Curt Storring 0:00

Welcome to the Dad.Work podcast. My name is Curt Storring, your host and the founder of Dad.Work. This is episode number 51. How to journal and process your way through deep reflection, alignment and clarity. This is a Friday reflections episode where I am just going to riff. And you can choose to listen or not. But if you're here, I'm going to assume that you're choosing to listen. So thank you very much. This one is going to be another episode where I talk about my own journey, the inner work that I'm doing how I'm processing it, hopefully, it will give you a chance to see sort of the inner workings of how I do things, it was not always like this, typically, it was even more messy, usually more painful, involved a lot more screaming, crying, and generally hating myself. So take this with a pinch of salt, I've done a lot of work to get to this point. And on the other flip side, it's hopeful man, like if I can get to this point and share this without breaking down and having a complete panic attack like I used to. There's hope for anyone out there because I was lost and miserable for a long time as a dad. So if nothing else see this as a message of hope that I can get here because I know you can too. We are going to talk about my process that came up from last week and about my how to find support and friends as a dad, what that looked like. And then it brought up a lot of questions for me. So I go into all the questions are brought up how I answered them a journaling process I use that was extremely effective. And I talk about my decision to double down on men's group and postpone the community launch we were going to do for a month or two months, maybe even three months, because I just didn't want to lose sitting in group with men because I love men's group. So if you're me tell you about that later in the episode. But if you are ready right away to hop on to one of our men's groups with us, we've got two now, we're starting next week, which is the February second and third, we're going to start Wednesday and Thursday men's group meeting weekly. If you have the funds to invest in yourself and your future, as a father, I would love to invite you to join us at Dad dot work slash group, you can apply there, once you apply, you'll be heading over to my schedule book a 15 minute call, we'll hop on that and make sure we're a good fit mutually. And hopefully we'll take it from there and you can join the group with us. I will talk about all that in the podcast episode. At the end, I go into the actual journaling process that I use. I'm sick today for about the third or fourth day which is terrible. So I apologize if the voice is a little off. And especially if the ideas are off. I will blame my brain fog and my sickness on any errors or lapses of judgment. So there we go scot free. All right. Okay, guys, thank you for listening. And I'm gonna head off probably go have a nap and try and feel better. So I'm ready to perform next week cuz we've got some amazing podcasts coming up. I'm so so excited to be honest, or the next even, or next couple months, just so much good stuff in the in the pipes already. So all that being said, Here's episode number 51. With me, Curt Storring, how to journal process your way through deep reflection, alignment, clarity, Friday reflections, let's go.

Hey, dads, I had a lot of great feedback from my Friday reflections last week where I talked about needing support, finding support, being friends, finding friends as a dad and my own process work and my own inner work that relates to all of that. And this week, I want to follow on with what happened over the last week in my life with my own processing and in a work journey. Because this whole thing has brought up so much and I have been steeped in doing my own work. So I might as well bring you along for the ride and see if it inspires you to do something of your own. Or if you've been lacking the tools, then perhaps me sharing these tools with you will inspire you to use them and go deeper and get more clarity in your life. So coming off last week, I had a lot of work left to do. And I had a bunch of questions basically, what did it mean to be supported? What if I actually got rejected? I know that I need to be okay with that if I want support, but that still is hard for me. What then? What about this business? What about Dad.Work? is a business? How can I not feel guilty about needing to build a business around this when it's truly heart centered work, or all I want to do is help dads live better lives become better men, partners, fathers suffer less love more all the things that I needed along the way. Is there a way to do that that is intentional and in alignment with what I want to do while also serving people who might not be able to afford the work at this time. So what does that look like? What about the insecurity of doing all this? What about being seen? How do I get the confidence even though I know this work? Sometimes I second guess myself? What about being seen and maybe being wronged? What do I do then? How do I deal with being judged? What about disappointing people? What about the money that comes up with it? What about the triggers in the world? In the traumas I still have about money that I haven't yet dealt with. And then suddenly, these just opened up the floodgates of more and more and more questions. I need to believe deeply in my own value, and the value of whatever I create, because I know it's heart centered, my intent is clear and pure, I need to wonder how to balance all things. What and who do I want to serve in work that will fulfill me, in work only not in life, I'm not looking for life fulfillment in my work, necessarily, task differentiation based on day of the week, so I feel most creative. Like there's all of these things that had been coming up for me all because I was challenged on this support and friendship and vulnerability in my group. And it's amazing how these things can cascade Once you tap into a vein of