The Divorced Dadvocate: Divorce Support For Dads
The Divorced Dadvocate: Divorce Support For Dads is a weekly podcast designed specifically for fathers navigating divorce. It addresses the unique challenges men face and offers practical guidance, emotional support, and real-life insights to help dads survive — and ultimately thrive — during and after divorce.
Each episode combines honest conversation, personal stories, and action-oriented advice to help listeners rebuild confidence, create healthy co-parenting strategies, manage finances, navigate court complexities, and heal emotionally. Since launching in 2020, the show has become a trusted resource and supportive community for divorced and divorcing dads.
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DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this podcast is to inform, not influence. It is not a substitute for professional care or advice by a qualified professional. The host, as well as guests who speak on this podcast, express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions, and The Divorced Dadvocate podcast & website neither endorses nor opposes any particular views discussed here.
The Divorced Dadvocate: Divorce Support For Dads
292 - Build A Life That Backs You
Rebuilding life after divorce often feels like a test of sheer will, but grit alone rarely carries us past Friday without a crash. The missing piece is environment—the external space we live in and the internal landscape we think in. When our surroundings pull us toward distraction, anger, or numbing, our habits follow. The key shift is to design conditions where the best behavior becomes the easiest behavior.
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Hello and welcome to the show. Thank you so much for tuning in again this week. And we are on our fourth and final episode of our mini-series, if you will, on rebuilding your life. If you've been with me for the last three weeks and the last three episodes, we've covered quite a bit of ground. If you're just tuning into this one first, I highly recommend that you go back and listen to the previous three. It's not a necessity. They kind of build on each other, but they are independent. It would just be uh helpful for some reference. If not, just keep listening on. It's going to be beneficial, I promise you. We've talked in the in the last three weeks about finding your direction. We've talked about building your structure, and we've developed talked about developing the skills you need to navigate this new chapter. But today what we're going to talk about is what I feel the glue that holds it all together. Today we're going to talk about your environment. But before I jump in, I just wanted to welcome, we got a couple of new members to the to the to the community. Those are Trey and Norm. Welcome to the Divorce Davocate community. Those of you who have listened for a long time know about the website at thedivorcedavicate.com. If you don't go check it out, we've got all kinds of resources for you wherever you're at in your divorce journey and at whatever monetary, financial position you're in. Some from from stuff that's free to uh stuff that's paid. We've got something there for you to get the the support that uh you need and ensure that you are you are the the the dad that you deserve to be in your kiddos' lives, let's just put it that way. Okay, let's jump in here now and jump into environment. So you can have the best goals in the world. You can have the discipline of a Navy SEAL. You but if your environment is designed to work against you by Friday afternoon, Friday evening, which is when I'm recording this right now, as a matter of fact, you're going to crash. And actually, I feel absolutely terrific after this week, and it was probably one of the busiest weeks. I don't want to toot, I'm not tooting my horn or anything, but I but I am saying that you don't have to feel worn out by a Friday, Friday afternoon, particularly if you've created the environment that is going to be conducive for you to be successful throughout an entire week. So, what we're going to talk about in this final episode, we're going to explore why change becomes infinitely easier when your surroundings support you and don't work against you, and how to redesign your space and your mind. So those are two different things, and we're going to talk about that to make success inevitable. So let's jump in. We talked about the willpower trap earlier, and I just want to start with I used to think that change was a hundred percent about discipline, right? I thought if it was a struggle, it was going to be it, it was it was because I wasn't. I thought if I was struggling, it was because I wasn't trying hard enough, right? So I thought if I just white knuckled it, I could force my life into a new shape or move it in the right direction. Divorce taught me that that is wrong. I'm sure that there's a lot of you listening right now that are probably agreeing with that, going, oh yeah, that is true. And so one of the realizations, other realizations I had is that change isn't about discipline, it's about environment. So change is not just about discipline. We talked, go back, listen to the first, the first episode about willpower and the finite amount of willpower that uh that you have. Change is about is not about discipline, it's about your environment. And and this is the truth. When my environment stayed the same, what happened was my habits stayed the same even after divorce. If I sat in the same chair, watched the same the same shows, kept the same junk in the fridge, I fell right back into the same patterns I was trying to escape. So auditing the external. What is making it easy for you to numb out? I just want you to ask yourself those three questions. Stop. I'm gonna say them again, I'm gonna pause. So, what we're doing is you're you're auditing your we're auditing your environment. You need to audit your environment. What in your life is pulling you toward distraction? Even if you want to pause this and take out your journal that we talked about and journal this, that would be a really good idea too, right now. Uh, the second question is what is pulling you toward anger uh or toward any emotion that you might be feeling on a regular basis? Maybe that's sadness. Uh the last question is, what is making it easy for you to numb out? We talked about presence in one of the last few episodes. What is it make what is making it easy for you to numb out right now and not maybe pay attention to what you need to be doing or be focused on? Okay. And and you need to be ruthless. I had to be ruthless with myself on this. And some of the