Episode #88
As men, we are taught that in order to provide for our family we have to work hard. Working hard then leads us to hustle, leaving us to think that we are doing exactly what we are supposed to do….but in reality, we are completely missing the mark.
While you are busy grinding to secure your children’s future, you are losing the chance to be with them while they are growing up because there is no energy left for them every time you get home.
You lose the chance to be physically and emotionally present for them and the chance to experience having a great father who can serve as their model when they themselves become fathers.
To be a great father you should have the skillset to understand your children and get into THEIR world. Spend time with them and do your best to not miss important events in their lives.
We often grind so we can give them everything we think they need to be happy but what we don’t realize is that spending quality time with them IS what makes them happy.
Know your priorities. Know what really matters to you. If you say it is your children or family, then you have to be PRESENT for them.
Break the pattern and be a father whom your children will look up to.
What you will learn in this episode:
- How to provide emotionally for your children by being present
- How to know your priorities and focus on what really matters to you as a father
- The importance of understanding your children’s needs
- What it means to be a great father
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Episode Script
Doug Holt 0:00
If you were to rate yourself on a scale of 1 through 5, 5 being the best possible dad you can be, 1 being complete shit. Where do you rate yourself today? Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Powerful Man Show. I am your host Doug Holt with my co-host, Tim, a powerful man, Matthews. What’s going on, brother?
Tim Matthews 0:25
Hey, how are you doing? I’m very well, thank you. How are you?
Doug Holt 0:28
Great, great. Well, it’s just coming off transparently. Tim and I just had, as well as Arthur and the rest of the guys, a call with the guys in the Brotherhood with a special guest speaker talking about startups, business funding, international funding. Some amazing opportunities that opened my eyes to ways of investing and almost, I guess, tax havens that I wasn’t even aware of that existed that are completely legal. So, my mind is spinning a little bit with all that great information that Adam, our special guests, provided. So I’m stoked about that.
Tim Matthews 1:02
I love it, though it’s illegal.
Doug Holt 1:05
Why don’t you think we say tax-havens? You think about people who are storing money in the Caymans and all over the world that came out, and I actually know a couple of people that got caught doing that, and I’m not here to judge them or what have you. But it seems in the US anyway, and the government has created these opportunities. I’m not going to talk about that today. But they’re legal, and I think that’s important. They’re incentivizing investors, and through the incentives they are giving, I would call it extreme tax benefits for those individuals. It is legal, and that’s important to me and my integrity.
Tim Matthews 1:41
Hmm, yeah. Pretty great.
Anyway, that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. One of the things I thought would be good to throw on the table. Tim is a topic that comes up for many of us fathers that are out there, and it doesn’t come up as a daily thought. But periodically, I have this thought, and I know a lot of the men that I know are fathers, especially the ones I look up to. It seems to happen that they’re great fathers. It seems to happen to them more often than not. We ask ourselves, “am I a great father”? And it may even come off as “am I good?” “Am I good enough?” “Am I good enough, dad?” “Am I doing the right things?” etc., to the men. So that’s the topic I want to bring up today.
Tim Matthews 2:25
Wow. I think it feeds into everything else doesn’t it? Being a good husband. Because the problem that I think a lot of men that we deal with in let’s say, the wider audience as well, are dealing with is, they’ve been fed this way and I believe that for a long time. The way to be a man is to go to work and sacrifice yourself there and grind it out to make money because when you do that, then everything will fall into place. But what we found is the problem with that is the more money than the guys tend to make that we work with, the more chaos it brings with it as well, and then when that happens, they end up trapped in between this position of their business and their family but they thought they were doing the right thing in the first place. The thought of the way to be a great father was to provide this home and this lifestyle. These holidays and all the rest of it to their kids, and then they don’t have anything left, any energy to engage with their kids in an even and quite the opposite, they end up being right-quote, short-tempered with the kids, don’t they? That guilt weighs heavily on them. The guys we work with don’t think it’s as much guilt as I should be with my kids rather than working, and I think that that may come up. Still, we don’t speak about that as much. The bigger pain point for our man is snapping and shouting at the kids and then missing out on the ballet lessons, swimming lessons, school players, and all the rest of it. Because the thing that wasn’t going to do is go out there and make money when that’s not what the kid remembers growing up.
