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.

This change we've made, this decision to become dads, it has uprooted everything.

It's like we're hit suddenly with a crossfire

hurricane. The house is a mess. The schedule is grueling. There is never enough sleep, never enough time in the

day. Even the cool, quiet, dark is pierced by the shriek of a man who has stepped on a pile of

Legos and that shriek is coming from your mouth.

Yet to be good at our jobs, to be good at this fatherhood thing, we need stillness, we need time

to reflect, we need focus, we need calm to restore and reboot us. Where will we find it?

It won't be, as Seneca and Marcus Aurelius remind us, in fleeing to the country or to the sea,

it won't be those measly two weeks of vacation or by cutting and running. No, we must find the

stillness within the chaos. It might not feel like these moments of quiet can exist with all

the crying babies or arguing teenagers, but they can.

We must go within.

We must find it early in the morning before the house is awake.

We must drink in those minutes after the kids are in bed.

Really drink it in.

Don't defer it in favor of Netflix.

We must take time with a journal.

We must enjoy that cute but preposterously

slow, walk from the school to the car or from the car back into the house. Soak up the garbage time,

...