Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Live a Life Worth Copying (Scott)

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Lessons - Live a Life Worth Copying (Scott) · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, we're talking about all those hours that you spend doing things you hate,
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  the soul crushing jobs, the endless kids sports practices, the networking events,
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  the committee meetings, the social obligations that you dread. If you are constantly sacrificing
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  what you want to do for what you think you should do, if your weeks are full of activities that you
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  are just enduring instead of actually living a life that you enjoy, this one's for you. You are
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  screwing your kids up on top of screwing your own life up. I'm going to show you why your kids
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  can tell when you're dead inside, what you're actually teaching them about adulthood and how to
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  stop modeling a life that you hate and start turning life into something you enjoy, not just survive.
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  Watch the parents at any kid's soccer game this weekend. Half are on their phones, another quarter
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  are gossiping about work, the rest are staring dead eyed at the field, mentally calculating if
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  they have time to hit Costco right after this. And the worst part is the kids see it all, not
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  that you're distracted, they see that you're dead inside, that you are enduring the game, not
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  living, that sitting in those bleachers at 7am, it's killing you slowly. See, when dad checks
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  the email during the game, the kid sees it and the kid knows that dad would rather be anywhere else.
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  When mom is fake smiling through another tournament that she rather not be at, the kid understands
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  that love means pretending. And when parents stand there dead inside pretending to care, the kid learns
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  that this is what adulthood looks like. See, this is a truth that should terrify every parent.
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  Children are emotional mirrors, they don't feel what you say, they feel what you feel. And if you feel
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  that when you sit in those bleachers at 7am, you are dead inside, your kid knows it, their body
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  knows it. And they're learning that love and life means dying slowly in public while pretending
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  everyone else is fine. And this isn't good enough, this isn't acceptable. Being an adult does not
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  mean that you have to hate your life. But if you don't work on yourself, this is what you're showing
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  your kids. We have convinced ourselves that to be a good parent, we have to sacrifice everything,
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  that love is measured in hours, log debt practices or dollars spent on equipment or weekends,
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  surrender to tournaments or any of the other million different hobbies and past times and extracurriculars
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  that kids can do. So we sit in these stands and we're dead inside scrolling on our phones, gossiping
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  with the other dead parents pretending that this is what love looks like. But this is what I wish
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  more parents understood. Your kids don't need more activities, they don't need more gifts, and honestly,
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  they're probably getting lots of love. What they need is to see you living a life worth living,
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  really living a life worth copying. Because right now, if you are just going through the motions,
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  you are just showing them some cautionary tale that growing up sucks and it doesn't have to.
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  You want to understand what you're actually showing your kids do this exercise, it's going to
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  ruin your week, but it's important. For the next seven days, track your hours in two columns,
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  a live hours and dead hours. So a live hours would be hours where you feel genuinely energized
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  and present and chosen and just living and doing things that you enjoy, and then dead hours would be
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  hours when you are just enduring and scrolling and just counting the minutes until it's over. And I
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  want you to include everything. So the commute to practice, dead, the tournament weekend, dead,
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  the networking dinner, dead, the gym class you actually love, that's an alive hour, the coffee with
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  your friend alive, the book before bed alive, okay? What you're going to discover is that you are
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  modeling 70 plus dead hours per week, 70 plus hours that you hate whatever it is you're doing.
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  You're modeling that to your kids and that is 70 hours of teaching your kids that adulthood is
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  a prison sentence, 70 hours of showing them that love means endurance and 70 hours of programming
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  them to expect misery. Your kids are watching and they're not learning what you think they're
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  learning, they're not learning dedication, they're learning that adults are zombies, they're not
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  learning commitment, they're learning that marriage means two people always fight and never see
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  each other, they're not learning love, they're learning that having kids means your life ends,
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  but newsflash, it doesn't. Here's a different way to live life, here's a different way to model
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  how to be an adult. My dad coached my hockey team for 10 years, but here's what made him different.
