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 stop worrying. Right after he had kids, the comedy writer Michael Schur took a walk with his mother.

You worry about one set of things when they're babies and then another when they're a toddler, he told her.

And then as he writes in his wonderful book, How to Be Perfect, the correct answer to every moral question,

he went on with his worries about them as kindergartners

and middle schoolers and high schoolers. I guess that's just the deal with parenthood, he said,

trying to make himself feel better. You worry and worry and worry until they're finally grownups

and have jobs and stuff. It was only then that his mother replied, oh, it doesn't get any better when they're

grownups. I worry about you all the time. It'd be wonderful if it were otherwise, but that's just

the way that it is. You never stop worrying about your kids. How could you? They might be older,

but they're still running around unsupervised. If you're lucky enough to live to be a hundred, you're still

worrying about what's happening in the world and what it means for your children and grandchildren.

You'll still be worrying about whether they're taking care of themselves, whether they're happy,

whether they're feeling okay. So what does that mean? It means pace yourself. You're always

going to be fretting, so maybe you don't have to

fret so hard about this thing right now. It means you don't have to invent stuff to worry about.

Life will take care of that. It means you better find an outlet, a hobby, a practice, a place to

channel this worry too, because it's never going to be resolved and you don't want to make yourself or your kids

miserable because of it.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Daily Dad podcast.

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