Let It Pound Your Head | Stoicism's Secrets To Being More Present (With Your Family)

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2:34On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

2:53Let it pound your head. For years you've worked, for years you've sacrificed, you've risked, you've hustled, you've made tough calls. Maybe you even left a few knives buried in a few backs. But all of it was aimed at getting somewhere. Somewhere you felt you needed to go, to do something you thought was important. And then it got you here. And, and, it was a little disappointing, wasn't it? Thus, it has always been this way. What do you think Seneca felt upon being elected consul, knowing that it means another day in Nero's court? How do you think Marcus Aurelius felt after another victory on the battlefield?

3:33Another year in office. The question pounds my head, the National sings. What's a lifetime of achievement? It's nothing is what it is, or at least not what you think it is. Soon you'll be ashes or bones, Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, a mere name at most. And even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, and trivial, he says. Shadows and dust, shadows and dust. That's what Proximo shouts at Marcus as he trots into the arena in Gladiator. The things we chase, what do they really matter? Are they worth the things we're willing to do for them, the nights away from home, the questionable ethics, the flattery, the compromises?

4:18No, and not much is.

4:27Trying to wrap bedtime up is the most arrogant and entitled and stupid thing in the entire world. At some point in your life, at the end, you would do anything for one more of this moment, for one more minute, for one more hug, for one more kiss, for one more conversation.

4:45If you were trying to define good parenting in one word, you could do a lot worse than just presence. Not like giving them presence, but being present. Actually being there. Where you are with what you're doing in the moment. I'm Ryan Holiday, the author of a bunch of books about stoic philosophy. I'm the parent of two kids. And in today's episode, I'm going to talk about some strategies for being more present with your kids. The enemy of being this Doe is this thing, this device in your pocket, this excuse to be distracted, this excuse to be anxious, busy, jealous, worried. People spend hours a day on their phone.

5:23Sometimes I'll be with my daughter and she's talking to me and we're talking and then bling, my phone goes bling, so I'll just go down like this. If you're talking to a person and then they just go like this, they just disappeared. It's a horrible abandonment. And when it's your father, just like, uh-huh, is that right, honey? It's just horrible. We talk about how life is short. We talk about how our kids grow up so fast. And then we spend the very finite and limited amount of time we have on this planet sucked into this thing. We understand that casinos are designed to suck as much time and money from us as possible.

5:55But it's the same thing with the phone. The smartest people in the world have developed algorithms. They're designed to take as much time from you as humanly possible. To take you away from what you are as much as possible. To unsettle you as much as possible. So you're more dependent on it. You're more addicted to it. You want to be a good parent. You want to be a good person. You have to find a way to leave the phone in a drawer, to leave it in your car, set up boundaries, to click the do not disturb button. And then I started to grow up and realized, no, I have to think beyond what the look on her face is.

6:21So I started to put it away. I started to just say, I gave my daughter my phone and I said, make a restriction code and lock me out of the Internet. It's supposed to be the other way around. Yes. You've got to come up with rules and strategies and standards that you set. So you are using the device because there are things in here that you need and the device is not using you One of the things that Stokes say is we have to stick with first impressions Marcus says you know my kid is sick but not that he's gonna die of it That's a hard example to hear but his point was that as parents as people We so often extrapolate out to the worst case scenario so quick right We hear him stir in the middle of the night and we go oh I'm so tired I can't get up now Stay up all night I can't be tired at work tomorrow It hasn't even happened yet you don't know if it's gonna happen yet They talk back to you or they get in trouble one time and all of a sudden they're out of control.

7:06They never let, we're extrapolating out. And this is taking us out of the present moment, which is not that severe, which is not yet that big of a deal. Discreet, concrete thing in front of us that we should deal with reasonably, firmly, but also with patience, with kindness. We should deal with it as an individual instance, which is what it is. Not part of this trend that could happen. not part of it this downward slide that we're terrified of but see it for what it is don't extrapolate the way to be present is to be present to take the thing in front of you as the thing that's in front of you nothing more nothing less there's something sad about people who try to have quality time with their kids because what they're missing is that all time is quality time this is jerry seinfos in this great interview he talked about how to screw the quality time i want the garbage time, watching them in their room reading a comic book or eating cereal when they should be in bed, doing anything with them, being stuck in traffic.

8:02Quality time does not exist. All time is created equal, but we have the choice to be present for and enjoy and soak in and love and appreciate the moment that we have with our kids right now. Trying to plan quality time, it's almost a cop out. It's almost an excuse for bad parenting because you say quality time is planning this trip in three months. It's quality time because I spent all this money. It's quality time because I put all this intentionality or work behind it. So you, my kid better appreciate it. Right now can be quality time if you're present for it, if you're fun, if you're nice, if you're accepting, if you're grateful, if you lock into this moment, whatever it is as a chance to be with each other, to connect, to appreciate the mundane, but also extraordinariness of life.

