Latest / The WARRBuilt Podcast / EP003 - Being The Man Your Family Needs
Transcript
- Dan: The last time you were really there for your kid? Not just in the same room, but actually there. You know the difference. We all do. It's the difference between being home and still being at work in your mind, right? You're still on the phone, still running the numbers, and then your kid asks you to watch something that they figured out, and you say, Yeah, in a minute, buddy. And if you really take an honest look at yourself, That minute never really comes. That question wasn't hard enough for you to sit with. Let me ask you a harder one. How would the people you live with actually describe you? Not the man that you're promising them you'll be, but the man you actually are, the man that shows up day in and day out in your home. What does that description sound like? Sit with that for a second, because we'll be exploring exactly that topic today. This is the Warbuilt Podcast, and I'm Dan. Last episode, we talked about the lie of the lone wolf, why willpower runs out, and why no man was built to do it alone. Today, we take that home to the four walls where it matters most. Today we're talking family. It's the first of our totems for a reason. Most of us are quietly failing at it while we tell ourselves we're crushing it. I want to start with the lie we tell ourselves about this totem. And to be clear, every totem has a lie attached to it, but the lie about family is a sneaky one. It doesn't look like failure, it looks like success. So let's define the lie. The lie is believing that providing for your family is the same as being there for your family. We believe it because it feels noble, it feels strong, it feels right. I'm working all these hours for them. I'm grinding it out for them. The house, the vacations, the nice cars, the college fund. That's love, right? That's me being a good man. And listen, providing matters. I'm not knocking it. A man who takes care of his family is doing something good. But somewhere along the way, a lot of us have quietly swapped presence for provision. We started using the provider role as cover for the father role, or even the husband rule. We tell ourselves that as long as the bills are paid, there's a roof over the head, and food on the table, we're doing our job. But we're blind to the fact that we That our family is sitting right there, fed, clothed, and completely starving for the one thing we are too busy to give them: Us. So let me give you the first hard truth of the day. Your family doesn't need more of what you buy. They need more of who you are. Think about your own childhood for a second, the stuff you actually remember about your dad or whoever raised you. Is it the presents, the gifts, the stuff? Or is it the handful of times that he was actually 100% fully there? Whether it was playing catch in the backyard or the fishing trip or Where he left work at work and was completely 100% zoned in on you, or maybe even a night where he just sat on the edge of your bed and listened to you babble about whatever it is little kids babble about. Nobody becomes an adult and thinks back and says, You know what made me really feel loved by my dad? The overtime he worked to pay for that nice nair nice pair of Nikes. No, we remember the times when our dads were just there, fully engaged and present in our lives. And the cruel thing about the concept of presence is that you can't buy it, you can't outsource it, and you can't make it up later. A lot of guys try to make it up with big gifts or some kind of extravagant financial overture later in life. That's not how it works. You either spend the time or you don't. And there's a real cost to not paying attention. One that nobody tells you about when you're a young dad. Your kids will nag you when they're little, and at some point that stops. At some point they stop saying, Watch this, dad. You've said in a minute so many times that they've just stopped asking. They learn that you're busy. They assume that you're less interested in them than whatever you are doing at the time, and they learn that them interrupting you is a bother as opposed to a moment for the two of you to bond. A lot of men mistake their kids' silence as them becoming independent when it's really the sound of a door closing. It's the end of an error in their childhood, and it's the end of an error in your fatherhood that you'll never ever get back. by the time you've got the time, they've stopped coming around. Don't let it get that far. Now here's what makes this so easy to get wrong. Being absent used to look like something. The dad at the bar every night, the guy who ran out on his family, everybody knew that that was a man failing his family. But the modern version of absent doesn't look like that. Our kind of absent looks responsible. It looks like a hard worker. You can check out on your family for 15 years and have everybody, including yourself, calling you a great provider the whole time. And that's the trap, man. Busyness is the one way to abandon your family. That nobody will ever knock you for. You've always got the phone in your hand and you've always got an email to answer because you're the guy who's busting his chops taking care of his family. You'll wear it like a badge of honor. And the concept of I'll relax when things slow down, we all say it. We all do it. But your four year old doesn't know the difference between a dad who's gone and a dad who's home busting his hump. All he knows is dad's not there and won't watch him do whatever he's doing. And that leads me to the second big issue on this topic, one that's bigger than most guys realize. You're not just providing for your family, you're teaching them every single day, your kids aren't really listening to what you say, they're studying what you do. You can tell your son to respect people all day long, but he's learning respect from the way you talk to your wife or his mother. You can tell your daughter she deserves a good man, but her version of a good man is formed by watching the one who raises her. The lectures you give them go in one ear and go out the other, but the examples you set, those stay for life. Don't believe me? Think about the time you've heard your kids say something and you felt your heart drop because they said it in the exact same tone as you. Whether it was snapping at a sibling the way you snap at your wife when you're stressed, or on a good day, showing the same patience with a kid at the park that you show with them. And that's it right there. They're mimicking you, the good and the bad. They're displaying and acting the way you taught them by your actions. And that blade cuts both ways, right? The way you handle stress, the way you treat a waiter, the way you own a mistake. Whether you keep your word or you let it slide. Your kids are watching and your kids are listening. They're building their whole image of what a man is out of what you're displaying. You are responsible for molding their idea of what a good man is by your actions. Actions matter much more than words here. So the question isn't just, am I spending time with my kids? It's what are they learning about being a man from how I act when I'm home? That one should hit a little hard. I know it does for me. I wanna be straight with you about something because one of my personal rules is that I don't pretend to be something I'm