Everything Is A Test Of Your Priorities
The Daily Dad
Daily Dad
4.6 • 630 Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2023
⏱️ 4 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We put our family first. That’s what we believe. That’s what we say. That’s the first commandment in the Daily Stoic Parenting Challenge. That’s the advice we give other parents. That’s effectively what we tell our kids too: You’re the most important thing in the world to me.
And then almost every single day, in countless ways, we fail to live up to those words.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | 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. |
| 0:13.9 | I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom, and insights from parents just like you |
| 0:23.7 | all over the world. Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps. |
| 0:32.6 | Everything is a test of your priorities. We put our family first. That's what we believe. That's what we say. |
| 0:39.7 | That's the first commandment in the Daily Stoak Parenting Challenge. That's the advice we give other |
| 0:44.1 | parents. And that's effectively what we try to tell our kids too. We say you're the most important |
| 0:49.5 | thing in the world to me. And then almost every single day in countless ways, we fail to live up to |
| 0:55.9 | those words. We get up from the Legos to take a phone call that could easily be taken later. We take |
| 1:01.4 | our eyes off of them so we could glue ourselves to the last two minutes of the game. We take the later |
| 1:06.5 | flight back from our business trip because we wanted to go out with our friends the night before. |
| 1:10.5 | We take time off work to be with them, but what ends up taking up most of that time? |
| 1:16.7 | We express concerns about how orderly the house is. We enforce rules about where stuff goes, taking |
| 1:22.5 | away the happiness of our house. If they're the most important thing in the world to us, why the hell are we putting |
| 1:29.3 | so many things in front of them? Why are we saying, as we quote Queen Elizabeth II as saying |
| 1:34.3 | in the Daily Dad, no, not you, dear. Why are we choosing these things that don't matter? Your priorities |
| 1:40.7 | as they exist in your head are meaningless. What matters is how they are expressed in practice. |
| 1:47.2 | Putting your family first is not a state of mind. |
| 1:49.2 | It is a statement you make with your actions day-to-day, minute to minute. |
| 1:53.5 | If something or someone is actually the most important thing in the world, it should be pretty obvious. |
| 1:58.0 | It should be demonstrated by the evidence. |
| 2:07.5 | So is it? It's one of my favorite entries in the Daily Dad, and you can check that out now at DailyDadbook.com. Grab sign copies from me. |
| 2:14.0 | And you can also get it anywhere where books are sold or grab the audio version as well on |
... |
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