Leveraging emotion

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Today on Dad Strength

• White lines, rumble strips, and ditches

• Box Breathing Plus

• Leveraging emotion

• A song a quote, a dad joke

White lines, rumble strips, and ditches

In White Lightning, Burt Reynolds plays a former bootlegger out for justice. He’s outfitted with a 1971 Ford Custom 500, a car with a powerful engine and notoriously weak cornering. A parting instruction from his handler as he peels off: “Keep it between the ditches.” It’s good advice. Let’s talk about what it means for your health.

Long before a fella finds himself wheel side-up in a ditch, he’ll have a host of feedback systems to work through, beginning with the painted lines on the road. The lines offer information but not structure. Your white lines are early signals, like blood-work or sleep duration. They are primarily made up of daily habits and routines. An indulgent meal or less-than-perfect night’s sleep shouldn’t mess with you much. This is double-edged, however, because you may drift for a while before realizing that you need to turn the wheel a bit.

Deviate beyond the lines and you might feel a rumble-strip vibrating your nethers. That’s something that is much harder to ignore. You’re not in trouble yet but the signals are strong—and some rapid course-correction is required to avert disaster. Here, you might identify a need for more exercise or better sleep. You might find markers of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance, or atherosclerosis. You might need medical intervention. This is where you know you need to get back on the road—but you still have the ability to do so. It will take more work from here than before but it’s doable.

So far, the fixes have been pretty straight-forward. However, once you’re beyond the rumble strip, you may find yourself losing control… Veering into heart attack country—or somewhere equally dire. And once you’re in the ditch? Well, I hope your auto association fees are paid up (and your claim won’t be denied due to previous towing).

The earlier you course-correct, the easier it is. And that’s the moral of this story.

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Box Breathing Plus

You’re probably familiar with box breathing, where you hold the top of the inhale and bottom of the exhale for the same amount of time as your inhale and exhale.

Try this: pick an easy movement, like arm circles or bodyweight squats. For each rep, perform one part of the breathing cycle. You will notice that it is much more challenging and requires much more focus. Good. That’s a feature, not a bug.

You may find that you need to tune your timing. That might be by performing multiple reps per phase—or perhaps by performing a half-rep for each phase. Choose whatever cadence allows you to maintain this cycle for at least a minute or two.

Leveraging emotion

On our most recent Dad Strength call, we got onto the topic of harnessing emotions like anger. One dad said, "Traditionally, my response to rage would be productivity.” That tracks. It feels like a very manly response. Take those negative emotions and use them to fuel your work. Anger for productivity. Sadness for art. Tears for Fears. The point is that this can be healthy and adaptive.

I have a question about the other side of this equation. It’s not whether you should do the above. It’s about what you do with positive emotions. Do you harness them? Do you dedicate the same time and importance to them? How often do you think about designing a life by feel? I don’t necessarily mean happiness, which can be tough to hold in your hands. But what about more complex emotions, like meaning, and the development of mastery, and what it feels like to really contribute to the wellbeing of others?

If every brick of a house is placed as a response—as a reaction—to the negative half of the emotional spectrum, I wonder what the shape of the house will be.


This stuff can be tricky. That’s why we talk it out every Tuesday.
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What I’m reading watching/listening to:

Generation Flex: a Men’s Health-produced documentary about young men and exercise culture

Elf on a Shelf and Economic Theory

Holiday Trek: The Motion Pictures (Captain Please Come Home)

A Quote

A Dad joke

What’s brown and stinky and sits in the toilet of the Starship Enterprise?

The captain’s log

Take care of yourself, man!

Geoff Girvitz
Father, founder, physical culturist
dadstrength.com

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