to transition from working to playing, and especially to move from working time to family time. Plan your transition well, so you can be in the right mental space for what you’re doing next.

Have a cocktail, or a commute, or an exercise session, to separate your working time from your family time. Having a little buffer, where you can process your day, helps you put it down.

14. Take micro breaks.

Step all the way out of the zone.

Set a timer for 50 minutes or 2 hours and every time it goes off, give yourself a minute or three.

Stretch, breathe deep, get a glass of water, or do twenty pushups – just don’t get so trapped in what you’re doing that you calcify. Every year your body is getting older, so give it some love.

15. Clarify your priorities.

Know what you want and follow the path to get there.

Prioritize your week and your day and your life. Knowing what’s important to you will give you guidelines you can use in every decision you make. Define your most important priorities in life for right now, write them down, and make decisions based on how close the outcome gets you.

16. Follow the 80/20 Rule.

Do more of what matters.

Also known as Pareto’s Principle, you are probably getting 80% of the results from 20% of the effort. Figure out what that 20% is, and do that 80% of the time.

17. Eliminate anything that wastes your time.

Refuse to waste a moment (unless you actively decide to waste it).

Whether it’s checking Facebook, walking to the water cooler, driving for lunch, or sitting in a meeting you don’t ever participate in, if there is something that is consistently wasting your time, find a way to stop doing it.

18. Do what you do best, not what you don’t.

Be clear about your strengths, and play to those strengths.

Defer or delegate work that you don’t do well (or work you simply don’t like to do) to other people.

19. Don’t get aggravated.

It’s your choice.

No matter what – or who – you have to deal with as part of your job, whether or not you get upset is entirely up to you.

Especially if you know something irritating is likely to happen, you can plan your reaction in advance. Plan around aggravation, and you will protect your emotional state.

20. Don’t sacrifice for work regularly.

You are not your job.

Sometimes you need to give up time with your family, or time for yourself, in order to meet your work obligations. That’s fine, occasionally. But if it becomes a regular requirement, your work will always throw you off-balance.

“Take care of yourself: When you don’t sleep, eat crap, don’t exercise, and are living off adrenaline for too long, your performance suffers. Your decisions suffer. Your company suffers. Love those close to you: Failure of your company is not failure in life. Failure in your relationship is.” — Ev Williams, founder of Twitter

Play Time Is An Important Part of Fatherhood

21. Plan your play time.

Your play is what helps you to rise.

Play is the key to your vitality, to your enjoyment of life. Dedicate enough time to it every week, every month, or every day, to stay rejuvenated. If it’s not on the calendar, you haven’t committed to it, and you need to commit to your own rejuvenation. Your family needs you to do it, so you can bring the best Daddy home for them.

22. Do what you love to do.

Make your time count.

When you have the time to spend on yourself, don’t waste it on something you don’t really enjoy.

23. Make part of your home a personal sanctuary.

Claim your own space.

Whether it’s your garage, your back porch, a corner of your bedroom, or a comfy chair in the main room, find a space in your house to claim for your own. Have what you need to relax easy at hand, so you can step in and let go.

24. Get plenty of sleep.

If you don’t make your sleep a priority, you will always be short on sleep.

There is so much to do as a Dad, and a limited time to do it. Like exercise and nutrition, your sleep can be an overriding factor in how well (or how poorly) you are doing in your life.

25. Don’t be selfish with your vices.

You-time should not drain we-time.

Your vices are part of your Play, and a part of what helps you indulge in your enjoyment of life.

But when your vice begins to affect your Work and your Family, it is no longer helping you balance; instead of helping you to rise, selfish vices cause your balance to wobble dangerously.

26. Wake up early and take care of yourself.

How you spend your morning sets the tone for your whole day.

If you’re sleeping as late as you possibly can, just to rush through the groggiest time of your day, you’re wasting the kind of man you could be becoming. Set yourself up with a powerful morning, and be willing to sacrifice late night Netflix to be a productive person.

27. Have fun with your partner.

Dating gets better after marriage, if you’re doing it right.

