Stoic Parenting Principles | Essential Lessons From 2024

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1:19Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down. Be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

2:10Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I told you that I was heading to DC. And the reason I was heading to DC is I went to the White House Christmas party, which was surreal and strange. And then I spoke to a bunch of White House staffers that are leaving the White House. As someone was telling me, they're like, every single person in this room is about to undergo a major career transition, which is sort of how it works when you're a political appointee. Sometimes your candidate wins, sometimes they don't, but you're We're constantly looking for a new job based on something.

2:53You didn't do something someone else did, right? And so, yeah, it was an experience. I suspect you could tell from my podcast over the years that I'm probably not going to be invited to the White House anytime in the next four years. So I thought I would jump on it. My wife, Samantha, came with me. It was a wonderful experience, surreal, again, sort of a bucket list thing. And we had a great time. Sort of cues up today's episode. My wife and I share a bunch of things, including the Painted Porch Bookstore, and she helped build Daily Stoic and so many of the different things we've done together.

3:29But obviously, our most important project is our two kids, which, you know, being away from them, they were pretty much all that we talked about. And in today's episode, I wanted to riff on some Stoic parenting lessons. As you know, I wrote The Daily Stoic. I also wrote this book, The Daily Dad. So I think a lot about what the Stoics can teach us as parents. When I talk to people on the Daily Stoic podcast, many of them are parents. I try to ask them parenting advice. So I wanted to sort of throw together the best parenting lessons and insights from the ancients and not-so-ancients that I got this year.

4:04I thought I'd start with a chat that Samantha and I had about one of, I think, the most important lessons that the Stoics can teach us as parents, this idea of having fewer opinions. Mark Shreya says, you know, remember, you always have the power to have no opinions. Now, this is something I constantly struggle with, but it's a good one. So I'll bring you that here very quickly. And then I'll bring you some other folks after that. In this episode, do check out the Daily Dad podcast. Samantha and I do an episode every weekend, give or take. You can check out the Daily Dad email at dailydad.com.

4:38And we have a new leather edition of the Daily Dad book, just like the Daily Stoic. You can grab that at store.dailydad.com. I'll sign your copy as well. We make it with the same bindery in the UK that we make the Daily Stoic leather bound. Really proud of that. But in the meantime, let's just get into it. I hope you had a great Christmas. I hope you went to some cool Christmas parties. Happy New Year coming up here very shortly.

5:08All right, so I was doing this Daily Stoic email about some of the Daily Dad, the commenters on the Daily Dad Instagram, which i don't know they are they in some ways embody the exact opposite of the kind of parent that i would like to be like i just can't imagine being the kind of person that sees a post that's like you should support your child uh whereas like um you know these kind of like inspirational they're like cute videos or whatever like like they go your child's not giving you a hard time they're having a hard time and then they find a way to be something they're offended is that they're like no that's not true at all like they're like angry about it what is that energy do you have any examples well i don't have any examples because you and i have already talked about this so you know exactly what i'm talking about but i just wanted you to admit that you don't have instagram on your phone why i mean i have no problem admitting that you keep it on my phone and then you just steal my phone constantly and there's not a single time that i have ever done that looked at the daily dad post which i was like oh this is great and then and then found the comments to be a refreshing glimpse into humanity we talk about this all the time i pull up the daily dad post look at the comments and sometimes there aren't any and then other times you just know and it's like what are you hiding from like you're obviously triggered for a reason Like you as a person must have seen this post and been like, I messed up as a parent because I have to like react to this in such a big way that I need to comment about it.

6:46Well, yeah, I was thinking like, what's it like to live with that person? And then I was like, wait, no, their children don't live with them. What is it like for that person to have authority over you? And I just felt I just feel this wave of sympathy for the children of a person who. Who. First off, can't allow someone else to disagree with them on the Internet, but to. Has this kind of I don't know, it's this kind of like forceful, negative dad energy that I really think is the opposite of what I'm trying to write. about in Daily Dad. What's it like for that person to live with themselves? Well, it's probably very unpleasant.

7:31It's probably very shame-based. It's probably very argumentative. It's probably very fragile. Reactionary? Yeah. It's probably not fun, and it's probably something that they take out on their children. Okay. So we talk about this a lot. So we see these Daily Dad posts. We try to avoid looking at the comments on our social media stuff at all because it's never good i mean it's good to avoid the comments on most things unless they're funny um but we talk about this a lot because it's always like oh man you were triggered by this like this is this is speaking to a part of your soul that you must feel guilt about if you're reacting in this way um and i'm like what are those things for me?