not. I'm not sitting here saying I'm some perfect family man who figured it all out. I'm not, I've got the same struggles you do. So when I talk about showing up at home, I'm talking to the guy in my own mirror first. My wife Marissa and I are raising our girls together. And that partnership is an important piece of this message because being present isn't just a kid thing. It's also important to the strength and health of your marriage. When's the last time you were fully present with your wife? Not co-managing a household, not tag teaming the logistics, but actually with her. A lot of us are great roommates and part-time business partners with the mother of our children. And we can call that a good marriage. But your kids are watching that too. The way you love their mother is the first thing they'll ever learn about love. And Merce and I, we've been through it. We've gone through our ups and downs. But I can tell you this much, our girls still roll their eyes when they see me come into the room and slap her ass or give her a hug and a kiss. They hear me treat her with respect, and I'll admit, they see me slip on occasion and see me get upset with her. But they know what love looks like, and they know how much I appreciate their mother and how important she is to me. And that's something that we should all strive for, to make sure that the women in our lives understand and know how much we love and respect them. Now I already hear the pushback because I've said it myself, right? I have to work, the bills are real, I can't just be home. And you're 100% right. I'm not telling you to quit your job and be at a stay-at-home dad or mom or husband. Provision is real and somebody's got to do it. And frankly, there is an innate need for men to be a provider. So I encourage that. But hear me on this. Presence is never about the number of hours. It's about the quality of attention in the hours you have. You're physically going to be in the house tonight. The question is whether you're actually mentally there or not. Twenty minutes of you full-on attention, phone in the other room, beats three hours of you physically present and mentally gone any day of the week. You don't need more time with your family. You need to be laser focused in the time you already have with them. The version of you that walks through that front door at night needs to be downstream of everything else. Your stress, your finances, fortitude, whether you've got anyone keeping you honest or not. You need to be free and clear of all that. But a man, white knuckling life by himself, carries that exhaustion home and unloads it on the very people he's working so hard for. He's got nowhere else to put it. And this is exactly why a man can't pull this off alone. On the flip side, a man with a tribe has somewhere to offload the weight. Other men, they can catch the venting and the fear and the frustration so that the man can walk into his own door lighter and give his family the best version of himself and not just the leftovers. Being a good father and a husband isn't only a skill you own at home, it's built on every other totem and it's built with other men. And this brings me to the third and final topic. This is the most important one. So make sure you listen up. You have less time than you think. I'll say it again. You have less time than you think. When your kids are little, the days are long, and it feels like the stage lasts forever. The six a.m. wake ups on Saturday when all you want to do is catch up on a few hours of sleep. The watch this dad 40 times a day. And somewhere in the grind, you start treating that like it's permanent. Like There'll always be time to be present later, after this busy season, after the promotion, after things settle down. Well, guess what? They don't settle down. Ever. The kids keep growing, whether you're paying attention or not. And one day you'll look up and the little one who wanted your attention every waking second has a whole life that doesn't revolve around you anymore. There's friends, there's a phone, there's sports, there's a future with a set launch date. I know that for me personally, this hits hard right now. My daughters are seventeen, heading off to college next year, and the time I thought I had with them is quickly evaporating. There is a definite hard expiration date on the time I have left with them. I can remember years ago just dreading coming home from work and one of my daughters asking me to go play catch in the backyard or the other one asking me to do a juju sidrill with them and thinking, Yeah, maybe tomorrow I'm a little busy, I'm a little tired. It was a constant thing. But now I've got one daughter who's all squared away to play field hockey in college, and one who, while she isn't sure what she's gonna do in college, is very intent on starting the next phase of her life. And that time I had with them, it's gone. I say to my wife all the time, I want my little girls back, I want my munchins back. Yeah, it was hard back then. It was really hard. But when you're in it, you don't realize how much you're going to miss it. And you also don't realize the impact of saying no to them. So for now, I'm embracing the random Tuesday night at dinner when we're just sitting around laughing and enjoying each other's presence. Because I know it's short lived. I know it's not gonna last forever. But these are the moments that I get to spend with them and enjoy and that they'll remember. We're all saving ourselves for the big moments in life, right? The graduations, the weddings, all the good stuff. But your ability to celebrate those is built on the hundreds of random weekday nights you sit around, sharing dinner, laughing, talking, and learning about each other. Presence isn't something you'll get to. It's a decision you make tonight. So if you take anything out of this podcast episode, I want it to be two things. One, a good father doesn't just give presence, he gives presence. Two, a good husband doesn't just provide a comfortable life, he lives it alongside his wife. Sum it all up, your family needs the real you in the living room tonight, not the better version of you sometime in the future. If haven't noticed over the last few episodes, I'm gonna ask you to put what you've learned into action. So here's your one thing this week. Pick a person in your house, your wife, one of your kids, and give them 30 minutes of view with your phone in another room. Not in your pocket, in another room. No agenda, no lecture, no fixing. Just show up, pay attention the way you want someone to show up for you. Watch. what those thirty minutes of undivided attention do. It's such a small thing and it's going to hit harder than any gift you've bought them. And if you read that and you felt how hard it is to be that man consistently, to bring your best self home instead of the leftovers, that's not a you problem. That's a doing it alone problem. And it's exactly what we built Warbuilt to fix. So come on over to warbuilt.com and come find a tribe. Get around men who will hold you accountable to being the father and husband your family actually needs. So that's all for this episode. Next time we go from family to the body that carries it. We're gonna talk about fitness and why it's got almost nothing to do with the mirror. Remember, be there tonight, not later, tonight. Together we rise, together we are war built. Join the pack.