76. Great Dad? Great Man, Plant The Seed

Foreign. Welcome to another episode of Real Dad Moomin podcast. This is your host, Al. Excited for today's session. What we're going to be running through is planting the seeds. The greatest way to be a father in this world, and the greatest way to be the greatest father, which ultimately the ultimatum of that, when done correctly, means you'll be the greatest man. Please don't ever forget that. Like, I love that you guys listen to or watch on YouTube. Listen to these podcasts. I hope they're adding great value to you. But this is your world. This is your life. It's your reality. That book, Raising Girls, Steven Biddulph, great book. I love it. Like, he's got some great stuff that helps with parenting tips, but one of the pieces where he wrote, I don't know whether to whisper or shout this to you. Be prepared to not be the most important person for the next 20 years, I think is fucking bullshit. Because if you're not looking after yourself and investing yourself the right way, your family loses even more. So, unfortunately, Stephen didn't have that breakthrough himself. From what he believes to be a perspective where ultimately you should give and sacrifice and you don't matter. I'm sure he didn't mean that in the real world, but context is a very funny thing. It's a very interesting thing where you need to take into account how people are going to a perceive and take that information, which, yes, granted, is on them. When you have a platform of reach and continuously exploring ways to do things and ways to help others, you better be careful when you take away that ultimate limiting belief of you being important, because that's what the gap in the world is. That is ultimately for me why I'm here. Like a large portion of my wife from being that fat, overweight, depressed kid through to father. The hardest thing in the world is seeing that man. I have destroyed myself when I haven't valued myself, which means what does that mean for my children? This is why I'm here. This is my purpose. You won't stop seeing me. Like, where we are going is uncharted territory for helping fathers the right way with the standards, standard that we're setting and continue to set. And the greatest pillar, the greatest universal truth in all of this comes down to your world, your reality, your life. We're getting shirts made up. Be a hundred so you can give a hundred. That's fucking so true, man. Don't ever take that away from yourself. So when we're talking about being the greatest father in this episode, make sure you understand where this comes from? It comes from you planting the seed. The greatest way to be the greatest father, with a little bit of a backdrop, backstory, or pre framing around this, ultimately comes down to choices on how one sees their life and how one lives their life. What do you mean now? I mean simply this. You're either growing or dying. Yep. That's great. That's cool. Awesome, Al. Thanks for that. You're either expanding or contracting. Well done. Exactly the same thing, mate. You said the exact same thing with different words. Okay. What I mean by these, and this isn't even at a consciousness of your cells at a cellular level. They experience the same, right? Growing or dying. But from a mindset point of view, from a motivational speaking point of view, all the different areas where people talk about growing or dying, expanding or shrinking, greatness or regret and all of this stuff, what it comes down to is a hunger for experiences that drive you out of the current shell that you are into the new formed version of who you are. Think of it. A caterpillar goes through a life cycle where it's a pupae and then it becomes a caterpillar for a large portion of its life, and then it's in the cocoon for the longest period of its life. Downtime, investing in its working, ultimately becoming that transformative evolution to become this butterfly. And then experiences the butterfly for, oh, man, not very long. One to four weeks, some a little bit longer, and then the cycle's complete and it starts again. Looking at cicadas, anything. Snakes shedding their skin, anything. There's a process of evolution where you must leave the former shell behind. When you say, this is who I am now, what you're saying is the past tense. This is who I am. Cool. Gone. Time's gone. This is who I am. Cool. The time's gone again. This is who I choose to become with the actions here and now that drive me to better actions, not then and there, but coming and forthcoming in the future. This is such a powerful breakthrough I had, because what it took away was the expectations, the pressure, the stigma that I'm special or he's special or everyone's special or no one's special. To focus on the most important thing. Where are we now? Where are we going? What am I doing about the now? What am I doing to move forward into where I'm going? And the greatest way you can do that is by choosing a life of growth. Life's good, though, Al. You know, I'm in my 40s. I've got my Kids. I've got a good career. I've got housework on holidays. Great, mate. Are you going to do it for the next 40 years? Of course you're not. Your children get older, you get older, you might have a niggle injury, there might be a car accident, there might be something else, there might be some trauma somewhere else. You might lose your job all of a sudden. Hurricane might come and hit your home. Like, you just. You don't know. Hurricanes in Australia, maybe not, who knows? But fires, there's always something around the corner. Don't settle, mate. And that doesn't mean you're living on the edge in a frantic way. You're already enough. And you have