Working Dads: Being Exhausted Is Not a Badge of Honor

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Working dads. Being exhausted doesn't make you a better father. Working 60 hours a week, resting five or four, never sitting down and telling people I'll rest when I'm dead is not a badge of odds. You need to sleep, honey. There's too much to do around this house. I'll rest when I'm dead. Somewhere along the way, a lot of us were taught that exhaustion is what a man looks like. A lot of us probably seen our fathers with red eyes. Tired, visibly tired, and we just put that together, and that's what we thought being a man is. And I know that for a fact, is because my little girl, she told me that, oh, I can tell when you're tired, your eyes are red. And who did I see with red eyes? My father. I know he was working and he was tired. When is the last time you rested and not felt like you were doing the wrong thing? And I'm not talking about passing out in front of the TV because your body just finally gave up. I mean choosing to stop. If sitting down makes you feel guilty, this one is for you. We've confused exhaustion, just being tired, dead tired, with importance. So tell me if you said this. Oh, I worked 12 hours. Oh, I worked a double shift. I picked up a shift. I only sleep four hours. I haven't taken a vacation all year, but that doesn't mean you're doing anything important. That doesn't mean really much to your children. Only thing it means is that you're never home. Now you might be taking care of home, but all they know is that you're never home. Because being needed isn't the same thing as being important. So being needed is what we all are. But being useful, are you useful when you come home? Or are you so tired that you're irritated, you're impatient, you're mean, whether you work first shift, second shift, or third shift like me, you feel it too. Only getting three, four hours of sleep, five hours of sleep if you're lucky. Being needed isn't like being useful. Can you listen to your daughter's story about school today and her and her friends? Or can you listen to your son's ideas about a report or listen to the writings in his journal? Can you listen to your wife tell you about her day at work and what you know what she's gonna make for dinner and what should we do? Or are you so distracted because you're so tired that you don't hear any of this, you don't want to hear any of this. All you want to do is get some sleep. If everybody at work gets the best of you, and your family only gets what's left, we need to talk about that. When I say the best of you, I'm just saying your attention. You not paying attention, you being irritated, you snapping off at them because they might do something wrong or just playing too loud, or your wife is talking and you're not listening, you're being short with her, and things like that, they get what's left of you. But at work, they got what's the best of you. Unless you plan on marrying your job and treating it like your family, that's gotta change. That has to change. Some of us watched our fathers work themselves into the ground, and we mistake survival as the blueprint. So some of us watched our fathers, our grandfathers, our uncles, our big brothers work from sunup to sundown. When I saw my dad leave, the sun was down, it was dark. And when he came back, it was dark. And like I said, when he when I saw him, his eyes was red. And when my daughter said that same thing to me, like last week, I was like, man, I'm I'm doing the same thing. I'm being him. A lot of them had no choice. A lot of them didn't have build better dads. This is what a man did. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not telling you not to work as hard as you can or have to, but I'm telling you, get some rest and pay attention to the people that love you. Honor the sacrifice, but don't inherit every consequence. I honor what my father did, the work he put in for years and years and years to take care of his family, but don't inherit the consequences. Don't inherit you missing out on a lot of things. My father came to one of my basketball games. Grade school, middle school, high school came to one game my sophomore year. The number one person, the one person I wanted to see me play was him. He came to one game. And you know what? I had a bad game. We lost. I can still remember that ride home because I wanted to win so bad for him. I wanted him to see me play. So don't inherit that. That's why every game my oldest son played, I went to every game. Anything he did, I went to Don't inherit the things that our dads did. We gotta work hard, but we can take a break sometimes to get some rest so we can go see them play. Because here's the part that nobody wants to talk about exhaustion doesn't just happen to you, it happens to your family too. When you're tired and you're not there and you're being mean and you're not paying attention and you're not being yourself, I'm gonna come in my regular time and spend some time with my kids, put them to bed, read them, do whatever they want me to do. Because your kids don't need to grow up telling everybody how hard you worked, because they really don't care. But what they do care about is the fact that they never got to see. Like I said, my dad came to one of my games, and I really wanted him to come to the two. I'm a 53-year-old man, I'm telling you now. If you think your kids aren't gonna have these types of issues or these these things to say about you, just because you thought you were doing the right thing by working all the overtime, doing all just doing too much, basically, you're wrong. They are going to have that to say about you. You better make time out for what's important for them. Whatever it is, if it's just watching one of their shows that they they like or listening to one of their ideas, don't miss out on that because you thought working was more important. Because you can't constantly give people what you refuse to replenish. They're asking for you, but you're not really you. You're not the best version of you because you don't rest. Here's the lie that working dads tell. I'll rest when everything is done. I'll rest when the mortgage is paid, all the bills are paid, the grass is cut, the repairs around the house are done, everything is in place, everything is done. Well, guess what? Everything will never get done. It's always gonna be something pulling you in one direction or another. So you'll never get any rest. When you tell yourself that lie, that I'll rest once everything is done. When is that gonna happen? Never get some rest. Because if rest only happens when everything stops, you'll never get any rest. Even if you think, oh, I can rest once everybody goes to sleep. Well, then you're gonna you're just gonna think of some stuff you can do now that everybody's not in your way. You have to choose to rest because all these things that you're trying to do, you're gonna be doing them half-ass because you're not your full self, you're not the best version of yourself. Your bandwidth is half or less than half. So you're not able to do the job, get some rest so you can do things the right way. I'm not telling any working dad to stop providing or doing things to keep a roof over your family's head and keep the lights on. What I'm asking you and telling you is to stop wasting time on things that don't deserve you. Stop wasting time on scrolling on your phone. When you're wasting time on things or people that don't deserve you, you could be doing the things that really matter. Because one day your kids aren't going to care about how many consistent days you work. They don't now, and they won't when they're adults. Nobody cares but you. I'm telling you, you won't be able to enjoy that money or enjoy the fact that you paid off debt or whatever because you're going to be laid up somewhere, or even worse, not here at all. And nobody wants that. So choose to rest. Rest is about having enough so you can do for your family. What's the thing that you do to recharge your body to give you the energy to go through another week and you don't feel guilty about it? Put that down in the comments. Let us know what you do. This is Build BetterDads. This is the place that we have the conversations that we wish we would have had 20 years ago. Now we can have them, and our children don't have to pay the tuition that we've already paid with all the mistakes that we made, with all the things that we've done that have got us to this point. Now our wisdom can finally pay off. If you need anything, I got you. This video was for you and everyone out. Peace.