[antifragile 4 🔥] healthy relationship space, the perfect diet, email to your kids, a quote on sins.
#15: 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.
We’re coming to you late this week…newborn life finally caught up with me 😅 Still getting to know our newest little guy…who much prefers to keep his vocal chord practice to the wee hours of the morning 😵💫
Welcome to the 15th edition of the antifragile 4 🔥.
It’s a weekly 4-item newsletter from The Antifragile Dad created to inspire dads to use the challenges of fatherhood as fuel for building an incredible life & an antifragile mind. Some weeks will have a theme, others will meander. Expect it every Friday.
Here’s this week’s antifragile 4 🔥:
a thought 👫 about healthy relationship space.
two quotes 🥗 from Michael Pollan & Tim Ferriss on the perfect diet.
a beautiful practice 📝 of writing emails to your kids.
a quote 🫣 on sins.
—
1.) a thought 💭 about healthy relationship space
There is a perfect amount of space that makes every relationship thrive. What is it?
The answer is different for every relationship. But it’s not 0% and it’s not 100%. It’s somewhere in between.
Watching my son for the past three weeks (as baby arrived) started me on this thought. I can say assuredly that spending nearly 100% of our time together is not our optimal number 😂.
Our relationship needs a little bit of space - i.e. time with him at daycare, etc - in order for our relationship to truly thrive. For me to be the most present, patient dad for him. And for him, the opportunity to stretch his horizons in new environments.
The same is true for my relationship with my wife. Having independent time is vital to our happiness together. It provides the opportunity to revisit the side of ourselves we are without each other. Which is important. We are a team…but fiercely independent as well. That needs to be cultivated.
But too much can be a bad thing. There must be a balance.
Purposefully scheduling most of my time away from my son and wife ain’t gonna make those relationships thrive. Other areas of my life could - triathlon training, work, travel - but the most important things in my life would suffer.
So - what is the balance? And how can I foster that? To encourage my wife to spend time with her friends and have a night to herself. To get Adley’s ass back in daycare 😂. You know. These are the kinds of things I’m thinking about right now.
What is your balance? With your wife, partner, children, family, friends, work?
2.) two quotes from Michael Pollan & Tim Ferriss on the perfect diet.
I’ve conducted endless diet-related experiments over the past 10 years - and the following two quotes sum up my findings beautifully:
Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
-Michael Pollan
The best diet is the one you keep.
-Tim Ferriss
Diet dogma is overrated. You can be a vegetarian most of the time…and still eat a burger at your friend’s cookout. You can cut out sugar most of the time…except when your wife wants to eat ice cream on the couch after another sleepless newborn night.
Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
Move your diet in the direction you want to go. But don’t lambast yourself (or others for god’s sake) over it.
3.) a beautiful practice 📝 of writing emails to your kids
Both of my kids have email addresses. And I write them emails on the regular.
The idea came from a friend who started doing this years ago when his daughter was born - he, his wife, and their entire family would write her an email whenever they felt like it.
Early ones were full of “welcome to the world” messages but eventually, the emails became beautifully mundane. Quick notes about the happenings of that day; what story they read for bedtime, what they had for breakfast, what song is one repeat in the car. The kind of stuff you forget 6 months down the road.
But now it’s all wonderfully preserved in an archive. Even if our kids don’t appreciate it until they have whipper-snappers of their own - that’s fine. But what a treasure it will be when they do.
4.) a quote 🫣 on sins
All sins are attempts to fill voids.
-Simone Weil
Perhaps viewing life’s vices as clues of a void instead of evidence of weakness is a better use of brain power.
—
Two last things for you this week:
Find a minute for quiet. Maybe it’s meditation, maybe it’s sitting on a bench, maybe it’s while you’re pooping. But put the phone away and just…be.
Be fire and wish for the wind 🔥
With love,
Chris