Stop Hating Your Life

Watch the parents at any kid's soccer game this weekend. Half are on their phones, another quarter are gossiping about work, the rest are staring dead-eyed at the field, mentally calculating if they have time to hit Costco right after this. And the worst part is the kids see it all, not that you're distracted. They see that you're dead inside, that you are enduring the game, not living. That sitting in those bleachers at 7am, it's killing you slowly. See, when dad checks the email during the game, the kid sees it, and the kid knows that dad would rather be anywhere else. When mom is fake smiling through another tournament that she'd rather not be at, the kid understands that love means pretending. And when parents stand there dead inside, pretending to care, the kid learns that this is what adulthood looks like. See, this is a truth that should terrify every parent. Children are emotional mirrors. They don't feel what you say. They feel what you feel. And if you feel that when you sit in those bleachers at 7am, you are dead inside, your kid knows it. Their body knows it. And they're learning that love and life means dying slowly in public while pretending everyone else is fine. And this isn't good enough. This isn't acceptable. Being an adult does not mean that you have to hate your life. But if you don't work on yourself, this is what you're showing your kids. We have convinced ourselves that to be a good parent, we have to sacrifice everything, right? That love is measured in hours, log debt practices or dollars spent on equipment or weekends, surrender, deterrentments, or any of the other million different hobbies and past times and extracurriculars that kids can do. So we sit in these stands and we're dead inside scrolling on our phones, gossiping with the other dead parents, pretending that this is what love looks like. But this is what I wish more parents understood. Your kids don't need more activities. They don't need more gifts. And honestly, they're probably getting lots of love. What they need is to see you living a life worth living, really living a life worth hopping. Because right now, if you are just going through the motions, you are just showing them some cautionary tale that growing up sucks and it doesn't have to. You want to understand what you're actually showing your kids do this exercise. It's going to ruin your week, but it's important. But the next seven days, track your hours and two columns, alive hours and dead hours. So alive hours would be hours where you feel genuinely energized and present and chosen and just living and doing things that you enjoy. And then dead hours would be hours when you are just enduring and scrolling and just counting the minutes until it's over. And I want you to include everything. So the commute to practice dead, the tournament week and dead, the networking dinner, dead, the gym class you actually love. That's an alive hour, the coffee with your friend alive, the book before bed alive. Okay. What you're going to discover is that you are modeling 70 plus dead hours per week, 70 plus hours that you hate whatever it is you're doing. You're modeling that to your kids and that is 70 hours of teaching your kids that adulthood is a prison sentence. 70 hours of showing them that love means endurance and 70 hours of programming them to expect misery. Your kids are watching and they're not learning what you think they're learning. They're not learning dedication. They're learning that adults are zombies. They're not learning commitment. They're learning that marriage means two people always fight and never see each other. They're not learning love. They're learning that having kids means your life ends. But newsflash, it doesn't. Here's a different way to live life. Here's a different way to model how to be an adult. My dad coached my hockey team for 10 years, but here's what made him different. He didn't do it for me. He did it because he loved hockey every practice. He'd be on the ice an hour early, working on his own game, running drills with his beer league buddies, still trying to perfect his slap shot at 45. And when practice started, he wasn't teaching as hockey. He was sharing his religion. The way he talked about the conditioning work, the joy when someone finally got a playwright. The way he demonstrated drill and you could see that he forgot he was coaching. He was just lost in the pure pleasure of the moment. And other kids' parents, they sat in the stands. They were miserable. They were counting the minutes. My dad was on the ice alive. So his alive hours that week, probably 15 just from hockey, plus his work that he loved, plus his Thursday poker game that he loved, plus his Saturday morning pond hockey before my game. So he was modeling 40 plus alive hours per week, doing things that he actually enjoyed. And that's what I absorbed. Not that adults sacrifice, but that adults play, adults live. See, I learned that adults are allowed to want things. Parents are allowed to choose themselves. And sometimes showing your kid what it looks like to honor your own dreams is the best coaching you can do. My mom was