289 - New Year, Same Chaos, Better Plan

The new year can feel loud with resolutions while your world feels quiet and broken. If divorce has left you unmoored, this conversation offers a steadier path: not hype or hollow motivation, but direction you can act on today. We walk through a simple 21‑day framework built for dads who need clarity, calm, and a plan that fits real life.

Join our Signal Channel: https://shorturl.at/8yqTb

Join The Divorce Dadvocate Membership Community - FULL Episodes - Live Meetings – FREE Workshops & Courses – Private Discussion Groups & MORE! - https://thedivorceddadvocate.com/membership-tiers/

How Are You Adjusting To Your Divorce? Find out in this quiz - http://www.thedivorceddadvocate.com/divorce-quiz.html

*FREE Dads Guide To Divorce* How to survive and thrive during and after divorce: http://www.dadsguidetodivorce.com

Don't suffer in silence! Get relief from the pain and confusion of your divorce and schedule your FREE, No Obligation Coaching Consultation - schedule a time directly into my schedule at www.TalkWithJude.com.

Join other divorced dads who have experienced or are experiencing divorce in this FREE Divorced Dads Online Meetup Group - https://www.meetup.com/Divorced-Dads-Meetup-Group/

Other Resources:

The Divorced Dadvocate Website - http://www.TheDivorcedDadvocate.com

The Divorced Dadvocate YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeSwx-F8KK4&list=PLT4HyN5ishYJznK51205ESxGZ2d19YkBp

The Divorced Dadvocate Podcast - https://thedivorceddadvocate.buzzsprout.com/

Divorced Dads Online Meetup Group - https://www.meetup.com/Divorced-Dads-Meetup-Group/

The Divorced Dadvocate Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/thedivorceddadvocate/

Chapters

• 0:00 A Heavy January Acknowledged
• 3:14 Motivation Fails, Direction Wins
• 6:16 Numbing, Busyness, And Lost Bearings
• 9:23 Sliding Versus Deciding
• 11:31 The Future Self Journaling Practice
• 15:44 Four Questions For Clarity
• 19:36 Pairing Journaling With Grounding

