Posts Tagged ‘Playing’

Traditions!

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

Today is the day to start a new tra­di­tion. There is a direct cor­re­la­tion between the fun, the qual­ity, the depth of rela­tion­ships in a close fam­ily and the unique­ness and fre­quency of that family’s traditions.

When fam­i­lies inten­tion­ally develop “their ways” of being a fam­ily early on, they tend to expe­ri­ence greater lev­els of fam­ily health and bond­ing. I have observed this over the years with count­less stand-out fam­i­lies and have adopted much of what I have learned from oth­ers over the years. I am in no way an expert, just a guy who is incred­i­bly pas­sion­ate about serv­ing and lead­ing a solid and lov­ing family.

10 Tra­di­tions to Cre­ate More Fam­ily Connection

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Posted in Life Planning | 9 Comments »

Sometimes You Just Have To

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

I just returned from a won­der­ful and unplanned road trip from my home here in Lake Oswego down to San Onofre, CA. One of my high school friends, Dave Makela (who now works for Min­istry Coach­ing Inter­na­tional) invited me to join his fam­ily on this camp­ing and surf­ing trip. They have held this beach blan­ket bingo type of reunion for the past 5 years, and it is very well attended. Dave also invited a few other surf­ing friends from our youth.

When Dave told me about it a few months ago, I did not think I would be able to make the trip. I have been away so much this year… I am just too busy…There is too much going on right now…It’s too long of a drive… These thoughts kept me from com­mit­ting, until about two weeks ago. Then the bug bit.

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25% Fun

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Last week I sent a few Tweets from Col­orado Springs where I was facil­i­tat­ing an exec­u­tive retreat with a won­der­ful group of clients. If you hap­pen to fol­low me on Twit­ter, you may have seen this pic­ture of me with a sweet Rain­bow Trout in my hands. The cap­tion read, “Fun exec­u­tive retreat today!”

I got some inter­est­ing com­ments after shar­ing that pic­ture. I heard every­thing from “You charge for this?” to “What a boondoggle!”

Today, I want to share my obser­va­tions about excel­lent lead­er­ship, mag­netic cul­tures, respectable results, and fun.

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Posted in Leadership | 4 Comments »

Trip or Vacation?

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

As I write this, I am in the home stretch of our return trip from South Africa. 26 hours down, just 2 to go…

My fam­ily and I spent the last three weeks sight­see­ing, learn­ing, sun­ning and surf­ing our way through this amaz­ing yet chal­lenged coun­try. We were so very for­tu­nate to join my sis­ter, her South African hus­band and their three won­der­ful kids on this trip. My brother-in-law Mark was a fan­tas­tic tour guide.

Our sched­ule was action packed. We saw pen­guins on the beach, vis­ited the Apartheid Museum, hiked through beau­ti­ful moun­tains, went zip lin­ing over rivers, and rode Ostriches. We went on game dri­ves where we saw lions, rhi­nos, ele­phants, and wilde­beests. We learned a lot about their bro­ken gov­ern­men­tal system.

And yes, I finally surfed my dream wave at Jeffrey’s Bay.

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Posted in Self-Development | 1 Comment »

Playing Like a Kid, Long After Recess

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

photoFor those of you who know me, you know I like to play!  My favorite hob­bies have always included some kind of a board under my feet.  Surf­ing is my great­est pas­sion, but I also enjoy snow­board­ing and carve and long board­ing through the streets of Lake Oswego.  I get all kinds of funny looks and terse com­ments from neigh­bors, who must think I am some kind of teenage trou­ble­maker as I skate by with my kids and their friends.

I’m not alone in this, either.  Many times at the beach, on the moun­tain, or in the streets you will find my col­leagues and their kids right there with me.  Coach Barry Engel­man has recently taken up snow­board­ing with his boys, and he also surfs with me from time to time.  Coach Steve Scan­lon can often be found skat­ing in local park­ing garages at 11pm, or at Mount Hood board­ing with his kids.

Any­how, our imma­ture hob­bies are not the point of this post.

So what is my point?  That I hang out with boys in men’s bod­ies?  Maybe so, but I believe that there is some life-giving magic to be found in play­ing out­doors at any age.

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