The Daily Stoic - Jessica Lahey, Angel Parham, Brett McKay, and Dr. Harvey Karp On Parenting and Stoicism

Episode Date: December 30, 2020

Today’s episode features clips from some of the best interviews about parenting in 2020. Ryan talks to Jessica Lahey, Angel Parham, Brett McKay, and Dr. Harvey Karp about letting your kids fail, reading the classics to them, teaching them hope and decency, and how to approach parenting from a Stoic perspective.This episode is also brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. Visit http://linkedin.com/stoic to get fifty dollars off your first job post.Today’s episode is brought to you by Thuma. Thuma has spent thousands of hours making the perfect platform bed frame, called The Bed. The Bed by Thuma is super supportive of your mattress, breathes well, and is built to naturally minimize noise. Thuma ships your bed frame right to your door, and it takes five minutes to assemble, no tools required. Visit Thuma.co/stoic to get free shipping on your order of The Bed today. Finally, this episode is also brought to you by HelloFresh, the meal-kit subscription that gets you healthy and delicious home-cooked meals, right to your doorstep. HelloFresh sends you meal kits in a way that fits in with your schedule and dietary preferences. Meals are seasonal and delicious, and save you and your family time and money on grocery shopping. Visit HelloFresh.com/stoic90 and use code STOIC90 to get $90 off, including free shipping.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 journal philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wanderer's podcast business wars.

And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to Business Wars on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another very special episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. Look, you may know I have another podcast that I do called Daily Dad. Another Daily Email I do called Daily Dad, another Daily email I do called Daily Dad.

I became a father in 2016 and as you can imagine, it's been one of the most challenging life-altering experiences that I've gone through. And it challenges you philosophically more than anything else. And, you know, the Stoics were fathers and mothers and husbands and wives. And all the other sort of familial positions we can hold in this life. And when Marcus says it stares you in the face, nothing is so well suited to philosophy as a lawyer in right now. I think being a father, being a mother, being a parent is a great example of that.

And you know, Senka had a son, a pet hepatitis, adopted a boy, Marcus really said, and many children, let's just say he was more successful in raising some than others. Parenting is a theme throughout stoicism, and it's a choice we make that comes with a number of duties and responsibilities and obligations. And philosophically, I think it calls us to exhibit those same standard four stoic virtues of courage and justice and wisdom and temperance. And so today's episode is some of the best insights

we have on parenting from some of the stoic fellow travelers and philosophers that I've interviewed over the last few years. We have Jessica Lehu, whose wonderful book, The Gift of Failure, is a must read. We talked to Dr. Parham, who's an expert on teaching the classics to kids, and actually I think this interview is a great way to learn the classics whether you're interested. I know personally I'm in the middle of reading some Shakespeare to my to my oldest son, and I'm learning as I teach, as Seneca says. I talk in the middle of reading some Shakespeare to my, to my oldest son. And I'm learning as I teach, as Seneca says.

I talk to the great Brett McKay, founder of Art of Manliness. And when we talk about teaching your kids hope and decency and these sort of principles that don't change. Finally, we talk to Dr. Carp, the writer of Happy's toddler on the block, and most importantly, my life, the inventor of the Snew, which my wife and I were just in the process of loaning to another friend, and now that the inventor of the snoo, which my wife and I were just in the process of loaning to another friend, and now that our our youngest is out of it, just a wonderful,

brilliant device that's been life-changing. Anyway, see you and I talk about how how how how to handle this complex job, how to talk to children, how to understand how they think, and how to apply stosism to a thing that challenges you in every way you can imagine. Here we go. Here's me talking to the author of the GIF, a failure, Jessica Leihy. You know, obviously the title and the concept of my book, this idea of the obstacle being the way, sort of, in a sense, is saying the exact same thing

that your book is saying, although it yours is geared much more towards parenting than mine. Parenting was very far from my mind when I was writing that book at 25 or 26. But this idea of failure being a gift that there's good that can come out of mistakes, falling short, things not going the way that you would like them to go. To me, it seems like a very stoic idea. You know, it actually didn't start in parenting for me. It started in teaching for me and only blood on over into parenting when I realized that I was doing, you know, the things that I was really pissed off at my students' parents for,

sort of creating this learned helplessness in their kids, you know, saving them every single time they forgot their homework that kind of thing. I was all I was very much on a high horse about this too, and I was really pissed off at them, and then I realized I was doing the same thing with my own kids, and that's perspective of what helps kids learn the best. And, you know, there wasn't a lot of great research sort of on the intersection of autonomy support of parenting or directive parenting and learning. And sort of that's what I became really interested in. And it turns out that when we're really directive or controlling of our kids, that it actually undermines their ability to learn, not just their motivation.

So yeah, there's absolutely a big crossover between the two ideas. And, you know, it's not that I want kids to screw up and fail that sort of beside the point, what I'm more interested in is how they react when they do, when, because it's not if it's a when, as we all know. So that element right there of how do we perceive that screw up, that mistake, that failure, and how do we react to the things we can control and the things we can't? I think that's where the intersection really lies. Yeah, no, it's interesting. I think when the when the obstacle's the way it first came out, people would sometimes go like, okay, so

so should I be seeking out adversity, you know, and my answer was always sort of like, life will take care of that for you. And so I don't think, yeah, I don't think parents need to be looking for opportunities for their kids to fail. It's primarily making sure that when they inevitably do fail, you're not depriving them of the chance of seeing it for what it is and learning that lesson. Yes, and no, I think there is this,

the thing that was happening with my students and in Evelu with my kids as well is that there was this real hesitation to do anything that created a challenge because there, and this goes sort of to the work of Carol Dweck with mindset that there was, it was really easy to get complacent and to coast because that's safe.