8:19Because that's just the way that I think. And I had this moment with our four-year-old the other day where we saw a kid having a temper tantrum in a store and he goes, I never have temper tantrums like that. I'm like, is that true? He's like, I never cry like that in public. I'm like, is that true? He's like, not in stores. I'm like, really? And he goes, okay, well, at one time in a store. And I was like, oh, and what was that like for you? And he goes through it. Okay. The leap for me is I saw a parent react to their kid in a way that didn't make me feel good because I've reacted to our kids that way.

8:56And to see another parent talk to their kid the way that like I have talked to our kids, it was like a rude awakening for me. Yeah. And I'm like, is this that same, is this me seeing myself reflected back into me a way I don't like? and is that the same thing that these people are seeing in these daily dad posts where it's like I'm being called out here and I don't like it well the one that got the strongest reactions I'm just remembering now we were sitting in the studio I was talking to Troy Baker and I was talking about this one of my favorite quotes from Mark Sturlus where he says you know you don't have to have an opinion about this you always have the power of having no opinion right and so I was saying that I think one of the things I've tried to learn as a parent is that like there's just stuff I don't have to have opinions about, right?

9:41I don't have a 19 year old. So I'm not, this isn't like, oh, you want to do drugs, go do drugs. Like, that's not what I'm talking about. But I'm just saying, like, like, I feel like there's so many arguments you can get in even with young children. So older ones is just like, you don't need to have an opinion on whether the music your kids are listening to is good or bad, right? You can have an opinion on whether it's appropriate for them or not at some point, right? There's, there's obviously some things that as a parent, you have some say over but like there's just a lot of opinions that you have right that people have that cause tension or conflict with them their children that is unnecessary and unavoidable that seems like a pretty straight down the middle insight that we could all benefit from and then watching the negative opinions that people had and went to for that of like well my kids and it like you're basically like their energy is like my kid actually doesn't know anything, always says the wrong thing, and I have to tell them what is good and bad.

10:40And like, you're getting the sense, oh, if you're having an opinion about this post, what must it be like to live in your house where you are an opinion machine and your opinions are so fragile that you need to enforce them on other people? Can you think of an example of something that was like your parents had a really strong opinion about when you were in high school that was not in In retrospect, you were like, you did not need to have an opinion about. Well, I actually, I remember one later, I remember at my sister's wedding, Nathan, our brother-in-law is a vegetarian. And I remember my dad going after that.

11:21They wanted a vegetarian like wedding reception. And I remember my dad afterwards being like, I was so worried, you know, that that wasn't going to work. And it turned out it did. And I was just like, like, it's not your event. And like, there is food, like no one's going to starve to death by not having meat at one event in the afternoon. And so like, but they had clearly like gone a couple rounds about it and talked about it and he was anxious. Like, he would have he could have done himself a favor and just not had, even if you're paying for it, not had any opinions on the food at a wedding.

11:54Right. And this is later on. People get in arguments over their kids' weddings because the parents have strong opinions about how the wedding should go, right? Obviously, there was other ones in my childhood. Haircuts. Haircuts is a great example. I liked heavy metal. I didn't want, like, long, long hair, but I wanted shaggy, long hair. Isn't it so hard to let go of the hair, though? Like, it's like you see, like, our kid likes that, too. And it's like, I almost am like, you looking, having long hair and looking sloppy is like a reflection of me. and how I'm parenting and how I'm caring for my kids.

12:27What's a generational thing? I care about it because I grew up hearing someone say there's something wrong with it when really it just needs to get to a place where nobody has an opinion about it. And I do think it's interesting that I think some people become parents because they want to have opinions about shit. You know what I mean? What they're looking forward to is the control and power over a thing that they can shake. It's because we, and I think I've been figuring this out, like you don't have control over yourself. And so you're just exercising control over your, not even you don't have control over your environment.

13:01You're exercising control over something you do have control over, which is just like tiny being. Yes. Or a full person. Yes. And so, yeah, I just, I just noted, like, obviously if we talk about anything that's remote, like if we have a quote from Barack Obama, all of a sudden these people are very mad, not whether the quote is true or not, right? They're like sucked into an argument about it. Or if it's anything related to Dwayne Wade, because Dwayne Wade has a trans kid, then there, and you go, man, I just, it just makes me feel pity for, I think what I'm becoming more attuned to and why I don't like about that energy is I just, as you think about how fragile and small and vulnerable kids are, right?

13:50And then how sensitive they must, if that energy is making me feel gross as an adult, just like, what is wrong with this person? Why are they being so negative or forceful? Or like, why do they need to tell me how wrong I am? What must that be like? If you're not a confident adult, that must be very disorienting and overwhelming to be around as a little person. Right, they're not, oh yeah, Yeah. The person is not aware of it and working on it. And, and like, they're just, the kid is absorbing it. Well, we talked about that. Like, what do you feel when the garage door opens? Oh, you can tell, it's like, um, when you were a kid, you could tell the mood of your parents by the way that the garage door opened.

