The Daily Dad

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     See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art1...

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 t...

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     See...

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 gr...

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, t...

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   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-s...

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...

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 m...

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 wer...

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...

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 , I...

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 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-i...

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 i...

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 crushin...

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...

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 em...

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,...

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 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Pr...

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...

“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 audienc...

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 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notic...

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 fam...

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 incred...

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 See Privacy Policy at https://art19...

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...