Fake it Until You Make It

Fake it Until You Make It

You got this...

Paralysis of action is a real thing.  I don't know how many times I've taken for granted the upbringing in agriculture and fire service where in-action was inexcusable.  Even the wrong answer done vigorously usually got us across the finish line.  Too often in life, I've assigned tasks and followed up the protests with a, "Nah, you've got this, you're a rock star."  Likely, in many cases, this has gotten folks to rise up to the challenge and...fake it until they make it.  What I've done for years personally has gotten projected on others...in large part with success that they didn't think was possible at first consideration.  

Just start...

If we sit around and make excuses, looking for every reason something couldn't be done, we'll still be sitting there undone at the end of the day.  Small actions and universal next steps can help you get started, and in many cases is more than half the battle.  I have a friend who is fond of saying, "If you don't do it this year...you'll only be one year older when you do."  Starting, even when you feel unprepared, then running hard and trying to look confident along the way is likely sufficient to pass 90% of those around you who never get started.  

Practice starts
early.

Steven Wright said it well, “Experience is something you don't get until just after
you need it.”  In the fire service, there were plenty of "firsts" that were unpleasant and prepared me in case it ever happened again (falling through a floor, nearly getting squished by a boat, and others).  That attitude or lifestyle translated into helping us get a pretty solid deal on our home...then learn how to rebuild it as we were moving in - we had to fake it...and we made it.  Ken Fisher in The Ten Roads to Riches, "Do the right things, you feel better.  Do the wrong things, you feel worse.  Your actions determine how your feelings trend."  In other words, clearly state what your end state (e.g. more happiness), then act that way, and over time, you'll be more of what you "think about" and practice doing.  

In the home, when you're not feeling particularly loving during a season, use loving words and do loving actions until your heart/mind/body/soul catches back up.  Our modern world is full of "planned obsolescence" and we're used to casting out the old, replacing it with the shiny in almost every facet of our lives.  Don't like the old car...run downtown; the toaster getting worn down...Amazon on the phone;  boss getting you down...find a new one.  We're losing our first-line propensity to shore up what we have and embrace things we invest our time, energy, and resources into.  There can be something said for life upgrading/optimizing and I'm not telling you to stick around in a super terrible job....for the sake of sticking it out.  That said, what we do repeatedly often becomes habitual...and habits often don't stay compartmentalized.  

Use the wind to 
make a parasail

In other words, what happens to our marriage, parenthood, religion, etc when we constantly practice tossing the baby out with the proverbial bath water at the first hint of a headwind?  When (not if...because you will), go through tough seasons with the important things in life, have you built your "stick-to-it" muscles up enough to get through them?  Have you practiced hanging in when it's an uphill climb with, at best, a murky mountaintop allegedly somewhere at the top of the climb?  I'm here to tell you that willpower will get you part of the way, but having other tools in your toolbox is huge.  

Fake-it-till-you-make-it requires a few precursors...enough baseline knowledge to stay safe, enough feedback along the way to not get "practice doing the wrong thing/training scars," and a commitment in your circle that failure is NOT fatal.  Done wrong, a culture and attitude of fake-it-till-you-make-it without the culture in place leads to an "eat our young" ugliness when something goes wrong...and in this fast and loose environment, things go wrong...and, as a leader, you need to be okay with that.  

As an example at home, a few years ago, I had a tough season where I'd lost a couple of friends to unexpected medical issues, had a new toddler at home, with another on the way, a wife who was working, teaching nights online at a college, and a foray back into a previous life deployed on a major hurricane in a major leadership role for a month...while we were house shopping for a fixer upper.  To say we'd squeezed the margin out of life was an understatement.  To say I was a patient, loving, available, sweet husband in that season...would be a drastic overstatement.  

If you deploy, bring one
of your kid's cows.

The siren song of "deployment" (loosely defined here for context as any high-adrenaline sprint with big hours, potential risk, etc) is a sexy mistress.  For many in the military, first responder circles, disaster management, and I'm sure other professions, we toil along in our "blue sky" existences with all the mundane routineness that implies.  Along comes this "gray sky' environment where we're often separated from "normal life" by time and space.  You're in a position to saddle up the white horse, ride in as a knight in shining armor, experience the esprit-de-corps of shared bonding experience, and solve problems.  The urgency of these situations provides a certain addictive allure and coupled with the fact that many bureaucratic handcuffs/excuses often fall away combines to be an environment many personalities gravitate toward.  

You can always climb
over a wall...

