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.

Get rid of your preconceived notions.

One of the things Napoleon advised his generals against was forming a picture of the battle. What he meant was that your preconceived notions,

your predictions, were a dangerous liability in something as fluid and fast-paced as a battle.

As it happens, this is good advice for fathers as well.

It's easy to go into it thinking that you know because you've read the books,

because you're on your third kid now and have it handled,

because you and your spouse have a plan for how to do it all right.

Then guess what?

Unavoidable reality quickly humbles anyone

with this kind of certainty. Many dads go into fatherhood with strong ideas of how differently

they're going to do things than their own parents. They were upset or hurt or never understood

why their dad was the way that he was.

And what do they soon find out from firsthand experience?

That, in a lot of cases, there actually was a logic to it.

Your dad wasn't as big of a jerk as he seemed to you, a little kid.

That it was more a timeless function of the job than any decision they were consciously making. When we talked to James

Frey a while back about what he learned about fatherhood, his answer was along similar lines. He

described being a father as an ongoing process of learning and adjusting and adapting. Every

situation, every kid was different, he said. In other words, you can't form a

...