Episode #347
Are you a good father?
How do your habits and behaviors affect your child?
If a man becomes a leader and becomes re-activated, everybody around him experiences a ripple effect – they start to follow the leader.
Kids are monkey-see, monkey-do. If they can pick up your bad habits, they can also pick up your good habits. When the man who is the leader of the family changes himself positively and your child witnessed that change, that child’s behavior shifts. If you are worried you are going to screw your kids up, unscrew them up by fixing yourself, improving, and walking the walk that we call The Powerful Man.
We want to be role models for our children. Show your child that you are going to conquer your issues and that you are gonna invest time, money, and resources into improving yourself.
That is going to serve your child far more than anything else.
That will make you a good father.
In this episode, we are going to talk about guilt and shame, how to be a leader, and what it means to be a good father to your child.
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Episode Transcript
Doug Holt 0:00
The man who’s become a leader becoming the benevolent alpha he’s becoming activated everybody around him again as a ripple effect they start to follow the leader gentleman I mentioned earlier had severe anxiety issues after his Alpha Reset he was able to get rid of most of those his daughters changed almost overnight because daddy changed and not because he told him to change the town. The exciting kids are monkey see monkey do as kids if you’re worried you screwed your kids up. Unscrew them up by just fixing yourself. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Powerful Man show. I am your host Doug Holt with my co-hosts, Tim The Powerful Man Matthews.
Tim Matthews 0:42
Yeah, I’m doing well. Yeah. I think I’ve told you this. I think I’m going to cut out meat from my diet.
Doug Holt 0:52
Gone vegan again is vegetarian anyway.
Tim Matthews 0:54
Oh, no, no, I’m not going to allow myself to be labeled as anything. I’m not; I’m just not going to do it. It’s too. I don’t want to self-identify with any label. Because I think it’s too restrictive. I’m just not going to do it. The reason for this is living here in the countryside. And by the ocean stuff, it’s spring. And just like you’ve got your back into the forest.
Doug Holt 1:23
Yep.
Tim Matthews 1:23
you go back to the farmer’s field, and there are little lambs there. And you have just seen them all, and I’m seeing calf’s, obviously baby cows. I just see all the animals, and I’m feeling connected to nature, which is great. But more importantly, I’m starting to question my ethics around it. Like the idea of just dairy and eating chocolate, let’s say, I just like, God, can I? Can I be a part of this right now?
Doug Holt 1:59
Me too, huh?
Tim Matthews 2:01
Yeah, yeah, so I’ve done it in the past, I didn’t do it. Right. I’m aware that I’d have to supplement quite a bit, I think, to do it well and to make sure I’m getting what I need to get as well. So I’m just taking my time with it. I’ve cut out dairy the minute; I’ve caught dairy. The only real dairy I was having was either on a pizza or in chocolate. So I’ve got vegan chocolate now. So I’m having that. And I’ve just not been buying the pizza, or you can get some nice vegan pizzas. So yeah, I’m just going to say I’m still eating fish. I had some eggs today. So I’m sleeping. Always wild. But so well. I mean, I find myself unable to make it easy to justify when it’s fish and eggs. So out of the supplements today. Quite a hefty list. Been recommended by a friend who has been eating this way for quite some time and feels amazing doing it. And it was kind of coincidental. I had a conversation.
