The Daily Stoic - Daily Stoic Sundays: This Is Your Most Important Job

Episode Date: June 21, 2020

“How do we emulate the great parents of history? How do we work on improving ourselves at this essential job? The one for which we are given next to no training, for which many of us had less than ideal models for in our own childhood?”Ryan talks about the importance of preparation for the role of a parent—and discusses a great way you can make yourself ready for this critical job.Sign up for The Stoic Parent, Daily Stoic’s newest course on how to be the best parent to your kids, today: http://dailystoic.com/stoicparentThis episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is a maker of mushroom coffee, lattes, elixirs, and more. Their drinks all taste amazing and they've full of all sorts of all-natural compounds and immunity boosters to help you think clearly and live well. Visit http://foursigmatic.com/stoic to get 15% off your order.***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/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: 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 Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four that can help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy

in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think to go for a walk to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellissi. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud.

From the build-up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents,

but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondery App. This is your most important job. Some people delight in improving their farms.

Epictetus said, some people find great pleasure in making more money or winning fame. But Epictetus, he delighted in improving himself day to day. But still, even here, we can miss the point. Epictetus wasn't talking about getting better abs or mastering obscure literature. He was talking about becoming a better person at working on things that really matter.

First and foremost, among the things that really mattered to the Stoics was being a good parent. Where else does someone have such an enormous opportunity to impact the future than by raising their kids right? Epic Titas adopted a boy and raised him. Kato trained his daughter, Portia, in philosophy and expected as much of her as he did of his sons.

Musoneus Rufus explained most beautifully what parenting meant to the Stoics. He said, what a great spectacle it is when a husband or wife with many children are seen with these children crowded around them. No procession conducted for the gods is as beautiful to look at, and no ritual performed solemnly for a sacred occasion is as worthy of being watched as is a chorus of many children guiding their parents through the

city, leading them by the hand or otherwise caring for them. What is more lovely than this spectacle? What is more worthy of emulation than these parents? So that's really the question, how do we emulate these great parents of history, these philosophers? How can we work on improving ourselves at this essential job? The one for which we are given next to no training, the one for which many of us had less than ideal models

in our own childhood. Being a father isn't just a thing you get recognized for The one for which many of us had less than ideal models in our own childhood. Being a father isn't just a thing you get recognized for with a card one day in mid-June each year. It's an occupation, a profession, a place to practice philosophy every single minute, so to with motherhood, so to with being a grandparent. Like the rest of life, it's something you have to choose a K-04. It's something you have to be intentional about. It's a place that calls for all four of the stoic virtues, courage, temperance, justice,

wisdom. It calls for all these things and more. It calls for them when we're tired. It calls for them when we're hungry. It calls for them when we're in the car. It calls for them every single minute of every single day. It's a thing we have to concentrate on like a Roman, as Mark has said, and engage with it like it's the last thing we do in our lives because who knows it may well be. So on Father's Day, we invite you to check out not just dailydad.com, our free daily email and podcast

inspired by ancient wisdom, but we invite you to check out our newest course, the Stoic Parent. To give you tools and support that you need to become the parent you want to be, it's 10 actionable practical meditations and prescriptive commandments for parenting. Rules you can live by and teach by for as long

as you are lucky to have this job as dad or as mom. All of these lessons are going to be pulled from the best of Stoic. Wisdom, the Stoics have been meditating on for thousands of years. You'll get daily action plans, custom audio, companions, workbooks, and much more. You'll get hours of audio interviews too. So check out dailystoic.com slash parenting for more. And of course, happy Father's Day to everyone out there. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music,

download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like

Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wonder yet.