Doug Holt 4:21
Yeah, so I’m going to disagree with you here gently. I think what you’re mentioning is the snapping and yelling, and in being short, those are symptoms of the problem. I think these guys do know or realize at times they are working too much, and frequently what happens right as a man as a provider for a lot of us guys anyway, is we have this story that’s been ingrained in our head, as you said, is that we need to go out and provide and then that’s what we do. That’s our role in the family and then are we going to spend time with our family. after I make two million dollars or whatever it is for each individual, then I can go to the ballet lessons as you said, or the football match or whatever it may be and I think the snapping and the anger and being short and not present is a symptom of the problem. It’s a byproduct. So I think what happens is guys, as fathers, certainly speak for themselves when I’m present with my son, as an example, and I’m playing with my wife, for example, went out last night, had dinner with friends, and I took care of my son made dinner, the whole thing. It didn’t happen to me last night, but every once in a while, I sit and go, “man, am I being a good dad?” And I don’t say good because I want to be a great dad. I want to… that’s just who I am. I want to be the best in everything I do. But I want to be a great father and ask myself those questions. But I also find myself, Tim, slipping back into those things were great; I want to provide things for my son. I want him to go to the best camps, I want him he’s only two and a half, but I want to do all these things, and I’m future casting. What I want for him are the opportunities that I want for him, which sometimes leads me not to be as present, or maybe the feeling of not knowing what to do with him to be present. I think what’s probably said better is not knowing what I could be doing. I look at my wife, and my wife, my son, has such a different bond because we have a little more of a traditional relationship. My wife’s full-time job is taking care of him, and so that my son’s really scared, he comes to me, but if he gets hurt, he goes to my wife, and there are biochemical reasons that happen with oxytocin releasing things like that. But back to my point for men, and who we’re talking to today, is as a father, I asked myself and the men that we talk to, and I talk to the dads that are in the Brotherhood and go through The Activation Method, as well as guys that are in our Facebook group that haven’t gone through our program. The question comes up often is, “am I being a good father?” “am I being a great father?” or, this is the subtext that comes back from our men, “am I repeating the same things that my dad did, that my father did?” because that’s all I know, and that’s the scary thing.
Tim Matthews 7:22
You know, as you were talking, I thought, “well, is there an easy way to answer this?” is it as simple as “have I been a great father?” Well, you’ve been a great man. If you’ve been a great man, and obviously, I’d have children yet, so I’m kind of leaning on you to see your perspective on this. Because as you were speaking, I was wondering, “Well, how do though? How will when you regret father?” How will you arrive at that point? It’s going to be evolving, and whatnot, and you’ve mentioned things in the past about what you want to the characteristics that you want to instill in your body, but on a day-to-day basis, what I’ve been saying that you, you can take confidence in knowing that you’ve been a great father if you feel confident in the fact that you’ve been a great man.
Doug Holt 8:11
Ah, I think that’s a really good point. I think they go hand in hand. They can also be separate. It’s kind of like I would describe health and fitness. You can be fit and healthy, but you can also be fit and completely unhealthy and vice versa. So in an ideal world, being a great man also means being a great father. But I can also see, and I have met guys who are amazing men, in their own right, and then maybe by people’s definition, they’re going to say, “well, you can’t be an amazing man if you’re not a good father.” But by my standards, they aren’t good dads, and they’re not good dads because they’re jerks. I think they’re good dads because they don’t know what to do. They’re lost.
Tim Matthews 8:57
What made them great men?
