On this episode of The Daily Dad Podcast, Ryan talks in depth about empire, philosophy, and natural feelings when it comes to our kids, as well as the connection we make with them through the opportunities and obstacles of life. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
These kids have changed your life. There are so many things you used to do that you no longer can. Traveling with no notice. Staying out all night. Sleeping on an airplane…sleeping in at all. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Joan Didion was bored. She was four or five. She was bothering her mother. She was asking for something to do. Her mother could have sent her away. Told her to stop . Told her to figure it out for herself. Instead, she went over to a drawer and pulled out a notebook. Here, she said, if you’re bored “then write something. Then you can read it.” The little girl was taken aback. “I had just learned to read,” she later explained, “so this was a thrilling kind of moment. The idea that I could write s...
We parents are like field goal kickers. Just like if a certain shirt or a pair of socks brings a kicker luck, Were always looking for something, Anything that will give us an edge. Just like a free throw shooter going through a preposterous routine, were religious about ours to. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Sure, you become a parent when you have a kid. It’s a biological thing. It’s a legal status. It’s codified on a piece of paper. But we all know that being a good parent is something much more than that. There is no one moment, one benchmark, one thing that makes you a parent–just as there is no single moment that one becomes a writer or an entrepreneur or a wise elder. Even ‘turning pro’ as the great Steven Pressfield has written , is not something that happens with the signing of a contract or ...
Think of all the things you’ve pretended to be interested in on a date. Think of all the hours you’ve spent at the office, what you’ve committed to and sacrificed to get ahead. Think of the bosses you’ve put up with at that job, the obnoxious colleagues. Think of the hours you’ve spent pouring over your finances, investing and saving and growing. Think of the time you set aside to go to the gym, think about the willpower you summon to slide into the cold plunge . ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad ema...
Ryan talks to Scott Hershovitz about the Adventures in Philosophy with Kids, the common misconceptions about philosophy, how to apply philosophy to actual life, and more. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Do You Really Care? “A key point to bear in mind…You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve. -Marcus Aurelius It seems like it’s really important to you. That the door not be slammed. That the chores be done a certain way. That everything be put away immediately. That feet go on the ground, not the furniture. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Ryan Holiday’s latest book, The Daily Dad comes out May 2. Preorder your signed and numbered first edition before they sell out! There are going to be moments where we’re not sure we can keep going. We hit a plateau in our career. We hit a wall on mile 19 of our first marathon. Our marriage is struggling. Our attempt to lose weight has stalled out. Going back to school has turned out to be a lot more than we expected. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter ...
Ryan Holiday’s latest book, The Daily Dad comes out May 2. Preorder your signed and numbered first edition before they sell out! [COUNTDOWN CLOCK] None of us come from families that were perfect. None of us got everything we needed. Our parents were not perfect. Indeed, they may have been quite flawed. Perhaps they were not loving enough, understanding enough, accepting enough. Maybe they just weren't there enough . ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , ...
Parenting doesn’t have to change a person. As we said recently , plenty of people remain the same selfish, immature, irresponsible people they were before they had kids. Which is why it’s worth making the distinction between having kids and being a parent. There are lots more of the former in this world than the latter. People who just have kids are still living the lives they had before. Parents live a different life. They become different people with different priorities, different capacities,...
Too many of us have the wrong idea about what happiness is. We confuse it with pleasure or fun. We confuse it with some sort of permanent state or an accomplishment to pursue. But happiness is more subtle and supple than that. It is something that ensues , as the great Viktor Frankl says in Man’s Search for Meaning . ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks to his wife Samantha about what their learning as parents, and the importance of making time for your children. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
You Will Want A Crowded Table “What a great spectacle it is when a husband or wife with many children are seen with these children crowded around them!” -Musonius Rufus It’s helpful to sit back and really think about what parental success looks like. First, of course, it’s having healthy kids who survive to adulthood—that’s obvious. But second, when you flash way forward into the future, what is it? It’s that beautiful phrase captured in the title of the Highwomen’s hit “Crowded Table.” At Thank...
Nothing takes up space in a parent’s head (or heart) quite like a kid who is struggling. “You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child,” the expression goes, and it’s true. If one of your kids is struggling–with reading, with adjusting to a new school or city, with becoming a teenager, with the divorce, with some health issue–it’s hard to focus or think about anything else. Even if you’re crushing it at work, even if one of your other kids just made honor roll or the varsity team. ✉️ Sign up fo...
