Over 40 – Page 6 – Disney Leadership Keynote Speaker

Father Son Traditions

Yesterday, you heard a promise. Here it is, the traditions a mid life Father put in place, using a lion’s share of midlife creativity. It would be easy to discount their value, because they are so simple.

Bear Hug
One, two, three
Twistee Treat Day
Food For Families
Dinner Prayer
You’ll never get in trouble for being honest
If you lined up all the boys in the world….

What simple, repeatable traditions do is ingrain key messages. Simple messages. Life altering messages.

While we are insanely busy, we all have one life to live. We ought to be insanely thankful for that, and then set out to make the most of it.

PS. If you regularly follow Mid Life Celebration, you already know there’s a really strong chance each tradition will be explained in future posts, maybe as soon as tomorrow. And if f you’re new here, welcome.

Mid Life Creativity

Do you ever have moments, seasons, or even longer stages of life where you question many things? Or maybe you find yourself lost and confused. Or, overwhelmed.

Mid Life creativity is critical in moving from a mid life crisis to a mid life celebration. Several times yesterday, I thought about it being Monday. Monday is “Twistee Treat Day”. And so is Friday.

Seemingly insignificant, or trivial, at first glance, isn’t it?

You see, as a mid-life father of a nine-year old, in many ways, I was a “fish out of water” when our son was born.

What to do, right? Well, it seemed like a good idea to find small ways to create lasting memories (traditions).

Perhaps the main reason this is challenging for me is because, when I tried to recall these things with my Dad and my Grandfather, I was coming up empty. Both men loved me and I loved them.

I just simply don’t remember any special things that we did together.

Tomorrow I’ll share a creative mid-life list of some of the things that are so simple, and yet so significant, that they will last life time. Who wouldn’t want that?

Addicted to Thankfulness?

It is extraordinarily uncommon to be fully conscious and in the moment all day, every day.

Why? No seriously, why?

If being thankful is such a blessing, why do we spend so little time doing it? Perhaps the same can be said for being healthy.

If being healthy is such a blessing, why do we spend so little time getting and staying healthy?

I think it’s because we over commit, over schedule, and, under plan. There’s a saying, “Failure to plan is planning to fail.”

I’m addicted to thankfulness. Grateful for the ability to think about issues like this. Excited to have daily challenges. Encouraged by slow and steady progress toward reconciliation.

Yes indeed, thankfulness is a drug. Don’t forget to take your medicine.

Midlife Weekend Warrior

Saturday. Finally. “Thought it would never get here”, people exclaim. Can you relate?

We see it over and over and over, don’t we:

“Can’t wait for the weekend”.
“Thought the weekend would never get here”.
“The week is finally over”.
“The week was hell”.

If we are truly thankful for our midlife situation, wouldn’t it sound more like this?:

“Can’t wait to get started again on Monday”.
“The week flew by”.
“Wish I had one more day before Saturday”.
“That was the best week of my life”.

All I’m trying to say is thankfulness places a whole new perspective on how we see the world and our place in it. But you already know that, right?

I Have A Confession…

“I have a confession”, our son told me last night as I was checking in on my social media routine.

His confession was nothing alarming. You see, we recently made an agreement that if he reaches a certain goal (with one of his daily chores) by the end on this month, he can pick out some Lego pods from the Lego store at Disney World (we live next door to Disney World).

However, while I was in Anchorage, Alaska this week, my wife got him one of these Lego pods. They are small and inexpensive, in the big picture.

He was worried that he broke some sort of deal with me. He did not. Not as far as I’m concerned anyway.

What he really did though, was remind me how thankful I am to have placed so much time and energy (worry) on developing honesty as a core value. “You will never get in trouble for telling the truth”, is the mantra he’s heard over and over again.

This also makes me thankful for repetition. Over and over again. Repetition is the “mother” of all learning. It is the root of evil and the root of goodness. But only if we focus on it, over and over again.