The podcast episode features David Rosenthal, a divorced, remarried former rabbi and relationship coach, who shares his deeply personal journey through divorce and his strategies for helping men over 40 recover from similar experiences. David discusses the challenges he faced during his 16-year marriage, the amicable yet difficult separation process, and how his faith helped him grow emotionally and spiritually. He emphasizes the importance of emotional regulation, self-compassion, and self-care in the healing process while providing actionable advice for co-parenting, managing emotions, and rediscovering personal identity after divorce. Drawing on his experience as a rabbi and coach, David also explains how he helps clients navigate their individual paths without imposing his own beliefs.
David shares practical tips for co-parenting five children, focusing on maintaining harmony for the sake of the children while keeping personal emotions in check. He stresses the importance of prioritizing self-care, such as sleep, exercise, and nutrition, and talks about how men can rebuild themselves by reconnecting with their inner desires and interests. Additionally, he highlights self-compassion's role in overcoming guilt and shame and offers insights into regulating emotions through mindfulness and perspective shifts.
The episode concludes with David providing his contact information and encouraging listeners to connect with him for coaching advice while the host expresses gratitude for the enlightening conversation.
10 Key Points from the Script
David's Divorce Journey: Married for 16 years with five children, David experienced an amicable but emotionally taxing divorce and used counseling to navigate the separation.
Faith's Role in Healing: As a former rabbi, David leaned on his faith to guide him through the emotional pain of divorce, deepening his spiritual connection in the process.
Co-Parenting Philosophy: David shares strategies for maintaining a child-focused approach in co-parenting, avoiding vindictive behavior, and fostering a positive environment for the kids.
Self-Care Essentials: He emphasizes the importance of sleep, exercise, and nutrition as the foundational pillars of self-care.
Rediscovering Identity: Divorce offers an opportunity to rediscover personal interests, desires, and hobbies that may have been suppressed during the marriage.
Emotional Regulation: David teaches clients to acknowledge and process emotions like anger and sadness without judgment, using mindfulness and perspective shifts to manage them effectively.
Self-Compassion: Recognizing and accepting one's own imperfections without self-criticism is crucial for healing and personal growth.
Healing Through Perspective: David encourages clients to step back emotionally, akin to observing oneself from a higher perspective, to regulate overwhelming feelings.
Challenges of Single Parenting: Balancing responsibilities and managing emotional waves when transitioning between parenting and alone time is a significant challenge for single fathers.
Advice for Struggling Fathers: For fathers dealing with alienation or strained relationships with their children, David advises focusing on self-healing and self-improvement to transform the dynamic.
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Don't Pick the Scab Podcast, the podcast that specializes in helping my men over 40 to recover from divorce.
[00:00:07] Every week we interview different guests with certain superpowers.
[00:00:10] We have David Rosenthal, a divorce-remarried former rabbi, and once a rabbi, always a rabbi, that has special skills for my men, and he's also a coach.
[00:00:34] Welcome to the Don't Pick the Scab Podcast, with the premise of connecting men over 40 with the tools and community to thrive in their divorce recovery either before, during, or after a divorce.
[00:00:48] So go ahead and introduce yourself, David. I've got some questions for you.
[00:00:51] Hi, everyone. Nice to be here. Really, I wanted to be here with David.
[00:00:54] And what an awesome resource you're building from men out there going through this challenging thing called divorce.
[00:01:00] Can you share your personal journey through divorce, shortening, shortening, how it shaped your perspective on relationships?
[00:01:08] Yeah, sure. Every divorce is unique, and I will share what my personal journey was.
[00:01:14] I was married for 16 years, traveled together with my wife through the world.
[00:01:20] We lived in various cities, we lived in Israel, America, Canada, multiple cities.
[00:01:24] We had five children together, and then after 16 years together, my wife decided that things were not what she wanted.
[00:01:34] And after an attempt to make things work, nine months of counseling together, which was both of us were trying to make it work.
[00:01:41] There were no bad guys in the situation. It was definitely hard, but everyone was trying their best to make it work.
[00:01:47] At the end of nine months, she decided the decision was final. She didn't want to be in the marriage anymore.
[00:01:52] And looking back, it really was the right decision. It was hard for me to see.
[00:01:56] Then we really want to make it work. I don't know about the men that I see really want to try their best to make it work.
