🔥 🎁 acceptance, gratitude, disconnecting/reconnecting, letting go

#71: a weekly 4-item newsletter created to inspire dads to use the challenges of fatherhood as fuel for building an incredible life & an antifragile mind.

Welcome to the 71st edition of the antifragile 4 🔥.

This week is a little different—as our family prepares to depart for two weeks of holiday celebrations, I’m sharing my four aspirations for the rest of the holiday season.

I’ve also decided to take next week off. Enjoy your eggnog, your Christmas trees, your eight nights, your friends, and your families.

I’ll see you on January 2nd.

With love,
Chris

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Here’s this week’s antifragile 4 🔥:

1. acceptance

2. gratitude

3. disconnecting/reconnecting

4. letting go

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1.) acceptance

Our family traveled for Thanksgiving as well, and whatever years I’ve added to my life through exercise and healthy eating, that trip took away—and then some.

The boys didn’t sleep. Work was crazy. Family stuff. Jammed for time. All the things. It was fun—and also not fun at all. You get it, right??

This trip will be different. No stepping in the same river twice, as they say.

But that doesn’t mean it’ll be less chaotic. We’re traveling with two little emotional magic 8 balls, after all.

What can be different is my acceptance of whatever hand we’re dealt. I raged hard against reality last trip—and that created a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float–sized serving of misery.

Regardless of what’s happening, I still get to choose how I respond. And for this Most Wonderful Time of the Year, I’m choosing acceptance of whatever comes our way.

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2.) gratitude

A very close friend of mine will be celebrating her first Christmas without her dad this year. None of us knows what life has in store.

All the more reason to be grateful for the moments we have together this holiday—whether they’re boring traditions, tinged with recent drama, or whether the fates decide to dump on them in particularly creative fashion.

I’m aspiring to put the phone away and keep my attention right in front of me. To soak in the moment. That’s where real happiness lives.

Because one day, we won’t get another one.

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3.) disconnecting / reconnecting

As noted last edition, I’ve been on the screen drug of late.

Not for the rest of the year.

I’m using this trip as an opportunity to build on my disconnection efforts—and to reconnect with people, books, and myself.

I intend to be bored a lot.

What better time of year is there for that?

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4.) letting go

Letting go of treating my life like a productivity problem.

Letting go of filling every quiet moment with distraction.

Letting go of expecting anyone in my life to be different than they are.

Letting go of wanting this time of year to feel different than it does.

And that’s enough.

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Happy Holidays.

With love,
Chris

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