Why your values and strengths are your SUPER POWERS

00:02 Welcome in this episode of the Team Super Dad podcast, why your values and strengths are your superpowers. And if you're not using them, then it is really going to be a struggle. Welcome on board. Let's roll theme. Welcome to Team Super Dad. 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.

00:37 Welcome back. All the dads in the Team Super Dad crew and to dads around the world, whether you've been a dad, working on being a dad, or right in the heat of it, you are welcome here. Team Super Dad, we are a community of motivated business-owning dads around the world, helping you live with clarity and confidence so you can be the man and dad you want to be and just not feel so stuck and struggling all the time. This series of podcasts, we're going through the Team Superdad power code methodology and we're in P for purpose right now.

01:17 You join me lunchtime on a Monday. So we technically, technically, Tuesday, even worse, technically, we missed the weekend. My boy had an operation on his hand. And whilst that is kind of an excuse, it did priorities. You've got to have priorities. And yes, getting this podcast done every week, getting it out of the weekend, that was my priority. But my boy beats that. We were in the hospital. I was talking to the nurse and she was like, oh, I think I recognize his name. And the funny thing is, we've been in that hospital so many times over the years.

01:59 Some people never go into hospital in their life. Other people seem to be there all the time. And my boy's not even a hypochondriac. We are definitely a family that leans into not being ill. My dad pretty much made being ill illegal when we were kids. Woe be tired if you were ill. But that has stuck with me. Thankfully, whether that's an internal power, a blessing, or just indicative of having quite a healthy lifestyle, probably all three. I don't really get that ill.

02:37 If I get bloody bowel cancer or prostate cancer or something like that, or heart attack, it will be disappointing to say the least. But that's another whole subject for another time. The P in power code is for purpose. And this third part of it is about identifying your values and strengths. So you actually live with those. When you're not, let's say you're focused on work that's not utilizing all your strengths and skills. If you're in a relationship or you're in a situation, I don't know, whatever, that could be friends, that could be work, it could be your home and neighbors.

03:17 When you're being asked to operate in a way that's counter to your values, like pulling against your values, then that also will be an incredible struggle. The thing about your values and strengths are, much like the old adage of boiling frogs, not realizing they're being boiled alive. Basically, apparently this is not actually true, but it's often used at conferences and stuff. If you put a frog in a pan of boiling water, it will jump out like, oh, that's hot and it will jump out. If you put it in a pan and heat the water, then it won't really notice and it will slowly be boiled to death, which isn't that nice in itself.

03:54 But I guess, as an as a as an example, it's relatively safe unless you've got a bunch of animal rights people in the audience. But it happens to us as well. When we are unaware of a friction of something that's we're pushing against the tide or we're working against what are our intuitive values and our core strengths, then it will get harder. And then over time, you know, because we're not aware of actually what's causing that, we just experience life as tough or getting up and going into work as tough or dealing with another bloody client or losing another pitch or coming home to a mess or arguing with your wife, like going to bed on a route like

04:42 sex life decreasing, the amount of fun you're having with your friends decreasing. Slowly but surely, you're just wondering where did it all go wrong. And when you go back and unpick all this, you start to find, as we've spoken about in the other two elements of purpose. not being really clear on who it is you are or what it is that you're doing on this planet on this journey around the sun. And then moving into this subject of if you've, oh, yeah, fulfillment, working, you know, fulfillment. Fulfillment comes from having a clear goal and ambition and a direction you're headed and doing work, living your life in a way that is taking you towards that.

05:31 That is where you find fulfillment. And your skills and strengths, your values and strengths, value, skills, strengths, all of that are part of it. So we work with a tool I created called the Superpower Matrix. And everything in Team Superdad is about unleashing that power from within you. Too many men are walking around half asleep, unhappy, or at the very least, not achieving their dreams and their full potential, which has them struggle and suffer and not be the best version of themselves.

