The 2-Minute Habit That Changes How You Walk Into Your House #694

You walk in the door. Your body's home, but your head is still at work, the invoices, the tough conversation, the subby who didn't show up. Your wife and kids can feel it, even if nothing's been said.

In this episode, I break down why home feels tense after work, even when nothing's actually wrong, and the simple framework I use to make sure that when I walk through the door, I'm actually there.

You'll learn:
- Why your family can tell when you're mentally still at work
- The "Driveway Reset" — a 2-minute process to change your state before you walk inside
- The 3 questions to ask yourself before you get out of the car
- Why leaving work stress at work isn't selfish, it's necessary
- How the first 15 minutes home sets the tone for your whole evening

This one's especially for trade business owners running a $500K–$2M business who've built something incredible but feel like it's costing them the life it was supposed to create. You don't have to choose between the business and being present at home. This framework helps you have both.

Start this Free Life Performance Scorecard (under 4 minutes) → https://scorecard.lachlanstuart.com.au/

Transcript

The Real Reason Home Feels Off

Lachlan Stuart 0:00

This is why home feels tense after work. And before you jump to the conclusion that it's oh because your wife's angry or the kids are racing around just being chaotic, it's not always because of that. And I want to give you over the next 10 minutes a little bit of a map on how you can make sure that every time you roll home, home feels like the place you really want to be. And more importantly, it's a place where you actually are. We think about it like this: many of us blokes, we go home from work, we walk in the door, and our physical body's there. We're rolling in there, our parents, our wife sees us, our kids see us, but mentally we're thinking about the invoices that need to be sent out, the work that needs to be done tomorrow, the conflict that was happening during the day, the subbies that didn't show up. And our wife can pick up on that, right? They know that we're distracted, they know that we're not being present. And quite often they would much rather just have us not there, getting in the way, than being there. And so, how do we change that, right? How do we go through a point where we're able to deal with all the things that we deal with at work? Because that's not going anywhere. All of the dramas and challenges that we have, they're going to keep happening. But how do we get ourselves to a point where when we walk through the door, we're switched on, we're there. And our wife and our kids know that. Our wife knows we're not distracted, she knows we're here to help. Our kids get so excited because they're like, Daddy, Daddy's home. And you're able to be there in that moment, not thinking about the invoices. If you're

Pressure Of Business Spills Home

Lachlan Stuart 1:32

tuning into this YouTube for the first time, uh, you're probably thinking, well, this guy wears the same thing because this is literally what I was wearing in my last video, and I just realized this. Now, look, let's just call it I have a uniform, even though I don't, I'm just wearing the same bloody shirt, but I have the uniform. But in this video, and what I focus on is I focus on helping trade business owners earn who are earning anywhere between half a million bucks to two million bucks, be able to get their life that their business was supposed to create. Because when we're dealing with the pressures of business, and I know this far too well, it can consume us and it can actually cost us all the things and the reasons why we were doing it. So I want to make sure that I give you a quick map and framework that you can use today that is going to allow you to walk through the door after a hectic day, and your wife knows you're there, your kids know you're there, and mentally you know you're there as well. You're not off thinking about other challenges. So, what

The Transition Period Before Home

Lachlan Stuart 2:26

happens? The key for all of us is understanding that there's a transition period, right? When we leave work, we go, we have this time in the U where we're cruising, we might be listening to a podcast, we might be on the phone, or we might just have absolute silence. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've done the absolute silence just to calm my mind. But then we pull up in the driveway. And many of us then just go straight inside without washing the day off. You wouldn't just, you know, let's think about this. You're doing a handover for a house and you've been in another job site, you're a bit dusty, you're a bit dirty. You don't just walk into the handover without cleaning yourself off first because you don't want to put crap around someone's new house. The same goes for when you're walking into your own house, and whether it's dust or it's just mental crap, we want to clean that off. And so that transition period becomes very important. And it's something I like to call the driveway reset. And I'm building a tool out now, and I'll do another video, I'm sure, at some point on this, because it's such a common challenge for most of us blokes. But the driveway reset is essentially you want to give yourself two minutes in the driveway to go through a little process that's going to change your state. And what I mean by state is like change your mood so that when you walk through the door, you're present, as opposed to walking through the door and thinking about all the other things that aren't your family. Because they know, just like you know, they know as well. And every time we are in front of someone, we're telling them or showing them what we believe is important. And if you're hanging around your kids, if you're with your wife and you're laying in bed at night, and instead of engaging and having a conversation, you're thinking about what are the tough conversations I have to have tomorrow. This person has an outstanding bill. She knows that. And she knows you're not there. And what do you think that will do to your marriage? Is it going to make it stronger? Or is it going to put a wedge between it and make you guys grow apart? I think it's going to be the latter. The same with the kids. They know, like if you're sitting there on your phone, they're wanting to kick the footy. Like my young kid, he's four months, so there's no kicking of the footy. But I am very adamant that I'm not on my phone when I'm walking him in the park and I'm pulling his what do you call it on the pram, the hood of the pram, so he can see the trees and he just lights up. And I do notice myself from time to time I'm on my phone and he sees that. What do you think I'm telling him? I'm telling him, dude, you're not as important as this text message. And I don't want him to think that because I know that will influence the relationship that we have in the future. So we need to be mindful of how we're showing up in the house. So think about it like

The Driveway Reset Method

Lachlan Stuart 4:58

this. And the driveway reset goes something like this. You're just going to sit in your U, right? Turn it off, sit in there for two minutes max, right? Going to do three slow breaths. Sorry, I got a truck going past. Makes me want to breathe. So three slow breaths. You can just breathe in through the nose as long as you can. Don't worry about timing stuff, just and then out through the mouth. And then in through the nose, and out through the mouth. And the third one, in through the nose, out through the mouth. That's what we're going to do. Look, that took us what? Depending on how fit you are and how good your breathing is, it might take you 20 seconds max. That's point two. But step three, we want to run through some questions. And I'm going to have a checklist for this that you can use these questions as a prompt in the beginning, but eventually you should start to remember them if you do it regularly. The first one is going to be what do I need to leave behind at work? And this is another step that we have in my coaching program where we help you work out what the shutdown process is at process is at work so that you can shut down and leave things there so that when you're going home, you already know you've done that. What do I need to leave at work? It could be, hey, I need to leave at work the conflict that I had today or the tough conversation I had with a subby today who didn't show up and now it's put my whole job flow behind. I need to make sure that I leave that at home because that's not my kids' problem. That's not my wife's problem. They don't care. They care about me, but they don't care about the problems that I'm bringing into the home. So that might be the thing that I need to leave at home. And then we can go through a process on how we leave that at home. And we do that more in the shutdown process rather than this. The second question you want to ask yourself is who am I walking into? We want to prime ourselves to remind yourself what you've got at home. You've got for me, I walk in the door to my beautiful wife, and we've been married for nearly five years. We've been together for over 12, right? And I know she's probably had a wild day looking after the young fella and also working. So I want to make sure that I remind myself that I'm walking into someone who's sacrificed so much and is looking after our kid while I'm out working. And she's also carrying her own career. That's incredible. The second is my young son, Freddie. He's four months old. He's the best little dude on the planet. And I know he's so pumped to see me. So I want to remind myself, even just talking about that now, I'm getting pumped and I feel good, right? Starts changing me from work mode, like all the shit that's going on there, to these are the people I'm about to go see. I'm so excited for that. And the third question we want to ask ourselves is what version of them, of me, do they deserve? For me, I want them to be the fun, playful, caring one, the one who knows I'm there and they're the only thing on my mind. And so when I think about that, I start going, well, how do I want to walk through the door? I want to walk through with a big smile on my face. I want to bring some energy. I want to run straight to my wife, give her a kiss on the cheek, and thank her for looking after Freddie for the day. I then want to go over to Freddie and she'd be like, What's up, little man? Like, and spend some time with him and see if my wife needs a quick breather. She might need a bit of downtime as well because she hasn't had that opportunity for the day. So

The First 15 Minutes

Lachlan Stuart 8:01

they're the three questions because a third step on this, which is a separate video, is the first 15. The first 15 is that first 15 minutes really sets the tone for how the afternoon's gonna go. And if you want to have an afternoon where your family is so grateful, you're home, they know that you're there for them, and the energy is great, and you're just gonna have a good time, you really need to maximize that first 15 minutes. I will do another video on that very soon. I've got so much more content coming out for you guys that it's gonna give you a map. I don't want to tell you how necessarily you should do things. I'll share stories of clients who are what's working for them, but also what's working for me on this framework. But I want to give you the flexibility. But with this framework, this map essentially, it's going to help you go from the guy who's built the incredible business, you have the money, but it's cost you the life that you thought it would build, it would create for you, right? Where you have a great family, we have adventures, we have good health, and we want to get you back into that because you don't need to sacrifice your business. I'm not telling you that you need to do that. We want you to have that while having all the things that you know it can create for yourself.

Subscribe For More Tools

Lachlan Stuart 9:09

So if you're enjoying this and if you want to follow more, make sure you just hit subscribe. I got nothing to sell you at the moment. I just want to give you tools and information. Eventually, I'm gonna start putting worksheets that you can just take for free and you can start implementing this for yourself.