The Mindful Dad
The Mindful Dad Podcast is where modern fathers come to reconnect—with themselves, their children, and what truly matters.
I’m your host, Odeani McBean, a mindful fatherhood coach and creator of the 365 Dad Journal. This show is for dads who want to break free from outdated parenting norms and lead with heart, presence, and purpose.
Each week, we dive into the deeper layers of fatherhood, exploring mindfulness, emotional intelligence, spiritual growth, and self-awareness. From letting go of control to healing childhood wounds, we cover the real stuff that helps you show up fully—not just as a dad, but as your highest self.
Expect practical tips, thought-provoking reflections, and honest conversations about what it really means to be a conscious, connected father in today’s world.
Whether you’re balancing a 9-to-5, side gigs, full blown entrepreneurship, or navigating the highs and lows of fatherhood, this podcast will help you slow down, breathe deeper, and parent with more presence and intention.
Because mindful dads don’t just raise better kids—they become better men.
🎧 New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe and start your mindful fatherhood journey today.
The Mindful Dad
The Mindful Fatherhood Starter Pack: 5 Habits Every Dad Needs
The Mindful Fatherhood Starter Pack offers five simple but powerful practices that help dads lead with more calm, presence, and emotional awareness in their daily lives.
Key Themes
• "What's Mine?" - A self-reflection technique to separate your emotional reactions from your child's actions
• Three one-minute presence breaks throughout your day to ground yourself and regulate your nervous system
• Respond without rescuing by being a witness to your child's experience instead of immediately trying to fix everything
• Make your nervous system your #1 parenting tool through practices like box breathing
• End your day with reflection rather than regret by journaling about what went well and what you'd like to try differently
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Thanks for tuning in today. If something in this conversation resonated with you or helped you breathe a little deeper into your role as a dad, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming next.
Daddy, daddy, dad, self-reflection the best gift that you can give someone is a gift that will allow them to look inward. Mindfulness Look at my head, it's so big. Wait, do your routine, though. Remember to breathe. Strengthening relationships I do, you do, I do.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Mindful Dad Podcast. I'm your host, odini McBean. Entrepreneur, devoted father of two and a fellow dad figuring this all out just like you. This is the space where modern dads like you explore what it really means to lead with heart, presence and purpose. Each week, we dive into the deeper side of fatherhood mindfulness, mindfulness, self-awareness, emotional connection and how to show up fully, not just as a dad but as your highest self. So take a deep breath, slow down and let's explore the path of mindful fatherhood together. Happy Tuesday, family. Welcome back to another episode of the Mindful Dad podcast. I'm your host, odini McBean.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is especially for the dads who are feeling overwhelmed, scattered. You know you may be feeling like your fuse is getting shorter than normal, or you're just, from being honest, tired of parenting, or you're just tired and you're just on autopilot Like. These are real feelings and real emotions. So, you know, saying you're tired of parenting can sound crazy if you're thinking about how the outside world is going to react, but feeling tired of the responsibilities everyone can relate to that. So don't put your focus on how the external world thinks about how you feel or your real emotions. Just put the focus on your intent, and the intent here is to overcome these certain emotions by practicing mindfulness. Right? So today is going to be like a mindful fatherhood starter pack. I would like to call it Just five simple yet powerful things you can start doing this week to kind of lead with more calm and presence and emotional awareness emotional awareness as you go throughout your day. Right? Sometimes we think we need to get on a plane and go on a 10 day retreat to get this kind of presence, this kind of calm. On a 10 day retreat to get this kind of presence, this kind of calm. Sometimes we feel like we need to go to a library and dig deep in 10 self-help books or just like the perfect conditions, right? So what this episode is going to do is show you five minutes two, three minutes things you can do every single day to be more calm and be more grounding as you experience your day, in your role as dad, also in your role as an employee, in your role as a business owner, your role as a spouse, whatever it may be, we want to practice these micro practices to help us out throughout the day. All right, so I am going to jump straight into it.
Speaker 1:This episode, the first one is something that I do all the time, believe it or not, and it's called what's Mine. So I came up with this, I would say, a few episodes ago, as I realized, when I was having interactions, especially with Caleb, because, you know, as they get older, he's 13. And as they get older, they, they know how to push those buttons. You know what I'm saying and I'm like you know what. I need something to center me when I want to snap, when I want to react. And asking what's mine basically is where I say to myself okay, what's the real source of this reaction that I want to do? Is it really based off of what is happening with him or is it my own stuff? That's being brought up here and I talked about this a couple of episodes ago with our kids being a mirror, being a reflection to our internal madness, and this goes hand in hand with that. So you know, if your kid is, I don't know, having a meltdown, or you feel like they're disrespecting you or they're just not listening.