[00:02:03] And it's almost always coming from the woman nowadays.
[00:02:07] There are exceptions, but what I promise me for my clients, it's usually the woman initiating the problem,
[00:02:12] like saying there's a problem and eventually making the decision for the divorce. And so that was the case of my divorce.
[00:02:18] And we worked through it as best we could. We ended up splitting the custody of the children 50-50.
[00:02:26] And it was quite a ride for me. I was changing careers at the time. It really knocked me on the ground.
[00:02:32] I was a puddle on the floor at one point, but I'm really proud to have healed, gone through the process and come on the other side,
[00:02:40] being able to help people going through that same process as a coach, as a relationship coach, as a rabbi,
[00:02:45] using all my skillsets and what I went through and the skills that I learned to help other people do easier, quicker, and with less pain.
[00:02:54] Wow. Okay. How has your experience as a rabbi, this is going to be my favorite question, I think,
[00:02:59] how has your experience as a rabbi influenced your understanding of marriage and divorce and influences your way you treat your clients?
[00:03:08] Great question. Let me start with kind of the premise of my religious faith.
[00:03:15] We have a big emphasis on relationship with God. It might surprise some people, but we're the God people.
[00:03:22] We really believe deep down that there's a creator of the universe who runs the universe, who cares about us, loves us,
[00:03:28] and everything that happens is all his guiding hand guiding us down the path.
[00:03:33] And so that's the framework from which I experienced my divorce.
[00:03:38] As hard as it was for me to accept, it wasn't a simple, okay, great, yeah, this is for my best.
[00:03:43] It's easy to say in theory, but experiencing it very hard, but that's the premise with which I experienced what happened.
[00:03:50] And there was a lot of questions like, why is this happening, God?
[00:03:53] I did everything, quote, unquote, I was supposed to do.
[00:03:57] So interpreting what was happening through that lens really does make you step up to the plate and say,
[00:04:02] hey, I'm meant to grow through this. I'm not a victim.
[00:04:04] I'm not someone who's just bad things are happening to me.
[00:04:08] There's a reason this is happening, and I'm going to try to do my best to figure out what that is and grow through it.
[00:04:12] So that's the premise through which, as a rabbi, I'm going through this experience.
[00:04:17] And really, my faith deepened in a major way.
[00:04:20] It really went to a whole new level through the pain that I experienced.
[00:04:24] It's a strange thing to express, but I had to learn how to let go and essentially trust in a way that I'd never done before.
[00:04:37] I can expand on that, but that's kind of like the chapter heading.
[00:04:41] So that's the premise that I went through in terms of how it helps with my clients.
[00:04:45] Really, it's a choose-your-own-adventure for my clients.
[00:04:48] I don't push my religion or my religious perspective on anyone.
[00:04:52] I really help people go down the path that they choose.
[00:04:55] If they're looking to me for guidance, that's a whole different question.
[00:04:58] But usually, the majority of what I do as a coach is helping people find their own inner wisdom, helping people find their own inner compass,
[00:05:07] and learning how to navigate their nervous system, which is a huge side topic that I'm really passionate about,
[00:05:15] which maybe we can explore together tonight.
[00:05:17] But that's a major part of the coaching experience.
[00:05:20] So my religion doesn't play a huge role in my coaching because it's much more about helping them where they're at.
[00:05:27] As a father of five, that's a lot of kids, man.
[00:05:31] How did you navigate co-parenting after your divorce?
[00:05:34] You were talking about being a puddle on the floor.
[00:05:36] So we did 50-50 kids co-parenting also.
[00:05:40] So we did week on, week off, change on Sunday afternoon.
[00:05:44] And at the beginning, I was just a puddle.
[00:05:47] They would leave for that week.
[00:05:49] And that whole week they were gone, I would become that jack-in-the-box parent.
[00:05:53] Put me back in when then the kids come back that Sunday.
[00:05:56] Pop goes a weasel, man.
[00:05:57] And it was off and on.
[00:05:58] And it took me a while to figure that I needed that self-care quotient for me to take care of myself while they were gone.
[00:06:05] And I forgot where I was going with this question.
[00:06:08] But as a father of five, how did you navigate co-parenting after your divorce?
[00:06:13] Yeah.
[00:06:14] It was definitely a huge learning curve.
