The Art of Manliness - #82： The Secrets of Happy Families With Bruce Feiler

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so have you ever

00:00:19.720 encountered families i'm sure you have where they're just like they're just have a deal they

00:00:24.120 just seem so happy and like they're perfect and like you get in there because you you're kind of

00:00:28.680 suspicious they're like there's something going on here maybe it's just all a facade and you get in

00:00:32.100 there and you realize no like these people this family is like actually uh they love each other

00:00:36.180 they're happy and they enjoy being around each other it's not to say they don't have trials and

00:00:40.620 setbacks and they're you know that they're perfect but they're able to manage those trials and the

00:00:45.480 stress and the setbacks that you know any family encounters what is it about these families that

00:00:50.920 make them so happy and so just together well our guest today wanted to investigate that question

00:00:57.560 his name is bruce feiler and he wrote a book called the secrets of happy families today we're

00:01:02.560 going to talk about what he uncovered writing the book and talking to families and talking to experts

00:01:07.680 and what's the research says what we as fathers can do to create a positive family culture we're

00:01:14.600 going to discuss what we can learn from businesses that we can apply to our family what we can learn

00:01:19.840 from go ruck challenges uh we're a big fan of the go ruck challenge here at the art of manliness

00:01:25.000 and we're also going to discuss whether family dinner is really all that important uh in creating

00:01:32.100 a positive together happy family so if you're a dad or you plan on becoming a dad one day

00:01:38.700 this episode is for you i think you're gonna get a lot out of it so let's do this

00:01:43.220 bruce feiler welcome to the show thank you very much for inviting me so uh what inspired you to

00:01:51.520 research and write a book about what makes a happy family well my wife how's that for manly right 1.00

00:01:58.600 i'm gonna begin by quoting my wife like my wife insists that i always say that i wrote about happy

00:02:04.040 families not because i had one but because i wanted one uh and that's true i think that what happened

00:02:10.060 for me was what happened for many people was that i felt sort of lost and confused and overwhelmed

00:02:17.880 specifically in our case we had gotten through what i call the years of defense right those early

00:02:24.620 years when it was when you're just reacting to what's happening right so it's diapers and sippy

00:02:30.080 cups and potty training and napping and snacking and all these things and you get through that and

00:02:35.960 your kids are sort of a certain age and then you do have this sort of window of time where you can

00:02:42.240 develop a family culture but while there's so much focused on the young years and even to a certain

00:02:49.840 extent there's a lot focused on the teenager there's actually not a lot focused on that

00:02:53.880 sort of middle period and and and really it turns out to go much longer than that so i was interested

00:02:59.760 in this idea of how you make sure that your family works and your kids are even attached to the

00:03:06.580 idea of family i mean speaking of my wife she hates when i talk about neanderthals let me just 0.82

00:03:11.560 talk about neanderthals for a second human beings have something that no other species on earth has

00:03:15.980 which is this very large window of time after our after uh kids are weaned but before they can

00:03:22.940 reproduce every other species on earth literally once they stop uh weaning they can have children 0.59

00:03:29.440 of their own humans don't we have this extra decade in there and the reason is is because we're

00:03:34.560 social our brains have to grow and we have to learn to sort of get along with other people and

00:03:38.980 sort of that's the window i sort of think of it as sort of from potty training to the prom right from

00:03:43.540 the first step to the first kiss where you have this chance to make sure you are a family and i had

00:03:49.700 no clue uh really about how to do that and so i wanted to go find out awesome well i'm you talked

00:03:55.620 about the defensive stage i'm right in the middle of that right now it will be this too shall pass

00:04:00.220 this too shall pass it's good it's good to know okay well tolstoy famously famously said that all

00:04:05.100 happy families are alike and each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way is that true i mean did

00:04:10.220 you find some common characteristics um that happy families have well when i first encountered that

00:04:16.440 actually i was a teenager when i first uh read that and my reaction and this is a technical word 0.73

00:04:23.340 was that it was idiotic of course all happy families are not alike right some are big some are small 0.88

