Ryan Holiday: The TRUTH About Hard Work & Success (How To UNLOCK Your Potential)

what is the things that light you up success should facilitate you being able to do as much of those things as you want to do if you don't have time to do the thing that only you can do what kind of life is that he's the host of The Daily stoic his books have sold more than 10 million copies byan holiday ladies and Gentlemen Just piling accomplishments on top of accomplishments is not the way one finds meaning in their life or their existence there has to be some point where you go this stops with me

we throw turn announc that we've reached 3 million subscribers we're incredibly grateful for each and every one of you if you enjoyed this episode don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on any of our new releases we're dedicated to bringing you the content you love our team carefully analyzes what resonates most with you to bring on board the best experts and storytellers to help you improve your life some of your favorite topics are sleep science weight loss physical fitness navigating breakups habit building and understanding toxic relationships upcoming episodes include one

of the biggest names in health and science world-renowned relationship therapist and your favorite manifestation expert is back to drop new findings hit subscribe to not miss any of these episodes if you think of someone who would love this episode send it to them to make their day the number one Health and Wellness podcast J shett J shett the one the only J sh you asked me if I'm thinking about being a parent yeah and I was saying that me and my wife have always wanted to have kids but it's really interesting because we'd set up

a life that we thought we were going to have we bought a house right next to her parents near all our friends in London it was small but wonderful and we were surrounded by the community we thought we had and then my career took off in a very unexpected way which brought me to New York and now to LA and it's really interesting that as things started to change in what we expected of life our expectations of ourselves changed and that hasn't changed the desire to have kids but what did change was you know my

wife got so immersed in discovering her passion something that she never even thought she'd think about and having discovered that we started to have really we've always had really healthy open conversations around not when to have kids because I think to me that isn't necessarily the right conversation to to me the healthiest conversation with my wife has been do we know how it's going to change our life to whatever degree you can know and are we ready for that change right now and that's kind of the structure that we've at least placed for our conversations

to have a healthy understanding for each other I think what you said at the beginning though was interesting because uh so a lot of people talk about having kids but you said are we going to be parents and I think that's an interesting distinction that we don't talk about enough right like having kids is biological or it's it's legal right you adopt or you get a bonus kid from a marriage like there there is having kids like people who live in your house and then there is the decision to be a parent and unfortunately there

are a lot more people who have kids than there are people who are parents people who decide to make this a central part of what they do right having kids is doing the legal bare minimum what you have to do to keep Child Protective Services away from your house and then there is the decision to say I'm going to change my life around this thing this is going to be the main the main or one of the main things that I do and I'm going to try to be really good at it right like most

people spend a lot of time trying to get great at their careers they want to make more money they want to accomplish all these things and then parenting is kind of this thing that we we just hope that we get right we just wing it right and that's a tragic skewed sense of priorities I think that's a brilliant distinction I'm so glad you raised that you reminded me of there's this viic verse that says one should not take on the responsibility of being a parent unless they're ready to Enlighten their child yeah like there's that

that kind of the idea of what you just said of flipping the script of like when should we have kids do I want to have kids to do I know what it means to be a parent and that's hard sometimes like it's a challenge because I think all of us look at ourselves and we go we're flawed normal individuals with trauma with challenges and we're like well maybe I don't deserve to have kids you can go the other way or I'll never be qualified to have kids yeah the comedian Tom seura has this bit where

he goes you know people say that uh having kids changes you and he goes That's not quite right it's that having kids should change you right so like if you're not ready to be changed that's one of the things when people ask me they go I'm thinking about having kids what what should I do and I go you have to be ready for it to change you like not only can you not live and organize your life the same way but going to be opened emotionally physically spiritually in all these ways that if you're resistant

to because you liked the way things were before you're not only doing your kids a disservice but I think you're doing yourself a disservice cuz this is this is a profound you know sort of shift on a human level and if you're not ready to be changed by it you're probably not ready to do it were you this conscious about being a parent before you were a parent or is it something that came from the process no it definitely came from the process like you you think you think you know and you have ideas but

it's not until this thing happens to you that you go oh all these other things aren't as important to me anymore right I think I I I do wish sometimes I think about wishing that I'd done it earlier there's this thing that happens when you achieve what you set out to achieve right which is that you realize it doesn't mean that that much right you you write a best-selling book you sell a screenplay you know you have some number in your mind and then maybe it's winning a gold medal you you do something and then

you get it and you go oh this is like nothing right this is this didn't change what I thought it would change it didn't transform me in the way that I thought it transformed me I feel lucky that I done a bunch of those things before I had kids because then I'd already I was already wrestling with the not the emptiness but I was wrestling with the the inescapable conclusion that just piling accomplishments on top of accomplishments is not the way that one finds meaning in their life or their existence what do you think it

does do then like what does it do in any goal and of course some goals are have a different scale to others but the idea of becoming a best-selling author or someone who's listening saying I want to launch a big podcast or someone saying I want the way I look at it is and I remember going on a really long walk with you once like through New York before I'd ever written a book or anything and it was around the time when I first interviewed you if someone honestly asked me when I was doing this

type of work offline I actually a never believed it would be big and B was not trying to make it big so if someone would have asked me when I was whether I was 18 or whether I was 25 and said to me Jay like what's your goal here my honest answer would have been I'm just trying to make ancient wisdom relevant because I get joy out of that act in and of itself like the act of studying researching and simplifying brings me joy sure and I love teaching and sharing and sharing those ideas with

people and hearing what they have to say about it and so I was doing that for 5 to 10 people every week for hours every day I was already happy now my life changed when scale became possible when a video by mistake went viral like it wasn't that I thought it would go viral or whatever and then life has changed but so partly my answer to that question or my reflection to the question I'm asking you is I don't think you should ever start something wanting it to be big in the first place but what

does a what does having a goal achieve and what type of goal should we set well the stoics talk about attaching your goals only to things that are in your control so if your ambition is to be accepted by a certain group group to move a certain number of units to make a certain amount of money to be invited to a certain Club you know if things line up great but there's also a very significant chance that they won't line up and so the idea is that you tie your ambition your intention your your motivation

to the parts of it that are up to you I really like doing it I get better like one of the reasons I wrote The Daily Stoke and the daily dad is that I have become better as a person for the the meditative practice of having to produce this thing on a daily basis so if it also then goes on to be successful then I get this sort of this bonus success of the Rewards or the royalties or whatever um so it's I think you want to root what you're trying to do as much as

possible in what is up to you Stokes go if you only enter competitions where winning is up to you you will always be a winner right and so if your if your goal is to beat this other person right to be more than this other person this other type of person I remember I talked to this author once and and he was working on this book and and he said uh I said what's your goal and he said I want to sell like 2 million copies and I said well where did that number came from

and he's like well I heard somebody had sold a million copies and I doubled it and so the arbitrariness of just wanting to one up some other person it's not only sort of empty and trivial but like it's not really rooted in anything that's up to you right and I think the best way to think about it is is this thing up to me or not and and what I have found is that when you accomplish those things it's great but it doesn't fix whatever you thought it was trying to fix it doesn't fill whatever

