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 never know what you're comparing against. You're wondering if you're doing something wrong because your kid can't ride a bike. You're wondering why they're not more athletic or more academic. You feel like a failure because they dropped out of college or because your divorce has been hard on them. And all of these feelings are more pronounced when you look across the street or across the parking lot at school and see other families nailing it in all these

areas. Of course, what you're not seeing is that the parents with those bike riding kids are

wondering why their kids can't swim. The athletic parents are deeply concerned that sports are

becoming their kid's entire identity. They're concerned that their superstar college kid is

profoundly depressed and unhappy. And by the way, their own marriage is hardly the picture of contentment that it appears to be on the outside.

The point is that the people you're comparing yourself to are struggling also in their own ways with their own issues.

And in fact, they're almost certainly looking at your kids and feeling insecure.

Why aren't my kids as well behaved, as funny, as confident, as whatever? It's been said that

envy is the one sin that is absolutely no fun. It is self-inflicted torture based on nothing but a

perception that someone else is doing better. But so often they are not. More often than not,

if we zoomed out, we'd see that things even out. So stop. Focus on your own family. Focus on your own metrics.

Don't pass this torture onto your kids, forcing them to measure up how you think other kids are

doing. Let them be themselves. Let them grow. Let them change. Let them discover at their own pace.

And give yourself the same gift. As dads, we know how important keeping up with your health is so you can keep up with your kids.

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