Doug Holt 8:59
What made them great men was their stand for their community how they showed up in their workplace. The things that they’re doing, external themselves, doing their work on themselves, taking care of their fitness, taking care of their spiritual growth, and leading their leaders in the community. It is just a few examples. But these guys, same guys, that the few that I’m thinking about that don’t fit the mold of both. That’s pretty rare. But there are a few cases. These guys don’t know how to be present with their children. I think it’s strictly from a fact him of this probably how they were raised and how their father was and their mother, etc. But they don’t know how to be present with a young child. They don’t know how to just be with them and be in their world.
Tim Matthews 9:54
More about being with the wife, I’ve been impressed with that. Are they present?
Doug Holt 9:59
Well, to my understanding, they are not in their bedroom with them. That’s not what I’m into. But I assume they are; when I’ve met them and met their wives, they seem to have a very dynamic and great relationship, and I think there’s a disconnect and I think a lot of the fathers out there will understand what I’m talking about is a disconnect from some men that don’t know how to relate to children, especially young children. It’s pretty obvious like you go nowadays because I have a two, two and a half-year-old, I’ll go to parties and of course, you start hanging out with people who have kids your age. The age of your kids, they might be a lot younger than me or older, etc. But our children are roughly the same age, and that becomes your association quite often, and so then you get to see how they’re interacting, and there are some fathers there that might be standing by the grill at the barbecue and just don’t know how to engage. They don’t know what to do, and they look at their kids almost like an annoyance because they don’t know how to communicate with them. They don’t know how to be present with them. They don’t know how to get into their emotional world. They don’t understand the states that the children are going through, probably because they haven’t taken time to study it.
Tim Matthews 11:10
Yeah, what I hear you say, hear from say the outside looking in, I think, I mean, it’s a great position to have this conversation knowing that having kids because I can look at things pretty objectively without looking through the lens of being a father when I imagine you’ve just got such a burning desire to provide for them. But say is there’s a lack of skill there. It’s not a lack of when we spoke about, like if your grant money can be a great father, what I was thinking then was, well if you’re a great one, we see you’re a powerful man who’s compassionate and loving and kind and present in we know into being a powerful man. Surely it’s easy to be a great father because it’s just an extension of who you are. But what I hear you say is that isn’t enough. You’ve got to have a skill set. You’ve got to train yourself an army of a set of skills that enable you to be able to connect with young children and understand what they’re going through.
Doug Holt 12:17
Hey, sorry to interrupt the show. But I wanted to ask you a question. Do you ever feel like something’s just missing, like there’s something more out there and you just can’t put your finger on it? I get it; go over right now to https://www.thepowerfulman.com/vs-biz/ to discover the system that other business people just like you are using. We’ve included 10 case studies, ten men just like you who have found the solution and have found their way on their path. We want to share that with you. Go over to https://www.thepowerfulman.com/vs-biz/ right away. Now let’s get back to the show. Yeah, you have to have exactly, Tim; it is a skill set. I think some people are naturally just talented towards doing it, and you can see that. Some people are just great with kids always have been. Some other people aren’t, whether it be their kids or other people’s kids and children. But what comes back to the actual point at hand, in my opinion, is the question, the burning question, and the question to probably the fathers that are listening to this, asking themselves is “am I a great dad?” right? And right now, at this moment, you can answer that question from a cerebral standpoint, right, and logic when have you, but how do you feel about it? Like if you were to rate yourself, and I’m not asking you, Tim, but I’m asking the guys listening to this. If you were to rate yourself on a scale, let’s just say 1 to 5, and I like 1 to 5 because when you do 1 to 10, nobody picks 4 through 6, it seems like. So 1 through 5, 5 being the best possible dad you can be, 1 being complete shit. Where do you rate yourself today at this moment? Not yesterday, not this morning. Not this is not what you’re going to do after listening to this. But right here at the moment. What do you give yourself as a father, role model, and leader in your family? What is that rating you give yourself, and I would propose to you guys listen to this if you give yourself anything, less than a four, for sure? Then it’s time to take some massive radical action. So Tim, from my standpoint, this does come up for me, and I’ve done a ton of work. I read the books on parenting the psychology because I’m a dork like that, but my wife and I exchange links. She emails me something every couple of days because I have another baby on the way. So I’m always interested in this and how it also applies to the men we work with and their belief systems. But it still comes up to me every once in a while like, “crap, am I being a good dad? Am I working too much? Am I not being present when I’m with him? Am I allowing him to watch too much screen time and we don’t get much screen time, but is it too much?” it’s one of these things that creep in other areas of our lives. But I’m playing in this just to being a father in that role, and I think you needed to find it as a man for yourself what a great father is, and then ask yourself, “am I hitting that goal?” whether you’re using a metric or not or it’s just a gut feeling. Are you a great father? And the answer is no. Maybe you’re just being good, and maybe you’re just being okay. But if you’re not a great father, then what steps do you need to take right now in the moment of insight to become a great father? I think those two questions together, Tim, are the ones that spur on change and insight into who you are as a man. We talked about being a powerful man. It’s just another element.
