Routines, Values, and Raising Kids Today

In this episode of On the Surface, we sit down with Brad Marotti and Jordan Janet to dig into the habits, mindsets, and daily choices that shape who we are as men, husbands, fathers, and leaders. What starts as a light conversation about podcasts turns into a deep exploration of why people crave long-form dialogue, how modern culture is reshaping connection, and why intentionality matters more than ever.

Brad and Jordan open up about the flood of information young people face, the difficulty of staying grounded in your values, and the ongoing work of building routines that support physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual wellbeing. From balancing the “five F’s” to shifting your personal bell curve, they share the frameworks that have helped them navigate busier careers, growing kids, and the realities of adulthood.

They discuss what it means to stay patient, aware, and present in a world full of noise, the challenges of raising children in a tech-heavy era, and the importance of carving out quiet space to think. The conversation hits on discipline, confidence, marriage, burnout, and the deceptively simple practices—early mornings, movement, reading, prayer, undistracted presence—that can change the trajectory of your life.

It’s an honest look at how hard it is to stay balanced, how easy it is to drift, and how powerful small, consistent choices can be over years. Whether you’re a parent, a leader, or someone trying to build better habits, this episode offers perspective that hits differently depending on where you are in life—and that’s exactly the point.

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome back to On the Surface, the GoTo podcast for construction and materials. I'm your host, Seth Stevens, and this week, Brad Jordan and I are back talking about successful habits, family life, and fatherhood. Let's go. I wouldn't even know what the recent like top 10 is. I only what? It says top shows on Apple Podcasts.

SPEAKER_03 0:36

I'm not sure if this is.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

That's not really it's not the same. I think Apple Podcasts uses like an algorithm to show top shows recently. And there's probably also like a promotion aspect to it. Who really knows?

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Most popular podcast 2025.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

There you go.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

On the surface. Must be a different on the surface. Overall, Joe Rogan's number one. The Daily is to Mel Robbins, Crime Junkie, Dateline NBC. Oh yeah, Crime Junkie's bigger. Smartless. Yeah, that's with Jason Bateman and Will Arnett. It's pretty good. Call her daddy. You gotta be kidding me. This American Life, Huberman Lab, which is a good one. And Dire of CEO. Number 10. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Wait, what is that one guy on there, Chris? The other Brit? Chris uh what's that uh what's that show called? Um it's like a pretty simple, isn't it? Yeah. It's a he's a good one. Chris Williamson.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

Modern wisdom. Modern wisdom. Yeah. And then on purposes guy, there's Jay Shetty. He's a also a Brit.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 1:56

Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Yeah. What do you think has made their shows successful?

SPEAKER_03 2:06

Like for me, the r the reason I like listening to them, there's a variety of topics. You know, you can talk about uh like geopolitics one episode, health uh one episode, and then um you know Christianity another. And they're they're all like just very investigative. Like to me, I'm I'm a very open-minded person, so I like hearing people have conversation without arguing and like to to try to make their point in a in kind of an intelligent way. And all of those podcasts that I listen to are like that. Like you get you could kind of both sides or all sides of of any kind of story. Mm-hmm. And then again, like he's popular now, thinking of diary of a CEO, and it comes to health stuff, he's got the top the top people on this.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Yeah, you also bring in high profile guests because you were doing well. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Well, and then on a scoping out from that even, and we've made this point before, I think the whole point of people being drawn to podcasts is they feel like they're part of a conversation. And these guys are all good, as you said earlier, conversationalists. So you're sitting observing that conversation from maybe from the outside looking in, but you feel I mean, when when you listen to these, there's no doubt, you feel a part of it, right? When you listen to some of these like top podcasters, you feel like you're part of that conversation. I don't know. It's uh I don't know. I don't know if it's you know, psychologically, if it's a connection, like a human connected to, you know, that you're seeking, that all of us probably seek to a degree. Uh, and that's feeding that in the right.

SPEAKER_03 3:52

What it feels like they're just trying to figure out the truth. Yeah. Like they're not, they don't have uh they don't have an under they don't have intention.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Maybe they're selling you something, maybe they're not. I don't know. It didn't feel like it. It doesn't feel like it, though. You're just listening to a conversation and you can take from that what you want. You know, you're you're not, you don't have to walk away, you know, completely changing your mentality, but you know, like you said, kind of approaching it with an open mind, just what's their perspective? You know, what do they have to control?

SPEAKER_03 4:19

Why do they think the way they do?

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Why do they think the way they do? Uh, you know, what's the reasoning behind it? Right. I mean, those are those are fun things for us to take in and unpack and figure out for our own.

SPEAKER_03 4:32

That's right. Like for me, I have values that aren't gonna change. Yeah. But I I've love to hear the way that you do. Right. Like I I without arguing. Yeah. You know, I truly want to understand.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

I think there's a parallel. This is gonna sound like wildly unrelated, but in uh in college, I had to, I think it was like freshman year when you're taking all your like core curriculum stuff. Like one, I had to do this, I had to do this like twice for some reason, once at my first school and once at my second school. But it was unpacking why people are drawn to horror movies. And a piece of it is that you can experience excitement, you can experience thrill without being in any real danger. So you're you're you're shielded from it. You know you're completely fine and safe, but you know you're gonna experience something, you know, on the edge.

