If you’re a millennial dad and your family life at home is not what you want it to be, then you’re gonna wanna pay attention to this. There are universal laws at play that may be causing these issues with your family. These are laws derived from chaos that can take your family life from United and peaceful to divided and chaotic.

As the leader of your home, it’s important for you to be aware of these and to learn how to use them to your advantage.

In this week’s post, we are discussing how to take advantage of a few laws of chaos in order to improve your family life. Whether it’s your marriage in which you and your wife no longer have a deep connection like you used to. Or maybe you’re struggling with your kids. It could also be work that’s affecting you so much so that you’re bringing that stress home and your family is being affected as well. Whatever the case is, understanding these 3 laws of chaos and how they work is gonna dramatically change your life as it did mine.

So the first law I wanna talk about is…

1. Entropy

This law pretty much states that everything that has order is constantly being pulled towards a state of disorder. You can see this in literally everything. For example, our human bodies we start out with life as a baby. Fully functioning, full of energy and life and as we age, our bodies deteriorate. Let’s look at physical objects, like a car. You may buy a brand new car that’s in complete working condition, but over time it’s constantly getting pulled towards Entropy. It’s moving from order to chaos.

So why is this important? Well it’s important because this is a law that affects everything, especially a family. You see, when you first fall in love and get married, there’s all sorts of great happy moments that make you feel like everything is good. But the longer you’re married, the more kids enter into the equation, those euphoric moments of happiness start to go down. And what happens over time is that Entropy starts kicking in. Instead of having order in your family life, things start getting pushed towards disorder, towards chaos.

So if you understand that your family is constantly getting pulled towards a state of chaos, then you have to fight entropy every single day. You have to fight to maintain order and peace in your home. And in order to do that, it requires you to invest time and energy into the relationships that make up your family. That is your wife and kids.

Now, what that looks like from a practical standpoint is stuff that you may already know. Within your marriage, you need some time for just you and the wife. Date nights are always great. If you can do once a week it’s probably the best, and if you can’t do that, then do once a month. Have a lot of intimacy during the week. Make out with her like you would when you were dating. All of this helps fight entropy in your marriage.

With your kids, simply spend quality time with them. Create memorable moments by teaching them something new. Mentor them in a discipline that you’re good at. Maybe it’s sports, martial arts, story telling, games, music, whatever your thing is, devote time and energy into that. This will help you fight entropy in the relationship you have with your kids. Chaos will only enter your home fast when you exert no energy to combat it. You have to fight it every single day if you wanna see improve your family life.

The next law is something called…

2. Initial Conditions

This has to do with the starting value of a variable that affects the evolution of a dynamic system. Kinda like the foundational principles of a group or a company. Let’s look at it in light of a company for a second. Take Apple for example. Initially, Apple was started in a garage. A couple of innovators that had an idea to revolutionize the home computer. They have always operated with that “Think Different” philosophy. They were the first computer company that got rid of the floppy disk. A lot of people were pissed about that, yet these Macs with funky colors and no floppy disk, somehow ended up in my classrooms when I was a kid. They invented the iPhone and iPad, and they got rid of the headphone jack in their phone. Their initial conditions have always showed this company to be innovative and bold to go against the norm.

When you’re looking at something in its current state, it’s important to trace back its initial conditions because chances are that will tell you why it is in the state it is now. So in a family dynamic, if your marriage is hurting and your kids aren’t behaving or you feel a disconnect with them, you gotta trace back the initial conditions that may have caused it. We see this a lot right now in our modern society in which people are doing things the non-traditional way when it comes to forming a family.

Most men and women are living completely promiscuous lives with a lot of sexual partners. Then they finally meet the so called “one” they wanna marry. So they move in together without getting married. They’ll buy a house together, maybe get a dog, then they’ll have kids, and after having kids later down the road they might decide to tie the knot if they’re still together at the end of all that. There’s a sense of commitment that isn’t fully there from both sides from the very beginning because the reason most people do it this way is because they want an Out in case things don’t work out.

