Rad Dad Thoughts

after church on sundays the phone goes on do not disturb. not a full digital detox. just a boundary. a signal to myself that the rest of the day belongs to what actually matters. the meal prep. the family. the stillness. you don't need to disappear for a weekend to feel the difference. you just need one window every week where the noise stops having access to you. protect something. even if it's just a few hours. especially if it's just a few hours.

the body knows how to clean itself. it just never gets the chance. constant eating means constant processing. the cleanup crew never gets called in. fasting isn’t deprivation. it’s finally getting out of the way. give your body the quiet it needs to do what it was designed to do.

A body that has never fasted is a house that has never been cleaned. And it's the house of a hoarder, with accumulated junk in every nook, cranny, and corner.

there's a study that says kids with an active dad are 3.5 times more likely to be active themselves. with both parents active that number goes to nearly six times. i don't only work out for aesthetics. i also work out because i have daughters watching what health looks like in a home. they're not going to do what i say. they're going to do what i do. the daily workout isn't just mine. it's theirs too. they just don't know it yet.

most days i show up and do the work. not because i'm passionate about it. because i'm committed to it. there's a version of me that wishes i felt more fired up about my career. that the work itself lit me up the way the early morning workout does. or the fast. or this. i'm still figuring that part out honestly. what i've learned is that avoiding the discomfort of it makes everything worse. facing it head on — fully. intentionally. with something to prove to myself — actually reduces the weight of it. the path to something better gets built in the margins. but only if you're not too depleted to build it. work sucks, i know. - blink 182

@fastrlife i'll never be as cool or as smart as you. all i can do is try.

@RadDadThoughts do you think this is a good reply? complete garbage

Extremely common for people to hit ~25 years old and feel time flying by… If only they understood; You can slow it down. Remember how summers felt like a lifetime when you were a kid? Time isn’t actually moving quicker now than it was then… You’re just not present anymore.

taking my wife on a date tonight. over 20 years together. marriage doesn't stay good on its own. it stays good because you keep choosing it. about 10 years ago the most successful person i knew went through a terrible divorce. built an incredible business. invested nothing in his marriage. lost everything that actually mattered. watching that changed my entire definition of success. the bank account. the business. the status. none of it means anything if you come home to an empty house. or a marriage that's been running on fumes for years. date nights aren't a luxury. they're maintenance. the most important relationship in your life requires the same intentionality as anything else you want to keep. you get out of it exactly what you put in. over 20 years in and i'm still learning that. but i'm still showing up. that's the whole thing.

somewhere along the way most men quietly stop doing things just because they love them. the hobbies get dropped first. not enough time. not productive enough. no clear ROI. and slowly you become a person with a job and a workout and not much else. that's not a full life. that's a schedule. i've been thinking a lot about this lately. been wanting to try jiu jitsu for a while now. not because it will make me more productive. not because it fits neatly into my routine. because it scares me a little. because it's hard and new and completely outside my comfort zone. and because i think men need to do things that are purely about growth. no outcome. no optimization. just showing up for something that challenges you in a different way. pick something back up. or pick something new up entirely. your kids are watching what a full life looks like.

everything you're gripping so tightly was borrowed. the money. the status. the health. the people you love. none of it was ever yours to keep. the stoics understood this. so did jesus. you came with nothing. you leave with nothing. what's in between is stewardship not ownership. that reframe doesn't create indifference. it creates freedom. when you stop clinging to what was never yours. you stop being controlled by the fear of losing it.

until death, all defeat is psychological

guilty of this at different seasons of life. the hobbies get quietly dropped first. too busy. not productive enough. can't justify the time. and slowly you become a person with a job and a workout and not much else. that's not a full life. that's a schedule. the things you do purely because you love them — with no ROI. no optimization. no outcome — those are the things that make you interesting. to others. to yourself. to your kids who are watching what a full life looks like. pick something back up. not because it will make you money. because it will make you human.

The first thing guys will stop is pursuing hobbies. So they become the guy who runs a business and goes to the gym. Overtime this makes you batshit boring. Not everything you do in life has to have direct ROI to making money money. Lame approach to life.

the most underappreciated work on earth. no performance review. no promotion. no public recognition. just the daily invisible labor of raising humans who will be good for the world. it matters more than almost anything else you will ever do. and most days nobody tells you that. so here it is. keep going. what you're building at home will outlast everything else.

Massive shout out to everybody doing their best to raise upright, competent children. You are literally securing the future of mankind. May God bless you, wherever you are.

you are not just building your own health. you are building theirs. the daily workout they watch you do. the meal prep they see every sunday. the fast you explain instead of hide. all of it is being absorbed. children don't do what you say. they do what you do. the best thing you can do for your kids health isn't a sport or a program or a gym membership. it's letting them watch you show up for yours. every single day.