SPEAKER_03 5:22

Do you guys like scary movies?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

I really don't know. No, I don't either. But it's obviously a super popular genre. Yeah. I'm not so uh I'm not I'm not unsure that listening to podcasts is a little bit similar where you're on the edge of this conversation, you're a big piece of it. You don't have to contribute, you don't have to carve out time to sit and meet with people face to face. You're listening to somebody's pretty in-depth conversation with uh a cushion between, you know, behind a glass wall, you know. Um, I don't know. I just feel like there's there's gotta be some kind of parallel there.

SPEAKER_03 5:59

And that's what it is for you. Yeah, someone. Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 6:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

It's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

It is interesting. I think I've heard that before about horror move movies. And I think that uh you're on to something with the podcast stuff. I think also like uh a lot of people are yeah, there's a lot of stuff you could kind of assume or or like wonder about, I guess, why people are into them. Because now society and technology is so prevalent that people like don't really have conversations, like face-to-face conversations as much, and there's a lot of like texting and things going on. So maybe people are just yearning for that.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

And that's why they like podcasts, because there's like an innate feeling within you as a human being where you are drawn to people. I mean, I think that that's true. Like humans require and need human interaction. Like I think COVID basically told us all that. And then younger generations and people who are introverted and stuff like that, like maybe don't know how to go about that human interaction the same way that they used to, or it makes them anxious or whatever, and so they're drawn to listening to podcasts because you feel like you're a part of that conversation.

SPEAKER_03 7:42

I don't know. It's just a modern way of of getting news and information as well. I feel like I'm I'm I love to learn, so I love to listen to podcasts that are teaching me something, but like for news, I listen to podcasts for news. A lot of reason why I listen to podcasts for news today is because everything that you listen to on TV is so biased that it's sickening. Yeah, yeah. Like no matter what channel you put it on. So I can find a podcast that talks about news in an unbiased way. And that's you know, that's why I listen to news on podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

I'd even even if I can't find that, I'll even try to listen to both sides of it of it, you know. Like I'll try to listen to one biased opinion and then I'll turn around.

SPEAKER_03 8:26

I'm flipping back between Fox and CNN if I'm ever watching the news. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

I think I think this morning on the way in, I was uh listening to like news podcasts, and one was like New York Times and the other was Fox. So kind of just hearing what each had to say. Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Which obviously there's a lot going on right now.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

I think that's why all that stuff those podcasts are popular too, like in the top ten. Like the daily is the second most popular podcast. And it's a New York Times thing, and it's slightly biased sometimes, but I think you know, you can also flip it over and listen to like the the Daily Wire or whatever, right? And that's like your opposite uh slightly biased opinion.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

I listen to both.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Yeah. Yeah, but they but I think they're also popular because they explore those topics and news further. Like it's not necessarily just like a rant, a biased rant about something. They're like exploring data and asking questions behind it. It's about as close as you can get to an unbiased news. Leans back into like curiosity.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Yeah, yeah. It we've talked a lot about too how our industry and just how much more readily available information is to all of us, right? How much quicker things change. The dynamics are far more accelerated today than they were 20, 30 plus years ago, right? Um, so there's also this, like, and and I think this is part of that. Like, I don't know, 30, 40 years ago, if you wanted to explore how to better yourself, or if you wanted to explore all these different perspectives, think about how much more work, time, and effort that took than it does today.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

I mean, you just flip on a podcast on your way into work and think of all the information that you've absorbed that you would have had to go find and seek out.

SPEAKER_03 10:28

It could be dangerous if you don't have like an internal form to internal That's true. Internal values of how you live your life, how you want to be. How you want to be.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

That could be scary for young people.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Three of us, you know, raising kids.

SPEAKER_03 10:46

Well, you could just you just changed with the wind, you know, whatever you listen to, you could latch on to it instead of being able to discern what's true or what's true for you.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

And I do think that is especially scary for young people.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Yeah. I think um, yeah, you'll I think you know that and you're making that point, but like the information is so readily available in all across all media platforms. Like that's just something that you have to be cognizant of all the time. And it's kind of scary whenever you think about your kids. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_03 11:22

The older you get, the more you can deal with it the right way.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Yeah, I agree. But I mean on the flip side of that, kind of what you were saying earlier, is it also allows you to like hear and be exposed to opinions you may not have otherwise heard. So it could, I'm not saying it should change like your values or your thought process, at least initially on a whim, but it could over time. Yep. Can you imagine going back in time and getting all this, like having to find all this data through face-to-face people or libraries?

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Right, yeah. That's my point.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Like physical libraries. Which I think about. I just wouldn't know anything.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

I think about my dad.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

I enjoy being play a lot more golf.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

I think about growing up, my dad got like three newspapers every morning, you know? And he had to set time aside to digest everything in all three of those newspapers to get and that's that's probably getting a fraction of what you can get in a fraction of the time today.