Because then, you know, if you've got this label of, you know, gifted and talented or smart or whatever, stuck to your forehead, then the way to keep that, to hang on to that and to feel good about yourself, was to not screw anything up. So there is this need, I think, for us to encourage our kids and not so much by forcing them to do it by modeling it, modeling these actions for them to stretch their brains and stretch their, you know, their concept of what they can do and to challenge themselves because the kids that are going to kind of stay stagnant. So it's not that we're like looking for adversity for kids, but we are looking for them to do new things that will stretch their intelligence and stretch their capacity and make new connections

in their brains. Because really, we're talking about kids and especially adolescents who have these incredibly plastic brains. And without that sort of challenge, we don't create more connection and expand the potential for even greater intelligence. So, yes and no to that question. Sure. It comes with sort of not letting your kids fail is that they already have, like, as a parent,

you failed so many times, so you've learned that lesson. So you're like, let's just get this, right? Right. But for them, they haven't failed. And they actually have only had so many opportunities to fail in their life. They're actually depriving them of something that is disproportionately valuable sort of right here and right now

because they haven't gotten their ASCIC 50 times, right? They haven't had their heart broken before. Like you wanna hit fast forward through something that they've never seen this movie before. Well, it's funny you mentioned heartbreak. I was talking to a kid a teenager just last week actually who just got out of a relationship that you know she she was saying you know I just wish I hadn't wasted my time those two years on this relationship and and I was telling her about you know my first love and how you

know that for me it was a really challenging, painful time when I allowed myself to be treated in ways that I would be so ashamed of right now. But that being treated that way and getting out the other side and realizing that I was the one who ended it, you know, at the end of the relationship, that made me understand how I wanted to be treated and what I wanted in a human being. And the funny part for her was that I said, you know, when this started and I saw you start to go through this, I wanted more than anything in the world to download my experience somehow into your brain so that you could understand how this was gonna turn out in two years. But I, you know, I can't do that. I can give you the best possible support. And by the way, when it comes to our kids,

the way we really have to do that is by understanding that keeping the lines of communication open by supporting them and making sure that we don't think they're stupid for what they're doing or that we're not dismissing them out of hand, because they're going to need to come and talk to us about those things when that end result that we could have avoided if they just taken our advice.

But I try to think of a lot of things, because that's the way it makes the most sense to me is by thinking about love and heartbreak. When I come to a point where I really, really just want to take over, take the reins for my kid, and just do an end run around an experience because wouldn't it be faster if I just told them from my own experience when it went wrong with me, I think about that

heartbreak thing because really there are so many things that we try to do an end run around that would be so much better. And an analogy recently I did was we were going somewhere my whole family and I sort of lied a little bit and said we had to beat the airport sooner than we did. And we got to the airport and I just handed the rain, we stepped inside the front door and I said, okay, what do we do? Where do we go next? Because my kids are so used to me dragging them through the airport and telling them where

to go and what to take out of their pockets and when to do it. I realized, wow, there isn't going to be this like magic moment in whatever age they first have to fly by themselves that they just know how to do it because they have been watching. They've been letting me do all the work. So letting them have that experience, it took forever to get through the airport and it was so frustrating for me to keep my mouth shut.

But, you know, it's a little bit like that first love experience. I can't download that information to their brain. I just have to let them go through it. No, I remember I was just... I'm frustrating for me as an adult. I just want to be able to, and for my students, you know, when I'm teaching them Latin, oh my gosh,

this would go so much faster for all of us if they would just be able to like, biosmosis suck up all of the knowledge that I'm trying to hand out to them, but that's just not how it works. I remember I was probably in college. I was supposed to go meet someone in a hotel and, you know, like, I get there and they're like, you know, I'm in room 909 or something and I said, what, what, what floor is that on?

And it was because I, even though I'd stayed in dozens or hundreds of hotels in my life, it had never been forced for, like, somebody hit the button on the elevator for me, somebody told them, and he always went, Floor, we were on, it's a minuscule connection that, you know, sort of once you get, you know, you never forget. But it was like, oh, no one, no one, I've never, even up in, you know, 18 years old, I've never actually been responsible enough for myself to have to know how to get from the lobby of the hotel to the room

we're in. You know, it's an embarrassing moment at the same time. But I'm forced to learn that at 18 when I could have learned it at 11. And so, yeah, I think there's this concept of snow plow parenting to me sort of encapsulates the universe that a lot of kids live in, that just the path has been cleared for them perpetually and consistently almost since they were born. There's a great discussion of this very concept at the beginning of Michael Thompson,

who's one of my favorite writers about boys. He wrote a book called Home Sick and Happy about sort of why campus such a magical experience for kids and why they learn so much when they're there. And in the introduction, he talks about when he's out speaking to parents about, you know, parenting issues and boys and kids in general, he asks the adults in the room to think of a moment when they really learned something that they were proud of. Like when they really accomplished something amazing.

And then he has them really think about that moment, put themselves in that moment, and then ask them to raise their hand if their parents were there when that incredible learning happened. And he said hardly anyone ever raises their hands. Because for me, it was, I had to go pick up my parents at, I was living in Italy at the time. I think I was 20, 21, something like that. And I had to go get my parents at the airport and Rome. And I lived a train, a couple trains away. And I had to go get my parents at the airport in Rome and I lived a train and a couple trains away and there was a strike and the trains were running. And yet I managed to get to the airport all by myself during this strike to get my parents on time. And it was a, the sense of pride I felt over being able to problem solve at a time like that was for me. It was a very personal experience.

And of course they weren't there because they would have fixed it. They would have ordered up some way to get there. And those moments are really, really important for kids. And we have to be able to step back and let them have those moments so that when they're as I just turned 50, I still remember I still feel such great pride in that moment. And I wouldn't have that if someone had fixed it for me. You know, you have that instinct where something goes wrong and then you're like, I should

call my dad, my dad will help me with this. I wonder how much of that is, is like, do they actually have that much experience in this thing or do they have confidence in their judgment, right? Which is actually something anyone can have, right? There actually is no right or wrong way to sort of take your car to the shop or do this or that. But what that sort of dad energy is

is often confidence or authority. And we still lack it in ourselves that we sort of want it in another person. And I mean, it's not a bad thing to continue to be helped by your father, but, but I think oftentimes that dependency on it is a, is due to a kind of a lack of confidence or, or actually, I would love to shift the language because I think that the word confidence is a word. I try not to use that often only because I think the word competence is a lot more important

when you're talking about parenting anyway, because competence and confidence are really different. And it comes down to, it comes down unfortunately to the self-esteem movement, I think, where we hope more than anything that our kids feel confident in themselves. And so we pump them up and we tell them how capable they are and how they can do anything they want to do and be anything they want to be an

aren't they so talented. But the research is really clear that that when we tell kids these things like you're so smart you're so talented you can do anything blah blah blah. Especially for kids with really low self esteem that that sort of talk in order to boost their confidence doesn't actually do that. It actually lowers their self-esteem because for kids, when they're struggling, if they're being told that that should not be their experience, that they are so gifted, so talented, so creative, so perfect, whatever, that then their reality doesn't match what people are saying their reality should be. And so I try to put more emphasis on the word competence, which is confidence based on actual experience, trying something, screwing it up, trying it again, that kind of thing. So this idea that, you know, confidence is great.