the gift and the tools to expand on that, to ask the question, well, yeah, here I am. It's a miracle in life. 1 in 400 trillion sperm. Jesus, man, look at me. How did I even become right? Think about that. Just slow down and stop for a second and think about that. How did I even become who, what and where I am today? Even me, right here, right now, sitting in hq, in the office, looking at a lens, talking to myself, speaking to myself with this technology. And it's just amazing. I'm holding up this hat that has RDM written on them. Like, fuck, man, I created that. That's pretty amazing. And I'm looking at this hat now. That's not an egotistical and arrogant thing. I didn't create it on my own, obviously. And I don't drive it on my own. No way. I'm one person. I am one cog in the massive wheel that is the greatness and the message of adm. But I look at this and all I see. My point is this. All I see is creation. But how did this creation start? It started with planting a seed. Cool. What kind of seeds are you planting? Are there seeds that you want to come to fruition and grow and build beautiful big trees with branches and leaves and shade and this beautiful miracle of life? Or is it going to yield some rotten fruit? Because the seeds you plant are seeds of shit and neglect and regret and conformity and staying in line and accepting truths and not being a critical thinker and not exercising your free will, which we're seeing a lot at the moment, but driving home a level of energy that you can ultimately have, but then neglecting that, like pulling away from that and going, I can't do it. A lack of belief, a lack of certainty. Lack of certainty. Uncertainty comes without action. Like, there's plenty of unknowns in the world. Don't mix the two up. There's unknowns in the world. We all have that. They can be a beautiful thing when looked through the right lens. Uncertainty. No, no, no. That's on your watch, man. You didn't influence and shift the conditions to create certainty in your life. That's on you. And that comes from lack of action. What are these seeds that you're planting now? This is my point here. You want to become a good father? Plant the seeds of success inside your children's heart and soul and their mind and their life and their experiences and their actions and their self esteem and their reflections. Like you don't understand when you don't spend time to be present, slow down and be still with your children. They go through exactly the same stuff as us. True power. Learn something, take action. Reflection. Where are they coming unstuck? Where are they falling down? Are they not even reflecting? Are they not even taking action? Are they not learning something new? Well, guess where that comes from. Monkey see, monkey do you. So when we're seeing this, what we're seeing is patterns that are built off the patterns of your life. So I'm talking about planting seeds in your children's life. What are the seeds that you've planted in your own first? Now look, make no mistake, when I do discussions and I talk with our coaching sessions inside of rdm, I love using a beautiful. It's not an analogy, but it's really a diagram to show and visualize your life as walking upstairs or downstairs. Now, sometimes the stairs may feel heavy, but guess what, let's take some action. Build some big fucking legs so we can handle that. You got a backpack on? No worries, mate. Let's build that torso, build those abs, build those shoulders so you can carry the load. You can't move at the moment. No worries, mate. Stay on the same step. You might have to just pause for a second and life might be that way for 10 months. You don't know like it is what it is sometimes, right? Don't beat yourself up. But also understand that, hey, if I keep doing this, am I actually still in the same step or am I walking downstairs? And when I'm explaining this just to give you a visual, those who are listening, if you're watching, can see my finger moving. But stairs, the horizontal is action. That's a timeline. 0 to 90 years, 0 to 80 years, 82 is the average. Let's say 0 to 82. Cool. This is your timeline. So there's always going to be horizontals. The horizontal formation of the step Is action, is time. The vertical of the step is standards. So are your standards rising with the action and the timeline of your life, or are they lowering people will create the illusion of evolution. Sorry, the illusion of elevation by lowering their standards and then justifying the reasons why they're there. Oh, no, this just is what it is. Oh, it's this, this, this and that. Cool, mate. No worries. You've just justified your standards to try and form this illusion of elevating yourself above some shit that you tolerate and accept in your life. Who do you think loses in that? I'm not talking about your children. You might have kids that are teenagers. You might have kids in their 20s. It never ends, though. Never ends with me and my family. I look at my father and my mother, and I look to them as leaders in different ways now because there's certain things they do that I love. There's certain things I do that have taught me that I probably shouldn't do, right? And it's not their fault. It's no one's fault. And I'm not saying this to hack on my parents either. They are amazing people. And you might have had a bad experience with your father, you might have had a bad experience with your mother. Either way, there's always a gift, mate. Don't ever forget that. There's always a gift. And this is where it comes down to ownership and responsibility. The seeds that they've planted in you, you can nourish and water them, prune them, adjust them, change them, tweak them, maneuver