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Rhythms Over Goals with the Cirullo's · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:03
  Hi, welcome to the family teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke. And we can't wait to chat about all things family. Thank you.
• 0:25
  All right, guys. Well, excited to bring you guys this episode of the Family Teams podcast. I'm here with our friends Chris and Justine Cirillo and my wife, April. So welcome, guys, to the podcast. Yeah, we're glad to be here. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Chris and Justine, they live in the Dallas area. We've been connected to them for a while. They've been bebopping around a little bit. They were in Oregon for a lot of time. And also they are part of...
• 0:49
  family Inc and integrated and have done a lot of family team stuff, stuff with us, and they're launching a business as well. So I'd love for them to talk about that because I think it's going to have a lot of relevance to what we're talking about today, um, about rhythms and all of each of our families have had, you know, different, I know, attempts at trying to live rhythmically. And I know that for both of us, this is a huge sort of cornerstone of how we live as a family.
• 1:11
  But I think a lot of people have, you know, some people have heard about this, maybe here or there. I wanted to kind of go a little bit deeper in this podcast. And one of the things that I've been presenting, I know at Integrated, this has been a big conversation, is kind of like our, or lack of a better word, code for how to live. And what I like to think about it is what is the distinct sort of moves we're making?
• 1:33
  that are a little different than maybe what people would do normally that we've discovered really work better for families. So there's things that work just really good for like getting stuff done. You know, there's a lot of content on that. There's things that work, you know, really great in a business context. A lot of those tools, we love to think about how they might work for a family, but oftentimes because families are different, right? They're
• 1:54
  highly relational, you know, we got to make things very sustainable. There's their, you know, they're, they're multi-generational. So what does it look like for us to bring some of these tools into the family in a healthy way? So one of the things that we've talked about in terms of the code is rhythms over goals. So what I want to do is kind of read a little bit about this. I'm going to shoot this out as an email to the family teams community. If you want to grab these emails, just go to familyteams.com and sign up for our email list.
• 2:19
  And so this is one that's going out real soon about rhythms over goals. And so the subject is when goal setting damages the family. Western business leaders have discovered a powerful principle. If you want something to happen, aim at it. We practice aiming by setting goals. Today, the most popular goal setting framework is summarized in the acronym SMART. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound is the acronym.
• 2:45
  I spend time every year making goals for various areas of my life, but I've noticed that there's a surprising problem with goal setting. It works too well. It's true that when you aim at something, you tend to hit it much more often, but something else happens when you aim at something. Your vision narrows. Things in your peripheral vision get fuzzy.
• 3:03
  And while you're aiming at these goals, guess who's often hanging out in the periphery? Your spouse and kids. The top world-class goal setters and keepers I've studied tend to experience massive business, sports, or creative success while leaving a legacy of damaged kids and broken families in their wake. How do we overcome this challenge?
• 3:23
  So here's what we recommend. Value rhythms over goals. Rhythms, repeated time-bound practices, are a more family-friendly way of bringing goals into the realm of relationships. The basic problem is you can set any number of goals, but you have a finite amount of time.
• 3:44
  And the richest and most important elements of life are relational. So if you're a goal setter, use your goals to help refine your rhythms. This forces you to deal with the trade-off of our limited amount of time. This causes you to prioritize human beings. So if you have a goal of growing in intimacy with your spouse, what does it take to, what does that look like in my daily, weekly, annual rhythms? Maybe debriefing with my wife every day, going on a date night once a week and planning a getaway every year.
• 4:12
  If you have clear goals in your career or business, you can help those goals. But when they bump into a family rhythm, then you can resist making the tradeoff. Those time blocks are protected. And so my family during those times moves from the periphery back to the center. And so there's a little image of most people go from vision goals to action.
• 4:35
  And what we're recommending, because that leads to imbalance, is a progression of vision, goals, rhythm action. In other words, you use your goals again to create rhythms. So this all begins with crafting a weekly rhythm and improving it over time. Living rhythmically ensures that goals serve your family instead of the other way around.
• 4:51
  That kind of gives you guys a little big picture idea of how we think about the tension that is natural between these two tools that are so powerful. So I want to start talking to you guys, Chris and Justine. How have you guys thought about this topic of rhythms and any way that you would describe how this has impacted your family? What's your journey into this look like? Yeah.
