December 8, 2025 • 50 mins
Divorce can make even the strongest dads feel stuck in survival mode. We sit down with Anthony Thompson, founder of Divorced Dads of America and creator of the Ascent Brotherhood, to unpack how stress hijacks your brain, why motivation seems to vanish, and what actually helps you lead with calm when everything feels loud and urgent.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (02:06):
Hello and uh welcome.
I'm so pleased to have you herethis week.
Thanks for tuning in, and I amunbelievably excited to have a
conversation with my guesttoday.
We're going to be talking aboutthe neuroscience of the of the
mind and faith and a whole bunchof awesome things that that you
(02:27):
might not think correlatetogether, but do correlate
together and are incrediblyimportant uh for you to know and
understand going through divorceand post-divorce.
But before I introduce our guesttoday, let me just remind you we
still have the 25% discount oncoaching that started on Black
Friday that is going through.
(02:47):
We're gonna just run this allthrough the the end of the year.
Check it out.
Learn more about it atthedivorced advocate.com on the
coaching tab.
It'll give you all the details,and you can simply use the the
coupon code DADS25 DADS25 atcheckout to get that discount.
(03:10):
All right, my guest uh today isleading a massive movement for
men who refuse to stay broken.
He's the founder of DivorcedDads of America and the creator
of the Ascent Brotherhood.
By combining biblical truth withhard-hitting neuroscience, he
equips dads to master theiremotions and build their
(03:33):
confidence, cash flow, andconnection with their kids.
If you're ready to stop reactingand start leading through peace,
welcome Anthony Thompson.
SPEAKER_01 (03:45):
Anthony, great to see you.
Thanks, Jude, man.
Thanks for being great to behere, dude.
SPEAKER_00 (03:49):
Man, I'm so excited to talk to you.
We we connected on social media,and I'm incredibly impressed
with the work that you aredoing.
We talked last week, I think Imentioned just before we were
talking to uh Joey Klein, whowho talks a little bit about the
neuroscience of the of the mind,also has created his inner
(04:11):
matrix system.
This is something I think whenI'm talking to dads, when I'm
coaching dads, is one of the anumber one first thing that that
you need to be cognizant of ishow things are coming up, right?
We talk about them withemotions, but there is a whole,
like like you talk about, awhole neuroscience behind that,
(04:35):
how to how to handle it.
And it the reason this isimportant, dads, is because this
has an impact on everything thatyou do from a communicating with
your attorney, with your kids,handling yourself.
Like this is the crux ofeverything and how you're gonna
get through this in a in apositive manner or potentially a
(04:56):
more difficult and challengingmanner.
But before we jump in, Anthony,really to some details, share
just how you got involved in inworking with dads and divorced
dads and a little bit about yourbackground and your divorce.
SPEAKER_01 (05:10):
Yeah, for sure.
Uh, first of all, we just wantto say thanks, Jude, for you
know the work you've done forthese years and this timeline,
bro.
Like it's it's significant, itmatters.
You've been doing this for awhile.
I just want to acknowledge youand your work.
Those of you listening, andyou're some of you probably have
had something that you've gottenfrom Jude.
I just want to recommend justtwo things to do.
It's like a lot of times we wantour ex to go crazy and drive
(05:32):
them crazy.
But one of the things that Ialways like to say is let's
drive the algorithm crazy.
And two things you can do forJude is one, just leave them a
comment in the in the section orwrite him a review of something
that helped.
And the second thing, if youwant to help another divorced
dad, uh just subscribe to thispodcast because just by doing
that indirectly, you're going toreach probably five to six
different dads that are lookingfor help.
And that's just a simple thingyou can do, man, without like
(05:54):
dropping money or anything.
So I just want to firstacknowledge Jude, drop that in
there.
And I say this like my storywas, you know, a lot of
corporate stuff, a lot ofC-suite stuff, and was starting
to pivot into coaching.
I was working with faith-drivenbusiness owners and helping them
make money, helping them crushit at home, and helping them,
you know, put systems togetherthat uh will drive their life
(06:15):
because when you are married,it's important to keep that
together and it's important tomake money.
And in the middle of that, Iwent through a divorce, lost my
job, you know, went from makingover$20,000 a month to driving
Lyft, you know, Uber Lyft, andit was demoralizing, crushing,
like felt like a like a bum, afailure, all of those things.
And so I took that experience,invested that time with mentors
(06:38):
and coaches and leaders to say,hey, I need help.
I'm crushed.
My confidence is shot.
My money, my cash flow is havingproblems.
What do I need to do?
And so I started learning thatand basically used both sides of
the coin.
Those who are married, I workwith them to be able to keep
that together and make money.
And then these divorced dad guysthat, you know, they have a
(06:59):
business and they have stuff.
And that's how I started workingthrough there.
And I say, guys, like, hey, I'mon the other side.
I've gone through hell and back,maybe not as much as everybody,
but I'll tell you the systemsthat you need to get on the
other side.
Because, dude, as you know, youknow, we rise to the level of
our dreams and our visions.
We fall to the level of oursystems.
And if there's anything thatI've realized with dads, is that
(07:21):
there isn't a system.
And one of the greatest thingsthat dads do is they're fixers.
Dads are great at fixing stuff,man.
Awesome.
But there's also a dark side tofixing.
And it's thinking that you canfix everything.
And there comes a moment whenyou can't fix everything.
And that's where, Jude, you comein, and guys like myself, where
we come in because you need aprofessional to solve the
problem.
(07:41):
So that's how I started gettinginto the road of it, man.
SPEAKER_00 (07:44):
Yeah.
So what you talk about is what Idescribe as the chaos of
divorce.
And during the chaos of divorce,because as men, our masculine
natures don't like chaos, right?
We like a linear path.
We want to know where we'regoing, how we're getting there,
real, real specific.
And and and that's then where weget this whole thing.
(08:07):
I get guys showing up all thetime, and I'm sure guys
listening think like all of asudden I'm so emotional, right?
They call it emotional.
Yeah.
Right.
But it's but it's it's more thanjust emotional, but it is these
emotions happening.
So kind of walk us through thebasics, right?
What what like somebody mightsay is emotional, or what guys
(08:28):
are describing as like, I'm allof a sudden emotional.
We know, you know, right?
That this the kind of the fight,flight, and and freeze that
starts to kick in.
Walk us through that initialpart of it and discuss kind of
the amygdala hijack and kind ofwhat happens.
SPEAKER_01 (08:44):
Well, a hundred percent, Jude.
I thought about this the lastcouple of weeks.
And, you know, back in the daywhen alcohol first came out, it
was it was acceptable, smoking,it was acceptable.
Everything was just, you know,hey, just having fun, no big
deal.
Then as they started getting tothe research and the data of
everything, they realized thisstuff is killing you.
You know, they're you don'tdrink and drive, you know,
(09:05):
people aren't smoking like theywere, maybe it's vapes or
whatever.
But the same thing rings truewith now the data and the
science behind what's happeningin dad's brains when they go
through divorce and what'shappening in it.
And so what you're saying thereis it's it's in the same
reality.
It's your brain is literallygetting hijacked to the point
that your your decision makingis reduced by 40%.
(09:26):
It's almost like one out of twodecisions suck.
And so when you're in that spaceand you're in that place, you
wonder, like, man, I'm havingtrouble making a decision.
You know, I'm having trouble,you know, you know, doing
something with my kids.
I'm having trouble like hiringsomebody or spending money if
it's not for my attorney.
And the reason why is becauseyour mind is literally in a
blender.
(09:46):
I tell dads it's in a blender,it's hijacked, and it's and
you're shutting down.
And so I say it like thisdivorced dads aren't shutting
down because they're weak.
They shut down because thestress hijacks their brain.
And that stress is is whatyou're under.
And it takes you the awarenessto be able to have to step back
and say, okay, I can't getmyself out of this problem.
(10:08):
I can't figure my way out.
I can't fix it.
I can't YouTube university isthe thing.
There needs to come to a pointwhere there's a strategy and a
system for someone to getthrough it.
So that's a lot of it in what'sgoing on in your brain.
Another stat that I love withwith some of the neuroscience is
that the cortisol in your brainis what spikes anywhere from 50
to 200%, right?
(10:28):
So what that does is it shrinksyour memory, it shrinks your
learning, it weakens yourwillpower, it weakens your logic
and increases fear andirritability.
And a lot of those things, whatI just said, is literally what
alcohol and weed and all thatstuff does as well.
It just shuts you down.
And so when your brain isflooded, you don't lose
motivation, you lose the accessto the part of the brain that
(10:51):
creates the motivation.
And so it's harder for you toget going.
So those are some of the thingsthat I I try and bring to dads
to help them understand likejust like you don't drink and
drive, you you don't try and goat this situation like you did
it before because you're gonnacrash and hurt yourself, or
you're gonna crash and hurt yourkids too.
SPEAKER_00 (11:11):
Right.
And there's a cost to this, tothis survival mode if you don't
understand what's happening.
And then you build the you firstbuild the awareness and then and
and and then figure out skillsto to do what you need to do.
And and so I would I just wantto reiterate a couple of couple
of things that that you said.
So literally what what ishappening is when you when you
(11:34):
get into this in this mode, likeyour your prefrontal courtes,
your decision-making operatingsystem either like goes haywire,
it just shuts down, is is iswhat you're describing, right?
So you imagine you're in thedads that are listening, are
you're in this blender like youyou talked about, and you need
to make decisions with yourkids, you need to make a
decision with the with theattorneys.
(11:56):
The decision might be as simpleas you need to like go and just
get your discovery done, butyou're like shut down and you
cannot even do anything.
And then you mentioned like thethe the cortisol connection,
right?
Where that's then all allflooding, and so like your
nervous system is just in anuproar, guys.
And it's and and and it's okay,and and and the other point I
(12:18):
want to make is it's okay.
100% it happened to Anthony, ithappened to me, it happens to
every dad that is going throughthis.
That is why it is that's whydivorce is rated as one of the
top like one or two stressors inanybody's in anybody's life.
So it is okay what you areexperiencing, because I get a
(12:40):
lot of guys with guilt andthey're like, oh man, like I
can't, my emotions are all overthe place.
I'm so emotional, like this hasnever happened.
I've always been able to dostuff.
I'm being like just understandthis is thousands of years of
your wiring, and now this islike something that we don't,
you know, we don't typicallyassess or think about as a
(13:00):
threat, right?
And then you and then it becomesa threat, and then your body is
just reacting, and that is okay.
SPEAKER_01 (13:09):
Yeah, it is 100% okay, man.
It's it's it's what happens,it's where you're at.
And I and I tell guys this, it'sthe difference is that, and I'll
give you my like my example iswhen I got in this situation, my
example was always okay, well,how do I figure this out?
How do I, what books do I needto read?
What what do I need to grabonto?
How do I re-engineer this thing?
And so my thinking goes to,okay, well, I can fix this just
(13:33):
by taking in this newinformation, and that's going to
give me a new result.
And it's going to give you somenew results, yes.
However, in these situations,when it comes to, I tell guys
all this time, I say, hey, youknow, uh, just recently in
Arizona where I'm at, we havesome huge rains.
And, you know, there's I sawsome guys around the
neighborhood, they had someholes in the roof and they had
guys on the roof fixing theroof.
