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 were given something special.

You knew it that day in the hospital and you felt it the first time they threw your arms

around you.

You were reminded of it every time they do something decent and kind and good.

You were given something very special.

You've been entrusted with something very special.

A bundle of genes and circumstances that will never, ever again exist in history.

That's never ever existed before. Something, someone totally unique and wonderful. Someone with gifts,

someone with something to offer, someone who needs to be protected and taught and help to become

everything they're meant to be. Okay, so why are you being so short with them? Why are you

complaining? Why are you treating them like a doll or a prop, as we talked about? Why are you trying to make them into something that you want to be? Why are you quibbling over little things here and there arguing over this and that? Why are you prioritizing stuff over them? Why are you gone so much? Why are you making them feel like there's something wrong with them for being different, for making mistakes, for not doing things as fast as you think they should? Why are you rushing them at all? Why aren't you soaking this in, enjoying the time you get while you get it? What you felt that day in the hospital, what hits you in those moments around a campfire, overhearing them in the car, seeing them on stage in a

school play, that was correct. You've been entrusted with something very, very special.

The problem is that we seem to lose hold of this agency. We seem to lose hold of that urgency,

that obligation, the obligation of that realization, and we revert back to normal, as if we've

just got a little side hustle that

we're taking care of. No, as he says in the road, one of the greatest parenting books ever written,

we've been given a warrant. If he is not the word of God, he says of his son, then God never spoke.

Well, let's never forget that. And let's act accordingly. I was just playing in the

pool with my kids and we were shooting this stomp rocket off in the air. And I was like,

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