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 the first episode in the podcast where we will be going deep with other men, other fathers who can share with us their journey, their experience their wisdom, on the path to becoming a more conscious man, partner and father. And that's what dad work is all about. It's my goal to help men suffer less love more and parent confidently. So that, like I said, you can be a better man, a better partner and a better father. And what that looks like, differs for each man. But the basics are that every day is not a struggle for you. You live according to a purpose that lights you up, you do things in the day that are intentional, you're not dragged along by inertia or drift. And you are the father, your children need to become resilient, loving, amazing people. So this is the first episode we're going to talk a little bit more about dad work, who I am my story, going from a dad who was miserable and angry and yelling all the time, over the last eight years to becoming a man who is now calm and compassionate and confident in himself in his partnership, and in his role as a parent as a father. So we're gonna get into that right now. And I look forward to having you along for the ride.

All right, welcome to dad work. This is the inaugural episode where I will be going over some things to help you get an idea about what the podcast is going to be like, so that you can tell whether or not this is a good fit for you as you become a better father, a better husband and a better man. So you can find out more about dad work by going to our website, which is dad dot work. It's a URL, it's much like.com. But it's actually dot work. So di d dot w o rk is our website. And you can find all things podcast related at dad dot work slash pod, there will be shownotes resources, links, social, everything like that you can get on dad dot work slash pod. My name is Curt Storring, as I mentioned, and I started dad work because of the journey that I've been on for the past eight, almost nine years. So my story really quickly here to give you an idea of where I'm coming from and why you may or may not want to listen to me is that I became a father quite young age 23 was my oldest son, he was born and I was, I was miserable. I was angry, I was sad, I was scared, I was lonely. I had very little support. And I had not done a lot of maturing, I obviously thought I was very mature. And those those years, you often think that you know everything. And that was certainly me. But what I found was that fatherhood really shone a light on every part of my psyche, my mind, my soul. That was in pain, that hurt that was being held together with defense mechanisms rather than my true self. Basically, things that my ego had built to protect me from the pain I felt from the trauma and the wounds I'd experienced in my life. And for me, as with most of us, those wounds, those trauma. Those traumas were products of my childhood. And so when I became a father, having a new human in the house to cry and make noise, and take my time up, all of those things ended up triggering me in so many ways that I just became very mean. I would yell, I would work incredibly long hours, I would not know how to help. I would become snippy and disrespectful to my wife, like everything was just a complete mess. And so that was okay. But I had no idea what to do. I didn't really have any mentors didn't have close relationship with my father, he died right before my second son was born and just had no one really to turn to. And so around the time that my second son was born, I finally started to look into why my life was the way it was why I was feeling this way why it wouldn't seem to get better. I would do something I would yell and I would immediately feel guilt. And that would rack me for days, literally days. Sometimes I wouldn't talk to my wife out of shame because I wanted to punish myself for acting the way I did, knowing that there's no way she could ever forgive me. Even though natural she did. And it was in those times when nothing was working. I figured there must be a different way. So my second son was born my first son was continuing to trigger me I didn't know how to build a relationship with him. I was completely lost. And one of the people I was following him To help me build my business, I mentioned that he meditated. And I thought, you know, anything to make me a more high performer because at this time, you know, I was doing fairly well in business. Everything on the outside looked great. And it was only the home life only the being a father being a husband that was not going well on the outside at least. So I thought I was exceptional. And a lot of ways I thought I was very skilled in many ways. And I thought, you know, maybe meditation would just help me take it up even another notch, I didn't even know it would help with parenting or anything like that. I just thought, That's how life was. So I started meditating. And it changed my life. It completely changed my life. Almost immediately, within the first week, I noticed that something that my oldest son did, I think it was yelling, or complaining or crying, or something very normal. And at the time, my reaction was like, I just couldn't deal with that you got to be quiet, you got to be quiet. Instead of yelling at that moment, I took a breath. And I found this space between the stimulus and the response that I needed