you thought it was trying to fill I wish I could give to everyone that understanding as early as possible I do think it's probably something you have to experience at some level on your own but ideally you experience it not on your fifth Super Bowl ring and you go oh it's never you know ideally that that comes as early as possible uh in the process that doesn't mean that once you figure it out you stop doing it you do stop you you can keep doing it but you've just you've broken the connection between uh like

your sense of self and these external things that are not up to you yeah yeah that resonates I I feel like to for me growing and learning are just such integral comp components of being alive yeah and feeling like there's progress and there's momentum that I try and pick goals that I'm challenged by the growth I'll have to make I set goals based on the growth I want not based on the goal so for example I just finished a nearly 40 City World Tour it wasn't that I wanted to go on a world tour to

go on a world tour it was like I want Ed the feeling of can I have I built up my health and resilience can I go on stage every night and deliver what does it feel like to pour love into the people who support my work I've been doing this for seven years online yet I've pretty much never met more than 1% of my audience if that what does it feel like to build community again for people and that's the stuff that gets you through it when it's tough yeah because the title or the whatever

the external reward would be doesn't motivate you when I fell sick in one city and I had to cancel a show that night and the next day I had to wake up get on a flight and do two shows back toback that day and the only thing that gets you through is I want to do this for my community this means something to me like there's this amazing thing that I always think about because it blows my mind when Kobe Bryant passed away his wife Vanessa was giving a speech and she said that he was

always playing through injuries and everyone knew that but no one really knew the reason and she asked him in a private conversation I believe one night like why do you do it and he said it's because someone is saved up to watch me play yeah and they might only ever be able to afford one time to watch me play sure and I don't want to let them down and that's how he played through injury it wasn't that he wanted the championship more or that he wanted the the ring more it was that I want to

be there for my fans who are showing up for me interesting I want to hear your thoughts on yeah I mean you have you have my book conspiracy right there which I saw when I came in and that's my worst selling book uh it is not that it hasn't sold well bad it's just all my books it's it's it's not sold well but it's it's the one that without question if people ask me what book I'm most proud of it's that one and and that's because I grew the most writing it was the most outside

my wheelhouse it was the most challenging it was the one I had the most doubts as to whether I could pull off and it's the one that's sort of most authentically interesting to me while I was doing it I you love all the projects that you do but that one was just different you know it was it was just different in so many ways if you can find a way when the when the stoks are saying if you only enter things where winning is up to you you always win what they're saying is that if

if it's intrinsically interesting and compelling and challenging to you you're doing it because you like the puzzle of it then you've already won and then everything else is extra and you know for basketball if if you like playing basketball and there's a reason it's called playing right if you like the thing then then all the other stuff is extra but if for you winning is what gets you up out of B well then what happens if you're drafted by a team that's not any good or what if you are crippled with injuries or you know

any number of things right winning is not up to you enjoying the the daytoday of it the lacing up of the sneakers the squeaking of the shoes on the floor the bouncing of the ball like the warm-ups you know the CRA if if you love all of that then everything else is extra and you got you got to figure out how to love like the the purity of the thing itself and find something in it that is fulfilling and wonderful just to you before it's ever out that's the purest place and I and I've had

to do work on that I've said this before but like probably with my first book I was probably like 90 0% interested in how it did and 10% Like proud of what i' done and i' like to think I've gotten that flipped I mean if you don't care about it at all like you're not going to keep doing them and you have partners and you know you have employees you have all these things that are dependent on it doing well but ideally most of the success is off the table just from having done it because

what if it comes out on the day of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster or a printer shortage like there's so many things that could happen that could get between you and the thing you wanted but if you enjoyed doing it then then you've you've picked all the fruit that's up to you to pick yeah absolutely you reminded me of a statement by George Bernard Shaw where he said we don't stop playing because we get old we get old because we stop playing yeah and and it's that idea of just you're so right like

I feel out of touch with myself when I'm not reading and learning and reflecting like that's when I feel misaligned if my life gets too far away from finding new ideas experimenting with them discovering them trying to understand them and wrap my head around them if I'm not filling my brain up with not just ideas theoretically but even physically trying something new experimenting with something I've never done before I find that's when I'm misaligned with who I am well yeah look success in your chosen field cannot be not having time to do what you like

to do in said field right like if I don't have time to read if I don't have time to write if I'm not on my routine on my schedule what kind of success is that I've mortgaged myself for a bunch of things that I don't want to do know those things might be lucrative those things might be fun those things might be rewarding in their own ways but the main thing is like what got you into this right and if if you don't have the time to do that what what kind of success is that

right it can be very easy to just say yes to all the things that are coming in and then you wake up and you go it has been weeks since I did X Y or Z like the things that light me up like what is the things that light you up and success should facilitate you being able to do as much of those things as you want to do are there always going to be administrative things and obligations and business of course but if you don't have time to do the thing that only you can

do like what what kind of life is that yeah and I know we both feel grateful and have ched our own in some way similar paths from moving from a corporate career to to doing what we love today and we both I know we both feel very grateful to be able to do that but I want to go back to when you were there and and even when I was there I think about what really worked for me was so I was at Accenture for anyone who doesn't know I was at Accenture after I left

the monastery because I needed to find a way to pay the bills and just reconnect with the real world and and figure out how I fit in again and the corporate world was what I would have naturally done before so it was where I ended up and I didn't enjoy being a consultant like that is not who I am in in any way but at that time I didn't know what was possible but I knew that I could demonstrate my own skills at work so I started to plan these idea days at work because that

was something that work wanted where I would get to bring in speakers to help people be more Curious and excited and I remember we had uh Saleem ishmail who wrote exponential organizations come in one day and my mind was blown because I was like I'm get to hang out with this guy and there was another person who was a writer and a speaker and so I was always trying to find ways it work to kind of dovetail my career to get me into the things I was interested by and that worked for me as a

way of satisfying me at work even though the actual job day to-day wasn't how were you doing that I know you enjoyed marketing and always have and but what would you say to someone who's sitting here going yeah you guys are lucky you get to do what you love every day obviously you just have to get the percentages right but I'm stuck in a job that I hate well it's funny we did have very similar past I remember so I I I don't believe in this idea that you have to like quit your job blow

up your life to pursue some sort of thing I wrote three books while I was a full-time employee at uh a large fashion brand and if you are good at what you do you can get leverage at that company to to pursue these other things things but I remember uh this would have been like the summer of 2014 I so I'd written a couple books and I I had I'd gone back to American Apparel where I was sort of Consulting in the turnaround of the company I was getting this huge consulting fee I was making

great money and I remember I was running in the morning and uh I got this like alert on my phone that I had a meeting like I had a staff meeting and I something hit me it it hit me it was like how many people would kill to write books for a living which is what I wanted to do more than anything and here I am rushing to get to a staff meeting because it's paying well like this life is too short to be cutting short the things that you want to do that help you

be be better at what you do you know to go to some meeting and so at some point you make the transition but for me the the idea was as long as my sort of corporate work was supporting and facilitating me doing the other stuff it was great and then as soon as they were fighting for the same resources I I made that I made that shift but I I think some people think that it's it's about this sort of bold burn the boats behind you thing and it can be I mean at some point

you do have to do that but I talk to people and they're like they're quitting their job to write a book but they haven't published a single thing online they haven't uploaded a single video you know and just start just start you can start way smaller than you think and the first thing that you put out there in the world should not be a screenplay or a book or whatever like you you need you need so much interaction with the audience to find out what they like what you like what resonates what you know I