06:11 That is the essence of stepping up, being the man you want to be in your family and in your community and in your business, and really living the life that you were given the opportunity to live. So your skills and strengths, why would you want to do something that is fundamentally not a core strength of yours? Or why would you want to do something that is fundamentally against one of your core values? Let's say on a basic level, you were being asked to lie about something or you were doing something that was underhand and one of your core strengths, sorry, one of your core values was trust and family and teamwork. Well, it wouldn't really matter if one day you did something or said something.

06:54 Oh, yeah, we're going to be late because we've got to go and do some other job. And who knows, maybe there was a different reason. So that's like a little lie. But if it was fundamentally bigger than that, like it impacted the whole structure of your work and your business from, you know, over an extended period of time, then that will eat away at you. So how do we address that? Well, ironically enough, not enough people have got any idea about what their values are and they don't focus enough on what their skills are. So if you're watching, welcome on board. You can comment because we're live on pretty much all the socials.

07:31 Be good to see you. I can see those comments when they're coming in. And if you're watching on the replay, excuse me, watching on the replay, of course, you can still comment and I'll pick them up. And if you're on the podcast, yes, the original crew, the podcast subscribers, thank you. Just share this. Feel free to leave us a review. If you like anything we're doing or talking about inside of this conversation today, you can go to teamsuperdad.com, send me a message. You can join the group teamsuperdad.com forward slash group. Basically, or you can comment power and I will get you in particular the superpower matrix, which we're talking about today. We can talk about how you can be part of the Team Superdad program.

08:16 So the Super Power Matrix, let's change the picture here. This is, I'm going to have to describe this for those people on the podcast. But the superpower matrix is four boxes. So you could take a piece of A4 paper of your comment power. I'll send you this template. You take your piece of paper and you put four boxes in each corner or one in each corner. And in the middle, you put a fifth box, which is your values. So you start on your values. And there's a whole exercise attached to this around identifying your values. But a couple of interesting ways you can identify values is if you look at

08:56 if you look at the news, or you look at current affairs, if you look at what people are talking about on social media and start to notice where you either are outraged by things or where you empathize with things or where you feel compelled to comment or to relate to somebody, to offer your encouragement, you will be able to see inside of that, ah, that injustice is something that irates me. So what's the opposite of that injustice? Well, we talked about before, it's trust, integrity, honesty, teamwork. You know, these could be your values. Family, love. There's a lot of emotive values in and around that.

09:33 And for me, and the way that I have grown up in the way of my work, both in my career and in my businesses and now in this business, in coaching dads around the world, a lot of my values are around determination and commitment and making it happen, you know. one of my coaches would scream at me, you can die at the finish line. You know, so there's that, there's a value of striving forward, of being your best. So, you know, it doesn't have to just be one word. A value can be something that you,

10:14 an expression or a phrase that you say. These are the values that define you. And listen, you can go to whole weekends on working out your values. But if you sit down with a piece of paper, you'll be quite easy to notice what's important to you. And equally, what if something really rubs you up the wrong way, then quite likely the opposite of that will be a core value. Then, moving into the four boxes, we have got, it doesn't really matter what order they come in, but we've got commitments, we've got passions, we've got skills and strengths, and then we've got weakness and struggle or weakness and suffering.

10:55 Now, starting with that last one, it's important that you are just as conscious of what you don't like doing or of what you find hard work. You know, for me, a strength of mine is project initiation, like kicking off projects, ideas, motivating a group of people towards a goal. What is a weakness of mine is like completing a project. Like my, when you get down into the minutiae of it and the granular parts of project execution, it becomes a lot harder for me. And so you could view that as a weakness, like, oh my God, this is terrible. Or you could really focus on the strength and say, I need to do more of that.

11:39 And I need to bring someone on board or work alongside someone whose core strength is that delivery part, is that execution part. The only weakness really in that exercise is when you notice you've been focusing too much on trying to be good at something you're fundamentally bad at. Why spend all your time and energy trying to get good at something that's not a core skill or not or something you don't even enjoy doing? So by putting your weaknesses and sufferings and struggles in that top box, it will give you an indication of things that you don't want to do more of. George McGueran, a valued occasional mentor of mine, I met him doing the podcast, and he stressed to me the importance of creating that team.