And I want my kids to have confidence too, but confidence is really more about optimism, I think. Whereas competence is a solid footing understanding that, okay, I have done something similar to this. I can apply that knowledge to this new arena, and I can probably, you know, I've figured out how to go places on trains before. I know how to use a cab. I probably, my Italians not very good, but I've done a couple of these things, and I can probably put them together to figure out a new way to get to that airport. And that's competence, not just confidence. And I think we need to move towards the competence idea

in order to help kids feel like they can problem solve. No, I'll buy that. I, when I use the word confidence, I really mean, I'm thinking actually, yeah, in the sense of confidence in it. Like, Marie Forleo has this phrase, everything is figure outable. It's like, do you have confidence?

Because like, think about it, it's on your first book. You had confidence that you could do it, even though there's evidence you could do it. But you had what your confidence is is in, and your second book is just as hard, because it's starting with a blank page again, but you have a sense that you have knowledge and evidence based sense that although this problem is really hard, there is a solution if

there is a solution, you will be able to find it. And that's what I think you need to go through the world with the sense that I love that. Yes, I absolutely love that, but I would also much rather feel the way I felt going into my second book saying not only do I know that I have the capability of doing it, but I've had the opportunity to screw it up and figure out what I did wrong and therefore now have the knowledge to go into this other book that for me was harder to write, but understanding that I had that capability sort of under my belt. So I love, I mean, if you look at my career trajectory, the joke among my parents and even my husband has been that I have this habit of talking myself into jobs that I'm absolutely not qualified to do, but I just have this optimism that I could figure it out. And I've been able to do that.

But what's really fun is to do something that's really, really hard and challenging in other ways, but at least understands that you've had the opportunity to screw that up and figure it out and get it right. I've got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. The Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the

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Download the Amazon Music app today. And here's me talking to classicist Dr. Angel Parham. You know, you look at most children's books, for instance, and they're funny and entertaining and bright, you know, have bright photos and everything. Then I can track like when you look at old history books and you know, like when you look at old history books, and you know, like something like the story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, that's obviously not as exciting as a pizza birthday party with, you know, supernatural figures, and you know, all the craziness in a kid's book. But the reason they were telling that story, even though it's not strictly true, was to really teach something important.

And I think that's another thing we lose when we sort of just focus on how entertaining is a piece of literature. Absolutely. This is a really wonderful book by Vegan Beroyin called Tending the Heart of Virtue. And the subtitle is How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination. And it is, I highly recommend this book.

And what he does is to really kind of flesh out exactly what you just said. What is it that, why is it that we read these classic stories? What do you get out of it? And he talks about how dwelling in story and metaphor helps us, young children especially, to think about the truth of what it means to be human, of what kind of person we want to be,

or don't want to be of these larger issues of love and goodness and evil, that is what those stories do. And I think we have lost an interest in our culture in cultivating this kind of moral imagination. Again, it comes down to quantifying. It's all about quantifying and what are the test scores and how procedures are the colleges that the kids get into. And that's the mark of a good education, rather than what kind of people are we cultivating with this education? I'm curious.

How do you, because what's interesting about these texts as vessels for virtue and inculcating these values of Western civilization, I find that to be so inspiring and it's been so informative for me. And then, of course, also, it's really easy to lose sight of, you know, the hypocrisy that looms over all of these works. I'm curious, like, in a city like New Orleans, with your background in sociology as an African-American, how do you talk to your kids about the things that are not talked about in these books, or in contrast, some of the bad things that are talked about in these books.

How do you suggest parents think about that, and how do we deal with that as a culture? Yeah, well, I do think that's a very important part of it. I think you have to deal with it head on. Some of it depends on the age of the children as well. But from a very early age, you know, I've just been straightforward with my kids, you know, when we're looking at a situation, say we're looking at the issue of slavery, you know, just talking through what does that mean, you know, what, how, what does that mean for someone to be enslaved,

you know, what do you think about that? Why, how, why would that happen? You know, you have to, from an early age, talk those things through. And I think the other reason, you know, one of the big reasons that the classics have been so in decline is because there are objections based on these very understandable critiques.

Right? You know? It's all old white guys. That's right. And I think the critique is understandable, but I don't think that that means that, okay, we just shouldn't read any of this. And here's why. I think one has to have a broader understanding of the classics and what they can do and

so this idea of awakening moral imagination or using them to think about ourselves and grander terms. So anyone who knows anything about the black intellectual tradition and classic writers of that tradition, so Frederick Douglass, for instance, W.E.B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, Philis Wheatley. These are some of the kind of heavy hitters in terms of plaque writers. All of them were immersed in the same classic literature. Both of them. And yet, they got something incredibly inspiring out of it. You know, certainly there are things there that are not inspiring and that are hypocritical and that are problematic.

Well, they didn't use those parts of them, right? You know, they took the parts that were nourishing and that were transformative. And that is what made the difference for them. formative, and that is what made the difference for them. So Frederick Douglass, for instance, he got his hands on a volume called the Columbian Orator, which was filled with, you know, these great speeches, and when he was a young boy, that's what he used to train himself to read and to speak persuasively. And in the Colombian order, there is a dialogue called dialogue between a master and a slave. And in that dialogue, the slave is basically explaining to the owner, you know, why this is just a bad deal for both of them. You know, how they're both being demeaned by this situation

and how it, you know, liberty is the way that you have to go. And so this also awakened in him, you know, of course he already knew the institution of slavery was a problem, but it just strengthened his conviction all the more. There is, in reading Du Bois, you know, he's got all kinds of classic references all throughout the souls of Black folk and his other writing as well, same with Phyllis Wheatley. So I just think it's really short-sighted to say, well, you know, it's it's it's mainly white men who have written this and some of them were slave owners

and some of them were really horrible people so we just shouldn't read their ideas at all. Well, what about non-white people, particularly African-Americans who have read this same literature and who have used it to great effect in liberatory ways? Now, I think it's all about exactly who have used it to great effect in liberatory ways. Now, I think it's all about exactly how do we read this literature, and we have to guide our children in ways that they read it

not to reinforce the inequalities we already have, but to generate conversations. And my favorite way of doing this, particularly when you start to get to the upper levels of, say, seventh through 12th grade, is to put these texts into dialogue with each other. You know, so read some of the core texts, you know, Aristotle Plato, in dialogue with writers like Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, for instance. One of my favorite things to pair is to look at Plato's allegory of the cave, for instance.

