Parenting

Fructifying Fortitude

Watching toddlers learn to walk is adorable. This instinctive right of passage reminds us that fresh motivation may be needed when progress stalls.

At first, early moves feel natural, and then crawling did the job. As children see what’s possible, expectations rise and success begins to feel inevitable. If progress stalls, parental motivation can lose its luster and concern sets in. But what if the breakthrough simply awaits fresh encouragement?

As new motivation is introduced, even when it’s unplanned, progress proceeds almost all at once. We scramble for the camera and those precious first steps are beloved by all. More practice is still needed, but this achievement renews momentum that keeps little ones moving upright and forward.

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For parents smiling as they read this, know that Pure Wonder, Wayfinders, Winding Whys, Training Wheels, Playforce, Santa is Real, and many timeless episodes from You Don’t Need This Podcast are energizing extensions on this topic!

As we build into new quests, our dance with innovation may also require shifting gears. Next time an engine stalls, step back to consider an alternate angle, talk to peers with different perspectives, take time away, or show up unannounced to adapt and get back on track.

Brewed From Within
#25 📖 Entrepreneurship

By Ben McDougal, ago

Waiting Rooms

The waiting room is that season where you’re not where you used to be, but you’re not yet where you want to go. It’s the in-between zone. The pause before your name gets called. The place where you’re preparing for something, whether or not you think you know what’s next.

If we move our egos aside just long enough, we can see the beauty here. The waiting room is where character develops. Where preparation happens. Where we create, reflect, and release what no longer serves us.

But we want to bypass it. We grow impatient and intolerant. We think our will, our force, can push us through faster. It doesn’t work like that. You’ll only exhaust and burn yourself out. It’s easy to watch others get called before you. The mental chatter starts: When will it be my turn? Will I ever be ready? Why them and not me?

The problem with watching others is that you have no idea where they are on their journeys. You don’t know where they’ve been, where they’re being called to next, or what’s waiting for them when they get there. Their timeline is not a reflection of yours. It never was.

Everyone gets called at exactly the right time for their highest good. Not a moment sooner. Not because the universe is withholding opportunity, but because love doesn’t set us up to fail. The waiting room keeps us from walking through a doorway we’re not ready for. It’s protective. We wouldn’t hand a nine-year-old the car keys just because they felt ready to drive. Your higher wisdom knows better. That child stays in the waiting room until they’re equipped for what’s next.

EXTRA SHOT

Watch Vanessa narrate this riff on-stage!

No one wants to be in the waiting room, but everyone must pass through it. These pause points aren’t punishments; they’re where we catch our breath, integrate what we’ve learned, and prepare for what’s coming. To often, we take this wait personally. Like it’s evidence we’re not good enough, not ready enough, not deserving enough. We get frustrated. Resentful. Sometimes we even give up.

But your job is to sit in the tension of not being where you want to be without making it mean something’s wrong with you. When we are able to loosen the grip, the pause can be strategic. You can recalibrate here. Gain mastery here. Rest here. The waiting room is the bulb that leads to the flower, fertilized by your patience and who you choose to become while you wait.

EXTRA SHOT

This contribution was written by Vanessa McNeal. Vanessa is a social architect and keynote speaker who helps us transform the nervous system to lead through love.

Life is full of waiting rooms. When the time comes, we move forward and eventually we find ourselves in another waiting room. We create suffering if we believe we’ll arrive one day at a place with no more growth, no more waiting.

That’s not how it works. What would we learn by skipping the journey to reach the destination? How would we develop patience, self-trust, or resilience?

Right now is transitory, but micro-moments add up and coalesce into the story of our comprehensive progress. Waiting rooms are where we become the person who’s ready and open to what comes next.

Brewed From Within
#97 📖 Life & Happiness

By Ben McDougal, ago

Wayfinders

Startups that pay in love are a blank
canvas that comes to life through us.

By nature, parents want to provide the means for children to go beyond their potential. Family requires immeasurable resources, but the love from our kids unlocks more hours in the day. The added productivity comes from seeing the best of ourselves in someone we care so much about. Purpose is renewed, and the heart we put into our creative work can make our presence as parents even more interesting.

Summon Stories

Children grow up fast, so we stay in the moment. Everyone tells us to cherish the simple joys of life, but it may be worth getting a little extra creative. One way to enhance your family’s ability to relive memorable moments is to use multimedia marketing skills to summon family stories.

Every moment is special. As creation becomes an acquired behavior, we can stitch together memories for our children to revisit interactively, any time, with or without us. We all have an endless collection of photos and videos on our smartphones, but scrolling around on a digital device does not translate into something a group can enjoy together. It’s easy for anything to get lost in so much noise. Spoken storytelling is always appreciated, but why not paint our most treasured stories with a few added brushes?

You can create quiet relics like photo slideshows, something that sits on the shelf, a mix of audio recordings, art on the wall, or a cinematic feature film that highlights your adventures. You’re the creator with endless ways to create.

