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.

You are different now. We worry. We worry when our favorite artist or athletes get married and have

children. We worried ourselves when we had kids for the same reason. Would this affect our careers?

Could we possibly continue to perform the same level, maintain all the things we maintained when we were

younger and had fewer commitments? There's even an expression

one we've rebutted before about how a stroller in the hall is the enemy of great art.

Parenting comes with so many obligations, so many stresses. It is so all-consuming. It can't help

but be a distraction. But the writer Stephen Marsh, who has an amazing little book on writing,

he once explained that being a writer and being a parent are in conflict, but not for the reasons

that most believe. He said the loss of time, the sleeplessness, the responsibility for another life,

the fixedness in place, the need to make money to support them. Having children is like losing

your virginity, he said. It changes the nature of meaning. His point is

that beyond the changes to a woman's body or a man's schedule, what changes most profoundly is what we

value. Suddenly the silliness of so many of our goals becomes clear. The never enoughness of our

ambition was suddenly given a dose of perspective.

If we were trying to achieve and succeed as some kind of misguided denial of death, well, then our

kids are a form of immortality too. You have seen something, finally gotten something that people

tried to tell you, but you just couldn't understand. Happiness is not an achievement.

It's not in stuff.

It is in people.

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