Speaker 1:Before you go into how you really want to react, right, think about this. What part of this reaction is about them and what part is about me? Right, that's what I call what's mine, you know so is it? Is it I'm overwhelmed? Is it that I'm feeling burnt out from work? Is it that I feel like my ideas and thoughts at work is not being valued how I feel like it should be? Are those the reasons why now you want to react on level seven to something that can be probably handled at a level two or a level three, right? So just think about it that way. This one question really, really builds the muscle of emotional awareness, of emotional responsibility. So just write this down when you get the chance. Obviously, if you are driving, no way, jose, don't do that, but write this down if you're at a place where you have the capacity to write this down and the question is going to be what's mine? Right, is this mine? Is this reaction based off of what I got going on, or is it truly based off of? You know troubles, or you know the annoyances that my child is bringing right now? What is mine and think about that fully.
Speaker 1:Now, this next one is going to come to no surprise, but remember, these are starter packs. This is many practices, so we're going to be very intentional on the time allotted for this one, and that is short meditations. Or, if you don't, even if you can't even think of the word meditation as being short, let's change it to presence breaks. Right, let's change it to awareness breaks. So what we want to do is practice three-minute presence breaks, three-minute awareness breaks, and what we're doing is we're just forgetting about the idea of meditating for 30 minutes, for an hour, for 20 minutes. We want to take a break for just three minutes. Just start with three. That's it. Just start with three. So what you want to do is, when you wake up in the morning, pause. That could be for one minute. Right, let's do it that way. Let's do these. Let's do three breaks, a minute each.
Speaker 1:So when you wake up in the morning before the world starts, just one minute, 60 seconds to just sit and pause, and within that one minute you can reflect, you can visualize on your day that you have upcoming, right this morning. You know, I meditate for about 30 minutes a day, but this morning, after my meditation, I did this for about a couple of minutes, this practice here where I intentionally close my eyes and I start to visualize my day ahead of me, right, what is today going to look like? I know I have a lot of work to do for my my nine to five, but then I know, once that's completed, I got to record this podcast episode. I get to record this podcast episode. Right, I have to cook some dinner, like, I got a bunch of things on my plate today, but I want to be successful in doing all of those things. So I'm just visualizing. I'm taking a minute to visualize my day ahead of me and how the perfect day will unfold, right? So the next one is you wanna do when, maybe in the afternoon, same thing Take a pause, take a break and just reflect on how your day is going so far.
Speaker 1:Are you doing the things that you intended on doing? How is your day going? And then one more in the evening One minute, 60 seconds. Seriously, you're just taking 60 seconds to think about your day as a whole. How was your day? What was some wins out of your day? What are some things you could have done better?
Speaker 1:All I'm asking you to do is take three breaks, each one minute, and reflect and visualize on your day and how you want your day to be and how your day was. So you just want to close your eyes during these moments, right, you want to close your eyes and you want to feel your breath. Right, we want to concentrate. So we still want to bring the principles of a long sit down meditation to the table, but without having it be 30 minutes. This is just going to be 60 seconds, but you still want to bring the same level of concentration and calm and awareness of your senses. So, for 60 seconds, you want to close your eyes, you want to feel the sensations of your breath, you want to listen to your surroundings and you just want to be in your body.
Speaker 1:And the reason why this is good is because the one thing that I would say we all suffer, with every single person walking on this earth right now suffers with, is emotional regulating of the nervous system. Right, we are pretty bad at regulating our nervous system and we have so many different techniques that we can do, but it's hard to just you're stressed out. Let me just go box breathe, right, sometimes it's hard to do that in the moment. But everything takes effort, everything takes work, everything takes embodying. It's not easy, because if it was easy everyone would be the happiest people on earth. You know what I mean. So just start to do these little things amidst the chaos and flex that muscle, flex that nervous system, regulation muscle right, and then you'll start to feel safe, you'll start to feel grounded and you know, you'll really feel like you're not at war with the moment.
