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We come in pieces
Plus: Getting ahead of our toughest conversations
Geoff Girvitz
November 28, 2024
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Today on Dad Strength
A simple tip for happy shoulders and big biceps
You contain multitudes. Or at least a few.
Getting ahead of our toughest conversations
A book, a quote, a dad joke
A simple tip for happy shoulders and big biceps
You know those mini-bands people people use for lateral walks, etc?
Here’s a great way to use them for shoulder health:
Place the mini-band over your wrists.
Grab a pair of dumbbells (a bit lighter than your default weight) and open your shoulders up into a position that feels good
Stretch the band a bit. You don’t have to move it much, you just have to take the slack out of it
Curl the dumbbells palms-up and maintain that lateral tension on the band from top to bottom in each rep, not letting your hands come back toward centre
This should feel great. That’s because it activates the muscles that externally rotate your shoulders and winds up creating space at the shoulder joint.
I don’t have a video of this yet. But I promise to put one up on Instagram soon.
You contain multitudes. Or at least a few.
Internal Family Systems begins with the idea that there are different parts of you—sometimes working in harmony to accomplish a goal and sometimes… not.
Exiles represent psychological trauma—often carried over from childhood. These parts of you are isolated from the others as part of a protective strategy because the feelings may be too tough to deal with. Or, more likely, feel like they’re too tough to deal with.
Firefighters work as protectors. They work to divert attention away from the strong feelings of hurt and shame that Exiles experience. The choices that Firefighters make are not always ideal—especially from a long-term health perspective. From alcohol and drug use to obsessive behaviours and workaholism. However, that doesn’t negate their protective value. That last bit is important. The aspiration is not to eliminate these needs but to understand them. From there, you can evolve your strategies over time.
Managers are more ahead of the game than Firefighters. They evolve more intellectual and less emotionally-reactive strategies. However, this is not to be confused with solving the problem—these are merely more advanced coping strategies. They too need to be acknowledged and understood.
The fascinating thing here is that many of our inner conflicts or contradictory behaviours are important and necessary. They also make sense within their own contexts. So, if these inconsistencies bug you, you have the option of stuffing them back down or evolving them. And guess what? There’s a time and a place for both.
My own biggest takeaway? Once you recognize that there is fighting inside of you, you don’t have to fight against the fight itself.
The first step toward inner peace may be accepting that there are multiple inner pieces.
Three free months of the Dad Strength Community Edition to the first person to hit reply and call out this reference.
Getting ahead of our toughest conversations
On our most recent call, we talked about big, tough conversations with our kids. Death. War. You name it. There are some things that you will feel are best to deal with when your kid brings them up. There are others that you’ll want to get ahead of.
My questions for our guys were about what these things are for them. However, the conversation quickly evolved to simple strategies for encouraging the values and skills necessary to deal with problems in a more universal way. To be kind. To be able to do hard things. To honestly listen to people. To understand how they can best learn something. To accept being wrong with grace. These deep skills will probably serve our kids more than any kind of specific tactical preparation.
There’s an insight that someone shared and I’m still thinking about: that most people are not well taught when it comes to how to apologize. Talk about universal skills!
This stuff can be tricky. That’s why we talk it out every Tuesday as a community.
To check things out visit dadstrength.com/calls
Could you pay $10,000 for a pet emergency?
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Don’t let unexpected vet bills stress you out. Protect your pet and your finances with top-rated pet insurance.
What I’m reading
Lots of research on the accuracy and utility of fitness trackers
"Replica of a Chip", created by Marilou Schultz, 1994. Wool. Photo taken at the National Gallery of Art, 2024.
A Quote
“Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo—which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead.”
A Dad joke
You’ll have to listen to the audio edition for this one.
Take care of yourself, man!
Geoff Girvitz
Father, founder, physical culturist
dadstrength.com