00:04:28.600 some are loud some are quiet but i have to say you know because of the sort of the way the world 0.97

00:04:34.300 works now right we live in this age where there's there's tons of research and thinking and sort of

00:04:38.560 ways of looking at sort of large-scale patterns i think that there is a lot of truth to that that

00:04:44.460 there are certain things we know now about how to handle discipline or difficult conversations or how

00:04:52.440 or or any of the things that parents face even the role of dads i think is a really sort of

00:04:58.080 under-discussed question it's possible now to draw some conclusions now and i should say here when

00:05:04.500 i set out doing this when i sort of set up looking uh for ways to make my own family work better

00:05:11.260 i insisted i mean i screamed it like as loud as i could i am not going to take everything that i know

00:05:18.260 and cram it into one of those lists of the seven things the six or five or ten things you knew you

00:05:24.560 know to you know how to how to make your family happier i don't know about you and look i guess

00:05:29.560 on the web we do this a lot now but i can't stand those lists i usually i usually disagree with number

00:05:35.040 seven and i forget number five and i think you know my kids will never go to college but it turned

00:05:40.460 out when i sort of have been doing this for years now i've been writing this column in the new york

00:05:44.180 times for five years now and and happy families and and meeting people around the country and

00:05:49.320 talking etc i actually do think that there are certain patterns that i uncovered and so i ultimately

00:05:55.080 did create what i kind of call my my non-list list of the things that high-functioning families have

00:06:01.360 it's not a i'm not wagging my finger and saying you must but these are sort of certain things that

00:06:05.780 do come up over and over again okay well let's talk about a few of those uh things that come up over

00:06:10.180 and over again some of the the things you found that research has shown that helps a family be

00:06:14.700 happy and what's interesting a lot of these things come from like places you wouldn't think they would

00:06:18.720 come like the world of business um so that one thing i thought was just fascinating was this idea of

00:06:23.500 applying agile development uh to your family uh for those who aren't can you explain just for

00:06:29.620 listeners who aren't familiar what agile development is and then how do you can apply that to uh your

00:06:34.460 family organization well so let's let's start with the list right so what is the first thing

00:06:40.880 that high-functioning families have in common they adapt all the time now this is completely counter to

00:06:48.720 how i was as a dad and i think that by the way dads are particularly susceptible to this right so

00:06:53.780 when i became a father it was like okay uh i'm going to set a few rules and i'm going to have

00:06:59.240 hard principles and we're going to stick to that and i'm going to have to be sort of tough

00:07:03.780 and uh that's what we're going to do well guess what it doesn't work out that way right things

00:07:08.500 are changing all the time one of my favorite lines is from a friend of mine who who's a dad

00:07:14.620 who has four at one point had four kids under six his first one is now going to college so this goes

00:07:19.240 back and he said and i love it he said with with kids everything is a phase even the good parts

00:07:25.380 right so just when you're used to diapers then they learn to pilot drain and just when you're used

00:07:31.320 to pilot drain then they go to school and just when you you got the school routine then they

00:07:34.360 add homework and just when you got that done then they add sports you know and then they add the

00:07:37.500 internet and then they add cell phones and then they add screens and video games and sort of you're

00:07:41.940 constantly having to adapt and of course now we have uh there's other big changes in the family

00:07:47.680 right so you've got three quarters of moms are working outside the home and now dads are much more 0.66

00:07:54.440 involved in parenting than they ever were before i mean just the idea that you know that that that

00:07:58.320 the two men would be having this conversation about parenting really unthinkable 25 years ago and

00:08:03.960 yet it's sort of the standard way it works now so there's all these changes that are going on

00:08:09.240 so how do you manage that change because what you're there's a great line you know you run a

00:08:16.020 this great website and let me just say i'm a big out loud here on your podcast i'm i just love what

00:08:21.060 you guys are doing and and visually and the questions you're asking i'm a big fan so i'm really happy

00:08:26.040 to be here but one of the things they say in the in the in the internet space is if you're doing the

00:08:31.400 same thing today that you were doing six months ago you're doing the wrong thing so you want to

