358 | Becoming Who You Want to Be, Engaging in the Now, and Tent-Bound Poetry (Aaron McHugh: Part 2)
Episode Description
In the second half of this conversation, Aaron McHugh dives deeper into how to become the dad you want to be with practical, bite-sized steps. Aaron also shares his poem “Tent-Bound,” a beautiful reflection on navigating uncertainty and embracing new horizons.
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Aaron McHugh is a writer, podcaster, adventurer, author, and global leadership coach. He hosts the fast-growing podcast “Work Life Play,” leads Reboot Your Life experiential weekends, and has been married to his wife, Leith, for over 26 years.
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· Take the first step toward becoming the type of person you want to be.
· Would things have been different if someone had told you what your life would hold?
· It’s normal to feel that the end is out of sight—and not like it.
· Engage in the here and now, even though it’s a hard place to be.
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Podcast Intro: [00:00:01] Being a great father takes a massive amount of courage. Instead of being an amazing leader and a decent dad, I want to be an amazing dad and a decent leader. The oldest dad in the world gave you this assignment, which means you must be ready for it. As a dad, I get on my knees and I fight for my kids. Let us be those dads who stop the generational pass down of trauma. I want encounters with God where He teaches me what to do with my kids. I know I'm going to be an awesome dad because I'm gonna give it my all.
Aaron McHugh: [00:00:32] Take the first step. Not the second. Not the third. Start with this step, close in. It's the life that we have, the family that we have, the day that we have, the neighbors that we have, the marriage that we have. The place of engagement that begins is in the now in the here. And here, it turns out, is a hard place to be.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:01:05] Welcome back to DadAwesome. Guys, Happy Thanksgiving. This episode is dropping on Thanksgiving Day. This is episode 358 and it's the second half of my conversation with Aaron McHugh. He leads Work Life Play podcast, blog. He wrote the book Fire Your Boss. And just very grateful for Aaron taking this time with me. I want to quick highlight something that we're launching in January. So at DadAwesome, we've been hosting these six week cohorts called the DadAwesome Accelerator. Only ten dads at a time for six weeks. And we guide this small group through a, we connect over Zoom and then we connect with homework and we connect really daily through some messaging back and forth. But we form a team that dives deep into everything we've learned in seven years at DadAwesome. And we just graduated one group of these guys and Deon had this to say, I'm going to share what Deon recorded because he actually threads together how all six weeks impacted him and the six themes of the DadAwesome Accelerator. So this is just a like a one minute recording, but he packs a lot of his points. So here's Deon talking about the DadAwesome Accelerator.
Deon: [00:02:18] The DadAwesome Accelerator group has been a game changer for me as a father. I can honestly say that every theme in our discussion has had a profound impact on how I will approach fatherhood moving forward, and I will share that and influence my son's growth and journey and experiences for years to come. Reflecting on my story, opened my eyes to how my journey fits into God's bigger plan while embracing my identity as God's son has given me a renewed sense of peace and confidence. Intentionality has pushed me to create lasting memories with my family, one's that I've never dreamed of before. While freedom has helped me to release past burdens that weighed me down. Wonder has reignited the Aw I feel in being a husband and a father and leadership has equipped me to guide not only myself, but my family and my community with a stronger faith. Each part of this process has brought me closer to living out God's purpose for my role as a father. I'm eternally grateful and blessed to have shared this experience with others.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:03:17] Grateful for Deon's just perspective on how he was impacted each of those six weeks. And guys, if you're interested in learning more about the January co-hort of the DadAwesome Accelerator, simply email awesome@dadawesome.org and we will automatically shoot you an email back with all the information and the application link to prayerfully apply. So let's jump in, we're going to jump right back into the second half with Aaron McHugh. And this actually he launches in with a story about a dad that he was encouraging with a practical challenge. So here's Aaron McHugh.
Aaron McHugh: [00:04:06] I remember a younger guy contacting me and he was telling me about how he doesn't have a lot of play in his life. Hey, I don't have a lot of play, a lot of work, a lot of duty, a lot of this, a lot of that. And he told me where he lived. So he lives about a mile and a half in, from the beach, the Pacific Ocean. I said, all right, I've got, I've got an assignment cause he's asking me all these tactical questions. How do I incorporate play into my life? I said, All right, I got an assignment for you, an invitation and please call me once you've completed the assignment. Let's get together again. So I said for the next month, I want you to drive to the beach, and I want you to sit there for ten minutes.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:04:48] Every day.