I I wrote online every day for something like six years before I got paid a single dollar I started my first website in the summer of 2005 and my first book came out in the summer of 2012 you know I didn't hit the New York Times bestseller list for another 5 years after that it takes a long time there's a there's a great law it's called Hof's law and it says that it always takes longer than you expect even when you take this law into account right like it's it's going to take way longer than

you thought and so if you quit in this sort of dramatic gesture you know you're not you're not going to have the runway to pull it off right you need like a lot of Runway a lot of time and so uh that that was certainly my path is it it took a lot longer than I thought yeah I'm I'm glad I'm glad you raised that and I love that tracking back of your journey just now and that law is awesome because it's it's so true when it comes to anything in life and for me I

I always say that to people because obviously I've been creating online work for seven years now and that feels like a very short period of time for most people yeah but I'm like no well for 10 years before these seven years I did this multiple times a week offline to groups of 5 to 10 people for 3 hours four times a week three times a week spending time with people coaching mentoring working for no money for no followers for no Fame no no success and then on top of that did seven years of public speaking

training before that which my parents forced me to go to after the event that I told you about in the beginning from age 11 to age 18 so my public speaking communication Journey started at 11 I'm 35 today that's 24 years of repetition yeah you need a lot of reps you need way more reps than you think that you do and the amazing thing about what social media and internet does is that you can reach millions of people with your work the nefarious thing about it is we hear about someone who uploads their first thing

and blows up and we think that that's how it goes right and it doesn't it takes a long time and I think what you're trying to do is build you know what a flywheel is like you're trying to you're trying to build this thing it takes a long a large number of slow methodical turns before it speeds up and speeds up and speeds up and then it starts to really Spin and and spin stuff off it takes like a long a long time um you know when the obstacles the way came out it probably sold

3,000 copies its first week you know it's now sold millions of copies but that's where it started right and it took a long time and so when people look at this sort of algorithmic success where they just upload a video it has millions and millions of views they think that that's how it's going to go and really it's about sort of methodically building this audience person by person and also building your confidence like rep by rep you know Moment by moment so then when you you suddenly do get the audience you're actually ready for it

like if I had gotten the audience that I thought I wanted or deserved when I wanted it it would have been it would have been Preposterous yeah I I remember I I was actually just thinking about this because I I I was just doing the marketing for daily dad and I was in New York and I did The Daily Show and I did CBS morning and I did some I I did a bunch of shows and I remember thinking back when my first book came out in 2012 they had the the publicist had me put

together a list of all of these Outlets that I wanted to do and I don't think we got any of them right it's not that they did a bad job it's just like we didn't get any of the things is I wasn't ready and the the media didn't care and then I realized like on this launch I did get those things but it took more than 10 years longer than I thought it would take right and now I'm getting it but if I had gotten them then I wouldn't have been ready I wouldn't have been

able to actually deliver you know on those at bats and so you think you want it when you want it but you don't you know I I heard something about the early days of Google where they were like eventually everyone's going to try our product but if they all try it now we won't be able to deliver for them they knew that they they knew it was getting better every day so actually from a marketing and a promotions and a sort of tra trory standpoint they wanted to to backload it as much as possible not

frontload it and that can be really hard that requires so much discipline and so much patience to go actually I don't want this right now I want it when I'm ready I want it when I'm good enough you think you're being screwed you think you know other people are getting the shots that you deserve but it's actually for the best because you're getting better every single day yeah and so I think about that of course with having kids too like if I'd had kids when I early I wouldn't have been emotionally right you know like

so it's it's um patience is is is all what it's all about that's the hard part about patience right because I think there's those two sides of the coin where one's like I believe I deserve it which we hear a lot about and I want to dive into that with you and then the other side of it is the mentality of well no I'm going to be patient and I'll be better when I get it yeah and it's almost like how does someone reconcile those two things because I think everyone's told to like believe in

themselves and like know your worth and kind of do this thing and I'm more along the lines of you because so many things for me happened far more organically than by belief and they happened far more by action than they did by thinking something for me it was what you're saying like when you first came on my show at Huff poost it's like I went from having I was live every single day with a guest for nine months five days a week and then I did the NASDAQ thing where I was live when I was

connected to Great authors like yourself and other people that I could have on so I before I launched my podcast in 2019 I'd done at least like two years of being live every day and no one like that show wasn't big or or you know it was it was good it was good definitely but it wasn't what the podcast is today and it was just but I got two years of reps of doing interviews well yeah I I was telling you like the caliber of guests that you've been pulling on have been insane right like

you've been getting people that don't do podcasts right and so I'm sure some of them you have tried to get on for a while and you would have been very excited to get them in 2019 or 2020 or 6 months ago but you're better now right so you think you think that you want it when you want it but uh it's better to get it later cuz you'll be better later yeah right and and the the the patience and the confidence to be like I don't have to force it there's that expression like don't run

to catch train you know it's like uh there's something in that like you don't need to force it if it if it's not a fit it'll come back around right and and and the idea that I sometimes think that everything I've written so far everything I've thought about is actually all prologue or preparation for an idea or an idea in a moment in time that I can't even conceive of yet like uh you know Michael Lewis the author um he'd probably written 15 books before The Big Short came out right when the markets melted down

in 2008 he had written dozens of popular books about Finance about sports about uh you know Tech entrepreneurs and then that moment happened and he was the person to write that book which sold millions of copies which turned into a huge movie that was when the man and the moment met right and I think Churchill said something about like you know there Comes This Time in everyone's life where you know Destiny Taps you on the shoulder and he says it would be a shame if you weren't ready when that happened and so you know everyone

thinks they're ready and they want it now but you actually you don't know what the future holds and and so just the sense that like every day I get a little bit better I work on it all the time uh I'm putting in my reps I'm following my process I'm you know putting in the hours and I have this maybe it's a little but I just have this vague sense that there's a thing that I haven't even thought of yet and that will be the best thing that I do yeah and that kind of keeps

me going what a beautiful way to live that that's spectacular and and at one point I remember sitting with someone and he wasn't trying to teach me he wasn't a mentor he was just I was sitting with him at a wedding and he was just telling stories of his life and he did quite a fascinating life because of something that his dad did and he used to just as a kid be following his to the Daily dad like following his dad and he was taking on crazy adventures and experiences as a little kid just CU

his dad had a crazy job I used to listen to him I be like wow like this guy just has so many stories they're not achievements they're not like I got an award or it wasn't like oh and then I became invited it was just he had a great set of stories he was sharing and I realized that at one point I realized that collecting experiences collecting skills collecting abilities qualities was so much more of a better Pursuit and I look at that what you just said for me today it's like I chose to be

