Can you humbly admit your role in the problem?

Show Transcripts:

Intro:

Welcome to the Father on Purpose podcast, featuring author and ministry leader, Kent Evans, and business executive and military veteran Lawson Brown. This is a show for you, Dad. You want to be a godly and intentional father. Unfortunately, you’ve turned to these two knuckleheads for help. Let us know how that works out for you. Before we begin, remember this, you are not a father on accident. So go be a father on purpose, please. Welcome your hosts, Kent and Lawson.

 

Kent Evans:

So, Lawson, I was on the phone with a member of our Father on Purpose community recently, and I was surprised by this dad’s kind of default setting, as it relates to some relational conflict he was having in the home.

 

Lawson Brown:

How did it begin? What do you mean you were on the phone? I know you reach out to a lot of guys that come through the-

 

Kent Evans:

I just dial numbers at random. Just 10 digits, and I go, “Hey, are you dad?” No. He actually was in our online community at Father on Purpose and he had put in a story in our thread and said, “Hey guys, I’m really wrestling with my teenage son, and here’s what’s going on.” And I was like, “Wow, interesting.” Number one, he asked for help, and he reached out to a community of guys, which already I like this guy, right? Anybody willing to say, “Hey, I need some help.” I like this guy already. And then I said, “Hey, here’s my cell number. Do you want to chat at some point? Give me a call.” So we worked it out. He gave me a call and we spent almost an hour on the phone. And here’s what was probably the most … I don’t want to use words like shocking or surprising, but it was mildly surprising in a very good way. This particular dad, the son he’s talking about is I think 17 years old, and their relationship has gotten really strained over the last few years. And it’s gotten kind of worse every year. And that’s not super shocking, right? Teenage years can be a little bumpy. I get that. But what was very interesting was I said, “Hey, can you think of a time when the relationship started to get off track? Can you go back to that moment where it was good and then all of a sudden it went on a different …” He goes, “Yeah, it was kind of when he started his early teen years.” And then without me really even prompting him, this was kind of the surprising part, he said, “Yeah, and I think I’ve been a big part of the relational problem.” And I’m on the call and I was like, “Wow.” Because I thought I’d spend the bulk of my time, as I’ve done with hundreds of other dads and myself, trying to get him to realize what role do you play in this problem? But he was already there. I thought we’d have to take him around the bases, to use a baseball metaphor, and he was already on second base. Because what he was trying to figure out is, what did he do wrong? If anything. If anything. I’m not saying he did. But that was his default setting was, what did he do wrong? And secondly, how could he get it right? And I just remember I told him, I said, “Hey man, I talk to a lot of dads, both directly and also through emails and all kinds of other methods, and I can tell you that you’re probably in the top … You’re in the 80th or 90th percentile in terms of your capacity to want to figure out your role in this drama.” Because most dads, they just throw their hands up when their kids become teenagers and they go, “Oh, the internet. Oh, these stupid cell phones.” Or, “Oh, social media.” Or, “Their friends, or that music person, or that athlete, or whatever.” And dads feel powerless, and they feel almost overwhelmed by the crashing waves of culture and influence and friends and all this stuff. And it there’s a sense in which, just because you live by the ocean I’ll use an ocean metaphor, it’s like if I stand in ankle-deep water, well, the waves don’t cover me. I can stand there all day and I’m not going to get knocked down. But if I keep walking out into the ocean, eventually, I get to a place where the waves are going to knock me over and I’m going to have to either sink or swim. I can always walk back to the beach. Right? But what I sense is I sense from a lot of dads, they’ve walked out into the ocean, and they’re out at 10, 12 feet deep, and they’re going, “I have no options. I have no options. These kids these days.” And I think, “No, man, turn around and head back to the beach. Let’s go find some relational safety. Let’s go find a place where you can stand on your own two feet relationally and see if we can get back there.” And then here was the big kind of magical moment, I thought, in our conversation. I think he would say the same. His name was Jeremy. After we talked for maybe 30, 40 minutes, I said, “Jeremy, if there was a continuum where at one end of the continuum there was a phrase that the label says teller or talker, and at the other end of the continuum, there’s a label that says, asker.” And the minute I finished even describing the continuum, he started to laugh. And I said, “What’s so funny?” And he goes, “I’m a teller. I’m a teller.” And I said, “What age is this child?” And he told me 17. And I said, “Where does this child fall in your birth order?” He has four children. He said, “He’s the oldest.” And I said, “Oh, okay. So you’ve got a 17-year-old, and then you got younger, younger, younger, down to 8 or 9.” And he goes, “Yeah.” And I said, “Okay, here’s what’s happening. Here’s what’s happening. You’re talking to your 17-year-old like he’s your 9-year-old.” And he just goes, “Oh my goodness.” And I said, “Bro, we all walk through this challenge as parents, especially if you have kids of multiple ages.” In my context, I got 22, 19, 17, 10, and 6, right? Well, you talk to your 6-year-old very differently than you talk to your 22-year-old, or at least you ought to. And some of the relational drama and the challenge we have where we get disconnected from our teen kids, especially, is we’re still talking to them like they’re eight, and all we’re doing is telling them how it’s going to be.

 

Lawson Brown:

I wonder how we’re talking to ourselves as well, because-

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. What do you mean by that?

 

Lawson Brown:

I mean, we all have our own inner voice, as dads, that we’re trying to coach ourselves in these moments and think of the right thing to do and say. And how much are we allowing ourselves to be off the hook or, like in Jeremy’s case, good for him, he kept himself kind of in the middle of it, wondering what his role in whatever degree of dysfunction happened was? Are we pushing ourselves? Are we encouraging ourselves to own some of this? Or is it our default setting to become, I guess, part of the victim of circumstance, along with our children. Back to your metaphor of being out in the ocean, the waves are crashing all around, you can’t at touch the bottom, you feel lost, scared. Your kids are out there with you. Are you in that together, or are you the lifeguard? Are you the one that is going to take responsibility for, well, we’re not just going to stay out here and let these waves crash? I’m going to be part of the part of the solution. How did we get in this? And you can triage it later, how’d you get into that situation? You don’t need to … Anyway, maybe a different topic for later. But what I like is he didn’t point fingers externally as his default setting. He kind of looked in himself. He looked at the situation from maybe his child’s point of view and kind of how has he added or detracted from being part of the solution. He was just honest.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. Well, I remember hearing one time, I heard Tony Dungy, he said on a radio broadcast, he said if you’re not taking care of your children, that doesn’t make you a bad dad, it makes you neglectful. And I remember hearing that and thinking, “Is that supposed to help me?” And then he went on to say when we use words like I’m a bad dad, or I’m just no good, or I just can’t get it right, that’s not specific enough for us to actually do something about it, right? So the third guy on this podcast, Hunter, is a really good golfer. I’ve played golf with him one time and I probably will never play golf with him again. Well, unless it’s Topgolf. In Topgolf, I dominated that guy, absolutely.

 

Lawson Brown:

Really? I wonder what the difference is?

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah, I did. Well, because it’s fake golf. It’s not real golf. In real golf, it wouldn’t even be close. He would beat me by at least 15 strokes, maybe 25. It would be a beat down.

 

Lawson Brown:

Wow.

 

Kent Evans:

He’s really, really good. But here’s what’s interesting. What’s interesting is the physics of the golf swing are not mysterious at all, right? He doesn’t hit the ball and go, “Golly, I wonder why that ball went where it went?” It went where it went because of how you swung the club. Now, there might be wind. I mean, come on. But for the most part, 99% of our golf shots go where we tell them. We just don’t like our incapacity to tell them where to go.

 

Lawson Brown:

Right.

 

Kent Evans:

That’s what gets us in trouble.

 

Lawson Brown:

That’s a good way of looking at it.

 

Kent Evans:

So coming back as a dad, I think the metaphor there is, what are the consequences of being a teller kind of dad? If you’re just a my way or the highway, this is how it’s going to be, look, you’re the child, I’m the adult, I got more wisdom than you, I’ve been down this road, I’ve been where you are. I mean, I can hear dad’s nodding. We’ve all said this stuff. We’ve all said this. What is love? You’re 15 years old, what do you mean love? Do you understand what love is? Has anybody had that conversation?

 

Lawson Brown:

Right.

 

Kent Evans:

If you’re a dad listening to this, have you had that conversation with your 15 or 16-year-old? Where they say things like, “Well, I’m thinking long-term.” And what they mean by that is next Friday, not 10 years. And so for us as parents, the question is, which piece of this are we going to own? Are we going to hit the ball and then go, “Oh my goodness, it’s the club’s fault. It’s the ball’s fault. It’s the grass’ fault. It’s the wind’s fault.” Or are we going to go, “No, pretty much that ball went where I hit it to go.”

 

Lawson Brown:

In the context of being a dad and helping resolve things within your family, that’s some humility to admit your role in contributing to the problem. The doing of it, like what Jeremy did, and the aha moment that you helped him kind of get to of being a teller versus an asker, that feels kind of tactical to me. But raising up a little higher than that and understanding man, that takes some … Especially depending on the age of your children, it takes some humility to admit it to yourself. And then I think you need to go one step further and talk about it with whoever this conflict is arising with, whether it’s your wife or your child or somebody at work or whatever. And people gravitate to that. People appreciate when … That can diffuse a situation. When you are in a position of, like as a dad, a position of authority, and willing to admit what dysfunction you’ve added in your way. That can disarm. It can diffuse. It can get other people to open up. It does take a bit of humility, for sure, and courage, but dude, it can be really worth it, because a lot of times, that just dissolves the problem.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. Well, even going back to that example I used of Tony Dungy, if I say I’m a bad dad and I go, “Well, golly, what do I do about that? I’m not sure.” But say, “I’m neglectful.” Or if I say, “I speak before I think.” Or if I say, “I am angry when things don’t go my way.” Okay, awesome. Now we’re getting to a place where we can work on that. Imagine, again … I like sports metaphors, only because I think they help me make sense of things. Imagine if you were watching after the game film with a great basketball player. It’s Steph Curry, and you’re watching after the game film, and he did something not exactly right in a game, and you’re sitting next to him, and the film comes up, and you’re both watching the same film, and there’s that mistake he made on the court, and then you just look at him and go, “What do you think of that?” And if he goes, “Basketball, it’s just so hard to play.” Or if he goes, “I’m just a horrible person.”

 

Lawson Brown:

Right.

 

Kent Evans:

You look at him and go … Or if he just goes, “The crowd was being so noisy. I mean, gosh, I mean, gee, they’re just screaming.” You’d look at him and go, “You’re a maniac. What are you doing?” Because why? Number one, he’s blaming some other external factor. Number two, he’s just calling himself a bad person. “I’m a bad father, I can’t get it right, I’ll never …” And he’s getting no closer to the actual solution. I mean, all that energy spent blaming the environment. But what I’m sure he would do, instead, right, if I could ever watch a game film with Steph Curry and something didn’t go right, he’d go, “Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s a defense where I should have gone to the left and then that guy would’ve been wide open. Next time, I’ll do that differently.” I’m sure. So I want to bring this back to dad moments-

 

Lawson Brown:

Think about your family as a team. You can tell when a game is going wrong if you’re watching it on TV and all the players are frustrated and pointing at each other. But if you have a leader or two where … It’s like you can feel the turnaround happening on the field when a play goes bad and that superstar player immediately turns around points at himself and goes, “That’s me. That was me.” They come running back to the huddle. That’s such a different vibe than something goes wrong and the star player turns around and points at somebody else. And you could just feel the team, the strands coming looser and looser. And so as the dad, you got to be that star player that turns around and goes, “That’s on me. That was me.”

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. There are times when, as a dad, I’m bringing things up at 9:30 at night when everybody’s exhausted and tired and ready to go to bed, and I bring up some super complicated … And it’s just, you want to go, “Really?”

 

Lawson Brown:

What a shock. I can’t believe that you would want to talk at night, late, about something that everybody else is bored of.

 

Kent Evans:

I don’t appreciate your tone.

 

Lawson Brown:

I can see everybody like, “Oh-”

 

Kent Evans:

Can we pause for a moment and just have a prayer vigil for my wife and my children, who … If you’re listening to this podcast, would you please pause for a moment? Her name is April.

 

Lawson Brown:

I’m teasing, I’m teasing. I love your energy. Your energy is great.

 

Kent Evans:

Energy is great. I had a boss one time who told me, he goes, “Kent, one thing I love about you is your level of passion. You are a passionate guy.” He goes, “The problem with passion is when it’s dialed all the way up, it looks identical to anger.” And he goes, “So you’ll be in a meeting and you’ll just be really excited. I mean, genuinely fired up about a topic. But you look like you’re mad at everybody else in the meeting. Everybody’s going, ‘Gee, why is Kent so mad?'” Now, he was coaching me, because half the time I really was mad. I mean, he was trying to be nice. But there’s a double-edged sword in that level of passion.

 

Kent Evans:

But, to that point, as a dad, what struck me by this guy, Jeremy, what struck me was a few things, and I want to learn some lessons from his approach.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah, you go.

 

Kent Evans:

Number one, he reached out to other dads for help. He raised his hand and he said, “Man, I don’t know what’s going …” I had a guy take me to lunch a couple of months ago, a guy named Ben, and he’s walking through a season with his teenage child, and I didn’t have all the answers. I’m not the fatherhood answer man. But I did have decent questions. Like, “Well, hey, how does this work in your house? And what’s happened here? And have you done this? And how did counseling work?” And I just helped him kind of triangulate his fire based on the questions, right? I didn’t have 10 great answers. That’s why the real value I could add with Jeremy at that moment was, “Are you a teller or an asker?” And he’s like “Got it.” And I said, “Great, here’s your challenge, man. For the next month or two, you’re going to spend extra time with your kids, probably.” We’re recording this around Christmas, so he probably has the holidays. “Can you spend 50 or 70% of your time asking, and spend 10% of your time, or 30, or 20, or a lot less percent of your time talking with your older kids. You can dial that different.” So number one, he reached out for help. Number two, he immediately started looking for how he was contributing to the problem. Yeah, sure, he’s probably got a knucklehead teenager who is selfish and immature. No question. But we’ve all got those, right? We’ve all got … If you’ve ever raised teenage kids, the definition of being a teenager is that you’re learning life. You’re going to display moments of immaturity.

 

Lawson Brown:

And it’s difficult because you’re learning so much and it feels like you know a lot because of where you were, contextually, within your own perspective, so it feels like you know a lot. But you just don’t realize what you don’t know.

 

Voiceover:

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Kent Evans:

Most 17-year-olds are a lot more capable than most 9-year-olds, and that’s just a few years. We all know that. I looked at a photo the other day, Lawson, of me as a soccer player in 1981. Well, for those of you who are doing the math on that, that was 40, 4-0, years ago. So I’ve told my boys often, “When you’re young, you tend to measure time in minutes or days. You can’t count the days to Christmas. You can’t count the days to your birthday. You can’t count the days to the vacation. As you get older, you tend to measure in decades, and you just see more of life.” So number one, he reached out for help. Number two, he started rooting around for where he potentially could improve. And number three, again, forgetting whether my ideas for him were good or bad, let’s table all that and not worry whether my ideas were good or bad, he received them. In fact, what’s really funny, at one point on our phone call, I said something about the percentage of time being talking versus asking, and he just goes … I love this guy. He just goes, “Challenge accepted.” And I’m like, “Dude, I love this guy.”

 

Lawson Brown:

That’s good.

 

Kent Evans:

I mean, and I told him, I said, “Hey man, in the, in the baseball game of fatherhood, you are on third base.”

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. This dude is eager-

 

Kent Evans:

“You really are.”

 

Lawson Brown:

… to be a good dad.

 

Kent Evans:

Yes. And so all that contributes to a place where you get out of kind of the victim … Now, there’s going to be things where your kids do stuff, they could even do stuff that endangers their life, they could do things that endanger their future, that endanger other people. There’s all kinds of drama that can happen that has nothing to do with us as parents, right? I mean, there was the one perfect dad. We all remember him, Garden of Eden. His own kids rebelled, and then his grandkids murdered each other. So the whole idea of I’m going to chase being a perfect father, completely ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. However, I’m going to be accountable for how I fathered. When I sit at the white throne in judgment and I’m talking to God and we’re talking about my life on earth, the record of my wrongs, I’m going to be accountable for how I fathered. I’m not going to be accountable for every single decision my adult children make, right? That becomes their own walk with the Lord. But I am going to be accountable for how I father. So I do want to do it well, right? I feel like it’s … God gave me this podcast. He gave me this mug. He gave me a wife. He gave me kids. He’s given me resources and opportunities to serve. I want to do it well. I want to do it well. And I want to encourage dads, Dad, if you’re listening to this today, I want to encourage you. If you’re having some relational drama … Because if you’re raising kids, you probably are, there’s probably at least a moment or two. I want to encourage you to think about that in the context of, what could you do differently? I’ll tell you a quick story, Lawson. The other day, I was talking to one of my older teenage boys, and there was a little drama around the house, and I said, “Hey if you could give your current kind of at-home experience a grade, what grade would you give it?” And he goes, “Probably like C-plus.” And I’m like, “Okay, great.” I said, “Awesome. I would, too. I think that’s probably about where it is.” And I said, “What grade would you like for it to be?” And he was like, “Well, duh. A-plus.” And I said, “Okay, obvious. That’s great.” I said, “Third, what do you think you could do to move that needle?” And then anytime I sensed him saying, “Well, my brothers, or my environment, or my mom, or you, dad …” I went, “Wait a minute. Let’s go back. Where is now? C. Where do you want to be? A. What could you do to move that needle? Now, it takes two to tango. You might do everything right and your mom or me are still demanding ogres and we’re going to be on top of you for something. There’s only so much you can control. But the piece of it you can control, control it. Whatever you can control.” And I think for dads, it’s a place of freedom. When I realize that a big chunk of my kids’ reaction to me is because I can be an angry jerk, and the way I talk to them can be harsh and critical, Proverbs 15:1, man, says, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Awesome. If I’m dealing with a bunch of anger, let’s go back. Were there some harsh words said? Probably. And who said them? Probably me. I mean, more often than not, it is probably me. And I don’t know if you’ve ever been around folks like that, Lawson, who either A, do a great job of taking accountability for where they are and their role in the process, or if you’ve ever been around folks who are kind of in the B category, it’s always outside of them. They can never figure out what they’re doing. Have you ever had any experience in that regard with people in your life that either took the bull by the horns and wanted to figure out their role in the process or just immediately denied it and figured it was probably somebody else’s problem?

 

Lawson Brown:

What’s interesting about that is it’s usually people who have a longer road beneath their feet. They’ve been there, done that, and have learned that it’s usually … I’m just kind of throwing this out there. It’s at least 50/50 me and the other. And more times than not, when you come across a situation like that, you can do less to make it better by asking questions and just listening and reflecting, versus trying to add into it. I think of my grandfather who was just kind of a wiser, quiet man of not a whole heck of a lot of words. But when he did speak, everybody kind of listened. And it was because he observed and he wasn’t quick to act, he wasn’t quick to speak. And it’s a good reminder to me when we’re talking about this in context of how do we, as dads, help our families and help our children mature and grow in these difficult trying situations where the world is just constantly after strife and negativity. And back to your analogy, again, of the waves, they need to look over and see their dad steady and coming on strong and not splashing water in their face in the middle of the waves, and trying to help but just making it worse. It’s okay to slow down and think and be methodical and pray and think before you speak.

 

Kent Evans:

Well, one word-

 

Lawson Brown:

Be that sage.

 

Kent Evans:

One word I think of when I think of this guy, Jeremy, is the word … It may surprise the listener, but it’s the word rugged, as opposed to the word fragile. For us to be rugged, kind of ready for battle kind of dads, we got to accept feedback. We have to. We got to let life and people and situations show us what we’re doing wrong. That does not mean we are failures. It means that we are growing.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah, you can’t be … You’re saying you can’t be callous to feedback or yourself?

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah, or afraid of it, just scared of it.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

Because-

 

Lawson Brown:

Seek self-improvement, man. Be hungry for it.

 

Kent Evans:

Absolutely. I mean, the guys-

 

Lawson Brown:

You kids are depending on it.

 

Kent Evans:

I’ll need a podcast listener to go look up the exact Proverb verse, but there’s a Proverb that says, essentially, the wise man, if you rebuke a fool, he will hate you, but if you rebuke a wise man, he would grow wiser still.

 

Lawson Brown:

Right. Ooh, I like that.

 

Kent Evans:

And you think, “Oh, wow.” And it’s somewhere, somebody can Google it, but … Or I’m close, I may not having exactly worded right. But for me, I want to be a better dad five years from now than I am now. And I think I am. I think my wife would agree. I’m a better dad now than I was five years ago. Well, that’s only going to happen if I can look-

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah, that’s right.

 

Kent Evans:

… at my part of it right in the face. Let’s go back to the game film. Can you imagine, after playing a game, you take a Tom Brady into the film room and he just curls up in a ball and just starts crying and goes, “I can’t watch my own mistakes. I can’t see where I threw that interception. I don’t have the strength. It’s over. I don’t …” But man, that’s a temptation that a lot of a dads can give in to. Where my wife has learned, after some of these moments, she’ll pull me aside and go, “Hey, so, why are you such an angry jerk?” And I used to be like … And I’d throw something, kick the door or something. Now I’m just like, “Ah. I don’t know. I’m sinful. I’m tired. I don’t know why, but here’s what I do know, my bad.” And I’ll go back out of the room and apologize to whoever I was-

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah, you get better.

 

Kent Evans:

I’m getting better. I’m definitely not there all the way.

 

Lawson Brown:

That’s the right thing, though, man, that posture of we want to get better. We want to be a better dad five years from now than we are today. Just like hopefully we are now than we were five years ago. It’s self-improvement. It’s being self-aware. It’s listening, understanding, and admitting, and humbly asking for help.

 

Kent Evans:

Yeah. Well, and I think … Let me leave dads with a word picture that I think would be a decent place to land this episode. And as I do it, Lawson, I’d love for you to comment, because I think your experience in the business world, you’ve done this probably a lot, and that is … Psychologists years ago talked about two default mindsets we tend to have as people. One is a fixed mindset, and it’s the mindset that, “I am who I am, I will be that way forever, and I’ve got to adjust life to kind of meet me where I am because I’m not changing.” The other mindset is called a growth mindset, and it’s like, “I am who I am today, but tomorrow I’m going to be better. And the day after that I’m going to be better. I’m going to be better, better, better.” And you see yourself as growing over time as opposed to seeing yourself as locked in and fixed over time. And the most interesting part of all that research, at least the parts that I’ve read, was, for me, for the fixed mindset person, feedback is threatening because you’re attacking who you are. At your core, Lawson, you are a failure … That’s what they hear. If they say, “Hey, Lawson, man, you probably could have handled that a little better.” That’s not what they hear. What they hear is, “I am a failure. You’re attacking me personally, and I don’t want to hear what you have to say.” That’s a fixed mindset person. A growth mindset person sees feedback as fuel. It’s like food. It’s like water. And they’re like, “Feedback-”

 

Lawson Brown:

That’s super cool.