00:08:36.340 be able to change this week grandma's coming next week mom has a business trip the next week junior 0.98

00:08:41.200 has a big sports game and he's got to get ready and then the following week someone's got a big test

00:08:45.680 you need to be able to be adaptable but if you adapt every single day your head will explode okay

00:08:53.780 so how do you solve that problem okay this is where agile comes in okay so agile is an idea

00:09:00.560 began in japan 25 years ago sort of came to the u.s and now it's really sort of sweeping

00:09:04.800 through businesses so ge to google to ted lots of people are doing this and the core idea is that

00:09:12.540 that the way things used to work in business and by the way and in the government and in military

00:09:18.020 on sports teams was the leader in charge would issue orders and they would trickle down to

00:09:24.900 everybody below okay that was that process is called the waterfall we all know it nothing has

00:09:30.520 been more waterfall than the family right the dad you know a hundred years ago dads owned mom and owned

00:09:36.800 the children literally that's how it was now we know moms are involved and increasingly our kids have a 0.77

00:09:41.540 safe that didn't work in business it basically failed and now things are done very differently

00:09:47.900 even the military sports we know it just simply works differently but families are kind of the last 0.97

00:09:53.580 to catch on with this and a lot of families have begun to change and that's really what the secrets of

00:09:59.180 happy families really taps into is this change so we'll look a couple of principles of agile really work

00:10:05.960 in the family one is you need to be talking all the time right so one of the things in agile is you

00:10:10.980 want to have a uh an information radiator is what the agile term for which is a big display in an

00:10:17.320 office that says who's doing what when i visit the family as you know my book it's a great story

00:10:22.380 about in idaho and the mom would come down in the morning and their four kids would come down

00:10:26.560 make themselves breakfast check their list of things they had to do you put their dishes in the

00:10:31.220 dishwasher check the list again feed the cat or put the you know make themselves lunch

00:10:35.440 check the list again take their belongings and go out to the bus i mean it was the most

00:10:39.880 amazing astonishing family dynamic i'd ever seen and when i insisted this would never work in my house

00:10:47.180 they told me i was wrong and sure enough when we put a morning list in our house

00:10:51.780 we've been doing it now for i think seven years it cut down on parental screaming in half like in in a

00:10:58.280 week because you're giving your kids sort of more responsibility and by the way a lot of people do these

00:11:03.380 lists but then they check it off again you want your kids to check it off you want your kids

00:11:08.240 to take more responsibility for their own behavior because as a parent you can force your kids around

00:11:15.920 maybe that'll work once or twice or maybe for six months and the long one is not going to work you want

00:11:21.400 your kid when your kid is 15 and deciding whether to get in the car with a drunk driver or have

00:11:28.340 unprotected sex or try drugs or whatever you want them to have experience making decisions and you

00:11:34.160 want to start that when they're young and the stakes are a lot lower but really the key is this family

00:11:39.900 meeting we do a family meeting now we do it every sunday night we ask three questions it comes directly

00:11:45.140 from this world of of agile what worked well in our family this week what didn't work well in our

00:11:53.160 family this week and what can we work on in the week ahead and you have these conversations

00:11:57.100 everybody's putting ideas out and then you basically pick a couple things you're going to

00:12:01.080 work on and you let your kids join the conversation about sort of setting their own rewards and

00:12:06.760 punishment so again it's not coming from you but it's more coming from them which is ultimately what

00:12:11.080 you want because now we know that builds up their brains and it gives them practice making the

00:12:14.840 decisions they're going to need later on that's fantastic actually we've implemented those three

00:12:18.640 questions into our weekly family meeting as well with even with our four-year-old and he's i mean

00:12:23.460 you know he's only four um but he's taken to it like he's giving an input and then he has like his

00:12:29.380 little list that he does in the morning is supposed to do and he loves it like he eats it up like i don't

00:12:33.900 it's it's crazy so how old are your kids now that one of them's four yeah one of them's uh four and

00:12:38.720 the other one's one so that's what we well what's great is it worked when you started when they're young

