Breaking Generational Trauma Without Hating My Dad

In this episode, I share how I caught myself repeating my father's mistakes, and the three shifts I used to stop parenting how I was parented and build real closeness with my kids.

Key Themes:

Recognizing the Childhood Father Gap

Shifting to a Presence Mindset

Auditing Your Life Through Self-Reflection

Healing the Lineage Through Hard Conversations

📥 RESOURCES FOR DADS:
Free Inside-Out Dad Blueprint: https://threesixfivedad.kit.com/innershadow

Grab the 365 Dad Journal: https://www.threesixfivedad.com/products/365-dad-journal-physical

Work With Me 1:1 (Coaching Application): https://www.threesixfivedad.com/pages/1-1-coaching-service

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

One thing that stood out to me about my childhood as a boy, especially growing up, I would say around middle school into high school, is that a lot of my friends, my closest friends, most of them, they had a relationship with their dad that I never had with mine. Um, that I didn't have with mine at that time of my life. I didn't think anything of it, right? I just was like, you know, these are friends that I'm cool with. We both did music, we both played basketball. I just figured that's all it was. Until years later, I was doing some work on this mindful fatherhood coaching business, and I was working with some marketing folks, and one of the, I guess you will call it, experiments that we had to do uh essentially was look back at your life and try and come up with something on brand about your life that you can now put into your business. And so I started thinking about my life and I started thinking about my relationship with my father. And then it hit me in the self-inquiry and the reflection during that experiment that I felt as though I was latching on to those friends because I really wanted what they had that I didn't have, and that was that close bond with their fathers. And the reason why that's important is because now that I'm a dad, I have two children, a 14-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl, at times, especially earlier in my journey, I can see where the shortcomings and and the lack of closeness I had with my dad, I could see how easy it is to essentially replay that. And I don't want to replay that. And so, if you're watching this video and you're a father and you're thinking to yourself, like, wow, when I was growing up, I wasn't as tight with my father. You want to make sure that you are aware of that and that you don't repeat that. And so, this video is just going to give you ways that I have implemented things in my own daily practice and my own daily bonding with my children that kind of ensures that I don't repeat that same closeness mistake that my dad did. And now, as a father, society is going to tell you to work, work, work, and it's nothing wrong with working. You know, I love working. Sometimes I may use work as a reason to escape from sitting with my own feelings, right? That's something that I could be honest about. But a lot of good things come from work, the ability to uh support yourself and your family, the ability to meet new people and foster new connections, right? That stuff can't come at a cost of not spending time with your kids and not building closeness with your kids. And so, taking it back to when I was in middle school, I was super cool with this dude named Ronald, and his dad was our basketball coach in like in seventh grade, and every single time we had practice, his dad would pick me up, his dad would drop me off, and I would spend a lot of time with Ronald and his family at home, and I just loved everything about his dad and their relationship. I had another best friend growing up, his name was Jamar. Same thing, him and his dad would like ride bikes together, and you could just tell they had this deeper layer of connections. I can probably name four or five other really good friends I had during my adolescence that now I'm realizing, right after doing this work, it's like wow, I latched onto them because my dad didn't give me what their dad gave them, and I just so badly wanted to be a part of that. And so, how do we ensure that we're taking steps to not put our kids in that situation, right? We want them to have great friends, but we don't want them to subconsciously latch on to people because of them something that they are not receiving at home from us, right? Before I start this, I always, whenever I bring it back to how we were parented, I always start with having empathy for our parents, right? Having empathy for our dads. Um, we don't want to go on a I hate my dad rant, you know, because he did this. No, we want to have empathy because we see how easy it is to do what our parents did because they are now seeing how easy it is to do what their parents did, right? It's a cycle. I'll always talk about that. Now, some ways that I ensure that I kind of build closeness with both of my children, the first thing will shock you, not really, maybe not. It's all mindset, right? If you wake up thinking to yourself, man, I'm