(13:53):
And I I liken that to the samething what's happening in a
dad's life is that you'regetting a roof leakage in your
life and it's pouring down, andthere's rain pouring down, and
you look at it and say, Hey,could I fix that roof?
Can I go to Home Depot and pickup the stuff?
You might be able to.
You might have that skill set todo it.
But do you also have the skillset to say it's going to last
(14:15):
for the next 10 years if I fixit?
So you can take the time, orwhat I've realized is that the
high elite level guys that Iwork with, they understand this
concept.
And this concept is whatseparates the good from the
great.
It's what separates the richfrom the poor.
They understand that they willtrade money for time.
And that means that they will goand pay for somebody to help
(14:37):
them save a decade of theirlife.
That is the simple difference.
And so a lot of guys that I workwith, they'll say, hey, I need
to put away my 401k, I need todo these things.
Those are all great things.
Right now, though, if you investin yourself, if you invest in
this process, if you save, ifyou stack the decade or like
yourself, Jude, if they they getwith you on certain things and
(14:57):
and and work with the attorneysand get stuff figured out
quickly now, that money isgonna, you know, 304x on the
back end and they'll have morethan enough they need in the
401k.
But they're so consumed over thenow.
And it's because, like I saidbefore, with your brain, it is
under fire, it's under attack,it is in a fury of World War II
(15:18):
bombings, and it's verydifficult to try and get
yourself out of that scenariounless you really trust
somebody.
And that's the hard part, Jude,is that right now everything
seems to be a scam, andeverybody's trying to do this.
And I always say this to guys Isay, look, the greatest
investment you have is inyourself.
And about 15 years ago, I did astudy on the human body.
(15:39):
I had a friend that had atransplant, an organ transplant.
And I walked them through theorgan transplant.
At the end of it, they told methe bill of the transplant.
I said, Dear God, that is a veryexpensive bill.
I and it got me wondering, gotme curious, how how valuable is
your physical body?
And so I did research andpopular mechanics, and there's a
lot of great books on it.
(16:00):
And overall, the gist of it isthat at the time, our physical
bodies alone are worth$42million back then.
Take inflation and now it's a$72million asset that you have.
That's what that's what God hasgiven to us, is this asset.
Now, the next question is whenyou have a$72 million asset, how
are you taking care of it?
And particularly your mind,which is the greatest real
(16:22):
estate that you have on earth.
And usually in those situations,guys are just like
flabbergasted.
They don't, it's hard for themto understand, it's hard for
them to even register.
But that is the asset, and thatis what each and each one of us
have, and it's how we managethat asset.
SPEAKER_00 (16:38):
Yeah, well, so I liken it to I like what you're
what you're describing there,right?
So so you know that you've gotthis unbelievable asset, right?
But you know also that you'vegot something happening with
this asset that is that is isbasically hijacking its optimal
(16:59):
performance.
So if it were like a supercar,if you went out and bought a
supercar and you had a supercar,but it, you know, it's revving
high or you can't get it uhthrough the gears or whatever,
like are you just gonna sitthere and tinker with that and
figure that out?
And like you probably figure itout after, you know, I don't
know, YouTubing supercars andhow to fix supercars.
(17:20):
But like, why are you gonna dothat?
Number one, you you're you'relikely to screw more things up
or have a greater timeline intrying to fix that than if you
were to try to find somebodylike you and the Ascent group or
or our uh membership site orcoaching, et cetera, that can
help you to move past that in aquicker, more efficient way so
(17:44):
that you can start utilizingthat supercar that you've that
you've got, this$72 million youknow, amazing thing that that
God has designed for you.
And so, so let's talk about thatand and how you help guys to do
that.
Because you're in in your setprogram, you talk about I think
the the dad's pain cycle, right?
(18:05):
Like how if you're stuck in thatfor months and months or even
years and years, that is goingto have a huge impact, not only
on your life, but on your kids'life, quality of like like what
happens for you for in i in thefuture.
SPEAKER_01 (18:22):
Yeah.
Yeah, dude, the the thing that Ihear the most, and I'm sure you
hear it as well, is when theseguys get with their little
fantasy football clubs ofdivorced dads that that have,
you know, they've gone throughit and they've they've they've
toughed it out.
And they're like, Yeah, man,well, you know, time will heal.
You know, it just takes time.
And I just I fight that thoughtso hard because, you know, I've
(18:43):
had some family members withcancer, and you know, time time
didn't heal.
It wasn't time, they didn't needtime.
It was what they did with thetime.
And I know you and I talkedabout this briefly, but it's
what you do with the time thatwill heal what it is that you
want.
And in addition to that, it'swhat do you want?
And so when I sit down with withguys, the the fastest way, if
(19:06):
you want to accelerate yourgrowth, the statistics will
show, the neuroscience will showtwo to three times faster, it's
by doing it's by having aforward focus of your life.
What is the vision?
And you have to have itspecific.
So when I say specific, here'sanother thing you'll hear a lot.
Well, I just want to be a gooddad.
That's BS, man.
That that's the stupidest answerI've ever heard in my life.
(19:28):
Why?
Because it's it's it's the mostvague thing that you could ever
get.
And your mind will never attachto what a good dad is.
What is a good dad to you?
Maybe it's taking them out.
Usually it's take them onvacations more, be able to
provide for them in freedom.
Right.
Still not specific.
How much money do you need toget to that place?
(19:48):
What type of vacation do youwant to have with your children?
What does mental clarityactually look like for you?
What does peace mean?
What does freedom mean?
So the more specific that youget into the future, then the
less specific you will get drawninto the past.
The reason why you get drawninto the past is because it's so
(20:09):
specific and it's so real.
I could ask each and every oneof you dads that have had a
tough time in co-parenting orthe divorce, and you would give
me a very specific moment whereyou were hurt and you were in
pain and you were frustrated andyou were screaming and you were
crying out.
You will tell me exactly whatthat looked like and what it
felt like.
The future has to be thatspecific.
(20:30):
And what it is, then we reverseengineer the days, the weeks,
the months of how to get there.
And I say this too, Jude, that'snot enough.
So you can have the plan.
And I'll give this littleframework that a mentor of mine
really, really helped me with.
His name is Brendan Burchard.
You guys probably all know whohe is.
Uh, and he's great.
(20:50):
He has this framework thatreally helped me.
It's called the Gates of Change.
And so a lot of you guys outthere, it sort of works like
this, and there's four steps toit.
And you have to have the firstthree steps in order to get the
fourth one to stick.
So if you want change to stick,you have to have these first
three before you get to thefourth.
Now, what usually happens isI'll give like a physical
(21:11):
analogy here where a friend ofyours comes in, they've dropped
30 pounds, they're feeling goodabout themselves, and you look
at them and you say, Bro, tellme what you did.
And of course, they'll say, Iwas on XYZ diet, I was working
out three, four times a week, Iwasn't eating sugar and bread.
I mean, we all know how to drop30 pounds.
It is, there is no sciencebehind it anymore.
(21:33):
It's very intentional, it's veryspecific.
Well, that's part four.
That that and that alone willnot cause change to stick.
What causes change to stick, itstarts with the first A is
awareness.
So when I'm talking with guys, Isay, hey, what's the awareness?
What do you want?
(23:18):
What are you aware to of theproblem that you're trying to
solve?
Well, I want, I need more money,or you know, I'm trying to get a
better bond with my kids, orthis co parenting thing is
driving me crazy, or I'm soalone.
Okay, great.
We're aware to it, step one.
And you know that.
That dude.
Step two is acceptance.
And I almost liken acceptance toJocko's extreme ownership.
(23:39):
I take ownership that I'm awareto this problem.
Because if you don't takeownership and you try shifting
blame or you try making excuses,then it's you're you're not
going to go anywhere.
So part two is I accept that I'maware to wanting to solve this
problem, to wanting to have thischange.
If it's losing weight, I acceptthat I'm fat, right?
(24:00):
I accept that my mind is in ablender.
I accept that I need to makemore money and what I'm doing is
not working.
Okay, great.
The third thing, and this is theone that I would say is the
gateway drug to freedom.
Accountability.
A is accountability.
It's the gateway drug tofreedom.
So those first three things havegot to get into the system.
(24:22):
You have to be aware, you haveto own it, you have to accept
it, you have to haveaccountability.
And then step four is we takethe action of what we need to do
to get there.
So the reason why those guyslose the weight or you transform
your thoughts or any of thosethings is because they've are
they've gone through the systemand they've gotten accountable,
(24:43):
and now they're getting thefreedom that they want.
SPEAKER_00 (24:46):
Yeah, so that's really interesting because you
hear it lots of times, andthere's slogans, just do it,
right?
Or why can't you do it?
You talked about you talkedabout the the kind of the
looking back mindset, which Iwould describe as the
therapeutic mindset, which isunpacking all this stuff,
talking over over about thisstuff, which there's some
(25:08):
benefit to that depending onwhat it is that you want your
goal to be, right?
Yeah.
Which you which you brought up,which is what coaches like you
and I do, Joey, some of theother people that are really
trying to help you to get someresults in a shorter period of
time.
Guys, you'd be really incrediblysurprised the results that you
get by working with with thesystem that that Anthony DJ just
(25:31):
talked about in in moving out ofthat, whatever it is, wherever
you're you're you're stuck withit, whatever those emotions are,
to to uh a different place.
But it takes understanding thesystem.
What you describe, right, is isis a system for for going
through that.
You've got to just you've got toyou've got to know where you
(25:53):
want to go before you can setthat GPS, right?
Like imagine using your GPS andjust putting it in and being
like, okay, take me to where Iwant to go.
Well, where is it?
You gotta actually, you gottaknow what that is so you can
plug it in, and then the GPSdoes its magic, right?
The the award, like, and then sowhat a coach like like yourself
(26:15):
is gonna do is gonna take youthrough those first three steps
so that then you can create theaction.
And and that's the thechallenge.
I'm not bashing therapy at allthat at all, therapy is is is
good, but the the coachingconcept around this of what you
just described, which is movingforward, and especially for
guys, that's why I think guytherapy doesn't resonate quite
(26:38):
as with as as much with withguys.
I think a lot of guys struggle.
I've struggled sometimes intherapy with depending on the
therapist.
Yeah, the therapists thatunderstand this, understand the
masculine nature, and and whatyou just described are the
really, really great therapists.
And those are the ones usuallyyou can't get into or it costs a
lot, a lot of money, right?
(27:00):
And and and so in it's just notsaying, well, then take action
because you need to do somethingaround that.
And so you you know, you've gotkind of a framework that that
you work guys through.
I think you call it fast.
Is that what is that what youcall to to to help men regulate
and and start moving in thisdirection like like you talked
(27:22):
about?
Can you talk?
Can you share with us a littlebit?
Obviously, you can't we're notgonna go through all the system.
That's where you guys gotta get,you gotta get in contact with
Anthony, get involved in theAscent group, and and help him
talk about this and and and workyou through this.
But but share with us justbriefly a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_01 (27:41):
Yeah, Jude, let me I'm gonna say this about therapy
as well, because this is alsoreally helpful for me.
My story as a kid, I grew up inthe south side of Chicago.
My mom was the youngest ofseven.
She had me when she was 15 yearsold, and she was out in drugs
and just having a lot of sex.
Long story short, when I waseight, she had a drug overdose,
and and my biological father isunknown.