00:12:44.480 okay the advantage of starting their young is they'll just all know this is how it works in

00:12:49.400 our family right so we we are going to talk about what it means to be part of the family okay um the

00:12:55.480 when they're young you're still making most decisions ironically the older they get and sort of ironically

00:13:01.420 even when they get to be teenagers which is in some ways when they're going to be the most resistant

00:13:05.420 it's actually when you need it the most because then you have less control over their schedules you

00:13:10.180 you know suddenly they're getting input oh my gosh what what tends to happen is right that you

00:13:15.180 know people say to me oh i'll never get my 12 year old to come to a meeting like this and i said okay

00:13:20.560 well here's what's going to happen it's going to be thursday night it's going to be 10 30 you're

00:13:25.380 going to be flossing your teeth you know your your your your partner your spouse is going to be

00:13:30.780 checking with grandma about who's getting to the eye doctor tomorrow you're going to be trying to

00:13:34.860 balance your checkbook and sort of figure out do you have enough milk to get through the weekend

00:13:38.880 and then your teenager is going to come to you and say oh by the way um i got to be at johnny's

00:13:47.220 house or suzy's house after my curfew on saturday and i need twenty dollars you know can you take me

00:13:53.640 and if you say and they're going to come to you at the most vulnerable time and kids are amazing about

00:13:59.220 this and and and you're going to give them the 20 bucks and say sure because you've got to finish

00:14:03.740 flushing your teeth and balancing your checkbook but if you say to them well actually why don't we do it

00:14:08.260 the family meeting on saturday morning or friday night or sunday night or whatever it is they're

00:14:13.260 going to be the first person there and that's the point you just cannot be changing what you do at

00:14:18.180 all times because you cannot function you have to say this is how we do it as a family we need total

00:14:23.940 buy-in let's all sit down when we're calmer and we'll try to figure out what's going to go on the

00:14:28.260 week ahead very good all right so another um sort of idea you took from the world of business

00:14:33.380 um is this idea of a family mission statement and we've written about family creating that family

00:14:39.120 mission statement on the site and whenever when we did we always got this pushback that like oh

00:14:42.960 that's too corporate and like you know that you can't do that with a family uh what's your response

00:14:48.920 to folks who say like you shouldn't have a family mission statement because it's too corporate

00:14:52.760 well first of all i was you i agree i mean when i first heard this idea i was like well not only

00:14:58.300 as a corporate it's also sounds cold and frankly corny now look i'm corny and i know enough about

00:15:03.880 what you guys to do to know you guys got a corny streak too so i don't mind being corny i used to

00:15:07.820 be a circus clown so i'm all for corny i like country music and corny and i you know uh i i i write about

00:15:14.720 that kind of stuff but so here's the thing that somebody asked me that caught me up short and that

00:15:20.580 changed my mind can and i would say to any person who asked this question can you tell me can your

00:15:27.740 kids tell me what values are most important to you the parent if i went to your kids and i said

00:15:33.260 well what is the most important thing to your family what would your kids say you know could

00:15:38.120 they say what's important to you i mean values we all talk about teaching values right the 24 7 world

00:15:42.560 we want our kids to learn our values from television or from god for god forbid from facebook or the

00:15:47.480 internet or movies we want to teach our kids values have you had a conversation with your kids about

00:15:53.260 values are you expecting them to somehow divine it or just sort of by osmosis to kind of just figure

00:15:59.100 it out see here's one of my main i mean i have to say this is sort of one of my main soapboxes if

00:16:05.000 you take one thing from this conversation it's sort of this and that is we all know today that

00:16:12.260 we have to work on our jobs if we want to get better at them we know we have to work on our hobbies

00:16:18.540 if we want to get better at those right our tennis game is not going to get better or our garden is not

00:16:22.700 going to get greener or our mile is not going to get faster or whatever it is if we don't work at

00:16:27.300 it we also know we have to work on our bodies i mean i mean gosh knows in the man in the man space

00:16:33.440 right you know sort of taking care of your body so much bigger now than that was even 15 years ago