14:37No, I thought it was, it's a, it's an interesting insight back into what your childhood was like. If you try to imagine what your feeling was when you heard the garage door open, right? And so I imagine the kind of parent that we're seeing comment on these posts, that's not good energy when they hear the front door open or someone coming up the steps. You're like, oh, here's mom or dad coming. And it's going to be a critical conversation. It's going to be a judgmental conversation. It's going to be telling me what to do, telling me what I shouldn't be doing. Like that's the energy. Yeah. Yeah.

15:10And it's not like your kid should be like mom's home time to party right like that's probably not the right vibe either but like why we're talking about cultivating this sort of we're talking about just being a tiny bit chill and you know we're talking about like taking a deep breath and just trying to look inside a little bit before you like hang out with your kids that's it what if i try to be empathetic to those people also it's like they probably have a job that's not fun they probably have a boss with bad energy right they probably had parents who had similar energy we have like the most fucking chaotic energy you and i have the most that's a different problem we have to talk we have to work so hard to be chill around our kids but just like when you you know i try to change when i come home from the airport right so you don't have your airport clothes yeah airport germs it's like you want to you want to not tread that energy in your house whatever the whatever twitter or instagram is bringing out of you whatever the energy that social media brings out of a person is the exact opposite of the energy that a good parent would have right or maybe i don't know there's could be some really positive things that you get out of social media but like whoever these people are that are commenting on youtube comments to people who are like whatever youtube energy is and twitter image uh twitter uh energy is and i would say yeah instagram comment section energy is the opposite of what you're trying to cultivate as a parent however i would like to say jordan oh jordan harbinger yeah jordan harbinger is like your daily stoic well i think he's responding to the same stuff he he's like what who is this yeah What are you talking about?

16:58And you do get, I think you also get the sense, your point is like they're clearly triggered or they clearly feel guilty about something. I think it's an energy of not, in the parenting domain, not being challenged, right? Like of being unquestioned, like their views, how it was when they were growing up, what they were taught. And then you're looking at this clip that's saying like, um you know have fewer opinions or you know like root for your kids or like uh give them a mental health day or you know all kind of like just see them as people yeah and and they're like i feel so attacked they're like no they're a part of me i will treat them the way i want to and then like i just want those people to know that we are sitting over here silently judging them for being sad sir this is a wendy's and we feel bad for your children this is who are you talking like like this is this isn't a discussion like this is a one-way conversation this is true this is a fact that people smarter than you have come up with not me but people smarter than you have come up with is a fact no one said tell us what you think about this or tell us how you you bully your kids differently like what are you talking about shut up listen Listen, this is, it's like, if you have a strong opinion about this, then you are the definition of who this is for.

18:29Anyways, rant over.

18:37Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on. thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields.

19:17and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in. We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that.

19:57If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that, but I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

20:45My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It over the holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

21:22Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

21:43One of the most powerful parenting convos I had this year on the Daily Stoic Podcast was with David Kessler. He's a grief expert who's worked with thousands of families who are losing a loved or even worked with people themselves who are dying. And he himself lost a son who was in his early 20s. And he had some really, really powerful reminders for parents to stay present and grateful for their children. I'll bring you a chunk of that here. Do check out his book and the full episode, one of the most moving ones I've ever had on the podcast. My younger son, David, died 21 years old. And - That must have been horrendous.

22:25Brutal, brutal. And I had been doing this work for decades. I knew that children died. I started in children's hospital. I got the concept. But I was the guy who was helping other people with grief and loss. and when that happened, you know, on the ground, on the ground, brutal. And I eventually had to think about like everything I've taught. I think I have to do what I've been telling people. I think I need to go to a grief counselor. I think I need to go to a group of medicine. listen. And oh my gosh, I was someone who was like, okay, go to a grief group. It took me three times to get to a grief group.

23:15I mean, something that I thought was like not the big issue was impossible to do. And then I had a cap on, took my contacts out, was wearing glasses, and I had to sit at a table with my books five feet away. And I couldn't go, that's me. I'm the grief expert. Right. I had to be the dad. And so I would watch myself and I would go, you're in denial. Yeah. You can't believe it. Oh, yep, there's your anger. I mean, I sort of monitored my process. The grief expert watched the father go through it. And then Kubler-Ross and I had always talked about this idea of people think there's a finality to acceptance.

