The Daily Dad

We do so much for our kids. We drive them around. We provide for them. We entertain them. And of course, there are parents who do even more. Parents who packed up and moved across the world for a better life for their kids. Parents who gave their lives for their kids.

How much do children understand these sacrifices? How much do they appreciate it? Not fully, that’s for sure. But that’s OK—because it’s not theirs to understand, it’s not theirs to appreciate. As we’ve said before, we owe our kids everything. We’re the ones that brought them into this world. They don’t owe us anything except to be themselves.

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every parent wishes they could have done some things differently. Maybe you wish you were around more when they were a toddler. Maybe you wish you were more patient when they were a teenager. Maybe you wish you said I love you more.

In her amazing book Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, Dr. Becky Kennedy writes that that’s what she hears all the time:

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we wanted to run our favorite entry from The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids, a helpful reminder on this day of celebration.

When you were younger, for Christmas, all you wanted was presents.

Now that you’re older, now that you have kids, all you want is presence. All you want is for your kids to be present over the holidays.


Our New Year New You Challenge is all-new content, guided by thousands of responses and reactions to our previous challenges, courses, videos, and emails. It’s a whole new challenge based on painstaking research and timeless science, for an all-new, life changing experience.

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/dailydad and get on your way to being your best self.”

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad,  Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on the emotional neglect that comes with using kids for social media,  the culture of Christmas being stressful,  not letting work or expectations become the main thing along with self awareness and communication.

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

​Theodore Roosevelt lived an incredible life. He was an author. A naturalist. A rancher. A police chief. A cowboy. A hunter. A governor. A soldier. A president. An explorer. A philanthropist. And that’s probably not even close to an exhaustive list. His life was full of activity. It was full of adventure. It was marked by triumph and adversity to overcome.

It’s worth telling your kids the story of Theodore Roosevelt to inspire them for the same reason that Theodore Roosevelt’s parents made sure he knew about the fascinating and inspiring lives of history. As one biographer observed, “the story of Theodore Roosevelt is the story of a small boy who read about great men and decided he wanted to be like them.”

So we’ll leave you today by putting a challenge in front of you. For the last four years, we have been doing what we call the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge—a set of 21 actionable challenges, presented one per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. These aren’t pie-in-the-sky, theoretical discussions but clear, immediate exercises and methods you can begin right now to spark the reinvention you’ve been trying for. We’ll tell you what to do, how to do it, and why it works.

From these challenges, you will:

✓ Learn to stop procrastinating and avoiding the change you truly desire

✓ Build new habits that form a strong foundation for change

✓ Abandon the harmful habits that are dragging you down

✓ Strengthen your character, becoming a more virtuous version of yourself

And above all: You will find out just how much you are capable of.

Every morning, the email arrives in your inbox, and it presents you with a choice. You can do the harder thing, you can do the challenge. Or you can follow the drift of least resistance—you can open the email and leave it at that. Or worse…you can ignore this call right now and not sign up at all. Which way will you go?

The 2024 New Year New You Challenge officially begins on Monday, January 1st. Stop delaying. Head over to dailystoic.com/challenge and sign up NOW! Let’s go.

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube   

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There is a beautiful passage in The Velveteen Rabbit where the young rabbit asks one of the seasoned old toys in the playroom whether ‘becoming real’—the process of being changed by the love of a child—is something that has to do with how a toy is made. Is it about having certain parts, he asked? Does it require a certain makeup?

"Real isn't how you are made," says the toy horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

So yes, it’s a choice, but an unusual type of choice. It’s the decision, as we’ve talked about, to accept this process. To open yourself up to it. To let it change you.

We choose to have kids, and they choose to give us their love, to really love us. We play with them, we connect with them, we open ourselves to them and they to us. And then this process changes, transforms both of us in the most wonderful and magical of ways.

For those ready to accept the process, to open yourself up to it, we created the 2024 New Year New You Challenge. It’s a set of 21 actionable challenges—presented one per day—built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Our goal is to help you and your family make 2024 your best year yet.

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Beauty to the Stoics was far deeper than appearances. “If your choices are beautiful,” Epictetus said, “so too will you be.”

It’s simple and it’s true. You are what your choices make you, nothing more and nothing less.

Isn’t this what we try to teach our kids? That, yes of course, we love them unconditionally and unequivocally, and have since the moment they were born, but they have this incredible power to choose what kind of person they’re going to be. The reason we read to them, the reason we tell them things, the reason we have rules and punishments and incentives in our house is to try to instill in them a good compass for making good choices.

We created the 2024 New Year, New You Challenge for that person and for that reason—to help you create a better life, and a new you in 2024. It’s 3 weeks of actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. It’s 3 weeks of waking up each morning, opening the email, and making a beautiful choice. And it will require 3 weeks of discipline and sacrifice and following the process.

But when you see the results? Well, it will take your breath away. So sign up NOW to join us in the 2024 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge!

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube   

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Each of us is responsible for what we do as parents, but we’re also responsible for the dynamic that exists in our homes and in our relationships. Just because you’re the nice one, just because you do the repairing, just because you’re not as hard on your kids—that doesn’t mean that you’re not complicit in the stress or strain that’s being inflicted. 

It’s our job to create a safe and loving and supportive home. We can’t make excuses—Oh, he’s just under stress at work. Oh, that’s what she learned growing up. 

And this pertains to more than just punishment. It’s our job to get on the same pages as our spouse, our co-parent, their step-parent, our ex, whatever, and figure out how to do this right. If we’re struggling, if we sense something’s wrong? Well, we can’t deny it. 

We can’t make excuses for it. We can’t just leave our children to fend for themselves with it. Because what they’ll end up doing is blaming themselves…and eventually, inevitably, you too. 

For those tired of making excuses, we announced last week the 2024 New Year New You challenge. This set of 21 actionable challenges—presented one per day, built around the most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy—is really a set of 21 choices. Every morning, the email arrives in your inbox, and you have to choose. Will you take the easy way or the hard way? Will you read the email and leave it at that or will you take on the challenge? Will you get better this year? 

That’s the question. That’s the choice. That’s the responsibility you can accept. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s no question Hemingway was a great writer. He was the voice of a generation—The Lost Generation. He redefined prose style in the English language. His books have sold millions of copies. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

He wrote beautifully on love and family (A Farewell to Arms). He wrote beautifully on struggle and perseverance (The Old Man and the Sea). He was also a pretty awful husband and father. As one of his sons said, to Hemingway “family life [was] the enemy of accomplishment.” It was a thing that interfered with his greatness, his craft, his books. “On several occasions,” Patrick Hemingway recounted that Hemingway “said being a a good husband, being a good father…all of [these things were] not recognized by a reviewer when he reviewed his book.”

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad,  Ryan talks to American stand-up comedian, actress, writer, director, producer, and podcaster Whitney Cummings on self-awareness, the ability to update the script, and the impressions we leave on our children.

IG, X, and Tiktok: @WhitneyCummings

To follow her on OnlyFans @Whitney

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.