00:16:38.260 we know we even have to work on our relationships and if we don't know the other person in the

00:16:42.800 relationship tells us all the darn time but why is it that we keep putting our family to the back

00:16:48.460 of that line we just sort of think our families are going to work are going to just function

00:16:51.160 without us doing anything about it well guess what you know what we know now is if you take

00:16:56.900 small steps you can make your family happier and you can make everybody in your family happier and

00:17:01.980 so this is a great thing if my wife were here she would say of all the hundreds of things we try in

00:17:07.040 the last five years and we're still trying this has been one of the top three things we set everybody

00:17:11.500 down we actually had we made our kids so we want to have a special occasion on a saturday night

00:17:15.780 we want a pajama party we want mom and dad to get in pajamas i don't sleep in pajamas frankly but i

00:17:20.840 got these striped pajamas from the bottom of my drawer that my kids gave me once we made popcorn

00:17:26.040 because my kids had never got jiffy pop because they thought popcorn came from a movie theater we

00:17:30.780 made popcorn my wife brought a flip chart home from work because i work at home and i don't have flip 1.00

00:17:35.520 charts and we had this incredible conversation so we started with this list of values as you know i put it

00:17:42.040 in the secrets of happy families but basically we just had a series of questions hey kids what do

00:17:47.480 you like about our family what you know when you go to school you know what do you miss uh when you

00:17:53.900 bring a friend over what are you most proud when you come to our house and let's just start talking

00:17:57.860 about it and we ended up with a list we had it was not really words in our case it was sort of a

00:18:02.680 series of sayings that were that mom and dad have or the kids have you know my wife has a line

00:18:06.900 i don't like dilemmas i like solutions that's on the list right we like to travel a lot because

00:18:11.960 uh so one of our lists is we're travelers not tourists and we made this list we we we you know

00:18:17.860 we got it printed up printed up we typed it up we put it in the hangs in the dining room do we

00:18:22.660 worship it every morning you know do we sit there and burn candles and do you know dance kumbaya around

00:18:27.360 it hell no but it's there and when we got a call from one of the teachers that my kids got to us

00:18:33.360 one of my daughters got into a spat at school and we're like well we didn't know what to do we went

00:18:37.800 to school we got our little talking to and we thought well what do we have to do i mean this is

00:18:42.200 again one of my kind of messages to parents especially to dad is we don't have to know all

00:18:47.940 the answers and guess what you ain't gonna know all the answers and for men you know it's our we

00:18:52.100 want to be mr fix-it we want to be the problem solver so we just have to call my daughter in my

00:18:56.280 office my wife my reference my high front of an organization in 25 countries she's got 250 people 0.86

00:19:01.280 working for her she's a strong woman she was sort of staggering through this cover like 0.60

00:19:06.920 like she didn't know what to do she doesn't really like discipline and so finally this flip chart was

00:19:12.520 still on the wall of my office and she says to my daughter so anything up there seemed to apply

00:19:16.500 and my daughter looks down and she says we bring people together kind of like that right and boom

00:19:22.880 we had a way into the conversation so the point is look we know from positive psychology we know from

00:19:27.820 all this research you cannot get better without a plan you can't run a marathon without a plan or a

00:19:34.240 triathlon right you can't uh start a business without a plan you can't bake a cake without a recipe

00:19:43.160 this is your best possible felt it's saying this is the family we want to be you're not going to be

00:19:48.620 that most of the time certainly we're not but articulating it can be an extremely powerful

00:19:53.540 and long-lasting thing i love the idea of investing in your family like you would your

00:19:58.240 your business or yourself or your health or whatever that's right we know we know it's not

00:20:02.980 we know that some siblings fight a lot right seven eight times an hour uh for kids six to ten

00:20:07.360 why do they do that the research is very clear because they take one another for granted because they

00:20:12.800 know they have no choice and that's sort of it we sort of think oh you know i got to deal with

00:20:18.540 my boss i got to deal with my mother i got to deal with my neighbor i got to deal with all this other

