291 - Love Is The Fuel, Skills Are The Steering Wheel

The hardest seasons can also be the clearest mirrors. When divorce turns up the heat, it doesn’t create flaws—it reveals the skills you were never taught and now urgently need. We open up about the cracks that surfaced under stress, from shutting down emotionally to fighting without resolving, and map a practical path from intention to execution. Love powers the journey, but skills steer it—presence, boundaries, conflict resolution, and emotional regulation.

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Chapters

• 2:04 Why Short, Action-Focused Series
• 3:03 Pressure Reveals Skill Gaps
• 5:55 Love Isn’t Enough Without Skills
• 8:52 Parenting And Co‑Parenting As Learnable Skills
• 11:26 Tools: Presence, Mindfulness, Emotional Regulation
• 14:05 Weekly Prompt And Homework
• 17:19 Community Resources And Coaching
• 18:32 Ratings Request And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:02

Hello and welcome to the show. Thanks again for tuning in this week. We are going over some practical advice the past couple of weeks, this week, and the following week, for you to be able to just listen to a short episode. We're keeping these short and sweet, 15 to 20 minutes, but then take that extra time to implement some of what we're talking about and some of the action steps that I'm giving you at each of these episodes. Hopefully, you have been doing that over the past two weeks. We talked in the first week about creating awareness around where you're at in your life, where you want to see your life post-divorce. Last week we talked about how willpower is a finite resource and creating structure is really important. Hope that you found some value in those. If you haven't listened to those, you can listen to this episode, still get a lot out of it. However, I'd suggest going back and listening to those two. Kind of they all it all kinds of it all kind of builds on each of the episodes. So pause right now, go back, listen to those two. They're only about 15-20 minutes each, and then come back and listen to this. But what we're going to be doing today is talking about how you can upgrade the skills that divorce is exposing, or the lack of skills that divorce is exposing. There's a quote in construction per well, it's not even a quote, it's just um just a concept that pressure bursts pipes, right? So so in our case, and I'm going to correlate this to divorce, uh, pressure reveals where the cracks were all along. Divorce can have a nasty habit of exposing things we didn't want to look at or that we didn't, or that we don't want to address. It shines a bright light uh into our darkest corners, which is a good thing. But and and here's the good news. Today we're not gonna be we're not talking about shame or or guilt. We're gonna be talking about how you take those and you find what they are and then build the skills around those. So if you're feeling overwhelmed or inadequate right now, it's like it's it's likely not a character flaw. Okay, we it's just a skills gap. Uh, and we're gonna talk about how to to to close those. Oftentimes, and I know during my divorce, I felt I felt a ton of shame. I felt inadequate. I tried to be super dad, and none of that was in fact true. It was that I just had to do a couple of steps that we've shared the past couple of weeks, but then this this week's episode of building skills that could help me through the process, but also help me to improve my relationship with my kiddos. So you might be thinking that divorce is causing all of your problems. Okay. Well, you can blame the situation, you can blame the system and the legal system and family court, and you can blame the conflict. But eventually, here's the hard truth is you're going to need to, or your your divorce didn't create the problem or problems. The divorce has revealed them. Okay, I'm gonna say that again. Divorce didn't create the problems, it revealed them. It's like that stress test that I was talking about for the building or for the pipes. The earthquake of the separation and the divorce shows you exactly where those cracks are in that plumbing or or where the where there is a weakness in your foundation. So, you know, what what is getting exposed is something, something that you either weren't aware of before or you were aware of, and you may have been avoiding it, and now it is in your face, and you're having to do something about it. For me, I'll I'll I'll share it was what what one of the things, like because this was an ongoing many things get exposed, and you have many things to work on. There's not just a goal line and you finish and you're done, which is basically life, right? It exposed how easily I shut down emotionally under stress. When things got really hard and hot, I would retreat. I wouldn't step up and I wouldn't fight. It exposed that I had very, very few skills in managing conflict really well. And I knew how to fight, but I didn't know how to resolve situations that was both mentally and emotionally myself, externally, set boundaries, etc. So that was one thing that was exposed to me. And and I want to just say one thing that every one of you dads needs to hear is that I know that you love your kids dearly. I and and and deeply. I love my and I loved my daughters dearly and and deeply. But what I needed to learn, and unfortunately the hard way, and why I'm sharing this with you today and over the series, is that love is just not enough. I thought love would conquer everything, that's saying, correct? But love, the way I want to describe it, is an analogy. Love is the fuel in the tank. But skills are the engine and the steering wheel. So you can have a full tank of gas, which is your love. You just have all of this outpouring of love for your kiddos. But if you don't know how to drive the car with that engine, that the the how much horsepower it has or doesn't have, the steering wheel, the brakes, the accelerator pedal, those are the skills. You are going to either go off course or worse, you're going to crash that car, right? So we need to identify the deficits. Parenting under this extreme pressure of a well, parenting, period, is a skill, right? So we and that's not something we ever learn in school. We don't ever, when our children are born, we're not giving a given a handbook and and and and taught a class. There's some parenting classes that are out there, but it is it is a skill that we mostly learn on the job. Parenting under extreme pressure, like divorce, is also a skill that is that needs to be learned. Co-parenting with with boundaries is a skill. If that is one of your uh issues, like it was mine. Regulating your emotions when you're triggered is also a skill, not something that anybody ever explained to me uh growing up, didn't ever explain to me in my uh early adult life, uh, is one of the things why we have Joey Klein and Inner Matrix System on the show all the time and encourage you to go talk with him. He's created this system around identifying those and dealing with those uh those emotions and feelings, and then actually utilizing them to go forward. So the none of these skills we are born with, they are all learned. So that's the good news, guys, and that's why there