Remember, you don’t have to answer all these questions. They are meant to guide you and help you start your journaling journey, especially if you’re unsure where to begin. The aim is to encourage a deeper understanding and expression of the role hobbies and leisure play in your life.
Easy
Uncomfortable
Fucking Brutal
All right, so you’re excited. The first topic: hobbies and leisure. Let’s give you the very quick version. And so if you wanna just get started, you don’t want a lot of instruction up front. Here’s what we’re talking about: you’re thinking about things that have brought you joy in your life. Playing guitar, fishing, hiking, camping, knitting, whatever it happens to be.
Knitting. All right.
There could be knitters out there.
You’re right, you’re right.
What does that say about you? What does that say about what you value? Why do you do it? These are the kind of things you want to share with your kids. Does it give you an identity? Does it bring you happiness? This is what we’re thinking about.
This is the low hanging easy fruit part of it, right? Where you can just do surface level easy stuff because a lot of you might not want to go with the real deep stuff. Right. So the quick, so if you’re still watching this part of it real quickly, this is about the real simple stuff that you can just get started with that you could throw out. So the questions, give us an example, something that you might answer here.
So, an easy question for hobbies and leisure would be, “What are your favorite hobbies or leisure activities, and why do you enjoy them?” Okay. Right.
That’s an easy, easy thing to look into a camera or record your voice for, right?
Yeah, exactly. I mean, here’s another example. “How do you typically incorporate your hobbies into your daily or weekly routine?” Simple.
So not only is this important for, is this really leaving a legacy, you know, it’s, your kids are gonna be interested in this stuff down the road someday. I want to just kind of give you an example because right now in your brain you’re like, why do I need to put that on camera? And I want you to think about your kids and your grandkids and then think about your grandkid in 30 years watching it, seeing that explanation from you. How would you have liked to have that from your grandfather or your father right now, or your mom, or your aunt or your uncle? That’s why you’re doing this, right? That’s why those kind of questions are important to answer. So that they actually can go, oh my gosh, I have a digital file on my watch with every conversation about hobbies. Right? So, I guess my point is it sounds silly, but it’s not.
Trust us. We’re guiding you through this. We’re your Sherpa on this journey. We have reasons why we’re doing this, so just trust us on this. But that’s the big idea. So if you feel like you got it, you want to get started, hit stop on the video. Go do your thing. If you want a little bit more, then keep playing the video. We’re gonna get into a little bit more detail on this for those of you who need it. But if you’re ready to go now, yeah. See ya. Go ahead.
Alright, so let’s do details on hobbies and leisure as we explained why you have to do it, because it may not seem like it’s some life-changing thing to leave for your kids. We explain why it’s important, so let’s talk about some more examples and what it really means. Because you’ve got this whole—J. scripted, this whole thing out. He’s really good at what he does as an educator.
It’s a curriculum. I can’t help myself.
Yeah. So he’s really good. So this is, I want you to understand this is not just something we threw together. This is really well thought out. And if you follow the structure, it’s gonna deliver for you big time.
Yeah. Because this is the first sort of content topic, I’ll give you a quick overview of how we’ve structured this. We’re gonna give you a list of questions that you can answer or not, but they’re meant to just start to get your brain going. And we’ve sort of categorized them in three ways. There’s easy questions, that are more tactical, right? There are questions we’re calling uncomfortable, which are gonna make you dig a little bit, right? And then the last category for every content we’re calling fucking brutal. Alright? These are the tearjerkers. These are the ones that are really gonna make you dig deep. And you may not be ready to go there, or you might not go there for every one and that’s okay.
You may never go there, right? Like some people aren’t gonna want to do fucking brutal. I mean. You just, some people won’t.
That’s right. So here are a few examples that you can be thinking about. We talked in the top of the video about the easy questions. Here’s a couple of the ones that are uncomfortable: “How do your hobbies reflect your values or aspects of your personality?” Yeah, easy, right?