Dedicate some of your play time to your partner, and spend time enjoying each other’s company. That’s why you got together, right? Enjoy each other as friends, as lovers, as people – not just as co-parents.

Dating gets better after marriage, if you’re doing it right.
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28. Have fun with your friends.

Every Dad needs buddies.

You need other grown-ups that you can do fun stuff with. We are social creatures, and spending all of your time with only miniature, socially immature people that still find fart jokes hilarious can take its toll on you.

Make sure you have at least one buddy you can call out of the blue to do something fun, and if you don’t have one, find one.

29. Find something physical that you enjoy, and do it regularly.

Your body is your temple.

The older you get, the more important your mobility becomes to your longevity and happiness; having a physical activity you enjoy will ensure you stay active as you age.

If you’ve ever been athletic, what made you feel confident and empowered? Do that.

If you’re not athletic, try some new sports, or movements, or dances, or games, and find a way to play with your body.

30. Be creative.

Make something you like.

Whether or not you are artistic or talented, there is some hobby or activity that includes creation as one of the core components. Being able to spend your play time making something, and look upon it and declare, “I made this,” will keep your mood and confidence elevated.

“The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.” – Richard Bach

How Are You Doing, Dad?

Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10.

• How satisfied are you with the time you spend at Work?
• How satisfied are you with the time you spend with your Family?
• How satisfied are you with the time you spend at Play?

Write down three numbers. Just give yourself a quick rating, right now, from 1-10.

Done that? Good.

Next, I want you to write a one-sentence answer to this question. Ask this question for any area of your life you rated at 8 or below:

What would I have to do to make this a 10?

You already know the answer, but sometimes writing it out helps you to verbalize it, acknowledge it, and make a plan of action to achieve it.

Dig Deeper – Fix Your Work-Life Balance

Download the Dad Balance Workbook. These 10 worksheets are designed to give you specific tactics to improve your life at Work, your time with your Family, and the rejuvenating Play that gives you the energy to do both of the others well.

All you have to do is subscribe to my newsletter, and I’ll send you the Dad Balance Workbook right away.

The post 30 Ways To Balance Work, Life, and Play first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

Born For This: How to Find The Work You Were Meant To Do is the latest from author and world traveler Chris Guillebeau, a man who could probably win the Guinness World Record for “most traveled man alive” if he ever goes into space.

During his journey to visit all 193 countries around the globe, Chris has met with many unconventional people, documenting their unconventional lives through his books and the articles on his blog.

After meeting so many people who have found uniquely fulfilling work, and the means (and ability) to define the terms of work that work best for them, he invites many of them to speak to thousands of people at his annual Portland conference, the World Domination Summit. This has made him one of the foremost experts in the modern changes at the intersection of work and the Internet, and in this book he comprehensively describes both the practical steps and the philosophical underpinnings of this new way to work.

Writing this book is what Chris was born to do – he actively guides his life and career by the principles that he lays out in this book, and using these techniques, you can find the work you were born to do, if you haven’t already.

I wish I had read this book ten years ago, when I first left my cubicle.

Non-Conformity In A Box

The day I knew I had to leave my cushy corporate job was a Sunday, the one day I took off from work to be with my family. I was working 60 hours a week to meet my sales quota, becoming the top salesman in the state for the Fortune 100 company that employed me. Most days I left the house before my family awoke, and returned home late at night after my kids fell asleep, more often than any father should.

Then one Sunday we passed my office building, this big, gleaming skyscraper where I spent the other six days of my week. My two year old son pointed out the window and said, “Look! Thats where Daddy lives!”

I knew, right then, my life had to change. I had to figure out what other kinds of work I could do in the world; and because this happened in 2008, and the economy tanked and nobody was hiring, I had to figure out how to do it on my own – immediately.

Born For This is a book that can save you years of floundering. Instead of figuring out what you want to be when you grow up as you’re growing up, just follow the map at the beginning.

The Dream Job Treasure Map

Born For This is a treasure map for finding your dream job, and it provides very clear and simple questions to point you in the right direction when you’re feeling lost.

