Blog / Podcast

Happy Father’s Day everyone.

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I miss my father every day. Seventeen years was nowhere near enough time together.

I had a lot more to learn from him and he had a lot more to pass along. We packed as much into those seventeen years as we could, made tremendous memories, had an indelible relationship and closeness that perhaps only a father and first born son could have and I’m grateful for every moment we shared together.

As I work to raise my boys I constantly think about what i’d be calling him up and asking him, what I’m missing, what I’m still learning and what didn’t we have the time and years to talk about that I so very dearly could use his fatherly advice on.

More than anything, I just wish he was still around. He would have made an amazing grandfather.

I’m the same age now as when he passed away and my boys are roughly the same ages as me and one of my brothers were. We have another brother and he was very young at that time.

I’ve always divided my life into two phases; up to 47 and beyond 47. That’s where the line was drawn for me. Now, I’m in my bonus time. The time that he didn’t get to see but that I get to make the most of. That’s how I can honor and remember him.

It’s important to me that my dad gets to see this time of my life thru me and that my boys get to experience it with me.

Maybe this answers some of the questions I get as to why I do what I do, live the way I live, say the things I say and make the choices that I make.

Quite frankly, that doesn’t really matter. I don’t need anyone to understand and I don’t answer to anyone outside of my family.

If anything I do, actions I take, say, write or live by helps you, that’s great. It does make me feel good and my dad was also the type of man who enjoyed helping people, putting smiles on their faces, inspire them and always treated everyone well from the basement to the boardroom.

One of the reasons I do this and speak to so many men thru the podcast is to fill some of that void, seek out advice, mentorship, conversation, support and hear the stories of lessons learned and passed along from father’s to sons and share them with other men.

While I had only seventeen years with my father, I’m grateful and realize that even those seventeen years were longer than many boys/men get to have and experience. Some are taken too soon, some choose to leave, some there but not present. Everyone’s got their own story.

There are two things I’ve learned that i’ll leave you with:

1) Your life can be changed at any moment by things beyond your control

2) You can change your life at any moment by taking control

Happy Father’s Day everyone.

In Health

G

This is probably the most difficult Sunday morning that I’ve had to get up and write since I started this newsletter.

If I focus on racism or anti-racism, what am I going to say? Will it be enough, the “right” thing or am I too worried about watching my words so that something doesn’t get misconstrued?

If I don’t say anything about racism, is my silence speaking even louder? Should I stay in my lane or would staying in my lane make me a bigger part of the problem?

Three black men, a Muslim couple an Asian OBGYN and a Jew from Long Island walk into a restaurant in Houston, Texas. Sounds like the opening to a joke, right?

It was breakfast for me yesterday. That’s my normal. We didn’t talk at all about race. We talked about family, business, summer plans, workouts, shared pancakes. At the end we hugged and went about our day.

I took a walk on Friday morning with a white colleague and race is pretty much all we talked about. Perhaps that’s normal too.

Had a great conversation with my former college roommate and fraternity brother on Thursday; Mr. Kentay Garvin. It’d been a while and with all that’s going on I wanted to reach out and just tell him I love him. My fraternity had black men in it. We had all types of men. Yes, we chose to room together. It was great to catch up. It’s unfortunate it took something like this for us to reconnect. We talked about our kids. His moving from DC to Phoenix. His girls playing soccer, his career, wife. It was great.

I’m going to train in an hour with my track coach. My black track coach. It’s weird for me to type that. What does it matter what color he is? He’s a great track coach. Husband. Father. Human being.

It’s really complicated and yet at the same time, it seems really simple.

Be a good person.

Do the right thing.

Support, accept and prioritize the black community NOW.

Not sure how? Ask.

Don’t understand? Read. Communicate. Open your mind.

Talk to your kids. Let your kids talk to you.

Stand up for those who are unable to stand up for themselves.

Do not accept racism and discrimination of any kind.