SPEAKER_03 12:26

You know what I mean? But that was probably a way for him to relax and stop.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

That's true.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Which which we don't do maybe enough of it.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Okay, so to that, um several things I was thinking about well while we were unpacking all that. Well, one, uh you you can we were talking about young people, right? And how scary that could potentially be. Um what's been hitting me, and I've talked about this before, what's been hitting me heavy lately is that you can hear this stuff as a young person. You know, you can get advice, you can get perspective as a young person, but it it's almost like it just bounces off of you. At least for me personally, that's how I was as a young person.

SPEAKER_03 13:05

And maybe open to hearing it at the time.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yeah, I get, you know, and you feel like you are, you feel like you're I'm I'm ready to digest this. Like I can think about that, cool, and then you move on, and it doesn't even take hold at all. Talking about, you know, raising kids and how fast that goes, or um, you know, what's important in life, and you know, how do you find fulfillment? What does fulfillment mean, right? You can I've been told all those things so many times, even within the last 10 years, and it hits different today than it did 10 years ago. But, you know, now it resonates. And I don't know if that's just getting older and getting wiser and and having had more experiences in life or or what changes. But um it's it's definitely different now than it was 10, 15 years ago for me personally, anyway. So that's you know, that's one piece of it, you know, as far as these talking about the dangers of all this information that's readily available to our young people. Um does it take a hold and effect today, no matter what you tell them, probably not, but keep on it. And maybe at some point.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

I think parts of it do. Like I hope so. One, you know, there's a lot of research that basically says you have to like intake the same thing like seven times or whatever, kind of like the habit stuff. Like to form a habit, you have to repeat it like seven to fourteen times or something like that. So I think that goes the same way with communication. Like I've been in involved in some stuff recently where it's people are saying, Well, yeah, like we brought it up and then nobody attended or it didn't do anything. And it's like, well, how many times did you bring it up? Well, one time.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

It's like you gotta repeat it over and over again. Yeah. And then two, I think back to your point, is like you're at like 10 when you 10 years ago, you were at a different stage of your life. So your core, your absolute core values may have been the same, but you were viewing your values differently because you were 10 years younger and in a different stage of your life. So you're like picking different things out of it. Like, okay, so 10 years ago for you, you had you Ramsey was maybe being like your third child was being born. Yeah. And you're probably see sleep deprived, and like just trying to get through having little kids and not even thinking about them being uh preteen and all this kind of stuff. So you're picking up different things from the same conversation then compared to now. Cause you're just like in a different mindset, you're in a different stage of life, and I think this is why it's important to like go back and reread books and like why it's important specifically like as a Christian to reread the Bible and things like that, because you can like what I've done on different uh I'm only like barely on my second read all the way through, right? Like I'm not gonna act like I've read it a ton of times, but I went through this time with a different colored highlighter.

SPEAKER_03 16:07

Their entire life and still learn everything.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Oh yeah. So I thought it'd be cool to use different colored highlighters each time because different stuff is gonna stick out. Yeah. And then like kind of compare. And you could do that with any books or whatever, right? Like I whether it's fiction or nonfiction or or whatever, it's just really interesting to see what sticks out to you on that on that go-around.

SPEAKER_03 16:33

Yeah, the same verse can mean two different things to you or make you feel two different ways depending on what stage of life you're in and what how how you what time you're reading it. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Which stage you're in. Mm-hmm. I think you're exactly right. I'm I'm gonna give you an example of one of those things for me that here as of lately. Um, so first is the when I was talking about fulfillment and success, you know, how do you define success in your life? Um, and I think it really boils down to fulfillment. Well, when you tell a young person that, I don't think, you know, they still have different ideas. When I say they, I mean I'm talking about myself, you know, 15, 20 years ago. I had my own ideas of what success looked like, right? And you can hear that it's about fulfillment and it's about balance and it's about, you know, maybe moderation, even if you want to use that. Um, but it didn't really take hold, right? And then something that's been that's been kind of thrown in front of me recently, and when I say recently within the last year a couple different times is, and I and this has been unpacked and studied and sold several different ways, but like the five Fs, right? So friends, family, finance, fitness, um, fulfilling career. Um, so looking at balancing all those. If you if you have balance and all those things, then you'll have fulfillment. And that should be your definition of success, right? Um, and kind of relating back to what we were talking about, like how we strive for that connective, that connectivity with other people, right? And that's where your friends and family and and and each of those F's, I think, have kind of changed for me over the years, right? Like what each of those mean. But understanding that that kind of balance um is what really kind of gives you fulfillment, you know, I feel like I understand that much more now within the last year or two than I did even 10 years ago to your example, like when I had young kids. I heard recently that had never really been laid out to me because now here I am at this point in my life where I'm trying to balance all those things and I'm struggling to do that. And so an illustration that was laid out to me recently, and this is another thing that is unpacked several different ways. If you look, if you put, if you put your efforts, energy, and stressors underneath a bell curve, and I'm sure both of y'all have seen this before. On the left hand, everything under the bell curve is what you're putting your energy, your stress, and your focus into, right? On the left hand side are the things that you can do almost automatically. They almost kind of they bore you because you're not really putting uh, you don't have to put a ton of energy, effort, or focus into it. On the far right hand side are the things that take a lot of creativity, a lot of effort. They're things that really almost, you know, stress you out to complete, do, or learn or master. Everything in the middle is kind of like the things that you have mastered and you can do those very well, right? And you do a lot more of those things. Well, as we start to try to balance those Fs, I think you start to try to stretch that bell curve out. And we don't really operate that way. That's how you get burned out. So what somebody told me recently was instead of stretching that bell curve out, you just have to shift it. So you have to push that bell curve. So if it's in the direction of things that you need to, if you need to master new harder tasks or pieces of your life, you've got to you've got to shift that bell curve in that direction. Keep it the same shape, but shift it. Now that means you're gonna have to let some of those lower level functions that you have, you got to let those go. And so that I don't know, that's been resonating with me lately. And raising kids.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

