Time Is a Violent River | Stop Being Surprised By This

Are we doing the work we know we should be doing? Or are we letting hour after hour, day after day, simply drift past us? -- Dr. Becky Kennedy is a clinical psychologist, bestselling author, and the founder and CEO of Good Inside, a parenting platform that gives parents practical tools for raising emotionally healthy kids. Named “The Millennial Parenting Whisperer” by TIME, Dr. Becky is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/good-inside-a-guide-to-becoming-the-parent-you-want-to-be-signed-by-author?_pos=3&_sid=f70897e32&_ss=rand host of the chart-topping podcast Good Inside with Dr. Becky https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-inside-with-dr-becky/id1561689671?at=1000lHKX&ct=linktree_http&itsct=lt_p&itscg=30200&ls=1. 👉 Check out Dr. Becky’s community and platform for parents https://www.goodinside.com/: Good Inside https://www.goodinside.com/ 📱 Follow Dr. Becky | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinside/?hl=en, TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@drbeckyatgoodinside, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQcifo_12x84Uji6h1TVmKg, Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-inside-with-dr-becky/id1561689671?at=1000lHKX&ct=linktree_http&itsct=lt_p&itscg=30200&ls=1, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1paqsvlLA7b5n0MFmo5xOq 📚 Grab signed copies of Dr. Becky’s books Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/good-inside-a-guide-to-becoming-the-parent-you-want-to-be-signed-by-author?_pos=3&_sid=f70897e32&_ss=r and Leave Me Alone!: A Good Inside Story About Deeply Feeling Kids https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/leave-me-alone-a-good-inside-story-about-deeply-feeling-kids-signed-by-author?_pos=4&_sid=f70897e32&_ss=r at The Painted Porch https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/good-inside-a-guide-to-becoming-the-parent-you-want-to-be-signed-by-author?_pos=3&_sid=f70897e32&_ss=r | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=dr+becky* 🎙️The Daily Dad Podcast | Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-dad/id1490007487,Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/6svmBL9PGzAGP16Yljgzv1, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyDadYT 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  Time is a violent river. Sometimes it really does feel like it, doesn't it? Sometimes it feels like our lives are moving so quickly, with today turning into yesterday and next week becoming last week. You wake up, you work, dinner, bed, repeat. And other times, it feels like time is moving very slowly, like the day or the week or the winter won't ever end. But time never stops flowing, it never lets up. In meditations, Marx realist reminds himself not to get lost in this, to lose the perspective of what is happening. "Time is a river," he writes, "a violent current of events glimpsed once and already carried past us. Another follows and is gone."

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  Like a river, time can deceive us. From the bank, the water can look almost still. But you step into it and you realize how powerful the current actually is, how quickly it is carrying everything away. Everything is moving towards a finality. We are powerless to stop this. All we can do is respect it, as we would a river or any body of water, can pay attention to where we are. We can appreciate what is passing before us. We can prepare for what is ahead. We can decide what we're going to do with the stretch of water we happen to be in. Are we spending time on things that matter? Are we present for the people we love? Are we doing the work we know we should be doing? Or are we letting hour after hour, day after day, simply drift past us? The river is moving either way.

• 1:43Ryan Holiday?

  That's life.

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Just had a little incident with the kids. You know, we're just hanging out, it's a slow day. Ordered them some fast food and it came without the sauce they wanted. And they were pissed. I mean, they were pissed because we waited too long for them to eat. So they were mostly just hungry and sort of had a decreased ability to deal with this. But it's also because it's hard when you're a kid. You have like expectations, you have thoughts, you have a way you wanted it to go, you have a way you like things. You are dependent on other people. It's not like they could have ordered it themselves.

• 2:40Ryan Holiday?

