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 Care Less What Others Think.

We used to need so much to be happy as we talked about recently.

We needed things to go well.

We needed excitement and success.

We needed people to like us.

We needed people's approval.

But now, not so much.

Conan O'Brien, who like any performer, has some part of him that craves attention

and validation, has explained how his insecurity has lessened

as he got older and has a family. Oh, as long as they're all right, he said of his kids,

then basically everything is right. And this is kind of an incredible form of freedom. So many people

think that having kids is the end of their creativity or a drag on their career. On the contrary, it can free you up

to do much, much better work because as we've said, it narrows things down real quick. It makes you

far less sensitive to things that don't matter, namely outside noise and other people. It makes you

so much less self-conscious. Aren't you used to embarrassing yourself and being ridiculous now? Having a kid does take up a lot more of your time, that's true, but it also means less time to read what other people are saying about you on the internet, less time to stew, less time to get caught up in controversies at the moment. We do better when we're not obsessed with what other people think about us. Well, now that we have kids, the only people whose opinions

were concerned with don't care about our work at all. So let's use that to our advantage.

When I'm on the phone, I'm walking. In the mornings I take my walk, I'm just always moving, always

active. And that's where today's sponsor comes in.

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