You have this mapped out for yourself. Have you done that work?

SPEAKER_00 20:10

I haven't I haven't put it on paper. No. I've have I thought about it, yeah. And it's hard because I'm kind of like on that left side of the graph, what am I letting go of? You know, sometimes um maybe it is like a just a dumb hobby that you have, you know, some of your time burners, your time killers, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:25

But you're you are letting things go, whether you think you are or not today to to make it to maintain.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Yeah, but what you can't do is you get yourself, because I find myself trying to flatten that bell curve out and stretch it out.

SPEAKER_03 20:38

Well, you're letting go of things that you don't want to. Yeah that's not in line with the way that you want to be. That's right. And if you're not intentional about laying it out, you you will let go of things that you you you wish you would. You really shouldn't. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Yeah. So I don't know. Those two things together have resonated with me more now. And I don't know if it's a, you know, because of the past experiences and exposures that I've had, because of where my career is at, because of where my home life and raising kids, because using the kids thing, for example, specifically, you don't have to, you don't have to do the same things with your kids when they're my kids are nine, ten, and eleven, nine, ten, and twelve right now. Uh, you don't have to do the same things with a nine, ten, and twelve year old that you had to do with a three-month-old, a one-year-old, and a two-year-old, you know? Yeah. That's just it's you have to let some of those things go and focus more on Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

I think you're I think it everybody this comes to a head for everybody at some point because like when you're younger and stuff, you just think that you can power through it and that you're doing a good job of handling all the stuff, which is not really what's happening. I think you just become like more self aware of all of your situation and like developing your values, and then you're realizing, like, hey, I I'm not fantastic at all of these things. And I've heard, like, I'm glad that you went into it because I've heard that same concept explained several different ways. Like, we've actually done it at like a work conference type thing. But the person taught it as like, all right, you are on like a bullseye map grid, basically, and you're like breaking it into sections of what you focus on and your values and that kind of stuff. And like over time, it's just kind of like an amoeba. Like it just shifts around.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

You gotta give here. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

You only have so much total to give, right? And then another way that I've heard it described or read, I guess, recently I'm I've been reading uh five types of wealth, I think is what it's called. And so it's basically the same concept about, you know, there's a lot more to life and what you prioritize and and what they call wealth more than just financial wealth and like making a lot of money. You know, you have time, you have health, you have relationships, all that kind of stuff. So he refers to it in the book as like dimmer switches. So like you don't ever fully turn the light switch off, but you can't have all of them on at the same time. So some have to dimmer switches have to go down and other ones go up, like throughout different stages of your life. Like obviously, through typically like your 25 to 50 or 45, like your family and relationship light is gonna be pretty high because that's a very important part of your life. Like it if you're married and having kids and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 23:50

Agree. I think that uh I think that as you when you're young, naturally your life becomes as you grow older, naturally your life becomes less about yourself. It naturally becomes uh more about the people around you that you're taking care of, your job. You know, you're whenever you're young, you're focusing on you're in control. You're focusing on what you want to do, what you're gonna do, your education, your friends, your relationships, what what have you. But when you know, as you get a family and you start taking care of people, you know life doesn't care about what you want to do anymore. And so it naturally you you know, you get out of balance, you get out of whack, you have to have a you have to have a plan to stay on track because you're you it's pulling you in all these different directions and and you just don't anticipate that when you're younger. You know, you think you're gonna maintain control of your life and you always will, and you come to find out when you're, you know, I'm almost 40 years old. Yeah, your life can control you for sure if you're not intentional about these relationships or these, you know, these seven things. Right. Or what you're gonna what you're gonna drop off or what you're gonna keep. You know, one of the things that I do to stay balanced, um, it's you know, and it this can change. It's a like a living document, but it's four you got four categories physical, spiritual, intellectual, and emotional, and just keeping a weekly, like a weekly targets. Not, you know, I've been talking about targets and goals a lot at work, but I think this is super important to do personally as well. You know, like physical can be it needs to be just a couple of things, but it could be getting 7,000 steps a day. Could be drinking a hundred a hundred uh ounces of water. Ounces. Yeah, I was thinking gallons, but that's you might drink.