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:04

Hello and welcome to the show. I sincerely appreciate you tuning in this week. And I hope that you had a happy holiday season. We are into the the new year here. And I do want to recognize that if January is feeling a little bit heavy for you, that's that is pretty common. If you're you're you're feeling instead of hopeful, somewhat broken, or you're you're just I want you to know you're not failing, right? You're you're responding to what's going on in your life, which is this this whole divorce process. And divorce has a way of draining the meaning out of things that are supposed to feel exciting, like the like the holidays. So you're you're you're in good company with lots of others, including myself, who have gone through this, particularly during or after the holidays and coming into a new year. And so today and over the next four weeks, what I want to do is I want to slow things down with you a little bit. And I want to talk about how you can not just survive this season of your life, which is the divorce season, and start deciding how you can become who you want to be and what you want your life to look like on the other side of it. So, what we're gonna do, what I'm gonna do today and over the next three weeks, is some brief, short, and informative episodes that are going to be action-oriented that you can that you can take, that you can replay, and that's the the couple of challenges that I'm gonna give you today, and I'm gonna give you over the following weeks that you can implement into your life right away. And so I just I remember the first January after my divorce pretty clearly. And while everybody around me was talking about resolutions and fresh starts, big plans, all that typical stuff with with New Year's, I felt completely unmoored. The the life that I had designed, that I had built was gone or crumbling away as as I sat there. I wasn't just grieving the the end of my relationship. I was grieving the future that I assumed was going to happen. The routines, the family rhythms, the version of myself that I thought I was becoming. Little did I know, right? And and that loss, what happens is it it messes with you. It messes with your mind and it makes you doubt things. What I what I didn't understand though at the time is that motivation's not what I needed. And that's what we hear a lot of in the start of a new year's the the motivation. People say keep positive, stay positive, set your goals. But when I was going through this just post, well, during divorce, but also just post-divorce, none of that, none of that landed with me. The whole motivational thing did not land with me. And what I eventually learned years down the line is motivation is not what is going to save your save you here. What is going to help you here is direction. Direction will help you. Now, divorce strips away your roles, your routines, and your identity. When that happens, what we do as as men is we default to maybe one of two strategies. This is what just is is the common two strategies that happen. First is we we numb out. And because we have all kinds of options to numb out in our society from the moment we wake up to the time we go to bed, that is a very, very easy option to take. The other option is we stay busy. We fill our lives with all kinds of stuff. Lots of times that's work and just diving into work. I did both of those. I I stayed busy and I numbed out. And I distracted myself with work. I stayed constantly occupied. And when things got quiet, I found ways not to feel. Just and and I joked, you heard me last week talking with uh with Anthony. I basically just found every way to do that possible in order not to feel those feelings. But as I mentioned last week in the in the episode, that didn't work for long because as men in our masculine nature, we are inherently wired around direction. We need to know where we're going, which is why divorce makes us so crazy, makes things so difficult, makes us feel so unmoored, like I said earlier, is that that sense that that sense of direction has disappeared. And when that sense of direction disappears, anxiety creeps in, right? Because we just don't know what's going to happen. Or maybe anger shows up, or numbness settles in like a fog, and we start to question ourselves. We all start to question ourselves during this process. The strongest men that I've ever met, the smartest men that I ever met, all, if they're being honest and they're talking about this and being vulnerable about it, they all admit that they they have questioned themselves and they questioned go, they had they were questioning themselves going through the divorce process. And so we start asking ourselves questions like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I get it together? And the fact of the matter is there is nothing wrong with you. Every dad that has experienced divorce has the has the same questioning going on. All that has happened is you've lost your bearings, right? If you've ever done any sailing or out in out on bodies of water, sometimes you you lose your your bearings and lose your your way, but eventually you find those. If you've ever gotten knocked down or knocked out or knocked silly, uh for for those athletes listening, it's it's a temporary, it's a temporary uh loss of your senses until you get your bearings again, right? That's why they call it getting your bearings. And and so when that is happening, in both of those examples, you don't turn the engine up and just start going as fast as you can to find your bearings at sea. If you get you know knocked silly, you don't just get up and try to run, right? The the answer isn't pushing harder, the answer isn't uh grinding through it, and it's not pretending that everything's uh fine and burying your head and just saying it'll all work out. The answer is, and this is what this is the point I want to make, and then we're gonna talk about how you get there. The answer is clarifying where you're going. Okay. And so you might say, well, how do I clarify when we're in chaos? There's a difference between sliding and deciding, okay? I'll say that again. There's a difference between sliding and deciding. So sliding through life and deciding. Sliding is what happens when you let the circumstances shape you. So we just let the circumstances shape us. We instead of paying attention to what we want to do and what we where we want to go, we just let the circumstances happen. Deciding is what happens when we choose who we're becoming, even while things are painful and uncertain. And so you might say, Well, how can I do that? Because all of this and chaos. You can do that because the only thing that you can treat that you can control through this process is yourself. So all you can all you can do is decide and choose who you want to become, and then make plans for that. So right now, that plan doesn't have to be perfect, and it's not gonna be perfect, and it's gonna be it, and it's gonna be malleable, and you're gonna change it as you go. But you don't, and you don't need to know how everything's gonna work out, also, right? That's what we want is guys. We want to know what's gonna happen and how it's gonna work out, but you don't need that right now. You can't get that. As much as you want to have it, as much as you want that clarity, you're just not gonna get it. So, what you can control is who you're going to choose to become. And and and what you need is a vision of who you're becoming. So, how do we do this? I'm gonna give you this future self-exercise. The future exercise, this is and and this, and so this is the eight, this is number one, right? So, we got four weeks this week and three other weeks of stuff we're gonna be talking about. This is the first one that I want you to to start with. And this is what I want you to start. It's simple, but it's not easy. I'll tell you, it's not easy. It sounds really simple, but it's not easy. I want you to get a journal and keep it by your bed. So you're gonna go get a notebook of some sort. You can buy them at the dollar store, and you're gonna get it, and you're gonna get a pen, and you're gonna keep it by your bed. Not on your desk, not in your car, but by your bed. And every morning from the time you listen to this, this episode ongoing. Here's what I want you to do before you check your phone, before you check emails, before the noise of the day, I want you, once you wake up, to just write for five to ten minutes in your journal. You're not gonna be editing yourself, you're not gonna try to sound really