PNTV: The Daily Dad by Ryan Holiday (in 20 minutes)
In this 20‑minute Philosopher’s Notes TV episode, Brian Johnson breaks down Ryan Holiday’s book The Daily Dad, a collection of 366 meditations aimed at fathers. Johnson highlights six core ideas that shape his own parenting practice. He opens with the “little fellow” concept – children constantly watch and imitate their parents – illustrated by a story about John Wooden and a personal Home‑Depot observation of a child mirroring his dad’s gait. He then moves to the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism – wisdom, discipline, love (justice), and courage – which Holiday frames as the hinge of a good life. Johnson explains how he tattoos the Greek word Arete (excellence) on his arm and uses the virtues as a daily teaching tool with his son Emerson and daughter, especially during chess trips where they discuss how each virtue supports the child’s goal of becoming a grandmaster. The next principle, “character equals fate,” ties virtue practice to shaping destiny. Johnson stresses the importance of being a fan of your child, sharing the Jimmy V story of a dad who packs his bags in advance to signal belief in his son’s dream, and he mirrors that by telling Emerson his bags are packed for chess tournaments. He then introduces Jocko Willink’s “good” mindset – treating every setback as an opportunity to improve – and links it to building “antifragile confidence.” Finally, Johnson bookends the book’s yearly structure, reminding fathers that time flies (tempus fugit) and urging them to savor the limited summers they have with their kids, using vivid anecdotes from recent chess tournaments. Throughout, he weaves personal stories, Stoic philosophy, and actionable parenting practices, urging listeners to embody virtues, support their children’s goals, and live with intentional presence.
Chapters
366 meditations on parenting, love, and raising great kids. Dads, if you haven't read this book yet, check it out. How do you motivate young kids? How do you teach them how to achieve the things they want to achieve in their life? But we got to know what they want. Then all this wisdom becomes them directing their behavior to achieve it. We can say all the things we want to say to our kids, and if they watch us doing something else, Good luck. They're gonna follow who we are, not what we say. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV. Today we've got another great book, The Daily Dad by Ryan Holiday, 366 meditations on parenting, love, and raising great kids. Dads, if you haven't read this book yet, check it out. As always, we've got A Philosopher's Note in which I pull out my 5 favorite big ideas. You can get access to the note and the MP3 that goes with it, um, for free in the show notes. We're approaching 800. I got 775 notes done so far, and Ryan Holiday holds the record for the most notes I've created on a single author with 10. This is again the 10th note I've created on one of his self-development books. The only one I have left to cover Currently is Lives of the Stoics. That's coming soon. But we got The Daily Stoic. Check that book out. Awesome book. We've got The Obstacle Is the Way, Stillness Is the Key, all four of his Virtue Series books, etc., etc., etc. Again, this book is phenomenal. Moms, you can read it too, but it's definitely for dads written with Ryan's trademark intensity. Just a kick in the butt. It will make you a better father. I promise you. I'm also excited to share some of my favorite ideas, so let's get straight to work. First big idea: a little fellow. A little fellow is following you and watching you. Goosebumps. January 1st, the first day of the year, Ryan tells us in the first month he has a theme for each month. The theme for the first month is teach by example. He spends 31 days emphasizing the fact that your kids will listen to some of what you say, but they're going to watch all of what you do. Goosebumps again. And they're going to follow your example. And the story that Ryan shares— and again, if you've read his stuff, you know he's a brilliant storyteller— it's a story about John Wooden. John Wooden, we think of him as an older man, but imagine him 9 years before he's hired by UCLA. 9 years before he's hired by UCLA, then he goes on to win all those national championships. Go Bruins! UCLA. Grad. 9 years before he goes to UCLA, he has his first child. And a friend of his sends him a picture with a poem celebrating the birth of his son. On the picture, there's a picture of a dad walking on a beach with a little fellow following him and watching him. Goosebumps again. And then there's a poem that says, a little fellow is watching you all day, every day. Our kids are watching us. They're going to embody the qualities that we have, the good and the not so good. If that isn't the most challenging thing in your life, I don't know what is. I have a 13, almost 14-year-old son. I've got a 9-year-old daughter. Being worthy of being their father, embodying the qualities I hope they embody, never perfectly, but more and more consistently embodying those qualities, is