[00:06:17] Not because I didn't know how to do all the stuff around the place, but doing it by yourself is really hard.
[00:06:26] Number one, I would say that the perspective that you've got to hold the most is really about how do you focus on the children rather than on the ex.
[00:06:36] It's very easy, especially at the beginning stages, to be vindictive, to be angry, to really have the focus be on your ex rather than on what's good for the children.
[00:06:48] And if you're not focusing on what's best for the children, that's a recipe for a disaster because they're going to suffer.
[00:06:55] And if you're an adult, then you're really going to say, you know what, I have all these feelings.
[00:07:00] They all make sense.
[00:07:02] But I've got to put them in a box for the sake of what's best for my children.
[00:07:07] And I'm grateful that both myself and my ex managed to really have the children as the main focus because that allowed us to navigate the best of the children.
[00:07:18] And the best thing really was that both of their parents love them and care about them.
[00:07:23] And no one's out to get anyone.
[00:07:26] No one's out.
[00:07:26] We didn't badmouth each other.
[00:07:27] I see people who are just so immature, not recognizing like what you're doing is hurting your children.
[00:07:34] And if you can't see that the most important thing is, hey, my children need their mother to be good in their eyes.
[00:07:40] It's good for my children if their mother is a good mother in their eyes.
[00:07:45] Not the opposite.
[00:07:46] If I try to undermine and undercut my ex, it's only damaging my children.
[00:07:52] And the small victory of making yourself feel good that your children like you better than they like your ex, it's really a really immature perspective.
[00:08:00] And so the first thing to get right when dealing with co-parenting five children is to make sure that your main focus is what's best for the kids.
[00:08:08] Everything else flows from that.
[00:08:10] And so we did the similar, almost exactly the same setup.
[00:08:14] One week on week, one week off with Sunday night being the changeover.
[00:08:20] And it was a huge kind of learning curve for the cooking for me.
[00:08:24] I cooked intermittently through the marriage.
[00:08:29] I didn't know nothing in the kitchen.
[00:08:31] But I definitely had to learn a lot more very quickly.
[00:08:35] Keeping kosher is a challenge in that there's not a lot of kosher eateries.
[00:08:39] And the ones that there are available are very expensive.
[00:08:41] And so you really have to cook a lot of your own food.
[00:08:44] And so that was something that I quickly had to get a handle on.
[00:08:49] And I'm really, I'm feeling really happy where I've landed a couple of years later and where my cooking is what it is.
[00:08:56] I had to, I made a cooking plan every week was like my Sunday.
[00:08:59] Okay, what am I cooking for me?
[00:09:00] I was super organized because I wasn't going to be able to do it.
[00:09:04] So I planned out the week, planned out all the snacks for the kids.
[00:09:07] Getting everyone to school every day with snacks and breakfast and then getting them at home and all five different pallets you have to feed.
[00:09:13] It's really, it was really a challenge.
[00:09:16] So walking, honestly walking was a phenomenal help to me in that it kept me sane.
[00:09:25] Going out for a daily walk where you're just refreshing yourself and you're able to reset yourself.
[00:09:31] Really, it was a lifesaver.
[00:09:33] I know it sounds weird, but that daily exercise helped me, especially on the days when I had the kids.
[00:09:41] I had to get through it.
[00:09:42] And then there's obviously the part of being alone when you don't have the kids.
[00:09:46] How do you deal with being alone when you've been not alone for 16 years?
[00:09:50] 16 years I had my wife and my children and then suddenly the house is empty.
[00:09:55] So it's hard, no simple transition.
[00:09:58] That was a big, that was a huge part of it too.
[00:10:01] Wow.
[00:10:02] Wow.
[00:10:02] So I did, I think we were going through the divorce and I was very immature.
[00:10:09] So I tried to keep everything copacetic.
[00:10:14] So for Thanksgiving, I invited my soon to be ex and all the kids over for Thanksgiving.
[00:10:19] So I had never cooked a turkey.
[00:10:21] So the girls at work said, hey, be sure to take the inside stuff out of the turkeys.
[00:10:26] I said, cool.
[00:10:28] So I didn't know there were two orvices.
[00:10:31] There's the neck and then there's the giblets.
[00:10:34] So I got the neck out, but I cooked the giblets in the wax paper in the turkeys.
[00:10:40] It came out okay.
