This is The Most Expensive Thing | The Best Stoic Insights On Raising Kids

Since Stoicism was founded, most of the Stoics have been wealthy…and yet almost to a letter, most of them have warned of the dangers and perils of wealth. No one embodies this paradox more than Seneca. The Stoics have warned again and again about the downsides of abundant wealth. He accumulated a net worth of three hundred million denarii (for context, Judas received thirty denarii to betray Jesus). He famously owned three hundred ivory tables for entertaining. He made so many enormous loans to colonists in Britain, that when the debt was called in around 60 AD, it destabilized the entire region. Yet in Letters From A Stoic, written during the final three years of his life, Seneca would warn again and again about the burdens of becoming rich.---And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan highlights the most important lessons that the Stoics teach us about raising kids.💵 Visit dailystoic.com/wealth to sign up for The Wealthy Stoic wealth management course today.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:28Speaker 00

  This is the most expensive thing. Since Stoicism was founded, the Stoics have warned again and again about the downsides of abundant wealth. Seneca must have been suspicious of those warnings because he found his way to becoming one of the richest people in the Roman Empire. He accumulated a net worth of what would be hundreds of millions of dollars into today's money. He famously owned 300 ivory tables for entertaining. He made so many enormous loans to colonists in Britain that when the debt was called in in around 60 AD, it set off the Boudica massacre in which tens of thousands of people ultimately

• 1:08Speaker 00

  died. In Letters from a Stoic, written during the final three years of his life, Seneca would warn again and again about the burdens of becoming rich. Very often, he writes, "The things that cost nothing cost us the most heavily." "Most people think," he says in the quest for an acquisition of money, "that one has much to gain and little to lose." In a modern context, it would be the sales rep seeing only the increase in pay and status that comes with the promotion, not the decrease in autonomy and the peace of mind that comes with the responsibilities of being a manager of an entire sales force. "But if I accept the promotion, I'll have more money." But Seneca anticipates this reply.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  He says, "Yes, you will also have more trouble and more people bringing you problems, more things taking up your time, more possessions to worry about, more time wasted thinking about how to own more." And more money. You have to reflect, Seneca writes, not only when it is a question of gain, but also when it is a question of loss. You have to think not only of the upsides, but also of the downsides that come with money. You have to think about the time and freedom and happiness rested from your hands and replaced only with money. You have to think about the burdens of becoming rich.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  You have to think about who you might become in the process of doing so, as Seneca so poignantly and tragically shows. Well, this is actually something we talk about in our new course, The Wealthy Stoic, A Daily Stoic Guide to Being Rich and Free and Happy. It's not just about how to make money, but how to think about money more holistically, how to earn ethically, but then also acquire responsibly, how to integrate sensibly into your life. It's rooted in the experiences and the writings of the Stoics, and we're going to teach you about the upsides and the downsides of it all. It's going to take place over the next nine weeks. There's emails every single week.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  We're going to talk about how Epictetus is actually one of the wealthiest of the Stoics, and how Seneca's being one of the richest was in some ways one of the poorest. We're going to talk about how to spend and save, what to prize more than money, how to climb out of and recover from setbacks, and a lot more. Every week, there's going to be carefully selected resources and tools that will help you on your path to financial independence, or whatever you're after. There's going to be live video sessions with me. There's going to be experiences and lessons from my own life, my own entrepreneurial journey, and my investing journey, and much more. So, check out The Wealthy Stoic, A Daily Stoic Guide to Being Rich, Free, and Happy.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  It's a live course. We'll run an archive of it later, but I'd love to have you join us. Do it together. You can sign up now at dailystoic.com/wealth. Or if you join Daily Stoic Life at dailystoiclife.com, you get this challenge and all our challenges for free. I'll see you in there.

• 4:27Ryan Holiday?

  Nothing challenges you quite like having kids, like becoming a parent. And the Stoics are no exception to this. First off, most of the Stoics do have children. In fact, Stoicism is one of the first schools to talk about the importance of raising a family, having kids. But the Stoics would have been challenged in every way by having kids, just like you and I are challenged.

• 4:50Ryan Holiday?

  And not only that, I think some of their best insights come from having kids and specifically address how to be a better parent. And in today's episode, I want to talk about what the Stoics can teach us about our most important job, raising great kids, being a great parent. And it turns out, there's quite a bit.

• 5:10Ryan Holiday?

  To me, this is one of the hardest things in the entire world for a parent to do. It's an exercise from Marcus Aurelius and from Epictetus, who are both parents. They say, "As you tuck your child into bed at night, say to yourself, 'They will not survive to the morning.'" Imagining your child's mortality, I mean, it's torturous. It's the most painful thing in the world. It's conceiving of the inconceivable, the most awful thing you could do. And yet, why did they do it? It wasn't to create distance between them and their kids. It wasn't to not be connected or loving to their kids. It wasn't to write them off. On the contrary, it's about actually being there. It's about thinking, you don't know how many more of these you get. The Netflix, or the email, or the book you wanted to read, none of that matters more

• 5:53Ryan Holiday?

  than this moment you have together right now.