And just kind of the power of education is one way that you can interpret that. And in our obligation to once we discover truth, to spread it as opposed to run off. That's why I've always taken that allegory. Exactly, exactly. So you can read the allegory of the cave together with, say, Frederick Douglass' narrative,

where he has this eye-opening passage about what it meant to his personhood and his soul to learn how to read. You know, there is so much you can do with that type of rich dialogue. Unfortunately, I don't usually see that happening. You usually see is, you know, two extremes. One that says, we have to defend this canon, you know, at all costs, and you know, just forget about all the critics. And then you have, on the other hand, this is a horrible racist group of readings and writers, and we just should cast them off. And that is not how black intellectuals

process this, you know, and I'm thinking here 18th and 19th century. That's not how they process it at all. And, you know, even going into the 20th century, Martin Luther King, very much again, immersed in the classics. And these are people that we would never critique for, you know, reinforcing racist hierarchies. And here's me talking to the founder of artofmanliness.com, Brett McKay. So when the pandemic started, I went to my shelf and I got the road by Cormac McCarthy off the shelf.

And my wife was like, you cannot read that book this right now. And I was like, you're totally right, I won't. But it kept, it was just occupying a part of my brain. And I was like, you know what, it took me, it wasn't until about three weeks ago that I finally worked up the courage to do it. And I know it's one of your favorite books, but at the end of it, literally, I had to,

I finished the book and I just went in my son's room and I just sat down and wept. It was the middle of the night, he was asleep, but it was just overwhelming. I'm curious, have you thought about, have you thought about that book recently? I mean, I read it once a year. Oh, really?

Yeah, it's sort of like a emotional, it's like almost like a Greek tragedy. Like you go, you read it. Yes, sort of a catharsis. And I do the same thing, a Greek tragedy. Like you go, you read it. Yes. Sort of a catharsis. And I do the same thing. You read it.

And I mean, I read it before I was a dad and it read it with me. But then when you read it as a dad, you just start sobbing. And then you just all you want to do is you want to hold your kids. When you're a dad, you're going through this crazy time that we're going on right now with the pandemic. And then the protests that are going on against police brutality for the death of George Floyd and all this other stuff, it can be easy to feel very, I don't know, like you lose hope. But like the message of the road, which is in sentence, extreme, extreme setting, is you

can ever lose hope. Like you always have to teach, and you had to pass it on to your kid, you have to, you have to teach them to carry the fire. I mean, that's, I think the most powerful message. Even when things are the most hopeless, that's like when hope becomes even more meaningful and significant. So to you is hope, what the fire is?

Yeah, I mean, it's a whole bunch of things. It's hope, it's all good things. It's like it's goodness is what it is. That's what I think it is, yeah. It's decency. Decency, yeah, but the hope that it will still carry on, even when you think it's gonna get snuffed out. How are you talking to your kid?

I know you were telling me you'd had sort of a family meeting recently where you talked about stoicism to your kids. How old are they? And I'm curious just like how did you explain it to them? Yeah, so once a week, we do what's called family home evening, and it's on Monday night, and it's really short. We do, here's the basic format. Either my wife or I give it like a short lesson, it's like literally like five minutes long, and it can be about anything. It could be sort of like life lessons that you would see on, I don't know,

Daniel Tiger's neighborhood. Yeah. Or it's like very practical. Like we'll talk to him about like what money is, what it means to pay the bills, things like that. And then after that, we go over our schedule for the weeks. So we are all in the same. So like who's got practice, who's got a birthday party, that hasn't really been going on. Honestly, the meetings haven't been really going on during the pandemic. There's nothing to meet about because you're just getting each other's business all the time. Right.

And then so after we do that, then we discuss issues in the families, anything that's going on that we need to get straight and make our family run better, the household run better. This is where you kind of, we try not to make it like airing of grievances. But it's like, okay, you know,

you're leaving your stuff out on the floor. Let's not do that. Please don't do that. Yeah. And then after that, we read our family rules, which we got from John Wooden. Have you read John Wooden, right? I have. I don't know about these family rules, though. I'm gonna look it up. Yeah. So it's like something as dad had as a kid. And it was basically your best work harder every day, never lie, never steal, never cheat. Be honest. Don't lie. Don't cheat. Don't

make excuses, something like that. So we recite that together. So anyways, one family meeting, we dedicated to a principle of stoicism. So basically we kept it super simple. We talked about, hey, there's these guys in ancient Greek and ancient Rome had this idea of philosophy, guided their life. And we just talked about the big tenant, like the big tenant we focused on was that even though things happen around you, they don't have to influence, like you have control over how you respond to that. And that's basically all we did. And then we just sort of came,

came examples, try to like ask them questions like, so you know, if someone does this, what would be your response? And they were like, oh, here's the response, a stoic response. So that was it. It was really simple. I mean, I showed him a picture of Marcus Arraileus because he's like the most famous stoic philosopher. We've done this without a stuff. I've done like lessons on like Churchill. You know, who here's what in Churchill? Like, you know, he represented

perseverance and then like, how can we be more, have more perseverance in our life? And that's, that's how we do it. So you keep it super simple, like really dumb down and don't try to have a whole philosophy class about it at last 30 minutes. Literally two minutes, three minutes tops. It's funny that you say that that's dumb down because it's such a profound idea that's so hard for adults to,

like I know that that's true, but I still mess it up all the time. People think they have to make these things like really, really complicated in order for it to be meaningful or deep, and you don't. And I mean, all these people think like, well, you gotta really hammer in your kids so they really understand it's like,

no, literally your kid has an attention span of maybe 10 minutes, so just get what you can. And then what you do is you is after you do in that meeting, like throughout the week, we focused on that. It's like, all right, what would be like a stoic response to that. And then you know, the kids are gonna roll their eyes at you, oh, dad.