Then when things actually don’t work out, you wonder why that is. Trace it back to initial conditions, you build the house on a shaky foundation. On the contrary in a lot of traditional couples that wait to move in together until after they’re married, they get to to experience and learn new things about each other after the wedding. Then the house, then the kids, it’s a different dynamic. The initial conditions are a lot more grounded and sturdy.

Now am I saying this is the case in all relationships, no. Of course there’s always exceptions, but the point is, the foundational principles by which you build your family life are important.

If you formed a family just because you knocked your wife up before you got married, chances are you’ll have to work harder at your marriage if you wanna make it work because you’ve never experienced a marriage without your kids. Your initial conditions didn’t allow for that, so you have to figure out ways to create new conditions for your marriage.

If initially you don’t spend quality time with your kids when they’re young, you eventually become less influential in their lives as they get older. This is why a lot of step fathers with older kids have such a hard time. You were not a part of that kid’s initial conditions and it’s gonna take time and energy for you to form new conditions.

The 3rd law I wanna talk about is…

3. Feedback

Now this is where it all really comes together because without feedback you won’t be able to fight against entropy and you also won’t be able to create new conditions if your initial conditions were bad. So let me show you how this works.

First you have Inputs, which then go through a Process, which then result in an Output. Whenever you produce something in your life, this is what’s happening. Let me give you an example of feedback.

When I was younger I used to rap in a Christian Hip Hop group known as Methodical Elements. We used to perform at different churches and youth centers across California and one of the things we would always have to do when performing at a place was get there early for a sound check. I would have to jump on the mic and test the volume, you know do the whole “mic check, 1, 2” thing. And one thing I hated about soundcheck was the feedback you would get from bringing the mic too close to the monitors. You see, the mic pics up your voice as the input, it then goes through a process that amplifies it, and the output is what you hear from the speakers and monitors.

But if you put that mic too close to the speaker it goes into a feedback loop, in which the output of the speaker gets put back into the mic as the input, it gets amplified again, then comes out the speaker to once again go into the mic. The result is this screeching sound that hurts your ears especially if you’re close to that speaker. I hope this makes sense.

So if we shift this feedback loop concept over to a family dynamic, here’s what this looks like. The input can be a thought like, “I don’t need to kiss my wife every day to show her I love her.” That thought goes through a process in your mind that becomes an output of you not kissing your wife every day.

Now your new input into your marriage is the act of not kissing your wife every day, your wife processes that, the output thought becomes he doesn’t kiss me every day which means he might not love me or find me attractive anymore. That becomes the new input she plugs into the marriage, and you can start to see how this feedback loop turns into something negative over time.

This will create chaos over time, so what you wanna do is watch your inputs. What are the inputs you’re putting into the family, how are those inputs being processed and what is the result? If you’re contributing with inputs that are resulting in a stronger marriage.

That stronger marriage gets plugged in as the input in a feedback loop that results in a stronger family. Stronger family, sets you up with the ability to raise stronger and more capable kids. If you can tap into the right kind of feedback loop, it’ll change your family life for sure.

The reason I wanted to share this with you is because most millennial dads are not aware of these laws. And right now you or someone you know may be going through hell in your own household. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way and you have the power to change it by taking advantage of these 3 laws.

This is gonna sound strange, but take some time to study your family dynamic. Why are there problem between you and your wife? How did you get here? What were your initial conditions? Have you been fighting entropy every day? Is there a bad feedback loop that’s causing issues that you need to stop?

Remember how I talked about the mic example, in which the feedback was unbearable. The only ways to kill that feedback was to shut off the mic, unplug it, turn off the speaker, or move the mic away from the speaker. The point is something had to change to kill that feedback loop.

When I learned this it allowed me to change my family dynamic for the better. It helped me establish a strong, passionate relationship with my wife and it’s helped me become a better father to my children. Now don’t get me wrong, I still make mistakes and I’m far from perfect, but just having this framework of understanding these concepts allows me to lead my family more effectively and check myself when I mess up.

Until next time my fellow alpha dad,
- G. Vidal