All posts by Damon Stoddard

Honor thy Mother and Father-Part 2

“Honor thy father and thy mother: that the days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” (Exodus 20:12)

In my last Blog, I shared about how we honored my mom for the holidays. Now I’d like to share how we are trying to honor my dad. Dad lives in Eastern Washington, about a 6 hour drive from us. Dad and mom divorced when I was three years old. I lived with mom after that. There were 5 of us kids (I’m the youngest), so you can imagine the challenges of visitation. I visited dad on breaks and during the summer, and we had an ok relationship as I grew up. I didn’t realize, however, that I was always seeking my dad’s approval until I was a senior in High School. I was class speaker and nearly had a 4.0 GPA with the exception of one B that I got in P.E.! I was pretty driven to succeed and I believed this success would fill the void that was left when mom and dad divorced. Of course, it didn’t. As I became an adult, I got angrier and angrier with my dad. I told myself it was his fault that I had problems with relationships, his fault I was hurting inside (of course it wasn’t, but it was easier to blame him than look at myself). When I’d visit him, my anger would come out and I’d become very cruel in my words…he had hurt me, so I would hurt him more.

But dad didn’t give up. He kept loving me and welcoming me. When I was 31 years old, my world came crashing down. I separated from my wife and now I had no choice but to look inward for the source of my problems vs. outward. I decided I wanted to have a counseling session with my dad. When I called him up, he agreed to it, so he came to Seattle for a counseling session. My counselor asked me to listen while dad told his side of the story. He shared how hard it was for him to divorce, how hard it was for him to not see his kids. He shared his regrets. Then he did something that would change my life and the lives of my kids and their kids. Dad asked for forgiveness. I broke down in tears as I accepted his forgiveness. Before that day, I was an extraordinarily driven man. If you’ve ever seen a pressure cooker with the water boiling inside and the spout on the top whistling from the pressure…this was me. When my dad asked for forgiveness, it was like the lid to the pressure cooker was taken off and the pressure that had built up inside of me was relieved after 31 years. That day was one of the best days of my life.

About 5 years ago, my step-mom asked me to come to Eastern Washington and see how my dad lived. I went over for Memorial Day weekend and we spent the time together. He has a small house and a fire pit in the back yard. We enjoyed talking and watching the fire well into the warm evenings in Eastern Washington. I told dad I’d be back with my family that summer. We came back as a family and camped in Dad’s backyard. We went swimming in Lake Roosevelt where I swam as a kid. We went and got ice cream at the drive inn that I went to as a kid. We went boating and bike riding….just like when I did as a kid.

Debbie and I decided that weekend that we were going to be more intentional about honoring our parents. We decided at a minimum we’d visit dad twice a year and when we visited him we would honor him in every way we knew how. We’ve done that, and I’ll share more about it in a future blog.

In closing, I want to share how lucky I believe I am to have a father that pursued me…even in my anger. The experiences in my life have created me to be the man I am today and I hold no resentment or regrets. I have the utmost respect for my dad, and am certain his decisions have significantly contributed to me and my family being emotionally healthy. Furthermore, I believe these decisions will result in stopping the generational curses with my kids.

Here’s my question to you. Do you have any unresolved issues with your father? If so, I want to challenge you to work them out. I guarantee you won’t regret it!

Honor thy Father and Mother…Part 1

“Honor thy father and thy mother: that the days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” (Exodus 20:12)

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. I have lots of thoughts about what to blog about, but I haven’t made the time to blog. The last month has been a month of honoring our parents, and Debbie and I have made this a priority in our lives and are very blessed that both of our parents are alive and healthy.

My mom lives down the road from us and we have her up for dinner three or four times a week. Our younger kids love to have her over and really enjoy going to Grandma’s house. I believe that my mom’s ability to live so close and be with us and the grandkids during the week is one of the greatest joys in her life….and interestingly enough, it is something our kids love as well.

Mom started a tradition about 20 years ago where she would cook a big meal for us on Christmas. We didn’t have much money growing up, but on Christmas she would buy a Prime Rib and cook it. She makes these rolls that are my favorite….she cooks them in a large tuna fish can! She makes salads, pies, potatoes…a Christmas feast. We lost our brother about 20 years ago in a car wreck. Ever since then, mom honors him by bringing out a 6 pack of Miller, his favorite beer.