a monk without knowing what it was before that I went to public speaking school because my parents forced me to go not knowing that I never said I really want to be a public speaker at 11 years old and then I went into the world of Accenture and learned about business and strategy which was very very useful and like today I put all those three things together sure and my career is based off all three of those experiences but I could never have known that and it goes back to that famous Steve Job statement of

you can always connect the dots you can't connect the dots moving forward you only can Looking Backward yes and so when you're living it's almost like collect experiences and skills and abilities and relationships when I was interviewing you all those years ago I would never have known that we would still be friends and we would connect and support each other you've supported my books but it's that you're just collecting that connection and relationship if that makes sense yeah one of my mentors uh the writer Robert Green he said one of the great things about being

a writer is that it's all material that everything that happens to you is material and so if you just go through your life going hey I don't know why I got dumped here I don't know why my house flooded I don't know why any of this stuff happened to me but I'm going to choose it as I'm going to choose to see it as something that's happening for me as an artist a leader a parent a spouse that this is teaching me something right when we when we say that the obstacle is the way it's

not that hey this thing happened and now as a result your business is 10x better off right like it it sometimes just happens bad happens but you learned from it or it it forced you to grow in some way just the sheer hanging oness of it made you stronger and better right it's not it's not that hey there's this magical you know opportunity in this that there's this just slightly secret Silver Lining and then everything's awesome no it's it's much deeper than that it's it's that the stuff that happens is shaping you and forming you

and and giving you opportunities to you know evolve as a human being that's that's what that idea is and so you know there are things that I've gone through in my life that end up shaping my writing for things that I don't even know I didn't know until I sat down that day that that would come back out right and so it's just this yeah it's this process of accum accumulating experiences accumulating insights accumulating you know things that you've read and then it all funnels ultimately into the work and what a great way to live

knowing that your best work is still ahead of you yeah I hope so I mean maybe not right maybe not I believe it I believe it for you I believe for me I think that's a great way to live and think yeah I I mean your best work doesn't have to be your most successful work that's what I mean yeah yeah I I'm just saying that's that's how I get up every day is that I think hey I'm there is this thing in the future maybe I won't be ready for it maybe I won't be

around but I I I like to think that it's all building towards something yeah yeah and I feel like when I look at back at some sages in you know the viic tradition and even in the Hindu tradition there were these amazing people that excavated temples like old sites that historical things had happened at yeah but no one really knew about it so no one would really visit but today 500 to A Thousand Years Later pilgrims visit these places and they did that believing and knowing that one day this place will be of significance but

not maybe in my lifetime yes and so they were able to fast forward their service in one sense or their passion knowing that one day this will serve others one day this will mean something to people even if it doesn't right now even if it's SE as valueless right now no it's it's kind of beautiful to go through life and go like hey somebody planted this tree somebody built this road somebody created this institution somebody fought for a very specific way of setting it up or thinking about it somebody went to prison over this right

somebody crossed an like all of us are the the lucky recipients of Investments that people made a long time ago and there's this Christian idea like you've been given a free gift so you have to give freely yourself and the idea that like yeah we are the we in the present are living in a future that other people dreamed of right and so how what is it that that you are contributing to the the next future right what trees are you planting what difference are you making what work are you creating and again like yeah

you're writing this book and you hope it sells now but maybe it sells 500 years from now maybe it's rediscovered then like that we we we consume works of art that were totally obscure or unappreciated in their own time that that we came back around to and so the idea of of owing the future something I think is a really beautiful idea there's that that quote like uh the world is great when old men plant trees in whose shade they'll never know and what about you right like what what have you planted what what are

you contributing um what are you giving away is is a is a way to measure your own life yeah yeah one of the chapters that stuck up from your book that I loved uh is called wait here I wanted to pick it up oh yeah raise a reader yeah and it's and it stuck with me because I was a kid who never liked reading until 14 and now I consider myself a like a voracious reader I absolutely it's my favorite way of learning and I realized it was because school always gave us fiction books and

so we'd get story books and a big one we' get a lot of was Goosebumps yeah and then you'd read R Dar and you'd read you know these incredible authors but fiction just never resonated with me and I remember it took my dad giving me like a biography or an autobiography that triggered it and I remembered my first ever books that I got really into were uh David Beckham's autobiography Dwayne The Rock Johnson when he was a wrestler's but autobiography and then the biography of like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and so it was

really interesting to me how my parents wanted to raise a reader but it took them a long time to understand what that meant how are you raising readers and what does that mean to you and why is that important it is strange I think one of the things that gets in the way of people falling in love with books is that there's kind of a snoody in it and there's this sense that there's literature and then there's all these other books it's weird that we tell high schoolers that they should read these like sort of

artistic novels and that this is what literature is and then they go well I didn't like the Great Gatsby which is an incredible book or I didn't like Grapes of Wrath so I'm not a reader meanwhile there's all these books about what it's like to be a teenager there's books there's Memoirs from athletes that they there's all these awesome things that they would actually that would actually reach them and speak to them that could sort of inculcate that that identity of being a reader and so like with with my with my oldest son who's six

like we don't read the books that I like that I think he would be into we read books about Minecraft because he's obsessed with video games and like to me this is like barely a book but you know but to him it it's it's a way to learn more about this thing that he's interested in which is what reading is and they they've they've done this interesting study of of kids reading like um if you remember as a kid you know you'd have to read some like essay or short story or whatever and this is

how they would test your reading comprehension well they found that if they gave kids say a paragraph about baseball they would read it much better than if they gave them some weird story about like some girl with a cookie or something right and what they were finding is that when the kids knew what they were reading about or interested in it they would it would resonate with them more I just don't like the idea that we exclude people from this amazing wonderful thing that is reading you see this even in publishing where like physical books

are considered higher than audiobooks and ebooks and I personally don't read audiobooks and I don't like reading ebooks I'm a physical book person but all I want is for people to read right like I want them to consume it in whatever medium they want to consume things in and so just meeting people where they are to me is the main way that you raise readers and it's it's a we just get in our own way on these things like I've read so many books even since I since I've gotten older like about where I grew

up and I'm like why didn't anyone tell me like like Joan didan is from the the same town that I grew up in and nobody told me that right I had to read these other novels that would that didn't resonate with me but if I this lady was from where I'm from that would have resonated with me at such a deeper level right and I try to think about what does the person want to learn what do they have a problem with how do how do we find a book that solves that problem cuz that's

when the light bulb flips when a book solves a problem for you or there's an Roi to it right that's what lights you up and then maybe you'll go read something that's purely artistic and doesn't have any of that but you really got to find where the book does something for someone I'm so glad you brought that up because I think a lot of people ask me like Jay what should I read like and and my number one question to them is what are you struggling with like that's the question I love to ask back

and I said I I can recommend a lot of books but what are you struggling with and I find that that's often where someone gets stumped where that's not necessarily how they've been trained to look for reading we've been trained to look for in terms of entertainment which is great and I nothing against that or we've been trained to be like oh it's the smart thing to do or like that's what what like you're saying this elitist mindset of if you're reading then you're thoughtful which I don't subscribe to at all yeah and so then

you actually lose it like for me we were growing as a team my company was growing over the last couple of years so literally all I've read is hiring books culture books leadership books that's all I've been reading and it has been the best investment and it has solved so many problems and it has solved so many challenges or mindsets I didn't have and I think that's such I'm I just want to highlight that point because I feel the same way that if you're struggling to know what to read look at what your challenge is

look at what your struggle is look at what problem you're trying to solve and you'll naturally be more inclined and immersed it's important to realize that pretty much anything you're going through someone has gone through before for and written a book about maybe they they succeeded and they wrote a book about their successes or they failed and they wrote a book about their failures right there are almost no new human problems people have been doing whatever it is that we're doing for thousands of years and to not Avail yourself of that knowledge is insane uh

