MB #015: Dinosaurs, Confusion, & Healthy Fathers

Read time: ~5.5 Minutes

Hey friends,

Let's chat about dinosaurs...in a minute.

Being a healthy father is when a father is healthy spiritually, physically, mentally, relationally, operationally, and more.

Part of spiritual and relational health is to relate properly to God, know Him, be known by Him, and then relate properly to your family as the head of the home.

A father who is spiritually and relationally healthy with being a father who is leading the home spiritually. And that is hard. It's super confusing at times. It requires a lot of additional thinking/prayer/reading, etc.

That said, according to scripture it's not really optional. But if we lean into the broken, fleshly image of Adam in us rather than being transformed into and living as the image of Christ, we will become passive and abdicate our responsibility in this area.

Along the lines of this topic, in the last few weeks, the Cirullo family has been learning about dinosaurs. Something my kids have been really interested in which means my wife and I need to be able to talk about them with confidence. Inevitably when you talk about dinosaurs, it brings up creation vs. evolution, old earth vs. new earth and so much more. All that to be said, we need to know how to address these things.

Here's one example of the additional reading/learning/thinking fathers should do. Recently my wife Justine and I spent our evening watching a documentary called 'Is Genesis History?'. It answered so many questions for me. It provided me the confidence needed around this topic to teach my children sound truth from scripture and explain what's happening in science. I highly suggest giving it a watch.

Then our family ventured down to a Texas State Park called Dinosaur Valley where you can find all sorts of dino footprints embedded into limestone. It's amazing, really!

The goal of this trip was to fill the relational cup of our boys and share in something that they love, teach them Biblical truth, revel in God's creation, and simply get outside in the sun, hike, and enjoy moving our bodies.

As a dad, we get to do this. It's a privilege that I all too often overlook and undervalue. But more and more, I'm increasingly treasuring the ability and responsibility to learn, wrestle with topics, and then teach them to my family.

I hope this serves as an encouragement for you to do more of the same.

_______________________

Bonus Fatherhood Health Tips:

1. Time-saving tip: Otter.ai.

Otter is an AI-powered speech-to-text translation app. It gives me transcripts with searchable text. Perhaps most valuable is the tool’s ability to identify unique voices and organize text by who's speaking. I've been using it for meeting notes for a few months both in SaaS sales (I wrap up that season of life in 2 weeks!), in my coaching business, and more. It has served to be super valuable. Otter.ai can also be used to dictate notes, write ideas you have, etc super fast. The hidden benefit of Otter is that I can use the iPhone app in a physical setting to record a conversation I want to reference back to, record sermon audio on a Sunday, or even transcribe an existing audio or video file like a podcast so I can search it for something I want to reference back to.

2. Physical and mental tip: Bulletproof Coffee

I've been drinking bulletproof coffee off and for over a decade - before founder Dave Asprey's influence and before his company Bulletproof was purchased from him. I say this not as an "I did it before it was a cool thing" but to highlight that I started doing it because it has sound scientific evidence behind it and that I've continued for over a decade because of the benefits it provides. I’ve found bulletproof boosts

my cognitive function significantly by fueling my brain with the essential fats it requires to operate at its best. My recipe consists of 1 TBSP of MCT oil, 1 TBSP of unsalted butter from grass-fed cows, and 12-16 ounces of black coffee. Nothing else. For the MCT Oil, I use BulletProof brand’s Brain Octane, and for butter, I use Kerrygold unsalted. Blend it in a blender and instead of an oily mess you have a frothy latte-like texture. You'll also find yourself burning more fat for fuel if you do this in a fasted state, making this both a physical and mental tip.

3. Follow-through tip: Default to Opt-Out Rhythms

Research shows if you have a schedule built around things you "will do" that you must then intentionally "opt-out of" in order to not do them, you're much more likely to follow through. One example of how psychology works with this is shown in countries that have "opt-out" organ donor programs. The countries that automatically opt you in and require you to intentionally opt out if you don't want to donate your organs have about a 90% contribution ratio. Compare that with countries that default to requiring each person to intentionally "opt-in" which only have about 15% of people who contribute. If you write things into your calendar and plan to do them, especially if they're relational (include other people) you're much more likely to follow through. I have clients that do this with their exercise. They put it on the calendar each week and add my email to the calendar event.

Here's to dinosaurs and leading well!

-Chris