Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

~ Carl Jung

This is an excellent episode that looks into many challenges we face as fathers and the way we lead, teach and connect with our children.

Our children need us to help them navigate their way into adulthood without all the baggage and the many wounds we have all acrued as a result of our childhood. With the ever increasing impact of social media and the tendency of many parents to be overinvolved in certain aspects and absent in others, it is more important than ever to become the complete men we are capable of being and develop the relationships that allow and encourage our children to come to us with the hard questions.

We are the primary educators of our children, and we need to be at our best to fullfill that role as effectively as possible.

This weekend I contracted the coronavirus, as did my kids... Naturally, it has been a challenge and I have been feeling pretty bad the last couple of days. I decided that instead of focusing on the fever and discomfort, I would try and see if I could learn something from the experience and check the perspectives I have, from my core values to the time I wasted consuming media about the virus, to my ability to surrender and accept the symptoms and do what is in my control to get healthy again.

This is just one of the many hurdles and challenges I will have to face as a father and so these lessons can mostly be applied to other life circumstances.

"Men who have lived significant lives are men who never waited: not for money, security, ease, or women. Feel what you want to give most as a gift, to your woman and to the world, and do what you can to give it today." - David Deida: The Way of the Superior Man

I'm tired.

I'm too busy.

I don't feel like it.

It is uncomfortable.

I need this.

I want that.

AND...

What would "The Superior Man" do?

“ Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.” – John Lennon.

...or worrying about the future, regretting the past, holding on to anger or just being swept away by your mind and emotions.

“We see that substance addictions are only one specific form of blind attachment to harmful ways of being, yet we condemn the addict's stubborn refusal to give up something deleterious to his life or to the life of others. Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict, when as a social collective, we share the same blindness and engage in the same rationalizations?”

What are you addicted to?

What are you trying to numb or escape from?

Why do you have this pain or discomfort or sense of discontent?

How much of what you occupy your mind with, expend emotion and energy on is actually of benefit to you and your family?

And how often do the things that are truly important end up paying the price?

We can get so caught up with things happening in the world, without first taking care of our first and foremost responsibility: home.

First, make sure you have your house in order, then go and save the world. But when you do, check that what you are doing is in fact having a positive impact, and isn't like shouting in a hurricance.

How often do we find ourselves buying things we don't really need? Somehow we fool ourselves into believing our next  "happy purchase" will fill a void and make us feel better. But eventually the dopamine rush subsides, and in all likelihood what we just bought ends up cluttering up our lives or goes out in the trash. 

We don't only do this with material things we buy. We use all kinds of things and activities in the hope they will make us feel better, and find ourselves getting into a neverending consumer loop. 

It is far more satisfying in the long run to produce and take the difficult route of digging deeper to connect with our true needs and desires.

“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

Every morning provides us with another opportunity for a new start, to be "reborn", just as every night allows us to reflect, draw a line under the events, thoughts and emotions of the day and "die".

What do you want to let die?

What do you wish  to see be born and rise from within you as you awaken from this short "death"?

What do you want to stop doing? What do you want to start doing, thinking and feeling? How do you want to connect more deeply and effectively with the people in your lives? What behaviours and words are having a negative impact on your relationships?

Each night we can take inventory of our lives and be intentional about the changes we wish to make, so that when morning comes we are ready to make those strides forward towards the lmen we are capable of being and the life we wish to live.

Sometimes we need to sacrifice one thing for another. At times we need to stand our ground and die on that hill.

BUT very often we don't have to make a choice for one thing OR another, we can make a choice for this AND that.

We can have one perspective, but be willing to listen to another. 

Instead of saying OR so often, lets start to say AND more.