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.

What do they worship?

We live in a culture that celebrates fame, celebrates money, that covets attention.

This isn't nostalgic judgment, it is a fact.

Not long ago, the number one career aspiration for young kids was astronaut.

Today, it's YouTube star.

Well, there's nothing wrong with making a living online.

It does reveal a certain

self-centeredness of today's culture. And we've talked before about how making sure we give our

kids something to believe in, not in the religious sense necessarily, but something they look

upwards at aspire to. And it's also important that that thing doesn't become themselves. In recovery circles,

the phrase higher power comes up a lot. And again, this has a religious connotation, but the real

reason accepting a higher power is part of the 12 steps is because addicts have come to believe

that they are the center of the universe. They don't care about

anyone or anything but their own needs or pain. They don't think anything is sacred, but that next

fix. And nobody wants that for their kids, which is why we have to work really hard to teach

our kids that they are not the center of the universe, that life is not about fulfilling every

bodily need, and that social

media is a dangerous place because it puts us at the whim of our ego and the algorithm which feeds

it. We want our kids to worship things higher than themselves. We want them to stretch, not stoop,

...