(28:02):
So when I talk about therapy,and I have the exact same
feelings toward it as you do,it's it's this understanding.
And Joe Dispenza, who I I lovehis stuff, and he has something
that is really helpful for me inthis in this area, especially
about memories and the past.
And what he says is that 50% ofour memories become inaccurate.
And what happens is every timeyou recall a memory, you you
(28:25):
change it a little bit.
And over time, the editedversion becomes a truth.
And so a lot of times we'retrying to fix something in the
past that we don't have all thedata, we don't have all the
facts.
And I liken that into thescriptures where it says that we
press on to those things whichare ahead.
We press on toward the prize,the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus.
It also says that the old man isgone, the new man has come.
So with the guys that I workwith, I look at it and say, hey,
(28:46):
you made some mess ups, I madesome mess ups in the marriage,
we screwed up, we could havebeen better, we we should have
done better, and and we can'tfix that.
What we can is forgive.
We can look at the old man, wesay, hey, we're gonna go into
the new man, this new system,this new set of beliefs, higher
calling, faith to faith, and allof those kinds of things.
And so what that does is it setsyou up that therapy, the word in
(29:08):
itself is healing.
And when I work with people, Idon't want you coming back for
the rest of your life.
I want you out of here.
I want you.
The whole group, the wholepremise of divorced dads of
America is that we'retransforming a million, a
million dads, rebuilding theirlegacy.
I want a million dads.
That's not all the divorceddads.
Most dads can't handle what whatI do or what you do, Jude.
(29:29):
Most of them don't.
Most of them don't want to.
A lot of them are deadbeat dads.
But the guys that that come inmy sphere, in your sphere, they
want to be great dads.
So if you want to be a greatdad, then this is the path, and
we're gonna get you there assoon as possible.
That is going to heal you andgive you the frameworks and the
systems.
When it comes to the fastsystem, I'll give it briefly.
(29:50):
F stands for faith and focus.
And so the first thing is thatwhat you focus on is what you
become.
Your focus is your feelings.
You know, and so we have to lookin, audit your mind.
What's going on?
What are you focusing on?
And you know, the the old Indiantale, I say to guys a lot,
there's a war happening in yourmind every single day.
There's there's two wolves.
(30:10):
There's a wolf of of darknessand despair, and there's a wolf
of hope and light.
You say, which one wins?
It's the one that you feed.
And so all of you dads arehaving this battle every single
day.
And you get to choose.
You get to choose how you feel.
You get to choose which wolfyou're feeding.
And the focus part of the fastsystem is exactly that.
What are we focusing on?
(30:30):
What is our vision?
What is our mission?
That is the only thing thatmatters.
Anything else is a distraction.
And our faith component is whenI say to guys, I say, look, I'm
a great coach and I'm a greatpartner, but I got an even
better partner.
And it's God.
And man, when I bring God intothe mix and bring God into your
story, most, most and every dadneed a miracle, brother.
(30:51):
We all need a miracle.
And so I do not even pretend tosay, hey, we're gonna get a
miracle, we're gonna believe fora miracle, we're gonna work on
that.
That's faith.
The next part is A, it'sawareness and accountability.
Awareness is obviously what wetalked about briefly.
What's what the heck's going on?
What are you aware to?
What are you not?
What are your blind spots?
What are your gifts?
What are your challenges?
And then the accountability.
It's the gateway drug tofreedom.
(31:11):
And so whether it's a guythat's, you know, not and I and
those of you guys that arelistening here, there's some
addictions that you got to letgo of if you want to get
forward.
The porn's got to go, man.
The weed's got to go.
The booze has to go.
Uh, and I'll tell and I'll tellyou this on my side.
I was never a guy that would sayI was addicted.
(31:32):
I would say that I was addictedto not being addicted.
What does that mean?
Yeah.
That means that it nevercontrolled me.
SPEAKER_00 (31:38):
I mean we tried everything.
SPEAKER_01 (31:40):
Yeah.
I tried it all.
And it would be, it wasn'tcontrolling me, but I also
wasn't stopping.
And it there comes a point whereyou have to say, hey, this has
to stop.
Why?
Because you have children.
Would you want your childrenstaring and scrolling porn?
No, you wouldn't.
Do you want your childrenpicking up a bottle, you know,
too too young?
What if what if they can'tcontrol it?
(32:00):
That's on you.
What about weed, gummies, all ofit?
So that addiction, that's a sidenote there.
Guys, your addiction, man, youyou've got to drop that now.
That's just, that's just thatjust needs to happen.
In awareness and accountability,that's part of it.
I've got guys that drop allsorts of accountability things.
And that is the gateway drug tofreedom.
The S side of the fast system issystems and strategy.
(32:22):
You have to have a system andyou have to have a strategy for
where you're going.
Why?
Because you're going to wake upone morning, you're going to
hate your life, you're whatyou're going to want to kill
yourself, or whatever it mightbe.
And don't, don't even, that'snot even a second.
We've all thought it.
I mean, there's no day that'sgone by where dads haven't
thought, is it worth me beingalive?
And so your system and yourstrategy is going to take you to
(32:42):
where you want to go when thosedays happen, and they're going
to happen.
And so that's where this, the Spart and the T is the
transformation.
So Romans 12 says, don't beconformed to this world, be
transformed by the renewing ofyour mind.
That's a constant, daily renewalof your mind.
It's filling your up, fillingyou up with the right thing.
So your inputs determine youroutputs.
That means what you put in, it'sthe recipe, it's the
(33:03):
ingredients.
When I change the ingredients, Iget a different product.
We want a different product,therefore, we need to change the
ingredients.
So that's in a nutshell whatthat does and how it's
customized and built for eachand every guy that I work with.
SPEAKER_00 (33:17):
That's awesome.
And yeah, you must have beenreading my notes here because
Romans 12, 2, you referenced waswas on, was on here.
And it's one of my favoritestoo.
And I think that really thatgoes to some of the guys that
are listening that aren'tfighters or haven't been
fighters.
I know that was my big thing,right?
Like I got to a point where Ijust find I remember the
(33:39):
realization, like, I need to befighting.
I need to be stepping up and Ineed to be getting back in this
this fight again.
And that's why I like I likethat uh renewing of the mind
because I literally had to gothrough that transformation.
And and and if you guys can kindof re reframe their minds
(34:00):
sometimes.
This is, we talked about thestress in the beginning.
This is a a renewing of yourmind and a renewing of your
life, whether you like it ornot.
SPEAKER_02 (34:10):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (34:12):
Right?
It's it's it's you don't haveyou're not gonna you don't have
an option.
This is happening.
You're going through a divorce,and so there is going to be a
whole renewal, which can comewith some beautiful what some of
the guys referred to like life2.0.
And I know you and I havediscussed kind of what's our
life like now, yeah, after thefact, and after we've gone
(34:32):
through everything that thatyou've d uh described, which is
creating that I call it creatingthe vision and direction, right?
You're like, yeah, and youdescribed a little very
similarly, but you need you needto get into that fight.
And and and you talked aboutpart of that fight is getting
rid of the addictions ordistractions or whatever.
We can be man, like we can bedistracted from the second we
(34:56):
wake up to the second we go tobed, if we allow ourselves to.
So you need to you need to getback into this fight, guys,
because if you don't, you'regonna be stuck in you know what
what you described before isjust that that the whatever it
is, that it could be a shamecycle, it could be an addiction
(35:17):
or or whatever, there's gonnahave to come a time where you
get back, you get in this fight,and you take the action.
SPEAKER_01 (35:24):
Yeah, yeah, it's good.
I I say like this a lot oftimes.
What I realize with guys is thatwisdom, I'll give you the
difference between wisdom andfoolishness.
We read the Bible, there's a lotof stuff on wisdom.
And sometimes it's really hardto understand.
Wisdom is knowing the rightthing to do and doing it.
Foolishness is knowing the rightthing to do and not doing it.
It's as simple as that.
So scripture says adouble-minded man is unstable in
(35:47):
all his ways.
So what happens with guys isthat they say one thing and they
do another.
And I'll give you an example.
So a lot of times I'll getsomebody on and we'll talk.
I ask them three questions.
I say, How important is yourkids to you?
Oh man, they're the mostimportant thing in the world.
I do anything for them.
Great.
Two, I said, now that they'rethe most important, how
important is your life with yourkids?
Man, my life is so important.
I just want to make sure that Imaximize it with my kids.
(36:08):
Great.
Number three, how important istime for you?
Man, time is the most importantthing.
We don't get any more of it.
I said, Great.
So if those three things are thethings that you're saying are
the most important, then show mein your calendar, show me in
your checkbook, and show me inin your in your lifestyle how
those match.
Because if they don't match,that's called foolishness.
And so what happens is as acoach and as an advisor like
(36:30):
yourself and myself, all we'redoing is is correcting,
self-correcting where guys aretelling themselves they're doing
something, but they're notactually doing it.
And so it's really easy forhuman beings to, you know, it
says that we love to be lied to,the quote goes, we love to be
lied to, and we're the easiestones to lie to.
(36:51):
And so those lies then becomethe reality.
And they're not bringing youinto the alignment, like you
said before, the vision of whereyou want to go in your life.
And when you answer thosequestions and you look back and
you take a step back, you'd say,okay, am I doing everything
financially with my kids that Ineed to do?
Am I doing everything I can inmy business?
Am I doing everything I can inmy time structure?
Do I have that label?
(37:12):
Do I have it set out?
Am I am I really doing it or amI just whatever?
If your TV's on more than itshould, then that's a problem.
If you're scrolling more thanyou should, it's a problem.
And so the addictions, thenumbness, all that sort of
stuff.
So I just, as you were sayingthat, those are some things that
I think every dad has to take astep back and and just get
savagely honest with themselvesbecause they're at this place.
(37:36):
I'm at this place, you're atthis place because of the
decisions that we've made.
No ifs, ands, or buts.
You're here because you putyourself in this position.
So if that's what you got andyou want to get something else
and you want to get somethingdifferent, then we got to change
the ingredients.
SPEAKER_00 (37:50):
Right.
And I think that brings it fullcircle to what we started with,
which okay, so you get into thisfear-based mode, fight, flight,
or or freeze.
Yeah.
But the antidote to getting outof the antidote to that
fear-based state is action.
Right.
It's gotta be action, it's gottabe doing something, it's gotta
(38:14):
be getting involved in like in abrotherhood, like the Ascent
Brotherhood, etc., hiring acoach, doing something in order
to move that forward.
It's gotta be.
I like the I like the phrase,action is the antidote to fear,
right?
SPEAKER_02 (38:28):
Yeah, yeah, it's true.
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
I agree.
SPEAKER_00 (38:32):
So well, so on that note, how can guys get involved
in the in the ascentbrotherhood?
What share maybe a little bitabout what the ascent
brotherhood is and why guysshould get involved in it.
SPEAKER_01 (38:47):
Sure, man.
It's I mean, it's it's similarto to what you run.
It's you know, there's theworksheets and there's a weekly
call, and it's ultimately likeyou walking into the ocean.
It's like, hey, I'm gonna get myfeet wet.
And as I get my feet wet, I'mgonna do some things I normally
don't want to do.
And I tell you what, when Ifirst started to do worksheets,
I hated them.
I thought I was, you know, I wasa big shot, you know, C-suite
(39:11):
guy that was like, what do Ineed worksheets for?
