This is The Most Expensive Thing | The Best Stoic Insights On Raising Kids

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1:29Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On 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.

1:54This is the most expensive thing. Since Stoicism was founded, the Stoics have warned again and again about the downsides of abundant wealth. Seneca must have been suspicious of those warnings because he found his way to becoming one of the richest people in the Roman Empire. He accumulated a net worth of what would be hundreds of millions of dollars into today's money. He famously owned 300 ivory tables for entertaining. He made so many enormous loans to colonists in Britain that when the debt was called in in around 60 AD, it set off the Boudicca Massacre in which tens of thousands of people ultimately died.

2:36In letters from a Stoic written during the final three years of his life, Seneca would warn again and again about the burdens of becoming rich. Very often, he writes, the things that cost nothing cost us the most heavily. Most people think, he says, in the quest for an acquisition of money that one has much to gain and little to lose. In a modern context, it would be the sales rep seeing only the increase in pay and status that comes with the promotion, not the decrease in autonomy and the peace of mind that comes with the responsibilities of being a manager of an entire sales force. But if I accept the promotion, I'll have more money.

3:16But Seneca anticipates this reply. He says, yes, you will also have more trouble and more people bringing you problems, more things taking up your time, more possessions to worry about, more time wasted thinking about how to own more and more money. You have to reflect, Seneca writes, not only when it is a question of gain, but also when it is a question of loss. You have to think not only of the upsides, but also of the downsides that come with money. You have to think about the time and freedom and happiness wrested from your hands and replaced only with money. You have to think about the burdens of becoming rich.

3:58You have to think about who you might become in the process of doing so, as Seneca so poignantly and tragically shows. Well, this is actually something we talk about in our new course, The Wealthy Stoic, A Daily Stoic Guide to Being Rich and Free and Happy. It's not just about how to make money, but how to think about money more holistically, how to earn ethically, but then also acquire responsibly, how to integrate sensibly into your life. It's rooted in the experiences and the writings of the Stoics, and we're going to teach you about the upsides and the downsides of it all. It's going to take place over the next nine weeks.

4:41There's emails every single week. We're going to talk about how Epictetus is actually one of the wealthiest of the Stoics, and how Seneca as being one of the richest was in some ways one of the poorest. We're going to talk about how to spend and save, what to prize more than money, how to climb out of and recover from setbacks and a lot more. Every week, there's going to be carefully selected resources and tools that will help you on your path to financial independence or whatever you're after. There's going to be live video sessions with me. There's going to be experiences and lessons from my own life, my own entrepreneurial journey, and my investing journey and much more.

5:24So check out The Wealthy Stoic, A Daily Stoic Guide to Being Rich, Free, and Happy. It's a live course. We'll run an archive of it later, but I'd love to have you join us. Do it together. You can sign up now at dailystoic.com slash wealth. Or if you join Daily Stoic Life at dailystoiclife.com, you get this challenge and all our challenges for free. I'll see you in there.

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6:53Nothing challenges you quite like having kids, like becoming a parent. And the Stoics are no exception to this. First off, most of the Stoics do have children. In fact, Stoicism is one of the first schools to talk about the importance of raising a family, having kids. But the Stoics would have been challenged in every way by having kids, just like you and I are challenged. And not only that, I think some of their best insights come from having kids and specifically address how to be a better parent. And in today's episode, I want to talk about what the Stoog can teach us about our most important job, raising great kids, being a great parent.

7:32And it turns out there's quite a bit. To me, this is one of the hardest things in the entire world for a parent to do. It's an exercise from Marcus Aurelius and from Epictetus, who are both parents. They say, as you tuck your child into bed at night, say to yourself, they will not survive to the morning. Imagining your child's mortality. I mean, it's torturous. It's the most painful thing in the world. It's conceiving of the inconceivable, the most awful thing you could do. And yet, why did they do it? It wasn't to create distance between them and their kids. It wasn't to not be connected or loving to their kids.

