Morning and Evening Bookends: Building Strong Family Rituals for Connection and Growth - LIFE Network: RAW Podcast #4

**Ben Greenfield** (0:00)
Welcome to a special RAW episode. What does RAW mean? Well, within the LIFE Network at joinlifenetwork.com, I pop on every once in a while and just release solo-sode conversations with me, myself and I. Today is one of those RAW episodes. This is gonna be at joinlifenetwork.com if you wanna check it out.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:27)
Welcome to the, let's start that over. We're here to talk about awkward, edgy, controversial content. Nothing is off-limits. You're gonna learn a lot. Welcome to the RAW podcast.

**Ben Greenfield** (0:41)
Hey, hey, let's see. I am recording. Just walking out my front door here of my home, and here's a new little, new microphone for today's RAW podcast, episode four, if I'm not mistaken. So hopefully my fancy new recorder gives you even better quality audio while I meander around the Greenfield compound here in Spokane and talk with you. You know, these RAW episodes have been fantastic. You guys have been giving great feedback, guys and girls. And you know, something that I've been asked repeatedly, that I haven't really talked, I guess, in detail about, but that's been on my mind a lot lately, because it's such a huge part of my life, by the way, Sal, say hello to our rooster. It's not 4 a.m., it's what, like 4:30 p.m. and the rooster's still going off. Never stops. But something that I get asked about a lot are, this whole idea of our family bookends, I like to call them the bookends, how we bookend our family habits and our family day. Now, this is important, whether you have a family, you plan on having a family, you know families who you might want to share this with, because we actually do have really solid, meaningful family connections every day. And a lot of people, you know, they, I don't want to jinx myself here, but they meet my sons, and they say that my sons seem like well-balanced teenage boys. You know, they're not into drugs and porn and looting with girls and alcohol and, you know, disappearing out in the town. They're, you know, they're hardworking, industrious, productive, upright, ethical young men. And I think that a big, big part of that, whether you're raising a girl or a boy, comes down to some key habits. Now, on my main Ben Greenfield LIFE Podcast, I've interviewed folks like Rich Christensen of the Legato Family Foundation, who our family worked with. And I detail that work also in my book Boundless Parenting to develop the Greenfield Family Constitution, the Greenfield Family Values, the Greenfield Family Mission Statement, the Greenfield Crest, the Greenfield Logo, which is proudly displayed on the flags that hang outside our front door, on the family pickleball paddles, and the family throw pillows, and the family t-shirts, and hoodies, and hats, and even the family pepper grinder, and cup coasters. I think that all of these elements, when it comes to family legacy, are so important to pass on generational meaning, generational wealth. If you look at the Greenfield Family Playbook, it has everything from the contact details for all the people who run our insurance, our financial management, all the way down to me and my wife and my son's memorial service plans, our end of life wishes, our family colors, our family spirit animals, what we do on Thanksgiving, what we do on Christmas, what we do on Easter, what we do on a day-to-day basis. It's all spelled out in there. But I specifically want to hone in for you today on the day-to-day, specifically the so-called bookends of the day. Probably one of the most meaningful things for me as a father, as a husband, as a human being. This is something that really gets me out of bed in the morning, and despite me loving my job as a podcaster and speaker and author and what have you, my job is wonderful. I love it. I love to be able to help people and educate just like I'm doing right now. But it's really the beginning of the day and the end of the day with the family, that's one of the most cherished and special parts of my day. And I think that just like with a workout or meditation or prayer or journaling, or a cold bath or anything else, you have to schedule this type of stuff in. It doesn't just happen, the type of stuff that I'm about to talk to you about. So here's how it breaks down. I know, I have it on my calendar, that every morning at 7 a.m., and yes, sometimes it's 6.55, sometimes it's 7.05, we're just going to go with 7 a.m. because that's about approximately when it happens and that's when it's on my schedule. I am in charge of gathering my entire family in the living room. Occasionally, if it's nice outside, it's the back porch or the patio or the backyard. But my job as the leader of the home is to gather the entire family and kind of like the quarterback of the football team, get everybody together for the daily huddle. Now in my book Boundless Parenting, I interview one couple, Patrick and Lori Gentempo, who first turned me on to this idea about probably eight years ago. So I've been doing this with my sons and my wife since my sons were about eight. But they literally spoke with their school superintendent and requested that their children be able to skip the first hour of school. And the children said, stayed home for the first hour of school. The family played music, danced, burnt incense, made breakfast together, and just hung out together as a family for that first hour of the day. Now, my kids are home school. I don't need to pull them out of school for the routine that I'm about to describe to you. And it's not really a full hour just hanging out and dancing together as a family, even though dancing is sometimes involved. But basically, for that 7 a.m. meeting, we all gather, we sit down on, again, living room floor, backyard, patio, you name it. And the very first thing I do is I check in on everybody. Hey, how are you doing? How did you sleep? How are you feeling? How are you feeling about the day? What are you excited about today? What's happening today? And then people begin to share, hey, my wife will say, hey, I