I I can figure this out.
And ultimately, the differencebetween the guys that are
successful and the guys thataren't, and I'll give you this
story about Michael Jordan.
And maybe many of you guys haveprobably heard it, but I grew up
on the south side of Chicago, soJordan was everything.
When I when I was in sixth,seventh, eighth grade, I was
downtown uh every summer for theBulls parade.
(39:32):
I mean, that was just that waslike a mark on the calendar.
So Jordan is really a big personthat I followed and had a lot of
friends that were close to himand his his stuff.
But there's a guy that I reallylike, Tim Grover, and he was
Jordan's coach.
And uh he also coached Kobe anda few other guys.
And so whenever people ask TimGrover, they say, Tim, tell us
about Michael Jordan.
What what made Michael Jordanthe greatest?
(39:54):
And Tim is just so dry andmatter of the fact.
He goes, you know what?
He goes, Michael wasn't the mosttalented.
He goes, Michael wasn't even themost skilled.
He goes, but Michael was themost coachable, and that's what
set him apart from everybodyelse.
And I say the same thing to eachand every guy.
The guys that are successful,the guys that make the rest of
their life the best of theirlife, they're humble and they're
(40:15):
coachable and they're ready tolearn and grow.
And I think that's what thesetypes of programs are.
It's it's guys coming in saying,I don't have all the tools or
the answers.
I'll do any worksheet that'spossible.
I want to see this happen in mylife.
I want my children to have alegacy that matters.
I want to be a better dad.
I want this X, Y, and Z.
So that's what's inside ofthere.
All of the systems that I usewith my 101 clients, all the
(40:37):
stuff that I go through that,you know, weekly group calls
just to get guys going, get justget them on their feet.
You know, like you, Jude, youknow, you you want to help
everybody, and I want to helpeverybody, but I also know that
you got to put skin in the gameto help.
And a lot of these guys, youknow, I that's the difference.
I'm not for everybody.
And just like you, Jude, you'renot for everybody.
(40:58):
The guys that are going to besuccessful are going to put,
they're going to put the stakein the ground and say, hey, I'm
going to do something with this.
SPEAKER_00 (41:03):
Right.
Well, this wraps back to to whatwe were talking about earlier.
I I know there's a lot of guysthat that listen, that listen to
to your podcast, listen to mypodcast, and they listen to
listen.
And I've been guilty of thistoo, right?
Like just listen to try tofigure stuff out myself.
But what what you're what youwe've been describing through
(41:25):
this is that or through thiswhole episode is that you are
you are you are your life isdriven by something, a nervous
system that that you don't know.
Like, so look, take it back tothe supercar.
Like you've got this supercar,except you don't nobody taught
(41:47):
you how to drive it.
Right?
So you've got this supercar andand you're kind of stuck in
first gear.
You don't know how to, you know,you don't have to, you know how
to take it off the line, but youdon't have to do the rest of it.
You don't have to go get throughthe gears, you don't have to
take it through the turns, likeyou don't know any of the rest
of this.
That's why, like the AscentBrotherhood, other groups, like
(42:07):
and and that can be not one ofour divorce groups, like it
could be one of your churchgroups or a men's group or
something else, or it could be a12-stop group.
Like if you're at the pointwhere you need to do, you need
to do some addiction work,right?
Get involved in these groups.
That's where the wisdom ofpeople like Anthony that have
gone through this, other gueststhat we've had on, so that, and
(42:29):
and then the other guys that arealso going through it at the
same time.
That's why it is absolutelycritical.
All you guys, all you dads thatare listening, get involved in
in the group, in the in thebrotherhoods in the ascent.
And like that is where themagic's gonna happen.
Yeah, it you might not likeworksheets, you might not like
whatever.
And then that's also like whyAnthony's on this show.
(42:51):
Like, maybe Anthony's for you,maybe Jude's for you, maybe
Joey's, like maybe somebody.
It we're not gonna, we're notgonna, and I don't, and I think
you probably agree, we're notgonna attract everybody, and nor
do we want to attract them.
We're gonna attract people thatare gonna work best with Anthony
or Jude or anybody else.
And so, but our point, and andI'll and I'll let you finish it
(43:13):
off, is get involved, right?
Get involved with the brothers,don't self isolate, find the the
help that that you need becauseyou deserve it.
And you've got this seventy twomillion dollar freaking supercar
that's that that that you wantto then take your kids in and
show your kids their seventy twomillion.
Dollar supercar that they'regoing to grow up and be able to
(43:35):
drive and and and run this thingto do amazing things in this
world.
SPEAKER_01 (43:39):
Yeah.
You know, Jude, when you weresaying that, a picture came to
me came to me like this.
In this whole process, uh, Iremember there was a time when I
was riding motorcycles and I wasgoing from Newport Beach to
Fresno to buy kind of thisvintage BMW.
And I had to take a train.
And I had never really takentrains before.
And so I went from Newport toLA, had to transfer trains and
(44:01):
got and got to Fresno.
And you know what?
It sucked, man.
It was an all-night train.
It sucked.
I got the bike, it was great.
I had another time where I whereI took a train across the
country a good deal, a goodamount of time.
Fun, cool, but ultimately likeit takes time.
Then I took a plane one timefrom New York to LA instead of
(44:23):
driving.
I saved a lot of time.
I had a client of mine that wasin New York and he wanted to get
to London, and this was backwhen the when they still had the
the Concord.
Yep.
And you know, he took theConcord, you know, from New York
to London, and it was, you know,just a couple hours.
And each each one of thosemoments, you'll notice that the
(44:44):
reason why people are doingthose things, the reason why
you're not taking a bus and youtake a train, it's time.
The reason why you're not takinga train and you're taking a
flight, it's time.
The reason why you're taking aConcord, it's time.
And time is a vapor, and we onlyhave a certain amount of it.
And when you understand thelevel of time and the
understanding of it, you'llrealize that you want to get
(45:04):
there as fast as possible.
And I'm not saying there areshortcuts, but there sure is a
lot of wisdom and structure andsystems to get you there faster,
right?
It's not a shortcut to go from,you know, New York to London in
the Concord.
It's not a shortcut.
It's it's it's possible.
And so what I think with guys isthey have to realize that most
of the things that they hear isfrom a lot of people that don't
(45:25):
understand what is possible.
And so when they do hearsomething that is possible, it's
hard for them to fathom.
They think it's a scam, theythink it's a joke, they think
it's whatever.
And it's really what you believeis what you become.
And so each and every one of youguys that are listening, if you
believe that you can get thereto wherever you want to go
faster, you want to make moremoney, bonds with your kids,
relationship, mental side, it'sall possible.
(45:48):
Scripture said there's nothingimpossible with God.
And I truly believe that whenyou see it, you can get there
and we can we can structurethose things.
So I just want to say that isthat that picture came to me,
and maybe for one of those dadsout there that is trying to
figure out how the heck is thisgoing to happen.
And I say this, man, the guysthat I have worked with, and you
can see on the timeline justwhat I would call miracles.
(46:09):
I've had guys that, you know,had to go to change state to try
and get time with their kids,had to fly to Hawaii and live
there for months with you knowsupervision.
And we started working, westarted talking through it, we
started praying through it.
And it was, you know, a matterof six months.
And now they have a 50-50 splitwith no extra added lawyer fees.
I've seen miracles happen.
(46:29):
And so I sometimes guys need tohave faith and hear faith to
activate their own faith fortheir life.
And so I just want to just leavethat there with you.
SPEAKER_00 (46:38):
Yeah, no, that's that's beautifully said.
And to to bring it back to theto the hijacking of the mind and
what you said, basically, oneout of two decisions you're
making during this process aregonna be bad because you're not
regulated.
And so that's why you can cutdown that time.
And then extensibly, then whatyou're doing is you're you're
(47:00):
cutting it.
So if one out of two decisions,think about it, it's just a math
equation, one out of twodecisions is bad during this
process, then that's gonnaimpact your life post-divorce.
Half of what decisions you'remaking are are likely not gonna
be the best decisions.
And the challenge oftentimes iswhen when we've talked about
this, is is that all you've got,all you're doing is listening to
(47:22):
your attorney who's telling youto just get through the legal
process and be done.
Well, that's not the onlyconsideration around this.
How you get through it, thedecisions that you make, once
you're long gone from them, andif you're not making the right
decisions, then you're not longgone from them because you're
gonna have to go back to them,which you know, and this is a
(47:43):
whole nother podcast is how theycan perpetuate this this whole
system is meant to perpetuateand keep people in conflict.
But anyway, so if you haven't,then you know, once you're down
the road, then you're having tocome back into this.
So you cut that time off byworking and understanding what
that you know what that supercaris doing and how you can do it
(48:06):
the best, and how you can getthrough this process because how
you get through it and theoutcome that that you have has a
significant impact on you goingforward for maybe decades,
right?
Because you're gonna be you'regonna be raising your kids,
you're gonna be co-parenting,hopefully co-parenting or
parallel parenting with withthis other person.
(48:26):
So, so yeah, get what Anthonydescribed as absolutely,
absolutely critical.
You don't have a lot of time inthis process to to figure this
stuff out.
And if you want to YouTube itand you just want to listen to
all the podcasts, that's great.
Okay, there's it's gonna giveyou some benefit, and you'll cut
down some of that time if youwant to get to it and you really
(48:47):
want to figure out what thatwhat that focus is and what you
want life to look atpost-divorce, call Anthony.
Get into the ascent you know,program or your business, and
you want to you, you know, likeyou described, creating a way,
uh a roadmap to get this done,get involved.
So let's just end it with we wetalked, man.
(49:10):
I I could go on.
I've got like five more thingsin my head that I want to say,
but like we're we're pretty muchwe're pretty much there.
But we'll we'll schedule a timeto to get you back and and and
and we'll talk some talk somemore because I think there's a
lot of you share so much wisdom,my friend, and and it's so much
in in line with what we do withour community here.
(49:31):
And I know that would the it itfalls in line with everything
that the dads have heard overthe the course of all of our our
episodes.
Share how the dads listening cancan get involved with the same
program, where they can find uhthe divorced dads of America and
and get in contact with you.
SPEAKER_01 (49:47):
Yeah, man, I think the easiest way is just on
Instagram is divorced dads ofAmerica, and there's a little
link there to jump into theschool group.
It's free, you know, and get allthe stuff.
So yeah, it's all there, man.
SPEAKER_00 (49:57):
Okay, so how did uh and you've got an awesome, we
were talking about that too.
I'm I'm the awesome Instagramaccount and all kinds of just
great stuff and reels andeverything else.
So so check that out, but alsogo to the to the website and and
get involved.
SPEAKER_01 (50:13):
Yeah, thanks, dude.
SPEAKER_00 (50:14):
Anthony, thanks.
I I sincerely appreciate it.
All of your your your wisdom andus connecting.
I look forward to us to stayingin contact and and and and maybe
having you back on the show tooto share some more information.
I like the idea about sharingvictories about guys
post-divorce.
We've both worked with a lot ofguys that see some of those
miracles happening.
(50:35):
And the the first thing Ithought about was like, damn, we
need to start sharing some moreof that stuff to give guys we
talk about some of the scarystuff a lot and the fear and how
to overcome it.
We need to share some of thosemiracles.
So maybe we we collaborate onhow we can do that, share a
story with some of ourprospective clients on it that
can do that.