23:57Like, I'm going to be done. and you know when people say how long will my sister grieve how long will my you know husband grieve I'm always like well how long is the person dead because if they're dead for a long time you're going to grieve for a long time but not always with pain right with more love eventually and by the way I always want to say to people grief is not just death I mean it's sure breakups divorce worse, job loss, everything else. But when I began to go, is this it? Am I just going to accept this? That's it. Okay, I'm going to accept it. It's like it wasn't enough. Yeah. And I picked up some papers that I had wrote about meaning.

24:43And I was like, that's not going to help. I threw those down, you know? And then about a week later, I read them again, and they gave me a little cushion to my pain. And I went back and I read Viktor Frankl's work, Man's Search for Meaning. I reread it. And I thought, what's the disconnection? There's some disconnection that I've heard over the years from people in grief. And as I started to talk about it, it became so apparent, everyone was like, well, David, there's no meaning in a child's death. There's no meaning in a murder. There's no meaning in a betrayal, in a car wreck, in a divorce, in a pandemic.

25:24And I realized, oh, the meaning isn't in the horrible thing. The meaning is in us. It's what we do afterwards. And that was a light bulb for me and so many other people. And I was so honored that the Kubler-Ross family gave me permission to add a sixth stage. And I got to add this sixth stage, but it also enabled me to write an update and go, everyone, still not linear, still not adding a mandatory step. But it does feel like we're a generation that didn't just want to go, yeah, accept it. Like, is there something more here? And I think meaning goes along with all those stories we tell. Do you feel like part of your tragic story, the way you've derived meaning from it, and not why you went through it, but what happened by going through it was your deeper understanding of these things and then your ability to come up with an additional layer of how one thinks about it, which has the potential to benefit thousands, millions of people far after your time here.

26:41And I think there's a moment we go through consciously or unconsciously. And I really thought about it. I live on this cute little street, little suburb, and I could picture a future where the teenagers on their bike would be riding by and the new kid would be there and he'd go, hey, what's the house with the cobwebs? Is it haunted? And they would go, no, it's a grief expert and then his own son died. Like I could see, I could never come out of the house now. I could choose that. I could be done. And I think after all our tragedies and setbacks and horrible things in our life, there's a conscious, unconscious decision of, do I live again?

27:35And beyond the, do I live again? My meaning that I really thought about is, my son David loved my work. I think it would be really heartbreaking for him to think that his life or death somehow constricted it. So then I had to look at, well, if it didn't constrict it, it could keep it the same or it could expand it. And I think that's the growth. That's the not just going through it, but growing through it. And growth is part of life. And growth is painful, by the way. We sort of glamorize it. Oh my God. Brutal. Brutal. Even just a kid growing an inch is straining their body, the amount of calories they have to consume.

28:22Growth is a constructive, but also a destructive process. Right, right. And it's part of life and a painful part of life, but an even more painful part is if we resist the growth. Yeah. It takes a lot of energy to become the person who never leaves the house again. Sure. And that is a real fight against reality. I mean, so many times when I'm working with someone, they'll go, it's over. It's just not continuing. And I'll go, could I touch your wrist? And they'll go, sure. And I'll go, your heart's actually continuing still. Would you consider tonight going home in the midst of your life is over, it's done, there's that checking your toenails.

29:17I think they're still growing through this. And so like when we begin to realize, oh, I can naturally grow. Yeah. And it's very easy to sort of go, but bereaved parent. I mean, how unusual, unnatural is that? Well, you know, we only have to go back before penicillin to go, well, every parent was a bereaved parent. Like one out of five children? Yeah. Every parent was a bereaved parent. Right. And so I can go, I was the grief, like, why? Why? And then I can get to, well, why not? Yeah. Why should you be exempt? Was I exempt? Why would I be exempt? Right. And it has made me go deeper with people.

30:04Yeah. And I would have loved to have taken a class instead of had to say goodbye to my son, but there wasn't an available class. Right. You know, it's like, this is the lessons that you learn through life. And it's not to say that these are, you know, we can't reduce this. Oh, what's the lesson? Oh, your tire was flat. What's the lesson? And it's, you know, it's more than that. There is something, though, about being a parent that I think makes you uniquely vulnerable. Joan Didion, you know, this is her table. Is it? And these are her chairs. Wow. Like she sat at this table with the family. There's a New York Times picture of that family, the one that was in the course of 18 months taken from her sitting at this table in these chairs.

30:48And she said something about how being a parent is like being a hostage to fortune. And you just like life has something on you now. And I think that's what keeps you up at night as a parent is like that something could happen and you don't have control of it. I remember when I became a parent, someone like I had this nightmare, I forgot what it was. And someone said to me, oh, you only have two nightmares as a parent, you die or they die. And I'm like, really? And it's like, well, that does become it. And listen, I love Joan Didion. I love when I often have people watch the documentary on her.