But you know, you just, it requires repetition for that stuff to finally sink in. I was thinking about this recently because I've been writing some sort of social justice stuff and you know, people have sent some very angry emails about it. And, or other people have just said, hey, we get it, okay? My response is like, first off, just because you get it,

doesn't mean that everyone gets it. And second, the idea that you get it is what's preventing you from truly getting it, right? I think the really wise people don't tell themselves they've mastered anything. They kind of remain a perpetual student of it. And so I'd be curious, how have you been thinking about

either in your own life or talking to your kids? How are you explaining some of these sort of lessons or rules in the context or the light of, you know, these sort of terrible videos that have come out that people that are marching in the streets, even some of those sort of mob violence. How are you discussing the values you're having as a family in applying them to what you're seeing in the world?

Yeah, so actually, this week, no, it was last week, we had a family meeting about this, because your kids are seeing this stuff on the news. They might see newspaper article, where it talks about protests or riots. And they're like, you know, what's going on there. And so yeah, we had a meeting dedicated to kind of like give some context to them. What's going on. So we had to explain to them like a really brief history that they could understand about race relations in the United States. So like you can't get too deep in that with like a six year old and a nine year old.

But we talked to people, like, you know, black people a long time ago in America were slaves. They were the property of other people. How do you think that would feel? And they're like, oh, you're really bad. And we talked about, you know, they've had a fight for rights to get the right to vote. To be well, first to be free, then the right to vote.

And then we fought a civil war to help, you know, get free, free this later. So we kind of getting that sort of sort of history and kind of understand that, you know, even still the day black people are treated poorly in a lot of instances. And this is what happened in this case. There was a man we talked about George Floyd,

he got killed by a police officer, shouldn't have happened. And then that was it. And so we just talked about the sort of the takeaway from that was like, you know, it doesn't matter what people look like. We treat the people with kindness and dignity and respect. And they're like, okay, I mean, and that was it. I mean, it literally was probably 10 minutes.

We tell that after certain point, the kids like sort of, I started glazing over. But that's what we did. And, you know, we're continuing to have a conversation because, you know, our son Gus, he sees something in the news, he's like, hey, what's going on here? And we have to like, you have that conversation again. And I mean, I'm hoping, I'm hoping it, it rubs off on me. They pick something up. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. And here's me talking to Dr. Carp. So Dr. Carp, it's amazing to talk to you.

I thought we'd start with something the UNI had briefly touched on on the phone last time we talked, which is one of the things that I have found so sort of humbling and inspiring but also just unusual about being a parent. And it's this idea of instosism. It's just, it's this connection to this sense that you're a part of something that has happened for as long as there have been people. And that we are descendants of an unbroken line

of other fathers and mothers, or we wouldn't be here. And this is sort of the theme you see in the stoics talking about all the time, just that history is the same thing happening over and over again. And I don't know, when I read ancient history, I'm just struck always by, you know, it's like Socrates talking about troubles at home. And like the theme of trying to be good at this really hard thing is maybe the most human thing that there is. Yeah, it's beautifully put, Ryan.

I think that you don't even realize that until you have a child. It's very abstract for people in our culture today because unlike every other generation of humanity in history and prehistory up until 100 years ago, you would have spent a lot of time with little kids. You would have helped raise your siblings and been with your cousins and run around in the play yard and be kids, take care of the little kids. And you just intuitively learned this stuff. Parents today very often have never even touched a baby before they have their own child.

And so they have all sorts of impressions of what it's going to be like being a parent. It's rather rosy and two-dimensional. And of course, in many ways, it's the most rewarding experience you can have. And it's truly the purpose or one of the greatest purposes of why we're here. But if you look at now your life being the next link in that chain that goes all the way extended back to the beginning of humanity, and now your children are the next link in that chain. In the past, those links have been,

have been put through the fire. They've been hardened and formed by all the experiences that you have in your early life. And we in our link in the chain, or maybe weaker links, then have been in the past. Unfortunately, not that we can't strengthen ourselves, but you do have to go out of your way as a parent to try to develop those skills, which may not have been part of your upbringing. No, that's interesting. And something we've been, I've been thinking about too,

is like, like, if you told someone they were starting a new job or that they were going to become a professional athlete, and we sort of approach other things in our life as a thing to master and to really study and immerse ourselves in. And with parenting, it's sort of like there's two, it almost feels like in our culture, another sort of two past that people go, either there's completely winging it,

or they see it as like a thing that you win, you know? And it strikes me that both of those are the incorrect directions to go down. Yeah, you know, and I think that reflects the way you have lived your life, right? If you've always just kind of, you know, done your work and you get your job and all that kind of stuff and you just naturally have confidence in yourself, you don't want to be told by egg heads how you're going to be raising your children. And maybe you have a strong family tradition, which you can lean upon.

Other people really grade themselves literally and figuratively according to how they've done in school and how they've done at work. And it's a very kind of linear success-oriented type of an approach to life. And children, of course, are much more of an adventure into the wilderness. There's a lot of rough terrain and changes and open meadows and it's something that we need to approach with a certain sense of humility and open mind to as so many parents will tell you as they go through the process they learn as much as they teach. I don't know if that's been your experience as well. No, absolutely. And it's like, you know, we have these sort of virtues of what we think a

good person is, is like, you know, someone who's patient, someone who's kind, someone who can figure things out, someone who, you know, is cool under pressure, then you have a kid and you realize like, you thought you were good at those things, but you've really sort of never been tested the way that you're being tested right now. And that strikes me as a theme in your work of all the virtues that come across. It feels like patience seems to be the theme of good parenting in your philosophy. I would say that's one of your five fingers,

but I wouldn't over stress that. Listen, a lot of people are impatient, they blow up, and actually you can learn from that. And kids can learn from that too. Listen, I can be loving and I can lose my patience and I might even say things I regret, but if I can come back and apologize and kind of write the wrong and show my love, actually that's not such a terrible experience to have. And in fact, it's probably, it's not the sanitized view that we have. Sure. But I think that that's probably more livable. But

there are two things I want to say. One thing about the idea that you said about practice and skill building. One thing is, you know, we talk about the 10,000 hours, you know, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the book about it in outliers. And yet, we assume that we 10,000 hours, you know, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the book about it and outliers. And yet, we assume that we can just parent without doing any training whatsoever. This most important and complex job and really the whole purpose behind our purpose in many ways is something that we kind of have a lot of hubris in believing that we just can do it. And I like to joke with people that when they have a baby,

many people buy baby books, maybe even five or six or seven baby books, not that they'll read all of them, but just buying them is a marker of your diligence as a parent. But once you get past that baby period, people don't buy books. It's as if there's, you know, they're just winging it. Number one, no one is time.