The problem with this comes when that environment also builds walls with our home team and loved ones..."you weren't there, you wouldn't get it."  This becomes doubly dangerous when we, as married people, gravitate toward others of the opposite sex "who were there, who do get it."  Ever wonder why there's such a high divorce rate in the military, firefighting, law enforcement, disaster response work, etc?  I'd guess that's got something to do with it.   Last week I was a hero slaying dragons, this week I'm back to the guy who changes the diapers and forgets to take out the trash.  

If you ride at sunset, 
bring a posse.

Anyhow, long story short, in that season, I wasn't feeling like the person my wife had married, the person who had committed to her...for better or for worse.  That puts a crossroads up, no matter how subtle a temptation it is in the background...stay the course/double down on commitments...or ride off into the sunset.  For most of us, I'd hope the choice is an obvious one...burn the boats, bind yourself to Odysseuss's mast, and do what it takes.  For too many these days, statistics show that we toss out our marriage and our parental blessings/responsibilities much like we would the out-of-vogue toaster or last season's fashionable sweater.  

In those moments, those transitional, tempting moments where you're just not feeling it...fake-it-till-you-make-it.  Hold his/her hand, set aside time to just be together, and inject appointments onto your calendar (to take a walk, have dinner, do those chores he/she appreciates around the house, etc).  In saying the words, and doing the deeds repeatedly over time, the feelings and fleeting emotions tend to come back.  We paint these pictures of the happily-ever-after-prince/princess fantasy life of marriage and real life.  If you've been "adulting" for more than a minute, you know that's a far cry from the reality out there.  Have, build, and practice using tools to get through the tough times.  Get good at fake-it-till-you-make-it in all facets of your life, because at the speed of life that we operate, paralysis is not a good thing...life will pass you by.  

Keep going...even
when the seasons
change!

All of this to say, you're far more capable than you likely believe you are...you're likely getting in your own way with your own excuses.  Embracing (and practicing to build the) fake-it-till-you-make-it muscles in your life is important because you never know when you'll need to pull those skills you've guilt out of the proverbial closet and put them to good use in a season of your life.  Having your first baby, taking a job a little above your head, moving to a new location, or going through a tough season?  Fake it till you make it. 

With you in the arena, from ours to yours...Happy Trails!

Call to Action: 

• Pick out an area that you've been stuck to move forward on.  Now pick out three "fake it" actions that you are going to get done this month toward that big goal.  
• 1 - ___________________ 
• 2 - ___________________
• 3 - ___________________
• Discussion: Consider what you/your family could/would/should (level of commitment) and start/stop/sustain (action) in order to make a big move.  Think about the minimum viable prerequisites to get started...go do that.  

Further Reading, Motivation, and References:

- Better Up - Fake it, til you make it

- Simon Sinek - a good perspective

Zig's Wheel (Part 2)

Zig's Wheel - Part 2

If you measure well...you
might just win a Grand Prix.

In the first segment of Ziglar's Wheel, we unpacked the model with the idea that we all have roles we subscribe to, whether intentionally or otherwise.  We looked at a few models that allowed us to get a sense of what our own model should perhaps look like based on the roles that we have in our own lives.  In this follow-on segment, we'll talk a bit about creating the rubrics, goal posts, score sheet, etc, and how to "systematize" it so it doesn't necessarily become the latest fly-by of the "good idea fairy" in your home, but rather a meaningful way to make progress.  It's long been said, "What is measured, is managed" and by assigning some metrics to our goals and objectives we begin getting closer to who we say we want to become while leading our family where we've stated we want to end up.  

We talk in the first responder disciplines about a span of control, with our ability as humans to successfully manage 3 to 7 "things" (tasks, subordinates, etc), with an optimum being 5 "things."  This range accounts for the fact that in a high-speed, dynamic, complex environment, we need to focus our attention more and likely end up more toward the "3" end than the "7."  Vice versa is also true - when we have a largely stable environment marked by static, we tend to be able to keep our eyes on more things.  Ask yourself which environment your family life looks more or less like - I'd guess probably dynamic and complex based on our many roles, moods, and life activities.

From: https://www.youngmoney.co
/p/fck-money-9acf 

If you look at Zig's Wheel - we've got more than 5 things going on.  This means we can have seasons where we lean into certain components of our lives for "sprint seasons."  When we look at some of our "most successful" people as measured by net worth we can see that the top 10 most wealthy individuals have had a combined 13 divorces.  Chances are, their "Zig wheel" is highly inflated on the time/investment they've put into the work "segment."  