Tim Matthews 15:56
And you think it’s a case of working too much or not being present? Because I guess you could work. I think I’m probably going to answer my question here, but I was going to say you could work a lot and then make progress, but then when you are with your son or your daughter, as long as you’re present and fully engaged, surely that would be enough, but I guess, maybe, wouldn’t be? Because if you weren’t too much, you’re going to miss out on some moments.
Doug Holt 16:23
Yeah, well, it’s a couple of things. So first of all, I think it’s all of them. First, the most important thing is to be present, and I know early on in my relationship with my wife I ran at the time. I had three companies that I was running, I was the sole owner of three businesses, and of course, I wanted them all to be as successful as possible. When I was with her, I would be with her, but physically in the sense that I’d be in the room, but I’d also be checking email, I’d be answering questions with staff and doing those kinds of things, and I remember what she said to me, she said, “Look, I get it. I knew what I was getting involved when I got involved with you, and I knew who you were, I knew you ran these businesses, I knew you’re ambitious.” She’s like, “What I want from you is just the time you’re with me, whether it be one night, whether it be three nights, just to be complete with me and when you’re in my presence, like when you’re with me, don’t be working. Otherwise, just go into the bedroom, go somewhere else and do it, and the same thing applies to kids.” So being presence number one. Number two is, you don’t want to work too much. I mean, we all have seasons. Business goes through seasons, and we go through seasons of life. But you don’t want to, at least I don’t want to be the father that misses those special occasions. I have a very flexible schedule. I work from home, but I also can miss going to the park and feel guilty. That’s another whole ‘another conversation. But I think you want to be present, you want to make the big events, and it comes down to priorities. As a father, do you want his success more important to you? Is money more important to you? And of course, we all have to make money, or is it the guy who makes it to the baseball game? Or is it being the father that shows up to school? What is it for you? And I think those, Tim, are very important things for each man to answer. Very few men sit down in silence and answer these questions for themselves, and that’s why when the question comes up, in my great father, many men don’t know how to answer it. They’ll turn to sedation, drugs, alcohol, porn, or work to hide from that feeling so they can get the feeling of significance from those things.