grateful for my children, and I'm not gonna let work, I'm not gonna let anything else stop me from devoting time with my children. That's a mindset. And if you assume that role and assume that identity, and that's the type of dad you're gonna be, that's what's going to happen. You're just gonna take aligned action. You know what I mean? I mean, this is actually, I'll give you a good example. So today, my daughter is with my nephew at as we speak at a pool party, and my son is here. His mom is coming to pick him up in about an hour or so. And I had this whole day mapped out in my mind. I was like, gonna wake up, I was gonna read, do some meditation, record this video while my daughter was out, and then since my son is 14, you know, him and he can hang, he can do his thing. And I thought to myself, I said, I can't do that, right? I can't do that. So the best way that I could make sure I get some closeness with him before his mom comes and pick him up, is I said, Hey, around 11:30 after breakfast, you and I are gonna go to the park and we're gonna play some basketball. We're gonna work on your game and we'll get some conditioning in. And he was like, Cool, that sounds great. And we went to the park, we had a great workout. He actually had a moment where he was doubting himself, and we had a very heart-to-heart talk about self-doubt. And so we had that discussion, and now we're back home, he's doing his thing, my daughter's at a pool party. When she comes back, I'll spend a great amount of closeness with her, and I'm here talking to you all. Mindset: if I woke up with the mindset of I just gotta work, work, work, I wouldn't even think about ways that I can spend time with my 14-year-old. He's taller than me. He's like, he's I'm 6'3, and he's taller than me, so I think he's about 6'3 and a half. The point is, he's independent now. If I didn't have the mindset that I want to make sure I spend time with him, it wouldn't have happened, right? And here I am spending great time with him. That conversation, that heart to heart that we had about self-doubt, that would have never happened if I didn't have the mindset of I'm a dad who wants to spend time with his kids, right? I'm a dad who wants to prioritize spending time with his kids. I could have easily had the mindset of I'm a YouTuber, I'm a mindful fatherhood YouTuber, I'm somebody who's ambitious, I work, work, work. And I could have done this video and probably batch recorded another video. And him and I would have never had that heart to heart about self-doubt because we I wouldn't have been in the uh situation, I wouldn't have been in that moment, right? I wouldn't have had that experience with him at the park if I didn't have the mindset of I'm a dad who wants to spend time with his kids. So the first thing you got to do is just make your mind up that I'm going to prioritize time with my children. Believe it or not, most things in life just comes down to mindset, right? Because your mind does so many things, and and and what we tend to do is associate ourselves with the thoughts in our mind. And so if our mind is telling us this is who I am, and that's a spotlight that we're shining, we're just gonna take aligned action without even knowing it. We're just gonna work, work, work, work, work because our mindset, our mind is telling us this is who we are, or we can choose to, you know, use the flashlight in our mind and be that right, and then just put the flashlight on time with kids, right? Time with kids. That's what I tend to do. I'm like, all right, right now I see that I'm having this real clinging to working, and because my mind is that's where the spotlight in my mind is, but I'm like, I control the spotlight, so I rather just change the spotlight to spending time with my children, and I take aligned action because that's what my focus is on. So the first thing is to just you know kind of make your mind up that that's the kind of dad that you're going to be, and that's the kind of dad that you are, and that will eliminate majority of this. The second thing, and I think this is like super important, is to self-reflect. Because if you're not self-reflecting, if you're not questioning, if you're not sitting in silence and just wondering why are you showing up the where you the way you are showing up, you'll never be able to even realize. Like, if I would if I didn't do that experiment, I don't even think I would have known. And I I probably did this two years ago. I don't even think I would have realized that the reason why, or a big reason why I was so close to these specific individuals was because of the relationship they had with their father that I didn't have with mine. I would have just thought, oh, we we played games together, we played video games, we hooped together, and I would have just associated it with that. I would have never realized the com the recurring theme, the recurring theme in their lives. The one constant thing with all those friends was they had this thing that I yearned for. I would have never realized that. And it took me until my mid-30s to realize