The #bornforthisbook by @chrisguillebeau is a treasure map for discovering your dream job.
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The work you are born to do, Chris writes, is at the intersection of three major forces in your life:

• Joy – ongoing enjoyment of the time you spend working
• Money – enough wealth to live your life in comfort
• Flow – a graceful state of ease and productivity

When you have all three of these qualities in your work, you’ve hit what Chris calls ‘the career lottery.’ People who have Joy, Money, and Flow are making enough money to live life how they want to live it, and they are enjoying work that they are uniquely qualified to do.

I’ve seen and read a bunch of different definitions of the right kind of work, but I’ve never seen the process distilled so clearly into the things that really matter. Chris’ Joy, Money, Flow formula has a good chance of becoming the intrinsic cultural advice we pass down to the next generation.

Look at the work you are doing right now. Do you have all three? Which part of the Joy, Money, Flow formula is lacking, and what can you do to improve that area of your career?

This is exactly the kind of advice we need to craft for kids growing up in the Internet age. We’ve seen, time and again, how the previous generations’ ‘stable’ advice has proven to be quite risky for us to take. Our peers can work for a company for thirty years and get laid off without a pension at a moment’s notice – but if you build your own audience and business, nobody can take that away from you. The next generation of workers will be safer if they are in control of their own career, and Born For This provides the tools to decide what’s really risky and what’s actually the safe bet.

Taking Better Chances

Since we are collectively reframing what we mean when we use the terms “career” and “work,” Chris provides some really helpful vocabulary, going in-depth on terms like side hustle and umbrella profession. His treatment of the gold rush as both a phase and a goal really helps to describe the ups and downs of entrepreneurial living.

Chris spends a couple of very good chapters investigating the qualities of risk. His stories about smart bets at a gambling table serve as really powerful analogies to the choices we make about our career.

When stakes are low, Chris says, that’s when you should take risks.

If you make a mistake with low stakes, you haven’t lost very much, so that’s the time to get risky and try new things. Bet your longshot on low stakes, and if it pays off, great; if not, no big loss. You should also be willing to make changes right away, especially if stakes are low; he uses an example of standing in line at the grocery store, and wondering if you should switch lanes when another cashier opens a new line.

His great storytelling skills put the reader right in the moment of his indecision, when he’s watching people who were behind him in line get out of the store with their groceries faster than him, because they switched lines. They took risks when the stakes were low. Chris uses this story to express the familiar FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) that binds us to what he calls a “false commitment to your existing choice, even as a more desirable option appeared.”

We have this built-in bias favoring what we’ve already been doing, because we think that the time we’ve invested in one choice makes the choice more valuable, even if it’s wrong.

“Don’t waste time on small things, and when the stakes are low, make changes right away.” – Chris Guillebeau

When your decision is high stakes, Chris provides two simple questions to put the entire choice in perspective:

1. Is it working?
2. Do you enjoy it?

If the answer to both of these is no, then it’s a no-brainer. Same as if the answer to both of these questions is yes.

The only complications arise when one is yes and the other is no, and then you have to dive deeper into your priorities and the risks involved; having this clear and simple framework for making high-stakes decisions has already benefited me personally, and I’m going to continue using these two simple questions whenever I find myself facing a high-stakes decision.

I’ve felt the exact FOMO that Chris described, and made poor decisions under it’s influence – usually staying in a job way past the time I enjoyed it, and sometimes beyond when it was still working for that season of my life. I stayed stuck because I was afraid of change, and I was afraid of giving up…but Chris made a really convincing argument in favor of quitting.

The Virtues of Quitting

“Contrary to popular belief,” Chris says, “if you want to win, you shouldn’t always just keep going. You should regroup and try something totally different. ‘Winners never quit, and quitters never win’ is a lie. To win, sometimes you need to find a new game to play.”

“Real winners give up all the time.” – Chris Guillebeau

This type of thinking, of flipping over the board when the rules of the game are confining you from making any good moves, is exactly the type of breakout thinking that help people to get out of their cubicle, and reframe their life according to the rules that work best for them. A lifetime in public school and corporate America has anesthetized many people to any possibilities outside of the traditional framework through which they’re accustomed to seeing the world.