Accept and support peaceful protests.

Hold accountable and punish those who murder and are out there breaking the law.

Register and vote out the bad politicians. Vote good ones in.

Fire bad police officers police chiefs who cannot manage their departments for the good of ALL citizens. Respect those who protect and serve and maintain their oath.

Here it is though.

It’s not going to be about what we do right now and over the next few weeks. It’s going to be about how we live every day about how we each lead by example in our homes, communities, businesses and lives for the long haul.

Real change will not come about by the things you say, post and write about today, but rather by how we consistently act, behave, speak, treat people, vote, conduct ourselves and hold those around us to a standard of conduct every damn day.

Lead by example.

Lead thru kindness, acceptance, courage and character.

Real change will come when we practice what we preach consistently. When it becomes more than just lip service, denial and temporary pacification of a permanent problem.

When we commit to working as hard every single day to end racism as we do in every of area of our lives where we seek improvement.

If we can do that and stick to that, then we will improve and I believe be able to make real progress.

Let’s show each other how important this is and how much Black Lives Matter by taking consistent, positive action steps every day. Year after year. Generation to generation.

G

The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in past time.

I operate in the past tense. That’s my lane. I know there’s all this talk about being present, how you need to be present, have to be present, present, present, present…Nope get away from that. Get past it.

I didn’t always. For a long while I operated in the present tense…Ie: I was always tense.

You can’t do anything well when you’re tense.

If you’re anything like me and you’re constantly feeling tension, why would want to hang out in the present tense? That’s where the tension is. It’s present! Naturally you’d want to get past the tension in order to move forward and thus “past tense”, right?

That’s where I hang out now. It feels better.

One of the reasons I started writing in the first place was because I was always tense. Things were getting to me and I was having trouble getting past them. Writing was (is) a way for me to work thru the tension I was feeling, sit down and journal about the experience or just mouth off into the voice memos on my iphone while in my car, say anything I needed to say and get it out of my system.

And just like invoking the 24 hour rule on an email (write it, give it 24hrs, read it, don’t send it!) I didn’t have to do anything with it (Or I could turn it into a newsletter that thousands now read every Sunday) I could vent, put it down on paper, read it back the next day, think about whether or not I was completely irrational, learn from it and often laugh at it.

It didn’t matter, because I had absolutely no control over the other individual or situations that were making me tense in the first place. What I know now is that I only have control over myself but the point was, I was allowing these things to make me physically and mentally tense and I had to find a way to listen, not react and subsequently alleviate the tension so that I didn’t have this constant pain in my neck and scoff on my brow.

Here’s a list things that seem to help me. Yes, you can spend a lot of time working to relieve tension but trust me, it’s a lot better than spending time around things that cause it.

Try ‘em out and let me know. They’re in no particular order.

If you have any tips or other things you do to release tension, let me know. I’m all ears!

• Writing
• Audio notes
• Exercise (Be careful here, too much HIIT can actually cause more tension)
• Ice Baths
• Warm Epsom Salt Baths
• Saunas
• Walk
• Meditation
• Box Breathing
• Pets
• Saying NO
• Being outside
• Yoga
• CBD Oil
• Melatoin

I’m also starting to get into PMR; Progressive Muscle Relaxation. Research shows that relaxing your body physically can also release psychological tension and stress, minimizing your stress reactivity and decreasing your experience of chronic stress. There are other effective ways to minimize psychological and emotional stress, but PMR can offer you one more tool to manage stress, which can help you to build your resilience overall. I’ll let you know more on this as I’m just at the very beginning stages.

For me now, I’m all about getting (and staying) past tense.

G

I'm keeping this brief...

How Do You Eat An Elephant?...

I don’t typically spend a...

Anyone else feel like we’re...

Life is very different for...

I’m either going to be...

I'm a little late this...

Let's face it. We can all be...

I was Harvey's assistant for...

Let me paint a picture for...

Meditate - Meditation...