You have to make constant decisions to keep your wheel on balance throughout your life.  Our balance comes from the sum of our individual decision-making moments when we choose how and where to invest our time (and other resources).  In the "we are what we eat" mode, this means that generally, we get out what we put into the system.  In other words, if we do the things that skinny people do, we'll be skinny (substitute skinny with any adjective you're after).  

Some things are better
desired end stats than
others...choose wisely.

As you're looking at your wheel, you need to define the desired end state.  If you want to be super successful on a particular part of your wheel, do the things that get you (and yours) there, with an upfront understanding of the required opportunity costs.  On a personal example, my (or rather, our) decision to dial back from the high-travel, high-speed, (potential) path to vice president-level positions at the national non-profit where I worked came with the balanced benefits we were seeking with our early kid-raising years.  In other words, we traded some potential upside/downside for other potential upsides/downside and now/next in an effort to end up in a more balanced perspective.  

Wheels and balance
go together, especially
when learning.

I'm not trying to say that we made the right decision for you...we did for us.  When you look at your personal wheel (the only wheel that matters), you have to cover the basics (make the minimum payments, so to speak) on all the segments of the wheel.  In other words, you've got to have enough of a job/finance wheel segment to cover your needs, but beyond a certain point (in any segment), you hit enough, and eventually a point of diminishing returns.  Our world requires people with super out-of-balance wheels (e.g. company CEOs, star athletes, etc).  For most of us mere mortals, balance is hopefully more of the goal.  We likely have seasons of life that we all go through where we lean into or out of particular segments...but we should strive to keep the segments roughly equal.  

When we look at balance, keep in mind that we have to stay actively engaged across the spectrum.  If we know we're coming into an upcoming busy season, take time to hyper-inflate other segments.  As a personal example, we were heading into a highly lucrative financial freelance season where I'd be more engaged away from the family.  In preparation (and after), we tried to "bank up" some capital in the parenting and marriage buckets through some intentional quality time and travel.  We also tried to smooth out the runway a bit on the way out of the season with more travel as a bit of a "count down to landing" during the busy season.  

All of this is to say that it's important to seek (read proactively create) balance toward your stated end desires and be honest with those desired end states to those around you.  It's not fair to a spouse or child to sign up, then shift gears and "run away" from those commitments.  Be intentional about defining the segments of your wheel, set goals, and take action to keep them balanced.  Check-in regularly with yourself and your loved ones on how well you're doing at keeping the chambers of your wheel properly inflated for the smoothest ride possible.   

With you in the arena, from ours to yours...Happy Trails!

Call to Action: 

• Pick out a role that you're feeling not in balance with and commit to three actions that you'll make happen (or habits) in the coming month.  Talk with your family and co-workers on how they'll support you to be successful.  
• 1 - ___________________ 
• 2 - ___________________
• 3 - ___________________
• Discussion: Consider what you/your family could/would/should (level of commitment) and start/stop/sustain (action) in your roles around the house.  Have your spouse/kids pick out a couple of sustain or changes that will make sense ahead.  

Further Reading, Motivation, and References:

- Gary Allen Right Where I Need to Be

- Zig Self Assessment 

Zig's Wheel (Part 1)

Zig's Wheel - Part 1

Some wheels help
you become a box
turtle.

We, as humans, are complex beings (no duh, you're saying, and rightfully so).  Our complex selves,
when we get married and have children multiply that complexity.  As we try to make sense of ourselves, our interactions, and our totalities, it can be important to seek first to understand in the words of Steven Covey.  One way that many smart folks have suggested looking at these complexities is through our roles.  Towards the front of this journey in time was motivational speaker Zig Ziglar's and his Wheel of Life, where he proposed the various buckets (career, financial, spiritual, physical, intellectual, family, and social).  That may be a great starting point for you, or perhaps the more customized to your specific roles (husband, wife, father, mother, employer, employee, etc) as advocated by Covey and others.  

For today, we'll unpack a few paradigms of Ziglar's Wheel of Life of how we see it.  If you Google search the topic, you typically end up with a clean, segmented pie graph of sorts.  

Others have the take that you can grade yourself on a scale of, say 1-10 in each dimension, and we'll dive into that in another post, with another set of tools we've created.  In that example, you can get the sense that if you've got a few areas that are a "10", and a couple areas that are a "2," you end with a pretty bumpy ride on your misshapen wheel using the metaphor of the wheel as a balanced life to go down the road on.  You can see how if you graded, then plotted out and shaded in your various circles, it'd be surprising if they made a nicely shaped wheel based on our interests, seasons of life, investments, etc.  