things that that came to to me when I asked myself these questions was I realized that having like not curating where I'm getting my information and news on a on a regular day was keeping me in a slow, in a low grade of anxiety and and anger. So what I started to do is I turned off everything and I started deciding what I was going to consume, and as importantly, when I was going to consume that. So that was one of the realizations that that I came to, right? And that answered the the the question of what was pulling me in a direction of distraction. Uh another one was I realized that alcohol was not beneficial. It wasn't a treat. It was maybe more so of a stress relief valve, but it was killing my energy. So I removed it. And since I've removed it, I can tell you energy levels, everything. There's nothing about alcohol that has been missed in my life. It really, when I look back on it, I just see that it was a toxin that I kept putting into my body that kept me from being living an optimal life. So so that was another one. The one of, and look, this is really just a partial list, guys. Let me tell you, like, there's a lot of realizations over the dozen years since divorce that that I've come to. And I'm just sharing a few. Like it could go on forever because this has been an ongoing journey. And that is and this is an ongoing journey. You're going, even with your environment, you're going to be realigning, trying new things, uh, implementing them, see what works. Some will, some won't. It's an ongoing thing. That's just life. There's no goal line. You're not going to just finish this up, be done, and have it all figured out. The last one I realized was late-night distractions, maybe going out too late, uh, hanging out with friends, going on dates, scrolling social media till till late at night. This was robbing me of sleep, and I needed, and I needed that sleep in order to handle the emotional weight of divorce. One of the big things when uh we're talking in our groups is about what you're doing mentally, emotionally, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, and physically comes down to are you getting good sleep? Are you eating right? Are you are you exercising? And the sleep thing for me was something that I had to align and created a whole routine around how I sleep now, when I go to sleep, what my room's like, what the conditions are, all that in entire uh that entire environment. And again, I'm gonna say it didn't all happen at once. I didn't have this realization and go, oh, at the beginning, it was like I just got to go to bed earlier and just started doing that, and then added some of the other things. So that leads me to my next point, which is small changes will compound drastically, right? You'll have a small change, but the the it compounds on itself. You might think I should be strong enough to resist that. So that is an that's absolutely it's absolutely false. And it's a kind of a falsehood that we hear as as men in general. You're not weak. You are human. Humans are designed to take the path of least resistance. All humans, men, women, adults, children, we are designed to avoid the the the difficult that would potentially kill us and go towards the uh easy and the path of least resistance, where we're able to uh continue uh living and and and go about our business, right? So that is just the way that it is. You're not weak if you think if you can't if you if you can't resist something. So what you have to do and you you have to design a path where good behavior is the easiest thing to do. So I talked about getting up earlier, right? If you want to get up earlier, don't rely on willpower. Put so you don't like immediately the first thing you're gonna do if in the morning, if you're just gonna uh if you're just going to rely on willpower to get out of bed at at a certain time, then you're gonna drain that willpower battery immediately down a higher percentage than if you would do something like put the alarm clock across the room so you have to physically get up out of bed, turn it off, and then you'll be out of bed. So you're not using your willpower in order to get out of bed to do that. You already have an external stimulus in your environment that is making you get out and do that, and you're not using your willpower to do that, right? Another one could be, and these are so these are examples, right, of where you can create the good behaviors that will help you to facilitate this. If you want to work out, lay your workout clothes next to your next to your bed or somewhere in your room the the night before, or put your shoes or your running shoes if you're gonna go running or whatever, your workout shoes right next to the bed so that you get out of bed when that alarm clock goes off, walk across the room, turn it off, your clothes are right there next to it, and your shoes are next to the bed or next to the clothes. You put them on and you put your shoes on. Another example, if you want to eat better, get the junk food out of the house. I still remember when I went through and I did this the first time because I had kids and we had junk food and they like junk food, right? And I just finally made the decision. I would like that's just a willpower thing. I will I just will eat. And so I got all the junk food out of the house. So then you don't have to use that willpower. Again, that's a battery. Your willpower is a battery. So you saved you you save part of your charge in the morning getting out of bed, having to get your clothes, having to get to the gym, not having to, not having to fight yourself in not eating some of the junk food. So make sure that that you are finding these different ways. Again, small changes uh will compound on themselves and be bigger and bigger and bigger. Let's see. They sound so yeah. So the other thing I want to say, it's it sounds small, right? It sounds stupid sometimes, but it's it is simply tactical. You you don't have to fight the environments. Uh, you're gonna have that energy of willpower, you're gonna have that more willpower to fight the difficult and challenging things. And what we're gonna talk about next might be the biggest one, which is the internal environment, right? We're so far focused on external environment, which house, but the biggest fight, at least for me, and I know for a lot of you, and because I talk to a lot of you, is that the the one inside our head is the biggest challenge. But just like we clean up our our rooms, we have to clean up our mental landscape. We often think that because a thought just pops into our head, it must be true. Okay, that is probably one of the biggest fallacies. If you if that's