Dad Guilt and Regret - the secret struggle

00:00 Welcome to Team Superdad. Are you working and feeling guilty about not seeing your kids, and then playing with your kids and feeling guilty about not working? That stuff will take you down! And today we're going to get it sorted. Roll the clip. Welcome to Team Superdad. Real dads creating their best lives ever. More time more money more fun You are not alone. You're on team super dad Hello gang, welcome. I've adjusted the setup

00:37 So if you're watching, you might see perhaps better than it was last week. Although it's not dark today! Welcome to the Team Stupid Ad Podcast If you're live, it's good to have you here You can comment... ...you can get involved in this whole event This session, this live, this podcast And if you are watching on the replay give me a hashtag replay Like, share and subscribe Bring in...this is the most important thing If your watching right at the start bring in other people that you feel might need to hear this message today Dad guilt, dad guilt. The unspoken struggle if you're new to Team Superdad we are a community of modern motivated dads creating the life we desire not like who feel stuck in You want to get some input and help with structuring your dad life so you have success in work and home then book yourself on a discovery call at teamsuperdad.com forward slash 15 cool easy

01:38 All the crew in the Team Superdad group, I can see you coming on live. That's good! You can comment of course and basically it is good to have you here It is the weekend...I don't know when your listening but if your watching live it is Saturday morning in the UK March still bloody cold and as I said in the beginning didn't I? If your struggling with all that stuff I was going to say another S word. They're getting a lot tighter on swearing so, i don't know it is Saturday morning and some dads say to me well I'll listen when we're in the car with the kids but if you swear too much then I can't have it on! So the late night ones with Glenn... Glenn and I both have girlfriends now so what can we say about that? Plus he's not locked down either. If you enjoyed the wrap-up

02:29 Previously, then hopefully Glenn and I will at least get together and give you an update of where we're all at. But back on theme dad guilt and regret this really is an unspoken struggle it's not often that if you know you said to one of your mates oh how's it going um they would say to you oh yeah I feel incredibly guilty about how much I'm working and not seeing my family It just gets covered up like Oh I'm fine thanks You wear it like it's something you're sort of stuck with. You just have to get on with it, It is part and parcel of having your own business or performing at the top Or whatever your work is Some of the dads at football My kids' football They work their arse off They are away on work six days a week And full respect for them doing that because they are providing But somewhere amongst all

03:28 You know, even if that's what you need to do there's still this challenge of managing the dad guilt because we only get one chance at our kids' childhoods and even that's in chapters. You know baby toddler young kid I think that's my favorite bit really four to seven was just lush well it was all lush really apart from when they were teething and that's a big shit And then of course when they're teenagers, there's another whole load of challenges. But it is what it is right? So whilst we do only get one chance feeling guilty about what you need to do is crazy or take you down now some this some of this might be controversial to you right but

04:16 That's okay. This is my view, this is Team Superdad ethos and methodology it's about having balance across your whole life so that you can succeed in every area if you're thriving in work because you're working so hard but your relationship struggling and time with the children are struggling You're not even getting to see your mates then I can assure you that sooner or later you will be burnt out And it will all come crumbling down. Dramatic, perhaps but also pretty damn accurate seeing it over and over again The complete opposite of that is where you do create balance across each of those areas in your life and you are creating space for yourself to thrive and to do what needs to be done to make it work

05:05 You can't run a car, you know in first gear all the time. It's gonna break it's literally going to break and our life is no different than that okay we don't live in the 70s or 80s anymore like some kind of sell-sell-sell work come home to a nice clean house and expect everything to be okay That wasn't realistic. It might have been for the time, but there was a lot of unhappiness there to manage our family well to keep that relationship full of energy and laughter and passion we've got to play our part in it let alone... There should be a desire to want to do those things to contribute and to be an equal player in the whole family setup so what it boils down to is working

06:03 Literally working as hard as you possibly can and then it gets at some point to that time, at the end of the day. And you've got to go and say you gotta go and say you gotta go and then you know the kids are gonna be going into bed and then you missed it again or you're going home when you catch in the last bit It's okay once or twice is okay one month two months but when its constant thats where it's gonna start eat away The flip of that is then deciding on Saturday or whatever version of time it is for you, oh right I'm going to play with the kids now and this happened to me a lot when I had

06:43 Before I was divorced, when we had the family. I had the business. So I have the home I had and so I would make that time to play with the kids but often I would be too distracted about what I should be doing instead or what email I wasn't responding to I spent about two years trying to learn how to trade, like trade like shares and stuff. It was intense there would be times when i was playing with the kids where i would be like drilling into my brain what should i be doing? What's going up? What's going down? And so you're not present with your kids and your children know this! You think they don't know it? They know it

07:28 Ultimately, the differences in your relationship with them and the biggest kick in the nuts that any kid can...any dad can hear from their kid is daddy why do you work so much? A good guy I know been a coach of mine at various points. Fraser over in New Zealand now he tells his backstory of his child saying to him Daddy, why are you so unhappy? Like it was out of the mouth of babes comes wisdom. I just bastardize that completely but something is close on that and that was his epiphany, that is his moment where he realized all this hard work that he was doing, his child, his toddler saw in him that wasn't happy So you got to craft your life