Eh, you know, you might uncover some things there. “Is there a hobby you gave up but wish you hadn’t?” Right. So, you’re a little less comfortable. You might be getting into some regret there, and that that’s okay too. Okay. All right. Let’s talk about some of the fucking brutal ones, if we can be so honest: “Have your hobbies ever helped you through a difficult time in your life? Please share that experience.”
See, this is a great question because this is where you can really dive into an actual experience that happened to you in your life. When you could answer that question. And again, that’s the whole point of this. So like you’re not here in 40 years and your kid is having this problem and they can pull it up on their whatever device or their Neurolink or whatever, and they can go and…
They’re already laughing at us.
Yeah. And there’s dad answering that question. That might get ’em through a really, really difficult situation or a decision they have to make. Yeah. So while it sounds on the surface, this is kind of a silly question to answer. I don’t think it is at all.
No, no it isn’t. And I think you know, here’s another example from the really difficult category: “What is a dream or aspiration you have within your hobbies that you haven’t yet achieved?”
There’s so many ways you could go with this. Imagine all the dreams that you didn’t have. And think about what you’ve been teaching your kids your whole life. Follow your dreams. Do what you love. I mean, what a great moment to be vulnerable and look into a camera or record your voice and say, “You know what, son, daughter, I always dreamed I wanted to be a fireman and I never did it, and here’s why I didn’t and, and here’s my regret from it.” That’s a really valuable lesson.
Yeah, it really is. And I think, even though we’re saying hobbies and leisure is sort of the low hanging fruit, it does sort of get you some quick wins under your belt. Like, here’s something I wanted to ask you about. Thinking about hobbies and leisure activities and how they connect to your identity or how you see yourself. Like, how do your hobbies reflect who you are?
Yeah, exactly. Great point. Like how do my career is one thing I’m an entrepreneur, so that I think my kids view me as an independent person who, you know, go jumps out and takes up, takes opportunities. But hobbies I could have done much better with my hobbies. I could have spent more time doing, going fishing and doing all those things and showing them. Look, kids watch what you do, right? They see what you do. They see how your life is, and they decide to be like that or not. My dad worked at General Motors for 40 years and took his lunch pail to work. I admire the man, his work ethic, but I never wanted to be him. But I watched it and I said, “I’m never gonna do that.” Which is why I do my own thing, my own schedule. Right. So they’re ultimately gonna decide what they want to do, but they do learn from you and they may actually go the other direction from you and they, these videos will help you communicate that to them.
That’s right. It’s not about what you say. It’s about what you do. Yeah. And I think that’s what we’ve all figured out as parents and, in my case my, one of my hobbies is music and I don’t play guitar because I wanna turn my kids into musicians. I play guitar because I wanna show my kids that there’s value in being creative and spending your time making stuff as opposed to just passively scrolling through social media or television.
Yeah, exactly. So, you know what, tell them that, right? Like, pull out your guitar and start singing and show’em to play guitar. Like the whole point of creating a legacy archive is to tell them things maybe you’re not comfortable saying to their face. Right. Let’s be honest. I mean, I have a pretty good relationship with my children. I think it’s a really good relationship, but I don’t talk to them about everything all the time. This is an opportunity for you to lay something out that they’re gonna see down the road. And again, remember, it’s not just for them, it’s for their kids. And the kids after that. And I also wanna remind you, this is for you, right? Talking about these difficult or easy things, it’s therapeutic in a lot of ways. It helps you communicate to yourself how important these things are. And, it fills your why and it makes this really, really interesting to do. So low level stuff you can just do. The easy questions here. I wish I was a fireman. I wish I would’ve done this. I wish I would’ve done more hobbies. I would’ve played more music. Right. All the cliche stuff. Right? Like, like you could do, like, you know, what do people say when they’re on their deathbed? Right. I wish I would’ve spent more time with my family, or I would’ve been trying more experiences. You can get that stuff out here. Right. And use the specifics to talk about hobbies and mindset. Or go real deep into the deep stuff and you know, cry. That’ll be a theme in all of the steps that you go through here. You know, starting high with the surface level stuff and down to the fucking brutal stuff, right?
Yeah. All right. All right. Let’s go to the next one.