to control my reaction. And that was the first time something like that had ever happened before. Usually, it would just be me flying off the handle, and then regretting everything I did. And it was meditation that caused me to find this, this break this parting of the clouds to find my clarity before I acted. And so from that moment on, I was hooked. I've meditated for probably five or six years, almost every day now, I've tried a variety of different types of meditation, pretty much everything there is to try. And it's an important part of my life now continuing today, to just help me with my mental health and staying grounded, staying true to myself, making sure I'm not reactive. And so that was the first thing now obviously, that did not change everything, I was still miserable, I still had no idea why I still hadn't done the work necessary to dive deep into my soul, my heart, my psyche, and figure everything out and come to terms with it, which is what I have been doing over the last number of years, which is sort of resulted in who I am today, which, which we'll get to. And so during this time, we have a couple kids, I'm working online as an entrepreneur, I'm making my own businesses, and we decided to travel the world, thought, you know, why not? Now why wait till retirement, if the means we have the ability with our work to travel, let's do it. So we moved to Asia. And I thought I was doing all right, and my sons were three and a half and one and a half. You know, the routine was fairly good, I was meditating, I thought I'd really figured myself out. Which is, of course, laughable, looking back. And as soon as we moved to Asia, and all of my routines were interrupted, going to the gym, meditating, journaling, things that I knew where to go to eat, where to go to work out, all these things were interrupted in my nervous system was completely overwhelmed. I just had no idea what to do. And of course, all of these things that parenting brought up, were brought up in travel, I got upset again, I got angry, I got mean I got miserable. And the first time that I consider hitting rock bottom was in Thailand, I remember basically lying on this concrete floor of the first apartment, we moved in, just literally pounding the floor with my fist, tears coming down my face, bawling basically, just imagining that there was no way I would ever get better, that I was so bad for my wife and my children, and that I didn't know what to do. And this was probably the worst I had ever felt up to that point. And for the next couple of weeks, it really acted as a reminder, not to act in the way that I was acting. And for a few weeks, it worked. And, and then it happened again. And I hit rock bottom for the second time in in as many weeks. And this was I think, the wake up call that I needed. I have a conversation. Later on in the podcast with my friend Dominic who talks about, oftentimes, the thing we need to change is to be hit by a Mack truck. And this was one of those. This was one of those times that really encouraged me to take a deep look and change. And so from that time, we continued on living in Thailand, traveled to right of Asian countries, moved to Eastern Europe for a while. And there were some better times I started journaling, I started reading much more deeply about things like my life, my spirit, my soul, my wounds, my trauma, habits, all those kinds of things. I started to form an idea of what would come to be my life later on. But I was still very deeply hurt very, very deeply wounded. And remember in Eastern Europe, my wife was rightly frustrated author with all of this, having supported me so much and said look, I'm going to take the kids back to Canada if you can't sort this out. And that was another Mack truck that continue to wake me up. So Along the way, I added journaling. I discovered breathwork, conscious connected breathwork, I started talking to people started talking to mentors and elder elders. And I eventually joined a men's group, I continue to read, probably read two or 300 bucks now on specific ways that I wanted to better myself with temper and anger in patience and finding out where those came. And it all started to finally take root. And that's why I think that compound interest in men in men's work and inner work on your healing journey is so important. Starting today, when you fall off the horse, even starting the next day, it's so important to get the reps in, because what I learned was that it was fantastic to start with meditation. And it required me meditating almost every single day for years to get to a point where I could then access the things that I needed to access,

which were my deepest core wounds. So I had build up this tool chest, that seemed good. And I realized that I was I was doing a lot of the right things, but was still triggered, often. And you know, thankfully, my wife and I continue to grow together, we've been together almost 10 years now. And, and that's a miracle to be honest. My my children are eight, six, and one, we had another child a little over a year ago. And I was doing all of these things that I thought were right. They were mindfulness practices, I was going deep, I was figuring out why I was doing things. And I fixed so much I had really, truly fixed myself in so many ways. And that's not an overstatement at all. And then I finally joined a men's group. And that was one of the things that catapulted me to the next stage is being around other men doing this work, who could see me who didn't need to give me advice, who could simply be there to hold space. And they would push me and challenge me when I wasn't showing up as my authentic self. And that's when I started diving deeper. And I started doing more self reflection, more mindfulness work, more physical embodiment work to move the physical wounds and trauma that had been held in me since childhood, and do things that, you know, I considered crazy at one time, from tapping to experimented with psychedelics, to embodiment practices, and different types of meditation, all of these things started coming together. And I was finally able to access the deepest core wounds that were troubling me all the way back from from childhood. These were the things that kept getting triggered when my first son was born. These are the things that were triggered when I felt out of control when I was traveling, these are the things that are triggered when I'm worried about money in my business, that turned me into a reactive person, rather than someone who is calm and grounded and can feel everything from a place of centered groundedness. And I don't know what to say other than Finally, it all worked, it all clicked. And certainly today, I still suffer on occasion. But I'm a completely change man. And that's because of the work that I've been doing here because of men's work because of mindfulness work. Because of all of these embodiment and grounded practices, breathwork, meditation, journaling, all of these things add up. And like I said, before, being in a men's group really supercharged all the growth I had done alone, because I was the classic lone