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.

Don't make them fit in. Our kids like us are utterly unique.

Inside each person is a combination of DNA that is never before and never will exist again.

And on top of that, each person's experiences, their interest, their unique moment in time, all of it adds up to something very, very special.

And what do we encourage our kids to do with this bounty given to them by biology and fate,

the Black Swan of Black Swans?

We encourage them to be like everyone else.

We compare them to how other kids are doing.

We try to get them to do what other kids are doing.

We're concerned if they don't fit in or if they stand out.

Yeah, that's the whole point of life. It was Dr. Seuss who tried to remind us of the stupidity

of this bias towards sameness. Today you are you, he writes in, happy birthday to you. That is

truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you. Our job as parents is to keep

them this way, to encourage this difference, to help them be newer and stay truer to that you than the day

before. Our job, as we said before, is to keep that spark in their eyes alive, to enhance the colors

they see, not mute them, to help them carry the fire of

their goodness and uniqueness, to help them be what they are, which is something very special,

never seen before, and never to be seen again.

Hey, thank you for listening to The Daily Dad podcast.

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