SPEAKER_02 25:42

I think you can legit die from drinking a hundred gallons of water in my sleep.

SPEAKER_03 25:46

You know, spiritual, a couple of things to, you know, to do to stay in balance for me is waking up early and you know, journaling or reading, getting your mind right in the morning. I don't do these things uh well all the time, but these are these are things that I have written down and uh in some form or fashion I'm getting to these things throughout a week. Right. And this is what helps keep me in balance. You know, emotional, that's is this is around to me, this is around relationships and making sure that you're setting time aside to to talk to your wife and to talk to your kids or having 30 minutes alone with your with each one of your kids once a week. You know, just trying to be intentional in that way. You know that for me, this is how I try to keep an assessment on how I'm doing, staying in balance. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 26:34

That um like developing goals around those categories, like it whatever you determine your categories is good. Another cool suggestion from that book is to create anti-goals, like basically helping you even more define like what you want out of that category, like um you know you're defining what you don't want to happen, right? Which helps you figure out the things that you need to prevent that from happening. Like that's right. So if it's like um I don't know, like so say it's health. Like I don't want my you brought up walking. I don't want my um like knees to hurt or back to hurt or whatever. So therefore I'd need to take 7,000 steps a day and like stretch or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 27:32

I've heard like painting a vivid picture of what your life could be like if you don't do these things. Yeah, it's basically everybody needs to go through it. Like you need to write it out. This is this is what could happen if I don't if I don't do these things.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

For somebody like me, and I think for a lot of people probably, what that helps do is develop a strategy of things you can control. Instead of just feeling like it's out of my control when I get to this point, that's just how it's gonna be. It's gonna be miserable. Well, well, back up a little bit. How do you not want to be? And what are the things you can control to avoid that?

SPEAKER_03 28:05

And that gives you that gives you reason for doing it for doing these things. You know, it gives you the why.

SPEAKER_02 28:10

And sometimes it's hard to like really define, fully define goals, like if it's just loftiness because you're struggling to define exactly what that looks like. Create a vision for your life. Yeah. In other words, you you Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

You create what you don't want it to be like in that process. You're creating what you know, you're creating a vision for your life. Yeah, you're creating what it is. And you set goals off of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

That's cool.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

What do you do to like do you feel like you get one-on-one with your kids, each kid, half an hour a week?

SPEAKER_03 28:44

No, not right now. I mean, it depends on which, you know, like last week I was traveling all week, so I obviously didn't. Um but just just having that idea or that goal in mind uh makes me try to be intentional about putting it on the calendar or thinking about when I could do it. You know, the last time I had one-on-one time with my oldest, we took the boat out and just you know, we're not neither one of us are big fishers, we try to be, but we don't we're not very good. So we ended up taking the boat out just sitting in the middle of the lake and talking, and it was good. You know, it was good for about an hour. Uh but just little things like that, just maybe once a week is too much, but once a month is probably a good goal, and I'd say I do get that in for sure.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

Well, one yeah, the once a week for half an hour is like it seems like it should be attainable, but I think your point is realistically it may not happen every week, but like you got an hour over a three-week span, and that's essentially the same thing. Right.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

Yeah. Sorry if you were gonna say something.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

No, I was just saying I I used to be better about it than I am now. You know, I think I my kids' schedules and our schedules have gotten busier to where that's one of those things you inadvertently let go of that you really shouldn't, right? So I need to figure out how to pack that back in, uh let go of something else and make that a priority. On the flip side, I had uh we had like over 24 hours with one of our kids just by themselves this weekend. Just nature of two of them were sick, she had soccer, we stayed the night up in St. Louis for her soccer games, and um it was great to spend, you know, just Megan and I and one kid. Um, it was great to have that, you know, real focus. But it it kind of I think if I feel like it affected her a little bit. Like she's not used to just being there just by herself with just mom and dad, and she didn't have the influence and input from her sisters constantly, you know, and it was a positive thing, but at the same time, I I think you could really see her energy level really drop, which I thought and and that's uh that's a her thing specifically. It's Hattie, and that's her specifically, which is your middle child. Yeah, she's a very intense, like feeds off of people, like that's just she's high energy, like that's how she is. And if she doesn't have that that feed from others around her, you can really kind of see her energy levels drop, which isn't an unhealthy thing at all. I just found it interesting.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

She's never really been never I mean, middle children are don't experience interesting. Yeah, and especially because you're uh well, you can leave for a little bit. And especially because your kids are so close together, like she has no conscious uh she has no conscious like experience or opinion of what it was ever like to be by themselves, right? Which is also a really frankly kind of annoying thing about oldest kids, which I'm an oldest kid, and my daughter is our oldest, and she'll like complain about you know her brother and stuff, and I was like, Yeah, you got to spend three years of your life with just us by yourself, being as annoying as you want to be. He has never experienced being the only child, yeah, which is like something that I can't comprehend either, but um it's interesting because you like everybody's experiences are different, obviously. And it affects the way that they are, like my wife and I joke about it all the time that like together these kids are chaos, and s when they're singled out like one on one, or you only you know, whatever, they're like the angel children.