them. You can shift, you can change. This all sounds pretty good, Al, but what's your point, mate? You talk about planting seeds, you talk about time, you talk about standards, you talk about your children. Greatness. Where are we going with this, Al? This is where we're going. If you plant the seed of growth and a hunger for growth. Two seeds you need. One, a hunger for growth. Two, an appreciation for life. What you instill and build in your children at such a young age to become this fucking monstrous oak tree, man, where you don't even need to worry about watering it. The rains will hit it. It'll draw enough nutrients from the ground around it because the roots are so big, it'll get plenty of sunshine because the leaves and the branches are so vast and so wide. It's done, man. The work is done. All you need to do is just nurture and take some shade under that tree and spend time with it. And what I mean by that is when your children become adults, because there are stages of life. What I'm saying is, if you plant those seeds of a hunger for growth and appreciation for life, what you're instilling in your children are two things. To constantly challenge and seek change in their life, to make that their normal, to make that the standard. People don't want to change. The reason why people don't want to change is because there's been changes in their life already that have affected them in a bad way because they haven't fucking risen up with the balls to create their own standards to influence the change that they want in their life. The end. It is that simple, man. Like you look at your life, it is riddled with change. Universal law, one of our absolutes, the one thing that is always the same is change. Think about it. Even if you do the exact same thing every single day for a year, well, yeah, it's the 10th of October, it's the 20th of October, it's the 10th of November, it's the 15th of December, you're on a different day. Different timeline, man. Different rhythm, different cycle of the earth, of the universe. It is changing. It is different. There are variables. Even if it feels like it's exactly the same, it's slightly different. Building and nurturing those seeds, watering those seeds might be like the old bamboo tree, the old Chinese bamboo. You might be watering it for four years and see, seen nothing. This is not true with children. We see radical change, right? We see a lot. We see some big changes. But even if it wasn't true and you feel like it's not there, or you feel like it's subtle, take a step back and have a look. Okay, well, I'm watering this bamboo tree for four years. But in the fifth year, bang. In ten weeks, fucking boom. It grows and shoots up to the sky. This is the exponential growth that's a little bit more consistent on a linear graph moving upwards. In your children, they're not trees. But it's also something that has a level of appreciation inside of you. Because guess what? If you're nourishing and nurturing that from the right line of leadership, showing, not telling, guess what you're doing in nourishing and nurturing yourself. You don't just plant one seed, mate, and that's it, you're done for life in your own life. Either you can plant new seeds, you can build new trees, new growth, new fruit. There's always a way, there's always an opportunity. But one of the greatest ways to have that inside of ourselves, especially at times when we don't look inside of our own heart. You don't like looking in the mirror. You don't want to do it for yourself. Do it for yourself through doing it for your children. Let your children be the example, almost in a reverse psychological way when going, hey, I'm helping them. Look at what they're doing. What can I do? Now that's inspiring. Don't sit back and be the big fucking fat footy mum or footy dad that just goes, ah, there's my boy, he's going to play reps one day. And you know, look at him go, blah, blah, blah. And I showed him everything he knows, like, well, fuck, mate, what do you think he'd be doing if you were going to the gym with him, if you're training with him or if you're investing that level of leadership not just in telling and showing. Now look, this is not judging people's weight. That's a pure example that I've seen from my experience coming through the grades and playing footy. I've seen children and, man, there were so many that were better than me. And I'm not saying it's because my father was fit and strong either that I made it through, but seeing these children that had certain influences with big holes missing, which means their parents rested on their laurels because they thought the work was done instead of going, hey, how can I invest in myself? You don't need to be ripped and full of abs and bricks, but what about your own health, man? What about your own energy to continue to forecast that onto your children, to continue to help them nourish and grow. I'm not saying you need to be skinny to be a good dad. Please understand the context here. Right, that was a quick fired example. That proves a point that life is energy. And the energy you portray is one that starts between the ears of the seeds that you plant and how you nourish and nurture them to grow the big trees in your life. That provides the shade for the little trees in your life, which is your family, to help them grow and be a big booming fucking tree themselves. This is life. And the greatest way that you can help, nourish and nurture that is by making sure the seeds that you plant are of two types. One is a hunger for growth and one is an appreciation for life. What does that do? It builds gratitude. It takes away entitlement. It takes away expectations