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.

Everything Marcus learned from Antoninus.

It's pretty incredible how concise Marcus Aurelius is throughout meditations.

There's something like 500 passages in the whole book, and rarely is a passage longer than a few sentences.

But when he sat down to write about what he learned from his stepfather Antoninus,

Marcus Aurelius couldn't help himself. Across many pages,

he details the many, many traits of his hero. We said recently that for his entire life,

Marcus was striving to live up to the example set by Antoninus. And here on Father's Day, we thought we'd let Marcus share everything he learned from

that great man. As Marcus says in book one, I learned from my adopted father, compassion, unwavering

adherence to decisions once he'd reached them, indifference to superficial honors, hard work, persistence, listening to

anyone who could contribute to the public good, his dogged determination to treat people as

they deserved, a sense of when to push and when to back off, a kind of single-mindedness, almost never content with first impressions, or breaking off the

discussion prematurely.

His constancy to his friends, never getting fed up with them or playing favorites.

Self-reliance, always, and cheerfulness.

The way he handled the material comforts that fortune had supplied him in such abundance,

without arrogance and without apology.

If they were there, he took advantage of them.

If not, he didn't miss them. His ability to feel at ease with

people and put them at their ease without being pushy. You could have said of him, as they say of

...