08:27 In particular around your work so that you can have it all. So you can have time to work, time with the kids, time with your partner and elements of that are inside Do The Work which is the W of the POWER CODE, the Team Superdab methodology But first of all comes ownership. It's about your mindset, you know there are times when you're going to have to work but sitting there feeling guilty is completely pointless. There are times when you want to play with your children and make time for that feeling guilty about what you aren't doing at work is completely pointless You can only be doing what you're doing. You can only...can't be in two places at once

09:05 Even the idea that we can multitask is pretty ludicrous because you're not giving either thing your 100% attention. You know, cook dinner and listen to a podcast fair dues but don't try and play with your kids an email your colleagues or team it's just bollocks! You won't do either well. And this ownership side of all of the Team Stupid Ad method is about your mindset there are Flow. We all have flow energy when we're experiencing a lot of toxic thoughts, a lot of toxic concerns, guilt and regret obviously fall into that side it will slow you down it will impact your confidence your creativity your sleep

09:53 It will impact how much fun you are to be around. You'll start being much more snappy at the people you love most, so toxic energy is criminal literally as well as the long-term effects of it will actually make you ill So but the complete opposite of that is creating a positive flow If you're experiencing a lot of guilt around the work that you're doing and you just can't shake that off you've got to frame in a much better way Put at the top of one concerns and then in the other column actually look to create the complete opposite that. Rather than it be a concern, what's an opportunity? Or rather than it being a concern how could you flip that like create a solution to it that would work for you and everybody else concerned

10:43 Because it's not that you can suddenly make guilt go away. It's not a switch you can turn off if if it was, you wouldn't be thinking in the first place. You're going to have to do something practical to work out or erase it so that it moves from being that toxic energy into the positive energy. Ownership fundamentally is about 100% responsibility. Feeling guilty about being at work is on you! If you're gonna feel that bit guilty about it... Go home! Like, GO HOME! Clearly You've got to plan and be more structured and be more organized. Communication is a clear part of it, letting the people in your life know where you're going to be and what you're going to do but then make solid commitments like honor your own integrity when you say you're gonna do something if you say right I'm gonna work late on these days and iIm always going to do the school run and be home in time to play with you before bed and have dinner together then stick to it

11:44 You wouldn't miss a flight at an airport. You wouldn't turn up painfully late for some important meeting and the idea that you could have success in life, right? If your if success in life is determined by your success at work then you haven't really got success in life because you decided to get married, you've decided to have kids, you decide to open a business these are all things that you committed to so why would you have one fail and the other one succeed? That really isn't success Okay, so a couple of things. First of all get honest with yourself you know if you're feeling... If you are feeling this then don't bottle it up inside it's not like

12:33 A heavy burden that you have to take on as someone who is performing at work or someone who feels like they need to make money for their family, someone has chosen to run a business. It needs to be something you express. You need to share it with your loved ones and with your mates like how do you experience this? How'd you deal with it being part of an accountability group having a coach being in the community of other like-minded dads is clearly a positive way to do that. That's why you should get inside the team Superdad The Jonnie Jensen Show, Jonnie Jensen, POWER CODE

13:22 If you've talked to the people in your life and you've organized it, if you're scheduling an honor in that diary. The final part of taking ownership of this is to really celebrate what you achieved don't get fixated on what you haven't done I haven't done this, I haven't done that, I haven't done like... That is exhausting a lot of guilt will fester inside there You know? If there's work to be done during the day get it done up until the point where you need to go Acknowledge, go through the things you've done. Be proud like people aren't proud be proud of what you've achieved that day not focusing on what you haven't done then go home and do what you said you were going to do then and then actually take a moment to acknowledge yourself at the end of the day like yeah I did that kids are happy i'm happy she's happy we go again tomorrow

14:16 Guilt is a choice, it's a perspective. It's a frame on the situation so we have to reframe it in the way that I've just outlined so that it becomes... We take away that habitual way of thinking of guilt and put into a different frame of someone who is smashing it all areas who's a kick-ass business person an incredible dad, amazing partner like and you're having fun your life with your mates If we were talking about what do you want, surely you'd be saying to me that's what I want. Okay so start to create it instead of going around feeling guilty running a number on yourself It's a downward spiral that you are fully responsible for So there we go 15 minutes boom

16:42 The Jonnie Jensen Show, Jonnie Jensen, POWER CODE If you don't plan for fun, you ain't gonna have fun. So make sure whatever you're doing get on the phone to friends get out in the fresh air uh get your daily sweat on with some exercise and just make the most of your weekend. Don't have Monday come around all too quickly and you've not done anything I'm Jonnie Jensen this is Team Superdad Podcast i'll see you on the next episode. Team Superdad Out!

17:28 This has been Team Superdad. Find us at teamsuperdad.com Join the program and create the best life ever for you and your children! You are not alone, you're on Team Superdad