• 5:11
  So we got introduced to the idea of rhythms through when you launched the current version of family teams. I don't know when that was 2018, 2019, somewhere in there. And we had our second baby. He was, I don't know, maybe three months old or so. And Chris was working a job where he was flying to Dallas one week a month and he
• 5:33
  So when this idea of having like a weekly rhythm came into play, we started thinking about how we could implement that and realized very quickly that it's hard to create a rhythm like that when we are getting him ready to leave, he's gone for a week and then he's coming back and we're kind of decompressing from him being gone that week. I was, I had a bunch, I was very overwhelmed with two little ones. And so we, uh,
• 6:00
  we're trying to figure out, well, what do we do? And we finally came to the conclusion that we had to find another job for him, that his current role was not going to work for us to be able to create these rhythms. And we ended up actually having to, I think it was like 60% pay cut that we took because we knew that this was so valuable for our family and that it was something that really we needed if we wanted to succeed long-term and to see the results multi-generationally that we wanted. Mm-hmm.
• 6:30
  And so it, it realigned our priorities rather than work and income being the priority. It was family and rhythms. And how do we create something that is life giving for all of us to be able where he is available to train the children on a much more consistent basis that the kids have a consistent rhythm rather than dad being gone half the time and then back half the time and figuring out what that all looks like. And so it.
• 6:58
  really it changed our whole dynamic once we kind of grasped how much our life needed those rhythms.
• 7:09
  Yeah, and I would say what the driving force behind this was working in the startup space. So, you know, a decade of working at three different software startups, essentially, and the your tension that you're describing between goals and rhythms, I think, is really well seen in that environment, you know, because we're going to be able to do that.
• 7:29
  When you are an employee, and this is what drove us to Family Inc. and building a business and getting into integrated, like we wanted to have the ability to control those dials in our life to make sure that rhythms were really prioritized. And when you are in kind of that startup environment,
• 7:47
  the overarching goal, if you will, of the organization is the driving force. And I think goals are focused on a destination and not necessarily who is involved in what's happened in order to reach them. Whereas rhythms are taking into account all of the components. And so.
• 8:06
  In a startup environment, it's like you've got this fiduciary responsibility to investors and all this stuff. So you have this driving force, but what's not accounted for, what's not taken into consideration is the rhythms in life of the people that are being used to achieve that goal. And then the relational, spiritual, emotional, physical havoc that it creates. And the result, as you see, is...
• 8:32
  this high turnover, high burnout environment in those kind of startup spaces. And so I think that's a really good picture of the difference between goals and rhythms. And rhythms just seem to be a container that encompasses everything and has to account for all of the valuable components that are supposed to be in it. Yeah, there's, yeah, there's, that's what's so tricky is the,
• 8:55
  is accounting for all of the high priority relationships, all the elements. How do you integrate all of those things? And the point of goals is really to eliminate, to reduce, to focus. And that's why I kind of say it works too well in some ways. I don't like it when people say goals don't work. They work, but they don't necessarily take into account all of those other things.
• 9:21
  things that are so important. And I know for us, you know, this has been, you know, for us, it was really a theological sort of discovery process of kind of bumping into rhythms. You know, we, I was so struck by the, so the fourth day of creation people talk are the, the, I think it's the fourth day creation where they create this, you know, God creates the sun, moon and stars. And, and basically he says in the, in the Hebrew, it's really clear that the primary thing being created there are the,
• 9:47
  Days, weeks, or days, months, seasons. And then in a whole creation story, he's creating this the week. And so you have in the creation account, the creation of rhythms as being central to what creation is. And then you have in the Ten Commandments, the fourth commandment, which is to keep the Sabbath as really...
• 10:05
  about forcing your life into a seven-day rhythm that mirrors the creation account in Genesis 1. And so oftentimes I ask people, what is the greatest technology ever invented in the history of the world for us to order our lives by? Yeah.
• 10:20
  And the greatest technology is this thing called the week. It's so powerful, but people have to have to have to experience the tension between living and constructing a weekly rhythm and, and this sort of like hard driving goal setting. And so, yeah, that's been a big component. So for April, what are, what does that start for you as you think about like, okay, you know, you've lived into this, especially being a wife who, you know, whose husbands, like both Chris and I, you know, we've been in these very intense startup environments where, you
• 10:49
  We're in these team meetings at work and everyone's like rah, rah, rah, and handing out bonuses and handing out accolades for what does it feel like to be a wife on the other side of that as we're trying to lead a family when you're seeing all those goals that your husband might be trying to achieve in the workplace.