Embracing failure is one of the best ways we can develop this counter-intuitive thinking, because every failure requires us to reframe everything anew. Chris’ strident encouragement to quit things that don’t work for you is a refreshing relief from all the bleed-till-you-succeed mantras that are so popular in our hardworking culture.

Related: read The Forge of Failure

I suppose the reason this very simple concept seems so unconventional is because we’ve been conditioned to see our work in a continuum of working-for-the-goal, when it’s more properly a series of stops-and-starts. Examining our careers with a piecemeal framework feels more authentic and useful, because nobody’s career (that I know) follows a single path to its destination – at least nobody interesting. We have periods of ups and downs, successes and failures, and planning for those cycles to be part of our path is, counterintuitively, more realistic.

Cycles Of Career and Life

We go through periods of wandering, and periods of devotion to one direction on our path. Neither lasts forever, and Chris encourages us to embrace these inevitable changes.

“Life is seasonal. There’s a time to explore and experiment, and there’s also a time to focus.” – Chris Guillebeau

Chris shares some really wonderful stories about people who have hit the career lottery, and the ways they preserve the ebb and flow as a part of it. Daniel Ek of Spotify gives five year commitments to the company, and that keeps him focused and on point, with a foot out the door if he ever wants to head that way. Elon Musk uses workshifting to slide between his roles as CEO of two major companies, one for making electric cars and the other for making rockets that go into space. There is no one career to rule them all that successful people pursue for the entirety of their lives; they find what allows them the most Joy, Money, & Flow in their lives, however it happens, and they do that.

“Select the job title you want, don’t choose from existing ones.” – Chris Guillebeau

Born For This is a Book with Flow

I also wrote a review of Chris’ previous book, Happiness of Pursuit, which was a book was about quests and adventures. While it chronicled an astounding number of stories, the storytelling was jerky, shifting between one example and another in a way that threw me out of the narrative many times.

With Born For This, I was completely engrossed in the book. Chris presented a couple of concepts he was going to discuss in the chapter, and told a few personal stories to get us really engaged, and then used those stories as analogies to play with the ideas he had presented. It is a really fluid and engaging style, and I thoroughly enjoyed the reading of it.

If you haven’t hit the ‘career lottery’ yet, if you are lacking in Joy, Money, or Flow in your work, then read this book and figure out what you’re supposed to be doing instead. Born For This will help you make the big decisions coming up in your future, and keep you leaning into the direction of the work you were born to do.

The post Born For This Book Review first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

Cold Showers

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Sean Russell – Cold showers build massive will power.

Doing something you are so resistant to, every single day, right when you wake up, takes a lot of mental strength. And over time, this mental strength and discipline will become an automated habit that echo’s into every area of your life.

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Phil Drolet – Building our mind is like building a muscle

The more we work it out, the stronger it gets. Once our mind gets strong enough, we can take on any challenge, or handle anything life throws at us, without getting flustered. We keep our emotions under control, and we choose the most empowering course of action. Then we do whatever needs to be done, and crush it. Boom.

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Jason Shen – Cold showers are like pushups for my self-discipline.

Cold showers suck, but every time I do one, I grow stronger. I can feel my self-discipline increasing. To be successful as an entrepreneur, I know I will have to make hard decisions, do things that are uncomfortable and work under stressful conditions.

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Stefano Ganddini  – If you want to achieve anything great in your life, you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

By willingly putting yourself into an uncomfortable situation every day for 30 days, you condition yourself to fearlessly take on new challenges, get out of your comfort zone, and master your mind.

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Jesse Jacobs – By intentionally exposing yourself to discomfort you disarm anxiety and fear.

Every time you turn the shower dial to cold, you are flexing your courage muscles, building confidence in your ability to confront uncomfortable situations. As you become more comfortable in the cold shower, you become more comfortable facing adversity with courage.

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Rik Panganiban – Just taking small steps, one day at a time, keeping my eye on the prize.

