6 pieces of timeless parenting advice from three great Stoic sages:
1/ We don't control what happens, only how we respond
Circumstances are not up to us, but we always have the ability to control what kind of parent we are.
Parents who only focus on what they can control are much happier than those battling against what they can’t control.
2/ Deeds not words
If you want to teach your kids, it’s not going to be with words. You have to show them that you live according to the rules you set and the values you tell them are important.
“Don’t talk about your philosophy,” Epictetus famously said, “embody it.”
3/ Tame your temper
Anger is “the ugliest and most savage of all emotions,” Seneca once said.
It doesn’t matter how stressed we are or what is happening around us, our anger is our problem. Not theirs.
4/ Memento Mori
“Remember that you will die.”
Life is short. Be present with your kids and love them while you still can.
5/ Learn with them
Seneca famously said that the path to wisdom could be walked by finding just one thing a day.
You don’t have to conduct lectures like Epictetus to be a teacher. Seneca’s teaching came in the form of sharing what he was learning.
6/ Courage. Discipline. Justice. Wisdom.
If you ever find anything better in life than these four virtues, Marcus Aurelius said, it must be an extraordinary thing indeed.
As a parent, you must model these virtues and teach your kids—by example and instruction—how they can too.
That's 6 pieces of timeless parenting advice.
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Every morning, I send a short email for @DailyDadEmail with one piece of timeless parenting advice from history, science, literature and other ordinary parents.
1/ Wake up early. 2/ Ask: Am I using this technology, or is it using me? 3/ Forget about outcomes—focus on making a little progress every day. 4/ Say no (a lot). 5/ Read something every day.
6/ Don’t watch television news. 7/ Comparison = unhappiness. 8/ Journal. 9/ Strenuous exercise every single day. 10/ Character is fate.
The world is complicated, paradoxical, and contradictory.
To make sense of it, to thrive in it, you must cultivate what John Keats called “Negative Capability”—the ability to hold conflicting ideas in your head at the same time.
Here are 8 ways to cultivate Negative Capability:
1/ Read widely & from people you disagree with
Epicurus said, “One sage is no wiser than another.”
The Stoics believed this too—that we should actively engage with anyone who can be a source of wisdom to us, regardless of the school of thought from which that wisdom arose.
2/ Study deeply
Marcus Aurelius chided himself “not to be satisfied with just getting the gist of it.” Instead, go “directly to the seat of knowledge.”
Seek out tutors and mentors. Linger, as Seneca said, on a small number of master thinkers, reading and re-reading their work.
Procrastinating "is the biggest waste of life," the Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote. "It snatches away each day...and denies us the present by promising the future."
Want to stop wasting your life?
Here are 8 Stoic tactics to beat procrastination:
1. Take it action by action
"Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole," Marcus Aurelius wrote. Remember, he adds, everything is built action by action. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, said, “Well-being is realized by small steps, but is truly no small thing.”
2. Create a routine
“Life without a design is erratic,” Seneca wrote, and full of uncertainty. Procrastination feeds on uncertainty. Routine eliminates that uncertainty. We know what we do and when we do it. Procrastination is boxed out—by the order and clarity you built.