is no guilt or shame in any of this, because if you're like me, you just did not learn any of this. But at this point, we need to be humble and just know that we're these are this time, is showing us is showing this the cracks in our our plumbing, the cracks in our foundation. So one of the an example of what I did and I needed to do, and I've shared this before, and if you've if you've read the dad's guide to to divorce, I I talk about this. I literally went back to school to learn to be a better parent. And it was something that I then did. I went back to love and logic classes. I've talked about that on many of the podcasts before, and they're one of our uh trusted, trusted allies on the on the website, an absolute tremendous way in which you can you can parent your kiddos, a philosophy for parenting your your kiddos. But it was it was challenging to have to go and do that. It was a little bit weird, it was a little bit awkward, but I'll tell you, after doing that for subsequent years, after my after I first found Love and Logic, but then also after the the divorce, it helped me immensely. And most of all, it absolutely transformed my relationship with my kiddos. So check I'll just make the the brief plug for Love and Logic. Check that out anywhere. It is absolutely amazing. But the thing that that helped me to do is stop winging it, which we're doing as as parents, if we don't have any kind of guidance, uh, and started operating with a toolkit, and then I was able to build those skills. So within that process, one of the most critical things, and I talk about that in the dad's guide also, is that I uh I would I started to learn presence and being present and what that meant, not just being physically there, but being mentally and emotionally there. Mindfulness, you hear this, it's it's more popular now than when I started talking about it six or seven years ago. But it's and it sounds sometimes woo-woo to to guys, but think of it basically as situational awareness. For me, it helped me to notice when I was lost in my head. And as guys and dads, we get lost in our heads quite a bit worrying about the next court date or an email from your ex or soon-to-be ex, instead of being present there with your kids who are right there in front of us, right? So what shifted was the uh the the skills to allow me to change how I responded. Uh, and and presence isn't about being calm all the time. We talked about this on our parental alienation call this this morning. It's and it's not about being a robot, it's not about being scripted, it's simply noticing what is happening inside of you, which we talk about with with Joey and the inner matrix system, whether that's anger, fear, sadness, uh, without letting it run the show, right? So that's that whole inner matrix system that that Joey has described and talked about. So identifying it, dealing with it, and then utilizing it to move in a direction that we want. So it's basically the difference between reacting blindly and responding with with purpose. So what with all of that said now, what I would like you to what what I would like you to do, because we want to take some action this week, is I want you to ask yourself uh this specific question this week. What skill is this divorce forcing me to learn? You can journal it like maybe we uh like we talked about in the episode a couple of weeks ago, or we've talked about regularly, or discuss it with somebody, a good friend maybe, but I want you to ask the question and answer what skill is divorce forcing me to learn? Is it patience? Is it organization? Is it emotional vocabulary? Is it how to cook? Right? What is divorce forcing you to address? And then the homework for this week is write down one area where you are struggling the most right now. And within that one area, find one resource you can explore this month to upgrade that skill. The example that I gave you was it was being present. One of the things that that I had done in the past, but I needed to upgrade my skill was learning meditation and and getting myself grounded in that. But the other one I also shared with you was the the parenting and going back to parenting classes, so I had more skills around how to handle situations with three kids as a as a as a single father, and that was the the love and logic. So that was the resource that I found that I found. So your resource, dependent upon what you wrote down, is uh as to what it is that divorce is forcing you to address now, and then finding one area that you're struggling the most in within within that answer, and then find something, some resource for you to start working on that. It could be a book, it can be a podcast, a YouTube channel, a therapist, whatever it might be. But then I want you to treat it like job training, right? Because being a dad essentially is I don't know about you, I feel is the most important job we potentially have if you're a father. So that is the action steps. Those are the action steps in the homework and what I want you to work on this week. And and and look, I also want to say if you're trying to piece this together by yourself through trial and error, I did that for a long, long time. When I say long time, years, the fact that you are listening to this now and working on some of this stuff, and I've got great great feedback from you guys over the past couple of weeks about doing this stuff. Uh I understand that it's challenging, that it's slow, and and it's painful. I did that for years, which is the reason why I built this community eventually when I started to figure, finally started to figure my stuff out and said, oh my God, this is so much better. This makes so much more sense. I need to start sharing this. So I want you to know that you don't have to figure this out alone. Coaching can help you identify exactly what you need to work on and how and how to apply it in real life right now. That's why we've built a community. Uh, we have the resources wherever you're at in your process and at whatever financial level you are able to become involved. We had uh just had our parental alienation call, which was a tremendous call that was completely free. You can check those out at the divorced advocate.com under the events page. We've got free QA's, we've got free group meetings, we've got the paid membership site where you can review all of those and listen to some of uh the previous group meetings. There's all kinds of resources on the website. Or if you want to fast track it, you can get some individual coaching one-on-one with me. And that's also at the website under the coaching tab. So wherever you're at, remember you you can't control the divorce, but you can control yourself and how you react and how you show up in the world. So, all right, fellas, that's it. Again, short and sweet, put this stuff into action. Please, we've been getting great comments, and I appreciate you giving feedback on each of these episodes. If you found some value, give us a star rating, whatever podcast platform you're on, just leave a just a one sentence comment or review or something. It makes the algorithms go crazy and helps other dads to find this podcast and find all of these resources. Thanks so much. Have a terrific week and God bless.