12:24 The book that I shared recently, the who, not how, again, highlights the importance of having the being with the right people to get the job done. Moving on to the more positive sides of it, your commitments. Now, your commitments will be unique to yourself. And some of them will be shared by many people. So not that unique. You know, a commitment could be if you've got children, then you are, or you should be, committed to being that parent, to being there for your kids. Some people would choose to have a pet, and that pet becomes a commitment by virtue of them needing to feed it and clean up after it.

13:07 Otherwise, what's the, you know, otherwise you're not really a pet owner. You've got to be clear on what your commitments are. If you've got a mortgage, like it's things that no matter what you're up to, you are committed to. Then your passions. Your passions are your hobbies. Your passions are something you love doing, something that you would choose to do above all else when given the choice. Now, could you have a commitment that's also a passion? Well, yeah, of course. You could be passionate about being a parent. And there are different levels of parents.

13:46 People have said to me in the past, I don't, you know, I couldn't, particularly we're talking about being a single dad and how much time I have with my with my children. Other dads have said to me, wow, I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you manage to juggle everything and spend all that time with your kids, you know, running to and from the school run or clubs. So it is a commitment, but it's something I absolutely 95% of the time love doing. So it's okay to have a commitment that's also a passion, a passion that's also a commitment. But again, being clear about what your passions are to ensure that you're doing them, that you're making them a consistent part of your life.

14:30 And ideally, making them a real part, a core part of who you are and what you do. Because when you know who you are, you know what direction, you know what you're good at and what you love doing, then you're going to feel fulfilled. So, and then the final box, strengths and skills. Really like an audit. audit of all the things you're good at. All the skills you've got that you, all the talents, all the strengths, you know, you wouldn't necessarily call a, I don't know, communication, okay? Communication, being able, you know, they call it like people skills and stuff.

15:09 So I consider communication and being able to empathize with people a strength of mine. Is it a skill that I've adapted and evolved? Well, certainly, but it starts off as a strength. Maths is not a strength of mine. I could practice and learn and get as and try to be as skilled as possible in that area, but it fundamentally isn't a strength. So it's never really going to be a skill. Okay. You can save yourself so much time, stress, and energy by focusing on what you're good at and what you love doing.

15:51 And then those areas where it's not a weakness or it's not something you enjoy doing, of course, you want to go and actually get a who, you know, bring someone in who's going to be that person that does that for you. The number of men that I work with who when we go through this exercise, it becomes so glaringly obvious that they're spending too much time doing things that are not a core strength, that are not a passion, and that's something they fundamentally hate doing. So guess what? When they are looking at the week ahead, when they're getting up in the morning, venturing into work, the idea that they're going to go and do a whole lot of stuff that they don't enjoy doing is shocking.

16:35 So it's no wonder you end up being frustrated and resentful. You're not operating at your best level. You don't have a clarity. You're not being creative in your thoughts. You're not energized, let alone what those kind of words would mean if you brought them to a relationship. If you're that kind of person going in person going into a social situation. And then worse than that, on top, what will commonly happen is that we'll look for distractions that will stop us thinking about those things that we don't like doing. Alcohol, drugs, porn, adultery, casual sex. Like there are, we'll go and look gaming, gambling, not necessarily all bad and wrong.

17:19 But when you're using them as a distraction, when you're using them as a way to cover up and avoid doing something you're going to do, then it is going to fester. It's going to rot you from the inside out. And that's when you find too many men stuck doing what they don't enjoy, not getting the results they want and wondering where on earth it all went wrong. It sounds pretty simple. And obviously there's not a magic wand. You can't flick the switch and change this overnight. But hello, Mark. Good to see you. What's the question here from Mark? We can bring this in. Look, there we go. But defining your weaknesses with real honesty is a difficult task, Johnny.