the same with the outdoors. She'd wake up at 5 a.m. on Saturdays and just love to hike and love to snowshoe and love to do anything outside. And she did it on Wednesdays and Sundays and random Tuesday evenings and the mountains, the forests, the trails. Those were her life. She'd take a snowshoeing and spend half the time looking at birds or identifying these animal tracks. And I guess a little bit was for education, but not really for education because she genuinely needed to know what made those prints. She loved it. She'd stop mid hike. She'd pull out her plant identification book, totally absorbed, basically forgetting that we were even there. So her alive hours were off the charts. Every sunrise hike, every camping trip, every moment that she spent plotting the next adventure. And we absorbed that energy. Me and my brother, we loved the outdoors growing up. But more than loving the outdoors, I loved that she was doing what she loved to do. See, kids whose parents have lives are more secure, not less. They don't wonder if they're enough to make you happy because they know that the parents happiness comes from all these different sources. They don't carry the burden of being your entire world. They're just a part of a rich life. And they don't feel guilty about growing up and leaving because they know you're the parent. You've had a great life. You love what you love. You're going to be fine. And they get something better than a parent who never misses a game. They get a parent who shows them what a life worth living looks like. So this is a lesson to you, to the parent, to the parent who's just existing through life because, hey, it's a job I have. It's, you know, I have to do this. I have to do that. I'm not saying blow up your life overnight and quit your job and never go to another tournament. I'm just saying it's start moving towards a direction of enjoying your life, enjoying your hobbies, enjoying your work, enjoying your spouse. Because what your kids actually need to see is you excited about Tuesday because your thing is Tuesday. You and your spouse kissing in the kitchen, not performing happiness, but actually being happy. Your kids need to see you say no to something without explaining yourself to death. They have to see you working on something hard because you want to get better at it. They have to see you protecting time that's just yours like it's sacred because it is. They have to see you having friends who knew you before you were someone's parent. They have to see you reading a book in the middle of the day to dancing to music that they think is ancient. Do you starting something new at 40 and 50 and 60? Do you choosing a live over dead even when it's inconvenient and to you modeling that life? It is worth living. This isn't about being a different parent. It's about choosing to be alive. So I want you to start small. This week add one thing that makes you feel electric that lights you up. Not for your kids, not for your spouse, do it for you. It could be a morning run. It could be lunch with that friend who makes you laugh until you can't breathe. It could be a hobby you haven't touched in years. It could be a class that you keep saying you'll take and then look at your dead hours. Look at the things that you really hate doing and pick one that is truly optional. The committee you hate, the book club that you hate, the standing coffee with somebody who drains you, the favor you do every week that no one actually needs. Cancel it this week right now, not after the holidays right now. The goal is into abandon your responsibilities. It's to stop treating every obligation like a life sentence. Look at everything through this lens and this become alive. Can I bring something I love into this? Can I shift how I do this? If not, if it's truly irredeemably dead, can I kill it? And slowly and deliberately, you're going to start choosing a live over dead whenever you have the choice and your kids will notice. They won't notice what you're skipping. They'll notice what you're choosing. They'll see you protecting your morning workout like it matters. They'll hear you laugh on the phone with your friends. They'll watch you say no to things without apologizing for just existing. They'll catch you doing something badly and loving it anyways. They'll see you building a life that doesn't require escape. And they'll learn that adults get to want things. That marriage can include two people with their own interests who choose to come together. That having kids doesn't mean your life ends. It means showing them what a life looks like. A good life looks like. Remember, your kids are keeping score, not of your attendance at their tournaments, but of your aliveness. And for most of us right now, we're losing. Your kid won't remember the activities. They will remember that you look trapped, that you're living a life that looks like hell. That you are showing them that being an adult means your life is over. And it doesn't have to be. Choose things that light you up. Choose things that make you feel alive. Choose things that show your kids what living a true, good, fulfilled life actually is.