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.

We know that our kids want to feel good, feel safe, feel loved, feel that someone is proud of them.

Feel that they are talented, feel that they are worth something.

We know that they'll want to have fun, take risks, mess up, be crazy, feel the pleasures of the world.

As the person who is in charge, as the person who wants them to be successful in life,

it may come to be that we

are at odds with those feelings fairly often, because we see their potential, we're critical,

because we are worried about them, we're strict, because we know how hard and competitive the

world is, we push and push them. Because we have so much on our plate, we don't always say

the nice thing. We don't state

the obvious. The problem is if they aren't feeling safe or loved or proud of them from us, where will

they get it from? Because they will go out and try to find it. If dad is blocked off because dad is

busy, daughter will go to find love in the wrong places. If dad

because dad is a hard ass because dad regrets his own youth, pushes too hard, son might rebel or

son might learn to value the wrong things. It doesn't matter the gender. It doesn't matter the

personality. If dad doesn't give the kids what they need, they'll get it somewhere and it won't be

from the right place. It might be from drugs or a gang or bad influences or reckless behavior

or from a false belief that you can earn acceptance and appreciation. That's wrong. They deserved

those things at birth and they deserved them from you.

I was just out with my kids chopping up some kindling and firewood for a trip we're going on together,

...