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.

How to be someone they can be proud of. Of course, her father would have preferred to be powerful, to be

wealthy, to hold some prestigious position. He didn't want to dig sewage canals or wait on

entitled aristocrats. He didn't want to be seen at the bottom of Rome's social hierarchy.

Nobody would have chosen that life. But in the girl who would be free,

like in life itself, Epictetus's father doesn't have a choice. Not about their situation anyway,

their status, not in a place like ancient Rome. He couldn't choose his fate, so he chose instead to

focus on how he bore that fate. We didn't choose this, he tells

his daughter, but we can choose not to add to our troubles by complaining about them. When she turns

up her nose at their dirty job, he tells her, how you do anything is how you do everything. And if you

do it well, it can be beautiful, no matter what it is. He refuses to be

humiliated, refuses to be broken. No one has the power to degrade us, he says, only themselves

by being unfair and unkind. Whoever you are, whatever you do, you can be someone your kids

respect, someone that they can be proud of. How? By doing your work well,

by taking it seriously, by taking yourself seriously, by taking a role as their parent, as their

model, as their protector seriously. The single parent working long shifts in a restaurant is

far more impressive than the half-assing stock broker anyway, even if the market compensates

these two roles very differently. The person who is committed, who is doing their best, who is in

command of themselves, the person who focuses on what's in their control that is doing what

needs to be done the right way, that is the true philosopher, not the one who has a fancy degree. You are taking

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