Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast, where we provide one lesson every single day to help you with your most important job, being a parent.

I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom, and insights from parents just like you all over the world.

Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

Do you really want to lose this?

We talked recently about the costs of selfishness, ego, narcissism, self-centeredness.

It's not only a recipe for inevitably overreaching in the professional world, it is a death

sentence to personal relationships.

Shaquille O'Neal found that his selfishness was part of the destruction of the Lakers dynasty,

but more painfully, it tore apart his marriage, culminating in a devastating day when he watched

his kids move out with their mother.

You go from having a house full of noise and relatives to haunting quiet, he explained.

Second day, third day, fourth day, forever. The silence starts to get to you. It wasn't just that

he lost a chance at another couple rings with his team or that he lost the ring on his wife's

finger. In losing his kids, Shaq said he felt

the most precious thing in the world slipping away, his children. Losing Sharif, Amria, Shakir,

Mearia, Miles, he said, was like losing the privilege of having joy. Is that what you want to happen?

No.

Then what are you doing?

Why are you making decisions that make it sound like you are in fact okay with that?

You're choosing work over them, choosing a pointless argument over them,

choosing a fleeting pleasure over them, choosing yourself over them. Well, if you don't stop, you just might

get what your actions are saying that you want. Just know that it's going to cost you the ultimate

...