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.

Everyone says that becoming the parent changes you, the responsibility, the stress,

the unconditional love, the cuteness.

This is big stuff. But as the comedian Tom Segura observes in one of its great Netflix

specials, it is wrong to say that it changes people. It's just not the right language.

It's that having kids should change you. If it doesn't, he says, if you're still the same person, if you still have

the same routines, the same behaviors, the same priorities after, that's a big problem. You're

doing something wrong. But it's hardly unheard of. Having a kid is a biological thing,

an objective life event. It's not different from growing old or getting married. Plenty of people do those things

without really changing. But as we've said many times here before, becoming a parent is something

different. Becoming a parent, not just being one, it's a choice. It produces a change. Not everyone

that has a kid makes that choice, just like plenty of people

reach 40 without maturing. You have to choose to be changed, to let all this stuff in, to change

yourself around it. It's not a given. It doesn't happen the day you came home from the hospital

with your newborn either. It's a process. It's a transition. It's something you actively do as well as

passively accept. It's a role you embrace, a person you allow yourself to become. It's funny.

I don't think I changed the day my wife had our son. So I'm embarrassed, right? I wish it had been

magical and instantaneous, but it took time.

And it wasn't until even we had two kids that I feel like I fully became the parent that I wanted to be.

It didn't change me immediately. It doesn't change you automatically.

...