Latest / Man In Your Corner with Shaun Tucker / Ep. 57 | Overcoming Dad Guilt and Mental Fitness Struggles as a Founder Dad
Transcript
- Shaun: Welcome back to the reset episode 57 with me Sean Tucker. You don't have to suffer alone anymore. If you're a man and you're listening to this, you're thinking, I've heard that one before. No, you haven't. I was at my ⁓ my hard Ben's club this morning, which I started here in Southeast ⁓ Melbourne. one of the new guys ⁓ joins He's quite open about ⁓ some the struggles that he went through as a new dad. He's got two children now, two kids. ⁓ And said, he's pretty open because he knows it'll help someone. Yeah, one of those people that he must have passed a comment, you know, said that it's only temporary, really, like the grief process that you go through as a new parent, it's temporary, right? You're going through this real big identity shift, these changes as a new parent and a lot of it's uncertain, right? You your routine, your schedule's thrown off, your... Probably supporting your partner and everything's just turned upside down. You've got this new life that's basically being supported and being held by you and your partner. And I think as men we tend to feel the need to only keep it to ourselves and not to say that talk therapy is the only way to get help but when we actually do realize that we can ask for help or it's perfectly okay to say that we are struggling. I think a lot of people don't. They sit there and they just struggle. They suffer. They suffer alone until it gets absolutely out of control. And this is where oftentimes people would do stupid things. Yeah, I think suicide rates in Australia alone, nine people are killing themselves every single day. Seven of them are men. If we don't show others that it's okay, not only to ask for help, just to even say that we're struggling. the people we care about, the people in our community. I think it's so important to have places where you are not judged, where you can go there and you can say, yeah, I'm actually not doing good. Or come along to the Sunday morning workouts and. It's not about pushing yourself hard. The idea is that you just have to show up and be there. If your week was crap and you show up on a Sunday morning and you put in an effort that even just showing up means that you're ahead of most people. And not ahead in terms of getting further than them in your life in comparison to theirs. You're ahead of them in in terms of taking care of yourself. because it's these kind of initiatives that are super important in connecting us back to ourselves and to what is actually important in our life. Because if you were caring for a baby as a new dad, as a new father, My guess is you're gonna drop everything to take care of that kid and you're gonna take care of your partner as well. There's a lot of changes that happen in that period where you're probably feeling quite alone. And this is why I started the men's club here in Mulgrave in southeast Melbourne, is simply to connect the community back together. Because... I was also someone who suffered when my daughter was born. Yeah, and I remember speaking to one of my brothers and he said, yeah, I went through that. Okay. You know, I'm not saying that it was heartless that he didn't really have compassion. No, he still let me suffer, which is part of the process. Right. I think we get so caught up in this, this ideology that we shouldn't be suffering. But the point of Sunday mornings is to actually show up and put in the work. Right. 45 minute workouts are pretty damn tough. I often don't know what's going to come out because I don't write the workouts. But it's not written by AI. It's written by the guy who started the Train Hard Men's Club over in California, Jason Kalipa. He writes them or his team writes them. Right, so they're crossfit style workouts. they're there to test you. They're there to test your fitness, to test your strength, and just to test your ability to continue. And the reason why they're so important is because if we get into our body and show that we're made for more, that we are capable when we feel like we're giving up, when we feel like giving up, yet we still have more reps to do and we get them done. This is what it's about. This is all what it's about because it's not about building strength and building bodies that look fantastic. That's just a side benefit. What it's really about is putting your ass to work and doing something hard when you feel like not doing it. That is the test. When you show up and you put yourself on the line and you go in and you think you can't do another rep and you do it anyway. That to me is you are mastering your mind. You are taking care of your body and mastering your mind. Because often times when we have those big identity shifts when you become a new dad or when you start a new job or whatever it is right or even if you lose a loved one right. The identity changes, you change fundamentally because the old version of you doesn't have the same routines, the same familiarities, the same comforts. And that's scary to know what's on the other side because you're leaning into the unknown. but it's the mind that attaches to the comforts of what you have now. And so showing up on Sundays and just putting in the work, but remember it's just showing up. The work is done when you just show up. So it's showing up to every single rep, showing up to every single bit of dirt you have to shovel. That's what I did yesterday. I was shoveling dirt. That's all you have to do. And think everyone is capable of doing that. So if you're feeling lonely, if you're feeling like you don't know where you can go because you feel like you'll be judged and you're feeling alone. Just come along. Come along to the Sunday workouts. If you won't come along to my one, if you're not based in Melbourne, find one on the Train Hard website. There surely is a location that's close by. There's 70 globally. So there may not be one that's close by, but you can also start one. The hardest thing is being consistent. That's the hardest thing. But you just have to message your friends. Message the people you know could benefit from it. And say, hey, I'm meeting here. I'm doing this 45 minute workout. Come along. all you have to do is show up. It's not on me to get you out of bed. You just got to come along. And I promise you that when you start doing that, you'll not only feel good about giving back, you'll actually start feeling better within yourself. Because large progress is made in small steps. Those small consistent steps that you take every single day, every single week, that's what leads to the larger steps towards your goals. So if you have found value in today's episode and you know someone who could really benefit not only listening to the podcast, but maybe even listening or coming along to one of the workouts, then I just encourage you to share it with one person. Find that person you know who could benefit from it and send it to them. That's how we grow organically and that's also how we get this train hard men's club even more global. creating more impact, building stronger men, building stronger communities, better dads. Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to see you in tomorrow's episode.