• 5:59Ryan Holiday?

  We are not very good with time. Seneca says, "It's not that we don't have enough of it, it's that we waste a whole lot of it." But one of the wonderful things I've found about having kids is that it puts this in perspective. Because I'm not wasting my time when I'm overcommitting. I'm not taking time for myself. I'm stealing time for my children. I'm stealing time that I promised someone else. And so, we have to think about time as our most precious resource. Seneca says, "Death is not in the future, death is happening right now. We're dying every minute." When we waste it on social media, when we waste it in pointless meetings, when we waste it going to things that we've been... Don't need to go to, even though we have a million other things to do. We waste our time, but we're not just taking that time from ourselves. We're taking it from our children. We're taking it from the important work that only we can do.

• 6:44Ryan Holiday?

  We're taking it from our spouse and of course, we are also taking it from ourselves. Stop wasting time. It's your most precious resource and you have to protect it, not just for yourself, but for the people you care about and the people that you don't know how much time you will get with in this life.

• 7:01Ryan Holiday?

  When my wife was pregnant with our first child, we came here to Dinosaur Valley State Park and we walked in this little river and you can stand in these footprints that dinosaurs left like hundreds of millions of years ago. So we just came back. Now we have two kids, one's five, one's two. And it struck me, there's this sort of stoic idea that we never step in the same river twice. So here I am stepping in this river that a dinosaur stepped in 100 million years ago. I stepped in it five years ago. How much has changed? Even though everything remains the same, right? The footprint is unchanged for 110 million years, but literally everything else is different. I'm different than who I was five years ago. So one of the things we want to seek out as parents is this idea that we never step in the same river twice. You go do the same things over and over again, but you appreciate how much has changed, how much your kids have learned, how much they've grown.

• 7:46Ryan Holiday?

  This is why you should reread books, re-watch old movies. You can't step in the same river twice, but you can't experience that same thing in a new way. And that's so powerful and important and humbling and inspiring. And I think it's not just stoic wisdom, but it's really great parenting wisdom. If you haven't done it, you should try it.

• 8:03Ryan Holiday?

  One of the best insights I ever heard about parenting is this, that behavior is the language of children. They can't always tell you how they're feeling. They don't always understand what they're going through. They can't articulate things, sometimes because they're so young, they don't have the words, but maybe they don't have the concepts or the experiences, or maybe they're afraid, maybe they don't have the relationship with you that would make it possible for them to translate what they're feeling to you. But their behavior speaks volumes. Your kids are telling you that something's not okay by the way they're acting. Your kids are telling you they're hungry by the way that they're acting. Your kids are telling you that they're stressed or depressed or afraid or feel unloved by the way that they're acting. Maybe you're one of those parents who go, "My kid never talks to me."

• 8:46Ryan Holiday?

  Your kid is talking to you all the time. Language is the behavior of children, but you're only gonna hear it if you're trying to listen, if you're really looking, if you're paying attention. Behavior is the language of children.

• 9:04Ryan Holiday?

  The best piece of parenting advice I ever got was that kids do well when they can. What I take that to mean is that when they're well rested, when the incentives are right, when they've been supported, when they feel good, right? When they've been prepared, when things have been explained, then they succeed. The problem is, we expect our kids to succeed in any and all circumstances, even when the deck is stacked against them, even when we're stacking the deck against them. Your kid's having a meltdown because he's hungry. Your daughter's having a meltdown because you skipped nap. Your kid's struggling in school because they just moved and they don't know anyone, they don't have friends, right? Kids do well when they can, when they're set up to succeed. So as parents, instead of focusing on criticism, instead of focusing on punishments or rewards,

• 9:48Ryan Holiday?

  instead of trying to force them to sheer force of we'll make them be what we want them to do, why don't we just ask ourselves, are we setting them up for success? Are we setting them up to be what they're capable of being? Are we setting them up to do well? Because when they are set up to do well, they will. Kids do well when they can.

• 10:10Ryan Holiday?

  You don't just magically become great at parenting. It's a thing you get better at over time, one day at a time, one experience at a time. That's what I'm trying to do as a parent of two young boys, but it's also what I try to do with Daily Dad. Every day, I write one totally free email that goes out to thousands of people all over the world who are just like you, parents who are trying to get better at their most important job. And I'd love to have you join us. It's totally free, no spam, one email a day. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. And I hope you sign up at DailyDad.com.