But number two, they think that there's, you know, they're just winging it. Number one is time. But number two, they think that, well, I know my kids better than anybody else. What do I have to learn? I just wish people would spend five hours less watching Game of Thrones and invest five hours in just learning about how toddlers brains work and how to speak with them because just as in my work with babies, there's some very specific counterintuitive techniques that are very helpful at mastering those first six months of life with your child. Between eight months and five or six or 78 years of age because all of us really become emotional like toddlers depending on how upset we get, there are some very specific techniques that can help you be super competent and skilled

and a master of talking with little kids and helping them get through their feelings and ultimately being a successful parent. So patients, of course, but there's very much a body of skills to learn that are not only not necessarily intuitive, but oftentimes counterintuitive. Yeah, the epic Titus quote that I love,

and I've used it on this podcast a bunch of times, he says, it's impossible to learn that what you think you already know. And I catch myself bumping up against that, and then I see other parents do it, where you just kind of assume you know, you go like, I have good instincts, or like, I was a kid once, I have parents where I read two books.

So obviously, I know how to do this extremely difficult thing that by the way, making a mistake here there could have big, enormous implications in the course of someone's life. So it's the wing it seems to be almost connected to a kind of arrogance or ego that like, I got this, how hard could it be? Right.

And of course, it's fed into by the whole Instagram world where you see everybody else succeeding. And so I like to think of this as we should on ourselves. You know, I should do this. I should be honest. I should, you know, all of those things and that, just assuming that you know, as you quoted, is an impediment. What's the quote by Mark Twain? It's not what I don't know that gets me into the most trouble.

It's what I know that isn't true. Sure. Yeah. So for example, everyone knows, you know, tiptoe, the baby's sleeping. Completely wrong. If you take a baby to a noisy party or a basketball game or some kind of sporting event that's really noisy, your new baby will fall asleep almost immediately. You would never sleep there, but babies can do it.

The idea that, well, listen, babies just don't sleep well in the beginning. You know, you've got to wait several months for them to learn day night differentiation. Sounds right. And yet, at the same time, we know if you drove your child all night in the car, they'd sleep an extra hour or two. And so, it does require us to not just hesitate before we assume that we know all this stuff, but also reach out to the people who maybe do have an expertise and can give you specific actionable advice. And I want to tell you one thing about toddlers, because people are struggling with toddlers

more than anyone else. You know, if you have older kids or high schoolers, you know, there's all sorts of stuff on social media that they can help with their learning, you know, we're in the days of COVID right now. And for babies, there's supports that you can get. And we're trying to help people out with this new bed, which is a response. Which I love. Thank you. Thank you.

We're really excited. We now make, I mean, we've shown that we add one to two hours of baby sleep. We keep babies safely on the back. And we're hoping by the end of the year that the FDA will recognize it as the world's first sits prevention bed. We think we're dramatically reducing the risk of infant sleep death, and it really is a 24 hour caregiver. So really, anyone can have their own 24 hour helper for the cost of a Starbucks a day, because we rent it all across the country. But anyway, that's the baby stuff. And it turns out you think when you have a baby,

that that's the hardest thing you've ever done, until you have a toddler. And you can throw this now. You have a toddler, and then you have another baby, and you go, geez, the baby is the easy part. Right. Toddlers are much more complex. So I wanted to just mention one of the greatest misconceptions

that parents have, which seems completely right, but actually is not only incorrect, but is actually undermining a parent's interactions with their young child. So we're all taught to acknowledge feelings. That's what respectful and pathic communication is about. When you have an normal conversation, it doesn't really matter that much. You go back and forth, like we're going back and forth,

it's kind of like a tennis match, you know, serve in a volley in return and things like that. And that, by the way, is the rule that governs communication in all cultures of human beings around the world. It's called reciprocity or turn taking. But when someone becomes emotionally upset, or emotionally engaged, let me say,

because it can be happiness as well. The rule of reciprocity changes. We no longer take even turns back and forth, but whoever is most upset gets to go first, and they get an extra long turn. And our job, before we, the listener, give our opinion about what's being said, our job is to acknowledge the information that was handed to us.

In my books, I have a book called, The Happiest Toddler on the Block, for kids eight months to five, six years of age. And this is called the Fast Food Rule, meaning whoever is hungry for attention gets to go first. And the way you respond, and this is what parents get confused about, is not rooted in the words you say.

It's rooted in the way you say the words. There are three steps actually. I call it toddlerries or translating into your toddler's language, but it short phrases repetition and mirroring a third of the person's emotion in your ton of voice and gestures. Now, this gets to brain physiology. This is really a neurophysiologic phenomenon.

Again, this is universal. This is a human basis of communication with someone who's upset. The way the brain works is, you know, if you opened up the top of your skull and you looked at the brain, it's like looking at two halves of a walnut. And the right half is emotionality, musicality, kind of immediate recognition of face and place.

And also the nonverbal parts of your communication, your ton of voice gestures. The left side of your brain is the so-called adult side or executive function is there. So patients, verbal capability, problem solving, the lay gratification, things like that. Needless to say toddlers are not so great with the adult side, and they're much better

with the right side of the brain, the more reactive side of the brain. It turns out that all of us turn off our left brains when we get upset. We become less logical, less reasonable, less eloquent, less patient. And we have a term in our culture. We call that going ape, right? I mean, you literally become less developed, less sophisticated in your approach. And we go down this evolutionary elevator

when we become more like cavemen. So the key thesis of the happiest toddler in the block is toddlers are not little children. They are knee-and-earthals. They are unsiphylized, unsophisticated, and the more upset they are, the more like that they are. So here's the bottom line. When you're talking to an upset toddler,

number one, you try not to get upset yourself, which is not so easy. So don't judge yourself if sometimes you lose it because that's just normal. But if you can hang on to your your presence of mind, you want to respond to them using toddleries, short phrases, repetition, and mirroring a third of their emotions. So when your child says, you're so stupid, you gave him the candy and you didn't give me any candy. You know, you were framed from saying, you know, that's not nice to talk to your mother like that. But rather, you narrated back saying,

you're mad, you're really, really, really mad. You, you, you, you want the candy and you're mad at me. You said, you're so stupid. You're so mad because you want the candy and you're mad at me that I said, you're so stupid. You're so mad because you want the candy and you're mad at me that I didn't give you any candy. And now your face is sad and you're even not looking at me because you're really mad at me right now.