inner work gold, if you will. And one of the things that I want to touch on most I'm going to get into how I dealt with all these questions. But there's something that I want to touch on here first, which is one of the questions was What do I truly feel that I want to give, rather than forcing myself through resistance because I feel like I have to. And this was a big one for me, because as you might have heard me talk about before on this podcast, and if you haven't, I'll give you a quick overview. About a year ago, now, I was going through a big transition, I was selling some of my portfolio of websites that I had made. These are affiliate and advertising websites that I ranked in Google, and I would make income basically when someone bought a product through the site, or if someone clicked on an advertisement on that site. And I was thinking, Okay, I've sold a bunch of these, I've got some money, what do we want to do, I want to start a real business. And to me real meant in person, real men, not online, real men, something that I could put work into, and not have to rely on Google or Amazon or some other online algorithm to reward me or not. And so I was going to start some local company, I wanted to start a high end local cleaning company residential, I was going to do it. So good, I was going to have all the systems it was going to be tech enabled, I was going to use my internet marketing skills to basically destroy the local competition, I was just going to be so amazing. And I get to do all this stuff. Like learn how to deal with customers learn how to do sales, learn how to manage a team, I was going to be this huge learning opportunity for me, I thought, and as I was going through this process, I kept getting this went on for months, I kept getting this feeling like ooh, I really don't want to be doing this. And me thinking just how I thought my entire life was, well, resistance is only meant to push through. So obviously stop being a wuss, and just get the work done. So I did, I came back time and time again. And I made a waffle and I'd come back, I'd waffling come back. And it got so bad to the point that I wasn't sleeping for the weeks leading up to the launch. And I didn't want to open my computer. And I was feeling sick to my stomach. And I have never felt so anxious before. And I thought well, you know, this is really new. And it's hard. And I guess that's just what I have to deal with. And it wasn't until two days before launch when I just couldn't handle it anymore. I called a couple of friends I called the coach called a grandfather called some people in my men's group. And I took some time to sit in stillness, rather than just pushing it away. Rather than keeping going rather than running at 100 miles an hour. I went for a huge walk. I literally sat in the woods. I did nothing meditated. I breathed, called some more people I walked back. So the next day or so thinking about it. But when I finally took the space to tap into what my gut and my heart were telling me, it was immediately obvious. I didn't need all of the time that I took because I knew right away as soon as I slowed down, that the answer was wow, this isn't just resistance because it's hard. This is the worst possible business you could have possibly started because it doesn't align with any of your values. Freedom, freedom, time, freedom, location, freedom, setting my own hours, not being beholden to customers, and clients and employees if they are not able to show up, like all of these things, which, you know, could be argued that they need to be worked on in my own work, I need to let go of control. That's fine. But that's as much more deep than I'm willing to go here. Mostly because I think these are just straight up values. And I don't have any problem with those. But it ended up being that all of this business was so antithetical to my values that I thought, wow, this is just so misaligned. It's no wonder that I feel resistance because my body my gut, is screaming at me Do not do this. You will be suffering for years if you go down this road without thinking about it. So long story short, I pulled the plug. It was the first time in my life that I had really let myself fail. And it really unleashed this floodgate of new work that I had been able to To do that I have been able to do over the last year and a bit now. And it was from that stillness. And from that decision to do what felt aligned, not just what I thought I was going to do, because the spreadsheets looked good. It was from that, that I'm able to be where I am now. And a lot of it is feeling more authentic, feeling more in flow, not feeling so rigid. It's actually allowed me to open up and slow down with my family, which has been amazing. And really notice and not be so controlling and overbearing, and all the things that I do. So this is not necessarily the point of the story. But I wanted to tell you that, because I'm now very sensitive to when things feel like resistance. And I don't want to trick myself and go, Oh, it must just be a misalignment of values. I guess I don't have to try hard anymore. That's not at all what this is about. And I don't let myself off the hook that easily. But I am now as I mentioned, very sensitive to this feeling. And so when this came up on the question that I just posed, which is what do I truly want to give? What do I feel that I have to give, rather than forcing myself to give because I think I'm supposed to, this is where the question came up for Dad.Work. And if you had been on the email list, if you have heard of last couple weeks, I was talking about this new community called the village. And the point was, I was feeling like, there were so many of you out there, who were interested in working together and doing this work, that if I stuck with men's groups, which I really love, which is where I feel in flow state, which is where I can most make an impact in the lives of the men who sit with me and in the world. I just I couldn't be the bottleneck. Basically, if