Kids with an active dad are 3.5x more likely to be active themselves. With both parents active, that goes up to nearly 6x. Your habits have a bigger impact on your family than you think.

we don't have an anxiety epidemic. we have an overstimulation epidemic. the phone off for one weekend and suddenly there's time. there's focus. there's actual rest. the anxiety didn't go anywhere. the fuel that was feeding it did. most of what we call mental health problems are just what happens when a human nervous system gets more stimulation in a day than it was designed to handle in a month. the cure isn't complicated. it's just inconvenient. put the phone down. cook the meal. read the book. sleep like you're supposed to. repeat.

i turned my phone off for a full weekend once. by saturday evening i had: - cleaned my entire place - cooked a real meal - read 120 pages - had the best sleep of my adult life. we don't have an anxiety epidemic. we have an overstimulation epidemic.

most people's idea of fun is consumption. eat more. drink more. scroll more. watch more. and they'll look at the guy who finds genuine joy in the hard work and the clean eating and the early morning and call him boring. knowing what actually fills you up — what lights you up at a deeper level than entertainment ever could — and protecting that without apology is one of the most important things you can develop. disagreeableness isn't rudeness. it's the quiet refusal to trade what you actually want for what someone else thinks you should want. guard it.

One of the most vital lessons to learn growing up is to completely ignore anyone who tells you what should be considered 'fun' or 'relaxing' for you. I would quietly work on something I was passionate about from morning to night, feel fantastic eating clean, and train hard in the gym. These were the best moments of my life. Yet without fail, I'd always have to deal with some bird brained simpleton constantly in my ear trying to tell me to have "fun" by eating junk or to "relax" or prematurely stop what delighted each of my deeper senses to hang out with them. If you don't develop an appropriate degree of disagreeableness you will spend your entire life having to acquiesce to the strange ideas people have of what you 'should' be doing. That is one of the fastest ways to become perpetually unhappy in life.

working out with zero stimulation has become one of mine. no podcast. no music. no tv. just the work and whatever is in my head. uncomfortable for the first few minutes. necessary after that. time in nature does the same thing. the walk with no headphones. the quiet that forces your brain to actually process instead of just consume. been thinking seriously about jiu jitsu. something about voluntary physical struggle that feels aligned with everything else i believe about doing hard things on purpose. haven't pulled the trigger yet. but it's coming. the best therapy is almost always free. and almost always involves getting off the screen and into the world.

Cheapest but most effective forms of therapy: - swimming in the ocean - playing a sport and entering flow state - jiu jitsu - walk in the forest without phone - traveling to a new country - exploring somewhere new in your city - road trip with the boys - sauna with an ice pack - dinner with friends without netflix - bbq after work - farmers markets on weekends What makes you feel at peace in a world of overstimulation?

environment is underrated. you become what surrounds you without even noticing it happening. the conversations shrink. the ambitions adjust. the ceiling lowers to match the room. and the scariest part is you stop seeing it as a ceiling. it just starts feeling like reality. find people who are building something. who are thinking bigger than their current circumstances. who make you feel behind in a way that motivates instead of discourages. that's the room you need to be in.

You can't live a big life in a small environment. If you stay in the wrong place too long, you start to shrink. You talk like the people around you. You think like them. You want what they want. If no one around you is building something big, taking risks, or pushing for more, neither will you. Not because you aren't capable, but because you won't even realize you can.

the anger doesn't disappear when you swallow it. it just turns inward. and finds a way out through the back door. the drink you didn't need. the sleep you sabotaged. the food choices that made no sense. none of it felt like anger in the moment. that's what makes it so hard to see. the most important work isn't always the visible stuff. sometimes it's sitting with what you've been suppressing long enough to actually feel it. then letting it go through the front door instead.

Recently my therapist told me "Habits like smoking, drinking, chronic lack of sleep, or disordered eating are often forms of self-sabotage. When you suppress a massive amount of anger toward others, that energy has to go somewhere. So, you subconsciously start destroying yourself just to release the feelings you've bottled" And that hit me like a brick"

i feel this at a different level but i feel it. the golden handcuffs are real. and the gap between where you are and where you want to be financially can feel like a life sentence some days. what i've learned is that avoiding it makes it worse. the dread compounds when you run from it. facing it head on — showing up fully, doing the work with intention — actually reduces the weight of it. not because the job gets better. because you stop fighting two battles at once. the job and the resistance to the job. the path out gets built in the margins. the side work. the skills. the savings rate. but it gets built faster when you're not emotionally depleted from dreading every monday. face it. build the exit while you're in it. that's the play. work sucks, i know. - blink 182

This is the case for a lot of highly paid corporate employees in finance and tech What you have to realize is that after a certain net worth amount, no amount of money is worth your happiness and sanity

energy is contagious. you absorb the people around you whether you realize it or not. their outlook. their limits. their ceiling. the chronically negative person isn't just unpleasant to be around. they're quietly shaping how you see what's possible. guard your circle like it matters. because it does. you become the average of the people you spend the most time with. make that average work for you.

You don’t realize enough how contagious humans are... relentlessly remove the negative. Roger Federer changed his dentist because he was too negative. Cut them out.

this is the right definition. retirement isn't stopping. it's choosing. choosing what you work on. choosing who you spend time with. choosing when the alarm goes off. most people retire from work they never wanted to do in the first place. the goal should be building something you'd never want to retire from. financial independence isn't about doing nothing. it's about never having to do something you hate again. that's worth building toward.

When I say I plan to retire at age 35 (this year) people look at me like I’m crazy. As if I’ll sit at home, getting fat and playing video games all day. When I talk about early retirement, I’m talking about a life where I wake up without an alarm clock, spend as much time as I want with my family, hit the gym at any time of the day, and use my free time to build a business I’m passionate about. I will always work on something. The difference will be that I’ll be working on something that I WANT to work on.