Yeah, great, dude.
Awesome.
(50:56):
Thanks so much, my friend.
All right, brother.
I'll see ya.
Hello and uh welcome.
I'm so pleased to have you herethis week.
Thanks for tuning in, and I amunbelievably excited to have a
conversation with my guesttoday.
We're going to be talking aboutthe neuroscience of the of the
mind and faith and a whole bunchof awesome things that that you
(02:27):
might not think correlatetogether, but do correlate
together and are incrediblyimportant uh for you to know and
understand going through divorceand post-divorce.
But before I introduce our guesttoday, let me just remind you we
still have the 25% discount oncoaching that started on Black
Friday that is going through.
(02:47):
We're gonna just run this allthrough the the end of the year.
Check it out.
Learn more about it atthedivorced advocate.com on the
coaching tab.
It'll give you all the details,and you can simply use the the
coupon code DADS25 DADS25 atcheckout to get that discount.
(03:10):
All right, my guest uh today isleading a massive movement for
men who refuse to stay broken.
He's the founder of DivorcedDads of America and the creator
of the Ascent Brotherhood.
By combining biblical truth withhard-hitting neuroscience, he
equips dads to master theiremotions and build their
(03:33):
confidence, cash flow, andconnection with their kids.
If you're ready to stop reactingand start leading through peace,
welcome Anthony Thompson.
SPEAKER_01 (03:45):
Anthony, great to see you.
Thanks, Jude, man.
Thanks for being great to behere, dude.
SPEAKER_00 (03:49):
Man, I'm so excited to talk to you.
We we connected on social media,and I'm incredibly impressed
with the work that you aredoing.
We talked last week, I think Imentioned just before we were
talking to uh Joey Klein, whowho talks a little bit about the
neuroscience of the of the mind,also has created his inner
(04:11):
matrix system.
This is something I think whenI'm talking to dads, when I'm
coaching dads, is one of the anumber one first thing that that
you need to be cognizant of ishow things are coming up, right?
We talk about them withemotions, but there is a whole,
like like you talk about, awhole neuroscience behind that,
(04:35):
how to how to handle it.
And it the reason this isimportant, dads, is because this
has an impact on everything thatyou do from a communicating with
your attorney, with your kids,handling yourself.
Like this is the crux ofeverything and how you're gonna
get through this in a in apositive manner or potentially a
(04:56):
more difficult and challengingmanner.
But before we jump in, Anthony,really to some details, share
just how you got involved in inworking with dads and divorced
dads and a little bit about yourbackground and your divorce.
SPEAKER_01 (05:10):
Yeah, for sure.
Uh, first of all, we just wantto say thanks, Jude, for you
know the work you've done forthese years and this timeline,
bro.
Like it's it's significant, itmatters.
You've been doing this for awhile.
I just want to acknowledge youand your work.
Those of you listening, andyou're some of you probably have
had something that you've gottenfrom Jude.
I just want to recommend justtwo things to do.
It's like a lot of times we wantour ex to go crazy and drive
(05:32):
them crazy.
But one of the things that Ialways like to say is let's
drive the algorithm crazy.
And two things you can do forJude is one, just leave them a
comment in the in the section orwrite him a review of something
that helped.
And the second thing, if youwant to help another divorced
dad, uh just subscribe to thispodcast because just by doing
that indirectly, you're going toreach probably five to six
different dads that are lookingfor help.
And that's just a simple thingyou can do, man, without like
(05:54):
dropping money or anything.
So I just want to firstacknowledge Jude, drop that in
there.
And I say this like my storywas, you know, a lot of
corporate stuff, a lot ofC-suite stuff, and was starting
to pivot into coaching.
I was working with faith-drivenbusiness owners and helping them
make money, helping them crushit at home, and helping them,
you know, put systems togetherthat uh will drive their life
(06:15):
because when you are married,it's important to keep that
together and it's important tomake money.
And in the middle of that, Iwent through a divorce, lost my
job, you know, went from makingover$20,000 a month to driving
Lyft, you know, Uber Lyft, andit was demoralizing, crushing,
like felt like a like a bum, afailure, all of those things.
And so I took that experience,invested that time with mentors
(06:38):
and coaches and leaders to say,hey, I need help.
I'm crushed.
My confidence is shot.
My money, my cash flow is havingproblems.
What do I need to do?
And so I started learning thatand basically used both sides of
the coin.
Those who are married, I workwith them to be able to keep
that together and make money.
And then these divorced dad guysthat, you know, they have a
(06:59):
business and they have stuff.
And that's how I started workingthrough there.
And I say, guys, like, hey, I'mon the other side.
I've gone through hell and back,maybe not as much as everybody,
but I'll tell you the systemsthat you need to get on the
other side.
Because, dude, as you know, youknow, we rise to the level of
our dreams and our visions.
We fall to the level of oursystems.
And if there's anything thatI've realized with dads, is that
(07:21):
there isn't a system.
And one of the greatest thingsthat dads do is they're fixers.
Dads are great at fixing stuff,man.
Awesome.
But there's also a dark side tofixing.
And it's thinking that you canfix everything.
And there comes a moment whenyou can't fix everything.
And that's where, Jude, you comein, and guys like myself, where
we come in because you need aprofessional to solve the
problem.
(07:41):
So that's how I started gettinginto the road of it, man.
SPEAKER_00 (07:44):
Yeah.
So what you talk about is what Idescribe as the chaos of
divorce.
And during the chaos of divorce,because as men, our masculine
natures don't like chaos, right?
We like a linear path.
We want to know where we'regoing, how we're getting there,
real, real specific.
And and and that's then where weget this whole thing.
(08:07):
I get guys showing up all thetime, and I'm sure guys
listening think like all of asudden I'm so emotional, right?
They call it emotional.
Yeah.
Right.
But it's but it's it's more thanjust emotional, but it is these
emotions happening.
So kind of walk us through thebasics, right?
What what like somebody mightsay is emotional, or what guys
(08:28):
are describing as like, I'm allof a sudden emotional.
We know, you know, right?
That this the kind of the fight,flight, and and freeze that
starts to kick in.
Walk us through that initialpart of it and discuss kind of
the amygdala hijack and kind ofwhat happens.
SPEAKER_01 (08:44):
Well, a hundred percent, Jude.
I thought about this the lastcouple of weeks.
And, you know, back in the daywhen alcohol first came out, it
was it was acceptable, smoking,it was acceptable.
Everything was just, you know,hey, just having fun, no big
deal.
Then as they started getting tothe research and the data of
everything, they realized thisstuff is killing you.
You know, they're you don'tdrink and drive, you know,
(09:05):
people aren't smoking like theywere, maybe it's vapes or
whatever.
But the same thing rings truewith now the data and the
science behind what's happeningin dad's brains when they go
through divorce and what'shappening in it.
And so what you're saying thereis it's it's in the same
reality.
It's your brain is literallygetting hijacked to the point
that your your decision makingis reduced by 40%.
(09:26):
It's almost like one out of twodecisions suck.
And so when you're in that spaceand you're in that place, you
wonder, like, man, I'm havingtrouble making a decision.
You know, I'm having trouble,you know, you know, doing
something with my kids.
I'm having trouble like hiringsomebody or spending money if
it's not for my attorney.
And the reason why is becauseyour mind is literally in a
blender.
(09:46):
I tell dads it's in a blender,it's hijacked, and it's and
you're shutting down.
And so I say it like thisdivorced dads aren't shutting
down because they're weak.
They shut down because thestress hijacks their brain.
And that stress is is whatyou're under.
And it takes you the awarenessto be able to have to step back
and say, okay, I can't getmyself out of this problem.
(10:08):
I can't figure my way out.
I can't fix it.
I can't YouTube university isthe thing.
There needs to come to a pointwhere there's a strategy and a
system for someone to getthrough it.
So that's a lot of it in what'sgoing on in your brain.
Another stat that I love withwith some of the neuroscience is
that the cortisol in your brainis what spikes anywhere from 50
to 200%, right?
(10:28):
So what that does is it shrinksyour memory, it shrinks your
learning, it weakens yourwillpower, it weakens your logic
and increases fear andirritability.
And a lot of those things, whatI just said, is literally what
alcohol and weed and all thatstuff does as well.
It just shuts you down.
And so when your brain isflooded, you don't lose
motivation, you lose the accessto the part of the brain that
(10:51):
creates the motivation.
And so it's harder for you toget going.
So those are some of the thingsthat I I try and bring to dads
to help them understand likejust like you don't drink and
drive, you you don't try and goat this situation like you did
it before because you're gonnacrash and hurt yourself, or
you're gonna crash and hurt yourkids too.
SPEAKER_00 (11:11):
Right.
And there's a cost to this, tothis survival mode if you don't
understand what's happening.
And then you build the you firstbuild the awareness and then and
and and then figure out skillsto to do what you need to do.
And and so I would I just wantto reiterate a couple of couple
of things that that you said.
So literally what what ishappening is when you when you
(11:34):
get into this in this mode, likeyour your prefrontal courtes,
your decision-making operatingsystem either like goes haywire,
it just shuts down, is is iswhat you're describing, right?
So you imagine you're in thedads that are listening, are
you're in this blender like youyou talked about, and you need
to make decisions with yourkids, you need to make a
decision with the with theattorneys.
(11:56):
The decision might be as simpleas you need to like go and just
get your discovery done, butyou're like shut down and you
cannot even do anything.
And then you mentioned like thethe the cortisol connection,
right?
Where that's then all allflooding, and so like your
nervous system is just in anuproar, guys.
And it's and and and it's okay,and and and the other point I
(12:18):
want to make is it's okay.
100% it happened to Anthony, ithappened to me, it happens to
every dad that is going throughthis.
That is why it is that's whydivorce is rated as one of the
top like one or two stressors inanybody's in anybody's life.
So it is okay what you areexperiencing, because I get a
(12:40):
lot of guys with guilt andthey're like, oh man, like I
can't, my emotions are all overthe place.
I'm so emotional, like this hasnever happened.
I've always been able to dostuff.
I'm being like just understandthis is thousands of years of
your wiring, and now this islike something that we don't,
you know, we don't typicallyassess or think about as a
(13:00):
threat, right?
And then you and then it becomesa threat, and then your body is
just reacting, and that is okay.
SPEAKER_01 (13:09):
Yeah, it is 100% okay, man.
It's it's it's what happens,it's where you're at.
And I and I tell guys this, it'sthe difference is that, and I'll
give you my like my example iswhen I got in this situation, my
example was always okay, well,how do I figure this out?
How do I, what books do I needto read?
What what do I need to grabonto?
How do I re-engineer this thing?
And so my thinking goes to,okay, well, I can fix this just
(13:33):
by taking in this newinformation, and that's going to
give me a new result.
And it's going to give you somenew results, yes.
However, in these situations,when it comes to, I tell guys
all this time, I say, hey, youknow, uh, just recently in
Arizona where I'm at, we havesome huge rains.
And, you know, there's I sawsome guys around the
neighborhood, they had someholes in the roof and they had
guys on the roof fixing theroof.
(13:53):
And I I liken that to the samething what's happening in a
dad's life is that you'regetting a roof leakage in your
life and it's pouring down, andthere's rain pouring down, and
you look at it and say, Hey,could I fix that roof?