my biggest challenge and my biggest commitment in my life. A little fellow is watching us, but only all day, every day. Teach by example. A couple of stories there before we move to the next idea. As I was thinking about this and preparing for this, I thought of being in Home Depot forever ago. Emerson was tiny, maybe 3 years old, tiny little guy. I remember walking behind a dad and his son. We were maybe 20 feet behind them, and I saw that the son was walking with the exact same gait As his dad. And it was one of those moments of, oh my gosh, literally our kids are watching us. They're mirroring us. They're embodying everything down to our gait. Keep that in mind. And we named our son Emerson after Ralph Waldo Emerson, who once said, who you are, who you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say. We can say all the things we want to say to our kids, and if they watch us doing something else, Good luck. They're going to follow who we are, not what we say. Teach by example. That is lesson number 1. And again, I don't know of a more challenging opportunity for us in our lives. The second idea we're going to talk about is character equals fate. Ryan is a practicing Stoic. He wrote a whole series of books on the cardinal virtues of Stoicism. The word cardinal comes from an ancient Latin word, cardo, which means hinge. The cardinal virtues are the virtues on which a good life hinges. The Stoics had 4 cardinal virtues, the ancient Greeks as well. The Christians modeled the same virtues, and all ancient faith and wisdom traditions come back to the same virtues over and over and over again: wisdom, discipline— Ryan talks about justice, I call that love— and courage. Wisdom, discipline, love, and courage. Those are the 4 Cardinal virtues of ancient Stoicism and of every ancient faith and wisdom tradition. Ryan says you must teach by example. You must embody these virtues, and you must teach these virtues to your kids. Now, as it turns out, if you follow my work, you know I've tattooed my arm with the word Arete. It's the name of my book. It's the one-word answer the ancient Stoics would have given you on how to live a good life: live with virtue, which Arete transcends and includes. Wisdom, discipline, love, and courage. Now, I've been teaching my kids this since basically they were born, but the way I practically teach it now— and you got to find your way to teach these virtues to your kids if you want to follow Ryan's wisdom and advice and my wisdom and advice— here's how I do it. Every single time my son, and now daughter, and I go out for a chess tournament— my son's into chess, I talked about that in a recent episode on Garry Kasparov's wisdom— Every single time we drive out of our property— we live in the country, right? We kind of close the gate and we're driving out. I say, what do you want, buddy? What do you want? And he says, I want to be a good person and I want to be a grandmaster, a chess grandmaster. I say, good answer, good order. Then I say, how are you going to be a good person? And we have done this dozens— every single time we've gone on a trip, which is now dozens and dozens of times. Each time he gets a little bit more concise, a little bit more sophisticated. We go a little deeper. My daughter's now doing it as well. I say, how are you going to be a good person? He says, I'm going to live with wisdom, discipline, love, courage. Then he throws in the virtues we talk about in my work, in our work with Heroic, that the modern scientists have said also lead to flourishing: hope, gratitude, hope, curiosity, and zest. And I say, awesome. How are you going to live with those virtues? What are they? And he says, wisdom is knowing how to live a good life, knowing the ultimate game, how to live a good life. Discipline is doing what needs to get done, Whether you feel like it or not. Love is being kind and generous. Courage is doing what you need to do even when you're afraid, right? And then he goes through gratitude, hope, curiosity, and zest. Every single time we do that, I say, good job, let's go. We sum it up in Arete. We talk about how you win when you live with virtue for something bigger than yourself. You are heroic. And now my daughter's starting the same thing. It's very sweet and cute. She's learning how to do it. And it's been an incredibly powerful thing for us to, to work with our kids on. Then I say, well, all right, good answer. Be a good person. That's what's going to help you become the grandmaster you aspire to be. Then we talk about his goals and when he wants to do what, what his next milestones are. We always want to start with the cardinal virtues because character equals fate. If we can show up as our best selves winning the ultimate game, we're more likely to win all the smaller games in life, etc. There you go. Next big idea. Always be a fan. Ryan, again, great storyteller, tells the story of Jimmy Valvano, Jimmy V, the iconic basketball coach. Now, when Jimmy V was just a kid, he told his dad, Dad, I want to be a college basketball coach and I want to win a national championship. He's a kid. Ryan