8:08It wasn't to write them off. On the contrary, it's about actually being there. It's about thinking you don't know how many more of these you get. The Netflix or the email or the book you wanted to read, none of that matters more than this moment you have together right now. We are not very good with time. Seneca says it's not that we don't have enough of it, it's that we waste a whole lot of it. But one of the wonderful things I found about having kids is that it puts this in perspective because I'm not wasting my time when I'm over committing. I'm not taking time for myself. I'm stealing time for my children.

8:44I'm stealing time that I promised someone else. And so we have to think about time as our most precious resource. Seneca says death is not in the future. Death is happening right now. We're dying every minute when we waste it on social media, when we waste it in pointless meetings, when we waste it going to things that we don't need to go to, even though we have a million other things to do. We waste our time. But we're not just taking that time from ourselves. We're taking it from our children. We're taking it from the important work that only we can do. We're taking it from our spouse. And of course, we are also taking it from ourselves.

9:15Stop wasting time. It's your most precious resource. And you have to protect it, not just for yourself, but for the people you care about and the people that you don't know how much time you will get with in this life. When my wife was pregnant with our first child, we came here to Dinosaur Valley State Park. and we walked in this little river and you can stand in these footprints that dinosaurs left like hundreds of millions of years ago. So we just came back. Now we have two kids, one's five, one's two. And it struck me there's this sort of stoic idea that we never step in the same river twice.

9:46So here I am stepping in this river that a dinosaur stepped in 100 million years ago. I stepped in it five years ago. How much has changed? Even though everything remains the same, right? The footprint is unchanged for 110 million years. But literally everything else is different. I'm different than who I was five years ago. So one of the things we want to seek out as parents is this idea that we never step in the same river twice. You go do the same things over and over again, but you appreciate how much has changed, how much your kids have learned, how much they've grown. This is why you should reread books, rewatch old movies.

10:15You can't step in the same river twice, but you can't experience that same thing in a new way. And that's so powerful and important and humbling and inspiring. And I think it's not just stoic wisdom, but it's really great parenting wisdom. If you haven't done it, you should try it. One of the best insights I ever heard about parenting is this, that behavior is the language of children. They can't always tell you how they're feeling. They don't always understand what they're going through. They can't articulate things sometimes because they're so young, they don't have the words, but maybe they don't have the concepts or the experiences, or maybe they're afraid.

10:49Maybe they don't have the relationship with you that would make it possible for them to translate what they're feeling to you. But their behavior speaks volumes. Your kids are telling you that something's not okay by the way they're acting. Your kids are telling you they're hungry by the way that they're acting. Your kids are telling you that they're stressed or depressed or afraid or feel unloved by the way that they're acting. Maybe you're one of those parents who go, my kid never talks to me. Your kid is talking to you all the time. Language is the behavior of children, but you're only going to hear it if you're trying to listen, if you're really looking, if you're paying attention.

11:26behavior is the language of children the best piece of parenting advice I ever got was that kids do well when they can what I take that to mean is is that when they're well rested when the incentives are right when they've been supported when they feel good right when they've been prepared when things have been explained then they succeed the problem is we expect our kids to succeed in any in all circumstances is even when the deck is stacked against them, even when we're stacking the deck against them. Your kid's having a meltdown because he's hungry. Your daughter's having a meltdown because you skipped nap.

12:02Your kid's struggling in school because they just moved and they don't know anyone, they don't have friends, right? Kids do well when they can, when they're set up to succeed. So as parents, instead of focusing on criticism, instead of focusing on punishments or rewards, instead of trying to force them to sheer force of will, make them be what we want them to do, why don't we just ask ourselves, are we setting them up for success? Are we setting them up to be what they're capable of being? Are we setting them up to do well? Because when they are set up to do well, they will. Kids do well when they can.

12:37You don't just like magically become great at parenting. It's a thing you get better at over time, one day at a time, one experience at a time. That's what I'm trying to do as a parent of two young boys. But it's also what I try to do with Daily Dad. Every day I write one totally free email that goes out to thousands of people all over the world who are just like you, parents who are trying to get better at their most important job. And I'd love to have you join us. It's totally free, no spam, one email a day. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. And I hope you sign up at dailydad.com.

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