I called him maybe a week or two ago, and I’ve been experiencing this kind of ethical dilemma, if you will, is springless here and things. And he was even going through a similar thing: hey, I’ve decided I’m cutting out meat, and I just started asking him. But how far do you go? Because if your argument is around ethics Well, what about your car that spews out tons of petrol cars like a supercar? What about this? What about the leather trim? You’ve got on the car, you’re not going to eat meat, but why? But anyway, we got into an interesting conversation because that’s why I mean, I don’t want to be like going crazy with this other without a mute because of Amelia. Amelia is like an animal. We don’t do things like the whole real leather stuff and all that. So, but anyway, I’ll let it go. What the journey is like where I end up. But yeah, certainly what I feel right now just feels so bad. Seeing these little lambs get raised and ripped away. And the carbs and Huh,
Doug Holt 4:15
Well, nice, juicy steak waiting for me upstairs. So…
Tim Matthews 4:22
But, yeah. Anyway, I will say I feel sorry. I want to share something with you. So I was speaking to a good friend of mine a few months ago. And he has kids. And he said, Tim, he’s done a lot of work on himself. By the way, He’s been doing work himself for many, many years. And he’s got a few kids. And he said, Tim, what, I am feeling guilty right now. I can see the pans I’ve had in the past play now in my eldest child. I said, what do you mean? Well the ways that I used to look at myself, I used to judge my body and how I had done even when she was young, like looking at myself in the mirror and saying little things, the way I would just do things and say, my behaviors, I can see her doing the same thing, almost repeating a pattern, I feel like I caught it quickly enough in my other kids and just when I started doing work on myself, so I wasn’t as angry with those guys. I was short-tempered; I wasn’t as withdrawn. I was a lot more connected to them. But I’m worried the damage has been done by the first, and I am trying my best to mitigate that and make up for it. But I can’t help blaming myself, and I try not to buy Kyle blaming myself. I feel guilty; I feel worried. I’m scared she might get into some scenarios as she grows up. And anyway, I thought it’d be a great topic to bring to you don’t have children. So I was just empathizing with the guy. And I’m going to pretend like I know what it feels like. Because I don’t, I can imagine what it might be like. And I’m curious as to what you think about this. I knew you when you found out Erin was pregnant. You very intentionally went into even more work on yourself because you were very intentional about the type of parent you wanted to be in the environment you wanted to create for Bodie. And you’ve done a great job, and you’ve done a great job. It’s something I aspire to. So yeah, I’m curious, what advice would you give this guy?
Doug Holt 6:37
Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you for the compliment. Very generous, as any parent knows, we all as a parent, I’m I kind of joke that you’re going to screw your kids up just how you’re going to screw them up, right? Maybe we’re too good or what have you. But this is something that we’ve heard a lot from the guys, especially The Alpha Reset, when we get into some deep work. You can remember a guy who had twins, right? And he started panicking, anxiety came over, and he was freaking out because he thought one of his twins was kidnapped. And his. And his twin was standing right there because he was a twinge. He just went into this kind of disillusioned state. And he saw that anxiety fall over the other twin, and she started freaking out the same way. And he said, Oh my god, I have to seek some help, I have to get some help on this and get things sorted. So I share that with you. Because this happens for a lot of us, right. But what I’ve noticed over time is a couple of things. One is if something is going on in your life, like what I did, my relationship, my wife, and I didn’t want to bring kids in until we had our relationship issues kind of sorted out.
And then when new ones popped up, when we had kids, we made it a point of really going after it because we wanted to be the role models for our children, right? We want them to come to grow up seeing what a relationship in a marriage could be. My parents separated when I was four, divorced when I was five years old. And so they sit you, what I would tell these guys is I’ve seen the other side of this too, with so many hundreds of men going through The Powerful Man program, and most of all of them being fathers. And all of us are screwed up in our ways, right. And what I’ve seen is when the man changes himself, and the kids, no matter what their ages are ideally younger, the better. They witnessed that change. And he’s the leader in the family. Right? So he’s doing it positively, that child shifts, that child’s behavior shifts. Now, again, we talked about this because it’s going on right now. But in the scope of The Brotherhood, some guys are going through this fitness challenge that I put together, right? It’s going to be through, though, this whole of q2. And what they’re finding out is they’re doing, let’s say, push-ups. And the kids are jumping on right now. He’s got a daughter on the back, and a son is next to him doing his version of push-ups, and the whole family is starting to become more active. The wife is getting involved and becoming more active. We see this more and more, right?
What’s happened? Well, you had a passive family that suddenly the man who’s become a leader, he’s become reactivated. He was deactivated, right? He’s becoming the benevolent alpha. He’s becoming activated again. Everybody around him, as a ripple effect, starts to follow the leader. They have that ripple effect to go into. The gentleman I mentioned earlier had severe anxiety issues right after his Alpha Reset. He was able to get rid of most of those. Not all of it but most of it. His daughters changed almost overnight. Right? Because daddy changed. Their hero had changed. And not because he told him to change Tim. This is what the interesting kids who see monkeys do. That’d be the best. We have a guy that’s on our team who just found out his wife is pregnant. So the best advice I would give him is to remember what monkeys see monkeys do. That’s kids. So if you’re worried you screwed your kids up, unscrew them up by just fixing yourself. I say fixing there’s nothing broken, but by improving yourself and walking the walk, we call The Powerful Man.