I could start a community, and not just sit in maybe one or two men's groups and serve 10 to 20. Guys, if I could serve hundreds at a time and a community, well, that would be the thing for the business, that would be the thing to save the world, that would be how we get Dad.Work into the homes of you know, 1000s Millions of men across the world. And that's great. And I know that it's worked for many men, there are communities out there for dads, there's communities out there for men, there's lots of communities that worked. And I also had a spreadsheet that showed me what the likely projections would be. And obviously, that's fine. As a business, I don't mind telling you that. And at the same time, it was mostly born out of my desire to hit those spreadsheet goals, and to not necessarily spend the time in the trenches in the men's group. And I thought, Wow, if I can just like not be in there all the time, it won't have to rely on my time and my energy and I can open this up. And wouldn't that be great. And something in here. As I was launching this, as I had guys on the phone, as I was getting these applications rolling in, it's like wait a second, something doesn't feel right. And so I had to go through this process. Again, I had to slow down. And I ended up journaling on it quite a lot, which I'm going to tell you about in a bit. But I first want to close the loop on this. So as I thought about this village community and what it would look like, I didn't love what I had put together. And I knew that I rushed it. I wanted to get somewhere I wanted this to come together, I was finishing up this eight week men's group intensive that we were running. And I wanted to keep going and I wanted something to be done. So I threw this together because it was the first thing I thought of, I didn't take the time to sit with it. And upon reflection, I found that I truly would miss sitting in men's group. It's something that fills me up personally, I love it. I'm good at it. Yes, it changes lives. Yes, but I personally love it. And that's important to me. And so why would I remove myself and try to lead this community, which I think would be very satisfying, but not at the expense of not being involved with the men in the men's group. I think also the part where I just put it together and was going to wing it, which I do with a lot of things which is fair, because this is a sort of a startup environment. And I'm going with the flow. And I'm really trying to lean in with my heart what feels right and just move and do things and try things and break things and fix things. And that's just how I operate. But I didn't feel like it was the best version of what I could offer. And I was worried about not being authentic in that offering and having men come in and then feeling that and I didn't want to distract from the amazing experience I know we can offer. And so what I have decided now and over the last couple of weeks is that I'm going to redouble my efforts on men's group to really secure my base to allow myself to feel nourished and full and in the work and talking to men and really in it helping serving day in and day out. And I will be launching a version of this community in the future, that's for sure. It'll probably be a lower cost offering. It might not be as intense as I originally wanted it because I will spend much of my energy and my time In men's group, with the 10 men in each one of the groups that I'm starting, but it will still be amazing. And I'm excited for that now that I see this path forward, I'm excited. It's not this pulling towards it's not me aiming for some number and hoping to get there. It's me going, what do I want? What do I want to do? How do I want to serve? What do we want to feel? How do we want to interact with these dads? Oh, okay, men's group, yes, a community to help more men access this work? Yes, maybe we'll do workshops, maybe we'll do more eight, week intensives. Maybe we'll do summits where we bring together experts on a specific topic and go deep for half a day or the whole day, maybe we'll do in person retreats, maybe I'll offer coaching, I don't know, I don't even care right now. Because all I know is I want to do men's group personally and for all the men who benefit. And eventually over the next two or three months, we'll get the community and that will be enough. And this brings up a lot of me, it brings up a lot of business and finance and money fears. And it brings up the fear of being seen and being enough and serving well enough, but it settles me in my stomach to talk about it. Whereas the community as it was originally set up, made me feel anxious and on edge and ornery, and like something was missing. This feels good. So the last point on this I will make is that we are launching two men's groups. One is going to be Wednesdays nine to 11am. Pacific. One is going to be Thursdays six to 8pm. Pacific, there are two options will meet weekly with a group of 10 other men up to 10 other men every week, and you will be seen, you'll be heard you'll be supported and challenged by the men in the community who will get to know you and who will form brotherhood, like most of us lack. I cannot tell you the power of this before you sit in the group. But it has changed my life. I know it has changed the lives of the men that I've sat in group with. I'd like to invite you to stay with us. If this is a time in your life, where you'd like to stop going alone, stop being a lone wolf, get some direction, get some feedback, have a group of men a sounding board to support you and your times of need, but also to challenge you and call you out on your BS to make sure that you are showing up as the best version of yourself men's group does that I use it personally. I mean, I'm in men's group, I run them yes. But I'm also in them because it are so valuable. This is not me just selling something because I'm trying to make a buck here, I believe in this with my entire being. Okay, so I personally go to men's group, as a