Self-pity just takes whatever little energy you have left and just takes the rest of it.

Hey guys, welcome to the Five Minute Fatherhood podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor.

Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build

your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned. What's up, guys? Welcome to another

five-minute fatherhood. So I know that sometimes when you guys are in a thick of dealing with problems with your kids,

particularly, you might have a particular sort of discipline or training issue with one of your kids,

and a lot of times you will tell yourself a story, and that story will either give you a lot of energy

for continuing to engage in this really difficult, oftentimes repetitive, exhausting process,

or it will suck even the last bit of energy out of you. And it's really important to pay

attention to the story that you tell yourself as a dad, why am I going through this right now?

What is the reason why I have to constantly do this? And a lot of times, there's a lot of stories

you can tell yourself about, hey, I want to do this for. And a lot of times, there's a lot of stories you can

tell yourself about, hey, I want to do this for my kids. But I think one of the things that's

really important to deal with and to think about in those moments when things are really, really bad

is to frame the whole process and project of fatherhood in some ways as a curriculum that God is

using to grow you. So God looked at you and said,

man, I really need to grow you. And so here's, here are three or four or two or five kids that are

really, this is your curriculum to grow you up. And this kind of a mindset of really seeing

the challenges of life as being there to help you become a

different kind of person that the father is trying to grow his sons you up. And he did that by

giving you the blessing of children. I know that in times where I guess I've really struggled a lot

with like the self-pity party. And this is where self-pity just takes whatever little energy you have left and just takes the rest of it. And so you have to have a mindset and a story that you tell yourself that doesn't let you go into self-pity. And you know, a lot of guys have the struggle where they see one of their friends who's single and just, you know, living it up or, you know, friends who just ignore their kids. And maybe I should do that. Maybe that's the story I should live into. And if you, if you tell yourself, if you give it to that kind of self-pity, it will suck the energy out of you. But if you actually tell yourself the truth, and that is that God loves you and he's doing this out of love for you, that he wants to give you a curriculum

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