Being a bloke, being a husband, being a dad its a total rollercoaster ride.
There’s the indescribable love you feel for your family.
But then there’s the suffocating pressure:
~ the crush of providing for the family
~ the overwhelming sense of failure of where you are with your finances compared to where you want to be
~ the endless frustration of uncertainty of whether or not your doing the right thing with work, money, investments, cheaper electricity
~ then there’s the bullshit bombardment of how perfect everyone else’s life looks, what other blokes are doing and we compare that to our darkest moments- enter the shame and guilt.

It’s something us men, and women, need to own for ourselves. There’s no shame or guilt that’s going to change the way we feel about the ups and downs of life. THERE’S NO SHAME IN NOT FEELING AWESOME ALL THE TIME. But, instead we try to suck up that feeling, we push it down, we try to ignore it, we try to toughen up. We end up replaying all of those unwanted emotions and feelings over and over and over… we end up building an overdramatic soap opera IN OUR OWN HEAD. We start to believe in our own drama, thinking its true.

What we are all feeling isn’t happening just to us. Remember that other dad, down at the swings, remember the knowing nod that you both exchange. The knowing nod of: ‘Yep, I’m exhausted. Yep, I feel the pressure, too. Yep, I’m struggling to keep my head above water.’ The knowing nod of the grind as you both raise your takeaway cups of coffee to each other…and you both smile as you think you should have saved that 5 bucks and made the coffee at home.

It’s not just you. There’s other blokes going through the same shit as you, you’re not alone.
How do I know?
Because that’s what I feel too.

The Chatters interview Sam Parker, Founder of Grab Life By The Balls, Chiropractor, husband and Dad of one has seen Men floundering and decided as a young man wanted to help not only his own self and age group but men of all ages. With mental illness in Australian and NZ men increasing Sam wanted to find a platform for men to be Aussie and Kiwi blocks, honoring who they are, how they do life and reframing and doing things differently allows men to open more possibilities in their life.

www.grablifebytheballs.com.au
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