Side note: (We took the liberty of adding in health to sort of round out more even, or at least easier to draw, pieces of pie).  Part of our push at Stand in the Arena is the idea that you build your systems, your wheels, your definitions.  For example, you may look at finance and define "a 10" (see below) as keeping up with the Jones, buried to your neck in debt but "looking rich" because society, through advertising, tells us that's the right answer.  You may also look at that same pie sector and define the same "10" as the exact opposite - living a frugal life where you spend very little, but have a great safety security net despite your hoopty car.  We'd encourage you to build your own pie, with your own roles, your own definitions of success, and your own grading scale rubric to make it the most meaningful to you and your family.   

For example, through college, I was a pretty serious and competitive runner.  My physical "score" would have been a near 10, and I was pretty focused on personal development (10 again).  At the same time, I was probably closer to a 2 on social, perhaps a 5 on family, and a 3 on spiritual.  The point is, that we almost always live out of balance.  We can also run "out of balance" for some time, for a sprint, or a season but not long term without some heavy wear and tear. 

Some wheels make mom cringe at the 
ingenuity before you even get started.

Without constant course correction and intentional, introspective "grading" on a fairly routine basis (monthly, quarterly, annually on your birthday, etc), we can slowly slip out of alignment and end up causing considerable friction for us and those around us.  As the old Indian proverb goes about the young boy asking his grandfather which wolf (the good one or the evil one) would win in a fight, the sage grandfather tells him, "Whichever one you feed."  In a similar fashion, we can inflate/deflate various sectors with intentional work.  At points in our lives, we've sprinted for some time to achieve a particular goal, get through a particular degree program or whatnot.  At other points in life, we've been on cruise control in certain sectors.  As long as you're intentionally doing it, that's okay.  

Some roles involve 
reading to dogs.

If you picture life as a low-altitude flight through the mountains, it paints a picture of the reality of the risk involved.  The flight can be spectacular as you take in the sweeping vistas, experience the adrenaline in your stomach, and generally enjoy your day...if you're actually flying between the peaks and valleys.  Take your hands off the yoke (airplane speak for steering wheel) to go make yourself a sandwich and you end up as a splattered omelet in a pretty place.  The same goes for life, if you take for granted, or neglect a particular sector of life, it's not long before you lose your efficiency and ultimately head for a crash and burn.  

We've generally subscribed to the scaled wheel model above, but in researching a bit for this post, an idea hit me that the clean segmentation of the pieces of pie above are probably a bit far from the reality of most of our lives.  

More likely, your actual pie looks more like a series of interconnected, overlapping, and competitive
circles.  Our time, unlike our money, is finite and therefore a "zero-sum game" where you end up robbing Peter to pay Paul, where, through our calendar, we can only "create" more time by investing it more intentionally, not actually warp it unless you have a Delorian in the garage.  In this example, some of the circles, just like the pie pieces, demand more attention for a season.  Some become islands off by themselves, unconnected to the others.  Others become misshapen egg forms that are getting compressed between different circles.  And, some are on fire due to an emergency (e.g. heart attack) and necessitate attention RIGHT NOW.  

Our last model starts to look like the old rocks, golf balls, pebbles, sand, and coffee skit, where we end up with a series of miniature circles interconnected to form the overall big circles, or Big Rocks (First Things according to Covey).  If you picture how messy real life is, you begin to get a sense of what your life might look like modeled out.  Various fires, various little circles in big circles, the occasionally spilled circles.  If we modeled this across the dimension of time, it can begin to look like juggling a 3D chess board while it is coated in lighter fluid.  

But...it doesn't have to be.  We'll continue to unpack some of the tools that we use (and have translated) from the frontlines of various disasters to helpfully help your family find some peace and serenity along the way.  

As we sort of wrap it up here in Part 1 of Zig's Wheel, we want you to think about the Arena you're building that you're committing to stand within.  We hope that the Ziglar Wheel model can serve as a bit of a guide to help you organize your thoughts, that we'll lead toward words, take those into actions, morph them into habits, and ultimately you'll end up living a much more intentional and likely fulfilling life through the process. 

With you in the arena, from ours to yours...Happy Trails!

Call to Action: 

• Pick out one role each day for a week and discuss with your family where you are at in that role right now and where you want to be.  Then pick out one action item in each role to commit to for a month.  
• 1 - ___________________ 
• 2 - ___________________
• 3 - ___________________
• Discussion: Consider what you/your family could/would/should (level of commitment) and start/stop/sustain (action) in each role.  