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  He didn't do it for me, he did it because he loved hockey. Every practice, he'd be on the ice in
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  hour early, working on his own game, running drills with his beer league buddies, still trying to
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  perfect his slap shot at 45, and when practice started, he wasn't teaching this hockey, he was
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  sharing his religion. The way he talked about the conditioning work, the joy when someone finally
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  got a playwright, the way he demonstrated drill and you could see that he forgot he was coaching,
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  he was just lost in the pure pleasure of the moment, and other kids' parents, they sat in the
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  stands, they were miserable, they were counting the minutes, and my dad was on the ice alive,
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  so his alive hours that week, probably 15 just from hockey, plus his work that he loved, plus his
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  Thursday poker game that he loved, plus his Saturday morning pawn hockey before my game, so
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  he was modeling 40 plus alive hours per week, doing things that he actually enjoyed, and that's
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  what I absorbed, not that adults sacrifice, but that adults play, adults live. See, I learned that
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  adults are allowed to want things. Parents are allowed to choose themselves, and sometimes showing
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  your kid what it looks like to honor your own dreams is the best coaching you can do. My mom was
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  the same with the outdoors, she'd wake up at 5 a.m. on Saturdays and just love to hike and love
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  to snow shoe, and love to do anything outside, and she did it on Wednesdays and Sundays in random
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  Tuesday evenings, and the mountains, the forests, the trails, those were her life, she'd take a snow
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  shoeing and spend half the time looking at birds or identifying these animal tracks, and I guess a
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  little bit was for education, but not really for education, because she genuinely needed to know
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  what made those prints. She loved it, she'd stop mid-hike, she'd pull out her plant identification
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  book, totally absorbed, basically forgetting that we were even there, so her alive hours were off
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  the charts, every sunrise hike, every camping trip, every moment that she spent plotting the next
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  adventure, and we absorbed that energy. Me and my brother, we loved the outdoors growing up,
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  but more than loving the outdoors, I loved that she was doing what she loved to do. See,
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  kids whose parents have lives are more secure, not less, they don't wonder if they're enough to
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  make you happy, because they know that the parents happiness comes from all these different sources,
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  they don't carry the burden of being your entire world, they're just a part of a rich life,
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  and they don't feel guilty about growing up and leaving, because they know you're the parent,
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  you've had a great life, you love what you love, you're going to be fine, and they get something
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  better than a parent who never misses a game, they get a parent who shows them what a life worth
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  living looks like, so this is a lesson to you, to the parent, to the parent who's just existing
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  through life, because hey, it's a job I have, it's, you know, I have to do this, I have to do that,
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  I'm not saying blow up your life overnight and quit your job and never go to another tournament,
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  I'm just saying that start moving towards a direction of enjoying your life, enjoying your hobbies,
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  enjoying your work, enjoying your spouse, because what your kids actually need to see is you
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  excited about Tuesday, because your thing is Tuesday, you and your spouse kissing in the kitchen,
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  not performing happiness, but actually being happy, your kids need to see you say no to something,
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  without explaining yourself to death, they have to see you working on something hard,
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  because you want to get better at it, they have to see you protecting time that's just
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  yours like it's sacred because it is, they have to see you having friends who knew you before
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  you were someone's parent, they have to see you reading a book in the middle of the day to dancing
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  to music that they think is ancient, to you starting something new at 40 and 50 and 60,
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  to you choosing a live over dead, even when it's inconvenient, and to you modeling that life,
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  it is worth living, this isn't about being a different parent, it's about choosing to be alive,
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  so I want you to start small, this week add one thing that makes you feel electric, that lights you
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  up, not for your kids, not for your spouse, do it for you, could be a morning run, you could be
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  lunch with that friend who makes you laugh until you can't breathe, it could be a hobby you haven't
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  touched in years, it could be a class that you keep saying you'll take, and then look at your dead
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  hours, look at the things that you really hate doing, and pick one that is truly optional,
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  the committee you hate, the book club that you hate, the standing coffee with somebody who drains
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  you, the favor you do every week that no one actually needs, cancel it, this week right now, not
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  after the holidays right now, the goal is into abandon your responsibilities, it's to stop treating
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  every obligation like a life sentence, look at everything through this lens, and this become
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  alive, can I bring something I love into this, can I shift how I do this, if not, if it's truly
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  iridimably dead, can I kill it, and slowly and deliberately you're going to start choosing a
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  live over dead whenever you have the choice, and your kids will notice, they won't notice what
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  you're skipping, they'll notice what you're choosing, they'll see you protecting your morning
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  workout like it matters, they'll hear you laugh on the phone with your friends, they'll watch you say
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  no to things without apologizing for just existing, they'll catch you doing something badly and loving
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  it anyways, they'll see you building a life that doesn't require escape, and they'll learn
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  that adults get to want things, that marriage can include two people with their own interests
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  who choose to come together, that having kids doesn't mean your life ends, it means showing them
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  what a life looks like, a good life looks like, remember your kids are keeping score, not of your
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  attendance at their tournaments, but of your aliveness, and for most of us right now we're losing,
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  your kid won't remember the activities, they will remember that you look trapped, that you're living
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  a life that looks like hell, that you are showing them that being an adult means your life is over,
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  and it doesn't have to be, choose things that light you up, choose things that make you feel alive,
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  choose things that show your kids what living a true good fulfilled life actually is.