How Being a Parent Has Changed Me

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you love this podcast, if you've ever gotten any value from it, please do me a favor, share it with someone that you love today. Send them a text message, say, hey, you should listen to this podcast. I think you will love it. It just allows us to impact more people, which is ultimately my goal here in what we're doing. So if you do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Today, I'm gonna be talking to you about how becoming a parent has actually completely changed my life.

0:38And this is, you know, for me, Something that I've had a lot of people reach out and be like, hey, like, could you do an episode on talking about this and how things have changed? And I think it's really important because there's a handful of moments in life that you can split into like before and after, you know, before you met your spouse and after you met your spouse, before this happened and after this happened. And having children is one of those moments, one of the biggest of those moments. And because before kids, the stakes are so much lower, like ridiculously lower. You can put off working hard on your healing and making yourself better.

1:16You can kind of coast a little bit. You can tell yourself you'll get around a certain thing someday. And you can just kind of, to be honest with you, it's just a lot easier, right? But the second you become a parent, like the luxury of just waiting to heal or kicking that can down the road, just that luxury just disappears. or if you care, it should disappear. Because now it's not just your life on the line, it's your children's life on the line because they will learn the entire world through you. And for me, like being in the position that I'm in, having coached people for 20 years at this point, almost every single time that I sit down and coach somebody and work with them, it comes back to the relationship with their parents.

2:01Almost every single time. There's always something that comes up from there that hasn't healed in some sort of way. And so for me, I was very aware of how important this position is. And so for me, when my son was born, I didn't just become a dad. In my mind, I became a mirror. For him, for myself, I became a teacher. And most little boys, if we're being honest, see their dad as their hero. And it's not something that I wanted to be just because of proximity. I don't want to be my son's hero because of proximity. I want to see that that is something that I am trying to earn every single day. And that realization of wanting to earn the spot of being a hero really shifted the way that I started to look at myself and to look at my habits and to look at my purpose in this world as well.

2:51You know, when you're a little boy, I don't know how it was for everyone else listening, but for me, when I was a little boy, my dad automatically became my hero. He wears the cape. And usually that's the way it is for most little boys. You don't question it. He just is because he's taller and he's stronger and he's louder. In your small little eyes, he is invincible, at least until you get older and realize some of the other stuff, right? And so that's kind of like the default setting for a lot of children and a lot of little boys. And I didn't want to just settle that for default. I wanted my son to think that I am a hero because I earned that, not just because I'm bigger or because I'm the man in the house.

3:32I want him to look at me and be like, that guy, when he's older, I want him to be like, that guy earned it. He earned it the way that he treated people with respect. He earned it with the way that he loved my mother. He earned it with the way that he works, in the way that he builds, in the way that he contributes to this world. He earned it by the way that he shows up for himself mentally, physically, spiritually, because the reality is my son will become some version of me. He already looks like me, So he's going to copy my tone. He's going to copy my habits. He's going to copy my mindset, my energy, the way I respond to stress, everything.

4:06So if I don't sit there and consciously shape the man that I'm becoming, then he's going to inherit not only just my strengths, but also my wounds and my trauma if I don't overcome them. And that's what I think about the most. You know, before having a kid, like I said, you can just kind of kick the can of healing down the road to just a someday kind of thing. When you have a child and you see them start to copy every single thing that you do, you realize like, oh shit, like I need to heal because they're going to copy everything that I do. I'm not going to pass that along. And so the thing that I love about children is that children don't care about your triggers.

4:48Like, let's be honest. Most of us, we walk through our life carefully tiptoeing around our trauma and our pain. And the way that I look at it and the way I explain it to my wife is that the way I realize is before I met my wife, I had built a life where I would basically be walking through a field of landmines. And if I step on them, that's like a trigger. Boom, I'd blow up in some sort of way, mad, emotional, whatever it might have been for each of us, right? As you get older and you start to know your triggers, you start to build a life to get away from all of your triggers, not to heal them, but to get away from them.

5:29So, you know, it's because it's easier to avoid your triggers than it is to work on them. So you stop doing certain things. You stop hanging out with certain people. And so you build this life where you're walking through a land, like a landfill, but you're walking the exact same route every single time so that you don't step on anything that you don't want to step on. And that's kind of like what we are like. We have this minefield and we've learned these routes to not step on landmines. Then we get into a relationship with another person and we learn that that person has triggers as well. We have triggers and we learn to basically navigate through the landmine together so that I don't step on her triggers, she doesn't step on my triggers, and we learn to navigate that.

6:13In friendships, we do the same thing. We learn what triggers our friends. We don't say those things. We don't do those things anymore. And we kind of like unconsciously build these maps in our head where we know where the emotional landmines are with ourself and with the people that we're closest with. And we walk around them. And you just learn to build a life where you're just walking around as many landmines as you possibly can. Because once again, for most of us, it's easier than healing. But then you have kids and kids don't give a damn about your triggers. They will stomp on every single landmine multiple times a day.