• 11:06
  Well, I think that the speed, like the instant gratification that or something along those lines that can come with goals of like, hurry up, we have a deadline, we have to achieve these things. When you're thinking like rhythmically and in the family and in the home, things have to kind of slow down, you know? So if you're talking about...
• 11:28
  I mean, even just in general, like a generalization of things that you want to tackle as a, just a human, like I want to read this book or I want to learn a language or something. You, you, you don't just like stop doing everything and just do nothing but study the language or do nothing but read this book or something. You try to fit it in somewhere. And so, you know, we would say like, find it, find a place to put it in your rhythm, your weekly rhythm language study or reading this book or whatever. So
• 11:54
  And then like slowly over time, over like the next 10 weeks, you have, look, you finished this book. That's great. Or over the next year or two, you got to conversational level in this language or something like that. So those are like in a family setting where you are like nurturing hearts and you're educating people and you're, you know, maybe working on home improvements or things like that. Then you, you can do those things over time, but it takes time.
• 12:19
  And time is passing. And so I think a lot of times we're not, our hearts are not wanting things to go at such a slow pace. We want like in the business world, we get, it's really easy to get caught up in like, this is it, this is your life. This is everything. And these are, these deadlines are so important and learning how to like step back from that and allow, you know, that's part of, I think it was part of your becoming more of a man, Jeremy was learning how to say no.
• 12:47
  Like we're going to chill out. We're going to stop. I am saying that I'm going to say no to that thing. That's enticing over here that has a deadline and all these things. And I'm going to dial it back so that my family, I can bring my family along. Cause I think there were seasons where I was like, we're trying to catch up. Hang on a second. Like we're, we're running behind you. And then during, like onto the next thing. And then what about this? And so learning how to like, Ooh,
• 13:14
  Let's just like, can you wait for us? Like one of us can't even walk yet. So just like for those of us who are training. That's right. Families are a little bit different pace, especially young families. And yeah, that's a, that's a huge. And yeah, what you're describing April is, is for me, the most helpful paradigm shift was to see my identity as a primarily as a father, as opposed to my work identity.
• 13:40
  So that when I go to work, I'm still a father representing a family that has its needs. And that's what I'm, that's my primary team. And that's what I'm primarily building. And I really want to be a huge blessing in this business. And this business has, you know, its goals are aligned with my family goals in many ways. But, you know, yeah, the pacing can be a real problem. And if that gets confusing, then my family often will inevitably take the hit if I'm primarily inhabiting that work identity.
• 14:05
  So I'm curious for you guys, Cirillos, Justine, maybe you could share, you know, what are some rhythms like as you guys kind of got into this and began to try to establish some of these for your household? What were some that were key? You know, how did this progress like practically for you guys? Yeah, we started with Sabbath and just trying to make that happen every week. And it was just very simple.
• 14:29
  basic at the beginning. We were like, we just want to have kind of a pillar in our week. And then as we started doing that, everything else just kind of started revolving around that. Whereas before everything was so linear, we never had anything like cyclical. It was just one thing to the next thing to the next thing. There was no stopping to reflect or anything like that.
• 14:52
  Like every detail when I do the grocery shopping and meal planning, everything was revolved around that dinner because that dinner started a day of rest on Saturday. So I didn't want to be thinking about cleaning on Saturday or grocery shopping or anything on that day. It helped to get the rest of the rhythms in order by having that one pillar day. Like what you hear? Be sure to leave a rating and review for this podcast wherever you use streaming.
• 15:24
  The family plan calendar is the new way to keep your family team organized. Plan your rhythms, menu, household chores, and notes for the family all in one place. Visit familyteams.com to purchase.
• 15:39
  Yeah, that kind of forces the whole rest of your life to feel like a seven-day rhythm and you start to feel the beat or the rhythm. And that's why I like the word rhythm is you start to feel it in your body when you're living into, especially a Sabbath, you know, you start to experience that. And Chris, I'm curious too, like, as you, like when you're leading a family and you have this tool of like rhythms, you know, and trying to balance all the things going on at work or how have you, how did you experience trying to use rhythms as a, as a father or
• 16:07
  And as a leader in a family. Yeah, I think actually something I believe we learned from you guys that was really helpful four or five years ago when we first started thinking through this was there's three kind of components that helped me begin to craft this. And I would say it's still very much a work in progress. I think this is something we're all going to be playing with and optimizing for our entire life. But the first was that the family mission.