[00:10:41] And in my quest for some normalcy, it was just horrible.
[00:10:47] I shouldn't have done it, but it was a learning experience for me not to do that again.
[00:10:51] But my biggest thing with co-parenting was after probably six months, seven months, like
[00:10:57] you said, you're a single parent.
[00:10:58] So you're humping, you're walking when they're not there, but when they're there, you're on.
[00:11:02] It's like on and off.
[00:11:04] And it got to the point, I could not wait for those little guys to leave.
[00:11:08] And then you feel guilty about that stuff.
[00:11:11] But people don't realize being a single parent with three, four, five kids, it's exhausting.
[00:11:16] Yeah, it definitely gets to the point.
[00:11:18] And then people told me, don't feel bad about that.
[00:11:20] But it was so hard not to feel bad about that.
[00:11:22] But everybody says it's normal because I said, man, I cannot wait for you guys to leave.
[00:11:27] Yeah, it's a funny wave in that you can't wait for them to get there.
[00:11:31] So on Sunday, you're like, I'm excited to see them all.
[00:11:34] And then come Sunday, Saturday night, it's really, I'm going to enjoy my alone time.
[00:11:42] Oh, yeah.
[00:11:43] What advice would you give to fathers who are struggling to maintain a relationship with their
[00:11:48] children post-divorce?
[00:11:49] There was a lot of, what's that term where the woman doesn't let the dad see the kids?
[00:11:56] Alienation.
[00:11:56] There's a lot of alienation going on.
[00:11:59] And one of my podcasters, interviewees said that even when the spouse, male or female,
[00:12:07] anything leads to kids to you, still keep reaching out.
[00:12:11] Don't stop.
[00:12:13] What do you think about that?
[00:12:15] It's a great question.
[00:12:16] To be straight with you, I haven't thought about it because I haven't had my clients have
[00:12:20] that experience.
[00:12:21] I would say that my first reaction is working on yourself.
[00:12:29] You mentioned an anger issue that you had struggled through at one point.
[00:12:33] And I myself had a similar control, anger vibe myself.
[00:12:36] But if you can go on your own healing journey, probably the biggest change that you can, you
[00:12:44] can't like when two people are dancing a certain dance, right?
[00:12:47] You can't necessarily make them change.
[00:12:49] But if you change the way you're dancing, they have almost no option on them changing the way
[00:12:55] they dance, right?
[00:12:55] If you're dancing the tango and suddenly you change the hip hop, they can't keep on dancing
[00:13:00] the tango because you're not in that same relationship.
[00:13:03] So when you're in a situation with your ex and there's a certain kind of relationship
[00:13:06] that's been established that she's saying, hey, you're a bad influence on the kids,
[00:13:09] I'm going to hold them against you.
[00:13:10] So if you change your behavior deeply, I don't mean superficially, if you go, if you really
[00:13:16] do heal, there's no option but for that relationship to change.
[00:13:21] And things can open up and opportunities can come that you may never have experienced.
[00:13:25] So I would say my first reaction was you've got to look at yourself and say, hey, how can
[00:13:29] I change who I am in a positive way right now so that the dynamic changes?
[00:13:35] I don't know if that will solve all your problems, but that's really the only thing that you
[00:13:38] have in your control other than speak legal means.
[00:13:42] I definitely believe in lawyers.
[00:13:44] I definitely believe in doing everything you can on paper to have access to your children.
[00:13:48] But when all that fails, that's what I'm assuming we're at here where she has all the
[00:13:52] cards, so to speak, the best thing you can do is change yourself into a healed, more caring,
[00:13:58] more loving, more patient father.
[00:14:00] And I don't mean it to be a walkover.
[00:14:02] I really mean a deep understanding of what it means to heal and to go on that journey for
[00:14:08] yourself.
[00:14:09] Does that make sense?
[00:14:10] Yeah, that same person who I did the podcast with, she said something that was just poignant.
[00:14:16] She said, in a heated co-parenting situation, you should love your kids more than you hate
[00:14:23] your ex.
[00:14:25] And that just hit me.
[00:14:27] I was like, wow.
[00:14:28] Wow.
[00:14:28] I got to practice that early because it took me a while to figure out that all my angst
[00:14:33] and my anger was just hurting my kids and not all the things I directed to her was just
[00:14:38] bouncing off her and going to the kids.