SPEAKER_03 32:42

I think it's important to get them alone. Yeah. Especially as they get older. Yeah, that's true. And by the time they get to be 15, 16, 17, they're gonna be who they are. You're getting close. You were out there having the talk. Yeah. We've had a few talks. Yeah, uh we've talked about girls a few times lately. It's been funny. It's 12.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

That's great. What's interesting too to think is we're all unpacking this, like we've gained all this wisdom over the years, you know, and then it's like if we could go back and listen to this conversation 30 years from now, we're probably gonna be like, just scratching the surface. What a bunch of idiots. They don't know what they're talking about. That's true. Perspective will change again as much as it has already.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Yeah. What kind of th what kind of habits do you do, Jordan? To like keep yourself, I don't know, operating well, sane. You look good too, so uh oh, maybe I should leave now.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Uh you know, I don't I'm I'm learning. Uh it's things that I have to develop that I have to be conscious of. Um definitely prioritizing um, you know, looking back at those five F's, uh, prioritizing some time and space for each of those. Um and and then figuring out what you gotta let go of in order to do that. Uh and I'm better at some than I am others. Um I try to find myself a little time in the morning to kind of like what you said, Brad, just and and more more, if nothing else, just unpack today, like figure out what am I up against today, you know, how am I gonna tackle it? And and there's definitely times when I don't do that very well. Um, and you know, the the great thing about my relationship with my wife is that she's she's not afraid to tell you that, you know. Uh, which is great. It's it's because that keeps me from really going off the rails, right? Because if I was left unchecked, it'd be easy for me to either stretch that bell curve and get in an unhealthy place or start dropping the wrong things uh because it's easier to handle the stuff in the middle of my bell curve, you know?

SPEAKER_02 35:00

True.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Um so without without some type of I I guess I'm just not great at that inter introspective to stop and say, what are you screwing up and what can you fix before it gets to be a problem?

SPEAKER_01 35:11

You know?

SPEAKER_00 35:12

Um so trying to unpack that, right? Stop and think about um what what are you maybe dropping the ball on? What do you need to spend more energy, time, and effort on of those five Fs?

SPEAKER_02 35:24

Yeah. So do you feel like you ever catch yourself or is it all No, I do catch myself. Okay, yeah, yeah. When do you think that happened? Like do you end up feeling like getting a feeling that you're like drowning and you're dropping the ball, or how do you know?

SPEAKER_00 35:42

That happens. Um sometimes at the end of the day, maybe I'll do the same thing at the end of the day that I do at the beginning of the day, just kind of unpack it and see how it went. Um, you know, like the other night, uh, at the end of the day, I just lost all patience with my kids. And I I didn't like blow up on them or anything like that. But at the end of the day, you know, you guys were talking about spending intentional time with each one individually, and like each one of them individually was annoying me the bitter that day.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

And at the end of the day, I'm like, you know what? They're just being kids. Like they're not doing anything any different today than they have any other day.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

So you were the one that was really being annoyed. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

And I had to tell Megan that I was like, look, I had a I had a rough day today. I didn't I didn't do it today.

SPEAKER_03 36:21

I think I think you know, it's hard to do, but we would all be healthier and better for it if at some point during the week, I mean it'd be nice if it was daily. Yeah. But some point during the week you have 30 minutes to an hour to just like assess. Yeah. Just or or walk around. Especially before you go home. Uh just to have some alone time, turn everything off. I stay so distracted because I'm always playing a podcast or something like that, and I know that I need to, you know, the best the best times to recoup and to really think and to assess is when you everything's shut off. It's just true. It's just quiet. Um setting some time aside for that alone time, that quietness daily or at least weekly is super important. I used to do it. And I don't do it. I don't do it often.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

I don't either. And I used to think it was so weird when people would talk about driving home or in their truck or what with nothing on. And I was like, that's the weirdest, the most bizarre thing I've ever heard in my life. And I'll find myself doing it now just unintentionally. I'll be driving and like in my own head and like, I've been going for 15, 20 minutes. But that's healthy. That's a good thing. You need to do that every now and then.