31:27And it begins with like, you know, she's a robust, elderly, giggling lady that you're like, oh, what a fabulous life she's had. And this person, that person. And then you hear about it and you go, wait a minute. She's been through that. Wait, that happened? How is she still standing? How does it not break this frail, tiny person? And yeah, it's unreal. How do you think losing a child, what do you think that brings you to say to a parent? How would that inform one's time with their children? It's hard because I don't want to take away anyone's human experience. And I'm so glad I got to have and still have with my older son all those human experiences.

32:13And I think about it like on one hand, I've done a lot of work with a cancer organization near me. And I remember, you know, one woman saying after she got into remission when she was about to die, she said, you know, I get up every morning and I just take in the sunrise. I went, that's amazing. I mean, I'm just ignoring it every single day. And then I remember seeing her like a year later and I go, how are you doing? And she's like, I'm doing great. My health's great. And I said, how are the sunrises? She goes, ah, you've seen one, you've seen them all. And I mean, I think we try to operate from the profoundness of all this, but we're just having this human experience.

32:57There's still a day-to-day-ness also. There's a day-to-day-ness. And there's times someone will go, my child didn't get into the college, da-da-da. And I'm hearing him, I'm like, that's not a problem. It's not a problem. I mean, but, and sometimes I say it and sometimes I realize, well, that is their biggest problem. Yeah. You know, and maybe they're open to a different perspective and maybe they're not. Well, it's like we all know what we're supposed to eat and then we get hungry or tired and we eat something different. So, yeah, you're right. You have these profound insights and then you're still a human being who, you know, is prey to all the things that human beings do.

33:33And I remember in that same cancer organization, someone shared with me, we were talking about what have you found out? like, you know, it was your last week, your last day. And one person said, oh, I'd put another load of laundry in. And I love the humanness of that. Like, okay, I guess I'm just going to do the next thing that's in front of me, even if this turns out to be my last day. Do you know who Montaigne is, the French essayist? He says, I hope death finds me planting cabbages. Wow. Just, he understood what Cicero said, that to philosophize is to learn how to die. But the idea was that you get this awareness, you get this understanding, you have these insights, and then you just go about your regular life.

34:14He's like, I don't, you know, not dreading it, but also not like sort of overwrought and overprepared for it. You learn all this stuff. And then in a sense, if you understand you could lose your kids at any moment, there's some unhealthy version where you just cling them so tight to you because you're afraid of always losing them that you end up losing them. It's this idea of understanding it and then taking them to soccer practice and sending them off to school and just living a regular life with them. Well, and I think a huge lesson is for me, fear doesn't stop death. Yeah. Fear stops life. So you get in too much fear and it's everything.

34:52It's, I mean, you could lose your kids. You could lose your spouse. I mean, that's like true to your job. I mean, everything. And so do we tighten up? Yeah. Do we go into fear? Do we shut down? Or do we go, oh, my goodness, that's right. I was going to lose everything anyway. I guess I'm just going to relax into this while it's here and enjoy it. Yeah, there's a balance to that, I think. and to go between, you know, that humanness and the reality of loss, that it's always around us. I always say death is like no further than six inches. I mean, something's around us that just could electrocute.

35:31I mean, something could happen in any given moment. And okay, I'm just gonna, well, live. And just like, I don't want this long, long wind down of my life. I mean, and I'd like to be caught in the act. I'm just planning a cabbage and boom, who knew? Like, would he have planted a cabbage? Yeah, probably would have. I wouldn't have done the another load of laundry.

35:59Gary Vee, who co-owns VaynerSpeakers, that's the agency that reps me for speaking. That's how I ended up at the White House. He came out because he wrote a children's book this year called Meet Me in the Middle about compromise. and we had a nice conversation in the Daily Stoic studio. He told me that he thinks there's a parenting pandemic out there and had some really interesting thoughts. So bring me that. It was funny when I was doing this book, at some point I was like, oh, wait till Ryan sees this. Literally meet me in the middle, right? Patient pig and eager eagle, right? Patience and being eager.

36:35The point of this book, and I'm so excited to be going into kids book land because the truth is I've really felt the impacts of getting to kids 15 to 25, especially now that I've been doing it for so long, it's fun to find that 40-year-old that's been watching you since they were 25 and you talk to them and you listen to the impacts and you get so humbled. And now I'm getting a little greedy. I'm like, okay, let's go younger. Like to me, you know, patience. Do you know that I believe most alpha winners that hear me talk about patience, that it's one of the things that, they like me, I'll go get all that, but they don't like when I go patience because they interpret it as complacency.