Further Reading, Motivation, and References:

- Zig's Wheel - https://www.ziglar.com/articles/the-wheel-of-life/ 

- Made for More Coaching - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w99LZ50vaUc

  

Protector Parent - physical harm...and its benefits...

Protector Parent - physical harm...and its benefits...

Starting fires...

We're called to be protectors and providers for our children and families.  We've talked about how that looks in several previous articles.  In some of the previous conversations, we've talked about protecting their mental health and perhaps more soft items in our more soft world.  That said, there is always a risk, albeit low, that our family will be confronted with a physical threat or situation.  Additionally, in our modern world, so many of us have stripped out physical harm, not just from the "bad-guy" but all physical harm to our children.  

We often fall into the trap of believing to be a "protector parent" and that "safe from physical harm" is the ultimate goal.  Certainly, it's part of it...channel your inner Rambo or Mama Bear to keep kids safe from the boogeyman...it's a thing, and an important one.  I'd argue that it might not be, and probably shouldn't be the only thing.  

...Cliff jumping...

I'll also argue, some physical harm is good.  Don't freak out and call social services here...any harm that rises to the level of a hint of abuse should - we should throw those people under the jail.  I'm talking about the increasing mindset that a skinned knee should be avoided at all costs in "modern parenting."  We were out at one of the playgrounds with a friend and their little boy the other day and the mom literally walked around like a human scaffold ensuring her pre-schooler couldn't possibly fall down.  This was on the super-engineered foam rubber matting, mind you.  

Ropes...and...

Kids, more accurately humans, learn through failure.  Our propensity toward helicopter/snowplow parenting where we so completely smooth the road before our children does them no long-term favors.  The skinned knee on the playground helps them, much like a river through a canyon over time, build their balance, coordination, confidence, boundaries, etc.  Avoiding the proverbial skinned knee throughout their time at home with us creates kid-dults that end up with an inability to function in adult life.  When I hit one of the struggle-adulting moments with a cantankerous co-worker, micro-manager boss, sick kid, more month than money, whatever it happens to be...I can trace my ability to work through it and come out resilient on the other side back to smaller-level failures growing up.  

Helmets are 
sometimes
required...

I remember being absolutely devastated as a "meritocracy" mindset sort of guy when, in college, a "no-brainer" position in an organization should've gone to our team but went to another.  Years later, talking to the decision maker, he hadn't thought anything of it more than balancing talent across fall and spring semesters...oh, mind-blown moment.  My utter brick wall was just a business decision balance for him at the time.  Fast forward now to a decision I had to implement from our nonprofit national headquarters of closing offices across the state...those learned moments once upon a time served me well to try to bring some level of peace, honor, comfort, and empathy to a tough situation.  

As we look at our parenting responsibilities, I believe one of ours is not to shield them from the bumps and bruises along the way.  We treat our kids "summer knees and legs" as badges of honor, an earned testament to their rough and tumble interactions with the playground, hiking paths, bike jumps, and assorted other learning that takes place outside.  Just the other night, our youngest ran his bike into the stop sign at the end of the road, bouncing off and skinning up an elbow.  Should, we as parents, say "no more bikes, ever" because of the chance that you might get a little road rash or help him get dusted off, back on the bike, and ingrain resiliency?  

Dogs are always
good adventure 
companions.

Again, to close, I'm far from advocating any threat-based physical harm from the bully or anyone in the circle.  I will advocate for the low-consequence harms (physical and otherwise) that build the mental fortitude to get through life as a content adult down the road.  We seek a balance in this space - we don't allow our kids to ride bikes off the Grand Canyon or down the interstate.  Nor do we allow them to ride on bikes without helmets or lacking brakes.  Hopefully, you all get the salient points here and will consider giving your kids a little more rein and latitude to skin some knees and learn some life lessons.  

With you in the arena, from ours to yours...Happy Trails!

Call to Action: 

• Pick out a couple of ways that your family, especially your children, can do some things that are risky...in a safe way.  Go do them this month.  
• 1 - ___________________ 
• 2 - ___________________
• 3 - ___________________
• Discussion: Consider what you/your family could/would/should (level of commitment) and start/stop/sustain (action) in terms of injury-prone activities - hiking, mountain biking, and such where you can "skin a knee" without long-term trouble.  

Further Reading, Motivation, and References:

- “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!” Cole Schafer

- Art of Manliness - The Risks of Not Letting Your Kids do Risky Things - https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/family/risk-not-letting-kids-risky-things/