SPEAKER_02 37:29

Yeah. That's what I was gonna say. I think there's a lot of people that like their don't mind like medium-ish commutes because it's like decompression time before you get home and stuff. Um yeah, so it's it's interesting. I think it's um like you were saying, you kind of get annoyed and you walk into the house and like you're self-aware-ish about it, and so that everything else annoys you. I've listened, or I've listened to like some Brene Brown stuff, and she has I mean, we don't practice this, but I've talked to my wife about it. Um she's brought up like you know, relationships aren't 50-50 realistically ever. Like some some days it's 70-30, the next day it can flip the 70-30 with the other person. It can be a hundred-zero some days. Like it's all that amoeba like push and pull of a relationship. And she said, like, a good um thing, I don't know, whatever to do is like whenever you walk in the house after work, they just like yell out what percent they're at. You give your battery level as soon as you're gonna get it. Yeah, like your bat like, yeah. So if you're having a bad day, so if you had a tough day, maybe it's not even bad, but you're just drained, and you walk in and you're just like, I got 20%. And hopefully your spouse in that situation is like, yeah, I got you. I got 80% today. So like I need to step up. And and it's like a communication tool because then everybody's on the same page about what type of day you had. That is awesome. Now, hopefully, you can't walk in every day and say you're at 20. Because if you did it's becoming a problem, it's becoming a problem, and you should probably reassess like things that you're doing during the day or your career or whatever, right?

SPEAKER_03 39:30

Because you're on the verge of burnout. I mean you're at some point you're gonna you're gonna hit a wall. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

I think back to your point though, about like finding time to recharge and like disconnect. I find myself in those similar situations where like I'm realizing that this just isn't going well, like stuff is being dropped, maybe I have like mental fog, maybe my like patience has just run thin and I'm like yelling or getting upset for no reason. I mean, really, I'm just like a little child at heart. Um I've found the best thing for me is like making sure that I wake up early, making sure that I get like physical exercise in, taking time to like just enjoy coffee and like read. Like for me, I try to read the Bible in the morning, um, enjoy the time where nobody else is awake because my wife is not a morning person at all. So I can just sit there and read and think and whatever before people get up. Um, and then on top of that, the best times for me, like the best periods of time, is then like being super intentional about not being on a device or a screen in front of me after like eight o'clock at night. Yeah. Yeah. Which is tough to do, especially if you like stretch yourself then. One physical detox. Yeah. One, you're like, we're all addicted to our phones and it's awful. Short for videos are ruining our minds. I mean, they're great because they bring so many things and they're so addictive and it's so annoying. Um, but like if you can do that, times that I have done that and been able to be intentional about okay, well, after like eight o'clock, I'm not doing any screen time, and like I use that time to talk to my wife or read, like at that point, I don't know, a self-improvement book or a fiction book or whatever, and then like have a routine and actually go to bed on time. One, I'm able to fall asleep faster. Two, I think I get better sleep. Um, and then three, I can just tell like when I'm in that sort of routine and and wellness, I guess I would call it, is I have way more patience. I'm like a lot sharper at thinking and at work. Um, I don't know, I'm sleeping better, my body feels better. Like, even though I'm like putting it through more physical stress by working out, there still feels better.

SPEAKER_03 42:24

So many good books on that, like the morning and how important mornings are or can be. Mm-hmm. A routine in the morning. Like there's a book called The Miracle Morning, but it all starts with, like you're saying, your routine at night and and getting getting to bed, cutting the phone off. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:42

Yeah, those are all it's really hard to wake up early. Like, I've heard um Jocko Willink talk about it. Like, he wakes up super early and he's and people at four o'clock. Yeah, but and people just assume that you're like a morning person, he can do it. And I've heard him say before, like, I'm not a morning person, like it's not easy for me to wake up in the morning, but there's tricks to doing it. Like, if your alarm is your phone, which I would guarantee that the majority of people it are, like it needs to be like for me, I put it on my addresser, it's not next to my bed, or put it in another room completely. So, like when the alarm is going off, you have to physically get out of bed to go turn it off. And recently with the time change, I've been awful because I just grab it and hit snooze and put it on my nightstand and get back in bed.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

I think I think the payoff to that sort of discipline, like making yourself do those hard things that you don't want to do is confidence. And like you the payoff to discipline is freedom in in your life. Like when you start keeping promises to yourself, getting up, doing your workout, doing your reading, your life starts to change. Like you start to feel better, you start to look better, you start to have more confidence. Uh it's just a you just it just becomes more enjoyable your life in general. I totally agree with that. It's so hard to do, but if you could stick to it, discipline will stick to that.

SPEAKER_02 44:13

Times whenever I go like a week without working out or whatever, and then I am standing at the sink in front of the mirror to like get in the shower or whatever. I'm like, you're so bad. You're a slav. You get this negative self-talk, which is not good for me. I know it's not. And then the next week I'll work out every day. Nothing has changed realistically, but it's all like a self-assessment and confidence. And then you're like, oh, you look pretty good this week. But you you literally look the same.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

I've looked the same.