• 16:34
  and they're kind of our vision and our value statements. That was a really critical foundational piece to this. And then the other two pieces would be to your point, who are we like father, mother, like as a Cirillo clan, like what is our kind of core identities? And then also who do we wanna become? What are the aspirational components? And so those three things,
• 17:00
  began to really dictate what got placed where and, you know, how much value we would put on certain things. And I think a good example on a micro of this would be like a morning routine, you know, for somebody like myself. I don't really set goals from a, you know, a reading standpoint or an exercise standpoint or anything like that.
• 17:23
  What I aim to do is be somebody, become somebody that exercises every day or that reads scripture every day. And I'm not trying to finish this reading plan. I'm not trying, you know, and I think what happens when you focus on, hey, what do I value today?
• 17:38
  who am I and who do I want to become, you start putting in place the rhythms that lead you the direction you want to go. And then you find that you end up achieving some of the goals that you might have set to focus on very kind of like laser focus wise. And then some of them you don't and you realize, well, those goals weren't aligned or they wouldn't have taken us in a direction that is aligned with where our family wants to go and who we want to be. Yeah.
• 18:04
  And so that's been a long process of kind of stripping things out that we once thought we valued, but really, you know, don't align with where we want to go. And that's hard to do. Yeah, this connection between rhythms, not just reflecting maybe a goal, but an identity. Like, who am I?
• 18:28
  Who has God made me to be? I know April, you've thought about that and have worked through that, you know, for, for mothers or for, for a family trying to live rhythmically, how do you see the connection between forming identities and the tools of creating rhythms for a family? Yeah, I think that can be a seasonal question for some of the roles that we play, you know, so for myself, it's.
• 18:50
  mother and wife are always, you know, always and forever. For the rest of my life, I'll have those roles and, and daughter for hopefully a little bit longer here. And sister, you know, those are some of the main ones that are identities I've had for my whole life. And then, you know, will have for a really long time. And then there's like neighbor, friend, and then the things that you do for your kids. So it's like chauffeur, chef, laundress,
• 19:16
  Like all the different roles, if you think about them as a role, they have to fit into your week somewhere. I used to be a letter writer and haven't paid attention to that one for a long time. But any kind of even just like hobbies that you have, you know, like I'm a scrapbooker or I'm a.
• 19:32
  you know, hedge trimmer for fun or something like that. So it's like the, the different things that you have in your life that you might call yourself, where do they fit? Is this a season for them? And then what does that look like? Like I can be like overwhelmed at being a mom and be like, Oh, it's my whole life to being a mom is just so, but am I being a mother to this child? And so like, maybe this is a season of where I'm, I need to really pay attention to
• 19:57
  this one, or maybe this is when I have my one-on-ones and I'm like swapping my kids in and out of that, or, you know, something more intentional about my role of motherhood instead of it just like being what I do from the time I wake up till the time I go to bed. And so it kind of allows me to hone in on like, you know, the laundress side of me needs to figure out why my washing machine isn't working or if we should start doing a clothesline or, you know, the things
• 20:26
  go down into a little bit deeper. It kind of separates out all the different tasks that I have into like a role. And it kind of helps give a little more purpose and a little more, even just like dignity to some of the things in my life that might feel kind of undignified or just like, you know, routine or boring or something like that. Things that just have to get done anyway.
• 20:48
  Yeah. Yeah. Living out those identities, I think, especially for moms is a big deal because there's such a, you know, such an overemphasis in our culture that your identity comes from your work. And that work is, you know, accumulating accolades from people outside the family. And so if you don't inhabit identities and see rhythms as an outflow of identities, you've embraced that you believe in, that you believe are important.
• 21:08
  and that are being celebrated, you know, by the family, then I think that tension is just can grow for a lot of, for a lot of women, especially who are spending a lot of time, or I think for men as well, that get distracted and think that what happens at work is the most important thing of who I am. So yeah, I think that connection is so super critical. You know, Justine, I have noticed you, you really, you know, you, you find tools in different places that have blessed your family. And I'm curious as you guys have.
• 21:33
  built out these rhythms, what are some tools, teachings, any, you know, whatever, what have you found has, have been helpful, especially as you guys, and I know you've passed on things to others as well. What, what, what has been helpful to you guys? We listened to a lot of podcasts. So the, all of this family team stuff, I feel like we consume that.