and assumptions. It builds a love for life. It builds an appreciation for life, which gives a nice general natural energy in love, not hate, not out of fear. Of failure. Not competing to beat other people, competing to beat the old version of who you are. Combine that with a hunger for growth. You can't lose, man. The hardest thing anyone can ever have. Parents, Children combined children, when they become adults, when they become parents, when you become a grandfather. If you're not already. A lot of you listening to this are in or entering the second half in life. So it's not too far away, mate. Is it? Is regret. With regret comes shame, disappointment, a lack of self love. Low self esteem, low self belief, low confidence. It does put up the walls. Put on the happy face. Do your fucking social media post to the family on holidays. Look how good it is. The sun's shining. Good for you, man. Awesome. What about the other 23 hours of the day? What about the other 364 days of the year? Hey, I see it so often, mate. And this, this is the hard part for me. We all get lured into it, right? Where RDM is going, it's going to be an absolute juggernaut. Like it's. It's going to be a monstrous empire. I know that. I can see it. I get it hard though at the moment because I'm not living in. And look, I. I can, I can sell. I can be a charismatic man and do all this sort of shit and talk at the cost of my soul. It's not worth it. It really isn't. I stay true and genuine to me, I attract the same kind of people and we build the tribe the right way. And it is hard at times because what we're doing is a gold standard. But I see other fairies come in and dive in and out and try and manipulate and pluck bits and pieces. I see a lot of people steal my content, steal different things and hype it up and pump it up and do all different challenges. And there are all these men's mental health programs. All of a sudden we've got all these guys who are just wizards, wizards in industry. They either did a life coaching course or neuro linguistic programming, an LLP course. So they went and did Tony Robbins course and. Awesome, mate. Good for you. You ready to help middle aged men steer through fucking decades of trauma and hardship? Good luck with that. I didn't find this. It found me. And it's an ever evolving and ever growing thing. But the reality is it's easy to get drawn into the traps of looking for instant validation, putting on a face. Superficial victories and. And the wrong types of winds are portrayed externally instead of building the framework. Nourishing and nurturing planting the seeds, watering the seeds, putting sunlight on them, looking after them the right way from the inside out. That's my point. Business, family, yourself. It's always there. There's always temptations. You hear that saying, there's no shortcut to any place worth going. It's the truth. Like, man, I'm 35, you know, whilst I'm an old soul and everyone in rdm, they know that I'm very mature, I'm switched on. I know my shit. I. I'm fucking bang on. I listen, I understand. I listen. I listen and listen and listen. And when I listen, I take it in and I break it down into a big grid. Imagine that movie Tron. I see this big. Some of the dads tell me the challenge, right? I see this big fucking blueprint, this big grid like Tron, and I'm just plucking bits and pieces everywhere and constructing an entire new roadmap and pathway, all the while listening and understanding, not telling them what I want for them, showing them what they want for themselves and holding this mirror up. Imagine 10 years, time 20. Imagine when I'm 55. There's no stopping this. No way. Patience is very important, but understanding the value of time is as well, which will be another podcast episode. It's the only thing that holds most people back, really, an illusion of time. But I'll do that in another episode. This one is understanding A, the value of time and B, the value of investment of your energy in that time, which means C, when we value the investment of energy in that time by nurturing and planting the right seeds of a hunger for growth and appreciation for life inside of our own children, what are we getting? We're getting a constant reflection and mirror of our own life. Because they're us, right? They're a part of us. They are us. They're you. You see that? And then you need to look in the mirror and you go, well, man, where are my seeds? What am I planning? What am I growing? What am I doing? What can I do? How can I keep moving forward? The leader and the champion I am for my children at the moment, and I'm not perfect when I use that word, but I am a champion for my children. The effort, the energy and what I put out needs to change, needs to adjust. My daughter's four. My other daughter's nearly two, and my son's nearly two months old. Time flies, right? Just goes. Just goes. This is what happens. I need to evolve and change level. That doesn't mean I become bitter or older. Or, you know, like, doesn't mean I adopt a specific character trait. It means what I do is I continue to embed these foundations and these roots of for myself, a love and appreciation for life and a hunger for growth. You adopt those two in a true and genuine way. Not out of anger, fear of failure, hate, competitive drive to keep up with the Joneses or beat your neighbors or beat someone else out of yourself and your own self. Love, man. I promise you, I guarantee you will not lose. What does that look like, Al? Not losing means no regrets. No regrets in life. You can't. Funnily enough, it doesn't even exist. Like, you can't really have regrets because if something you had full control and influence over, well, then