SPEAKER_03 44:44

It's all in your head. Yeah. Oh no. You you start to look better, Seth. Oh, thanks. For sure. Appreciate it. But it is a mind game. It's mental keeping those disciplines. Yeah. Changes your mindset. Yeah. It's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

A uh a friend of of ours sent uh sent me a, and I don't know if he sent it to you guys or not, but he sent me uh like a short video. I don't know if it was a YouTube video, I think it was. It was a and I can't remember who I've seen the video before. Again, didn't resonate with me years ago when I first saw it, but I saw it yesterday when it was sent to me. A Navy SEAL talking about um going through buds and how he's like, I don't look like a Navy SEAL. Like when I walk in a room, people are like, that dude's a Navy SEAL. Like he doesn't he doesn't look like a Navy SEAL. And he was like, that's because what people's perception is of what a Navy SEAL should look like is in it is inaccurate. And I guess he had a really good uh whoever his officer was that took him through buds. Um and and I I find it interesting the more you unpack some of these like real tough personalities or who we think are the real tough guys, you know, the the military, how they unpack the psychological side of it and what makes people successful and what bolsters them up, I think is is interesting. That's it's a lot more there's a lot more of that than you would assume than just like dirt and grit, right? Um but essentially what what he was telling him his outlook needed to be to get through BUDS is I'm gonna give you one hard task and you need to focus on completing that one hard task. Don't focus on what's ahead of it, that one hard task, and you get that done, and that's a success. I'm blessing that too. You got another hard task. And yeah, I'm just gonna ask you to do that over and over again for however long BUDS is, like eight months or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_03 46:31

You make your bed the right way perfectly. And when you're done making your bed, you go eat breakfast. That's your task. And when you're done eating breakfast, you go, you go do this, and it's just one thing at a time.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

And then at the end of the day, you climb in that perfectly made bed, and now you know what all you accomplished that day, right? And that's it. And then when you wake up the next morning, you focus on that one hard task and then the next hard task and the next hard task. I don't know. I just found that it's that discipline that we're talking about is what's been is what those guys have ingrained in themselves. It's not like they're superhuman. They have trained themselves to attack everything they've done that way.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's a I think it's a recipe too to battle against anxiety, just you know, just the overwhelming feeling of everything, all the pressure of life and especially, you know, our work, what it puts on us, focusing on the task at hand one day at a time. Uh it's hard to do. It's hard to do sometimes to not think about it all and for all it all not to be swirling around in your head. But when you get to a point to where you can you can uh put those things in boxes and focus on one at a time, it it makes it uh sustainable. That's true.

SPEAKER_02 47:47

Yeah, yeah. Any closing thoughts? What's uh this is a cool question. What is a habit or routine you wish you'd built ten years ago? Ten years earlier. That's the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 48:08

You know, ten years it's probably the you know, focusing on the the four aspects of my wellness. You know, that's something that I wasn't doing ten years ago, it's probably five years ago. And still today, you know, it's not as consistent as I want it to be. But just the just the concept of okay, ten years ago I'm gonna be intentional about focusing on my well-being. You know, that's not something that I really thought about. It was more just career focused or taking the taking care of the kids and trying to, you know, spend have time or have a good relationship with my wife and and not focusing on what keeps me healthy. If I started thinking about that ten years ago, I think I'd be in a better position today and more healthy for my family and my work today, for sure. Yeah. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 49:00

I think similarly for me, it would be like focusing on that weldness and like being in the mindset of consistency and small gains over time make large gains. Like I think ten years ago I was younger and of a mindset of like well, I can just get gains in chunks, basically. Yeah. And then slack off and then just like gains and that one extra push-up. Yeah, you yeah, like if you think about it that way. If you think about it that way, yeah, sure. But um even going through the mindset of like you may think, yeah, I'm just not gonna do that because it's not gonna be a big gain. Like there's a lot of a lot to be said for consistency and discipline, even if it's less, so it feels like it's not a gain that day, like just consistency pays off over time.

SPEAKER_03 50:04

Like if that makes sense. Yeah. Dropping like unproductive habits or or activities that's taking up taking up time in your life.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

Yeah, it could be it could be that. It could be not taking for granted that like just 10 minutes of conversation with your spouse, like every day, is good. Like and thinking, oh, well, I don't have you know, 10, you know, I don't have 30 minutes right now, so we'll just won't talk. And then we'll get like an hour and a half four days from now. Well, everything just kind of comes into perspective later. Like you should just make it a then you can see that hour and a half four days from now.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

Yeah, that's believing reviewing that budget once a week for 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

Yeah, that's a big one. That's a big one. Yeah. It's more like two and a half hours for me, but I get in trouble. And I will now because she listens to this.

SPEAKER_00 51:05

For me, I think it's just about intentionality. I wish I think ten years ago I was just I wasn't very intentional about what I did or didn't do. I just went about life, right? Uh and I don't mean to make myself sound, you know, completely irresponsible or like I had zero forethought. Uh, but definitely not I didn't bring that element of intentionality to it. Like I know it, and I'm not even saying that that's a good habit of mine now because it's not. I don't I don't do it well enough, but it's something that I'm at least aware of at this point, and I do it. I try to bring that into my day more now than I did 10 years ago. Um, so hopefully that turns into a habit. I continue to get better about it.

SPEAKER_02 51:47

But yeah. For sure. Good stuff. Yep, good stuff. If y'all enjoyed the episode, please rate our show and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and check out Delta on all social media platforms at Delta Companies, and our website at Delta C O S looks like Deltacos.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.