Reform is Necessary, Despair is Criminal

The Daily Dad

Daily Dad

Society & Culture, Dads, Relationships, Parenting, Self-improvement, Kids & Family, Ryan Holiday, Wisdom, Education, Fatherhood

4.8 • 602 Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 2023

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You weren’t the parent you wanted to be in 2023. You weren’t the person you wanted to be in 2023. Almost no one was. Anyone who thinks or says they were is lying…and for most of us, this truth goes back further than a calendar year.

None of us are perfect. We all screwed up. We all back-slid. We all picked up bad habits. And as a parent, that means our kids picked up those bad habits too. Because, as we’ve said before, behavior is the language of children.

For those ready for reformation, as we mentioned last week, we created the 2024 New Year New You Challenge. It’s a set of 21 actionable challenges—presented one per day—built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Our goal is to help you and your family make 2024 your best year yet.

Participants of the New Year New You Challenge receive:

✓ 21 Custom Challenges Delivered Daily (Over 30,000 words of all-new original content)
✓ Three live Q&A sessions
✓ Printable 21-Day Calendar With custom daily illustrations to track progress
✓ Access to a Private Community Platform

These aren’t pie-in-the-sky, theoretical discussions but clear, immediate exercises and methods you can begin right now to spark the reinvention you’ve been trying for. We’ll tell you what to do, how to do it, and why it works. And when adversity inevitably comes around, you’ll be ready.

The 2024 New Year New Your Challenge officially begins on Monday, January 1st. Stop delaying. Head over to dailystoic.com/challenge and sign up NOW! Let’s go.

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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.
0:15.9	I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom,
0:23.7	and insights from parents just like you all over the world. Thank you for listening,
0:29.6	and we hope this helps. Reform is necessary. despair is criminal. You weren't the parent you wanted to be in
0:38.4	2023. You weren't the person you wanted to be in 2023. Almost no one was. Anyone who thinks
0:44.7	or says they were is lying. And for most of us, this truth goes back more than a calendar year.
0:50.2	None of us are perfect. We all screwed up. We all backslid. We all picked up bad habits.
0:55.7	And as a parent, that means our kids picked up those bad habits too. Because, as we've said before,
1:01.1	behavior is the language of children. But the key questions are who will pick themselves back
1:06.6	up in 2024? Who will not give up? Who will stop the backslide? Who, to borrow from Marcus
1:12.7	Realis, will keep going back to it? Who will keep going back to their self-improvement? Not just
1:18.3	for yourself, but to model the behavior you want to see in your children. Samuel Johnson
1:23.7	didn't have any kids, but near the end of 1775 was 1776 on the horizon, he wrote
1:29.2	beautifully about this in his diary. When I look back on resolutions of improvement and amendment,
1:34.6	which year after year have been made and broken, he said, either by negligence, forgetfulness,
1:39.1	vicious idleness, casual interruption, or morbid infirmity, when I find that so much of my life has stolen unprofitably
1:45.8	away and that I can describe by retrospections scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously
1:51.8	employed, why yet do I try to resolve again? I try because reformation is necessary and despair is
1:59.9	criminal. We must keep trying. It's okay if you have
2:03.5	some bad days, all parents do. It's okay to feel a little discouraged and overwhelmed. It's okay if you
2:08.4	stumble. The path to improvement is rocky. Stumbling is inevitable. But to give up to stop trying,
2:15.5	to let the stumble turn into a catastrophic fall? No, you can't give up
	...

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