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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just got back from the West Coast, did the talk in Portland and San Francisco, did this long road trip as a family.
I'll probably do a whole episode about some Stoic lessons from driving several hundred miles with... a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old, and my wife who was recovering from some illnesses. So that was a lot. But while I was in San Francisco, a friend of mine from high school and middle school, we've known each other forever, he came out and I'd actually bumped into him last summer in Greece.
He was there visiting his wife's family and we were hanging out. He has a daughter and another kid on the way. And I was telling him about Dr. Becky. And I said, you've got to read this. I think I sent it to him when we got home or he bought it himself. I don't remember. But seeing him a year later, he was like, hey, I went on this tear of reading parenting books since we saw each other.
And he was like, thank you for recommending Dr. Beckett. He was raving about Dr. Beckett, which is like one of my favorite things to do when a book hits me and then I get to pay it forward by recommending it to other people. I mean... At some level, that's my whole career. I've been paying meditations forward for 20 years.
But Dr. Becky's book, Good Insight, is probably the parenting book I've recommended the most. And I think it actually really aligns with what we talk about here. So whether you have kids or not, I think there's some teachings here. Because basically, the big misunderstanding about stoicism is about not feeling anything, that we're detached and unmoved, untouched by emotions.
But that's not the case. I don't think the stoics are trying to eliminate feelings, trying to understand them, to work with them, to make sure that anger and fear and frustration and sadness, excitement, lust, any of the emotions, the dysregulation, it doesn't grab the steering wheel and take over the car, which is like exactly the metaphor that Dr. Becky used in today's episode.
She's a clinical psychologist. She's the founder of Good Inside. She's the host of the Good Inside podcast. Good Inside is a number one New York Times bestselling book for good reason. They've been calling her the parenting whisperer. The work's been really helpful to me and my kids. She talks about DFKs, deeply feeling kids. I've got two of those.
Although when I told my son he was a DFK, he got extremely mad at me. And then now they've been saying that I'm a DFP, a deeply feeling parent, which just means you feel stuff deeply, it can overwhelm you. And again, stoicism is about how we deal with that. We don't get to choose that's who we are, but we do get to decide how quickly we get back to regulation, right?
When Mark Strauss talks about being jarred by circumstances, how fast can we come back to the rhythm? Can we get back to who we are? Can we get back in the driver's seat? Today's episode is with the great Dr. Becky. She has not just Good Inside, which I've loved, but she has two wonderful little kids' books, That's My Truck and Leave Me Alone, two books with exclamation points in the
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Chapter 2: How can we learn to manage overwhelming emotions?
And probably the more emotional and triggered you are or the more highly attuned you are to noticing things, the more you need those strategies because you're operating at a level where all these sensors are firing all the time.
One million percent. Two things come to mind when you say that. One, have you heard of this kind of framework of speaking for a feeling versus from a feeling? No. Like it's a powerful framework. Like we see kids in general, definitely deeply feeling kids when they're younger. They speak from their feelings. Right. When you speak for a feeling. Right.
It's kind of me over here and my feelings over here. And I know I'm angry. And so I'm able to speak for the anger when I speak from anger. It's not usually so productive.
So I think we talk about kids in general, but definitely for deeply feeling kids, if they have such more intense feelings and more frequent feelings, the need to help them speak for those feelings, not from, is that much more important. So that's number one. The other thing I've been thinking a lot about And I've been saying this to crowds, it's been resonating, just feelings are information.
And if you think about, I don't know, the best CEOs in the world, even now, the world is very overwhelming. Running a company now, how do I run a company when the whole world is changing? All this stuff about AI, there's a lot of information. And good CEOs don't say, hold on, the whole AI revolution is so overwhelming to me, so just I'm going to ignore it. Yeah. Right.
The best CEOs take information that could be overwhelming and learn how to sit with it and think with it and tolerate it enough to then be able to make good decisions from it. And so when we think about feelings that way, and I know you obviously talk a lot about stoicism, but it all comes together. If Feelings are information.
Well, some information can be overwhelming, but there's a lot of really good data that we want to be able to pull from so we can speak for that information.
The from and for distinction is really interesting because that's a problem people have with stoicism, right? They'll go, well, if I don't get angry about things, how can I change things, right?
It feels like it's somehow both resigned, but then also a bit sort of selfish or privileged to go like, you know, if you're saying don't complain or don't get upset or don't get angry, how are we ever going to improve things? How does an activist fight for change? And the reality is like what an activist is trying to do. It's too important to be angry while they are doing it.