00:20:24.100 stuff my you know my fantasy football league whatever it is um and you just keep putting

00:20:29.800 your family to the end of the list and yet we know that nothing the most important thing in our

00:20:35.540 happiness is other is our relationships with other people and the family is the relationship that

00:20:39.740 matters most and we keep spending the least about a time working on it okay so uh you hit this point

00:20:45.860 because i thought it was great because you read any like magazine article or website or blog post

00:20:52.120 and like they always say that if you want a strong family you have to eat family dinner together like

00:20:57.400 the secret of the if you do that your kids are gonna like not do drugs they're gonna be straight

00:21:01.600 a students and everything's gonna be amazing uh but your research and your what you found is a

00:21:06.260 little more nuanced than that um what role do does family dinner or family meals play in creating a

00:21:12.240 happy family okay so nothing has been more studied than family dinner right tens of thousands have

00:21:18.060 been videotaped audio taped logged analyzed every you know um and like has been counted and you know

00:21:24.000 parsed and this is what we know uh there's only 10 minutes of productive conversation in any meal time

00:21:31.660 the rest is taken up with take your elbows off the table and pass the catch-up now that has value

00:21:37.480 and that's important but the the main message here is that the 10 minutes that the family time

00:21:44.160 is what's important if you can do it at a meal time fantastic congratulations give yourself a pat

00:21:50.140 on the back go sit down have family meals but it doesn't work in many of our schedules particularly

00:21:55.180 when kids are young when my kids were young we used to have to have to have them they used to have

00:21:59.120 to go to bed at seven right or 7 30 and my wife didn't even get home till 6 30 so they had to be

00:22:03.380 bathed in bed bathed in bed bathed in bed or it didn't work um so it just simply doesn't work

00:22:10.260 americans rank 33 out of 34 countries 35 countries on the u.n study of families that do this okay

00:22:16.820 a third of us simply are not doing it you don't have to kill yourself and and say you know confine

00:22:22.700 yourself to doom if you can't the point is find time to have the family time i interviewed a chef he

00:22:30.340 works at night he's never home at dinner so we said you know what family breakfast is going to be

00:22:34.160 uh my thing you can have a family snack at 8 30 if your kids are older after they come home from

00:22:39.100 sports practice even one meal a week can be effective the point is it's you can do it at a

00:22:44.500 carpool you can do it around a game it's the family time and the connection that matters where you do it

00:22:51.520 is not the most important thing okay um so we're big fans of the go rec challenge around here i've

00:22:57.960 done three of them um really yeah we've done giveaways with them and uh we just we love them

00:23:03.420 and you have a chapter about how go rec challenges can help create a happy family uh how can go rec

00:23:10.100 challenges uh create a happy family so let's go back to um let's go back to my my non-list list right

00:23:17.300 so number one is adapt all the time and we talked a little bit about that number two is talk a lot

00:23:22.360 okay and so talk a lot not just difficult conversations as you know in in secrets happy

00:23:27.700 families i have a bunch of chapters on this but talk about what it means to be part of a family okay

00:23:33.420 so talk about your family mission statement talk about your family history talk at meal time or carpool

00:23:39.380 time or whatever it is the third element so it's adapt adapt all the time talk a lot go out and play

00:23:45.620 okay we if you focus on the positive memories it'll make all those difficult times much easier to bear so

00:23:50.720 i went looking for how can we make family reunions and family activities and joint family time

00:23:57.340 especially in multiple generations work and so the military has a lot of ideas there and that's what

00:24:04.520 brought me to go rec so what go rec is if you don't know is it's a sort of extreme sport crossfit

00:24:11.600 sort of group bonding experience many of them take place overnight uh and you take whatever it is

00:24:17.060 15 to 30 people and you put them through an intense bonding experience and you tax them very physically

00:24:22.940 the one i did was on the night i did it in new york in new york it was the night before 9 11 uh it was

00:24:30.240 basically from 8 to 8 p.m the night before ending at ground zero on the morning of 9 11 so we'd have

00:24:35.720 this and people across the brooklyn bridge and swimming and doing push-ups in the in the river