Speaker 1:Because I think, if I could be honest, a lot of the times when I feel stressed out, it's like I'm at war with the moment, which is not good. You know the moment. I'm grateful to be in the moment. This is a blessing to have woken up and to be in the moment, but at times it can feel like you're at war with the moment. So this is why taking these many breaks of presence can help you. I mean, if I'm being honest, if you're at work, go to the bathroom, close the stall and do it there if you have to, you know, while your kids are brushing their teeth, or you know, if you got young kids that take naps, just find the time during the day, three times a day, for 60 seconds each, and you'll just start to realize how good you feel after. And then what will? Also this is what happened to me when I first started doing this type of self-work is three minutes turn to 10 minutes, 10 minutes turn to 20 minutes. You'll start prioritizing these things Right now.
Speaker 1:For a lot of you, it sounds you're going to say I don't have the time, and that's fine, because, remember, time is a lot of you. It sounds you're going to say I don't have the time, and that's fine, because, remember, time is a state of mind, time is a perception. So you're going to say that and that might be your truth right now. But as you start prioritizing yourself, as you start prioritizing your self-care, it's like time just flies out of nowhere. I mean, flies to you out of nowhere. It's like you just look up in the sky. You're like, oh my God, look at all this time. Last week, two weeks ago, I didn't have time to sit for five minutes. I did it for one minute and I thought that was a lot. But as soon as you start prioritizing your well-being, trust me, you'll find the time. That's the one thing I can assure you. You will find the time once you start prioritizing your well-being.
Speaker 1:Number three this is probably one of my favorite things to talk about. I have a whole episode on this and it's respond without rescuing. So it's easy, especially as dads, we are very logical, we want to fix as men, right, we're like Mr Fix-its, and it's easy to want to fix whatever your child is going through, whatever your family is going through. But what if your job isn't to solve it but just to be a witness to it? You know, I can recall many years ago I was dating this woman and she basically was going through something and I had said to her hey, you know we can try this, you can do this and you know we can Google this. And I was trying to like solve it for her.
Speaker 1:And I remember she text me back and she was like hey, you know, I don't need you to fix anything, I just need you to kind of let me know that you could see how this is hard for me. Let me know that you understand, you can empathize with why I'm having a hard time with this thing. That's all I need from you. And she was like stop trying to be a man and like fixing everything. And this was almost. This was like six, seven years ago and I assure you to this day, every single time I'm placed in a position where someone is telling me their issues, their problems.
Speaker 1:If, if I'm not asking directly hey, what do you want from me in this moment? Do you need solutions or do you need me to just listen? If I'm not asking that outright, I'm thinking that in my head when I respond. Right, so I think that's something that we can do with our children every single day. Right, we can just be witnesses. We don't. We don't have to be Mr Fix it, so just listen. Ok, I see you a little upset right now about that. I felt that way too when I was your age about this thing. I know exactly what you're going through. I'm with you, boom.
Speaker 1:You know, like sometimes, when my son gets in the car and I could tell bad day, like I could just tell Even from the way he walks to the car and opens the door I'm like, yeah, we had a bad day today. You know what I mean. And instead of just being like trying to rant, run off the list of different things why he might be having a bad day, I'm like and I see you're not doing too hot, you want to like talk about it and then once sometimes he says no, but a lot of times he'll tell me what he got going on, and I'm just here, I'm here, I'm listening, and then I'll ask him, you know, I'm like, do you want to hear what I got to say? Sometimes I go straight into father mode, right, you know, and this is what we have to understand Going straight in to fix it and listening and taking the time without responding, that is also farther mode. This is a vast ocean and we don't have to be one specific way every single time. So just because you're choosing to be more, I would say, understanding, I would say more passive, just because you're choosing not to just put the gloves on and go solve the problem right away, doesn't mean that that's not you being a dad. Right, because sometimes all people want is emotional support. They just want you to be a sounding board for them, and our children are the same exact way, right. And when you do this, when you just like, don't try to rescue, and you really respond to what's happening, I think it builds trust. And I think it builds, like, this kind of emotional bond, this emotional connection between you and your child, and I have definitely seen that with me and Caleb. We, for the amount of times that we, you know, we let our frustrations spill over with each other, I could name 10 times more of the amount of times that we have had just like calming and presence and grounding conversations based off of if he's frustrated, or based off if I'm frustrated, and I think it's because I purposely am practicing this, where I'm not trying to solve everything without listening first. Hope that makes sense. So that's number three respond, don't rescue.
