Leading with Stillness

A few weeks ago, I had a busy day at work and ended up working late in the office.

This led my wife to having to do everything with the kids. From taking them to school, picking them up at school to after school activities.

It’s challenging and with 2 kids, it becomes chaos.

When I got home, I walked into:

I was exhausted after a long day at work, but none of that mattered now. I needed to be there for my family.

I took over taking care of my son. I had my wife go upstairs to relax and cool down. She was mad, but she needed the reset.

I finished feeding my son dinner, gave him a bath and put him to bed.

Then I went to go check on my daughter. The second I said Hi to her, she was already screaming at me. Mad and telling me to leave her alone.

I wanted to get mad, tell everyone about how stressful of a day I had, but no one wants to hear about that. They only want to tell me about what they’re struggling with.

I stay calm with my daughter, asking how her day was while she is highly emotional. Trying to get her to talk to me. She barely says anything, and everything she says is with a raised voice.

I don’t raise my voice and she starts feeding off my energy. She starts to calm down and is finally talking normally.

Eventually she asks if we can play outside together.

At this point it’s 8:30 at night, I’m still in my clothes from work. But I can feel she needs to play.

We go outside, it’s dark out. She wants me to watch her ride her bike in the driveway. Then she wants to pretend play like she’s a bicycle teacher and I’m a student.

She’s pretending to teach me how to ride a bike while I sit on this small bike I can barely fit on. She’s in a great mood and is so happy to teach me.

After 20 minutes, my wife comes outside to watch us play. She’s calmed down and is smiling with us outside.

Eventually we all sit outside together.

We’re all happy and enjoying each other’s company.

We’re a happy family again.

I tell this story, because it’s important to realize the types of effects we have on our family.

My family was stressed out, everyone frustrated and fighting. They’re all feeding off each other and escalating because everyone is mad.

I came home to that and I could have let it affect me. I could have fed into it and started fighting with everyone. I can easily think back to times where I did this and everything got much worse.

Instead I was calm. Everyone fed off my energy and was forced to meet me at my level.

We ended the night a happy family.

This is the power we have with our emotions. We can either let them affect our whole family, or we can be in control.

When we’re in control, it’s amazing to see how well everyone else in our family functions.

This is how we Rise as Men.

This is the Rise of the Modern Man.