Can I go to Home Depot and pickup the stuff?
You might be able to.
You might have that skill set todo it.
But do you also have the skillset to say it's going to last
(14:15):
for the next 10 years if I fixit?
So you can take the time, orwhat I've realized is that the
high elite level guys that Iwork with, they understand this
concept.
And this concept is whatseparates the good from the
great.
It's what separates the richfrom the poor.
They understand that they willtrade money for time.
And that means that they will goand pay for somebody to help
(14:37):
them save a decade of theirlife.
That is the simple difference.
And so a lot of guys that I workwith, they'll say, hey, I need
to put away my 401k, I need todo these things.
Those are all great things.
Right now, though, if you investin yourself, if you invest in
this process, if you save, ifyou stack the decade or like
yourself, Jude, if they they getwith you on certain things and
(14:57):
and and work with the attorneysand get stuff figured out
quickly now, that money isgonna, you know, 304x on the
back end and they'll have morethan enough they need in the
401k.
But they're so consumed over thenow.
And it's because, like I saidbefore, with your brain, it is
under fire, it's under attack,it is in a fury of World War II
(15:18):
bombings, and it's verydifficult to try and get
yourself out of that scenariounless you really trust
somebody.
And that's the hard part, Jude,is that right now everything
seems to be a scam, andeverybody's trying to do this.
And I always say this to guys Isay, look, the greatest
investment you have is inyourself.
And about 15 years ago, I did astudy on the human body.
(15:39):
I had a friend that had atransplant, an organ transplant.
And I walked them through theorgan transplant.
At the end of it, they told methe bill of the transplant.
I said, Dear God, that is a veryexpensive bill.
I and it got me wondering, gotme curious, how how valuable is
your physical body?
And so I did research andpopular mechanics, and there's a
lot of great books on it.
(16:00):
And overall, the gist of it isthat at the time, our physical
bodies alone are worth$42million back then.
Take inflation and now it's a$72million asset that you have.
That's what that's what God hasgiven to us, is this asset.
Now, the next question is whenyou have a$72 million asset, how
are you taking care of it?
And particularly your mind,which is the greatest real
(16:22):
estate that you have on earth.
And usually in those situations,guys are just like
flabbergasted.
They don't, it's hard for themto understand, it's hard for
them to even register.
But that is the asset, and thatis what each and each one of us
have, and it's how we managethat asset.
SPEAKER_00 (16:38):
Yeah, well, so I liken it to I like what you're
what you're describing there,right?
So so you know that you've gotthis unbelievable asset, right?
But you know also that you'vegot something happening with
this asset that is that is isbasically hijacking its optimal
(16:59):
performance.
So if it were like a supercar,if you went out and bought a
supercar and you had a supercar,but it, you know, it's revving
high or you can't get it uhthrough the gears or whatever,
like are you just gonna sitthere and tinker with that and
figure that out?
And like you probably figure itout after, you know, I don't
know, YouTubing supercars andhow to fix supercars.
(17:20):
But like, why are you gonna dothat?
Number one, you you're you'relikely to screw more things up
or have a greater timeline intrying to fix that than if you
were to try to find somebodylike you and the Ascent group or
or our uh membership site orcoaching, et cetera, that can
help you to move past that in aquicker, more efficient way so
(17:44):
that you can start utilizingthat supercar that you've that
you've got, this$72 million youknow, amazing thing that that
God has designed for you.
And so, so let's talk about thatand and how you help guys to do
that.
Because you're in in your setprogram, you talk about I think
the the dad's pain cycle, right?
(18:05):
Like how if you're stuck in thatfor months and months or even
years and years, that is goingto have a huge impact, not only
on your life, but on your kids'life, quality of like like what
happens for you for in i in thefuture.
SPEAKER_01 (18:22):
Yeah.
Yeah, dude, the the thing that Ihear the most, and I'm sure you
hear it as well, is when theseguys get with their little
fantasy football clubs ofdivorced dads that that have,
you know, they've gone throughit and they've they've they've
toughed it out.
And they're like, Yeah, man,well, you know, time will heal.
You know, it just takes time.
And I just I fight that thoughtso hard because, you know, I've
(18:43):
had some family members withcancer, and you know, time time
didn't heal.
It wasn't time, they didn't needtime.
It was what they did with thetime.
And I know you and I talkedabout this briefly, but it's
what you do with the time thatwill heal what it is that you
want.
And in addition to that, it'swhat do you want?
And so when I sit down with withguys, the the fastest way, if
(19:06):
you want to accelerate yourgrowth, the statistics will
show, the neuroscience will showtwo to three times faster, it's
by doing it's by having aforward focus of your life.
What is the vision?
And you have to have itspecific.
So when I say specific, here'sanother thing you'll hear a lot.
Well, I just want to be a gooddad.
That's BS, man.
That that's the stupidest answerI've ever heard in my life.
(19:28):
Why?
Because it's it's it's the mostvague thing that you could ever
get.
And your mind will never attachto what a good dad is.
What is a good dad to you?
Maybe it's taking them out.
Usually it's take them onvacations more, be able to
provide for them in freedom.
Right.
Still not specific.
How much money do you need toget to that place?
(19:48):
What type of vacation do youwant to have with your children?
What does mental clarityactually look like for you?
What does peace mean?
What does freedom mean?
So the more specific that youget into the future, then the
less specific you will get drawninto the past.
The reason why you get drawninto the past is because it's so
(20:09):
specific and it's so real.
I could ask each and every oneof you dads that have had a
tough time in co-parenting orthe divorce, and you would give
me a very specific moment whereyou were hurt and you were in
pain and you were frustrated andyou were screaming and you were
crying out.
You will tell me exactly whatthat looked like and what it
felt like.
The future has to be thatspecific.
(20:30):
And what it is, then we reverseengineer the days, the weeks,
the months of how to get there.
And I say this too, Jude, that'snot enough.
So you can have the plan.
And I'll give this littleframework that a mentor of mine
really, really helped me with.
His name is Brendan Burchard.
You guys probably all know whohe is.
Uh, and he's great.
(20:50):
He has this framework thatreally helped me.
It's called the Gates of Change.
And so a lot of you guys outthere, it sort of works like
this, and there's four steps toit.
And you have to have the firstthree steps in order to get the
fourth one to stick.
So if you want change to stick,you have to have these first
three before you get to thefourth.
Now, what usually happens isI'll give like a physical
(21:11):
analogy here where a friend ofyours comes in, they've dropped
30 pounds, they're feeling goodabout themselves, and you look
at them and you say, Bro, tellme what you did.
And of course, they'll say, Iwas on XYZ diet, I was working
out three, four times a week, Iwasn't eating sugar and bread.
I mean, we all know how to drop30 pounds.
It is, there is no sciencebehind it anymore.
(21:33):
It's very intentional, it's veryspecific.
Well, that's part four.
That that and that alone willnot cause change to stick.
What causes change to stick, itstarts with the first A is
awareness.
So when I'm talking with guys, Isay, hey, what's the awareness?
What do you want?
(23:18):
What are you aware to of theproblem that you're trying to
solve?
Well, I want, I need more money,or you know, I'm trying to get a
better bond with my kids, orthis co parenting thing is
driving me crazy, or I'm soalone.
Okay, great.
We're aware to it, step one.
And you know that.
That dude.
Step two is acceptance.
And I almost liken acceptance toJocko's extreme ownership.
(23:39):
I take ownership that I'm awareto this problem.
Because if you don't takeownership and you try shifting
blame or you try making excuses,then it's you're you're not
going to go anywhere.
So part two is I accept that I'maware to wanting to solve this
problem, to wanting to have thischange.
If it's losing weight, I acceptthat I'm fat, right?
(24:00):
I accept that my mind is in ablender.
I accept that I need to makemore money and what I'm doing is
not working.
Okay, great.
The third thing, and this is theone that I would say is the
gateway drug to freedom.
Accountability.
A is accountability.
It's the gateway drug tofreedom.
So those first three things havegot to get into the system.
(24:22):
You have to be aware, you haveto own it, you have to accept
it, you have to haveaccountability.
And then step four is we takethe action of what we need to do
to get there.
So the reason why those guyslose the weight or you transform
your thoughts or any of thosethings is because they've are
they've gone through the systemand they've gotten accountable,
(24:43):
and now they're getting thefreedom that they want.
SPEAKER_00 (24:46):
Yeah, so that's really interesting because you
hear it lots of times, andthere's slogans, just do it,
right?
Or why can't you do it?
You talked about you talkedabout the the kind of the
looking back mindset, which Iwould describe as the
therapeutic mindset, which isunpacking all this stuff,
talking over over about thisstuff, which there's some
(25:08):
benefit to that depending onwhat it is that you want your
goal to be, right?
Yeah.
Which you which you brought up,which is what coaches like you
and I do, Joey, some of theother people that are really
trying to help you to get someresults in a shorter period of
time.
Guys, you'd be really incrediblysurprised the results that you
get by working with with thesystem that that Anthony DJ just
(25:31):
talked about in in moving out ofthat, whatever it is, wherever
you're you're you're stuck withit, whatever those emotions are,
to to uh a different place.
But it takes understanding thesystem.
What you describe, right, is isis a system for for going
through that.
You've got to just you've got toyou've got to know where you
(25:53):
want to go before you can setthat GPS, right?
Like imagine using your GPS andjust putting it in and being
like, okay, take me to where Iwant to go.
Well, where is it?
You gotta actually, you gottaknow what that is so you can
plug it in, and then the GPSdoes its magic, right?
The the award, like, and then sowhat a coach like like yourself
(26:15):
is gonna do is gonna take youthrough those first three steps
so that then you can create theaction.
And and that's the thechallenge.
I'm not bashing therapy at allthat at all, therapy is is is
good, but the the coachingconcept around this of what you
just described, which is movingforward, and especially for
guys, that's why I think guytherapy doesn't resonate quite
(26:38):
as with as as much with withguys.
I think a lot of guys struggle.
I've struggled sometimes intherapy with depending on the
therapist.
Yeah, the therapists thatunderstand this, understand the
masculine nature, and and whatyou just described are the
really, really great therapists.
And those are the ones usuallyyou can't get into or it costs a
lot, a lot of money, right?
(27:00):
And and and so in it's just notsaying, well, then take action
because you need to do somethingaround that.
And so you you know, you've gotkind of a framework that that
you work guys through.
I think you call it fast.
Is that what is that what youcall to to to help men regulate
and and start moving in thisdirection like like you talked
(27:22):
about?
Can you talk?
Can you share with us a littlebit?
Obviously, you can't we're notgonna go through all the system.
That's where you guys gotta get,you gotta get in contact with
Anthony, get involved in theAscent group, and and help him
talk about this and and and workyou through this.
But but share with us justbriefly a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_01 (27:41):
Yeah, Jude, let me I'm gonna say this about therapy
as well, because this is alsoreally helpful for me.
My story as a kid, I grew up inthe south side of Chicago.
My mom was the youngest ofseven.
She had me when she was 15 yearsold, and she was out in drugs
and just having a lot of sex.
Long story short, when I waseight, she had a drug overdose,
and and my biological father isunknown.
(28:02):
So when I talk about therapy,and I have the exact same
feelings toward it as you do,it's it's this understanding.
And Joe Dispenza, who I I lovehis stuff, and he has something
that is really helpful for me inthis in this area, especially
about memories and the past.