  And then so when it doesn't go the way you wanted, you feel betrayed, you feel angry, you feel surprised, you feel scared, whatever, right? All these things, which is part of childhood, but it's also part of life. Like adults act this way all the time. People who know better, people who it is not age appropriate for, they do it. So of course, kids do it. I don't know, it just made me, made me think of what I wanted to talk about in today's episode, because one of the things that Stoics talked about over and over again was sort of preparing, premeditation, right? Not pessimism, not catastrophizing, but preparation. They wanted you to think ahead about what was likely to happen. As Seneca said, "The unexpected blow lands heaviest." They wanted you not to be surprised by difficult people,

• 3:23Ryan Holiday?

  by delays, by frustrations, by interruptions, by inconvenience. Like when you expect something that has less power over you, when you're prepared for it, you're less likely to be knocked off balance by it. So even though, you know, my wife had specifically asked, like in the order for the thing, she'd put it in the notes on the DoorDash order, it didn't happen. But you know what? I was like, hey, I remember last time this happened, we had an extra one and I shoved it in the center console of the car. Boom, I ran outside and got it. Were they totally pleased and appreciated this rabbit I pulled out of my hat? No, again, but this is kids. I know this is how it goes. I didn't let it surprise me. So that's what we're talking about in today's episode

• 4:08Ryan Holiday?

  with one of my favorite people and favorite parenting experts, Dr. Becky. She is a clinical psychologist. She's the founder of Good Inside, the host of the Good Inside Podcast, the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Good Inside, one of my favorite parenting books. Also, two wonderful kids books that I recommend. I'll link to that in today's show notes. But we were talking about how kids can be hurt and surprised by unexpected things, but also we as parents shouldn't be shocked and surprised when our kids act like kids. So in this little episode, we're talking about deeply feeling kids, which I have two of, talking about how to deal with frustration,

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  emotional vaccination, a term I love, and this Stoic idea that we should not expect figs in winter. We have to stop being shocked when human beings act like human beings, when children act like children, when Murphy's Law, which predicts all these things going wrong, makes things go wrong. Let's get into it. And again, if you haven't read Good Inside, go read it right now. We have signed copies in the store, I'll link to that. And we have signed copies of her children's book, another one I've been raving about, and I will link to that as well.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  We allow ourselves all the time to be surprised by the completely predictable. And when you're really surprised as a parent, that's one of those moments when our feelings do take us over. Humans don't like to be surprised. They really don't. And so we can't control everything, but step one, I think, is actually just thinking, okay, let me look at my day. Are there hotspots? Can I start to connect the dots? For a lot of families, leaving the house is a hotspot. For a lot of families, the transition to dinner is a hotspot. For a lot of families, the transition to bed is a hotspot and just the going to bed is a hotspot.

• 6:01Ryan Holiday?

  Basically, transitions are the problem.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Transitions are really hard. They're really hard for kids because they're always engrossed in something where things feel familiar and comfortable. And we're being, they're being asked to kind of leave that situation, to go to something a little less known or a little more uncomfortable, which by the way, we have to ask our kids to do those things. But when you think about it that way, yeah, that's hard. You know, especially as a kid. And we tend, me too, I'm not above this, to be in efficiency mode during those moments. And one of the things I keep thinking a lot about is just the difference between being efficiency mode and connection mode. And I think efficiency and connection are inherently in opposition to each other. And even for anyone listening to think like, which is more comfortable for me? There's no morality to either, just knowing which is more comfortable

• 6:46Speaker 01

  probably gives you insight into which side you need to move into. So it's really, really common to be in efficiency mode for those transitions. So I'm trying to get my kid to dinner and I'm like, come on, like put away those toys, come to dinner. Of course, that's going to lead to my kid's bigger reaction. Then I'm going to get frustrated because I'm just trying to move the night along. My kid's trying to still play with blocks, right? And so even that framework, okay, so that tends to be a hotspot for us. My anger takes over, my kid's frustration takes over. We're both no longer the driver in our car. What can I do about it? So very simply, even before involving your kid, to be able to finish the sentence is so powerful as a parent. I expect a blank to happen and I can cope with that.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  I expect my kid to give me a hard time coming to dinner.

• 7:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  And I can cope with that. I expect my kid to not listen the first time I scream from the other side of my house, put on your shoes, we have to leave right now. And I can cope with that. The expectation plus the reminder that we can cope allows us to have a very different reaction when those moments come. It's almost bizarre. It's like, well, my kid didn't listen. Like you almost feel powerful, like, oh, I did kind of, I kind of predicted that. You know, you know it's coming, which is one of the things that really allows us to stay as a driver in the car and then be more productive in actually getting our kid out of the house.