Really the most important result is a boost in my self-confidence, having confronted something that I thought was ‘impossible’ and beaten it. The next obstacle I face that seems ‘impossible’ I’m going to remember this episode.

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Joel Runyon – I use cold showers as a litmus test.

They cause the attitude and character of the person taking them to evolve. Even the people who don’t take them reveal their characters through the excuses they give.

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Do you want stronger willpower?

Can You Take A Cold Shower Every Day For 30 Days?

All you gotta do is step in, son.

The post One Simple Exercise To Strengthen Your Willpower first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

Easter Egg Treasure Hunts can be done any time of the year.

Making a scavenger hunt at the playground is one of my kids’ all-time favorite activities to do with dad. All it takes is a little planning, a little drawing, and a buck or two for prizes. (Or candy, if you go that way.)

To set up a scavenger hunt at the playground, the secret is surprisingly simple.

“Begin with the end in mind.” – Stephen Covey
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1. Start at the end of the scavenger hunt.
2. Decide where your prize is going to be hidden. And then,
3. Work backwards to the beginning.

What you need:

• Index cards
• Marker or pen
• Easter eggs (optional)

Setup Time: 20 minutes

Scavenger Hunt Playground Example

I’m going to leave the prize, an Easter Egg with three dollars worth of coins, hidden under the slide. That’s where we will start.

Next, I’m going to take one of my note cards, and draw a picture of the slide.

(This is usually the part of the set-up where I tell my frantic children to play by themselves, because Daddy is “making the magic happen.” They will try to interrupt you. Continually. Stay strong, look busy, and make plenty of jokes. Chase them away as a monster, just make sure they giggle instead of cry.)

After drawing a picture of the slide on my notecard, I draw a little star to show where the prize is hidden.

Next, go find another hiding place, somewhere else in the playground. Put your new drawing into an Easter Egg (or just fold it up, if you don’t have eggs) and hide it in another spot. Hiding the clues in Easter Eggs is optional, but it makes the clues really visible for the kids.

If you don’t have any eggs, you can make playground treasure hunts with folded up note cards, and the kids will still love it. The location-to-location discovery is what they really like.

I’ll hide this final clue next to the swingset. This is the one that leads to the final prize, but it’s the first clue that I’m leaving for them to find. (Backwards, see?)

Then I stand there and draw a picture of the swingset, with a star showing the location of the egg.

Now I take this clue, and I go to the previous location of the treasure hunt, that I’m just now discovering. Starting at the end, I go backwards, step by step, drawing the clues along the way.

For this demonstration, I’m only going to have 3 stops, to make it simple. The entire map looks like this:

1. Bench
2. Swingset
3. Slide

You don’t have to stop at three clues; keep going! Make lots of clues, until your kids can’t wait anymore and they are totally freaking out. At that point, give them the drawing in your hands and get out your camera, because you are going to get some great photos of their fascinated little faces.

Here’s the first stop on my treasure hunt, on the bench:

I gave my kids the first clue, and they followed it, step by step, all the way to the end.

Even if they saw me stash the prize, my kids ignore it. What they really love is the process of discovery, like the unwrapping of a new present. The moment of deciphering the unknown into the known is especially potent for children, and setting up a quick and easy treasure hunt at the playground is an great way to give them an elevated dose of this excitement.

For Ages 2-4:

Hide a bunch of prizes in no particular order.

Going step-by-step won’t make sense to little kids. They just want to discover something shiny.

Have them wait nearby while counting to twenty (with a grown-up or big kid’s help) and cover their eyes, while you dash around hiding prizes and treasures – candy, coins, or stickers – all around the playground. Even if your child doesn’t find them all, some other lucky kid will discover what you’ve left and have a much better day because of it.

For Ages 5-7:

Riddle Clues

If you don’t like to draw, then use written clues. Start at the end, hide the final prize, and then go one step back in your treasure hunt. In this example, I would make the last clue, “Under the easy place to fall,” leading to the slide. You could make the swingset clue, “Next to the big green legs,” and for the bench, “Behind the best place to sit.” Even if your kids can’t read yet, finding the clue will give them a rush, and you can read the clue out loud to them. Puzzling out the clue adds on a whole new level of difficulty and fun.