37:09But there's a reason there's two words in the dictionary. Patience is not complacency. Eagerness, I love. Ambition, you know. But this book is basically telling kids and parents, by the way, that in America, we've become way too red and way too blue. Yeah. And the magic is purple. Sure. By the way, that's why this was purple. I'm like all about purple now. Do you know Aristotle's golden mean? All right. So many, many centuries ago, Aristotle said that most virtues are a midpoint between two vices. So courage, the opposite of courage is not cowardice. There's recklessness and cowardice and courage is in the middle.

37:48For the Stoics, the virtue of temperance or self-discipline would be between eagerness and patience, right? Like it's in the middle there. Love you. And so I'm using these V friends to show being eager and hungry, amazing. Being patient, amazing. what I do in here is I go too much patience becomes complacency too much eagerness becomes sloppy yes and how these two v friends you know it's fun come together and I think it's gonna and it's cool it's a middle book for kids so you can read it from both sides so two nights out of that week you can get them on both and I'm so darn excited about this because I love both audiences in a parent and kid world yeah so the cartoons I have coming out for v friends on youtube kids this summer, the books, the master plan I have for the next 50 years of VFriends, my audience is gonna be both.

38:37Unlike a lot of things, Coco Melon is driving parents crazy, but crushing for little kids. I'm hoping to be, like I'm excited, I can't wait to get the first DM or email. Bluey, kids and parents like Bluey. By the way, it's one of the reasons I, the Bluey founder flew out from Australia and we had a meeting in New York and was giving me some nice flowers about some of the stuff I did around TikTok and how it helped blow up Bluey and I was like, fuck, I gotta do that for myself for VFriends. It was profound. Bluey does that, correct. And that's what VFriends is gonna do as well. Like I want it for both.

39:07And this is like kind of my first like real foray into it. I'm excited to get the first email this summer from someone who's like, hey, got the book because I'm a fan of you, read it for my four-year-old. Gotta be honest with you, the patient pig thing really hit. Like I know that I'm gonna be on a plane and I can see my face in the screen on a plane already grinning because that is a little bit of my secret plan. but that's absolutely right. The whole concept of meeting me in the middle. Because people think stoicism has no emotions. No, there's has no emotions. And then there's a slave to your emotions.

39:38Stoic is in the middle between those two. You have it and you choose which ones you utilize or don't utilize, but you're not overpowered by them. The biggest pandemic in parenting right now, a lot of parents right now that are listening have an opposite view of their co-parent, right? Their wife or husband thinks something, they think the opposite. Yes. Yes. One parent takes the lead on something and goes over here. Yeah. The other parent that has a different view to get their kid in the middle, they think they have to go here. Yes. You're too soft on him. You're too hard on him. Correct. And so the answer actually is to go here.

40:11Yes. But that is like the opposite of what most people do. Yeah. So I fully understand. It makes so much sense. And I think about it daily. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You should. If like your instinct is to be hard, you're probably actually already being too hard on them. So you should actively go easier. And if you're like overprotective, you should be like, Hey, I'm going to really push. Correct. But what ends up happening in a parenting environment, why do co-CEOs not work? Parenting is hard. So you have one parent that is third generation wealthy and their framework's different than the person they married who's was born in Mexico and is an immigrant.

40:44They're going to have different P's on their kids, of course. But again, when the first parent moves on whatever, the other parent that's on the other side of the pillow tends to go too far. This is what happened. By the way, this is politics right now in America. Everyone's much more a shade of purple, but we keep pushing each other because of these moves because everyone's actually trying to get the purple. But what they're doing is extremely making red and blue get more red and blue. I'm very passionate about this. And I'm very hungry as a person that loves to communicate and make content and hopes that, you know, every day I hope one of my purple, which is the predominant message I put out disguised in business and other things, that it really has that ultimate viral moment that makes everyone that's too far left or right on anything, parenting, business, politics, go, huh, that's right.

41:35Well, it's funny, like parents are like super concerned about how much screen time their kids have, right? And so you all want your kids to do stuff in the real world. So like one of the strategies we came up with is like, hey, you love watching YouTube videos. I'm going to make, we're going to choose to watch videos about places. Then you're going to get excited to go to those places, then we're going to go to those places. So instead of banning them from the thing, which makes them want to do it more, you think, how do I take this thing you have interest in and use it as a bridge to go to this other place that I want you to do?

42:01Watching parents today who are of the era where parents demonized alcohol, which then only led to kids loving to drink alcohol. And then kids going through college experiences where they saw someone who never drank alcohol because it was demonized completely get wasted on their first week of college watching that generation of parents not realizing that with social media and screen times they're doing the same thing like that's brilliant good for you and i look the other thing i would say to parents is like you're the parent like if you think tiktok like tiktok is a good one because i talk about it in marketing a lot of times the most extreme parents are like china or bad or whatever i'm like why are you yelling at me i'm talking about tiktok about business like you don't like tiktok for your kid you're their parent delete it off their phone Oh, we can't do that.