have tennis practice at 11, and I am going to go pick up Alpha Alpha for the Goat, home around 2, and my sons say, hey, Dad, we have Jiu Jitsu at 11 today, we have tennis at 2, and we have a big meeting for our card game company for whatever. And so we're all kind of matching up our schedule, talking about the day, and yes, we all also use Google Calendar. So every family member does put what their activities for the day are on Google Calendar. So you can add a glance if you really wanted to go in and see what everybody's up to in general. But it's nice to just sit at the beginning of the day and talk about what's going on with everybody's day. It's important for two reasons. It helps you all just meet together as a family, even if you're like ships passing in the night the rest of the day. It's great to be able to gather like that at the beginning of the day. And secondarily, it helps to understand that, oh, hey, my sons and I don't have any major appointments or meetings until 9:30 a.m. So our workout today that we do together is going to be at 8:30 a.m. Or we all are super busy this morning and there's no way we're going to be able to do our workout together. Because I'm going to be working out at 8.3 and my sons are going to be working out at 3 So as a part of the huddle, we give them the same page about what the workout of the day is going to be. Because my sons and I all do the same workout plan together. I'm kind of in charge of the physical fitness programming in our house. No doubt, I'm probably the person most equipped to do that for our house. Because I'm a personal trader, just a glorified personal trader. So anyways, we match up schedules, talk a little bit about what's going on that day. And as a part of that discussion, there's even a discussion about the family dinner, which I'll get to later on. But it's literally, hey, what got pulled out of the freezer last night? Because we'll usually begin to plan one night's dinner the night before. Who's making a salad? Who's trying our new recipe from a cookbook we got? Who's doing the meat? Who's making the potato salad, or the bread, or the carrot fries, or what have you? Shout outs to my cookbook, Boundless Kitchen and Boundless Cookbook. Most of our family recipes are in those cookbooks. But basically, we really get on the same page about dinner because it's such another formative part of the second bookend of our day. So everybody knows in the morning what it is that they're expected to have ready for family dinner at 7 p.m. 12 hours later when family dinner gathering occurs. And sometimes there's other little discussions. Hey, whatever, dad didn't sleep too well last night. I'm going to take a nap this afternoon. Heads up. Or mom's not feeling well. Let's pitch in and help her today. Just little things like that. So then we move into a devotional. We always for years and years had some kind of a reading that we do together as a family. Sometimes it changes like leading up to Christmas. It's an advent reading. Right now, while I'm talking to you, it is a book about work by a productivity expert and a Christian author named Jordan Rainer. It's called Word Before Work. It's about how to take pride in the work that you do and devote it to God and help other people. Just a really good perspective on productivity and work from a theological standpoint. So we do that reading. Usually, I do the reading. I love to read aloud for years and years. I don't do it so much now that my sons are 16, but read the family stories every night before bed. But I do the reading, the devotional reading. I'm traveling, one of my sons or my wife does it with the family at home. And so I do the reading. And then when I finish the reading, I will usually talk to my family for about two to three minutes about kind of a major takeaway, or I'll ask them a question about something that I read that I thought was important, that I want to hear their perspective on. So it's a little bit of a, you know, brief discussion after the reading. Nothing's too long, cause let's face it, you know, we don't have a six hour morning routine, but, you know, just that quick discussion after the reading. And the reading is usually five to 10 minutes maximum. So, you know, within about 15 minutes, we have matched up schedules, we've planned out the day, we've done a devotional, uplifting spiritual reading together. And then we all pray. I lead the prayer, and it's just a wonderful thing to do together as a family, to engage in something spiritual and sacred together. You know, the very last thing I do in bed before I fall asleep is my wife and I pray together. You know, after we do our pillow talking and our heads hit the pillow and we're falling asleep, and our lovers embrace, we pray together. And our whole family prays together in the morning. My prayers are very simple. For those of you who don't know how to pray or want a structure for prayer, it's very, very simple. I follow the AXE acronym, ACTS. Adoration, meaning first, I will say something like, you know, dear God, you're so awesome, you know, wonderful. Thank you for allowing us to just come before you and for creating the universe. And you just basically act like you're walking into a king's throne room. And then confession, you know, please forgive us for this or that, or, you know, something that we fell short on, or, you know, forgive me for being selfish, or, you know, forgive, you know, me for not trusting you and getting anxious yesterday in work. And typically after the C part, the confession, I'll stop for about 20 or 30 seconds to let other members of the family, and as well as myself, just silently, you know, confess whatever it is that we want to lay out on our hearts before God, that we would like to be forgiven for, because that's one of the, of course, the most beautiful parts of, in my opinion, my religion, Christianity, is that, you know, you're not expected to be perfect, but you can ask for forgiveness for what you've done, and come away completely clean and with the weight off your back and not have to carry shame and guilt. And that's, you know, in my opinion, just the most beautiful part about Christianity.