[00:14:40] Yep.
[00:14:41] Yeah.
[00:14:41] Yeah.
[00:14:42] Let's switch gears here.
[00:14:43] Self-compassion.
[00:14:44] What role does self-compassion play in your healing process after your divorce?
[00:14:48] That's huge.
[00:14:49] That's one of your big deals.
[00:14:50] Self-compassion.
[00:14:50] Yeah.
[00:14:51] Self-compassion is huge, especially for people who have never had it before.
[00:14:55] I remember I took a meditation course as part of my attempt to become a life coach.
[00:15:01] And I was introduced for the first time to self-compassion through the meditation coach.
[00:15:07] And she demonstrated it through the way she spoke to us.
[00:15:11] With just care and compassion and bandwidth to accept wherever we were at.
[00:15:16] And it was such a shock.
[00:15:18] It was like, wow, wow.
[00:15:19] That's possible that we can accept our faults and not beat ourselves up and not think that
[00:15:24] we're horrible human beings.
[00:15:26] I understand that humans make mistakes and that's okay.
[00:15:29] And that it's okay to admit our mistakes without beating ourselves up.
[00:15:37] Wow.
[00:15:38] I made a mistake.
[00:15:39] That sucks that I did.
[00:15:40] And it's okay that I did.
[00:15:42] And I love myself anyway.
[00:15:43] Anyway, that's a really hard holding two perspectives.
[00:15:49] So you're holding yourself that you're at fault and you're still loving yourself.
[00:15:53] That's something that we may never have experienced.
[00:15:55] Usually we kind of experience either you're good or you're bad and I don't love you.
[00:16:00] And so being able to say, you know what?
[00:16:02] I made a mistake.
[00:16:02] I'm not perfect.
[00:16:03] And I still am worthy of love.
[00:16:06] That's a huge paradigm shift for a lot of us.
[00:16:09] And so giving the grace to ourselves to say, hey, humans make mistakes.
[00:16:13] That's okay.
[00:16:14] We don't have to be perfect to deserve love.
[00:16:18] That takes the weight off your shoulder.
[00:16:19] You can just relax into that in a whole different way.
[00:16:22] So you can say, yeah, I screwed up.
[00:16:25] I made mistakes.
[00:16:26] And I'm still worthy of love.
[00:16:27] God still loves me if you believe in the higher power.
[00:16:30] And I still love you.
[00:16:32] I'm still worthy of love from others.
[00:16:34] So that's a huge reframe.
[00:16:37] And so for all us going through, the pattern that I use is a loving father to a child.
[00:16:46] If you saw your child making a mistake, when you say, oh, you're a terrible kid.
[00:16:52] How can you do that?
[00:16:53] Obviously, the older they get, the harder it is to do this.
[00:16:56] But the younger they are, you realize they just made a mistake.
[00:16:58] That's okay.
[00:16:59] I love them.
[00:17:01] They made a mistake.
[00:17:02] That's what humans do.
[00:17:04] We can't be expected to get it right.
[00:17:06] Even when we're clever and wise, we make them screw up all the time.
[00:17:10] So just like a loving father loves a child and has compassion for their mistakes, so too I can have it for myself.
[00:17:17] So the love I have for my children actually informed how to love myself.
[00:17:22] Wow.
[00:17:23] Can you discuss the importance of emotional regulation in relationships and what practical tools do you recommend for men to manage their emotions during tough times?
[00:17:33] Because men grow up, don't show your emotions, don't cry, things like that.
[00:17:38] But I think there's a breakthrough where more men are going to get counseling, things like that.
[00:17:43] So things are changing.
[00:17:44] Yeah, for sure.
[00:17:46] Emotional regulation is 90% of the work.
[00:17:51] Allowing yourself to feel your emotions and being okay with it.
[00:17:54] I'm allowed to feel whatever I feel.
[00:17:56] And learning how to ride the wave of an emotion is just something we were never for.
[00:18:02] It's something that I teach my clients all the time.
[00:18:05] How do you interact with anger?
[00:18:07] How do you interact with sadness?
[00:18:09] How do you interact with shame?
[00:18:09] All these different emotions that we basically usually just shove down and say, no.
[00:18:16] If you got angry, like you were almost angry at yourself for getting angry.
[00:18:20] Like, oh, I've gotten angry.