tells us his dad said, oh, that's amazing. You're gonna do it. I believe in you. Goosebumps. I believe in you, which is the essence of this little micro chapter. Then, a couple days later, the way Ryan tells the story, Jimmy V's dad says, hey, come here. Come into my bedroom. Brings him into his bedroom and he points at some luggage sitting in the corner of his bedroom. He says, you know what that is? Jimmy V's like, no, I have no idea. What is that? He says, I'm packed. Jimmy V's like, you're packed for what? I'm I'm packed for when you win your national championship. My bags are already packed. Jimmy V is a kid. Tears in my eyes right now. Jimmy V is a kid. His dad, his bags are already packed. Let's go, going to the national championship. Oh my gosh, isn't that awesome? And then after I read this, I looked it up. Did Jimmy V win a national championship? I couldn't remember. Yeah, Jimmy V won a national championship, but it took him 8 trips to the NCAA March Madness tournament, right? First time he got in, he calls his dad, hey, I got in. His dad says, my bags are packed, let's go. Gets kicked out, eliminated in the first round. Next year, second round, takes him 8 times. And then I searched, was his dad still alive when he won his first national championship or his only national championship? Yeah, he was. They celebrated it on center court. I told this story to Emerson. You may want to tell this story to your kids. So my son, again, wants to be a chess grandmaster. So I told him this story and I said, you know what, buddy? My bags are packed. I can't wait to go to the trip. We go on, again, these chess adventures. We gotta hop on planes to go to some of the bigger and better tournaments, right? My bags are packed, buddy. I cannot wait to be there and to celebrate you when you become a grandmaster. He wants to do it by the time he's 18. Aggressive goal. He's working hard to get it. But my bags are packed. We want to believe in our kids. We want to help them get clarity. Help them dream. Help them see what what they're capable of. Believe in them. And then, as per our wisdom in 10 to 25 by Dave Yeager— 10 to 25, the whole point on that is how do you motivate young kids? How do you teach them how to achieve the things they want to achieve in their life? Check out the notes for more. Check out the book, of course. Check out the PNTV episode, etc. But we got to help them earn competence. We got to teach them how to achieve the things we want to achieve. But we got to know What? They want. Then all this wisdom becomes them directing their behavior to achieve it. So we teach our kids how to eat, how to move, how to sleep, how to breathe, how to focus their attention. My wife's as into this stuff as I am. But we don't teach them in an abstract way. I know what Emerson now— my daughter's only 9— but Emerson knows what he wants. And I've helped him get clarity on that and set up goals. But now I can teach him, well, if you want those things and you want to pay attention to how you eat, How you move, how you sleep, how you breathe, how you focus your mind and train. I use his goal to teach him the things I want him to make sure he knows so he can win the ultimate game and of course also have a shot at becoming a grandmaster. So again, the point here is know your kids' goals. Help them get clarity on that. Don't be the dad who's telling your kid what to do all the time like it's your idea and you want it for you. No, no, no. You want to help them get what they want in life. That is what we want to talk about with being a fan. And then of course, pack your bags and help them achieve the things they want to achieve in their life. Believe in them. Love, love, love that story. In the note, I've got some links to Jimmy Vee videos that are super inspiring. Next idea here is inspired by Jocko Willink. Ryan, again, 12 months, right? Each month has a theme. He's a practicing Stoic. Dads, we need to struggle and endure, right? We need to move through life's inevitable challenges embodying the wisdom we hope our kids embody. Show them how to do it. He uses Jocko Willink's Good speech that I linked to in the note— we'll link to in the show notes as well. If you haven't watched Jocko Willink's Good, awesome little video clip on YouTube that has however many millions and millions of views, Check it out. Again, we'll link to it in the show notes, link to it in the philosopher's notes. As you may know, if you've seen that video, whatever happens in Jocko— Jocko Willink, for those who don't know, former Navy SEAL commander. We've got notes on his books Discipline Equals Freedom and Extreme Ownership in which we talk about the exact same idea. Anything happens to Jocko, he says, good. Good. Anything, right? And Ryan uses this to apply it to in war. You know, this happens, that happens, good. We can use it to get better. Ryan says, look, the flight is canceled, good. We get to spend more time having fun at the airport. Emerson, my son, loses the chess game, good. We're going to learn something. Truly, we're going to learn from that mistake. The relentlessness with