Tim Matthews 10:21
I love that. And what would you say to the guy that says he feels guilty because he’s caused this? That’s what he believes.
Doug Holt 10:31
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 ThePowerfulMan.com/Bonus to discover the system that other businessmen just like you are using. We’ve included 10 case studies, ten men just like you who have found the solution and found their way on their path. But we want to share that with you. Go over to ThePowerfulMan.com/Bonus right away. Now let’s get back to the show. So, first of all, I get it. I grew up on a steady diet of guilt, guilt, and shame. My guess is he feels guilty about everything. Guilt is his go-to. He feels guilty when he doesn’t follow his diet the way he should. He feels guilty when he doesn’t make as much money as he should. He feels guilty when he raises his voice when he shouldn’t raise his voice. He feels guilty when he says no to a friend who asked for help even though he can’t do it. He feels guilty when he doesn’t overextend himself and gives up on himself to help others. Guilt is his go-to drug, it’s mine. It’s something I’m still working on, Tim.
Guilt is my go-to drug-like, like I have to wait too much on my plate sometimes. And then you or somebody else asked me to do something. Hey, can you help me out with this? And I feel guilty if I say no. Right? That’s the initial reaction; we get to work on the guilt. Right? The more I’m involved in The Powerful Man as a movement, our teachings, that guilt gets stripped away. But it has been heavily ingrained in me that I literally, I joke, but it’s true. I grew up with guilt. It’s what my mom used to raise three boys and a house. And she jokes about it now. Like I call her out on it. And she’s like, yeah, how do you expect me to raise three guys? You guys are all athletes. I was a single mom. So I use guilt, a manipulation, to raise you guys. Well, that’s what overcomes me. So I would tell this guy he feels guilty about it. Awesome. Sit with that. Realize that guilt is not getting you anything, guilt and shame. Don’t go anywhere. Right? Don’t get you where you want to go. Now, what can you do to improve upon yourself in such a manner that you’re going to showcase to your daughter this guy he said was a daughter? Hmm, your child, his daughter, in this case of what it means to live what we call an FCS life. Right? What does that mean? So I don’t know what this guy’s exact thing is that the daughters got the issues with, but let’s just say it’s anxiety. Okay, cool.
Show your daughter that you’re going to conquer your anxiety issues, that you’re going to invest time, money, resources into improving upon yourself because that is going to serve your daughter far more than anything else, right? She’s going to witness her father saying, This isn’t good enough. And I’m going to do what I need to do to fix it. That’s going to carry her far more than a college education would, right that determination to say, what, this isn’t the path I want to be on. This isn’t the life I want to live. I’m going to seek out coaches, mentors, whatever it is, therapies to get rid of this good isn’t good enough. I’m not going to settle for anything less than great. That’s what I want to pass off to my kids. You can feed a man fish out of the idea that you can feed a man fish or teach him to fish feed a man to feed a man of fish. You feed him for one meal, and you teach them to fish; he can feed himself for life. That’s why we encourage this father to do it.
Tim Matthews 14:25
Yeah, this guy was struggling to open up with me as well. And I asked him who we had spoken to about this. What do you mean, well, who have you spoken to about this? I’d You mean like a therapist? I know. Who’ve you shared this with so well? No one. Why? Well, I don’t want to burden people with this. And James, right. I don’t want to burden people with this. Okay. But also, the other piece is I think he might be terrified about how I look. When I look like a bad father, right? Are people going to think that exactly? Yeah. Are people going to think that I’m a bad father? I encouraged him to look. Again, I don’t have kids. So I’m not going to try and sit here and tell you what to do. Imagine if you were to share this with some people you felt you could trust, right? I imagine there’s going to be a good percentage of them probably thinking something similar or even worried about something similar.
Doug Holt 15:34
90% Yeah, I would guess, any woke man, so to speak , a new term that’s out there, conscious father, they’re worried about it, right? Because we all have bad habits and things we’ve done and things we’re not necessarily proud of in our lives. And we don’t want our kids to follow in those footsteps. We want them to learn from our mistakes. Right? And so it’s when that shame takes over. This is why I look, and I don’t do the consultation calls with the guys looking at joining the program. But I can almost guarantee you the reason most guys listen to this podcast, but don’t reach out to find out about The Activation Method is a shame. They don’t want people to know that they don’t have their shit together, that their marriage isn’t perfect. It’s purely a shame. I can tell you what, when a guy finds out what I do with a powerful man, any married man, right? They all start asking me a ton of questions, but never specific questions about their marriage. But I’ve been coaching for over 20 years. I know exactly what they’re doing. They’re like, man, and I don’t want anybody to know that I have a sexless marriage. I don’t want to know that my wife and I are fighting. I want everybody to think we’re perfect. And I know how to figure this out. It’s the same reason guys don’t ask for directions, right? They don’t want to find out. What’s the same thing that happens to dads?