• 8:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, why are we surprised? Like my kids are the slowest people to ever exit a vehicle, like in the history, like they're just so slow. And yet it surprises me every time and I get frustrated by it all the time.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:19Ryan Holiday?

  Like they have shown me definitively that they do not get out of cars quickly. And yet I'm out of the car quickly, expecting them to have gotten out and then frustrated that they're still in it.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  I think this is just, you know, the inherent issue with being human. We all can be fairly egocentric. It sounds like when you get out of the car, by the way, Ryan, like me, I'm like, we are parking the car to go do something. Let me just be clear, I'm not parking to just chill in the car. So I am so ready.

• 8:44Ryan Holiday?

  I don't even want to do this thing. You want to do the thing.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. I have no interest in going to your soccer game where you're perfectly average at best. Like that's not even how I want to spend my Saturday, but that's what we're doing. But either way, I'm locked in. I know what I'm doing. And so we do all, and I do too. We have a hard time separating me versus you. I want to get out of the car right away. And even if my kid likes soccer, they're, I don't know, they're in the car, they don't have a sense of time. They're not thinking about being on time for soccer practice, right? It's just not how their minds work. And I think that mismatch often is why we're kind of surprised by the predictable, which means though, there's again, something very hopeful, even just once a day. And if this is your example, you can say, okay, every time I get in the car, I'm going to make sure there's a post-it that's just visible to me.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  And it's literally just going to say something simple. My kids are going to be in stalling mode. My kids are going to be in comfortable in the car mode.

• 9:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  When we park. I expect that to happen and I can cope with it. It will actually change what you do. I actually bet you'll get them out of the car faster because you won't spend, whatever we all spend, 90 seconds, five minutes yelling at them about how they never listen.

• 9:53Ryan Holiday?

  Right. It's funny how Stoic that is. I mean, there's this Stoic concept of premeditatio malorum. Do you know what this is?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  No, educate me.

• 9:59Ryan Holiday?

  And Latin, that's just a premeditation of evils. So Seneca says, you're going to go on a journey by ship.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:05Ryan Holiday?

  What could happen on a journey by ship? There could be a shipwreck, there could be pirates, there could be storms.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:10Ryan Holiday?

  There could be a quarantine, there's all these things. And, and you should know this and you should expect those things to happen. And there's another one where Cato's going like, okay, you're going to the baths. What happens in a bath house? There's smells and there's noises and you bump into people. And, and I think what you're adding to it, which I really like, is, is this sort of affirmation at the end, which is like, and that's not a big deal, I can handle it.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's funny, I have this phrase I think about emotional vaccination. It's kind of similar.

• 10:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Right? If I say to myself, this is going to be a hard part of my day. I don't like at dinner when my kids won't come and then they end up complaining. I'm not trying to say that's enjoyable to me at all, but we can't make hard moments enjoyable, but we can make them predictable, if they are predictable, right? And so to vaccinate yourself, oh, let me imagine that. It's going to be a little annoying. You know, nighttime is another example. Usually when you put your kids to bed, especially when they're young, you are so ready to be off dad mode or mom mode.

• 11:09Ryan Holiday?

  Ready to clock out.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's the exact same moment, your kid wants eight more minutes with you. So nobody's wrong there, it's just a bad kind of match.

• 11:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  And again, if we say to ourselves, okay, I want to be out of the room at X time, probably not going to happen till X plus eight minutes, right? Let me just get ready for that. What am I going to do in that time? I can cope with that. Everybody ends up winning.

• 11:32Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and the surprise is what makes it worse, the Stoics would say, like the unexpected hurts more.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:38Ryan Holiday?

  And so by expecting it, you're taking away some of the power in advance.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 11:44Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe you didn't know this, but we actually have another podcast. We do a daily parenting show as well. And we'd love to have you join us. If you want ancient wisdom, modern psychology, best practices, all of that, you know, basically what we do for the Daily Stoic, but applied to what I think is our most important job, being a parent. Well, The Daily Dad is a short message you can listen to while you're brushing your teeth, making coffee, after you drop the kids off at school, whatever it is. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I will link to it in today's show notes or you can just search The Daily Dad Podcast.