6:45Not because they're cruel, but because they're pure. They're raw and they haven't learned to filter themselves for your comfort. And this is why so many people say that their children are their greatest teachers is because you start to learn all of the shit that you've been burying for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. And every time your child sets off your anger or your impatience or your shame, it's not them. It's you. It's your unhealed place. And I always say anytime you're triggered, that's like the universe coming to you through another person to say, hey, this is something that you need to work on.

7:25Children are saying you need to work on this multiple times a day by their actions because either you heal or you stay stuck. Healing is really the only true path to freedom though. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably one of the people who wants to heal, but most people, they would rather just avoid all of it. And the image that I've created in my mind, and I've been explaining to people, and I've explained it to a lot of other parents, and like, oh my god, that makes so much sense, is this metaphor, right? Every wound that you have, everything that hasn't been healed within you, is like a small fire that's been kind of quietly burning for years.

8:04Like, you know it's there, so you try to avoid it. You walk around it. You build a life in a way that keeps you from getting too close to those fires. And then you have a child and a child doesn't just walk by the fire. They dump gasoline all over that fire over and over and over and over again. Once again, it's not punishment. It's the universe saying, look, like here, you need to heal this. You cannot pass this fire onto your child. If you do ignore it, if you double down and keep avoiding it, then you don't just carry the fire. What you do is you hand down that fire to your children because trauma is hereditary, not just in your DNA, but in your behavior and in your patterns as well.

8:47So your unhealed wounds will become your child's wounds unless you decide to face the fire and put it out. It is the universe trying to show you where you need to heal yourself. And the greatest thing that you can give your children is a healed version of you. Otherwise, they will struggle with the same things that you struggle with. And I'll give you a real quick example. I have a friend who recently just had a baby, and I was talking with him about, you know, kind of what's going on, and baby's a few months old and everything. And he was talking about how his wife has this, since he's known her, she has this way of catastrophizing.

9:29And she only catastrophizes for health things. Like, you know, if something goes wrong, she thinks she has cancer, she thinks she's going to die a slow death. And that's the only place in her life where she catastrophizes. And so she's built her life to kind of not step on those landmines, not have that fire be, you know, have gasoline put on it. Well, then they have the baby. And you care about the baby more than you've ever cared about anything in your entire life, more than you care about yourself. So now she's extremely worried about the baby. Super worried about the baby, all the things that could possibly happen, right?

10:03So I'm talking to him about it. And there's a couple of little small things that have come up. And the pediatrician has recommended them to go to three different times, three different visits, to go to three different specialists. And every single time they go to a specialist, she just catastrophizes everything that could possibly happen. She goes on Google, She tries to figure out what's going on. And then she goes off the rails of like, can't sleep. Can't, you know, it's all of this stuff that's happening with her taking this wound that somehow comes from childhood. I don't know the exact story behind it.

10:37Now she's placing it onto her child and it's way bigger than it's ever been because it's a little fire that's been going for years and the gasoline just makes it so much bigger. And so that example is, it's always been there. It's just that that thing is continuing to come up because it's going, the universe is going, hey, you're going to need to heal this. Like it's always been there, but the universe is trying to make you aware and say, hey, it's worse now. I'm trying to make it worse to make you see it, to make you understand it, to make sure that you know you need to heal this part of you so that therefore you don't pass it on to your child.

11:13And so he was talking to me about, they both go to the same therapist and he's like, yeah, she's got an appointment with him today. And there's many times where I've talked with parents where they realize they have this trigger. This trigger is 10 times more with the child. I'm like, yeah, because the child is the gasoline that's pouring it on. There's the universe coming to you through your child saying, hey, wake up, heal yourself. Because the day everything changes is when you decide to have children and you have them. You have kids. Before you have kids, the stakes are personal. Like, can I build a career that I enjoy?

11:50Can I get in shape? Can I heal my childhood wounds? Can I manage my triggers? Yeah, all of those are great. I'm kind of thinking about it. But now it's like, okay, now the stakes are a lot higher. Back then, if I fail at, you know, changing my career, fail at getting in shape or fail at managing my triggers, like I only hurt myself and that's it. But after kids, failure has a ripple effect. Like if you don't heal, they inherited. If you settle, then they're settling for the exact same standard. If you lash out and you have anger issues that you got from your dad, then they're going to normalize anger and they're going to do the exact same thing.

12:24If you numb yourself because your parents were avoidant, well then guess what? They are going to inherit your avoidance as well. It's the real wake-up call of parenting is that the stakes are so much higher and they are generational at this point. And so I'll be real with you. There's a whole lot of pressure. And I know a lot of parents out here, I'm not trying to stress you out. But we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get it right. And that pressure can be suffocating. But here's what I've learned when you start to look at it. You cannot be perfect. You cannot be perfect in life and parenting and any of that.