We all do a form of this because family is our favorite, but the time required is real. A rigid cadence is not required, since any day is a good day to ship this type of art. In the early days of photos and video, recording family time was reserved for birthdays and Christmas; now, every day is a holiday. You don’t need to rush but keep producing new surprises. Everyone will love the end result, and as more come together, the growing playlist becomes a sequence of stories that follow kids growing up. With our constant collection of content, a good story is always ready to tell, but at a minimum, why not share an annual gift with your kids, partner, and other loved ones?

Along the way, attentive organization will make a growing collection of relics easier to craft. This takes an ongoing commitment, but file management is easy and helps bring life to life with shared memories.

Your future self will then thank you for organizing and producing such heartfelt content. Share this beauty in public if you want, but that can alter the art if it becomes performative. Do this for yourself and your favorite people first. Organize the massive library offline, then, if you want to play with the transitory channels of social media, that’s a personal choice.

Tracking neural activity patterns and electronic brain scans may retrieve memories without physically capturing content in the future. For now, it’s up to us to coordinate personal storytelling. Fortunately, compiling your own heritage is amusing and assembles positive emotions along the way.

This special interest becomes second nature as we enhance our own real skills to commemorate those we love. Technology can make editing content productive, but this is not your average task. This is the type of sincere storytelling you enjoy spending time with.

As kids grow up, these projects will have a low view counts but will always be your favorite. Looking ahead, imagine being a child right now, then receiving such a thoughtful collection from your parents someday!

You’ve Got Mail

Consider setting up an email for your little one. This inbox can be used as a communication channel to write to your child as they grow up. Whether you start writing before they are born or later in their life, imagine the gift this inbox will be in the future! This email address can be shared and used for online accounts, but at a minimum, this tailored inbox curates a personalized time machine full of thoughtful updates.

Along with sentimental content, your kids will appreciate an email address that can be used after childhood. First and last name with your preferred email provider should stand the test of time. This is also a good chance to register a URL using their first and last name. Your gift can personalize an email address or support a personal website someday.

Avoid Routine

“Time flies” and “They grow up so fast” are accurate, but avoiding routine may slow down time.

The freedom to be spontaneous is a privilege, and everyone will define such flexibility differently, but a proven path to explore such a reality is entrepreneurship. Boundless hard work, dedication, and resiliency are what this lifestyle takes, but suffering provides a stronger sense of purpose.

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What’s your favorite parenting tip?

As this purpose is layered in later stages of life, experiential wisdom can be channeled into more treasured time doing things that make us happy. While hardship is part of the deal, children make their parents happy. Perhaps a reward for parents who lead by example is the opportunity to share everything with those who matter most.

Brewed From Within
#118 📖 Life & Happiness

By Ben McDougal, ago

Lifelong Learning

Elizabeth Tweedale brings parents and students together by embracing lifelong learning. Since graduating from Loras College, she has (co)authored six books and exited an AI company called GoSpace. This award-winning technologist is now the CEO of Cypher Coders, which is an IRL coding camp for children, as well as, Coco Coders, an online coding school that has taught over 10,000 kids how to code!

It was cool to have this leader in education craft a caffeinated contribution called Playforce and as you’ll hear in this impactful episode, Elizabeth is passionate about family and remains dedicated to transforming how parents think about technology and the future of work. As Elizabeth closes by saying, “do your best, and let them say.”

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By Ben McDougal, ago

Oversubscribed

It’s a go-go world of busy, busy, busy.

With days scheduled from start to finish, what time is left for random acts of conspicuous kindness, a bit of serendipity, or just saying yes to more adventure?

Coordination often requires thoughtful preparation. There is value in staying organized, but over-planning is a trap. The thirst for productivity has made busy feel likened to being successful. How often do we hear pride disguised as disgust when someone complains about the constrictions of their frantic calendar? Yes, prerequisites include hard work, a healthy obsession, and endless sequencing, but unique opportunities emerge when we’re not captive to a calendar.

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Planning is based on fear.
Doing is based on success.

Renting time can be lucrative, but there are ways to efficiently get things done without falling victim to a stacked routine of back-to-back everything.

Meetings led by talking heads, fracturing lunch affairs, and youth sports are all common versions of this trap. Each activity is cool, but when combined, your days become booked and you have something to do every night. To keep fluidity flowing, schedule fewer meetings next week but retain an eagerness to meet anytime. Instead of lunch, sip brews on either side of the day. Along with standard stuff, consider adventurous ways to share time. Audibles include parlaying a first meeting with an event, going for a stroll, and nature is always nice. This breaks routine. Conversations can be more provocative, as a shared encounter adds depth to any relationship. Lastly, appreciate limitless play, but organized sports will not define a child’s future. In fact, it more commonly limits the experiences a family enjoys together. The game resets at puberty, and at a societal level, playing sports as a career is a fantastic dream, but more often an accepted fallacy. Organized sports deliver camaraderie, fitness, teamwork, loyalty, problem-solving, business opportunities, and a competitive rush, but camps provide these benefits with less time and cost required.

Comfort without a plan leaves space for the unexpected. Things will not always work out, but if calendars remain a tool to keep our promises while staying quietly organized, complacency can be replaced with serendipity. If you feel oversubscribed, fly with fewer plans to let the voids of no agenda unravel a freedom to be your best.

Brewed From Within
#120 📖 Life & Happiness

By Ben McDougal, ago