you chose it, didn't you? Which means you're not really regretting it. All you're looking is going, well, I wish I did this instead. But you actually chose that pathway, which means you probably don't really have a leg to stand on. That's a whole other episode itself as well. Regret sort of technically doesn't actually truly exist, but that's quite interesting. I don't want to go down that path today because it's a little bit more explanation involved, but it's the hardest thing ever, man. Like, deathbed or not, you have regrets in your life. It's like, fuck, what an empty feeling. What a waste. What a level of depth of despair, shame. Not me, not you. If you're listening to this and these podcasts and these episodes. Not you, man. No way. How? How not? Why not? We've got guests on. I'm doing all different topics, doing different bits and pieces. We've got audio books and different courses that I give out for free. The month of November. Primal Power 2 How to Move youe Body the Right Way and Look After It. Create a New Relationship with Yourself and exercise like man. Help you however you want. We are always here for you. Don't ever forget that. And if you're listening to this in December, hit me up anyway. We'll have a different course for you. But honestly, like, you can't have regrets in your life. Don't fall down to that. Don't self sabotage, don't talk, pop yourself. Plant your own seeds of a love for life and appreciation for life. That gratitude and a hunger for growth. And you do that within your children as well. You both do it together. What a beautiful relationship. Doesn't matter if your children are 18 and 15. Doesn't matter if you had some bad history with them. Replant some New seeds, get the crops out. All right, cool. Get the soil, mix in a bit of mulch, bit of cow manure. Put it all together, mix it all in, Bang. Get your bedding in, get your framework. Awesome. I've got my raised garden bed. Beautiful. Plant some seeds. Go again. Whilst time goes so fast and life's a flash in the pan, in the present moment, there is time. You're still here listening to this now. There is time. You got a child who's 24, and they might not like you or they hate your guts. Beautiful. Not beautiful, but okay. Live your own life. Lead your life, and lead by example. And they will turn around, they will see, you know what? Especially when they get hit with hardships, because they'll know that life's messy, man. Life is messy. We've all got lists. It's full of shit. We've all got skeletons in the closet. It's full of hardships. And if you've had a real easy run, you're like, oh, my life's been right alone. Well, guess what? You haven't fucking pushed hard enough. That's the truth. That is the truth, man. I hope you enjoy this episode. Being the greatest father and being the greatest man comes down to the seeds that you're willing to plant, the nurturing nourishment that you're willing to follow through and follow up with afterwards, and the reflection in the mirror and going, hey. A love and appreciation for life, a hunger for growth. I'm the same as well. We're all part of the same crop. I'm planting the same seeds for myself that I am for my children. And we're growing and nurturing each other together. I may have a bigger tree at the moment. Awesome. Let's do some trimming. Let's work on some stuff. Let's work on myself. Let's provide some good shade for the little ones. Let them grow up, let them build. And let's do this as a team and as a family, because that's the most valuable thing you can ever have. As you get older, you realize the value of time is so precious. It's so important. I've only got a handful of friends. That's it. My old gyms that I used to run, there's some great people there. I don't have time to invest in them. That's the truth. They are not a priority in my life. Amazing people, but that's not enough. That alone is not enough for me. Spearheading the vision of my immediate family RDM and the legacy we Build together for fathers all over the country. Have an amazing day, night, weekday, weekend, whenever you listen to this. Hope you enjoy, take care and thanks again for tuning in. Anything you ever need, let me know. Alexdabmonment.com take action. Everything you do when you're listening, when you're taking this in, just find. Even if it's one thing, one cue, one gift, one word, find it and act on it. Don't just listen. Don't get pumped up. Do something. I don't have time now. Fuck, man. Find the time. But I've got to do this, this and that. Cool. Triage yourself. Do I have to do that? Okay, it's giving me this money or it's giving me that opportunity. Okay, cool. How long will you do it for? Is it worth it? Pull it back a little bit. Is having an extra few dollars in your account worth the time that you can spend on yourself to be happier and healthier physically and mentally for yourself and your family? Probably not, man. I've seen all the posts. I've seen a post of a billionaire who died at 60, like $7 billion, and he's like, man, it just rocks you. He talks about money meaning nothing. Now, understand, he's got it and he's got plenty. I get that. But ultimately, the greatest thing you can have in this life is experiences. And you can have experiences through drawing freedom. And freedom can be bought to a degree with money. But also, you're not working 24 hours a day. And you can build and invest in your own self with the right level of energy to lift your energy without necessarily spending a lot of money either mentally and physically. Take action. Always take action. Hope you enjoyed and got some great value out of this. Take care and I'll see you soon. On the next episode. Cheers.