For Ages 8-12:

Encrypted Clues

Have you ever introduced your kids to cyphers? Cyphers are codes that mask information. When you have the Key to a Cypher you can decode whatever it says, but without the Key you will only have a string of gibberish.

Teach your kids how to use a cypher, and set up a few clues using this cool generator:

http://cryptoclub.org/teachers/clue_generator.php

Work out your locations and clues in a notebook, by yourself. When you’ve got all your clues written out, enter all the information into the web page linked above at Crypto Club. It will generate a printable PDF with a page for each encoded clue, as well as a Legend for you to refer to with every clue (encoded and deciphered) for your reference.

With half an hour of preparation, you can give your kids a truly epic Saturday afternoon.

Keep Exploring

If your kids are showing a lot of interest in this game, introduce them to Geocaching when they are old enough to move around a bit on their own. Geocaching is a smartphone-based app that hides little ‘caches’ of interesting things in tiny, hidden boxes in the real world.

Finding a geocache out in the open, hidden from the ‘muggles’ that don’t know about the game, is a source of genuine excitement for kids.

In case you’re wondering how I learned to make treasure hunts so simply and easily, I make treasure hunts for the World Domination Summit every year. Before that,  I made a bunch of superhero-themed treasure hunts throughout the city.

But you don’t need an alter-ego; you’ve got your superhero name, Dad. Go be a hero to your kids.

The post How to Make a Treasure Hunt at the Playground first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

Good movies are a treasure to find.

A movie that will keep a child entertained, without zoning them out into a mental oblivion, is like finding a wonderful new friend. You invite your favorite stories into your home regularly, because they always bring laughter and happiness, without being scary or confusing.

Finding a good movie that will keep a toddler engaged, and still not scare them, can be a real challenge if the child has older siblings. My kids are spread over 4, 7, and 9 as I launch this website, and the movies that my older kids are ready to watch are not appropriate for the youngest to see.

So we’ve had to find exciting yet gentle movies that can satisfy everybody, both young and really-young alike.

These are the five movies we keep returning to, because these are the ones that everybody loves.

5 Best Movies For Little Kids

My Neighbor Totoro

Release Year: 1988 – Running Time: 86 minutes

Tonari no Totoro is a Japanese movie from Studio Ghibli. The animation is beautiful and slow-moving, a welcome change from the wham-bang-pow flashy animation that is sometimes targeted at kids.

When I sit my kids down for a movie, I want them to calm down, and not get riled up, you know?

Totoro is a Shinto nature spirit, who lives in a camphor tree near two sisters, Satsuki and Mei. The sisters befriend Totoro as they adjust to rural life, a new school, and the ongoing illness of their mother.

As Common Sense Media says, “Overall, this is a family film in the truest sense — it appeals to moviegoers young and old alike.”

Mary Poppins

Release Year: 1964 – Running Time: 140 minutes

This was the first movie to allow actors and animated characters to share the same space. It deserves a place in film history because of this technological enhancement, but kids love the songs and the stern but lovable Mary Poppins.

Fun fact: Julie Andrews was nursing an infant during the filming of Mary Poppins. She nearly turned down the part, but they delayed filming to allow her time to have her baby first.

Toy Story

Release Year: 1995 – Running Time: 81 minutes

Billy Crystal calls turning down the role of Buzz Lightyear “the greatest mistake of [his] career.” At the time, a computer animated movie sounded unappealing, something”just for kids” without real substance

When my kids first saw Toy Story, I was worried about the consumerism and messages that my kids (as homeschoolers) are normally protected from. I was surprised to find a rich story of characters with real depth to them, characters that just happened to be toys. They had strange rules they lived by, like going limp when humans waled by, so no humans would see them moving or talking.

(Fun fact: if you see one of the costumed actors dressed up as Toy Story characters walking around in Disneyland, yell “Andy’s Coming!” and they will all fall down limp.)

Toy Story was fun for my bigger kids, and without many frightening moments, it was suitable for my youngest as well.