But you gotta put that aside, guys. You got to raise your hand. That’s bravery. It’s courage, right? I talked about courage a lot. Courage is being scared or shameful. And doing it anyway, that takes balls, right? You got to step into it. And it’s not a weak man that does that. It’s the opposite. It’s a super friggin ‘strong man who raises his hand and says, Look, I need help. Or hey, I have a question. I’m just not sure about this. That takes courage because everybody, I go through it, right? Where I’m worried at times. Oh, geez, what’s this other person going to think of me? Right? Oh, what’s Tim going to judge me because I did this, whatever it was, yes, we all do, of course, you’re going to judge me. You’re like my brother. So, therefore, I don’t care. Now, it’s a weird thing. For these guys, are you listening to this? Right? When shame comes into the playing field, you have to step fully into it. That’s how you conquer shame; just go through it like a barrier. So we have American football, right? We have a position American football called a running back, right? Call hike, the quarterback hands the ball to this guy, and he just runs right. Not always straight. But he’s running, he’s running through the defense, and he’s going to get smashed. But the way you do it is you smash through. And the more and more you do it, guys, the more, the more you approach that shame and just realize no one’s judging you because they’re too busy thinking about themselves. Right? They’re more concerned, this guy if he raises hands to the other people around him, essentially, whatever that may be, if he’s in a program, the guys in the program will be easy. After all, they’re not judgmental at all because they’ve already been through so much. And just says, hey, look, man, this is what’s current for me. Has that occurred for anybody else? I have a feeling he’s got a lot of guys stepping in line. And a lot of guys who are scared to raise their hand. Now he puts himself in a leadership position. This is just like you guys.
They’re on the fence about joining the program. Right? That’s if, if you’re worried about what people will think or worry, like, I should know how to do this myself. That was my friggin ‘story. I can build businesses, and I can do all these other things. I should be able to fix my marriage myself. I couldn’t. I was scared that people were going to find out too. What will they think of me if they find out that my marriage isn’t as perfect as it looks on social media? What are they going to think of me? They found out that so quickly after we got married, things just weren’t working out. Oh my god. It was hard for me originally to talk about it on this podcast. What are they going to think about? They found out about my wife, and I’ve had problems. Guess what, guys, as soon as I started talking about it, friggin every guy I’ve talked to is like, yeah, of course, every beep I’ve got the same problems, differences. Some people don’t do anything about it. So for this gentleman or any guy listening to this, whether it be your kids, whether it be your marriage, will be your health. There’s no need to feel shame about it. I encourage you to be courageous and step into that fear anyway. Right and be the leader. be the leader by showcasing to the people around you what it is to be scared, not settle, and step up and step into your best life.
Tim Matthews 20:13
Although that, well, I’m going to send in this episode and see what he thinks.
Doug Holt 20:17
Yeah, let me know. Let me be this particular guy in the program, and I’m happy to talk to you as well. Because gosh, I’ve been there. Right. And like I said, I think every father has been there to different degrees, of course, different things that we do or don’t do. But yeah, monkey see, monkey do. And it goes well. And it goes bad. So if it can go bad, monkey sees monkey do. And your kid can pick up your bad habits, guess what? They can also pick up your good habits. Well, gentlemen, that’s a wrap for us at The Powerful Man show. I will invite you guys to be courageous and share what you got from this episode in our Facebook group. Right? Just go over to The Powerful Man Facebook group. It’s a private community of men just like you. It’s just for the business owner. So I apologize. We get tons of requests every day from you guys that just don’t happen to own a business yet. We are going to open up another program eventually. But right now, we’re focused on business owners only. We know our system works for the differences business owners have. So go over there if you’re a business owner and share right. Be courageous and share what’s going on for you. Raise your hand and lead. Until then, guys, have an amazing day. Take action as always. We’ll see you next time at The Powerful Man Show.