Aaron McHugh: [00:04:49] Every day. And I don't care what you do. If you're there longer, great. If it's raining, bring a jacket. And call me, call me after a month. Now, that was a tough assignment for this guy. I've not heard from him yet.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:05:13] He hasn't called you? No.
Aaron McHugh: [00:05:14] Doesn't mean, he might, he might hear this and choose to complete it.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:05:19] That's it. I'm sure he will. I'm sure he'll hear this.
Aaron McHugh: [00:05:21] Or maybe he did complete it and it wasn't necessary. But the key was what I shared with him is, I said, become the kind of person who can enjoy going to the beach. He told the story about, you know, my daughter and I, and she loves going to the beach and she just wants me to take her there and just throw the Frisbee. And he's like, But I can't ever find time and I'm a big deal, and you don't understand how stressed and worried I am and how much the world requires for me. I'm like, yeah, I get all that too. But let's just start. Do you have ten minutes a day? He's like, Well, I could find ten minutes. I'm like, Well, let's just start with becoming the kind of person who can sit there at the beach and then let's carry on the conversation.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:06:07] My heart just jumped to the first month that I lived here. I did go to sunrise every single day for a month, rain or shine.
Aaron McHugh: [00:06:16] Nice.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:06:16] And no one challenged me. It was like this gift that I couldn't wait to open, right. But then once I, once I actually get a streak going, I like to finish the streak. So that helps. But let's do a little playful hypothetical assignments around play and around become the kind of dad that will. So I'll throw it out, you throw one out. So the beach, the 30 days at the beach or some beautiful nature place would be an example. Let's see, oh, I just read before this I did get on the floor and wrestled three of my four daughters. I canit, can't really fend off all four right now. Like three of the four, tickle wrestle full on, you know, over five minutes of wrestling and a very few tears, for the most part, it was all joy. But a tickle challenge would be an example of like, Hey, get on the floor and wrestle and tickle your kids, right. There's an example of a play type challenge or assignment. You use the word assignment, throw out another example.
Aaron McHugh: [00:07:13] One that I really like is ride your bike or walk to wherever the thing is. Ride your bike to get coffee with a friend, you know, a daughter, a kid. We did a, we did a hike to a friend's house for dinner once where we phone'd him up, well he lived two towns away, up over a mountain pass. And so he said, okay, it's so-and-so's birthday, let's invite the teenager who kind of wants to do something with the uncles. Let's phone up our friend John. Hey, John, we're coming for dinner. Can we come on whatever day? Yeah, no problem. Great. Well we're coming over the pass, be looking for us with headlamps. It was amazing. So you can do the bite sized version of hop on a skateboard or a bike. Or it can be the maybe more ambitious.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:08:13] Yeah. Yeah. And we could go on and on, but there's a few for you and you already shared the one about on your way to work, do something unexpected and then don't wash your hands and head in. I mean, there's, there's so many of these kind of playful and I do appreciate and I'm going to send our listeners to, to your book and to your podcast archive of just like this is like this is how we're meant to live. A truly not with these borders of, of this is segmented and this is segmented and I have to get through in the narrative that you opened up the first question, the first response was like, I tell myself this narrative, then it doesn't help me bring joy into the present. So let's go here, though, Craig McConnell, you've written about him. I know he's made a big impact. I actually don't know how long ago it was he passed, but I'd love for you to reflect on Craig McConnell and any things you learned that would be helpful to us dads from from his life.