This year, the baton was passed to my two older sisters. It was amazing. They cooked a feast for the family and all the details were remembered-multi-colored fruit salad, prime rib, rolls….even the 6 pack of beer.

I watched mom smiling ear to ear during the day as she watched her daughters carry on a tradition that she had started years ago. Mom truly felt honored that day and everyone in the family felt pretty close to one another.

Sometimes I take for granted that she lives down the street and I get to see her a number of times during the week. I forget that I didn’t have much of a relationship with her parents, and never met my grandpa on my dad’s side and only met his mom a few times. It’s different for my kids, and I’m hoping that when they have kids of their own they, too, will live close to us and we, too will enjoy a relationship with our grandkids.

Remembering 2010

In my first blog I wrote about the power of memories and I challenged everyone to take out the video camera and record the kids sharing their memories from the prior year. I finally did the same with my family on Friday.

For those that don’t know me, I have four kids-a 16 year old step-daughter, a 13 year old daughter, a 5 year old daughter and a nearly 3 year old son. On Friday we made pizza together for dinner and went upstairs to record our memories…something I try to do every year with them.

I started doing this a long time ago with a vision of pulling up the recordings of my kids sharing their favorite memories from that year with their kids. Can you imagine? Sitting together at Thanksgiving with your children and their children? You pull out a video from 2010 of mommy Monica when she was 13. Her kids see her sharing about the time when she went sledding in the late evening on the fresh snow with her dad (grandpa) when it snowed Thanksgiving week of 2010. It kinda warps the brain to think about it. I believe that Monica will watch the video and the memories will come flooding back for her as well.

How about watching mommy Amanda sharing about walking around in Old Towne San Diego with her brother and sisters? For Amanda, the memories will flood back as if she were just there. Then there is mommy Noelle. She was only 5 in the video, but her memories are as vivid as the day she was camping at Keller Ferry with her family in the motorhome and playing in the wind with her best friend. Noelle’s kids now understand why the annual camping trip to Keller Ferry with the extended family is so magical.

Nathan will be sitting there with his wife and kids. He was not even 3 years old in the video and now he has a 3 year old son of his own. He’s sharing about the fire truck he got for Christmas and decides he’s going to give his son a fire truck this year for Christmas.

Debbie and I (e.g. mom and dad, grandma and grandpa) are filled with tears and joy as our family laughs, loves, and remembers the years that we became a family. We are thankful that we decided to record these precious memories.

Will you join me and make a video of your kids sharing their memories from 2010?

An Elegant Life

Those of you that know me are probably asking yourselves “What is Damon doing writing about elegance?” I drive a 1995 Maxima that I bought for $700 about 4 years ago, I wear jeans that I bought at Costco for $15. I keep my face unshaven at most times (my wife likes it that way!). So what am I doing blogging about elegance?

What do you think of when you think of elegance? My wife says she envisions a beautiful flowing gown. My mom thinks of a beautiful woman with the dress perfectly tailored ready for a special event. This is probably the way most people think of elegance. At work, we talk about an “elegant solution” to solve problems we might have. For example, on the Windows Phone 7 you don’t have to unlock the phone to dial a phone call. That is elegant!

Last year I read the book “who’s got your back”. This was one of my favorite books last year as a few of the concepts in the book have dramatically affected my life. The author, Keith Ferrazzi was working 80+ hours a week, feeling stressed out and tired, and really not being as productive as he would like to be. He knew he couldn’t continue living like this so he called a mentor of his. His mentor invited him out for a “Long, slow dinner”. They went out and his mentor asked him a few probing questions (don’t you love it when your mentors do this to you?). The first question he asked was how his finances were with his business-how’s the balance sheet, how’s the cash flow, do you know your money goes down to the penny. Keith was shocked-what did money have to do with where he was in his life? He didn’t come to talk about money! His mentor then zinged him with a statement that struck him to the core. Keith-you know what your problem is? Your problem is your life isn’t elegant.” Of course, Keith had the same thoughts about elegance as most of us do-he thought about how he grew up poor and always strived to live a different life than he had. He remembered the rich kids teasing him for being poor. His mentor then explained elegance.

Elegance is putting out the minimum amount of energy to get the maximum result. It’s that simple. The rest of the book describes how he achieved an elegant life by surrounding himself with people that had and/or were like he wanted to be. His claim in the book is that who we are is the “average” of our five closest friends (but this topic is for a future blog post).

