Summer Road Trip Fails

Nothing tests your ability to be your best or bring out the best in others in my opinion more than a family road trip.

What are the top 3 tests? How about the best way to pack the car, who sits in the back of the minivan versus who sits in the middle, and how much time everyone is given on their devices during the drive? What do you say?

What are ways to make family road trips succeed more and fail less in bringing out our best as well as the best in others? What works for you? One idea that comes to mind is tone. It’s something I fail at regularly and here’s a few things I have learned in my failures:

1. when you fail to use the right tone. it’s surprising how open others are to your requests to ‘start over’ and get the tone right.
2. Your success lies more in ‘how’ you say something more than ‘what’ you say. This makes me think about times when my kids asked me the same thing in two different tones of voice and how I reacted in two different ways. Why?

In terms of our tone, let’s sustain an endless summer of successes….