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.

They can't help it. It's a remarkable historical what-if. Abraham Lincoln was traveling east to assume the presidency

at a pivotal moment. Several states had succeeded to form the Confederacy in America's future

hung in the balance. For weeks, he'd been working on his inaugural speech in which he pleaded with

his fellow Americans to keep the union together. we must not be enemies, he'd written,

adding that we must be guided by the better angels of our nature. This top secret document that

only a handful of people had even seen one destined for immortality, in fact, was quite nearly

lost. Lincoln's teenage son, Robert, asked to stay with their baggage,

had promptly handed over the leather satchel it was in, among other suitcases, to a hotel clerk

in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lincoln, who had long strived to be a patient, loving father,

unlike his own, was stunned. Are you kidding me? Lincoln's father would almost

certainly have struck his son for even a much less serious offense. The traveling party watched

as the normally implacable Lincoln leaped over the counter and began to furiously go through the

bags until he found it. Thankfully, Lincoln was able to break the pattern of his own bringing. What his son had done

had been incredibly stupid, but this shouldn't surprise anyone because teenagers are stupid. The real mistake

was handing it to a child for safekeeping. What 17-year-old could comprehend the stakes of that speech could have

understood what hung in the balance? He was probably distracted by a girl or the smell of food down

the street. He wasn't thinking about the consequences of his decision because his brain was still

developing the capacity to do that. We have to remember that no matter how high the

stakes feel, and let's be honest, they're rarely as high as Lincoln's were. Our kids are just being

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