17:59 Do you have advice about approaching that? I preach about positivity, but it's interesting to hear your advice. Thank you, Mark. Weaknesses, some of the people around us, the people who love us most, just because they don't tell us our weaknesses on a regular basis, they probably see them or they're willing to see them much more honestly than we are. So, you know, I think it's appropriate in that first run at this to try and be honest with yourself about where your weaknesses are. And that's why it also says in the down though, weaknesses and struggle or weaknesses in suffering.

18:39 You might not be able to admit to areas that are weaknesses, but you can, if you're honest with yourself, about, wow, I really struggle when I do that. Or I don't sit down to do that task with any enthusiasm or real energy around it. Or I've been doing that for so long, it's driving me mental. So you could look in the area of suffering for things that are fundamentally not a core strength or a passion. And like I said before, approaching people that know you really well. And you could take a mix. You could take a family member, a work colleague, one of your children,

19:18 an old friend who's known you forever, someone you've only just met recently. It could be someone you've completed a project with. You really want to create a safe space for them, those, to say, this is what I'm doing. It's pretty cool, actually. I'm working on my core strengths and values. Part of it is identifying some of my weaknesses. So as weird as this is, I wonder if you can spot in me some things that I'm not that great at. Or, you know, and so people were like. they'll check first that they might say something positive before going into two or three weaknesses. Um, and of course, that's okay, but you want to create that space for them to actually actually say that.

19:57 And then, when you've asked a bunch of people and you've got your list as well, look for the patterns because this isn't about rubbishing you, this is about I, you know, um, it's an audit, it literally is an audit. So, if there's some common trends, then you can start to group them and put them together. Fundamental to this, and thanks so much for that question, Mark. Fundamental to this is it's not about running yourself down, right? This is an opportunity to step up. Too many of the conversations that I have inside of my work inside of Team Super Dad and the Hero Academy, people take it as blame or fault or a failure.

20:36 Guys, we've got to give that up. The breakthrough comes from recognizing that we're just here on a journey inside this skin sack going through the motions. We've got somewhere between one day and around 90 to 100 years of opportunity to give this a go. Why would you spend all that time doing something you fundamentally don't enjoy or aren't good at? You know, in the world we live in today, there's never been so much scope and opportunity to upskill and to progress. And just because we can't do it overnight doesn't mean that this is not a valid thing to do, not a valid exercise to do.

21:17 If I said to you, the life of your dreams, like you're fulfilling your potential and living your best self, would that be worth it? Yes, okay, but it's going to be a year's time. Would it still be worth it? Of course, it would be what am I today? 48 and a half. Have I got 30 years, 40 years more, 20 with energy and vigor? Um, of course, you want to strive and pursue the life that really lifts you up. Uh, a friend, a mentor, a business partner, advisor.

22:01 Um, Penny Power once in a great conversation to a room full of people spoke about this idea of working in your flame. And it really is that. Like, if you look at the top of a candle, where the flame is, it's where the it's where the heat is, it's where the energy is, it's where the beauty is in that candle. You know, why would you go to the opposite side of the room and try and do something in the dark? This is about the essence of you. And when you come home to the people you love and you've been working that day on a sincere goal, centered in your values, doing something that you believe is going to be successful and is going to impact others, is going to give you the lifestyle you want, then that is where you're

22:47 going to find your self-belief, your power, and your energy. So, if you comment or message me, um, power, comment, power, and I'll get you over that super dad matrix. You can have that template to go along with this chat. Um, and uh, and of course, if anything we're talking about here in this series where we're going through the power code is of interest and you want to find out more about going through the power code, being part of the hero academy, then simply get in touch, message me, comment power, and uh, and we'll have a conversation about getting you in the next intake of the hero academy, guys.

23:25 Absolutely brilliant to have you on board, Mark. Once again, thanks for your questions. You feel free to come on over to the Super Dad group on Facebook. If you go to teamsuperdad.com forward slash group, that will get you in there. Until next time, thanks for tuning in. Team Super Dad out. This has been Team Super Dad. 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 Super Dad.