General Mattis uh was a fourstar general in the Marines he was Secretary of Defense sort of this he's known as this kind of warrior Monk because he's not just this Warf fighter but he's also this deeply thoughtful sort of student of his craft and he he pointed out he points this out to like young soldiers he says like hey people have been fighting on battlefields for as long as humans have existed and the earliest literature is about this right you know whether we're talking about Homer or Gilgamesh you know the idea that you would not

Avail yourself of the lessons they've learned he's like is insane you know he's like the mistakes you're making cost people things and so to make a mistake by trial and eror that someone else has already gone through is reckless and irresponsible and and he has this great quote I think about all the time he says he says if you haven't read hundreds of books about like what it is that you do he said you're functionally illiterate right illiterate not in the sense that you can't read but a literate in the sense that you haven't read

and it's the same thing right if you haven't read it you don't know about it and the fact that you could is irrelevant what matters is have you read about this and and so just realizing that whether it's parenting or starting a business or uh you know being successful or creating social change like people have been through this a long time and they have really thoughtful things to say about it and to not Avail yourself to that knowledge to just go I'll figure it out on my own is not only inefficient but it's irresponsible right

like you could have succeeded earlier you could have had the impact earlier you could have saved yourself going down this road or that road but you didn't because you thought you were too smart epicus says you know it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know and so part of reading is also the idea of humility the idea of like I don't know about this I want to know about this somebody knows more about me more about this than me that's the mindset of a reader that you want to cultivate and and we

we think about this with our kids like they'll ask us questions and we'll like kind of know the answer and we'll start to answer and then we stop ourselves and we go no let's go find out about this together like let's look this up like there's this magical thing called Google we can look it up right we can read a Wikipedia page about it we can buy a book about it I want to teach them the habit of I'm curious about this I want to go down the rabbit whole and figure it out just guessing

or uh you know half asking it is is not is not the mindset that makes you you want to be the person that figures stuff out and is good at it has the tools and the determination to figure stuff out that's what you want your kids to have yeah and are your kids at school now yes yeah so how are you and they go to a like a a regular National curriculum like they're learning they're learning the curriculum that they teach in the US yeah yeah so like with that kind of like how are you

I guess I find that as parents it's natural to want to save our kids from the mistakes we made yeah or protect them from the wrong turns we took I would love to hear your philosophy or your thoughts or your approach right now especially with the daily dad on how are you doing that or are you trying to limit your projection onto them like how do you deal with them as fresh but then also your thoughts around the world and how School works and how how do you navigate the fact that you can always think

you know what's right for your kids but most of what you think is what is right for them is based on what you think was wrong for you yes yes I mean I I heard an interview with Brian graser once the movie producer and he been on the he's dyslexic right and that dyslexia shaped him and formed him into being This brilliant creative uh you know sort of producer and uh cultiv of talent and so someone asked like well would you want your kids to go through that it was so formative in shaping you and

he was like are you out of your mind so there is this sense that the struggles we went through um if we can spare our kids them that's great and then at the same time we also understand that if you spare your kids all trouble and all difficulty they become very fragile and so it's this kind of tension between you know uh I I I sort of say like you want your kid's life to be good but but not easy right like so where you can prevent needless suffering or struggle or pain you want to

and then at the same time if you do everything for them you're actually making life so much harder for them so that's why I like this idea of like hey if they they think that they can just come to me for all answers uh they're not developing the ability to figure stuff out for themselves so what I want to do is model like I may already know the answer I may already think I know the answer but I want to figure it out with them together that's what we want to do um and I I

I sort of think about that as a general parenting philosophy yeah I like I like what you were saying there because I think it applies in coaching it applies in mentorship it applies in a relationship like doing things for other people often feels like love Yeah but actually It Isn't Love because it than doing things for people I if you were to be like I don't know how far the Moon is from planet Earth and you went and checked it on your phone and then just told your kid the answer is different to saying hey

let's both sit down on Google and let's look at the Moon and then look look at Jupiter and Saturn and let's look at the entire you know solar system and right that's what I'm totally yeah you want to show them how to figure it out for themselves you want to equip them with the tools to do it because you're not always going to be there to do it for them yeah like there's um there's helicopter parenting people know about that then there's this also this one they talk about called snowplow parenting and snowpow parenting is

going ahead of your kid and clearing all obstacles and difficulties out of their path which again feels like a form of love and yet it's also quite cruel because eventually you won't be there and they will have to experience those obstacles and if they haven't built the skills or the strength or the confidence the sense of self that says I'm a person that knows how to solve problems well they're going to be in serious trouble yeah and that's that must be so hard I'm not a parent so that must be so hard because when you

see this innocent adorable kid and they're going through some pain or Challenge and it and you want to give them the skills of how to solve their own problems which I do believe is prob if we if we had to debate it out it's probably the most useful skill of time is how do you solve any problem well I was thinking about this recently there there's this singer Morgan Wade and she has this new song and and there's a lyric in it she says something like all of your dreams are a parents fears and if

you think about your own life right all of the things that are good in your life came from risks that you took like for me it was dropping out of college you know um my wife and I you know we got together super early we moved in we we did things that in retrospect were crazy and people probably thought were bad ideas um I've made career decisions that were crazy I I did all these risks and I wouldn't be here without the risks and so one of the things that's hard as a parent is realizing

that like more than anything what you want is for your kid to be safe right and so there's almost this inherent conflict right like a person wants to be happy and fulfilled and do cool things and a parent wants nothing bad to happen ever mhm right and the ability to to realize that there is a tension there that the thing you want more than anything will ultimately smother and deprive them of the thing that they want more than anything it's all of it like when I dropped out of out of college you know my parents

like took it really badly like it it crushed them you know they'd worked so hard I think so much wrongly of their identity was tied up in my sister and I's success and they didn't want to be the parents that had a kid dropped out of college cuz it's weird at you know a party or something to talk about and maybe it was a bad decision maybe it ended up working out but maybe it was a bad decision and and so I I did it but then immediately after a bunch of really bad stuff happened

