Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast where we provide one lesson every day to help you with your

most important job being a dad. These are lessons inspired by ancient philosophy, by practical

wisdom, and insights from dads all over the world.

Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

What matters more than results?

Tracy Ellis Ross has a famous successful mother, the singer Diana Ross.

You might think that someone that's successful would care a lot about success. Indeed, it's a pretty

common pattern that driven parent drives their child to get good grades, to win games, to be the strongest, prettiest, or most

popular. They want to continue their pattern of excellence down through the college their kids go

to or the profession they work. But Tracy got lucky. Her mom did it right. While most parents

would ask their kids, how are your grades? Did you win? Are you

number one in your class? Diana Ross would ask, did you do your best? How do you feel about it, Tracy?

Tracy, who amidst some fits and starts in the world would go on to be a very accomplished actress,

would explain that her mother's emphasis taught her an essential perspective shift,

how to navigate a life through how it feels to you as opposed to how it looks to everyone else.

We've talked about this before. School doesn't matter. Grades don't matter. What matters

is what your kids learn about the world through these things, the priorities they pick up and the values

they absorb. So that's the question. Are you teaching them that test scores matter or that

learning counts? Are you teaching them that success is winning arbitrary competitions or that

it is becoming the best version of themselves. Results don't matter.

Not the obvious ones anyway.

What counts is the person you are shaping them to be.

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