Speaker 1:Number four is and this is kind of attaching to number two but make your nervous system. Make your nervous system your number one parenting tool. Think about it that way. Make that you're not your strength, not your physical strength, not your muscles, not how loud you can yell, none of that. Make regulating your own calm inside of you. Let that be your number one parenting tool. Because if you are filled to the brim, right, if you are with good stuff, not like you're old, not like you're burnt out, but if you're just like filled with just this unwavering level of capacity, this unwavering level of love as a dad, that's all. That's all they need. That's all your children will need. That's all your family will need is just you being present. But it's very hard to be present if we are not able to be calm, if we're not able to see things as they are right. Oh, taking care of your inner self, taking care of your own nervous system, that is the number one tool you have in your parenting, your parenting toolbox. Trust me Right, I spoke about this some episodes ago.
Speaker 1:Like many micro practices you can do to regulate your nervous system, and the easiest one I'll bring this up again here is box breathing system. And the easiest one I'll bring this up again here is box breathing. I do this all the time. Step away, set your timer for two minutes or four minutes and breathe in for four seconds, hold for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds, hold for four and repeat the process. I mean, that is it. That is it. Regulate your nervous system.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, the next thing I'm going to say is really hard to do, and I know this because I've been in positions where I wanted to do this and I didn't. But I've also been in positions where I've wanted to do this and I have succeeded. And that thing is actually taking a pause before responding, right, like I'm talking about live action. I always talk about. When I, when I say these things, I say live action, that means like we're in the thick of it, like daughter is going wild, son is talking back. This is it Like. That's what I call live action and parenting. And in live action, I promise you, you have the ability to take a 10 second, 20 second pause before you say anything. Right, this will kind of help you lower your voice whenever you feel the urge to raise it. Right, seriously, think about it that way. In live action, try to take a pause before reacting. So that's number four Make your nervous system and regulating your nervous system, make that your number one tool in your fatherhood toolbox.
Speaker 1:And the fifth one, the fifth one is going to be and this is also going to come as no surprise reflect, especially when you end your day. Reflect. So that means get a pen and write these things on paper and you want to reflect about your day and you don't want to regret anything, right, you just want to reflect. So you're going to open up the page and every night, just ask yourself certain questions. Man, like what went well today for me as a dad? You know, sometimes when I have my kids and I'm overwhelmed and I'm like overstimulated and I'm like, oh, they are working me to the bone when they go to bed. I'll just open up my notebook and I'll say that was a wild day for me today. But what went well, you know, like despite, despite the emotions, despite the frustration, what? What went well today? And I'm usually able to point out multiple things that went well, you know, during the day of being dad, something else, multiple things that went well, you know, during the day of being dad.
Speaker 1:Something else you can ask yourself is you know, where did I react instead of respond Right? So like, where did I have the opportunity to truly listen to what the real issue is and give a response? Versus where did I just snap back into unconscious parenting? When did I do that and write that down and talk about those times? And another thing you can ask yourself is you know what would I like to try different the next day? You know so, okay, today I reacted like this. That didn't go over well, it just made the situation worse. So tomorrow, what can I do differently? And if you think about this, these are all questions you could even ask yourself about everyday life.
Speaker 1:You know, sometimes it's hard for me to get on here and just keep it strictly to fatherhood, because I'm like, I know we need this type of help in every aspect of our lives. Like, think about it. You could open your journal and ask yourself what went well today at work, what did not go well today at work, right, what went well today with the conversation I had with this person? What did not go well, what would I like to do differently tomorrow with achieving my goals? You know, like these things you could reflect on nightly about anything in your life. And here's the kicker A lot of us, when we get on this self-help journey, this self-improvement journey, we do all of these things that I'm talking about for every area in our life, except for our relationship with our kids, and I think that's why it's important to ground yourself in these practices, because it's like if you can Google and watch YouTube videos on how to be this way and how to be that way, why not implement these same practices?
Speaker 1:For probably your most important job in life, right, is raising a child, you know. So think about it that way. What went well today in my parenting? Where did I react instead of respond in my parenting, and what would I like to try differently tomorrow, right? And for five days. Try these for five days in a row. Just answer these questions five nights in a row. If you miss a night, there's no shame. The point of it is we are intending we're not trying to be perfect, it's not perfectionist intention, right? So I'm going to quickly name all five of these one more time and then we're going to get into a little guided meditation to kind of help bring this all together. So the first one is to ask yourself what's mine, okay? So before reacting, before snapping when you're frustrated, ask yourself is this mine, right? That means, is this about them or is it really about me? What part of my reaction is about them and what part of my reaction is about me, right, what's mine? Ask that question what's mine?