• 21:52
  Anytime something comes out the seven day, is it called the seven day rhythm or what's the. Oh, the seven day family, of course. Yeah. Yes. That course. I feel like we go back to that often of like, okay, how are we doing on our current rhythms? Is there something that we want to add that is in here that we haven't done yet? Or yeah. Did you have a thought on something?
• 22:15
  No, I was just thinking about maybe more on the lines of like execution tools. Is that? Yeah. Yeah. I think we leverage a lot of experiential things. And then you find tools like homeschooling stuff and like discipleship resource, things like that for the kids that. But we have like for instance, we aim to eat meals around the table regularly.
• 22:38
  three times a day. Like we're in a stage where we can do that with kids because they don't have other stuff going on yet. So we're leveraging that as best as possible. But then inside every one of those meals, Justine is usually leveraging something to kind of,
• 22:54
  move the identity of our family forward, the vision of our family forward. And so those might be specific homeschool resources or a memory verse type of resources or things like that. But I think just getting creative with what you're doing inside of these moments is really, has really been pretty key for us. And anything else along those lines? Yeah.
• 23:19
  Yeah. And as you guys have done this, I know Chris, like you have started to think about how to train dads, you know, to lead their families. You know, I'd love for you to maybe share a little bit about like, what have you learned in coaching, especially at the father level that, that you find is a critical component as, you know, a dad who's maybe not doing this is, is like, you know, either a business owner or has a pretty demanding job and has thought about how to
• 23:44
  lead in that context, maybe, but, but, you know, how do you help them? How have you found what, what works to help coach a dad who's starting to think about this for the first time? Yeah, I've found probably the most prevalent opportunity for growth or challenge that someone might be facing is an all or nothing mentality. And I think as Justine called out, like when we first started doing our Shabbat dinners,
• 24:06
  we were very focused on, I don't care how this goes or how elaborate it is, or if it lasts for five minutes and the kids are done and we're off, like, we're going to do it every week. And if that means we have to do Thai food takeout and paper plates, that's great. Like we're...
• 24:24
  the goal is not to, to try to reach the goal. Yeah, like immediately, it's to create the rhythm, it's to be okay with imperfection and starting somewhere and being consistent with small, because that will I mean, look at you guys, what 20 some odd years into Sabbath dinners and like,
• 24:46
  they're amazing I see them on you know social media and people that get to join you guys are just blown away but that's a result of you guys starting you know I think with like a set of dishes that you got a goodwill or something like that I think yes very humble beginnings yes
• 25:03
  Yeah, but it just, it compounds, right? And so for dads, I think the biggest piece is to actually not have a goal of what it's going to look like, but just figure out what you can sustain and pick something small enough that,
• 25:19
  you could literally do it for the rest of your life, barring major issues, right? Like, you know, severe illness or, you know, something happening in your life. And so in that regard, like you can grab these little things and they could be five minutes and just say, we're going to start here because we know that if, if we never got a chance to improve on this, we could do this for the rest of our life. And then you get to build off of that. But if you aim too high, right?
• 25:45
  and you still carry this all or nothing mentality, you run the risk of just destroying the whole thing in your pursuit. Well, you're so discouraged because you're not meeting that goal or that ideal that you have. And if, yeah, you just keep it very simple, like,
• 26:01
  I just want to drink eight glasses of water a day or something. Yeah. It seems like, yeah, when somebody comes to our house for Shabbat or we're being able to train them how to do like a Sabbath meal, they almost always need to hear how, how did it start? Because otherwise, yeah, they, they, they, they think, okay, you know, after 15 or 20 years, you know, I got to immediately do this or it's worthless and what's,
• 26:22
  One of the, one of the mantras that we've had to adopt over the years is defend the rhythm. You know, basically we will establish and time block certain things. Hey, we're going to study the Bible, you know, as a family on this night, or we're going to like, this is our, you know, we're going to, we're going to try to, you know, have this game night, or we're going to have, you know, various things in our rhythm. And, you know, you approach that and.
• 26:46
  You think I can't, I can't, I don't think I could pull this off at a 10, you know? And so a lot of people are like, well, then can it, and we're much more like, can you pull it off at like a two? Like we would rather pull it off at a two and have, you know, have done it and defended that ground of that, that, you know, that Tuesday night ground that we called a certain thing and dial it way down and just make it super sustainable. And then over time, improve it. Then say, if it's not a nine or a 10, then we're not going to do it at all.