wolf. I didn't need any friends, I didn't need any help, I could do everything myself until I realized I just couldn't. And so joining a men's group really gave me the opportunity to be a leader in my life, to be a leader of the men in my men's group, and to finally be held accountable, to become more grounded, not to be better even but to become more true to myself. And that was very interesting to me, because it wasn't what I assumed, which is just continue to crush it all the time. It was to slow down and find out who you truly are. Find out who you are, what you believe, how you can show up as your full aligned self with all of the pieces of you aligned and grounded, rather than putting up faces that you are that you have created from your ego. And so that's my general journey. And I have been able to become a better man, a better partner and a better father. And that's what I'm hoping to share now to other men who are struggling, or who simply are crushing it in every other area of their lives, but are struggling being a father. I have talked just now about becoming a better man. But becoming a better man is the very basic points to become a better partner and a better father. There's a lot of people talking about becoming a better dad, with tactics and styles of parenting. But it all comes down in my experience to simply Figuring your own shit out. That means realizing why you get triggered why you act the way you do, why you can't connect with your kids, why you fight with your partner, why you can't love her better. All of these things is men's work. And that's why this is called dad work because it's men's work for dads. And this is all the kinds of things we're going to be doing here to become a better man. But specifically, if we want to talk about partners briefly, I learned compassionate communication, I learned how to find love, because forever I had only found anger. And when I wasn't angry, I was neutral. But there was nothing on the other side of that. So I finally found it, I found love. And that's been the guiding light of my life. Ever since I realized how to apologize when I needed to hold space for my wife, to speak my truth. To treat her like the divine feminine, she deserves to be treated as so that my divine masculine can shine through. This is why today after 10 years, my marriage is better than ever.

And specifically with fatherhood, being a better man helps, obviously. But being a better father also means knowing what our kids need, and how to interact with them from our place as a leader in the family. And so finding out what triggers you sitting with those triggers, healing them, integrating that healing, asking yourself, why your children are triggering you certain ways, why you're not getting along, finding out what they actually need, and how to give it to them, what your goals are as a parent that really helped me, and then how to show up for your kids so that they feel safe, seen soothed and supported, which is from Dr. Dan Siegel. And learning how to communicate with them asking them better questions, rather than just Hey, how was your day, and learning how to discipline them without punishment, these are all things that we're going to talk about on this podcast, because they have been so fundamental in my life. And so that is the basics of dad work. I have taken my life from many, many times over the last few years in the dumps, and from the ground, and I've become significantly better for it. And my wife can attest to that my children can attest that the men in my men's group and attest to that I have transformed my life through the power of mindfulness practices and men's work. And I feel so called so called because this, I think is the number one way we're going to fix everything that's wrong in our society in our world. Whatever you think the base causes are, I guarantee you that the root of them all is that children don't grow up feeling loved. They don't grow up feeling accepted, seen and heard and supported from their parents, particularly their fathers in many cases. And they grow up to live through defense mechanisms that their egos create, to not feel the hurt that they experienced in childhood, whether that was abandonment, or neglect, or abuse, whatever that was, carries on into their present day, their adulthood. And so if we can help fathers become better men, if we can get them to connect with their children and deal with their own wounds, we can help men become chain breakers, breaking the chains of ancestral trauma that usually follow man and follow people without who don't have the wherewithal to do the work it takes to heal and integrate that trauma. And so this is where it all comes down. If we can do that, for men, they can do that for their children, their children grow, grow up more resilient with fewer wounds, and they will stop doing things that are trauma based, shame based and ego based. And I think that's the key to fixing everything. So I'll get into that more. That might sound a little bit cryptic. But that's my firm belief that the work we're doing here is life changing, world changing. And that's why I do it. And if I can help even the single man feel better suffer last because I know, I've got very close to thinking that my life was not worth living anymore. If we can help just one man gets to a point where he feels grounded and connected to himself, his wife and his father or his children. That'll be a job well done. So I'd love to have you along. We've got some interviews Coming up, we'll go deeper into that. And I will also have some solo episodes where I talk about some of the things that I have learned that have helped me most in my journey. But until that time, check out dad.org slash pod. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook, find out the show notes, resources links, we've also got a course called conscious fatherhood and helps men suffer less love more and parent confidently it goes over all the basic fundamentals that if I had only known eight years ago, my life would be completely different. So check those out. dad.org slash pod, thank you for spending this time with me. I look forward to chatting with you more over the coming months and years because this is a lifelong project. That's all for now. Thank you