Don’t Stay Down: 2 Tactics to Help Beat the “Dad Blues”


If you are a dad in your 40s and you are feeling the pinch emotionally or you’ve hit some sort of funk it can take some time to get yourself back to some sense of normality. We can all feel pressure as the father or provider of the household. And this pressure isn’t helped by external issues, not to mention the fact that when we start to go into our advancing years, we may start to feel those little tinges of sadness that we’re not as young as we once were or not as energetic. And these things can all add to a melting pot of anxiety, either in terms of how we look or how we feel, or that midlife crisis people talk about. But what can we do to offset these issues?

The key lies in making us feel better about ourselves.

Be the Person You Want to Be

You might be someone who is prioritizing everyone else above you and while this may keep a household going, it doesn’t do you any favors.

When you think about the person you want to be, are you being authentic? Being the person that you want doesn’t have to be about completely changing your outlook, but you can change how you look in the mirror.

If we have little aspects of anxiety stemming from insecurity like a crooked tooth, why don’t we get clear braces or have this tooth fixed? If we begin to obsess about these little things, we can either take the approach of trying to block it out or we can do something about it.

Being the person that you want to be is about making some achievements. And the little things in life can make you feel better than you realize. When we feel that we are finally someone that we are proud to look in the mirror at, this can be all we need.

Watch Your Language

If you feel insecure or insignificant, you’re not alone.

Men in their 40s can feel overwhelming depression due to various pressures. We can start to take control over this with simple practices, and when we feel disheartened we need to resist the urge to negatively label ourselves. We have to remember that with something like a self-fulfilling prophecy, this can stem from how we think and how we speak to ourselves.

By starting to relabel certain terms from a negative one to something more positive, it can help us change our mindset. We must remember that if negative thought processes can make us feel bad about ourselves that positive ones can do the opposite. It’s all about training our brains.

We have to remember that our brain, in a subconscious sense, cannot tell the difference between what is imagined and what is real. This can give us amazing power over our thoughts by incorporating positive self-talk. 

And these are two little things to get yourself in the right direction. Every dad feels down on occasion but this doesn’t mean we should stay down.

Jeff Campbell

Jeff Campbell is a father, martial artist, budget-master, Disney-addict, musician, and recovering foodie having spent over 2 decades as a leader for Whole Foods Market. Click to learn more about me

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