• 27:14
  that really rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Like it's really hard for them sometimes to make that. April, I'm curious, could you, you know, I know that that defend the rhythm mentality. How has that like played itself out in our family? And then what, yeah, how have you thought about how to work? Well, it was very hard for me at first when you would say that is like really hard.
• 27:33
  like annoyingly hard because I'm just like, no, no, it's just not working. It's, it's like, I'm done. I've lost all my energy. I like, can we just not do this again? Or like that day would come again. And I'm remembering last week and I'm like, Oh my gosh.
• 27:48
  I don't like Tuesdays. And, um, so then you saying like, no, just defend the rhythm. And it actually, over time, I became very dependent on that because I needed your energy and your vision. Like I, I, you know, might be lacking that because of X, Y, and Z that happened throughout the day or something. And you start, you would infuse like energy and excitement into an event. And then it would really help me.
• 28:13
  Be like, okay, that's right. That's right. If we can, we can do this. And so defending the rhythm and then it becomes after you've had a few successful ones of whatever rhythm it is you're trying to implement, then it can become really life-giving and very, you know, enjoyable or something you look back on. We've been doing this long enough that we have many, many rhythms that we don't do anymore.
• 28:36
  because of life and because we're in a different season now and the kids are different ages, but we can look back and say like, oh, that was such a sweet season. That rhythm that we did, we used to do this thing. And so there's, it creates lots of different memories for the kids too. And when you do it like that rhythmically, then they can, you defend that and you've established it. Cause I can tend to, I can tend to, um, even with like homeschooling and all that stuff, just really wear out. And then just things just kind of fade out.
• 29:01
  just quietly fade off into the distance. And so having a rhythm where you're really challenging yourself to like, Nope, I'm going to revisit this. I'm going to revisit it. I'm going to try it again. And understanding that we have 52 of them this year, like I'd be down to 47, but we can just keep going and keep trying. So I think that's been really helpful to just for my personality, but then also
• 29:23
  For your leadership in the home and then me getting ignited to it. And then like watching the long-term consequences with our kids where they're like, you know, able to remember and recall these like rhythms that we were trying and failing and then defending and trying again.
• 29:40
  Yeah. Yeah. I would say too, like on to kind of elaborate on what you're describing is like you also can't identify where the problems are if you don't have rhythms. And so you've gotten some that have worked their way out and new ones that have come in because like you've had this framework that you follow and you identify what doesn't fit, what's not working, like what needs to be added in.
• 30:06
  But if there is no rhythm and your whole week is just kind of go with the flow, oftentimes you can have this this sense of dissatisfaction or that something's missing, something's not clicking, something's not working, but you can't figure out why, because nothing is repeating.
• 30:22
  And so having like a block calendar where all of those little pieces are laid out, then you can figure out like, oh, after two years, I still hate Tuesdays. And that's probably an indicator that something needs some tweaking or like, and hopefully it doesn't take two years, but like you can't identify that if that's not on the calendar as a rhythm and you don't have an established way of repeating that. Yeah.
• 30:47
  That's right. Yeah, that's huge. And when reflection is built in just seeing, like you said, when reflections built into your rhythm, you can, you might, by the time Thursday comes, you might forget the Tuesday thing, but then on maybe on your day of rest, when you have a few minutes, you're like, Oh, that's right. The Tuesday thing happened. We need to like remember to try to figure out how to tweak that. So instead of just like, Nope, we're just, you know, down the linear rabbit hole.
• 31:13
  Yeah, that's happened so many times when we do like our yearly review, we'll go back and be like, wow, a lot happened this year. Or like, wow, this was a harder year than we really realized, you know, as you look back at the calendar at what happened. And we used to just move on to, you know, set our goals for the next year rather than let's pause and look back at the last year and.
• 31:35
  reflect on what that looked like. It was always going forward, moving forward, and I think- Reach the next thing. There's also those seasonal components to rhythms, not just the seven day, you know? And we realized this year, we actually, we chose not to do any family summit this year and reflect on the year until the spring, because we felt like we were just going against the grain of like the natural rhythm of our family's year.
• 32:01
  And it was actually really fruitful to like enjoy the holidays, get through January and February, March and kind of like and then April was this like natural time for us where when spring where we're actually kind of evaluating and moving forward on some things. And so I think freedom on the annual and monthly basis for people to to think about rhythms is really key.