8:49Garbage time, ordinary time. That's what you want to grab onto. That's what you want to appreciate. That's what you want to make the most of as a parent. People seem to have an unlimited appetite for ruining their day by watching the news or by doom scrolling on their phone. This is so unfair to your kids to have Fox News running in the background or MSNBC running in the background. This isn't making you a better parent. Yeah, of course. It's a job of a parent, of an informed citizen to know what's happening in the world around them. But do that with books, right? Show your kids what a positive information diet looks like.

9:22Understanding things on a big level actually looks like. Don't watch cable news. Don't get sucked into the arguments on social media. Don't bring that toxicity and noise and fear-mongering directly into your house. You've got it running in the background where your family's trying to eat dinner. It's making you upset. Their mood is being shaped by it. They don't understand it. It's just not a good way to live. You have to manage your information diet. And a big part of that is pushing away real-time breaking news that you're not actually going to use to make real decisions and focus on better sources of information that give you perspective, that give you wisdom, and that are, of course, modeling better habits for your kids.

10:00I think the fundamental problem with all parenting books, what I really struggled with when we had kids, is that parenting isn't a thing you do one time. It's not something you ever get. So the idea that it could be solved with a book that you read one time is crazy. It's a thing you are learning, not a thing we have mastered, but a thing we are in the process of beginning to understand. And that's actually the idea from the new book, The Daily Dad, 366 meditations on parenting, love, and raising great kids. Whether your kids are old or not yet born, whether you have one or almost a dozen, this book is about the journey that you're going on, a timeless journey that generations, millions, billions of people have been on before you.

10:46They've done things right. They've made mistakes. They've learned things. You're on the journey to be the best parent that you can be. You're on the journey to be the parent that your kids need you to be. If you want some help on that journey, you can borrow from the sources that I continue to lean on to this day in a one-page-a-day format. Check out the new book, The Daily Dad, anywhere books are sold. You can pre-order a signed numbered edition from me at dailydadbook.com. Barnes & Noble has a special edition also. You can get in any format you want to listen to, but I hope you pick up a copy.

11:23I hope it sits on your nightstand and I hope it helps you get a little bit better at your most important job.

11:36There's a story I love about Ulysses S. Grant. This is long before he's the great civil war general. His life is a mess. Everything has gone sideways. His life is drudgery and pain, but he'd come home from work every day. He'd open the front door and there his son would be ready to wrestle with him. He'd say to his son, Jesse, I am a man of peace, but I cannot stand being hectored by a man of your size and then his son would charge him and try to take his dad to the ground. And I can just imagine all the pain and turmoil and loss, insecurity and frustration and resentment that Grant has in his life.

12:07It all goes away. And actually, no, it doesn't all go away just because he's wrestling with his kids. Part of why it goes away is because he's leaving it there at the front door. He's not tracking it into the house. If you want to figure out a way to deal with the difficulties of life, I think one amazing way to do that is to get down and enter your kid's world to wrestle with them to have fun with them to let them distract you to be fully locked in whatever you're doing with them even if it's something as ridiculous as pretending to let them beat you at wrestling just a few weeks before he died kobe bryant got a text from a reporter she was doing some story and she wanted to interview him there was a time commitment involved he just said no he said hey my kids are keeping me busy i can't he didn't know that that no was buying him a few precious more minutes with his kids that he would never get back that he didn't have very many left of and very few of us do know that but we say no because we never know there's an arrogance and entitlement and saying yes to every opportunity that comes your way jumping on every cool thing that you get offered taking every work obligation on its face you don't know how much time you have left with your kids you don't know how many more opportunities you're going to get which means you have to say no a lot saying no to the things that don't matter the Stoics say give us the opportunity to say yes to the things that do matter.

13:24It gives us the double benefit, Marcus Aurelius says, of doing the important things better. You have to say no. Maybe the hardest exercise in all of Stoic philosophy comes to us from Marcus Aurelius. He says, as you tuck your child in at night, say to yourself, they may not make it until the morning. Memento mori, meditating on our mortality, that's difficult enough. But for a parent to meditate on the mortality of the person you love most in the world, the one person you would die to protect, that you want nothing bad to happen to ever? Why would you do that? Isn't that tempting fate? And Mark Cerullo says it's not tempting fate.

13:55It's totally out of your control. The reason you meditate on the mortality of your children, I think he's saying, isn't to practice detachment or disengagement. You're meditating on the mortality of your child. So you soak the moment that you're in up to its fullest extent. You realize that trying to wrap bedtime up is the most arrogant and entitled and stupid thing in the entire world. At some point in your life, at the end, which is hopefully in the future, a long time in the future, you would do anything for one more of this moment that you're in, for one more day, for one more minute, for one more hug, for one more kiss, for one more conversation.

14:29And yet here you are rushing through that because you have a phone call to answer, you have emails waiting for you, there's that thing you paused on TV, right? You're trying to get back to something, but really what you're doing is you're rushing away from this thing right now that actually is the most important thing in the world with the person whom you say is the most important thing to do from the world. So we do this exercise not to practice detachment. Marcus Willis buried multiple children. This exercise did not help take the sting out of that in any way. That is an impossible thing to do.

14:58The point of the exercise is to help make you more present, more grateful, more loving here, right now, in the present moment.

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