You’re upset because you just blew it in that meeting. You’re kicking yourself because you meant to get up early and ended up sleeping through your alarm and missing a flight. You’re stressed about the business, you wish your marriage was better, you hate the way your house looks from the street. You can’t watch the news without being disgusted or outraged or worried. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
You notice it one day–the garage is full. Of strollers no longer used–first the single, then the double and the jogger. The chair you and your spouse spent so many wee hours of the morning in, rocking the baby back to sleep in. There is the balance bike. Then the first one with pedals. It’s next to the trailer you used to strap them in and tow them behind your bike. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
It’s important to remember that everyone was a kid once…and that no child is perfect . For instance, as a child Gandhi once stole some money from his brother. The boy was wracked with guilt, terrified of the consequences–from his parents, from the law, from God. Ultimately, he went to his father and confessed, laying out every aspect of his crime in great detail in a long, self-flagellating note, offering himself up for some extreme punishment he felt he deserved. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad em...
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks to KIND Snacks Founder Daniel Lubetzky about the importance of being kind, culture and values in a successful company & the steps on making the world a better place. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
In one of F. Scott Fitzerald’s funniest short stories, “ Head and Shoulders, ” a certifiable genius falls in love with a showgirl. The plot and moral of the story aren’t relevant for today’s email—though the story is highly recommended—instead there is a little passage in it that introduces a concept that is worth thinking about: ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
“Your kids are not keeping score on your career. They just want a parent who’s emotionally present and supportive of them.” -Ben Stiller David Letterman was the king of late night. His shows ran for thirty-three seasons, making him the longest-serving late-night talk show host in the history of American television. At its peak, he was making something like $30 million a year, watched by an audience of many millions every week. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad:...
There is a joke about a kid who, not liking the ‘No’ he got from one parent, asked the other, in order to get a ‘Yes.’ “Never come between your mother and I,” the father says, “we sleep in the same bed together.” ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
We spend a lot of time looking at the absolute worst parents. Not just because so many leaders and celebrities and artists seem to put their families absolutely last in order to achieve their success, but also because artistically, flawed and tragic figures quite naturally fill up the most pages and screentime. As Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina , all happy families resemble each other but unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily...
Of course, this parenting thing is hard . It’s expensive. It’s an enormous amount of work and responsibility. And yet, we are the luckiest people in the world, aren’t we? Not just because, as we’ve said before , it took a black swan of black swans for any of us to be here, for us to even have our kids (especially those parents who struggled with fertility or adoption). We have been given an incredible gift with this opportunity to be parents. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 F...
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan sits down with author Amy Morin in talks on how to find agency in your everyday life, overcoming mentally challenging situations by gaining perspective, and the cost of success when it comes to parenthood. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Relationships are tricky. Especially the ones we have built the modern world around. Monogamous. Long term. An equal partner in parenting and in professional pursuits. Oh and our partner is supposed to be our best friend too. It’s a lot to ask of someone. Harder still when you throw in the craziness of kids and the current state of the world. But you deserve a partner like that, and they deserve a partner like you. We deserve happiness and fulfillment and love, together. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily...
“As we bring up our children, we have to remember that we are caretakers of the future. By improving their education, we improve the future of mankind, the future of this world.” -Immanuel Kant Adam’s father wanted nothing but for his son to go to college. John Adams wanted to do anything but go to school. He often skipped class to go fishing or hunting or to fly his kite. He didn’t like his teachers. He didn’t think he was learning anything useful. He had no interest in furthering his education...
We all know that confidence is important. Most of us wish we had more of it. We spend a lot of time trying to build it up in our kids . By encouraging them. By reassuring them. By seeking out activities that will develop it in them. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
We say we’d do anything for our family. We’d like to think if we were tested, if we had to make some terrible choice, if it really was a matter of life and death, or if we were struggling to subsist, we’d come through. Would we though? ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
As a society, we have very attuned ears for what words are offensive. There are words that religious people find offensive. There are the words that collectively we have decided are hurtful…as well as the words various groups are trying to get people to understand are potentially hurtful. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