good like a like a poet or or or Shakespeare or anybody. I want you to just write. And I'm gonna give you four questions to contemplate while you're while you're doing this. If you want, if and if you want some reference to to this, you can always get the transcript on the on whatever podcast platform you're listening to. There should be the option to pull the transcript. If you can't get the transcript on that, you can go and search on BuzzSprout, which is where I host this, and you can pull the transcript from there. But I'm also going to include a blog post every week that is in correlation with this episode at thedivorcedadvocate.com. That's the website. So you can go to the website, check out the blog post. We'll be talking, it will say the same thing. Uh obviously not the same thing because I'm saying this verbally, but it's going to walk you through the same stuff that we're talking about in some of these ways to start. So these are the four questions that I want you to be thinking about when you are writing for that five when for that five to ten minutes. The first is who am I three years from now? Who am I three years from now? Again, you're creating a vision. The second one is and and it's who you are as a person, right? And and maybe describe the environment that you would like to see and how you would like your life to be. The next one is what does a normal day look like for that man that I'm that I am three years from now? So that's the environment part is what what am I doing? How am I how am I showing up? What kind of work am I doing? What's my relationship look like with my kiddos? The third question is what matters to him now? Obviously, life changes over the years, three years from now, what will matter to him? And the fourth question is, and this is a big one, why does he refuse to stay stay stuck in this place? And why this question is important is it's going to help you to uncover uh and and realize maybe some of the things that are keeping you from working towards create working towards getting to that vision of what you want. So that that fourth one is why does he refuse to stay stuck in this place? Doesn't mean that you're gonna be stuck, but it's conceptualizing, right? And I want you to do this now beginning after this episode, tomorrow morning, when you wake up for the next 21 days, right? We're gonna what we're gonna be creating is is is not habits. Habits are something you do automatically, but we're gonna be creating routines. These little routines that are you're gonna implement over a period of time are then gonna change into they are going to change your lifestyle. That's then be gonna become your lifestyle. So you will begin to start journaling and you'll you'll just start doing that every single morning. And you're not gonna do it to impress yourself, you're not not to sound good, but all these four questions and this journaling is just meant to help you to get honest with yourself. And I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you, it's gonna be uncomfortable, right? When I started to do this in the beginning, very uncomfortable. In fact, I put this off for years before doing it. I had so many people talk to me about doing this. I know therapists are big on this. I put it off and put it off. And even when I started, I had starts and stops, and it was very uncomfortable to do. Some days, all that came out was anger and confusion. And and I laugh about it, but that's okay because there's still days now in my life where anger and confusion comes out in journaling too. So other days it might be grief. That was probably gonna be a big one that you're gonna experience because you're going through the grieving process in all different areas of your life. But slowly, what's gonna happen is clear clarity will start to emerge as you do this. This is what happened for me. This is what happens with with guys that that I'm coaching. The clarity will start to emerge. Now, the other thing that is important, I feel, is that you need to pair this with a grounding practice. For me, that grounding practice was meditation, helped me to slow down my nervous system enough to notice what was actually happening inside of me, paying attention to my thoughts, etc. You listened to uh Joey Klein of Inner Matrix System talk about a month, month and a half ago about that. It's really important for you to be able to slow down your nervous system so that you can pay attention to what is coming up. So it was meditation for me. For you, it could be something like walking, it could be something like lifting weights, it could be prayer, it could be just sitting quietly with a cup of coffee before the kids wake up and the house wake up and and the busy day goes. The the activity isn't as important as it being just a starting point of your day, responding instead of reacting. So you're not reacting to the day, you're responding to your body and your thoughts of what's coming up, so that you are in tune with those. So this is what I want you to do tonight, then also is so we got a morning journal. You've got this by your bed right before you go to bed. I want you to write one full page answering this question. So so you start in the morning, you've got your you've got your grounding practice in the morning in your journaling, right? Okay, so in the evening, right before bed, you're gonna answer this question in your journal. If nothing changes, where will my life be one year from now? Okay, if nothing changes, where will my life be one year from now? Don't sugarcoat it. Be honest, and then write one full page answering this. If I fully commit to becoming a better man and father, what could be or what will be different? So you've got two questions. One page on each of those. If nothing changes, where will my life be one year from now? And the other is if I fully commit to becoming a better man and father, what could be different? Why is the question about becoming a better man and father? Because the only thing, gentlemen, that we can control right now is ourselves. You're not making promises here, you're just creating an awareness. And awareness always comes before change. So that's what these this exercise, these exercises and this grounding practice is meant for you to do is create an awareness so that you can create that, so that you can implement or so that you can then work on your vision and direction for where you want to go. Okay. And so, you know, if you're if you're listening and you're thinking, look, I know I need direction, but I don't know how to build it alone. This is exactly what we do in our in our workshops, but it's also what I do individually with the dads that I work with, with individual coaching. We clarify who you're becoming, what actually matters now, and how to move forward with intention instead of that chaos that we're living in right now, right? There's still going to be chaos around you, except you're going to be the calm person that you can control in this storm of chaos around you. So if you're interested in working and taking it to the next level, just check out the divorced advocate.com. There's a tab that says coaching. It talks a little bit about what we do in an individual coaching. And then you always have the opportunity to schedule a complimentary session with me. It's a discovery session. We just talk about what you've got going on and how I might be able to help you. That is just on the main page right at the top. It says, Do you need advice? Click on there and it's complimentary. We can schedule a time for us to talk together and see what you've got going on and how I can get you in the community, what resources in the community can help you, or if coaching is for you. So, gentlemen, again, this was short and sweet. It was meant to be this week. I want you to now take the extra time you've got, go get that journal and work on that, work on a grounding practice, and then keep working on that for at least the next 21 days. You are creating a routine uh in your life that is going to give you some massive, massive benefits on clarity and awareness for getting through this, but also most importantly, life after divorce. And as always, if you found some value in this today, please share it far and wide on social media. It helps us immensely, the algorithms. Uh, if you are sharing it, if you're giving us star ratings, if you're giving if you're giving us a comment about it, that helps other guys to find the show and get the help that they need and deserve also. Thanks so much for listening. Have a terrific day. Perfect week and God bless.