Aaron McHugh: [00:09:10] I want to say August, August is the anniversary of his passing. And I think he's maybe gone six years now. I could be off a year or two, so it could be five. He was a foundational founder, I guess, contributor to the original team at Ransomed Heart. John Eldridge, Craig, Bart Hansen, Gary Barkalow, Morgan Snyder, those are kind of the original O.G. guys. I'm sure there were some others, but they were the anchors that began that all in, I guess early 2000s. So Craig was a pastor in Orange County or in L.A. County, actually, Redondo Beach area, and subsequently gotten to know his family much better. And his son in law spent time with, great dude. So Craig was this guy who just had a lot of levity about him. And he had like a professional comedian set of sticks, you know. Just whatever you were talking about, he found a way to make it hilarious where you would cry from, from laughing. Well, you also had this way about he could be just dead serious about, with vulnerability around things that matter. So I remember going to him at a men's retreat that we had and asked him about being a dad. And what if I realized that I've screwed up my kids and I didn't mean to and I didn't know I was doing it? But now it's clear to me, I have and I am. And he was, and I was like just sobbing, you know, tears rolling off my face. And he's like, Yeah. This is good. He was like just kind of older brother like in the moment. He wasn't too worked up about it and he was like, Yeah, me too. And one of his pieces of advice was, well, what you can do is start being the dad you wish you were then, now. Start being that guy today. And he kind of went on to tell us a couple of stories about some restoration that would happen, had happened in his relationships with his kids. So that's one. And then the quote that you reference, specifically, probably from the writing was you have this great way about, again, keeping it light. Of he's like, you know, there's a real grace in life. Like well, great, what is it? Tell me, Craig. Well, we'll never know the fullness of our glory. And we'll never fully appreciate how much a pain in the ass we are.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:12:02] Both sides. Both sides.
Aaron McHugh: [00:12:03] Like two truths. You will never have full clarity on either of these truths. And they're both true. I was like, okay, I think you're right. That is a grace.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:12:18] This poem that we've been referencing. I've never, in seven years of this podcast asked an author, a poet, I'm not sure what you call someone who writes poems. A poet right? To read a, a poem. And I don't know if you even have it pulled off right now, but the, you wrote it. You'll have tell us how long ago, Tent Bound, a poem about midlife and new horizons. And a lot of my questions have actually, I had one set a direction for this and then I discovered this poem. And so I've threaded most of my questions have come from this poem and I've been texting it to friends all morning. So I like to, I kind of like to binge some of my preparation for this podcast. And so, so many friends have been impacted already. And instead of reading the whole post, just the poem part and we'll send guys, we'll make them go read the reflection portion. But would you be willing to read Tent Bound for us?
Aaron McHugh: [00:13:10] Yeah, yeah. Let me, by way of just intro, I would like to tell just a little bit of a just a back story. Where this came from is I was on an adventure trip with some buddies. I spent a lot of time in back country environments. And our favorite is when we're off trail. So hop a pass, drop over into a valley, climb another pass and, you know, some miles later, call it home. And what was really special about this trip was we had a big ambition, but the weather came in and we were tent bound. And it turned out it was a rhythm of every day. So we had like a 5, 6 day window and we were 2 or 3 days in in this rhythm of tent bound by about 1:00 in the afternoon, predominantly until the next day. It was a lot of time in the tent. And so we would like occasionally come out when the sprinkles would stop or we'd grab a fly rod and go catch a few on this beaver pond we were near. But they were small excursions, so a lot of time alone in solitude. So I ended up reading a couple of books on my phone, just kind of like Kindle, listening to some music, sometimes just staring at the ceiling. I had been marinating in a couple of poems through the summer and a couple songs that you can read about referenced in the the post itself. And so this one line just really stuck with me, from this author, David White. And the line is, no one told me it would come to this. No one told me it would come to this. And all summer I had been filling in the next lines. No one told me it would come to What? Like this, the ones in the tens. And so I kind of just started, like, living my life in the rearview mirror, articulating to myself, why is this line so powerful to me? And I realized that a lot of it was some version of, would things have been different if someone would have told me? Would I make different choices? Would I have listened to them? Would I've even listened if they said, okay, sit down, I've got a projector for you. We're going to thumb through the thumbnails of all these ones in tens. And the challenge is this is your life. Go forth and live it. I would have hated that. But there's something that was troubling to me recurrently around this question of, gosh, but I didn't know. I didn't know. So for me, this being in the tent, wrestling with this question, then I decided to just start penning it and I'll show you here, I've got these little field notes. I have, you know, volumes of them. I like this National Park series. So I had torn out a couple of pages, brought on the trip and just started penning these down. So what came out is this poem that then got revised over time, but this is the final version. So Tent Bounds, A Poem About Midlife and New Horizons. Tent Bound. No one told me it would come to this. No one told me it would come to this. Tent-bound with a full life of songs and heartbreak. Just outside the zipper door, thunder's convincing accusation: Am I beyond the reach of love? Am I beyond the reach of love? I've been lost for a while, tip toeing in someone else's boots. The trail undefined, the end remaining out of sight, knowing only. Knowing only from here to there. Cresting midlifes great divides, an inventory I take. The path. The path that led to here, a dress rehearsal, a preamble. Only now. Only now am I equipped for the liminal edges of this frontier. Adjusting my bearing, dressed in alpine glow, the new horizon awaits my arrival. A new horizon awaits my arrival, calling down sweet reverence to be the lamp and to my feet. When will I know the weight of my own glory? Tent Bound.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:18:24] Aaron, I am going to encourage the dads listening to just rewind and do a slow listen, a second pass, because you can, I, I truly could spend a day zipped up in a tent with bad weather and just this, this poem and the you know, it's about a five minute read of your reflect. You kind of unpack it in this post that will link out to the dads. I want to end with just asking you with that as a backdrop and hope this idea of a horizon like I've been, it's like there's a hopeful future for every dad listening right now. I'd love to just invite you to speak life, courage, risk. Speak into me and the dads as just kind of any closing remarks to this conversation we've had today. And then say a short prayer over us, Dads.