leader, in some cases, yes, in these groups. Absolutely. But I go to make sure that I'm always focused on my Northstar. Who do I want to be in the world? How do I want to show up? How do I say I want to show up? And am I actually acting that way. Because if I'm not, I know that the group of men I sit with will call me out on it. And they'll support me when I need to. And they'll call me up and they'll introduce new ideas I hadn't heard of before or thought of before. And every single week I will be held accountable knowing that I have to show up wherever I am, however I am, and that I won't be judged or shamed along the way. Oh, man, there's there's nothing like it in our society today. Beyond perhaps what I've heard in the military, where you know, your your life is on the line, and you're holding another man's life in your hands. This is as close as we can get to that type of brotherhood. And I think all men should be in a men's group and you might not be ready for it now. That is fair. It is not for everyone. There is a cost it is $200 Canadian, every month, if that makes you squeamish, if you think that I'm a bad guy for wanting to charge. I'm sorry, but that's on you. Because if you're not willing to spend money to change your life, I mean, literally change your life for the better than this is just not for you right now. That's okay. I do not judge you for that at all. Keep listening to the podcast, keep checking my Instagram posts, keep enjoying the emails I'm sending for free every week. Do all of those things. Join us in our community later on. It's going to be a probably a cheaper offering. That's fine. But keep men's group in the back of your mind. work to make it work for you. If you don't join mine. I don't even care. Go find one locally. Go find one that's free or cheap. I know there's a few options out there. But I'm inviting you here. Two hours a week. Wednesdays nine to 11am Pacific Thursdays six to 8pm Pacific 200 bucks a month Canadian so I think it's 160 American if that feels right. If you feel scared, but also like you're a bit of a hell yes. Then this is probably the answer you're looking for. I'd love to have a call with you. I'd love to have you apply the way that you can join us if this is interesting is you apply at dad.work/group. you book a 15 minute call with me You will automatically go to my calendar once you fill out the application. So it's no problem doing that. on your end, I will do a call with you to make sure we're mutually the right fit. I only want to work with people who are hell yes, because as I mentioned, we've got so much other content and workshops and worksheets and all that kind of stuff out there for free. That I only would like to work with men who are ready who have done a little bit of work to get to the point where they know this is what they want. Go to dad.work/group, dad.wrk/group apply and gets most of the way down the page. There's an application form just a few questions, book a call with me, and we'll get a call together and hopefully get you involved if this is the right step for you. Alright, so that was a bit of a tangent. That's not the point. I'm actually curious what you think about how I deliver that. Are you triggered at the price? Do you really want to join? Yeah, what came up? Let me know curt@dad.work, or Instagram dad.work.curt would love to hear from you. And if brought up, nothing great. Keep listening. Cuz I'm going to go into journaling now. Okay, so the next thing we're talking about is how I actually answer all these questions. Like I said, I have I'm literally looking at my journal right now. And what are the probably 20 to 30 questions I wrote down. So I have all these questions going on my mind. I'm wondering, what do I do? How do I get through this? It's so much it's overwhelming. Everything needs to be done at once. I thought, it's running around in my mind like crazy. I hate having a full brain like that. And I love having headspace, as funny as the name of that meditation app. But truly headspace is what I'm always after this expansive feeling of freedom and creativity, in my mind not being bogged down. What do I do? So I ended up writing down the list of questions. And I decided that I was going to take them one by one. And I was just going to journal on them until I was complete, whatever that looked like, I wanted to have an answer for each one. But I was okay, going until I felt complete. And this is why we do meditation and mindfulness and yoga and breathing and all the rest that kind of stuff. So that you can feel so deeply into your own body that you just know, intuitively, when you're done, when you're complete what you feel. Anyway, another side point, but I felt into this to make sure that I was either going to answer everything fully, or feel complete. And so one by one, I took them, I used no prompt, I just started writing. And I made a bullet point. And I just went and I would ask myself questions, and I would journal whatever came up and I asked, put my fears down on paper and did all this stuff, to get to the point where at the end of them on almost every single one I came to, here is the end result. I didn't want to jump forward because it's too easy for me to answer 90% of the way and then jump forward to the next question. And then have them still living in my mind for the next week until I have a little bit more time to do it. So I was going to stay with one question as long as it took, I was a very important part of this process. And I would make an action item where necessary, make a big, fat bold action item on paper. And then I would write a one line action item. And only then when it was complete or had an action item did I move on? And do that for every single question no matter how small, no matter if it needed to be journaled on, I would write it until it was complete, so that it could feel out of my head and answered. And man, I gotta tell you, this was perhaps the most impactful journaling exercise I have ever done in my life. Perhaps