Are you filling your bucket?
If you are impatient, burnt out, or irritable—you probably aren’t filling your own bucket. To lead effectively you must take care of your own needs. As dads we sign up to be second, but do you find your patience runs thin when your own needs are sacrificed?
Patience: the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.
Two things effect your patience—the external and the internal. The external is things like you’ve had a hard day at work, the kids are misbehaving, your relationship with your wife is strained. The internal is your own voice inside your head that beats you up.
Focus on the internal—you can control that easier. To do so you need to keep your bucket full. Self-care is not selfish. Take 30-60 minutes each day for yourself. You are doing your family a service by doing this. You can show up bigger and better and have more patience by giving yourself YOU time.
In reality, you don’t have just 1 bucket. You have 4 buckets:
1.Body
2.Mind
3.Heart
4.Spirit
Is there any bucket you aren’t filling? Review each one and if you aren’t taking time to fill it, seek to fix that. What bucket are you most neglecting? You can be full in 3 buckets but empty in the 4th. To be the best dad for your family you need all 4 buckets full.