which he looks into his mistakes and his coaches analyze his mistakes so we can quit making them is astonishing. I wish someone taught me that 50 years ago, 45 years ago. Where was this growth mindset? How do we teach our kids to embrace life's challenges, to use everything as fuel for their growth? That's how we move from being fragile, way past being resilient, to being antifragile. I've got antifragile confidence tattooed on this arm, which I just started quizzing Emerson on. What does that mean? It means, he says, when life hits you, you get stronger. Like going to the gym. All of life's challenges, we say good to it. Let's use it. As fuel to get better, then we build antifragile confidence. The word confidence means intense trust. We have intense trust that we will use whatever life throws at us to get better, to get stronger. Good is our response as we struggle and endure and get stronger through the process. Final idea here is the final, final, final— I often like to pull out the very first big idea in a book which are often in the first, you know, intro or first words. And then the very last words of a book are often the most powerful. So the last— I kind of bookended here. Day 1, January 1st, December 31st. You start by knowing that you got to teach by example. You end by knowing that time flies. December 31st, end of the year. Time flies. In Latin, tempus fugit, right? Tempus fugit. Time Flies. Remember that. Even last weekend, I'm at a chess tournament, super busy. There's hundreds and hundreds of kids and adults and their families in the hotel. They go to the ballroom, etc. It's awesome. Feel the energy. I was able to watch— you can't always watch chess matches. Last weekend, I could. I could sit there, and I watched literally over 15 hours of chess matches between my son and my daughter. Awesome. Not a lot going on, a lot of thinking, but just fantastic to see them competing. And then the event's over. Next morning, I'm in the hotel, I go to work out, and it's quiet. And I always feel this moment of almost sadness when I realize, wow, another tournament is gone. Time's flying. My son's almost 14. I've got 14, 15, 16, 17, 4 more years. One of my dear friends is a former commander of an aircraft carrier who's now an admiral serving my family, your family. Bless you, Admiral. Thank you. Keep it private. But he tells us, um, tells me as a dad who's a few steps ahead of me, 18 summers. That's all you get, 18 summers. So I was doing the math. How many more of these tournaments do I get with my son? You know, get emotional again. How many more tournaments? 4 years. We do— used to do 2, even 3 a month. We're doing a little less and higher quality ones. So I've got probably, maybe, definitely 1 a month, right? Nothing's definite. Dale Valente. I'm alive, he's alive. We've got at least one a month over 4 years. That's 50 tournaments, maybe 2 tournaments, 100 tournaments maybe together between now and the time that he's 18. To appreciate how fast time is flying, to savor these moments, to be present right here, right now with our kids is, again, one of my biggest challenges. I've gotten way better at it as I've realized the truth of this wisdom. Everyone says time flies, they're going to get old. Quickly. They're going to grow up so fast. I always heard that. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. But I didn't really get it until literally like 2 years ago, right before my son was turning— I guess a year and a half ago— before, as my son was getting ready to turn 13, that truth finally landed for me. Dads, don't wait as long as I did. Appreciate the fact that time flies. There will be a last time you change a diaper. There will be a last time your kid pees on the, the, uh, If you got a boy, pees on the toilet seat or kicks the toilet paper roll off and somehow rolls it across the, the room, or Legos are left on the floor. Time flies. Cherish these moments. Say good to all the challenges. Be a fan. Believe in them. Pack your bags. Tell them that you believe in them. Tell them that your bags are, are literally or metaphorically packed. And then get really good at helping them achieve the things that they want to achieve. And you do that By embodying, teaching by example, using all of life's challenges to get better, and remembering that the ultimate game is to embody the cardinal virtues: wisdom, discipline, love, courage. Continue on with gratitude, hope, curiosity, and zest. That's what I've got today. I hope you enjoyed. Most importantly, plus one, let's go! What idea jumped out and landed for you? Hopefully there was at least one, perhaps more than one, but what's one idea That jumped out and landed for you. Life-changing ideas are only life-changing if you live them. How are we going to move from theory to practice to mastery together today? Think about that, get on that, and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Again, check out the note, um, you can get that one for free. We've got 750+ of these. Can't wait to share more with you. Have a great day. See ya.
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