42:45The peer pressure at school. I'm like, oh, you're a puss parent. I understand now. Yeah. Don't be mad at me. I'm talking about marketing and selling flowers on TikTok. Yeah. Like you have a problem with anything. Address it. Yes. This is my favorite V friend. Actually was going to be the first book, but I got to this. The V friend that I most want to make popular is accountable aunt. We have become remarkable at pointing fingers. Biden's the worst. Trump's the worst. Republicans, Democrats, America, China, my, my spouse, mom, fuck me up. dad fucked me up my boss is a dick capital we are what about this brother the thumb ryan the thumb doesn't exist anymore do you know why i'm so happy i stay in thumb i spend an ungodly amount of time in an enjoyable way this is the interesting part of like what could i've done better i fucked that up damn i shouldn't have done i could have it's and some people when they hear me say things like that they're like doesn't that get depressing i'm like no i'm in control when you think everyone's in control, but you, you're finished.

43:45Yeah. Yeah. I talk about this. It's like, it's called self-discipline for a reason. You know what I mean? Discipline is this mythical thing that you get, you think you get to enforce on other people. No discipline. It's here. It's here, right? Like you can hold yourself to high standards and then you can hope other people come up to this. It's not this weapon. Man, does it have a ripple effect? It's so funny you say that somebody, um, man, this struck me. I was on an Asian tour speaking and I was in Singapore and And it was like this kind of like VIP dinner afterwards. It was the only one I did on that tour.

44:16And this young woman, she might have been 27. We got into one of those favorite dinners I have. 12 people, everyone gets deep. And she talks about how she resented her mom her whole life because she was one of the biggest judges in Singapore and she was never around. And then she was young, 25, 27, 29. She goes, in the last five years, I realized my mom was showing me how to live versus telling me how to live.

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45:19And then as I wrap up, probably the question that I get the most is, how can I teach my kids about Stoicism? How can I teach my kids about ancient philosophy? How do I make my kids interested in this? Get asked this all the time. So I put together some thoughts. One of our more popular episodes on the Daily Dad podcast was my thoughts on how to do this. Let's just get into it. How do you teach your kids about ancient philosophy? Well, you probably don't tell them that you're going to teach them about ancient philosophy because they will definitely not be interested. But the reality is that most of the ancient philosophers were parents.

45:58Most of the ancient philosophers tried to be good parents. And many of the stories that we have of the ancient philosophers, particularly the Stoics, is them talking about lessons that they're trying to teach young people. And so this art of being a Stoic parent is not a theoretical one. It's a very real one. Marcus Aurelius had children. Epictetus didn't have any children of his own, but he adopted a boy and raised him. Seneca had a child. We don't know if he lost the child young, but we know he was a father. We know he wrote a lot about parenting. And then he essentially raised Nero from adulthood.

46:33but not necessarily a success story. But, you know, the Stoics were thinking about how you train young people from the beginning. Cato had children. In fact, his daughter, Portia, clearly he taught philosophy and she became sort of a Stoic superhero in her own way. So what are some of the Stoic lessons for parenting? Well, I think the first, and this is, I think, the simplest, most direct thing you can teach your children. It's this sort of core lesson in Stoicism. And it's, we don't control what happens, but we always control how we respond. That's the core of stoicism, right? We have powerlessness over the external world, over so many things in the external world, but we have complete power over ourselves, over our thoughts, over our emotions.

47:14So one of the things a parent trying to teach their kid stoicism can do, they don't have to teach them names or dates or places or any of that. You just go, look, okay, that person shoved you on the playground. You don't control that. You didn't like that. You didn't want that. But you control what you're going to do in response. Are you going to tell them how that made you feel? Are you going to decide to hit them back? You know, is that the kind of person you want to be? You control whether you're going to sit and cry about it all day. You control whether you're going to pretend to be sick and stay home from school the next day.

47:43You don't control what happens. You control how you respond. You don't control whether your teacher, you know, has it out for you. You control how you show up every day and the work that you put in. You don't control whether you have a natural aptitude for math or sports or any of these things, but you control the effort you put in. You control where you decide to channel your effort in response to this reality. So at the core of Stoicism is that idea. And I think it's one of the most powerful and important lessons you can teach your kid. And the earlier you teach them this, the better. We don't control what happens, but we always control how we respond.