Pirate Fairy

Release Year: 2014 – Running Time: 90 minutes

For an exciting movie with swordfights, this movie is surprisingly gentle and low-stress.

Out of all the Tinkerbell movies, this is by far the family favorite. Captain James Hook makes a surprise appearance, but most importantly, the main character Zarina goes through an introspective journey to find out what she’s really meant to be, and she is not at all like other fairies.

She could take a turn for the worse and become a villain, but her friends end up saving her and giving her a chance at redemption.

The art is fantastic, and the soothing music interludes keep the kids calm and curious.

Nanny McPhee

Release Year: 2006 – Running Time: 97 minutes

Yes, it is another movie about a magical British nanny – but this is not a reboot of Mary Poppins. it is an exquisite tale that stands on its own merits..

Be warned, I only think this is an appropriate movie for kids under 5 because my youngest son has older siblings, and a mischievous streak. An oldest or only child under 5 may find the introduction of Nanny McPhee startling (or even scary), unless you’re holding them while you watch and giggling about how fun it is.

The movie opens with some truly rotten children chasing out their 17th nanny, and their single father, at his wit’s end, is graced with the providential arrival of Nanny McPhee. She is masterfully played by Emma Thompson, with warts and funny teeth and all sorts of physical deformities that, one by one, disappear over the course of the story, until the well-behaved children and the pretty nanny display the harmony of a family saved.

The plot has some twists and turns that will mean things to adults but fly over the heads of kids – especially when the father agrees to take on a wife, and the children unleash their pranks on her instead of their family.

There are more movies in this series, so if you’ve ever yearned for more Mary Poppins, done well in a modern film, you’ve got your wish.

Did I miss one?

What’s your favorite movie for kids under five years old? Leave a comment below!

The post 5 Great Movies For Kids Under 5 Years Old first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

Winter is not a fun time to have the furnace go out on you.

Yes, it certainly helps to have perspective, as I kept telling myself: modern heating over the last century has come a long way. Instead of having to chop wood all weekend (or conscript your children into doing it), we can simply flick a switch or turn a dial or press a button and select how warm we want our home.

Most of the time.

When the furnace goes out, and you don’t have a hearth or a Franklin stove to gather your family around (thanks to the obsolescence caused by said furnace) then all these advances in domestic technology don’t keep you warm at all.

You can, however, hack your house to keep it warmer.

When our furnace went out last winter, the Huntress Clan had to find ways to keep ourselves warm with what we had. I’d like to say it was because we were cheerfully celebrating our ingenuity, but really, when it’s below freezing outside and inside, there isn’t much else you can do but find ways to warm up.

12 FREEZING WEATHER HACKS:

1 – Boil water on the stove. The steam expands quicker than hot air from the coils, and you can get more heat from one burner with boiling water than you can with all four burners on high with nothing on them.

2 – Do like the English do, and drink hot tea at sundown. Keep the kettle on (see hack 1) and keep drinking hot tea.

3 – Buy a space heater and keep the receipt. After the coldsnap passes, you can return the heater, for a net cost of only the electricity you used.

4 – Run extension cords around your house to keep your space heaters on different circuits. Keep battery-powered lights on the path to your circuit breaker box, so if you blow a circuit, you can see your way to the breaker box.

5 – Drink Ginger tea with cayenne pepper. If your immunity is low, eat raw garlic. Spicy foods that stoke your inner fires are better than cooling foods that calm you down.

6 – Eat soup for dinner. Nourishing, thick stews are best. Don’t diet – overeat instead, because temporary fat will help to keep you warmer.

7 – Dress in light layers, and change your undermost layers 2-3 times per day. If you sweat at all, even a tiny bit ( very possible with lots of layers), the moisture will stay in your clothes, and actually make you colder as the temperature drops.

8 – Take a hot bath or shower once a day. Shock your system with excessive heat. Just make sure to dry off completely. I’ve found late afternoon to be the best time for a hot pick-me-up.

9 – Keep your feet warm. They are the first to get cold and easy to forget. Cold feet can make you grumpy without knowing why.

