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. There are only hard decisions.

Wouldn't it be nice if everything was simple and straightforward? That's what we'd like the job of a parent to be.

We'd like there to be a blueprint laid out exactly that says what we have to do

and when we have to do it in order to guarantee that all our parental eyes are dotted

and T's are crossed.

Of course, life isn't remotely like that.

It's said of the presidency that only the impossible problems make

their way to the desk of the president. The easy decisions get decided lower in the chain of command.

It's the intractable no-win situations that get escalated to the leader's desk. And the same

could be said for parenting. Parenting like life is often a matter of choosing between the lesser of two evils.

It's about making the best of bad situations. It's about being pragmatic and realistic.

Marcus Aurelius reminds us that we can't go through life expecting it to be like Plato's Republic.

We don't live there. We live in the real world where there are only hard decisions.

Which is actually what we built the new Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge around, which has not just a full week on decision making,

but a full week on problem solving because it's not the easy, simple problems that land on

our desks as parents.

It's only the tough stuff.

That's okay.

We can be ready for it.

And if you're looking for something to make you a better leader at home or at the office,

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