like it ended up being way harder than I thought for a bunch of reasons and what I really needed then was parents right and so my parents worried that I was doing this thing that was dangerous didn't support me doing it and then they weren't there when I needed their actual support right and so it's it's understanding that like what you what you need to do is not like be right about stuff or get your way but to sort of show them that you're there for them whatever happens and that maybe that's a way that

you cut through this tension of like we don't want them to do anything that's dangerous but if you're fear of that pushes them away then when they are in danger they're not going to come to you right and that's what you should fear more than anything I um I interviewed this guy's name was Dave Cary Captain Dave KY he was a p in Vietnam and um he said something to me that I think about now all the time as a parent he said the goal of every conversation as a parent is to get to have

the next conversation right and I think about that in life in business it should it's almost like every decision you make it's it's am I closing doors here am I burning Bridges behind me am I shutting things down down or am I keeping things open right life is about options how many options do you have and just just realizing okay this conflict this disagreement this tension you know the main thing that you're going to want with your kids in the future is that relationship and nothing is more important than that and so I think about

that all the time yeah no I mean reflecting on what you're saying I feel like that was something that was so like my parents when when I did decide to become a monk it was like that was uncomfortable for them I never went to my graduation ceremony I graduated but never went to have the picture taken and that was a big thing because everyone's house we'd go to they've had pictures of their kids you know with their little scroll and the hat and all the rest of it and but it was the same it was

they didn't support it and they didn't block me yeah and then when I failed at it or when it all ended they were there to catch me I moved back in with them yeah and those two statements you put two of the chapters in the book are always be a fan and love unconditionally and I was reflecting on those and I was like I think my parents have always loved unconditionally like they've been able to have this relationship with me where yeah I I I would totally give them credit for that where they never let

me feel like they weren't there for me regardless of even if my choices were totally against their is and I respect them a lot for that because it I've made it hard no no it's beautiful and kids do make it hard right and it's it's going to be a challenge there's this there's a story about Jim volvano the basketball coach he realizes at like 10 or 12 or 13 or whatever he wants to be a basketball coach and he tells his dad he says I'm going to I want to be a college basketball coach and

goes okay and then the next day his dad calls him in into his bedroom and uh he says you what's going on and and the dad says see that suitcase and the son says yeah and he says it's packed and and he says why and he says it's packed for when you coach in the final four you know and this idea of like your kid has this dream and you know judge it you don't tell them that it's unrealistic you don't tell them it's crazy you don't let them know how hard it's going to be

you also don't take it over and say well here's what you're going to need to do you just go I'm rooting for you is is a beautiful thing and too much of the love that parents have or the support is conditional on whether it's going well whether it's socially acceptable whether it's understandable or not you know I think a lot of parents want their kids to be doctors and lawyers because they know what doctors and lawyers are right and social media manager sounds made up right even if one pays better than the other even if

one is what lights the kid up and the they hate the other more they just want it it this this desire to understand uh gets in the way of just support uh which is really what it comes down to the sense that hey these people these people believe in me yeah uh these people really believe in me yeah and I feel like with my parents I I probably had more of a neutral relationship where I wouldn't say they were believing in me or rooting for me but they weren't putting it down and so it was

more a bit like let's start there yeah you make your decisions and whatever like it's not like we believe in you and it's going to be great and we it's not like we're trying to hold you back I think a lot of us today though and and I think the difference for me was I had such conviction and I always have when I've made my choices and it sounds like you did too obviously in the way you described it where I didn't really care what anyone thought and I still kind of him that way like

I'm like whatever I'm going to do what I want anyway and I think a lot of people like want their parents to like root for them and I hear this a lot where they like people say to me like Jay like my parents don't believe in me and like no one's like encouraging me and no one's supporting me what do I do in that situation and so it's interesting because we also have that inbuilt desire for our parents to root for us but as in your case and as in many others and even in mine

in a different way your parents aren't going to be your biggest cheerleaders all the time and most of us didn't have that experience so while you're trying to be a dad who is unconditional and a fan you didn't get that and majority of people in the world didn't get that so how no can screw you up I remember I I was in business with someone and uh he was doing something kind of crazy I forget what it was but someone brought up I was like why is he like this and he goes if you just

translate everything he's saying into daddy daddy look at me it all makes sense and you realize this person didn't get kind of approval or attention from their parents and and it drove them to be successful in business but it also made them a liability in business because they weren't dealing with the situation at hand they were dealing with this sort of unfulfilled unmet desire to get attention to be recognized and that's a really that's a really dangerous thing you know and I think at the core of it like a good number of men are just

motivated by wanting their dad to be proud of them and the sooner you realize that if your dad wasn't proud of you at the beginning no amount of success is going to make you feel that later right I do think there there's this great quote from Marcus realis that that is a really important piece of parenting advice that I try to think about he says you know things are not asking to be judged by you and he says remember you always have the power of having no opinion so being a fan being a supporter being

a cheerleader that's that's where you want to get as a parent but what if you just started by not having an opinion like your kid is your kid and they're going to do what they want to do and they're going to be who they are the fewer opinions you have about that the better your relationship is going to be absolutely you think back with your relationship with your parents and you think about the arguments that you had the things you fought about and how in retrospect how small those things seem and how little they mattered

uh because what matters now is that there is the relationship right what matters is that there's still the affection and the feeling and that you spend time together and yet there were moments where it seemed like they were willing to trade that to enforce some arbitrary rule or some cultural norm or you know force you into some box that they had for you and and the fewer opinions you have the better I think as as a parent like your kid likes this video game the fact that you think video games are dumb is an opinion

you don't need to have yeah keep it to yourself yeah and how do you deal with it on the other side like I find that I'm sure a lot of people listening they're like I wish my parents had that mindset right because they didn't but then how do you still live a meaningful fulfilling life because so much of who we are is wrapped up in this entire relationship and you find as you said we are like I'm going to do my own thing because I want to control my life but we're still controlled by the

expectation of being successful because our parents want us to be successful so we're still trying to prove them wrong or right and so how do you kind of what what do you do in that scenario where someone's lived a life and they're like well I'm kind of like you Ryan where my parents weren't my number one fan I didn't have unconditional love they don't support me and I still find myself trying to impress them all the time yeah yeah it's it's it's realizing that if you didn't get it you're never going to get it and

and and and and to to try to to try to continue to get a thing that you're never going to get is a Fool's errand right and that you have to figure out why you want to do what you want to do and what what's important to you right and that have you ever done any inner child work yeah yeah you realize oh hey like my parents weren't what I needed to be at to this 14-year-old but I need to be what I what that 14-year-old needed or I'm going to go through the world as

a 14-year-old and it's not appropriate for a 14-year-old to be in this meeting or in this conversation or to be you know operating at this level you know you have to re sort of reparent that inner child or it's going to pop out at totally inappropriate times and places and I think one of the beautiful things about having kids is it does give you a sense of who you were right you you don't really remember what it's like to be four and then you have a four-year-old and you go oh this is what I needed

as a four-year-old yeah and so I can't go back in time and give that to to to my four-year-old self but I can do a better job for this four-year-old we we got my four-year-old off at at Camp yesterday and he really didn't want to go he was really struggling he was really upset and he was sort of having this anxiety attack he was struggling he was crying and um and and so ultimately after like 30 minutes this is dragged on and 30 minutes 45 minutes it's going and he's getting more and more upset and

then we without even talking about it we just decided he didn't need to go and as as my wife got back in the car and we're driving him back to our house and we're going to to you know just have a fun day or whatever uh all I said was I think we both know that our parents would have handled this differently and you know they would have forced it right and and the idea that hey it's an opportunity to do things differently to stop certain Cycles right to turn over new leaves to just to

just do it a better way and that that that is not only your obligation but it's also healing for yourself M to go oh this is what I needed then and you can't go back in time but you can write a better future what gave you the intuition in that moment for you specifically to know whether to push them to go to camp or where you were like no actually because I I remember as a kid I used to get a lot of those anxiety attacks as as a young kid and I remember even when