because I gave myself permission to go for it all the way. Even if it took hours out of my day, even if it took a week or a month to complete this exercise. It just feels so complete, I feel completely plumbed out. Basically, I feel like my pipes are clean. There's nothing left in there that I'm wondering about. And of course new things have come up. But it's not clogged down with any of the things I was worried about, like the rejection or the insecurity or the guilt of charging or the confidence or whatever it means to be supported. Or where do I find friends? Or how do I truly fit into all this? All of that has been dealt with. And it doesn't mean it's done. I've got processing work left to do an integration work left to do that's very important. But I no longer have the questions about them. I know what I need to do. I've already done many of the action items. And that's the last step is when you answer these questions, don't just look at them. Make a list? What are the action items you committed to? What are the ideas you need to continue to flesh out if that's something you needed to do? What are the main principles of the decisions you made so that you don't forget them? Where can you now write them or show them in your daily life

such that you don't forget everything you learned in this journaling session? So that's what I did. I made up to all these questions that came up from this last couple of weeks of inner work and processing. I wrote the questions down I journaled on every single point all the way through with no expectation of where it was going to go. Only that I needed to finish each idea before I moved on. I made action items where necessary and then I made a list of the action items at the end, and moved through them piece by piece until they were done. And I am just about through that. It's been about a week since I've done this. Alright, I think that's everything I want to talk about today, I am still sick, I have been sick since Monday. This is completely terrible, and I hate it. And I don't know what it is, I don't really care what it is, I'm not scared of one particular virus or another. Unlike most people in our society today, I have a robust immune system for which I'm grateful. And I'm going to try and get some rest. So if my voice is a bit off today, if my ideas are less clear today, if I rambled in any point, I asked for your forgiveness. And yeah, that's it. So if you want to join the men's group.org/group, if you have not yet joined our free 14 day better man better than email series, go to dad.work/email. That's 14 days of basically all the tips and tools and practices and wisdom that I came across. It was most impactful, most impactful in my journey to becoming more of a conscious father, just generally hating my life less because I was miserable. And I was a terrible dad and husband. And so I just wanted to share the sort of best tips and practices I learned. And you can find that at dad.work/email. You can find all the podcast notes, all the resources, all that kind of stuff at dad.work/podcast I'm just trying to list off all the things right now What else am I missing? We're going to be doing a free monthly community call men's group. For the men who can't afford or access the weekly men's groups. I was going to do one Thursday night, which is actually when I'm recording. So this will be out on Friday the 28th January 27. We're supposed to do it tonight. I am not going to me to do the meeting tonight. I need to rest I need to sleep. I've been asleep super early lately. So I'm going to postpone it. But you will be seeing that coming in the future. So if that's something you're interested in, you can sign up as well. I'll leave the link at a later podcast because we're not ready to release that quite yet. And what else I just released an Instagram post for the first time in the last couple of days, head over over to dadwork.com on Instagram. I think that's it guys. I would be interested to hear from you. If you haven't emailed me or hit me up on Instagram. What do you want to hear more of what are you curious? Do you like these sort of open heart centered? Exploring my own journey? Do you want to have simply more learnings and teachings and trainings? Like what are you into? If you like this, please let me know if you don't also let me know. It'll help me serve you better. Obviously, I do not take this time together for granted. I listen to podcasts sometimes. And I know that I have such a limited time to do so that I pick mine very carefully. So I appreciate you listening to this very much. And that's it. I won't ramble on any longer. Oh, last thing if you haven't left a review, please do so and possible on Spotify now, as well as Apple. So that's the last thing I appreciate. You have a great weekend. So you can do some journaling. You can do some introspection, slow down. Why don't you ask yourself this weekend? What in my life? Do I truly want to do? And what am I doing? Because I've always done it? Can you ask that question? What have you always been doing? And therefore you keep doing it? And what do you actually want to be doing? could you dare to ask that without bringing up too much discomfort? That's a hard one. And that's one that I think about all the time. I'm gonna ask you to look into that this weekend and go forth spend some quality time with your kids with your partner and yet be the best version of you fill up your own cup this weekend as well. All right, take care guys. See you next week on Monday

that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. It means the world to find out more about everything that we talked about in the episodes today, including Show Notes resources and links to subscribe leave review work with us go to dad.work/pod that's DAD.WORK/POD. type that into your browser just like a normal URL, dad.work/pod to find everything there you need to become a better man, a better partner and a better father. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai