Be The Man And Dad You Want To Be This Christmas & New Year

00:00 Being a man and dad at Christmas, making it the time that you want it to be. That your family brought it to be. That you thought about Christmas being when you were a kid bringing into life now. It can and should be the thing that all men do for themselves and their family let's go Welcome to The Jonnie Jensen Show, where modern dads discover how to create the true riches relationships and results they deserve. Get your High Value Man blueprint and join our community at highvaluemanproject.com Let's go!

00:40 Hello men, good to have you back here. A Christmas message for you all which terribly time stamps a podcast if you're listening to this and thinking oh it's not Christmas anymore then keep listening because this isn't just about Christmas we are a community program for modern motivated dads Men who are creating the lives that they desire rather than the one they feel stuck in. Success and home at work because success without happiness really isn't a result that any of us are striving for, and that's what we do here inside The High Value Man Project. That's why I bring you here inside this episode, this show, This Jonnie Jensen Show podcast

01:20 If you're listening for the first time, it's great to have you here. And if you've...if your a return listener which there are many of you please be sure to subscribe and I need more reviews basically go to Apple Podcasts on your mobile hit the little three dots and leave a review on Spotify pretty similar hit the three dots leave review dead easy! And it helps promote the show basically It's Christmas. I am recording this, it is about to be about six o'clock on Christmas Eve. Has it been important? Yeah, it's been important in our family. Is it special? Yeah, it is special because we choose to make it special! I have had the pleasure of lots of good Christmases and lots of time spent with family and as I shared on the single dad special a couple of weeks ago some curious unexpectedly...

02:18 They had the potential to be poor Christmases, but they turned out to be fun. And I've just been to my daughter's nativity play at the church youth group she goes to and my ex-wife was there naturally so here we are October 5th 2015 is when we broke up and this year it's Christmas 2025 So 10 years since that breakup I remember Christmas 2015 The Jonnie Jensen Show,

02:59 It doesn't get much worse than this. But the good perspective on that is that the only way is up, baby and that really should always be the message wherever you're up to there should always be a could we make it even better next year? Like what would it take to go 1% better or even 10% better and then the reality of not always being perfect I'm going to make sure that next year is the one. And, uh, I guess that's kind of what my message is for you all today and I know I'm not sure that I did the intro that much justice. I just came upstairs to fire off an email from a friend who was in the UK at the time. And she sent me this email saying, Hey, I've got some great ideas for Christmas.

03:51 I've had the privilege, the blessing, the good fortune of growing up in a family Where fun and love and laughter was, was an integral part of everything that we showed up for. My mum sadly died when I was nine but you know those Christmases before she passed it my memories of it It has to be big! It has to be full of family and friends and laughter and joy And thats why I remember it

04:42 Always a lot of people around the table and then people showing up, people arriving at the door. You know like friends of my folks literally turning up at various points during Christmas Day ringing the bell coming in you know lot of noise and energy and good times good times so to the degree that I've been able to carry that on I remember the first Christmas that my now ex-wife and I were together. We were at my aunt's who became my mum figure, and she said at the end of the day, that s the best Christmas I ve ever had!

05:22 And I was like, oh well. Good! Pleased! Glad but we didn't do much did we? She said well Christmases for me have normally been about rows and upset and tears and disagreements you know like some days of our lives EastEnders Christmas special I'm Consider that's on you at some point. Like if you're talking about the relationship or you're talking about how Christmas is going to pan out, are you talking about it not being the way you want it to be? Maybe you're not seeing the people you want to see, or it's not the way you want it to be, or your... Or it's not gonna be as much fun. To some degree, you let that happen. You created that.

06:34 Now, if the relationship is out of whack and there's stress and strain in the relationship it will go back as far as you can see. Like where did you stop leading in your relationship? Where did you stop showing up not like The Man but stop showing up as the charismatic force in your relationship that is the space for Welcome I've just finished reading, re-reading Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It's about creating these win-win situations where as a team, as a partnership, as a marriage

07:35 You're able to look at what would it be like for you to have your ideal Christmas? Okay, great. This is what I would like to do for it to be my own ideal Christmas. Like where can we create something not compromised to the nth degree so you both get a shit version of what you actually wanted but what would it look like to mesh that together to create a super version of it Welcome back to the Jonnie Jensen Show.

08:27 Either don't have him over or if he is coming you say to him, listen mate if you're coming you need to be like this. Or you need to not do that otherwise off! That's how you show up Right, and for your kids Christmas for me was always special. You know Father Christmas stockings presents by the tree running down the morning was always like a crazy o'clock time um and I think back to my kids being little and you kind of have to put some we'll all remember those times when they're like what time is it? What time is it? It's 3 45! Like no

09:08 I'm not sure what a Christmas, AKA Santa has even been yet. Um, just go back to bed it's got to be at least five and but then the idea that you can't get up at five for your kids like Christmas! The idea that five is too early and you're going to send them back to bed for now. Sure. I remember those times as a kid myself sitting there waiting till she haven't gone back to bed. You sit in there with your brother and be like, can we? Can we? But It's on us, on us as the man to bring that magic. To generate it for our kids to put the Christmas cheer into Christmas and even when they get older you know Christmas is always better with Santa. Christmas is always better with Father Christmas so whatever age your kids are like have that spirit of Christmas be there

10:02 The degree of surprise, the degree of joy. Breakfast coffee in the morning cup of tea whatever it looks like presents and you know one of those things we all my mom and her family always had you open a present at a time now this twists some people's heads off The idea that you have to sit and wait for each person to open their present. Bizarre for anyone that's not done it, but equally I find it incredibly weird. We won't say who, but you know the presents were piled. Each person's presents were piled up in front of them. Of course you do Father Christmas in the morning and then you do family presents later on in the day again that makes sense to me because if you do it all in the morning then what else have you got left to celebrate during the day? But yeah so going back to the family thing put a pile of presents in front of everybody right

10:58 And then say, right. Is that it? Is the tree empty? Yeah, it's empty go! And everyone just like tears their presence open you can't see... It's bedlam there's paper flying everywhere they're like oh look what I got no one cares what you've got because they're focused on unwrapping their presence There is no joy There's no magic in the giving, like who gave you that? Oh this is from so and so. Oh that's nice oh good okay let me get another one out from the tree and pass it on okay give this to your grandma its this is from you to your grandma oh nice one okay I'm not telling you how you have to run your Christmas right but if your experience of Christmas Day or they in fact the whole Christmas thing from Christmas Eve...I know you don't do Boxing day in America but

11:47 You know, you have that at Thanksgiving. That whole weekend thing... If the experience for Christmas for you doesn't have enough joy and laughter in it put it in! Look at ways you can bring that to life And make it special, you know so that your kids grow up with that experience of family. There's a family value being instilled there. There's the value of giving. There's the value of gratitude. There's the value of celebrating like each other or celebrating our faiths. You know doesn't matter which faith you are but you know it doesn't even matter if it's not your date of the year when your faith celebrates like literally hallelujah praise

12:30 Praise to God, praise to Jesus. Praise to whoever you believe in right? So much rigidity around what you can do on what day and what we're here for and I get if you're fully Christian this is a very important time of year but the message i would like to think of all faiths and certainly of Christianity is about family, it's about looking out for each other, it is about forgiveness, it is about bringing the joy Looking out for your neighbours, making a stand for things that you believe in. Being a role model making the difference for the people in your life Christmas is about love and laughter so if there's people in your life that you've got a strained relationship with consider what it would look like for yourself let alone them to build those bridges what would it take over this Christmas period to make that call? To let them know

13:33 I don't know that you're sorry or that you miss them, or that you are going to make sure you see them more often next year. Like an old friend someone you fell out with life's short what does it take to make a friend these days? And yet you may well have old friends that you've allowed to fall out of touch with put the effort in bring that energy be the kind of person that is always interested The Jonnie Jensen Show, Jonnie Jensen Show,

14:23 I'm going to be able to rise up above the problems. I'm going to bring the joy, celebrate and be grateful for what we've got. We will talk more next week about planning and vision and setting goals for 2026. The internet is full right now of make some goals, set some plans! But let's do that in a couple of days time. Let's do that before the new year or over the new year, The thing to do right now is be grateful for 2025. To take a moment whether it's tonight whether it's at some point over the next few days but to take a peaceful moment with yourself whether you go for a walk with your sit down with a beer and have a look everything good that happened in 2025 have a look that everything went right

15:21 And really get a sense of gratitude for that. And even the things that didn't go right, because it's very easy to look at the things that didn't go well and be pissed off about it, have the raging arse at situation or someone but if you do that there is every chance that you will fail to see the lesson or opportunity I'm Like these are the important feel good chemicals that as humans we thrive upon. We crave them and when we're not actively creating them or we lose touch with how we can generate these things, how we can show up in a way that has us be that kind of person then it gets very dark. It's that downward low value death spiral. It gets lonely. It gets difficult. Things get strained

16:43 So that's my little message of gratitude and good fortune for us all really, is to enjoy these next few days not just as a splurge but as a real opportunity to reconnect with the people you love. To be grateful for everything you've been through this year. To feel the love coming back at you when you give it out and share this You know, you don't know the difference a message like this makes to people. You don't know what place they're in in their life whether it's me saying this or whether it's you saying it to them. You have no idea what the simple generous act of saying these words could mean for someone. They could

17:31 I've had a shocking time. They could have kept it all themselves, they could have been hoping praying that if they could just get through this time they could just push on another however long it'll be alright but it takes something like this someone like you to make the difference So thank you, thank you for being part of High Value Man this year and for listening and sharing this podcast. Go and leave a review of course. We've got lots coming up 2026 we're kicking off the accelerator which is our 12-month program it's how it structured is three 10 week cycles three ten weeks sprints of