that. Why? Because I had a lack of self-reflection, I had a lack of self-inquiry, right? And so the second thing is to really be serious about sitting down, questioning how you're showing up, but just self-reflect, right? I feel like you can watch a thousand videos, you can read a thousand books, listen to a thousand podcasts, and out of all the things that you consume, there are nuggets that you know really, really resonates with you as a father, as a human being. And we just let all the noise around us, externally and internally, pull us away from what really resonates. And I say that to say I do the same thing, right? I'm trying to create much more than I consume. I just want to surrender and just you know, to whatever happens, happen. But one thing I realized throughout this consumption is there are nuggets, and you know what I'm talking about. There are nuggets that you just they just feel right. The person saying it doesn't feel like they're saying it, so you can buy something. The person saying it just feels genuine, right? And for me, this information right here is is one of those for me, is the idea that we are only going to grow externally, internally, if we start inside first. For me, that piece of information just kept coming up and coming up. So, what did I do? I started journaling, not selling you on anything, but that is the inspiration behind me creating my 365 DAD journal because I'm like, I fell in love with the act of sitting down and reflecting and writing out my thoughts. If it wasn't for me doing that, I would not have known all of this information that I share on this channel, right? I would not be able to give you this, these relatable experiences that I give you. It's because I sat down and I reflected. And here I am able to tell you this information that you're probably now gonna say, dang, that's true. I have this same experience, right? It's only relatable because it's real, and it's only real for me because of me taking moments of my day to sit and reflect on why this is happening, sit on and reflect on how uh can I be better, right? You just gotta reflect. You don't think that you can just run your way through this process of trying to be a better dad while trying to be a better individual. It's impossible. It's gonna take some silence, it's gonna take some thinking, it's gonna take some reflecting, it's gonna take some questioning what you thought was real about you and about what surrounds you. But it has to start with you being vulnerable enough to sit and just let the feelings happen, right? And the the third thing, third and final thing I'll say when it comes to how to make sure that you don't make the same mistakes as your father did when it comes to closeness and building a bond, is really talk to your dad, especially if your dad is still around, right? If your father figure is still around, have that conversation. Had nothing to do with this, it had something, it was um financial, and then literally probably a day after this argument, I sat and I'm like, Oh, I get it. The reason why I was so passionate, the reason why I was so frustrated with him in that moment really had nothing to do with what the actual conversation was about. It was because I was still holding on. I was still holding on to what he didn't provide for me as a child. I was still holding on to not having that closeness. I told him that straight up two days, two, three days later. I said, you know what, I apologize for you know my behavior, and um, you know, we could have a conversation without both of us yelling. But I said, I realized that I was lashing out at you, had nothing to do with what we were actually talking about, it had everything to do with me still had holding on to resentment towards you, and you know what my dad looked at me and said, A, he apologized for the lack of involvement, but b, he also said, you know, he sees how I am with Caleb. He goes, I see how you are with Caleb, I see how you show up to everything, I just see how you're so involved, and I wish I was that way. This is a man that is 70 years old and is able to look at me and tell me, I wish I would have done that when you were that age. I he's like almost feeling bad. I don't want him to feel bad, I want him to be self-aware, that's great. But he's literally telling me in my face that he wished that he showed up the way I'm showing up for my son. Wow. I mean, talk about a breakthrough, right? And so if your father is around and you're able to have that conversation, I would highly recommend you just have that conversation and be vulnerable and let him know how you feel. Uh, because you'll the how the conversation may go can really surprise you, as it did with me. And so that's it for today. Just wanted to give you some ways on how to not parent how you were parented when it comes to wanting to spend time and wanting to be intentional about building bonds and deeper connections with your kids. First, shift your mindset, second, self reflect, and third, have a hard conversation if you're able to. All right, I'll see y'all next week.

unknown 16:15

Bye.