I was going to high scho I had to take exams to get into certain high schools that my parents want me to go to and I remember like just being so stressed at that time with like going to these entrance examinations you don't know anyone there and you're seeting in this Hall and you're doing exams at 11 years old 10 years old to get into this 11 plus school and whatever and I remember feeling that when there were times when my parents were like it's okay and there were times when I was pushed through and

obviously I I only personally remember the ones I was pushed through that worked out yeah uh but naturally there are lots of kids in the world who only remember the times when their parents should have let them pull out and they didn't so how did you at least for yourself reconcile that in a moment like that because I'm sure sometimes you're like no pushing through is good and you know you know yeah the stoics say one of the most dangerous things we can do is extrapolate right because it takes us out of the moment we're

in and then we're thinking well what if it happens again and what if it happens again and what if it happens again and then all a sudden you're living in this future where if you let this thing happen over and over and over again your kid is utterly incapable of doing anything for themselves and just going hey what does one day of camp actually matter right what is uh what what is what is actually at stake here yeah and you realize that almost nothing is at stake right you know like your kid's throwing a temper

tantrum and you go this is not an appropriate way to act I don't want to raise a kid that throws temper tantrums I don't want to raise a kid that can't have and and you realize you're not even thinking about your kid anymore you're thinking about you and and what you should be thinking about is oh wait we forgot to have lunch right or oh wait they're oh wait they're coming down with something and you realize oh this is an individual instance it is not a reflection of the their trajectory as a human being and

and being able to do that to anyone in life is really power it's an Incredible Gift to be able to look at the moment you're in as not much more than a moment that you are in is is an incredible thing to do for yourself and them I I struggle with that even as a writer obviously discipline is important commitment is important routine is important but then you have kids and you're in this world of unavoidable reality and you have to go I can't do what I wanted to do today that doesn't mean the wheels

are going to come off and everything is going to collapse you have to be okay you know and and just that sort of acceptance and to go this is a singular instance no more no less I'm just going to do what we need to do and and and when I think about things that have got really Haywire with our kids or in my life it's because I wasn't in that moment I was in whatever I was extrapolating that moment to mean if it happened over and over and over again it's a brilliant answer I love

that that that resonates so strongly with me because I think we you're so right we just take one moment to be so predictive yeah of their entire future like if I let him quit camp today then he's going to quit this and if I let people talk to me this way then I'm just GNA be this person that gets pushed around and you're like this is uh one poorly written email it it doesn't mean anything more than that and and that you can just let like Let It Go Now obviously if you're doing that all

the time for everything you can get in trouble too but but just going yeah this is this is not that big a deal I that's a question I try to ask myself all the time does this actually matter or do I just think that it matters is my is is is what other people think you know informing whether I think this matters or not do I actually care about this and then that just turns down the volume which is really what you need the most you just need to turn down the volume yeah that's my

favorite one disconnecting from if I ever get worked up about something or red up about something it's because I've let the opinions of others become a lens through which I'm seeing the significance of something well one of the really screwed up parts about having a kid and I was just talking to someone who has a like a six week old so you get your kid take them home from the hospital and then you have to take them to their first pediatrician visit and then you do this bunch of times in their first year and you

take them to the pediatrician and the first thing they do is they weigh them and they measure them right and then they give you these numbers they go your kid is 80th percentile in height and 40th percentile in weight and they and their head size is the 16th percen they the first thing that happens when you have a kid is they tell you mathematically where your kid measures up against other kids and it's like this the whole way they should be walking by this age they should be uh reading by this age riding a bike

by this age and so you have this data like if if you didn't know how other people were doing you wouldn't care but because they told you then you you want to win that game and the game is the size of your kid's head which you have no ability to influence whatsoever I mean yeah you want to know hey your kid is dangerously un you know uh underweight and maybe malnourished but it's usually it's like oh they're 87% in weight and not 94 you know like and all of a sudden you're thinking as a kid

you're thinking back to when you were a kid and you're like well I want to get an A and so anything above 90 you know and and so it's it starts at the very beginning this sort of comparison game and the less if you knew less you would be much more relaxed and much more kind to them and yourself and it's important to remember that you're not raising an average kid you're raising your kid you're not raising uh a kid on a spectrum you're raising this person that you were getting you were given that has

a unique set of DNA and a unique set of circumstances that you have some control over and a lot of things you don't have control over and I think the more you can kind of tune out what other people are doing like my wife and I were like concerned that this kid we know who was born like the same day as my son like he's riding a bike and my son can't ride a bike and we're like are we screwing up are we holding back are we bad as parents and then we were talking to

them and they were concerned that their son couldn't swim and ours can swim like a fish and you just realize oh yeah it's all it probably has nothing to do with anyone it's just one of them is naturally disposed to swimming and the other has some brain that makes biking easy and if we didn't know that that some kids were doing this and some kids were doing this we would just be like well they'll learn it eventually right and so I think of course you do it is important to Benchmark and know generally when stuff's

supposed to happen but just so much of this information it's only there to make you feel inferior or insecure or alarmed and that's not going to make you a better parent absolutely I mean I'm so glad you went there because I feel like that's the exact thing that's on everyone's mind and I think it applies to everything from having kids to getting married to being engaged to moving in to dating to friends to how much money you should have made by what age like it it just goes across the board I wonder I've spoken to

a lot of people on the podcast about mum guilt to mothers dad guilt's a thing too and you know as someone like you who you said you've had a lot of successes before you became a dad but at the same time you're an ambitious driven individual I'm sure you know other dads who became dads before and after they've had success let's paint the scenario which I think is a common scenario someone's trying to put food on the table they're trying to take care of their family they don't get to be there for bedtime every night

they don't get to go to the football game on the weekend like they can't show up at all these places because of genuine reasons how does that person be a present loving dad or what does it look like for that scenario I do find moms are way harder on themselves than dads and and part of that is cuz dads I think historically have been judged on a much uh more generous or SL sliding scale right and so the fact that there is some dad guilt is is in in a sense a sign of progress right

that like oh hey this is something that I am uh expected to be good at to take seriously and that if I'm not good at it someone's not just going to handle it for me right I think the reason moms feel guilty is they they're like there's no safety net like I'm the final line of defense right and so I do feel dad guilt sometimes and and I I see that as a sign that like I'm I'm caring about it right cuz you know who like it's like um it would be wonderful if all parents