And what he says is that 50% ofour memories become inaccurate.
And what happens is every timeyou recall a memory, you you
(28:25):
change it a little bit.
And over time, the editedversion becomes a truth.
And so a lot of times we'retrying to fix something in the
past that we don't have all thedata, we don't have all the
facts.
And I liken that into thescriptures where it says that we
press on to those things whichare ahead.
We press on toward the prize,the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus.
It also says that the old man isgone, the new man has come.
So with the guys that I workwith, I look at it and say, hey,
(28:46):
you made some mess ups, I madesome mess ups in the marriage,
we screwed up, we could havebeen better, we we should have
done better, and and we can'tfix that.
What we can is forgive.
We can look at the old man, wesay, hey, we're gonna go into
the new man, this new system,this new set of beliefs, higher
calling, faith to faith, and allof those kinds of things.
And so what that does is it setsyou up that therapy, the word in
(29:08):
itself is healing.
And when I work with people, Idon't want you coming back for
the rest of your life.
I want you out of here.
I want you.
The whole group, the wholepremise of divorced dads of
America is that we'retransforming a million, a
million dads, rebuilding theirlegacy.
I want a million dads.
That's not all the divorceddads.
Most dads can't handle what whatI do or what you do, Jude.
(29:29):
Most of them don't.
Most of them don't want to.
A lot of them are deadbeat dads.
But the guys that that come inmy sphere, in your sphere, they
want to be great dads.
So if you want to be a greatdad, then this is the path, and
we're gonna get you there assoon as possible.
That is going to heal you andgive you the frameworks and the
systems.
When it comes to the fastsystem, I'll give it briefly.
(29:50):
F stands for faith and focus.
And so the first thing is thatwhat you focus on is what you
become.
Your focus is your feelings.
You know, and so we have to lookin, audit your mind.
What's going on?
What are you focusing on?
And you know, the the old Indiantale, I say to guys a lot,
there's a war happening in yourmind every single day.
There's there's two wolves.
(30:10):
There's a wolf of of darknessand despair, and there's a wolf
of hope and light.
You say, which one wins?
It's the one that you feed.
And so all of you dads arehaving this battle every single
day.
And you get to choose.
You get to choose how you feel.
You get to choose which wolfyou're feeding.
And the focus part of the fastsystem is exactly that.
What are we focusing on?
(30:30):
What is our vision?
What is our mission?
That is the only thing thatmatters.
Anything else is a distraction.
And our faith component is whenI say to guys, I say, look, I'm
a great coach and I'm a greatpartner, but I got an even
better partner.
And it's God.
And man, when I bring God intothe mix and bring God into your
story, most, most and every dadneed a miracle, brother.
(30:51):
We all need a miracle.
And so I do not even pretend tosay, hey, we're gonna get a
miracle, we're gonna believe fora miracle, we're gonna work on
that.
That's faith.
The next part is A, it'sawareness and accountability.
Awareness is obviously what wetalked about briefly.
What's what the heck's going on?
What are you aware to?
What are you not?
What are your blind spots?
What are your gifts?
What are your challenges?
And then the accountability.
It's the gateway drug tofreedom.
(31:11):
And so whether it's a guythat's, you know, not and I and
those of you guys that arelistening here, there's some
addictions that you got to letgo of if you want to get
forward.
The porn's got to go, man.
The weed's got to go.
The booze has to go.
Uh, and I'll tell and I'll tellyou this on my side.
I was never a guy that would sayI was addicted.
(31:32):
I would say that I was addictedto not being addicted.
What does that mean?
Yeah.
That means that it nevercontrolled me.
SPEAKER_00 (31:38):
I mean we tried everything.
SPEAKER_01 (31:40):
Yeah.
I tried it all.
And it would be, it wasn'tcontrolling me, but I also
wasn't stopping.
And it there comes a point whereyou have to say, hey, this has
to stop.
Why?
Because you have children.
Would you want your childrenstaring and scrolling porn?
No, you wouldn't.
Do you want your childrenpicking up a bottle, you know,
too too young?
What if what if they can'tcontrol it?
(32:00):
That's on you.
What about weed, gummies, all ofit?
So that addiction, that's a sidenote there.
Guys, your addiction, man, youyou've got to drop that now.
That's just, that's just thatjust needs to happen.
In awareness and accountability,that's part of it.
I've got guys that drop allsorts of accountability things.
And that is the gateway drug tofreedom.
The S side of the fast system issystems and strategy.
(32:22):
You have to have a system andyou have to have a strategy for
where you're going.
Why?
Because you're going to wake upone morning, you're going to
hate your life, you're whatyou're going to want to kill
yourself, or whatever it mightbe.
And don't, don't even, that'snot even a second.
We've all thought it.
I mean, there's no day that'sgone by where dads haven't
thought, is it worth me beingalive?
And so your system and yourstrategy is going to take you to
(32:42):
where you want to go when thosedays happen, and they're going
to happen.
And so that's where this, the Spart and the T is the
transformation.
So Romans 12 says, don't beconformed to this world, be
transformed by the renewing ofyour mind.
That's a constant, daily renewalof your mind.
It's filling your up, fillingyou up with the right thing.
So your inputs determine youroutputs.
That means what you put in, it'sthe recipe, it's the
(33:03):
ingredients.
When I change the ingredients, Iget a different product.
We want a different product,therefore, we need to change the
ingredients.
So that's in a nutshell whatthat does and how it's
customized and built for eachand every guy that I work with.
SPEAKER_00 (33:17):
That's awesome.
And yeah, you must have beenreading my notes here because
Romans 12, 2, you referenced waswas on, was on here.
And it's one of my favoritestoo.
And I think that really thatgoes to some of the guys that
are listening that aren'tfighters or haven't been
fighters.
I know that was my big thing,right?
Like I got to a point where Ijust find I remember the
(33:39):
realization, like, I need to befighting.
I need to be stepping up and Ineed to be getting back in this
this fight again.
And that's why I like I likethat uh renewing of the mind
because I literally had to gothrough that transformation.
And and and if you guys can kindof re reframe their minds
(34:00):
sometimes.
This is, we talked about thestress in the beginning.
This is a a renewing of yourmind and a renewing of your
life, whether you like it ornot.
SPEAKER_02 (34:10):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (34:12):
Right?
It's it's it's you don't haveyou're not gonna you don't have
an option.
This is happening.
You're going through a divorce,and so there is going to be a
whole renewal, which can comewith some beautiful what some of
the guys referred to like life2.0.
And I know you and I havediscussed kind of what's our
life like now, yeah, after thefact, and after we've gone
(34:32):
through everything that thatyou've d uh described, which is
creating that I call it creatingthe vision and direction, right?
You're like, yeah, and youdescribed a little very
similarly, but you need you needto get into that fight.
And and and you talked aboutpart of that fight is getting
rid of the addictions ordistractions or whatever.
We can be man, like we can bedistracted from the second we
(34:56):
wake up to the second we go tobed, if we allow ourselves to.
So you need to you need to getback into this fight, guys,
because if you don't, you'regonna be stuck in you know what
what you described before isjust that that the whatever it
is, that it could be a shamecycle, it could be an addiction
(35:17):
or or whatever, there's gonnahave to come a time where you
get back, you get in this fight,and you take the action.
SPEAKER_01 (35:24):
Yeah, yeah, it's good.
I I say like this a lot oftimes.
What I realize with guys is thatwisdom, I'll give you the
difference between wisdom andfoolishness.
We read the Bible, there's a lotof stuff on wisdom.
And sometimes it's really hardto understand.
Wisdom is knowing the rightthing to do and doing it.
Foolishness is knowing the rightthing to do and not doing it.
It's as simple as that.
So scripture says adouble-minded man is unstable in
(35:47):
all his ways.
So what happens with guys isthat they say one thing and they
do another.
And I'll give you an example.
So a lot of times I'll getsomebody on and we'll talk.
I ask them three questions.
I say, How important is yourkids to you?
Oh man, they're the mostimportant thing in the world.
I do anything for them.
Great.
Two, I said, now that they'rethe most important, how
important is your life with yourkids?
Man, my life is so important.
I just want to make sure that Imaximize it with my kids.
(36:08):
Great.
Number three, how important istime for you?
Man, time is the most importantthing.
We don't get any more of it.
I said, Great.
So if those three things are thethings that you're saying are
the most important, then show mein your calendar, show me in
your checkbook, and show me inin your in your lifestyle how
those match.
Because if they don't match,that's called foolishness.
And so what happens is as acoach and as an advisor like
(36:30):
yourself and myself, all we'redoing is is correcting,
self-correcting where guys aretelling themselves they're doing
something, but they're notactually doing it.
And so it's really easy forhuman beings to, you know, it
says that we love to be lied to,the quote goes, we love to be
lied to, and we're the easiestones to lie to.
(36:51):
And so those lies then becomethe reality.
And they're not bringing youinto the alignment, like you
said before, the vision of whereyou want to go in your life.
And when you answer thosequestions and you look back and
you take a step back, you'd say,okay, am I doing everything
financially with my kids that Ineed to do?
Am I doing everything I can inmy business?
Am I doing everything I can inmy time structure?
Do I have that label?
(37:12):
Do I have it set out?
Am I am I really doing it or amI just whatever?
If your TV's on more than itshould, then that's a problem.
If you're scrolling more thanyou should, it's a problem.
And so the addictions, thenumbness, all that sort of
stuff.
So I just, as you were sayingthat, those are some things that
I think every dad has to take astep back and and just get
savagely honest with themselvesbecause they're at this place.
(37:36):
I'm at this place, you're atthis place because of the
decisions that we've made.
No ifs, ands, or buts.
You're here because you putyourself in this position.
So if that's what you got andyou want to get something else
and you want to get somethingdifferent, then we got to change
the ingredients.
SPEAKER_00 (37:50):
Right.
And I think that brings it fullcircle to what we started with,
which okay, so you get into thisfear-based mode, fight, flight,
or or freeze.
Yeah.
But the antidote to getting outof the antidote to that
fear-based state is action.
Right.
It's gotta be action, it's gottabe doing something, it's gotta
(38:14):
be getting involved in like in abrotherhood, like the Ascent
Brotherhood, etc., hiring acoach, doing something in order
to move that forward.
It's gotta be.
I like the I like the phrase,action is the antidote to fear,
right?
SPEAKER_02 (38:28):
Yeah, yeah, it's true.
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
I agree.
SPEAKER_00 (38:32):
So well, so on that note, how can guys get involved
in the in the ascentbrotherhood?
What share maybe a little bitabout what the ascent
brotherhood is and why guysshould get involved in it.
SPEAKER_01 (38:47):
Sure, man.
It's I mean, it's it's similarto to what you run.
It's you know, there's theworksheets and there's a weekly
call, and it's ultimately likeyou walking into the ocean.
It's like, hey, I'm gonna get myfeet wet.
And as I get my feet wet, I'mgonna do some things I normally
don't want to do.
And I tell you what, when Ifirst started to do worksheets,
I hated them.
I thought I was, you know, I wasa big shot, you know, C-suite
(39:11):
guy that was like, what do Ineed worksheets for?
I I can figure this out.
And ultimately, the differencebetween the guys that are
successful and the guys thataren't, and I'll give you this
story about Michael Jordan.
And maybe many of you guys haveprobably heard it, but I grew up
on the south side of Chicago, soJordan was everything.
When I when I was in sixth,seventh, eighth grade, I was
downtown uh every summer for theBulls parade.
(39:32):
I mean, that was just that waslike a mark on the calendar.
So Jordan is really a big personthat I followed and had a lot of
friends that were close to himand his his stuff.
But there's a guy that I reallylike, Tim Grover, and he was
Jordan's coach.
And uh he also coached Kobe anda few other guys.
And so whenever people ask TimGrover, they say, Tim, tell us
about Michael Jordan.
What what made Michael Jordanthe greatest?
(39:54):
And Tim is just so dry andmatter of the fact.
He goes, you know what?
He goes, Michael wasn't the mosttalented.
He goes, Michael wasn't even themost skilled.
He goes, but Michael was themost coachable, and that's what
set him apart from everybodyelse.
And I say the same thing to eachand every guy.
The guys that are successful,the guys that make the rest of
their life the best of theirlife, they're humble and they're
(40:15):
coachable and they're ready tolearn and grow.
And I think that's what thesetypes of programs are.
It's it's guys coming in saying,I don't have all the tools or
the answers.
I'll do any worksheet that'spossible.
I want to see this happen in mylife.
I want my children to have alegacy that matters.
I want to be a better dad.
I want this X, Y, and Z.
So that's what's inside ofthere.
All of the systems that I usewith my 101 clients, all the
(40:37):
stuff that I go through that,you know, weekly group calls
just to get guys going, get justget them on their feet.
You know, like you, Jude, youknow, you you want to help
everybody, and I want to helpeverybody, but I also know that
you got to put skin in the gameto help.
And a lot of these guys, youknow, I that's the difference.
I'm not for everybody.
And just like you, Jude, you'renot for everybody.
(40:58):
The guys that are going to besuccessful are going to put,
they're going to put the stakein the ground and say, hey, I'm
going to do something with this.
SPEAKER_00 (41:03):
Right.
Well, this wraps back to to whatwe were talking about earlier.
I I know there's a lot of guysthat that listen, that listen to
to your podcast, listen to mypodcast, and they listen to
listen.
And I've been guilty of thistoo, right?
Like just listen to try tofigure stuff out myself.
But what what you're what youwe've been describing through
(41:25):
this is that or through thiswhole episode is that you are
you are you are your life isdriven by something, a nervous
system that that you don't know.
Like, so look, take it back tothe supercar.
Like you've got this supercar,except you don't nobody taught
(41:47):
you how to drive it.
Right?
So you've got this supercar andand you're kind of stuck in
first gear.
You don't know how to, you know,you don't have to, you know how
to take it off the line, but youdon't have to do the rest of it.
You don't have to go get throughthe gears, you don't have to
take it through the turns, likeyou don't know any of the rest
of this.
That's why, like the AscentBrotherhood, other groups, like
(42:07):
and and that can be not one ofour divorce groups, like it
could be one of your churchgroups or a men's group or
something else, or it could be a12-stop group.
Like if you're at the pointwhere you need to do, you need
to do some addiction work,right?
Get involved in these groups.
That's where the wisdom ofpeople like Anthony that have
gone through this, other gueststhat we've had on, so that, and
(42:29):
and then the other guys that arealso going through it at the
same time.
That's why it is absolutelycritical.
All you guys, all you dads thatare listening, get involved in
in the group, in the in thebrotherhoods in the ascent.
And like that is where themagic's gonna happen.
Yeah, it you might not likeworksheets, you might not like
whatever.
And then that's also like whyAnthony's on this show.
(42:51):
Like, maybe Anthony's for you,maybe Jude's for you, maybe
Joey's, like maybe somebody.
It we're not gonna, we're notgonna, and I don't, and I think
you probably agree, we're notgonna attract everybody, and nor
do we want to attract them.
We're gonna attract people thatare gonna work best with Anthony
or Jude or anybody else.
And so, but our point, and andI'll and I'll let you finish it
(43:13):
off, is get involved, right?
Get involved with the brothers,don't self isolate, find the the
help that that you need becauseyou deserve it.
And you've got this seventy twomillion dollar freaking supercar
that's that that that you wantto then take your kids in and
show your kids their seventy twomillion.
Dollar supercar that they'regoing to grow up and be able to
(43:35):
drive and and and run this thingto do amazing things in this
world.
SPEAKER_01 (43:39):
Yeah.
You know, Jude, when you weresaying that, a picture came to
me came to me like this.
In this whole process, uh, Iremember there was a time when I
was riding motorcycles and I wasgoing from Newport Beach to
Fresno to buy kind of thisvintage BMW.
And I had to take a train.
And I had never really takentrains before.
And so I went from Newport toLA, had to transfer trains and
(44:01):
got and got to Fresno.
And you know what?
It sucked, man.
It was an all-night train.
It sucked.
I got the bike, it was great.
I had another time where I whereI took a train across the
country a good deal, a goodamount of time.
Fun, cool, but ultimately likeit takes time.
Then I took a plane one timefrom New York to LA instead of
(44:23):
driving.
I saved a lot of time.
I had a client of mine that wasin New York and he wanted to get
to London, and this was backwhen the when they still had the
the Concord.
Yep.
And you know, he took theConcord, you know, from New York
to London, and it was, you know,just a couple hours.
And each each one of thosemoments, you'll notice that the
(44:44):
reason why people are doingthose things, the reason why
you're not taking a bus and youtake a train, it's time.
The reason why you're not takinga train and you're taking a
flight, it's time.
The reason why you're taking aConcord, it's time.
And time is a vapor, and we onlyhave a certain amount of it.
And when you understand thelevel of time and the
understanding of it, you'llrealize that you want to get
(45:04):
there as fast as possible.
And I'm not saying there areshortcuts, but there sure is a
lot of wisdom and structure andsystems to get you there faster,
right?
It's not a shortcut to go from,you know, New York to London in
the Concord.
It's not a shortcut.
It's it's it's possible.
And so what I think with guys isthey have to realize that most
of the things that they hear isfrom a lot of people that don't
(45:25):
understand what is possible.
And so when they do hearsomething that is possible, it's
hard for them to fathom.
They think it's a scam, theythink it's a joke, they think
it's whatever.
And it's really what you believeis what you become.
And so each and every one of youguys that are listening, if you
believe that you can get thereto wherever you want to go
faster, you want to make moremoney, bonds with your kids,
relationship, mental side, it'sall possible.
(45:48):
Scripture said there's nothingimpossible with God.
And I truly believe that whenyou see it, you can get there
and we can we can structurethose things.
So I just want to say that isthat that picture came to me,
and maybe for one of those dadsout there that is trying to
figure out how the heck is thisgoing to happen.
And I say this, man, the guysthat I have worked with, and you
can see on the timeline justwhat I would call miracles.
(46:09):
I've had guys that, you know,had to go to change state to try
and get time with their kids,had to fly to Hawaii and live
there for months with you knowsupervision.
And we started working, westarted talking through it, we
started praying through it.
And it was, you know, a matterof six months.
And now they have a 50-50 splitwith no extra added lawyer fees.
I've seen miracles happen.
(46:29):
And so I sometimes guys need tohave faith and hear faith to
activate their own faith fortheir life.
And so I just want to just leavethat there with you.
SPEAKER_00 (46:38):
Yeah, no, that's that's beautifully said.
And to to bring it back to theto the hijacking of the mind and
what you said, basically, oneout of two decisions you're
making during this process aregonna be bad because you're not
regulated.
And so that's why you can cutdown that time.
And then extensibly, then whatyou're doing is you're you're
(47:00):
cutting it.
So if one out of two decisions,think about it, it's just a math
equation, one out of twodecisions is bad during this
process, then that's gonnaimpact your life post-divorce.
Half of what decisions you'remaking are are likely not gonna
be the best decisions.
And the challenge oftentimes iswhen when we've talked about
this, is is that all you've got,all you're doing is listening to
(47:22):
your attorney who's telling youto just get through the legal
process and be done.
Well, that's not the onlyconsideration around this.
How you get through it, thedecisions that you make, once
you're long gone from them, andif you're not making the right
decisions, then you're not longgone from them because you're
gonna have to go back to them,which you know, and this is a
(47:43):
whole nother podcast is how theycan perpetuate this this whole
system is meant to perpetuateand keep people in conflict.
But anyway, so if you haven't,then you know, once you're down
the road, then you're having tocome back into this.
So you cut that time off byworking and understanding what
that you know what that supercaris doing and how you can do it
(48:06):
the best, and how you can getthrough this process because how
you get through it and theoutcome that that you have has a
significant impact on you goingforward for maybe decades,
right?
Because you're gonna be you'regonna be raising your kids,
you're gonna be co-parenting,hopefully co-parenting or
parallel parenting with withthis other person.
(48:26):
So, so yeah, get what Anthonydescribed as absolutely,
absolutely critical.
You don't have a lot of time inthis process to to figure this
stuff out.
And if you want to YouTube itand you just want to listen to
all the podcasts, that's great.
Okay, there's it's gonna giveyou some benefit, and you'll cut
down some of that time if youwant to get to it and you really
(48:47):
want to figure out what thatwhat that focus is and what you
want life to look atpost-divorce, call Anthony.
Get into the ascent you know,program or your business, and
you want to you, you know, likeyou described, creating a way,
uh a roadmap to get this done,get involved.
So let's just end it with we wetalked, man.
(49:10):
I I could go on.
I've got like five more thingsin my head that I want to say,
but like we're we're pretty muchwe're pretty much there.
But we'll we'll schedule a timeto to get you back and and and
and we'll talk some talk somemore because I think there's a
lot of you share so much wisdom,my friend, and and it's so much
in in line with what we do withour community here.
(49:31):
And I know that would the it itfalls in line with everything
that the dads have heard overthe the course of all of our our
episodes.
Share how the dads listening cancan get involved with the same
program, where they can find uhthe divorced dads of America and
and get in contact with you.
SPEAKER_01 (49:47):
Yeah, man, I think the easiest way is just on
Instagram is divorced dads ofAmerica, and there's a little
link there to jump into theschool group.
It's free, you know, and get allthe stuff.
So yeah, it's all there, man.
SPEAKER_00 (49:57):
Okay, so how did uh and you've got an awesome, we
were talking about that too.
I'm I'm the awesome Instagramaccount and all kinds of just
great stuff and reels andeverything else.
So so check that out, but alsogo to the to the website and and
get involved.
SPEAKER_01 (50:13):
Yeah, thanks, dude.
SPEAKER_00 (50:14):
Anthony, thanks.
I I sincerely appreciate it.
All of your your your wisdom andus connecting.
I look forward to us to stayingin contact and and and and maybe
having you back on the show tooto share some more information.
I like the idea about sharingvictories about guys
post-divorce.
We've both worked with a lot ofguys that see some of those
miracles happening.
(50:35):
And the the first thing Ithought about was like, damn, we
need to start sharing some moreof that stuff to give guys we
talk about some of the scarystuff a lot and the fear and how
to overcome it.
We need to share some of thosemiracles.
So maybe we we collaborate onhow we can do that, share a
story with some of ourprospective clients on it that
can do that.
Yeah, great, dude.
Awesome.
(50:56):
Thanks so much, my friend.
All right, brother.
I'll see ya.
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