[00:18:21] I've just gotten angry at myself for getting angry.
[00:18:23] As opposed to saying, hey, I'm allowed to feel anger.
[00:18:25] It's okay.
[00:18:26] I can't necessarily express it in the way that my anger wants me to express it.
[00:18:30] I still want to go to jail.
[00:18:32] But I'm allowed to feel that feeling and just allow it to be.
[00:18:36] That paradigm shift of allowing your emotions to be without trying to change them.
[00:18:41] Just experience them.
[00:18:42] What do they feel like in my body?
[00:18:45] That, to me, was such a healing part of my process.
[00:18:49] I had to learn how to feel my emotions.
[00:18:51] And when they get really big, you think, oh, this is going to overtake me.
[00:18:55] You have this feeling like, oh, my gosh, my anger.
[00:18:58] I remember this one time I was driving back from the airport.
[00:19:01] I don't remember.
[00:19:02] I was going to the airport.
[00:19:03] And I was in the car.
[00:19:04] And I was fuming with rage.
[00:19:06] And I just shouted out in the car, I'm allowed to feel whatever I feel.
[00:19:11] Which is a strange statement to make for maybe some people out there because they don't have this block.
[00:19:18] But for me to allow myself to feel that anger was huge.
[00:19:22] And so emotional regulation means, number one, allowing yourself to feel emotions.
[00:19:27] But also learning how to regulate that in a healthy way.
[00:19:30] So can I share with you a little analogy?
[00:19:35] You've got this in Australia.
[00:19:37] You have this lifesaver competition, lifeguard competition, you'd call it here in America, where they have these amazingly fit lifeguards that go into the water, into the surf.
[00:19:47] And they have a swimming competition.
[00:19:49] They have a rowing competition.
[00:19:50] So imagine if you were one of these guys that's going into the surf and he's wearing a POV camera.
[00:19:54] He's got a camera right here.
[00:19:56] So you can look at the TV show, TV station that's presenting this wonderful competition.
[00:20:01] You can see what this guy sees.
[00:20:03] The waves are hitting him.
[00:20:04] He's being tumbled.
[00:20:06] He's in the surf going up and down.
[00:20:07] And then they've also got another camera crew up in a helicopter about 200, 300 feet above the surf.
[00:20:13] So they can look at that view as well.
[00:20:14] So the guy in this TV station can flip between the different views.
[00:20:19] One second he'd be in the surf.
[00:20:20] The next second he can be above the surf.
[00:20:23] And so this is two different paradigms that we can have as people.
[00:20:26] We can be in the actual emotion.
[00:20:28] We can be in the waves of anger, the waves of sadness, whatever it is experiencing.
[00:20:32] We can be in there.
[00:20:33] Or we can look down at ourselves from up above and say, oh, wow, I can see that I'm going through this right now.
[00:20:39] And that's a perspective change that allows us to regulate ourselves.
[00:20:44] When it gets too much, when the emotion is too great for us, we can actually go into the helicopter and talk to ourselves and say, hey, I see you're going through this.
[00:20:52] You're doing a great job.
[00:20:53] I see that you're feeling this emotion.
[00:20:54] It's okay to feel that emotion.
[00:20:56] And you're safe.
[00:20:58] And it's self-parenting, essentially.
[00:20:59] You're allowing yourself to coach yourself through a hard emotion.
[00:21:03] We're talking about emotional regulation.
[00:21:05] This is one of the tools that I use with my clients where you can switch between different perspectives.
[00:21:09] Just like right now, you can close your eyes and imagine yourself looking at yourself from above.
[00:21:13] It's the same thing.
[00:21:14] We have the ability to occupy different perspectives in the same experience.
[00:21:17] We can be in the experience or above the experience.
[00:21:19] And that above really helps us to navigate the sometimes bigger emotions where anger or sadness
[00:21:25] or shame or whatever it is comes in.
[00:21:27] And we can say, hey, it's okay.
[00:21:28] You're allowed to feel that.
[00:21:30] That's a natural feeling.
[00:21:31] Let's allow that to exist in our body.
[00:21:33] Don't try to fix it.
[00:21:34] Don't try to get rid of it.
[00:21:35] Just feel what it feels like.
[00:21:36] One of the things I feel like my clients, how would you describe it to an alien?
[00:21:40] How would you describe the feeling of anger that's going on in your body to an alien?