00:24:41.120 but go rock obviously there's there's tough mudder there's any number of these sort of other extreme

00:24:47.140 elements out there you don't have to do that what i like is the idea of working together you know and

00:24:52.960 i think that that for example the way we do this in our family is we have two different families right

00:24:58.720 there's my wife's family when we get together with them we they like games and sports so we do this

00:25:04.000 sort of extreme sports thing with the kids it's sort of like uh they meet on cape cod we call it

00:25:09.480 the cape house challenge and it's sort of a like a little color war or olympics style thing where

00:25:15.560 the kids compete on teams and it gets people from different families working together my family is

00:25:21.720 a little bit different actually there's a sort of a more arts culture there so we actually do a play

00:25:26.800 or this year we did a movie where we get together and bring again it gets the cousins together it gets

00:25:31.920 the aunts and uncles from different generations it gets the grandparents involved what i think the

00:25:36.480 go rock offers all these things offer is the go rock image that i like is the log i don't you said

00:25:42.400 you've done three i don't know if you've had logs in yours but the idea that halfway through you find

00:25:47.280 a big obstacle it might be a tv it might be a bed might be a log and then the entire group you can't

00:25:52.720 move the log from point a to point l wherever they make you take it for 90 minutes unless you swap come

00:25:59.360 up with a plan come up with a way of working together you need a log you need a common enemy

00:26:04.160 that will bond people together and uh you do that on your family vacation you'll make the connections

00:26:11.180 that you're lacking during the rest of the year and it'll get people over from fighting it well you

00:26:15.160 like breakfast early and you like basic lane and you left the wet towels in the bathroom

00:26:18.720 this kind of an extreme thing will create the positive memories that can last you for a long time

00:26:23.740 fantastic so you've mentioned three things on your list there's six right so there's talk all the

00:26:27.880 time uh there's only three there's only three okay there's subsets but there's only there's

00:26:31.960 three big ones those are the three things so it's uh adapt adapt all the time talk talk a lot and get

00:26:38.100 out and play yep get out and play go out and play awesome well bruce we're our time is running up

00:26:43.600 this has been a fantastic um conversation uh where can people go to find out more about your work

00:26:49.240 so if you go to uh brucefeiler.com that's f-e-i-l-e-r brucefeiler.com you'll see

00:26:56.520 there's lots of stuff there there's a little toolkit uh there's links of videos as you know

00:27:01.180 i gave a ted talk on how to make your family happier that uh is uh just about to reach a

00:27:06.940 million views um you know i talk a lot around the country i write a new york times column

00:27:10.980 sort of brucefeiler.com or my uh facebook page which is facebook it's brucefeiler author or you

00:27:17.580 can follow me on twitter at brucefeiler uh i'm out there sort of talking about these things and

00:27:22.720 you know i especially talk about dads a lot because i think that's a sort of new dimension

00:27:26.700 of this whole thing but you know reach out let's keep the conversation going awesome yeah and i if

00:27:31.540 you're a dad or plan on being a dad i definitely recommend picking up the secrets of happy families

00:27:35.480 it's fantastic you'll great some you'll get there's like some awesome just concrete takeaways you'll be

00:27:39.540 able to apply right away so go out and pick it up thank you very much bruce our guest today was

00:27:44.220 bruce feiler bruce is the author of the book the secrets of happy families and you can find that on

00:27:48.920 amazon.com and i recommend if you're a dad go get this book it's fantastic it's i've taken a lot from

00:27:54.600 that book and applied it in my own family and you can find out more information about bruce's work at

00:27:59.760 brucefeiler.com well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips

00:28:07.840 and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you

00:28:12.640 enjoy the podcast and you feel like you've gotten something out of it i'd really appreciate it if you

00:28:16.560 would go and give us a review it doesn't matter what it is um give us a review on itunes stitcher

00:28:21.420 or whatever else you use to listen to the podcast and until next time this is brett mckay

00:28:26.320 telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - September 19, 2014

#82： The Secrets of Happy Families With Bruce Feiler

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