the only thing you take away today, and you go away saying, hey, like maybe every thought in my head is not true. Because here's the liberating thing your thoughts are not facts. I'm gonna say that again. Your thoughts are not facts. Just because just because you think I'll never recover from this, or you think I'm a failure, does not make that true. I can attest to that. I've got hundreds of guys in our community that will come and attest to that. It's just a thought. It is basically mental weather, snowstorm, rainstorm, or whatever that is passing through your mind. So learning to notice those thoughts with without immediately believing them, firstly and foremost, and secondly, acting on them is something that will absolutely change your life. It's the difference between standing, let's use the weather uh analogy again. It's the difference between standing in a weather storm and getting rain soaked versus being inside a container or a house or whatever and watching from the window. You see the rain, right? You're seeing that thought, but you don't have to drown in that thought. You can see it, you can recognize it. This is where when we were talking with Joey Klein and the intermatrix system, where he does all that work in his group about identifying the thoughts that are coming in and then taking those and then and then harnessing the feelings from those and moving your life in a direction to where you want to, you want to you want to ex, you want to uh you want to realize the feeling you have, and you can harness your thoughts in order to move in that direction. So, so that's a whole practice, right? That's what Joey's created intermatrix systems. There's lots of stuff out there that that you can you utilize and and work on. But what what a number one is just recognizing, again, your thoughts are not facts. It's gonna take practice, it's gonna take repetition, but I promise you the payoff is going to be real peace. Okay, so just like every other week, we're gonna keep these short and sweet, but I'm gonna give you some homework. And my goal is for you now to take the extra 15 minutes or 30 minutes that you would have been listening to this and stop and to work on this exercise that I'm gonna give you now. We're we're about three three weeks into this. This is the fourth week now, right? So here's your assignment for this week. I don't want you to overhaul your whole life overnight or immediately. I want you to make one environmental change this week. It can be removing one negative input. Maybe you delete a social media app that makes you angry or upset or charged or distracted. Uh maybe you pour out the alcohol and decide that you're not going to do a drink anymore. Maybe you stop watching the news after 6 p.m. so that you are not in a state of anxiety or upheaval in your mind before you're getting ready for bed. Okay. Remove one negative input and then add one supportive input. Uh, maybe instead of watching that news, you're gonna put a book on your nightstand and you're gonna read that book right before you go to bed. Or maybe that will be put a glass of water on your nightstand so that you drink some water instead of that drink that you had after work, right? Put or put a sticky note on your mirror that reminds you of your goal. Maybe you maybe that sticky note says your thoughts are not facts, right? So maybe that could uh be be what it is that's gonna help as a reminder every day. Divine design a space that supports the man you are becoming, not the man that you used to be. So, fellas, as I wrap up this series, I appreciate you listening. I know I've got a lot of great feedback this time on this series, and and I and I and I appreciate that. I appreciate that you guys are implementing some of this stuff. Uh, you've been talking about it. I know that you are you are trying. Keep trying. Go back, listen to some of this stuff. Thriving after divorce isn't about one single breakthrough moment where everything magically gets fixed. Like I said, it there's not a there's not a goal line, that's there's not an end. It's an ongoing process. You are going to build this. And as guys, we're we're builders, right? So I know that you can do it. And it's built through clear direction, that was our episode one. It's built through a supportive structure, that was our episode two. It's built through growing your skills, that was last week's episode. And then finally, what we talked about today, it's built through intentional environments. And so if you're listening to this and and know what you need to do, but you're struggling to actually do it, I want you to know that you don't have to do this alone. This is why I built the divorced advocate community, because for me, there was a gap between knowing and doing what needed to happen during this process. And I didn't have, you know, all those resources were out there. We've brought all these resources together now under one roof for dads going through divorce. And and it's and then this is bridged by having a guide and having the other guys in the community, having coaches, having all of the experts that we are aligned with to help you through this. So if you want guidance and support in building that life, I invite you to learn more about the community at thedivorcedadvocate.com. We've got uh memberships that allow you to dip your toe into it, listen to more of the meetings before you maybe jump onto one of the meetings, see who our experts are, and maybe do some self-guided stuff with the app and some of the self-help stuff that we have through that. And we got full blown coaching. If you want to jump in and And get some support and jumpstart that that uh building of that life. And you can check all that out at the divorced advocate.com. The the membership tab talks about the membership, the coaching tab talks about the coaching, and then we got all the other resources that are on there to the podcast, the blog, the divorce quiz, everything else. So, fellas, thanks for thanks so much for listening over these uh weeks on these four episodes. Keep building, just keep doing slow, incremental progress is the the way to go. And if you found some value in what I share today, please give us a star rating, a comment. Just make again the algorithms go crazy. Other guys look at it, they go, hmm, they read, they make it a comment, they do a star rating, they tell somebody else. We had a whole bunch of guys in from one of our one of our supporters and and colleagues that I work with this week on some of our calls. It was absolutely fantastic. So just keep getting that word out there. It helps us immensely. Thanks so much. Have a terrific week and God bless.