Speaker 1:Number two was we're going to take some minute breaks, right, we're going to do three of them. It's going to total three minutes for the day and all we're going to do is, in the morning, we're going to take a minute to visualize how we want our day to be, how we want to show up as men, how we want to show up as dads, how do we want to show up as an employee, as a business owner, whatever the case may be. How do we want to show up as an employee? As a business owner, whatever the case may be, how do we want to show up? We're going to do the same thing in the afternoon and in the evening. We're going to do the same thing for 60 seconds and reflect how was the day?
Speaker 1:Calm yourself, ground yourself in complete silence with your eyes closed for one minute, three times. The next thing we're going to do is mindfully listen. So we're going to respond without rescuing. So we're going to listen and we're just going to act like we know nothing. And our job is not to fix it. Our job is just to hear and hear. That's it. And empathize, all right.
Speaker 1:Number four make your nervous system your number one parenting tool. I can't stress this enough. This is probably the most important out of all five of these things. Do small practices to regulate your nervous system, to calm down. Box. Breathing is my go-to in this scenario. And the last one is end the day with reflection, not regret Reflection. So end the day with reflection.
Speaker 1:Open a journal, open a notebook, take out a pen or pencil and just ask yourself three questions what went well today? Where did I react instead of respond, and what would I like to try differently tomorrow? You don't even have to do all three of these questions in one night. One night could be what went well today. The next night could be where did I react instead of respond. The third night could be what would I like to try differently tomorrow? This is the world, is your playground. Have fun in it, you know what I mean. Just whatever you feel like doing, however you feel like doing it when it comes to this practice, that's what you should do, right? And those are my five, I would say, mindful fatherhood starter pack. Those are the five things that you can do. To picture yourself just going into war, you know, and just you got your book bag on, and instead of grenades, it's these five things here, right? I assure you this will help your journey as dad, for sure.
Speaker 1:All right, so before we close out, I want to lead us through a short guided meditation, and this meditation is about returning to the present moment, because that's where all the magic is right. We can't get the past back. We can't even reenact the past, nothing. We can try to do it based off of memory, but nothing will truly be the same as it was the first time it was experienced. And the future? You're right, that's not even here yet. And when it does become here, it's the present moment. So that's why we want to really spend our time appreciating the present moment.
Speaker 1:All right, so find a comfortable seated position. As long as you're not driving, even if you're at work, you know you want to take a break. You want to go outside. Just find a comfortable position that can be sitting, laying or standing. You want to close your eyes or lower your gaze, whatever feels good for you. Most people I teach meditation too they feel comfortable closing their eyes. But if you want to lower your gaze, if that feels good, you can do that as well. So you want to take a slow deep breath in and a long slow breath out One more time Slow deep breath in, slow deep breath out.
Speaker 1:As you're breathing, feel your body where it touches, whether it be the ground. If your, your butt is on a seat, a cushion, a bed, wherever your body makes contact with earth and objects. You want to feel into that. Maybe there's. You may find that you feel some sort of energy sensations moving in your hands, your fingertips, your palms. Notice those sensations If your feet is tingling, your breath moving in and out, just notice those sensations. Just notice those sensations. Now, as you're noticing the sensations, bring your children's face to mind. Picture them smiling. Picture them being vulnerable. Just picture them smiling. Picture them being vulnerable. Just picture them as they are. Now you're going to put your hand over your heart and you're going to repeat these three things silently.
Speaker 1:I choose presence over perfection. I lead with love, not ego. I am learning, and that is enough. I choose presence over perfection. I lead with love, not ego. I am learning, and that is enough. Take another deep breath in Gently exhale. Take another deep breath in gently exhale and, when you're ready, open your eyes and you are back.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in today, as always. I am very grateful. I am sending you all light, as always. Also, for those of you listening all those days coming up around the corner, I'm going to need you to go to my website or click the link in the show notes and send someone who loves you a link to the 365 dad journal. Tell them this is what you want for father's day. And we are going to really prioritize our self-care. This year, we are prioritizing journaling. We're prioritizing men being okay with being vulnerable, and this 365 dad journal will not only do that for yourself, but it will also help you with the connection and the bond you have with your children. So tell somebody you love to get you a 365 dad journal for Father's Day this year. And I love you all. I'm sending you all light Until next week.
