Eyres On The Road

Today the Eyres make a strong appeal for a more inclusive definition of "FAMILY" and suggest that blood really is thicker than water. Conscious, diligent effort to stay connected with parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles and even ancestors is important and always pays off. Family is not just parents and kids: we are ALL part of a family. The Eyres give four specific suggestions on how to connect and synergize.

The Eyres continue their 3-letter lesson series with the concept of "easy" and the question of whether we should think of our lives as hard or easy and how we can move from one toward the other. For Easter week, Richard and Linda have focused on Matt. 11:30 where Christ says "My yoke is easy" and they examine both spiritual and secular approaches to simplifying, prioritizing, and "sharpening our saws."

How can parents and grandparents work together in a synergistic way for the good of the children? How can we keep ourselves connected with good parenting and grandparenting ideas? The Eyres discuss these questions and point us toward their website EyresFreeBooks.com where many of their books are instantly available for free and where there are discount links for their latest books.

In this episode, Linda and Richard talk about the three books they are currently working on, and reflect on how the role of books has changed in today's world, and been replaced in many ways by podcasts and audible. They mention the new hit podcast of their four daughters and encourage us all to pay closer attention to what we listen to, what we read, and what we write.

Today the Eyres are at Indian Wells at a tennis tournament and talk about how Linda adopted Richard's love for tennis. The discussion expands to how Richard developed a love for Linda's profession of classical music, and then broadens to the concept of making the interests of those you love into your own interests and learning from each other even as we expand our own horizons.

Richard is flying solo from Phoenix this week on Eyres on the Road while Linda is traveling with her sisters-in-law, so Richard is taking the opportunity to explore some recent public polling data that shows that the individual rather than the family has become the basic unit of American thought and culture and that good jobs and income are thought to be more relevant to well-being than being married or having children. What can be done?

Today, Richard and Linda turn their discussion to the most important topic of all--love. And they explore the word as a verb and suggest starting the day with the question of "how or who can I love more today." They ponder two phrases from the Second Great Commandment: "like unto it" and "as thyself," and suggest that simply thinking more about love as a verb can change every day of our lives.

In this episode, the Eyres explore Richard's new article in Meridian Magazine (latterdaysaintmag.com) called Paradigm Shifts on the Road to Exaltation, and discuss how important it is to see religion and faith institutions as support mechanisms for our relationships and human connections--as the means to the end of loving each other in ways that bring us joy, particularly in our families.

On today's episode, Linda and Richard talk about one of their websites called eyresfreebooks.com where about half of their 60 published books can be found, and read, for free. Once the copyrights and publishing rights revert back to the Eyres from the publisher, they make it free and put it up on this website and today on the podcast they discuss their motives for doing this.

As the Eyres move into their 14th season (there have now been over 600 podcast episodes) they return to their series on Three-Letter Lessons. KFB represents KNOW, FEEL, and BELIEVE and the discussion is about how these three concepts work together and co-exist under the umbrella of Faith. Richard and Linda's objective today is to get us all to think more about all three.

Today's episode is essentially a tribute to books, and Richard and Linda talk about their lifetime love affair with books, quoting Ben Franklin who advocated that a person should always carry two books, the one he is reading and the one he is writing. The Eyres get a little personal and tell about the books they are working on right now.

It's a big subject, but the Eyres zoom in this episode on how parents and grandparents talk (and don't talk) about the financial aspects and lessons of life with children; and about what family systems can be put in place to help kids of all ages become financially responsible and avoid the Entitlement Trap. It's important to think it through and have a plan within your family!

PROPINQUITY means "the state of being intimate and close to someone--as in close family kinship," and in this episode the Eyres discuss how we can build more propinquity into our 3-generation families through parents and grandparents working in synergy and even symbiotically together as managers and consultants with the common goal of the well being of the children.

This first podcast of Season 14 begins the new year with some ideas on forming effective and happy 3-generation families, and working in teamwork as parents and grandparents for the best benefit of our children. Also announced is the MasterClass the Eyres will teach in January, details at GrandparentsAcademy.com.

This episode concludes Season 13 of Eyres on the Road, and next week begins the podcast's 14th year, so the Eyres focus today on how we can all better-set our resolutions for 2024; and mention three alternative frameworks for setting effective goals for the year ahead, and for working with children of various ages on setting their own goals and hopes and resolutions for the New Year.

Santa or Jesus, commercial or spiritual, peaceful or spiritual, peaceful or frantic, getting or giving, hard-times or joy, closer or more distant to Christ. The dilemmas and conundrums of Christmas are many, and they are different for each of us. In this episode, Richard and Linda give some thought-solutions that may help us all to solve the dilemmas and cure the conundrums.

Today Linda and Richard talk about some of the Christmas traditions, rituals, and ideas that have worked for their family over the years. These range from trivial ideas like hanging the Christmas tree from the ceiling so kids can't push it over to big ideas like how to escape Santa and commercialism on Christmas Eve by focusing entirely on Christ and on giving by staging an imaginative "Jerusalem Supper."

The Eyres share some recent tough times including several deaths within their immediate families and close circle of friends, and discuss the learning and perspective that can come with grief. This rolls into the word "align" (ALN) and some thoughts on how we can more deliberately align our goals with our reality, our character with our ideals, and our will with the will of God.

The Eyres are casting from the Yucatan today, and thinking about how we can make our children and grandchildren more empathetic, more aware, and more truly "citizens of the world." In the second half of the show, Richard and Linda shift to a more personal vein and talk about recent tragedies; and discuss how thinking and talking more openly about death can produce genuine interpersonal and family benefits.

This episode (despite the fact that Richard has almost lost his voice from the Thanksgiving revelry) is about Thanksgiving and Christmas family traditions and how these rituals are more than fun little habits--they are the glue that holds families together, and observing them and making a big deal of them is important. And its not a bad idea to modify and create new traditions that teach the values we want our kids to have.