48:14I think if I was going to try to teach my kids some sort of core Stoic lessons, I might just start with those four Stoic virtues. And I think these are words you can put up around your house. You know, you can quiz them on flashcards. you can talk to them about it. And of course, you also have to sort of exhibit them and be a role model about them. But the four stoic virtues are courage, moderation, justice, and wisdom, right? Bravery, endurance, strength, that's courage, temperance. So moderation, balance, self-control, equilibrium, that's that second virtue. Justice, doing the right thing, just that you do the right thing.

48:52Marcus Aurelius said the rest doesn't matter. Then wisdom, the joy and the love of knowledge, the pursuit of knowledge, education. So those four core Stoic concepts, again, your kid doesn't need to know who Marcus Aurelius is, doesn't need to know who Seneca is or Epictetus, but we can just teach them those four things. I think if that core virtue for the Stoics is wisdom, then you have to actively prioritize education in your home. Seneca is given a Stoic tutor growing up. Cato given a stoic tutor growing up. Marcus Aurelius given a stoic tutor growing up. Epictetus meets Musonius Rufus more in his 20s, who he studies under.

49:31So who are the smart minds? Who is handling your kid's education? It's not just about where they're going to school. Who are their educational role models? Who are you surrounding them by that they are learning explicitly from? So that's one of the things I'm thinking about with my kids. Okay, school, That's a legal obligation getting into college. That's part of it. But what can I do with my means to make sure they're getting access to really great teachers and thinkers who they can learn from in a direct one-on-one relationship? We all know that mentorship is really the way that we get ahead, really the way we come to understand things on a deep level.

50:04So how are you helping provide that for your kid? I think this is part of that idea of education. It's not just, hey, you're young. You have to go learn these things. But you have to learn alongside your kids. So Seneca talks about how when he's writing his letters to Lucilius, he says, like, assume that I am laying in the same hospital with you. Like, we're both learning. We're both sick. We're both trying to get better. And so it's not just enough to tell your kids that, you know, wisdom and education are important. But how are you modeling that with your decisions? How are you learning with them?

50:33How are you bringing them in when you're struggling with things? So when we're talking about teaching these four virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom, like how are you helping bring your kids into that? Show them a situation you're struggling with at work that, you know, sort of pulling at your conscience and show them how you're thinking about it, how you're wrestling with it. And hopefully and ideally show them how you're going to make the right decision afterwards. I think another core part about teaching our kids stoicism, once you sort of laid this foundation, is don't baby them when it comes to books.

51:06People used to read Seneca and Marcus Aurelius when they were kids. George Washington was introduced to stoicism as a preteen. So when are you introducing them to the text? Don't just assume like, oh, they're young. I have to give them this special kid-friendly version. No, kids used to read Epictetus in Greek and in Latin. They would learn them in the original languages. And we would never expect our kids to do that. But the reality is they could because we know that generations before they did. So I think we get better by wrestling with difficult ideas, by big ideas, by sort of reading above our level as we talk about a daily stoic.

51:41So don't infantilize your kids and assume they're not capable of pushing themselves. So like, look, sure, they can start with the daily stoic Instagram and they can start with these videos. They can start with the podcast or though, like give them a copy of Marcus Aurelius. Let them wrestle with it. Show how you're wrestling with it to talk to them about it. You might be understanding it at different levels, but make this stoic process something you're engaging in together, something that you are both working on. You know, a house without books is not a home. So what kind of books are you inspiring your kids to read?

52:14Are you pushing them to read? They will rise to your level of expectation when it comes to education. If you assume they're kids and they don't know anything, they're not going to know anything. So push them to really read these texts. And I think they'll be able to absorb Stoicism at a level that will surprise you. The ultimate, most important way to teach Stoicism to your kids is to just live it, right? Epictetus said, don't talk about your philosophy, embody it, right? Don't talk about it, be about it. You can't go around and tell your kids, look, these are the four virtues. This is what the Stoics said.

52:47This is what Marcus Aurelius would do. What matters is what you do. What matters is how you live, how you and your wife or your husband, how you guys model this behavior for your kids. Don't talk to them about being stoic and then freak out in traffic. Don't talk to them about self-control and temperance and then have an insatiable appetite for food or sex or money or fame, right? You have to prove these lessons. So the best way ultimately to teach your kids about stoicism that doesn't require any explicit that work from you as far as teaching goes or instruction goes is just to live the principles that we talk about here and that Seneca and Marcus Reelus and Epictetus laid down all those centuries ago.

53:35So anyways, if you want some more stoic parenting wisdom and advice, be sure to check out the Daily Dad podcast. And don't forget to check out the new Leatherbound edition of the Daily Dad book at dailydad.com slash leather.

53:52thanks so much for listening if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on itunes that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show we appreciate it and i'll see you next episode

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