[00:21:45] Okay.
[00:21:45] There's this rise in temperature in my face and my chest is really tight and my muscles are starting to shake.
[00:21:52] So you're describing the experience.
[00:21:53] By doing that, you're focusing on the feeling in your body without making it wrong.
[00:21:58] You're not judging it.
[00:21:59] You're not saying it's wrong.
[00:22:00] You're just saying, wow, this is what it feels like.
[00:22:03] I'm allowing myself to feel this feeling.
[00:22:05] And what happens is it only lasts about 90 seconds and the average emotion peaks and goes down within 90 seconds.
[00:22:14] It's when we stop it, when we prevent it from coming out to its fruition that it essentially gets stuck inside of us and sticks around for much longer.
[00:22:23] So conversely, the more you accept an emotion, the quicker it can dissipate from within.
[00:22:29] I'm not sure which piece of the question I answered there, but I wanted to share.
[00:22:35] All that.
[00:22:36] Excuse me.
[00:22:37] I think you got it wrong.
[00:22:37] Do you have a drink?
[00:22:38] Oh, no, I'm good.
[00:22:40] Yeah, let me get a drink.
[00:22:40] Yeah.
[00:22:41] As a life coach, what common issues do you see men facing after a divorce?
[00:22:47] What are some of the common issues?
[00:22:49] A lot of the men who go through divorce really are broken in a major way, thinking that they've failed.
[00:22:55] There's a lot of shame.
[00:22:56] There's a lot of what I did everything that I thought I was meant to do.
[00:22:59] And now I've done better than what's going on here.
[00:23:02] And so learning how to listen to who they are.
[00:23:08] Very often, I don't know if you've been related to this in your previous marriage, but we do everything we can to try to make our lives happy.
[00:23:17] We put all our own needs, all our own desires completely to the side where we almost don't know what we like.
[00:23:27] Sure, there are some things that we like that we hold on to, like beer, like watching the game, whatever it is.
[00:23:31] But we don't have a very rich understanding of what we like, who we are, what we need, what are our interests, what are our desires, what are our hobbies.
[00:23:41] And so a part of the healing journey for men is really to discover that about ourselves.
[00:23:49] I remember one of the times I was dating my current wife and we were smelling perfumes.
[00:23:55] And she had gotten like a bunch of different samples of perfumes, like 20 different perfumes.
[00:24:01] And I was smelling them all.
[00:24:03] And it was such a surprise to me that I had definitive opinions on ones that I hated and ones that I liked.
[00:24:10] And it sounds silly, but I never, whatever, whatever you like, whatever you like, honey.
[00:24:14] But, oh, when I was being asked, what do I like?
[00:24:16] Wow.
[00:24:18] Actually, that's disgusting.
[00:24:19] I don't like that.
[00:24:20] Oh, that's quite nice.
[00:24:21] And then there was some in between.
[00:24:22] But learning how to discover what you like, what interests you, how do you want to spend your time, what do you want to invest in your time-wise, what kind of hobbies you want.
[00:24:33] That is some of the rebuilding that you need to do to listen to your inner voice, your inner desires, because that voice of who you are is so crushed and so tapped down.
[00:24:43] Learning to listen to its subtle sounds is potentially the beginning of the healing process.
[00:24:51] What about self-care?
[00:24:52] That's one of my big ones.
[00:24:54] Don't take care of themselves.
[00:24:56] And I equate it to the thing where the plane's going down.
[00:25:00] You're supposed to put your oxygen mask on first.
[00:25:01] If you don't, you pass out and everybody dies.
[00:25:04] Put your mask on first.
[00:25:05] You can save your kids, things like that.
[00:25:07] But once again, guys want to take care of everybody else first before they take care of themselves.
[00:25:12] How do you talk to men about that?
[00:25:15] What's the defining point for that?
[00:25:17] The first three that I take care of, which I think are absolutely essential for every human being.
[00:25:22] Number one is sleep.
[00:25:25] Number two is exercise.
[00:25:27] Two and three linked up.
[00:25:29] Exercise and what you're eating.
[00:25:31] Those three things.
[00:25:32] Because when we think of self-care, self-care has been associated with many pedis and smas and luxury items.
[00:25:39] But really, self-care is essentially saying, what are my needs?
[00:25:42] How do I take care of my needs?