Aaron McHugh: [00:19:17] Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah, I think what's coming up for me is that it's normal to feel that the end is out of sight. And only being able to see from where you stand to just around the next corner or the next step. I don't meet many guys who love that. Most of us are engaged in our life in such a way that in the roles that we play and the space we occupy and our families and work and communities is somehow some way we have this compulsion to need to know. I have it to. And what I find is, I would encourage each of you, another David White poem line that he has from another poem. He says, start with, take the first step not the second. Not the third. Start with this step, close in. Start with this step close in. And he says that the pale ground beneath your feet, which is, is from where we stand. It's the place that we inhabit. The life that we have, the family that we have, the day that we have, the neighbors that we have, the marriage that we have. The place of engagement, it begins, is in the now, in the here. And the here, it turns out, is a hard place to be. And I'm, I'm cultivating and encourage you how possible and hopeful it is to cultivate the practice of being here, to being here now. And recognizing that the life of God in us and the more of us that belongs to the more of God, then the more of being here becomes possible.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:21:50] Thank you, Aaron. Now, would you say a short prayer over all of us Dads?
Aaron McHugh: [00:21:55] Let me read you one. So Eugene Peterson's we talked about. He is absolutely one of my favorites. And the message translation is one of the places I play the most. So he writes in Proverbs, so Proverbs 3. I love this rendition. So, 3:17. All right. So as a, as a prayer for you fellow companions, right, another journeyman. Trust God from the bottom of your heart. Don't try to figure out everything on your own. Don't try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God's voice in everything you do. Everywhere you go, He's the one who will keep you on track. He's the one who keep you on track. Bless you, my friends.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:23:15] Thank you so much for joining us for episode 358, the second half of my conversation with Aaron McHugh. If you want these show notes, the link to his website, this poem, also the link to that blog post, itincludes a lot more than just the poem. It includes him kind of unpacking what was behind each line and how really over the last year it's been built out in his life. So I highly recommend you take a read through that. It's only a five minute read, but it's so valuable. And then would just recommend his podcast, his book, other resources, and really anything that Aaron touches want to send you guys that direction. So go to dadawesome.org/podcast for that information. Again, it's Thanksgiving Day when this episode drops and just want to encourage you guys, let's press in in the area of gratitude this weekend with our, with our kids. There's so many, there's so many practical ways to, to share things you're grateful for, share ways you've seen God move, share miracles that you've been a part of and encourage and draw out, what are your kids thankful for? So just a practical like moment here on Thanksgiving weekend to a press into what we pray is part of our culture values of, of all of our families, deep gratitude. So guys thank you for being DadAwesome. Have a great week.
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Tent-Bound
No one told me it would come to this—
Tent-bound with a full life of songs and heartbreak.
Just outside the zipper door,
thunder’s convincing accusation:
Am I beyond the reach of love?I’ve been lost for a while,
tiptoeing in someone else’s boots.
The trail undefined,
the end remaining out of sight,
knowing only from here to there.Cresting midlife’s great divide,
an inventory I take.
The path that led to here—
a dress rehearsal,
a preamble—
only now am I equipped for the
liminal edges of this frontier.Adjusting my bearing,
dressed in alpenglow,
the new horizon
awaits my arrival,
calling down sweet reverence
to be the lamp unto my feet.
When will I know the weight of my glory?
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