Latest / Man In Your Corner with Shaun Tucker / Ep. 44 | How Your Nervous System Undermines Presence and Performance as a Founder Dad
Transcript
- Shaun: Welcome back to the reset episode 44 with me Sean Tucker. Today is all about how an unregulated nervous system is actually sabotaging your fatherhood. See, for many years, even in the last two years, I can't say that I am perfect. I will openly say that I'm constantly working on myself to be the best possible man and possible father that I can be. I remember being very dysregulated when my now two years one month year old was born. ⁓ Because it's such a shock to the system when you become a new parent, right? And I share this with you ⁓ to ⁓ look within and the question, where am I ⁓ taking on a lot of pressure? ⁓ And how am I with it? How am I? How am I showing up or how is it affecting how I show up in the places that I care about most in the places that I actually don't want to show up that way. So when my daughter was first born, you you go through a period of time where you do have impacted sleep. You do go through a period of the relationship between you and your partner being different and You know, it does affect how you show up in business. It affects how you show up at your work, ⁓ in your daily interactions, in your relationship, and most importantly, how you show up in yourself. And I was fortunate. I did not gain a lot of weight when I first became a dad. I took care of myself pretty well or managed myself pretty well, except for the times where I felt like I was maybe being attacked, where the feedback was coming in. was almost as if I was the one to blame for it. And in most cases I was, but the reason I say that is because, you when we accept responsibility and don't just say, you know, it's someone else's fault or or whatever, when we point it back at ourselves and ask ourselves the question, how could have I done that differently? Or maybe how should I respond now that I know what I did was not the right way to do it? Because then we can learn. If we see ourselves as a failure, if we see ourselves as the one to blame or we start blaming someone else, then we are not accepting responsibility for how to live our life. and how to show up and how to respond to the situations that we face. So looking at that situation, I was asking myself, well, how, like I didn't want to act that way. So now that I know that, how can I show up differently or how can I communicate more clearly so that it doesn't get to this point? And I think the world would be a lot better place if we all learned how to regulate ourselves when we were faced with challenges or adversities. Doesn't matter if it's just having a difficult conversation, doesn't matter if it's a boundary cross, it doesn't matter what it is. If we learn how to regulate ourselves, our state and change our state, then we can choose how we show up without damaging the people that we love the most. Without hurting them because most of the time, the ones that we hurt, it's only because we're hurting ourselves. And we're putting our internal standards to a point where it's... not meeting our expectations of how we show up, but on the flip side, it's actually hurting the people we care about most. And if you looked at your life right now and you're wondering, hmm, you know, when I do get home from work and I've had a big work day, I do tend to snap at my kids because I just don't have the time. I just don't have the patience or the energy for the crap that they're throwing at me. for the little tantrums that they throw because they're not getting their way. Well, this will happen, right? Kids will always be kids. And there's this belief in, I think it's Taoism, that kids and children are the way, right? And I wholeheartedly agree. Because when you get into the place of the heart, when you get into the place of flowing, when You're not just thinking, ⁓ what did I do wrong? Or how can I show up differently? You're not analyzing it. You're just flowing. You're just yourself. You're not pretending or trying to be someone else. It's good to analyze, it's good to use your mind and your intellectual capacity but don't see it as the only answer as the only option because you'll get yourself into a lot of trouble and the greatest metaphor that I can give you as to way that the mind works it's like having a really really sharp knife and if you have a really sharp knife well one, the question is Should you have a sharp knife or should you have a blunt one? Which one is more useful? depending on the level of focus and specificity that you're using the knife right if you're a surgeon you want a blade that's very very very sharp and very precise because if it's not well using a blunt knife is not really going to do much is it And we can relate this to how our mind is. If our mind is really dull, it's not really that useful. If it's really sharp, it is very useful. However, most of the time without proper awareness and proper levels of being conscious, you don't know if you're holding the blade or if you're holding the handle. You don't know how shaky your hand is when you're holding the blade, when you're trying to cut an apple for yourself. and who's it gonna cut? The one holding the blade or the one who's, you know, saying stuff. you're probably going to cut yourself more than what you'll actually go around and move the knife because if you're someone like me, you would never use physical violence. You might accidentally say something you're not keen on or you're not too proud of, but you'd never physically hurt someone unless you signed up to an MMA fight and that's what you did, right? ⁓ Yeah, or if it's in your combat sports training, then of course you're going to do that. Or if it's in a survival situation, like of course there are exceptions to the rule. Rules are made to be broken. So look at your life right now and ask yourself the question, am I showing up as good as I could? Because if that answer is no, that to me probably says that you have a regulation situation. an unregulated nervous system will make you more reactive. It will make you more dangerous when pressure gets high. And I'm not talking about dangerous as in this tactic to sound really cool and be dangerous like you're a really sharp knife and you know exactly how to go fully out of control whilst being fully in control. No, not that kind of dangerous. The one that does damage to the people you love the most, including yourself. That's what I'm talking about. And so if that is you, I have some really, really cool announcements because I will be running my retreat. This is a two day experience for the men who feels like they are unregulated. They want the body, they might have the body, but they're not showing up as good as they can be. They want to become unforgettable. They want to be. in their kids when they're 40s, they want to be talked about when their kids are in their 40s as this unforgettable man, this unforgettable dad. And so if that sounds like you, then I invite you to a call where we can get to know each other a bit more and you can hear about exactly what this two day retreat is all about. It will be an in-person retreat in or around Melbourne, definitely in Victoria. And yeah, I'm just so excited to share that. So yeah, if you found value in today's episode, I invite you to share it with one person, just one person. And remember to regulate yourself. The best thing you can do is notice how you're breathing either in body, like notice how you are in your body, in your posture, or just notice how long your inhales and exhales are. If they're really short, just try and lengthen them a little bit. So thanks for tuning in and I look forward to seeing you in tomorrow's episode.