• 32:27
  Yeah. I think, I think some people too, when they hear this, one of the things I hear often, and I definitely have experienced this is, you know, I'm not that kind of a person. I'm more of a spontaneous person. I like calendars. I don't like, I don't like blocking things on my calendar. You know, sometimes when they hear this, they think it's like you're creating a calendar in 15 minute increments. And, you know, this looks very different for different, different people, right? You can have themes, you can have large time blocks, but the question is, you know, does it repeat? And, you know, that, that,
• 32:53
  I really think that even though there's a big spectrum between spontaneous people and people that really love structure, I think everyone really benefits from a rhythm. You know, I think that there are cycles that are too frequent. You know, sometimes people find a daily rhythm that's just monotonous, like Groundhog Day can drive them nuts.
• 33:12
  But, you know, there's two things that will drive you crazy. One is if every day is the same and the other is if every day is different. And so it's like, well, what are we designed for? People kind of go, you know, people really kind of start to lose it if every day is the same and they start to lose it if every day is totally different and unpredictable. And that is that we're built for rhythms, right? And so no matter how spontaneous you are, you know, if you're a coach of a team or a leader of a business, you know, no coach of a team ever...
• 33:36
  you know, got his team and said, guys, I'm kind of a spontaneous person. I don't really believe in rhythm. So I don't know when we're going to practice. I don't know, you know, when we're going to play games, but you know, let's, let's just kind of, you know, figure it out. No, like you're going to lose every game. No one's going to show up. You can't do that. And this is, this is really why it's really a category mistake. First and foremost, the people don't understand that families are teams.
• 33:56
  And when you are a team, then the question is first, like, what do I as an individual feel most brings me to life in terms of spontaneity versus, you know, schedules? It's really what, what am I stewarding and what tools work for the thing I'm stewarding? And then how do I bring my individual creativity or our culture of a family that is unique into that? But you have to start with what you're stewarding. And if you're stewarding a team, like any sports team, sports teams need rhythms, right? And so, so do family teams.
• 34:23
  Any last things that are kind of popping to mind you guys think might be helpful, tools, resources, concepts before we wrap up today? I might just add on what you're describing. And I think that just when you think about the individualistic culture we live in, the question is always, am I wired that way rather than does my family need this? To your point with the team and with the coach.
• 34:48
  And so I think if we start thinking from a team stewardship perspective, rather than what serves me, I think that changes the entire conversation. Great. Yeah. Any, any other last things that you guys want to say or anything that any tools you want to call out before we're done here today? I think we were going to put together a resource for anybody that might find it helpful. It'll be at missionfitdads.com forward slash rhythms.
• 35:15
  And it'll just be kind of like a quick start guide of if I don't have any rhythms, kind of how can I start somewhere? Yeah. Awesome. Thank you guys. Yeah. If you haven't checked out, you know, what Chris is doing over at MissionFitDads. So it's missionfitdads.com. Is that right, Chris? That's where the resource is going to be slash rhythms.
• 35:34
  Yeah. So check that out. You know, Chris is doing a lot of coaching cohorts of guys who are, who are really trying to upgrade, you know, their, their, their family leadership. And this is very holistic. One of the things I love about how Chris thinks about this is, is he's, as he's helping guys get fit, you know, physically, he's really thinking about, you know, how to make, how to make you into a kind of father, a certain kind of father and using tools like rhythms and.
• 35:57
  reviewing those things and coaching, you know, spirit, very specifically, because a lot of us need coaching. I think we're, we're, we're diving into this. So definitely check out those resources and yeah, at family teams.com we also have other resources. Like I said, we're going to send this out in a, in a, in an email. So you guys want to,
• 36:13
  jump on and subscribe to that. That'd be great. But thank you guys so much for doing this today. I know this is like a really important and interesting tension between goals and rhythms that families, you know, feel, especially when you're in, you know, more of a A type person or in a hard driving business context. And, and you can bring that stuff into the family through rhythms in a really healthy way. And I think that you can see just so much progress that you can make and improve over time. I love the idea of
• 36:40
  of iterative, repeated rhythms that bring improvement to the life of a family. And there's a lot of hope. Rhythms give me a ton of hope for seeing families transform into really functional teams. But I think this particular tool is critical. So Justine, Chris, April, thanks for doing this with me today. Absolutely.
• 37:03
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