Tim Matthews 18:40
Yeah, and I think, as you said, It feeds into the initial point. Many men have been taught to believe that the way to provide is to go and make money. Yeah, the way that many men have been taught to provide is to go and work hard and make money, and that’s where a lot of their identity comes from, doesn’t it? A great question that we often ask them is, if I were to take your business away from you today, who would you be? And a lot of the men often realize that “Holy crap! If my business was taken away from me today, then I don’t know who I’d be, I wouldn’t know why I was here, or my purpose was also on it.” I think reprioritizing that is where a lot of the guys experience huge shifts. It isn’t in their relationship when they come out on The Alpha Reset because they’re able to see the truth of how they’ve been operating what matters to them. Then they adjust accordingly, and then they often don’t go back. Rarely do guys go back to operating in old patterns and that big shift in their identity? How they see themselves as a man, as a father, as a husband, and as a business owner, and often they then start to prioritize business last doesn’t mean just taking action. Of course, they do love their business; still, it’s part of who they are. But it’s part of who they are, not all of who they are, and as a result, they often start to make money a lot easier. While taking on more holidays and ever before, we see that time and time again, and it feeds directly into this topic here, in my opinion of being a great father in prioritizing so you can make the ballgame so that you can be at the school players. Because otherwise, when your identity and self-worth is tied into making money, it’s almost like, “Do I go to the school play, or do I make money?” so do I sacrifice part of myself and lose, have to give up part of my significance to go to the school play, or is that a tough position to be in. No one wants to lose anything. So you’ve got to look at your identity, and what matters to you?
Doug Holt 21:05
Well, yeah, I agree with you, and I think, again, I think it goes a little deeper than that. We look at the men as they go through The Alpha Reset. They come out of that a completely different man, and part of the reason they come out a completely different man is, as men, one’s not a rite of passage for many of us, but to, what, who are you? Like, who is your essence? Who are you, like, who are you as a husband? Who are you as a father, but who are you as a man? And I think, Tim, answering that question sets the tone for the rest of them. It sets the tone for the next questions to come about.
Tim Matthews 21:46
Hmm, I think, well, I don’t think I know, it’s that a loss of identity that has the men, the cycle through the five identities. Because at first, they go through the lens of greed, whereby whatever they achieve, however much money it is, or success, or accolades, or cars, homes, holidays, whatever. They’re just never satisfied; there’s always something missing, and then, because of that, and because of the sacrifice they’re making to achieve that, they start to get frustrated and angry because they know they want to spend more time with their kids. Still, they also feel the pull to go on work, and they used to have the answer. But for whatever reason that they don’t have the answer to this, hence the anger. It’s almost like they’re a volcano ready to erupt any moment, and then from there goes to the shame when they act out of character; they isolate themselves. Fourth, agony, loneliness, and uncertainty, because they understand that they can pray like this forever; otherwise, the wife will leave them. The business will crumble, their kids won’t want to spend any time with them by the time they’re 10 or 11, 12 years old. But it’s because, at the foundational level, they don’t know who they are or what they want, and this isn’t anything against them. They’ve just thrust themselves into the business from a young age, believing that that was going to be the answer, only to wind up having made money or having the cars or whatever achieving what they thought was the answer and realizing it wasn’t. Yeah, the key to really being able to recalibrate, well, we call The Alpha Reset, reset for a reason. Now the guys come and reset their life, and the key to being able to reset your life lies in those two points, knowing who you are and what you want. It’s only from that place that you can actually be the great father, be the great man, be a great businessman, and have the foundation on which to build, and so often, the men keep trying to add flaws to a building that has crumbling foundations, and that’s where they end up just breaking down. The marriages are almost crumbling, and they’re acting out of character with the kids and because it’s just too much for them. The great men are always great men, but it just ends up in too much.
Doug Holt 24:17
Awesome, awesome. So, gentlemen, I’m going to ask you this question, especially your father’s. Those of you that aren’t fathers, you can forward think that’s right for pace. But are you a great father? Give yourself that 1 to 5 scale, and if the answer isn’t a five, or maybe a four, then what is it you need to do right now at this moment to become a great father, and for some of you, it’s, it’s rediscovering who you are as a man, redefining who you are as a man getting those insights. So you have a place to start with a secure foundation because what matters most of you guys. Are your kids if you have them? That’s what men will die for their families quite often and then the same thing for you guys if you don’t have kids yet, but what does it mean to you to become a great father? What does a great father look like? And how can you create your life and your lifestyle around? So, gentlemen, that’s all for us for today for this episode. We’ll see you next time on The Powerful Man Show.