That is six or seven or eight times of repetition for a one year old or an 18 month old or is even more immature. You might just point and gesture and go, you want, you want, you want, you want, you want, now, you want, now, you say, mine, mine. Now that sounds weird. It sounds like it's baby talk or it's like, you know, the wrong way to do it. And yet, when your child is very happy, that's exactly what you do. Yeah, you did it. You did it. Well, you did

it. Good job. Good job, honey. Wow. Look, you did it. You did it. Wow, you did it. Good job. Good job, honey. Wow. Look at you. You rip. This is how we speak to people when they have strong emotions because the left half of the brain is turned off. So when you want to teach patients and you want to teach cooperation and you want to teach the leg gratification, which we can talk about why those are so important to teach our kids and for us to learn ourselves and what are the techniques for doing that. The very first step parents have to learn and understand is how to reign in their own emotional response and how to help their child reign that in because that ultimately becomes the way that they learn to be able to dominate and control their emotions. And I don't mean dominate in this bad way. It's good we have emotions, but you have to be able to know when to express them

and how not to be dominated by them, which I think is really one of the bases of stoicism. No, I was just gonna say that, yeah, people think, you know, stoicism is the absence of emotion, but it was seen to lab. He said, it's better to find us sort of the domestication of the emotions. And so, yeah, the idea that we're these sort of wild,

the endothalzer, we have these urges and impulses, that's true, and then we go, but in a civilized society, that's not okay. And so I love that phrase, and you talk about that a lot, the idea of sort of like your job as a parent is to help civilize your child. And that's, to to me such an interesting way of redefining the job.

And it's not to be in any way criticizing young children or labeling them. They are uncivilized. And your job is to teach them the rules of civil life. How to say, please, and thank you, wait and line, share your toys, speak at your turn, you know, with your utensils, you know, that ultimately is a big part of it. But here's the thing, which has been the either or,

and I'm trying to be in the middle of the road here, which is that it's not all about behaving well. It's about understanding that none of us always behave well, and that's part of the beauty. To have passions, to have emotions is a great thing. And to learn how to balance them and channel them when the situation is appropriate. I mean, you're seeing people protesting in the street, screaming and yelling, hey, that's appropriate. You know, when you have great injustices, that's not necessarily the time. Of course, yes, you want to sit and have rational dialogue, but sometimes you have to wave the flag.

You have to make big gestures to get attention. You're saying like the toddler is acting the way that they're acting for some underlying reason, right? They're tired. They can't articulate what they're trying to say. They're frustrated. They're confused. You know, they don't know how to handle this, whatever it is.

Instead of addressing the behavior, although the behavior is important, you try to understand the root underlying cause. So you go, oh, you're throwing a, you're having a meltdown right now, not because you're a bad kid. You're having a meltdown. And, not because you're a bad kid, you're having a meltdown. And not because I'm a bad parent, you're having a meltdown because we skipped nap or because I thought you ate and then you didn't eat or whatever. You're tired, hungry, scared, that's why you're acting the way that you're doing. It's interesting how we can get there with toddlers, but I do feel like we struggle understanding that other

people, our fellow adults, are also always acting for a reason, or our spouses acting for reason. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. This is really, even though there's the word toddler in this book, it could be the happiest teenager on the blog, or the happiest adult on the blog, or the happiest grandmother on the block or the happiest grandmother on the block because these are universal human styles of communication. We all become toddlers if we get upset enough. We literally turn off our left brains and we become much more embedded in our right brains. We become an brain equivalent of a toddler. And again, that's not to be disparaging at all.

That's just the reality. And so most of us intuitively know how to handle that. So listen, if your best friend is grieving something and they're crying right there in front of you, you could say, you know, I see you're upset, but you really have to think about it this way. But probably more likely what you're going to do is say, oh my god, oh my god, I'm so so sorry. I mean, I don't even know what to say now. It's terrible. You're going to repeat something with almost a blabbering words. The words don't even matter. You could just say, oh, oh, and that is as eloquent as using words.

Once you've joined with that person, this is one of the things about parents, you're not going to solve all your kids problems or all of your spouse's problems for that matter. And you don't need to, that's not your job. Your job is not to figure it all out. Your job is to be a companion. Your job is to say, you're not alone in this.

And I trust you to figure it out. And if you want my help I'll try my best to help you along. But I have confidence in you and I believe that you know what you keep trying to you're trying to open up that jar and you're I see how you're like twisting it with your hands and you're really trying hard. Good for you. You're really making an effort rather than going right in and say, honey, can I help you with that? I mean, you will get to that point where you'll say when your child's starting to get frustrated,

you know, would you like a little help? But you don't start there. And that's part of the point. It's really how to learn how to dance with people who have emotions. And it's not being in a rush to solve the problem because in trying to solve it, you're assuming that you know better than the person and you're trying to move them

off of their feelings when right now they need to be expressed in their feelings. Freud said that unexpressed feelings never go away. And we all live with that. If we had a disappointment or a shame in the past and we get into a similar situation, we naturally kind of duck down a little bit more. We kind of curl in a little bit to protect ourselves. We see that of course with phobias. When you're in a situation that's similar to your prior phobic situation, you'll automatically

anticipate that, trying to protect yourselves. And so it's important to understand that the role is not to save the person that we love. It's to be accompanying them. Does that make sense? No, it totally does. I'm curious, I know your kids are a little bit older, but being that you were a doctor of their whole lives and now you're a startup entrepreneur

and an author, you do all these things. I'm curious, what advice we've done this thing for daily dad and one of the one of the sort of the laws is about putting your family first, but it's a balance right because to put your family first you have to work and and yet to be really good at your work you it has to be a priority. How do you think about that sort of that work-life balance thing? How do you make your family a priority, but still go out and try to do things in the world? I think you have to ask my family that.