I’ve spend a lot of time thinking about this new definition of elegance. I’ve searched my own life to determine how elegant my life is, and I’ve found a lot of places that were very inelegant, and have made some changes.

  • I took Keith’s advice and looked at our finances. When I was brutally honest with myself I realized that the state of my finances was really a great indicator of the elegance in my life. My wife and I sat down, we made a budget, and we changed how we managed money in our home. Our solution was quite elegant…we went to using cash for our expenditures (this, too, is a future blog post). This elegant financial solution has had a tremendous impact on our marriage and our financial health.
  • I love to read and have stacks of books that I’d love to get to, but never have the time to READ. But then I realized-I don’t have to READ to get the benefit of the books. I could LISTEN to the books on CD and learn the same amount. But where would I find the time to LISTEN? Turns out that right around the same time I was given a job that necessitated a very inelegant commute of 40 minutes each way. The elegant solution occurred to me-LISTEN to the books I wanted to read during the commute! Within a month I was able to double my intake of books, and it took me LESS TIME than reading. Now this is an elegant solution.
  • I determined that exercise is critical to my health (emotional and physical). The work move also put my office too far from my gym, so I stopped exercising. I wrestled with this for quite some time, but then I came up with an elegant solution. I found a Snap fitness that was 3 minutes from my office. Turns out there is also a Snap fitness 5 minutes from my house. I began running on the treadmill for 30 minutes at lunch 2 to 3 times a week, and exercising on Saturday’s at the Snap near my home. As I write this blog, my wife is at the Snap fitness as well (we had a membership at the Y but almost never used it because it was very inelegant-it took 30 minutes of commute time for a 30 minute workout). This elegant exercise solution has resulted in me losing about 5 lbs. since I started and I have increased my endurance dramatically as well.

These are a few examples of elegance in my life. I’m able to accomplish more with less effort by striving for elegance in every area of my life. I have a lot more peace, my relationships are better, I’m healthier, I have MORE time available to do the things I want to do. One of my goals for 2011 is to live an elegant life. I’m very energized by this goal as I’ve personally experienced the benefit and the effects are now impacting those closest to me as well.

How about you? What areas of your life could benefit from an elegant solution? I want to challenge you to pick one area and strive for an elegant solution. If you get stuck, let me know, I’d love to help!

A New Year….A New Blog

My Family-1967 (I'm the baby)

I’ve learned a lot about the power of memories over the past few months.  I love taking pictures and videos of my family, and have always done so.  I also love looking at old family pictures and videos.  There is something about looking at a picture that takes you right back to the time when the photo was taken.  This Thanksgiving, my dad came over and we spent a bunch of time scanning old pictures of him and the family into the computer.  He sat by me, we listened to the Carpenters, and he chatted with me about what was happening when the pictures were taken.  I learned a lot about dad, about my childhood, and about what really matters…..family, relationships, and memories.  We watched old home movies (you know the kind that are on a movie reel that you run through a movie projector?) and he shared about those times.  I was too young in the movies to remember anything, but once again, I learned a lot about my childhood and my family of origin.

My Family-2010

Christmas came and I, of course, gave gifts with pictures….mugs with the kids for the grandparents, a Christmas ornament with a picture of the kids for my wife, and Christmas calendars with pictures of the kids to the grandparents.  My wife reminded me that this is what I do every Christmas…I give memories as gifts.

This year, I asked myself “Why do I spend so much time and effort to create memories with photos?”.  It occurred to me…because I value family, memories, and relationships! 

So, why start blogging?  My main rationale for creating a blog is to create an ongoing, easily accessible log of “memories”.  Memories of events that impacted me enough to write a blog, memories of learnings I’ve had, memories of significant events in my life or my kids’ lives.  Blogging-a way to immortalize memories with the added benefit of making the memories “sticky” for me (the writing solidifies them) with the ability to share with anyone that cares to read!

So, here goes.  http://stoddsblog.com is now live. 

My final comment and challenge.  In 2004 I made a decision to video tape memories of the year with my wife and kids at the end of each year.  I haven’t done it every year, but I did watch the memories of 2004 on Christmas with my wife and Monica.  WOW.  What a powerful experience to watch memories from 6 years ago.  The kids were so young, we were so young, but the memories quickly came back as we held back the tears.

Will you join me this year and every year in videotaping your kids sharing their favorite memories of the year?