This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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. Your future is what you make it. It's so far away, so long from now that it's almost impossible to

conceive. Even two weeks from now, it's difficult to consider. But still, it's worth remembering

that a few years from now will be here before you know it. If you're lucky, a few decades from now

will be here before you know it. Your kids will be grown and you might even have grandkids.

You will be old someday. What will you want then? How will you want things to be? What will you want to be able to do with your family? In his fantastic book, Outlive, Peter Attia, and we carry the book in the painted porch. We just did an awesome two-hour interview with him on the Daily Stoke podcast, which you check out. He looks at this idea literally

and figuratively. Will you want to be able to go skiing with your adult children? Will you want to

be able to travel to see your grandkids? Will you want to live long enough to maybe get to see them

get married or bring you great grandkids? Just as important as whether these things are physically

possible, though, is will you have the kind of relationship that allows for it? Will your kids want to do those things with you? These are

questions you have to be thinking about, not just thinking about, but making decisions and investments

about an in. If you eat whatever you want, if you let your weight balloon, if you smoke, drink

to excess, it doesn't matter what dreams you have for your twilight years. You are making a powerful statement in reality about the value of those things to you. And the same goes for how you balance work in life, whether you've put in the work on your issues, whether you've improved it repairing with your kids, whether you support and root for them, whether you judge or criticize them.

Again, you can fantasize about family trips where you're retired, but if while you're working,

you're a self-absorbed miserable jerk, that's never going to happen. The future is a long time from now, and those years can feel very far off. And yet it's decisions we're making right now

the priorities we demonstrate today

that will determine what that will look like. So think about what you're going to want to be able to do

and how you'll want things to be and then decide and act accordingly. You can't be what your kids need if you're not dealing with your own unaddressed issues.

And that's one of the things I wish I'd done earlier.

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