I'm sure, well, I'm in a mea culpa, right? I mean, I can definitely learn to do that better. I'm in a challenging situation where I'm a bit older. I've had some health problems, and I have a job that I'm trying to accomplish, which is really a service to this sounds more grandiose than I wanted to sound. But there's something that I'm trying to accomplish that is gonna help a lot of people. I live my life really with the sense of service.

I feel like that's the most important thing that I can do is try. If I die and some people say that their lives have been helped by me, you know, then that is a life worth living. And I'm fortunate that my wife and my stepdaughter have one child who's 36 and actually works in our company and my wife is that my co-founder and she works as intensively as I do. We're all deeply committed to mission. And to a certain degree, we have to sacrifice,

or we have sacrificed some of the vacation time or some of the other, you know, kind of fun things in life, perhaps, as we all try to accomplish this mission. And there's no perfect there, right? Perfect is the enemy of good. I'm sure we could do things better, but we're working as hard as we can to try to make a difference in the world. So we're probably getting a C-plus in that work life balance situation. No, no, I mean, I think it's an interesting tension, right? And for the Stoics, there was this idea of servicing what they called the public good or the common good.

And yet, also, the importance of family and how do you match those things up? And it's fascinating. And Stoicism is, you have some some stoics who had great kids, a Kato's daughter Portia is famously this you know incredibly strong inspiring powerful woman who sort of you know almost out shines her father and and then on the other hand you have comedists Marcus Aurelius' son who Joaquin Phoenix probably underplays in the movie Gladiator, just in terms of how awfully was. And so, yeah, I'm just curious.

It's attention, I think we're all dealing with, and maybe just the first step is admitting that it's attention and then finding some way to work inside of it. I think you're right. I think frame of mind is incredibly important. Having the paradigm, when I wrote the happiest baby on the book, on the block, rather,

the idea that the post it that I had on my computer was it's the metaphor stupid. It's like Bill Clinton's is the economist's stupid, because metaphors allow us in a single swipe to really capture broad concepts. And so for babies, the key concept is that they're born three or four months too soon, the idea of the fourth trimester. If you understand that, then you

understand what your job is for those first four or five months of your baby's life, your one big walking uterus. For toddlers, the key encompassing metaphor is that they're cavemen, they're primitives, they're uncivilized. And there are two things that happen when you recognize that. Number one, you have different expectations of your child, right? You know that if you have a good day, it's just a good day. It doesn't mean that, you know, just because you're 14 months old, said, thank you, you know, it doesn't mean they're going to do it every day. And it also changes your expectations of yourself as a parent.

You know that you're dealing with an uncivilized person, and the more upset they get, the more uncivilized they are. And so you have a little bit of distance to be able to have a point of view recognizing that you're not in the fight, right? You can kind of float above it a little bit so you can be emotionally distance, which sometimes you have to do so that you don't get pulled into it. Because when someone spits in your face and screams at you, you know, it's natural to get emotionally pulled into it. This is not just a metaphor, by the way, it is honestly, I believe the way that our children grow is an echo of where we've been in the past.

And when you go to a playground with your kids and you look at a one year old next to a two year old next to a three year old go to a playground with your kids and you look at a one-year-old next to a two-year-old next to a three-year-old next to a four-year-old, you're literally looking at a six million-year-old person next to a two-million-year-old person next to, you know, a four-year-old is like probably a 4,000-year-old person in terms of the capabilities that they have. And then you understand differently how to speak to them and you have the wherewithal to kind of knock it pulled into it. When you have that frame of mind that allows you to be a little bit more emotionally pulled back. So last question and I've talked to a bunch of guests about this and it's something I sort of struggle with, but if I've gotten a lot of value out of, the stokes don't talk too explicitly about parenting, but in epictetus is writing,

and then we find it repeated in Marcus Aurelius' writing, he gets it from epictetus. There's this sort of stoke exercise, the stokes talk about sort of memento-mory meditating on our mortality. And what epictetus says a parent should do, and I'd be curious, I've thought this I've thought this as I, as I strap my son into into this new, although obviously I know it has certain health benefits, as you

were mentioning with SIDS, but Epic Tidus says, you know, you, you, you took your child in at night and you say that you should be set, you should say to yourself or think very briefly, like they may not make it to the morning, that this may be the last time that you ever see them. And he says, the reason you do this is, I think, one, they were saying this because infant mortality in the Roman Empire must have been horrendous. And Marx really did lose, you know, many children at a way too many children for anyone human.

But to me, the point of that exercise is to slow down to become instantly and undeniably present to sort of soak that moment in and to really be there for it. Like, I catch myself going like, you know, we got to get bedtime wrapped up, you know, it's, and then I go, but what am I going to do after this? I'm going to go watch Netflix or respond to emails, right? And the idea that you only get so many bed times and you don't know when the last one will be, to me, is a very powerful parenting exercise. And I just be curious if you're either horrified by this or if you like it. Oh, no, I think it's a very important exercise, but it is just an exercise.

What I mean by that is there's a temptation, again, in our culture, maybe more than others, but it's like this all-or-none phenomenon. Anyone who's had serious illness, and I had it one time, a serious illness, and then the sky never looked more blue, you know, once you get over that, and you're so happy to have your abilities. But you really can't live your life just in the moment. You do have to be able to switch hit and be present and yet also be a planner.

And so it's important, I think, to always appreciate our mortality and to when you're eating the orange to stop and smell the orange peel and taste the sweetness of the orange, be in the moment, and meditation or mindfulness is a wonderful way of doing that. And there are practices with children to help them do that as well. There's different techniques that I talk about in the book, but the point being that you want to practice those exercises as well as knowing that you have to plan for the long haul

and make that optimistic assumption that everything's going to work out. No, that's what I said. It, like a work-life balance, is also a tension, the tension between planning and presence. Exactly right. Yep, totally agree. Just a few days left to sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It's our best thing. You get 21 custom challenges. Almost 30,000 words, almost a full book's worth of content. You get a printable calendar.

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