 

Kent Evans:

“Give it.” Because they know, “Well, gosh, if I’m going to be better tomorrow, obviously, I’m going to have to learn what I did wrong today.”

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

Overtime. Have you bumped into, even in your own career or with people you’ve managed or worked with, people who were at either the fixed mindset end of the spectrum or the growth mindset end of the spectrum?

 

Lawson Brown:

Of course, yeah.

 

Kent Evans:

And how have you seen that play out? And give our dads a word of encouragement to kind of wrap us up today.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. I haven’t heard it explained like you just did, which I think is really good. The feedback as fuel, that’s beautiful here. Here’s what I’d say is two things. You’ve got to want it. You’ve got to be open to it. Right? I mean, for it to work, like you’re saying, that fixed mindset is the feedback comes and it hits a wall. Growth mindset, it comes in and it fosters and it produces. I think that the word mindset is right there, because it’s not a personality trait. Some people say these … You’ve talked about it before, some of these testings, that show that you’re the DMAIC or you’re the whatever, you’re the DISC, where you fall into that, and that’s just who you are, and that there’s no changing it, and you’re not going to adjust. That’s false. You can learn. You can be open to things. You can understand yourself better. You got to be open-minded to it. I’d say that’s one, us as dads. And number two is, it does take work. It takes thought. It takes prayer. You’ve got to put some effort into it. It’s not just going to come naturally. You’re not just going to get better because you want to, alone. You got to put some time in, just like anything. But I will say this, it’s so worth it. Your kids are dependent on you doing that. Ask for help. Bring some people into your life. Ask for feedback, and then shut up and listen and try to hear what God’s telling you in some of that feedback because he wants you to be better. He knows that you are the key, dad. You are the key to your family. And the more you put into this, the more rewarding it will be. And like Kent said, that day when we stand before God and are accountable for the legacy of the family that we help produce, it means a lot. It’s what it’s all about.

 

Kent Evans:

And any dad listening to this podcast is a growth mindset dad, more than likely, or he probably wouldn’t be listening to it.

 

Lawson Brown:

Yeah. Right on.

 

Kent Evans:

So what I want to say is, Dad, if you’re listening to this, thanks for listening. And I think Lawson and I, we could both say let’s all go be more like this guy, Jeremy, that we talked about throughout today’s episode. Let’s be open to the feedback. Let’s seek it out. Let’s admit where we can contribute better. Let’s have a growth mindset. And let’s do that together as dads. And Lawson and I have been delighted to encourage you this week. Hope this has been an encouraging show, and we’ll see you next week.

 

Kent Evans:

Hey, Dad, thank you for listening to today’s show. If you found this episode helpful, remember you can get all the content and show notes at manhoodjourney.org/podcast. And if you really liked it, please consider doing three things. Number one, share this podcast with someone. You can hit the share button in your app, wherever you listen to podcasts, or just call the person up and tell them to listen in. Number two, subscribe to this podcast so you get episodes automatically. That helps us, as well, to help dads find the show. You can do that through your favorite listening app, whatever that is. And finally, review this podcast. Leave us a review, good or bad, wherever you listen. Those reviews also help other dads find the show. You can always learn more about what we’re up to manhoodjourney.org or fatheronpurpose.org. We will see you next week.

 

Outro:

You’ve been dozing off to the Father on Purpose Podcast, featuring Kent Evans and Lawson Brown. Now wake up, head over to fatheronpurpose.org for more tools that can help you be a godly, intentional, and not completely horrible dad. Remember, you are not a father on accident, so go be a father on purpose.