10 – If you have a draft coming from a loose window, cover the window with foam or a blanket. Then cover that with a plastic shower curtain to make it airtight.

11 – Smaller spaces are easier to keep warm. Sleep in the smallest room, and if possible, sleep as close as you can to the ceiling. Heat rises, so the floor is the coldest place to be. (Just make sure you have adequate ventilation for breathing.)

12 – Do something extra nice for a homeless person, if you see one. Buy them a cup of hot tea, or donate a blanket or some socks. You’ll be warming your own heart, as well as theirs.

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” – Hal Borland

As Autumn Leaves by Neil Simone

The post 12 Freezing Weather Hacks first appeared on Be The Better Dad.

Bedtime was a catastrophe.

Both of my sons were crying. My wife had spent most of the day sick and vomiting, and she was still trying to console our screaming boys. I fell into bed, exhausted, and the last thing I wanted to hear was a crash coming from the bathroom.

My daughter is the oldest and (I hoped) the most likely child to be capable of going into the bathroom alone to get her toothbrush. In this perfect moment of breakdown, she knocked over the ceramic cup that held our toothpaste, and it shattered on the bathroom floor.

In the midst of all this chaos, I asked myself the only important question that mattered:

“How would the better dad handle this?”

Asking this question was automatic. I’ve conditioned myself to ask this question whenever times are tough, because in the heat of the moment, I can make terrible decisions.

So I didn’t handle it the way I wanted. Instead of reacting, I paused to asses how a better dad than me would handle this situation, and then I did it that way.

What I Wanted To Do: Hurl myself out of bed, screaming loudly, “Get into bed right now!” Then I would go and grab the broom from across the house, stomping and cursing all the way.

What The Better Dad Would Do: Get up calmly, tell my daughter it was okay, and I would clean everything up. Move slowly, speak quietly, and reduce the chaos, instead of adding to it.

Playing the part of the better dad doesn’t come automatically to me, but if I pause for the right moment, I can convince myself to play that part for a little while, no matter how badly I feel.

When Parents Are Tired And Grumpy At Bedtime, The Kids Are Feeling Worse

At the end of the day, children fall apart. They are tired, cranky, loud, and completely irrational.

And What About You? If you are tired, cranky, loud and irrational at the end of the night – how much more difficult can you make it for everyone else?

You have the power to escalate a bad situation into a horrible one.

Wielding the power of a father cuts both ways. The better dad can use his mighty power for good, and help children channel their breakdowns. The tired and cranky father, the one who makes bad decisions, can turn a difficult situation into lifelong psychological scars.

Think about it: How many of your most damaging childhood memories happened when your parents were tired or stressed?

When you are tired or stressed, take extra care, for there be dragons.

Responding Instead Of Reacting

When your emotional reserves are depleted, your automatic reactions are guided by your discomforts. Attacking these discomforts is a common reaction, especially when things are happening all around you to add to your discomfort.

Reacting to stress only causes more stress.
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Instead of reacting, the Better Dad can respond to the situation, in a way that serves his family instead of harms them.

It’s not easy, but with one deep breath, it can be done.

“The main thing to learn is mindfulness and the pause,” says Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.net.  “Mindfulness means watching ourselves when something happens. Then pause. We don’t have to act immediately, just because we have an internal reaction. We can pause, not act, breathe. Then watch the reaction go away.”

Five Questions To Ask When You Feel Terrible

Anytime Tony Robbins feels awful, he said in his book Awaken The Giant Within, he asks himself these five questions:

1. What’s great about this?
2. What’s not perfect yet?
3. What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it?
4. What am I willing to no longer do in order to have things the way that I want to them?
5. How can I do what’s necessary to get the job done and enjoy the process?

Your brain will immediately give you a remedy, because you’re asking the right question. It’s a lot more productive than reacting (childishly) to what’s not working, and it will uncover the best way to move forward through difficulty.

We have the resources to enjoy doing anything, as long as we ask the right questions. As the ancient Stoics reminded themselves….

The post The Only Question To Ask When Times are Tough first appeared on Be The Better Dad.