[00:25:43] And so your first primary need, honestly, that you can't do without is a good night's sleep.
[00:25:48] It sounds so simple and so obvious.
[00:25:50] But the difference that you are as a human being when you're having three hours of sleep versus seven, eight hours of sleep, you are a different human being.
[00:26:00] Your ability to be happy, to be functional is completely different.
[00:26:04] And so sleep is the number one priority, I say, for self-care.
[00:26:07] Make sure you have a discipline around your bedtime and your getting up time, which is really hard to do when you're not necessarily bound by the kids or whatever it is.
[00:26:17] You're like, I want to go on my phone a little bit longer.
[00:26:21] I want to watch Netflix a little longer.
[00:26:22] So sleep is the number one self-care item I recommend.
[00:26:26] Number two, exercise.
[00:26:28] Making sure that daily you're doing 20, 30 minutes minimal.
[00:26:33] Some kind of exercises that you enjoy.
[00:26:35] Don't do something you don't enjoy.
[00:26:37] If it's walking, if it's running, if it's playing a sport, if it's going to the gym, lifting weights, yoga, whatever it is that floats your boat, figure out a way to do that.
[00:26:45] Because these things are what keep your emotional well-being possible.
[00:26:50] Possible.
[00:26:51] If you don't have good sleep, if you're not exercising, chances are you're going to be depressed.
[00:26:55] You're not going to be functional.
[00:26:57] And then number three, obviously, is your diet.
[00:26:59] Making sure that you're eating healthy because the foods that you eat can really take a toll on your body if you're not feeling good.
[00:27:05] If you're overeating, if you're eating all foods that don't make you feel healthy, it's going to affect your ability to function.
[00:27:13] So those are the three basics.
[00:27:15] From there, learning what you need, but going back to the previous thing,
[00:27:20] like what's my voice saying?
[00:27:21] What do I want?
[00:27:21] What do I need?
[00:27:22] Those are the things.
[00:27:23] Listening to yourself allows you to figure out what are the needs that I have that aren't being filled and how can I go about feeling it?
[00:27:29] That's essentially what self-care is.
[00:27:31] Self-care means taking care of my needs and being able to hear them.
[00:27:34] Oh, you know what?
[00:27:35] I really feel like being social right now.
[00:27:37] Oh, great.
[00:27:38] Let's take care of that for you.
[00:27:40] Being the adult for yourself.
[00:27:41] Just like you and me for your children, you can say, hey, let's take care of my child and see what they need.
[00:27:46] You've got to have the same tender, loving kindness towards yourself.
[00:27:50] It's not true.
[00:27:51] There's a paradigm shift from being disciplined, which comes with a little bit of fear, a little bit of toughness, to being loving and saying, hey, I want to care about you, David.
[00:28:00] David, I want to care about you.
[00:28:02] I want to help you be taken care of.
[00:28:05] You're being the adult for yourself.
[00:28:06] That's what self-care in my mind is.
[00:28:08] It's a paradigm shift from thinking about luxury to thinking about what do I need?
[00:28:12] How do I take care of my needs?
[00:28:15] Does that make sense?
[00:28:16] Yep.
[00:28:18] All right, David, man.
[00:28:19] My men have about a 30-minute attention span.
[00:28:24] So we're at 30-22.
[00:28:27] Let the people out there know how to get a hold of you on the Internet, and I'll have your contact information in the show notes.
[00:28:33] But how can we get a hold of you?
[00:28:35] DavidRosenthalCoaching.com.
[00:28:36] That's David Rosenthal.
[00:28:38] T-A-V-I-D-R-O-S-E-N-T-H-A-L.
[00:28:42] Coaching.
[00:28:42] Coaching.com.
[00:28:44] Love to connect with anyone and everyone.
[00:28:46] And it's been a pleasure being on your podcast today, David.
[00:28:49] Thank you so much.
[00:28:50] Sorry about that coughing, man.
[00:28:52] I got this cold, and I'm trying to get rid of it.
[00:28:54] But that was a lot to unpack.
[00:28:56] I'm going to get a special title for this one, for sure.
[00:29:00] Awesome.
[00:29:00] We'll definitely have to hook up again in 2025, which is strange in 2025.
[00:29:06] Lovely connecting with you, David.
[00:29:08] I appreciate it.
[00:29:09] Thank you.