13:00And I can't be perfect. And my job is not to model perfection. Because then my son's going to try to be perfect. I don't want to model that. I don't want to model perfection. I want to model growth. I don't have to hide my mistakes. My job is to own my mistakes and then to repair my mistakes and to show my son what accountability looks like as an adult. I don't need to protect him from every single pain. My job is to try to equip him with resilience, with empathy, with love, with how I treat him, but also how he sees me treat myself, but also how he sees me treat his mother. And so this cape that I'm talking about of hero, you know, it doesn't require flawlessness.

13:45It doesn't require you to be the most perfect person. It requires you to screw up, to take accountability for it and to fix it. It requires honesty. It requires effort. It requires the willingness to keep getting back up. And once again, it's not about being flawless or perfect. It's about growth. Like there's a really great song that Morgan Whalen has. It's a song that he wrote for his son. It's called Superman. And there's a line in it that says, I do the best I can, but Superman's still just a man sometimes. That's like such a good line because he's like, he's trying the best that he can. He's trying to be Superman for his son, but Superman's still just a man sometimes.

14:25He's not always Superman. And so when you look at that, like parenting, for those of you guys that are parents out there or want to be parents. Parenting is the ultimate personal development program. Like kids are the most intense self-improvement program. You know, books are great. Courses are great. Retreats are great. All of those things are great, but nothing will reveal your weak spots faster than a toddler screaming at 2 a.m. Like that, that will show you your weak spots when you just want to get some freaking sleep. But, you know, if you let it and you see this pressure of being a parent as a way to transform, it can completely transform your life.

15:07Like mentally, you can learn patience because it's easy to be patient when you live by yourself. But when you have a child that's, you know, freaking out two o 'clock in the morning, you learn patience. You learn how to self-regulate instead of exploding. You learn how to separate your child's behavior from your own personal worth. That's mentally. Physically, you realize that you can't pour from an empty cup. Your health isn't just about you anymore. It's about having energy to live longer for your children, to be able to play with your children, to focus on being there for them. Shit, to focus on being present.

15:46You realize how much time you spend doing stuff that doesn't even actually matter. You realize that you could be playing with your kids and you're starting to think about other things that are going on, it's like, why would, there's nothing in this world that's more important than being as present as I possibly can right now. Let me work on this. And so you have to work on your presence, your relationships. You know, they're going to learn that from you and you start to get better at your relationships because you start to realize that they're seeing the way that you treat their other parents.

16:14And that becomes a blueprint for what they believe love should look like. Every interaction with them is a lesson. And so then you start thinking about, well, also, what am I doing for my work? Like, what do I do? Like, if work stops being just about you, it becomes about like, hey, how can I model what it looks like to contribute in this world, to have passion, to have courage? Because children don't just hear what you say. Like, they see what you do and they will follow in your footsteps whether you like it or not. And so, you know, your child doesn't see you and go, oh, well, I'm just going to live a different life.

16:49like they'll see you work a job that you hate just to pay the bills and they'll believe that's what adulthood is. That's what a lot of us saw our parents do. You know, if your child sees you bury emotions instead of processing your emotions, they'll learn to bury theirs. If your child sees you chasing growth though and facing fears and living with a purpose, they're also going to inherit that from you as well. And so the real question isn't like, what do I want for my son? It's more of like, what am I willing to demand for myself? What am I willing to demand of myself? Because the life that you tolerate will become the ceiling for what they accept in their lives as well.

17:26And so it's calling you to grow and to become better. And so if you're a parent, like your children don't need a perfect parent. They need a parent that they can see that's trying their best and trying to become better. Like they need a healing parent. They need a present parent. They need a courageous parent. And so if you're a parent, stop running from the work. Stop trying to numb the pain. Stop trying to, you know, just honestly stop being on your phone so fucking much. Stop putting your phone in front of your children so much. Like stop telling yourself that you'll deal with these things later because later isn't safe anymore.

17:58Not when you have these little eyes that are watching you. And so you need to start focusing on healing your wounds so that your children don't inherit them. Show them what courage looks like by living a courageous life. Show them what love looks like by practicing it. Show them what integrity looks like by you embodying it. Because your children are not just your responsibility. to your children or your legacy. And so for me, I don't want to just be my son's hero because biology handed me the cape. I want to earn it. And he is my greatest reason for growth, not my excuse to stay the same. He's the gasoline that's on top of all those little fires, those little triggers that are in the way of love and courage and truth.

18:39And so I know I'll never be perfect, but I'm trying to be as real as I possibly can. I'm trying to be as present as I possibly can. I'm trying to be as courageous as I possibly can. And if I do that, maybe one day when he does look at me and call me his hero, then I can look at myself and go, you know what? It's because I earned it, not because of biology. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories. Tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And also, if you want to learn about coaching with me outside of the podcast, I have programs, step-by-step programs to help you overcome certain aspects of yourself and build a better life.

19:14You can go to coachwithrob.com to learn more. Once again, coachwithrob.com. And with that, I'm gonna leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.