were concerned that they weren't doing a good enough job but the the fact is there's a lot of parents that aren't thinking about it at all they're either not thinking about it because they're so convinced they're perfect and they're not or they just don't care that much so it's good that it's good that you're insecure that you're questioning yourself then just realize that other than that other than the indicator of of prioritization is not actually helping you be a better parent right whipping yourself like I I joke like your kids are going to hit you

enough like you don't need to whip yourself on top of it right um be kind to yourself and that that's a great line from sen he says the the the sign that that philosophy is working in your life is that you're becoming a better friend to yourself yeah and and so you should be a good friend and parent to yourself but there is this sense I think with dads that like your job is to provide and you go I'm doing this all for my family if you never see your family are you really doing it

for them you know um or or are you using your kids as an excuse to do this thing that you want to do right I'm not saying that providing isn't important that you shouldn't try to be successful at work I just I just think like hey uh the thing your your kids want more than anything is you right that's what your family wants you and so if you go oh I'm doing this for you did they want a new mountain bike or do they want to see their dad during daylight hours right both both yeah

um but but when they think back to their childhood they're not going to go oh I did have a lot of cool stuff right like I never saw my parents but I had a lot of cool stuff right it worked out for me they want you and and so how do you how do you find that balance I mean what when we talk about work life balance what we're talk the reason that's so hard is we're talking about tradeoffs like that you can't have it all and um you're going to have to say no to

some things one of the things that that having kids changed for me is that it made it easier for me to say no because it Illustrated the opportunity cost much more vividly right like if I didn't have kids if it's just me and my wife or just me you know I could always squeeze more stuff in and I I I I couldn't calculate or necessarily feel what it was costing me but when you've promised your time to this little person who wants to wrestle or go in the swimming pool or play Legos and then you're

not able to be home because you agreed to some dumb conference call or you let someone pick your brain you feel that more yeah right you feel that more the opportunity costs were always there you just didn't feel it because it wasn't personified in a in a heartbroken three-year-old so it's helpful it it can it can be really really powerful I have I have this sign in wall in my office and just says no and it's it's between two pictures of my kids and it's a reminder that when I'm saying yes what I'm saying no

to is a and b and when I'm saying uh no I'm saying yes to a and b and realizing that that your fear of being rude or hurting someone's feelings well you better get comfortable with that because you're going to you're going you're being rude to someone you're letting somebody down you're hurting someone's feelings and should it be this stranger or should it be this person that you promised you know you were going to be there for or that you said is the most important thing in the world to you like the calendar doesn't lie

you you say family is the the most important thing to you but what is your calendar show I I I could couldn't agree more I always I always said the way you spend your money the way you spend spend your time and the way you spend your energy shows your values and priorities far more than what you say or think yeah because you're back like what you spend money on is showing what you care about what you do to make money shows what you care about but what is your biggest fear or Worse quality in

you that you are so scared of projecting onto your kids are you aware of that are you yeah I mean I think you have to be I think I think I've never been glad that I lost my temper it's never made anything better and so you know kids are frustrating uh it's overwhelming um the other the other day my my son was uh in the car and he's s of yelling and and he's really upset I so look back and I'm like what's happening and my my other son goes you know I think Jones's just

really overstimulated right now and I was like wow that's like amazing you know like I was like I wish like first off I was proud cuz he obviously picked that up from us but I was like I wish I could have that kind of awareness cuz all I was thinking about is like what is this noise right and he's thinking why is that person making that noise um and and so yeah the things that you get upset with your kids about uh when you lose your temper like it's it's never stuff that you're like that

was okay 1% of the time it's like they ran away from you in a parking lot and you're so scared something could have happened uh and and you kind of need to get that across but most of the time it's it's nothing that matters and yet you are telling them that it matters and you are telling them that they don't matter in a way that you would never want right and so I think I think for me it's it's about temper um and and you know how do you tame that how do you keep it

from exploding onto the people that you love to that's that's the struggle what what have you discovered in that path uh it's hard like you said it's hard it's really hard it's really hard my wife and I try to get good at going like you're having trouble handling this right now why don't you step outside why don't you go for a walk like or why don't you just let this go you know what I mean like why is it act does it actually matter that pajamas get on by a certain time like why are you

forcing this thing and I think often times the frustration comes from when things are are being forced and so stepping back is is usually the best way to do it and then I also think like look people lose their temper it's a fact of life my parents lost their temper at me quite a bit I don't ever remember them apologizing for it right which is something I try to do a lot I try to go hey it's stressful for me at the airport I'm trying to make sure that we all get to the place that

we need to get by a certain time so we can go on the vacation that by the way you want to go to more than me right but I was just I was stressed earlier like I wasn't in control of myself earlier and I'm not proud of that I don't like that and that wasn't good but I'm owning it now now MH and it didn't say anything about you right and so the ability to if you can in the moment go hey I'm over stimulated or I'm stressed can you do it later at least if

you can do it later it's not as good but it's still an improvement and then can you take responsibility for your emotions as opposed to dumping those emotions on someone else and then making them filter you know sort through them in therapy 20 years later Ryan thank you so much for coming back on the show today it's so great it's so great I feel like what I wanted to do today was talk about parenting but also being a kid of parents who didn't read the daily dad and what that feels like as an experience because

you're trying to be a parent without having had parenting training and one thing you said that is going to stay with me for a long time was if you don't reparent your 14-year-old self you're still a 14-year-old and I think a lot of us can resonate with that statement very deeply that there's an age that we feel we lived our toughest worst Year and no one took care of that yeah child or that teenager or whatever age it was and that's something we all need to recommit to yeah I mean one of the struggles of

of being a parent you're trying to give stuff that you didn't necessarily get right and it's even harder for people who didn't have you know a dad or a mom or you know their Dad or Mom was an alcoholic or you're trying to give things that you didn't get but that's that's the obligation is to try to do a little bit better right to try to give them the things that you felt that you needed or wanted that's the goal right um but yeah you open this you said you know you're trying to heal I

I do if you leave those things unexplored or unaddressed you're just passing them along and that's there has to be some point where you go this stops with me right like this there's a beautiful senal line you talks about how we can't choose our parents but we can choose whose children we would like to be and the idea that like biology doesn't have to be destiny that it doesn't have to keep going the direction that it always went that you can do it differently that you can decide hey no my my parenting heroes are these

people that I can borrow from these parents that had different tools than my parents that had more patience or wisdom or Insight or empathy than my parents and that that I can I can give that to my kids that's that's a beautiful thing the book is called The Daily dad 366 meditations on parenting love and raising great kids by Ryan holiday if you don't already follow Ryan on Instagram on YouTube across social media his podcast of course we named all the books earlier uh please go and follow him across all platforms Ryan anything else you

want to share with the community over here now thanks for having me yeah thanks for coming back man we look forward to every time sir thank you if you love this episode you'll love my interview with Dr gabo mate on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable so a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick does it it goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable