Part of being an awesome human being, in my not-so-humble opinion, is having your own style. And to a certain extent, walking the path of awesomeness means figuring out one’s own style and developing it. On a personal level, I want to develop myself not just for myself, but also because I want to role model for my son. In a word, I want to father (verb) with style.
But what is style?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines style as “a distinctive manner of expression (as in writing or speech) “. It’s not until the 4th and 5th definitions that style gets rendered into what we now think of – something related to fashion or popularity. So the original meaning of the term describes a particular way of being, a distinctive way of doing something. It’s an individual expression of a person’s inner self – the personalities, foibles, and biases of a person enveloping a person and coloring their form and function.
Why does this matter? Because in this day and age, we as fathers have forgotten a couple of things about style. We are so harried and so busy with giving 150% to work at our offices, and then being dutiful and generous partners to our spouses (and rightly so!) that we have forgotten how to be our own selves…At least this is the conceit that we tell ourselves.
Work does suck up our energies, and home does tie up our brains and time, and the rest of the world clamors for whatever is left of our time and energy and attention. So it may seem perfectly reasonable to say that “we have no time or resources to develop ourselves”.
Truth is that we have gotten too tied up or too lazy to develop ourselves into the best that we could be. And as tragic as this may be for our own egos, consider that our kids see us as role models. Consciously or unconsciously, our sons model themselves after us and our daughters use us as the model for their future male relationships.
I too am 200% guilty of all of the sins that I have listed. I eat too much junk food. I don’t get enough sleep. I get impatient and lose my cool too often. I don’t exercise enough. I don’t shave enough and don’t pay enough attention to my grooming. I don’t read enough. I don’t complete all the things I say I will do. I break too many promises. I could go on.
It’s time to reclaim our style. As men and as dads. As fathers, as the paterfamilias, we have to represent our families. We and our spouses are the two sides of the same coin, but in way too many instances the wife side of the coin is shiny and beautiful, but the husband side a little too scratched up and rusty. Let’s do better.
But where to start? Easiest, simplest, place is in how we look. It may sound shallow and superficial, but don’t tell anyone who’s not bathed and shaved in days that what a person looks like doesn’t matter. A lot of our internal changes need juice from our self-esteem, our self-image, and our self-discipline. Strangely enough, psychologists have shown that these internal forces can be shaped by external ones, and grooming and clothes can make a difference. Again, put on a finely tailored suit and tell me that you don’t feel more powerful, more confident. I don’t want to have to think about too much in terms of fashion, so keeping things simple I think is good. Complex, expressive attire I will tackle once I have gotten the fundamentals down. Simple, and let’s not forget neat. It’s the fundamentals – simple and neat in everything we put on ourselves and you can’t go wrong. It’s good place to start.
What next? How about expanding our minds? Reading. Read one book every week. Read every chance you get. Learning doesn’t every stop, even when you’re out of school. Pick a book, any book. Even the trashiest dime store novels are better than not reading. Why? By the virtue of the fact that you have to twist and contort you mind to understand what another human mind has written means that you are stretching and exercising your brain. “But there’s no time” some will say. Bullshit, I say. Even back in the days before ebooks we could carry paperbacks around. Read on the toilet. Read while you are waiting on a line. Listen to audiobooks while you’re driving (OK, this one’s a cheat but it still counts). Read, no excuses.
What more? Workout. Workout for 10 minutes every day. 10 minutes is how long it takes to boil water for a pot of coffee. 10 minutes of burpees. Or 10 minutes of pushups and squats. Or 10 minutes of jumping jacks. Try it. 10 minutes is short enough that we should be able to squeeze it into any day, every day. But the exercises listed, if done for 10 minutes, is enough to knock the wind out of you and make you sweat. And sweating will be good. No more sitting around. We gotta make stuff happen to be awesome and do it with style. And to make stuff happen, we gotta be in shape and healthy enough to keep up with it.
Style is not just about looking good. It’s not even about feeling good. Style should be being good, being awesome to the extent that the awesomeness is part of everything you do. Let’s get stylish.