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.

Teach them to be kings.

Unless you are currently in line for a hereditary throne, it's unlikely that your

children will ever be a king or a queen. And this is a good thing because it seems like both a

thankless and a toxic job to say nothing of its effectiveness as a form of government.

Still, you should try to raise your kids to be kings, at least in the Stoic sense. It was Musonius Rufus, the teacher

to Epictetus and an advisor to many leaders who said that a king needed to be a philosopher

and that a philosopher needed to be a kingly person. Whatever your kids end up doing,

it's important that they embody this idea. Whatever their gender,

it's important that they embody the many ideals so admirably possessed by someone like

Queen Elizabeth, dignity and restraint and duty and commitment and strength. It's important that

they follow the model of Marcus Aurelius, who strove not to be stained purple, that is, not

corrupted by the power he held. It's important that they learn

how to, as Seneca, the advisor to Nero, wrote, command the greatest empire in the world, our own minds,

our bodies, our own souls. We don't know how powerful our kids will end up being, what armies

they might oversee or laws

they might pass or money they might have, but we can set them up to be worthy of this power.

And we do that by teaching them values, by modeling values, and reminding them that ultimately

it isn't the job that makes the person, but the person who makes

the job. And this is basically the lesson of the boy who would be king and the girl who would be

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