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Chapter 3: What strategies help in speaking for feelings instead of from them?
Right. Yeah. Very similar to probably what you went through with your son. So first of all, one of my favorite lines to say to kids is just. You weren't expecting that.
Yeah.
Or you didn't want that to happen. Hard stop. I'm not fixing it. I'm not actually changing my behavior. But we get into logic mode. I'm not going to turn around. We've been driving for an hour already versus what your son's kind of saying is I wasn't expecting it to look like this. And just actually saying that is simple. You weren't expecting that.
I consider that understanding our kid validating. my kid. Nine times out of 10, maybe 99 times out of 100 when I say that, you better bet I am not changing anything about my behavior. I'm not turning around and going back 96th Street again. And I think putting that together is something as parents, we almost don't realize that's an option. Oh, I can deeply understand my kid.
Oh, we miss the ice cream parlor. Oh, you weren't expecting it to look like this. And I can also say, I'm not driving back. Like those two things can be in the same moment.
Hey, it's Ryan. I'm on the road right now doing talks all over the country. I love traveling. I love going to new places. The thing I don't like about it though is I don't get to sleep in my bed at home, which I like not just because it's home, but because I have an eight sleep on my bed. I've had an eight sleep on my bed, I don't know, five years. I love it. My wife loves it.
We love it because it cools the mattress. It heats the mattress. You can have different sides cool at different temperatures. It's even how I wake up in the morning. Instead of an annoying alarm clock or that, you know, horrible sound on your phone, it lightly buzzes you awake. And then when you're up, you want to turn it off, you just... tap the mattress.
There's all sorts of awesome features in my Eight Sleep. It was worth every penny. The point is I love my Eight Sleep and the Eight Sleep keeps getting better. Eight Sleep users report up to 32% better sleep and up to 34% better deep sleep. This is all stuff you love. You can use the code dailystoic at eightsleep.com slash dailystoic right now for up to $500 off.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of understanding versus approval in parenting?
So teleportation is a reasonable explanation for what happened if you don't know. And you go, OK, so, yeah, you're they're constantly making up explanations for the world on a very small amount of information. Yes. Of course, they're going to get it wrong or be confused or have. Well, why isn't it like this? It's like because that makes sense to them. It just doesn't make sense to you.
That's right. There's so many things we take for granted that we've connected the dots in life that kids actually need some things said really simply. Like, especially often when kids start to have sleep issues, they're three, they're four. So many times really simple things end up helping them. Hey, when you go to bed, I just want to show you. Come with me.
When I close the door, this is where I go.
Yeah.
I don't disappear. Yeah. Why would they know that? Yeah. And so to some degree, mom, dad, dad, they're like, I literally need to know for my safety. Are you still around? Which we understand. And so that can help. Yeah. Right. Or, you know, when you go on a business trip saying, I'm going to put it up for you, there's going to be three little rings and you can rip off one at a time.
And then when the last one is ripped off, that's the night I'm coming back. They don't know three days. What does that mean to a four-year-old, right? Rings, they understand. One more ring till dad's back. That they understand. And yes, they're going to sleep better at night.
By the way, how would you sleep if like all of a sudden your wife was gone and they'll be like, I'll be back in an unknown moment. I wouldn't sleep very well.
Right. Right. Yeah, I was on an airplane a couple of months ago. And, you know, it was like we got on the plane late and then a crew member was missing. And then it was obvious that we were going to miss this connection. And they weren't giving us that much information.
And they were obviously lying also, you know, where they're like, hey, it's going to be 30 minutes, but there's no way it could possibly be. And as I was just sitting there sort of stewing in my frustration and resentment of the situation, I was like... Oh, this is what being a kid is like, you know, like something's happening. Nobody thinks I should be privy to it.
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Chapter 5: How does repair in relationships impact emotional well-being?
A lot of us do. Think about how well we understand the swim process. Nobody I know has one or two swim lessons and says, The swimming isn't working. And honestly, the instructor is reinforcing bad behavior by staying with my kid in the pool before they swim. My kid's going to think it's okay to not swim. My kid should just go to their room, come back when they know how to swim.
That would be an insane thing. A lot of us pay for lessons for...
years because we actually understand first you have to be in the pool then you have to blow bubbles blowing bubbles doesn't look anything like swimming but we actually understand that it's part of the arc so you know what we can be patient yeah we understand how kids learn how to swim way better than we actually understand how kids learn how to regulate their emotions and i think that's the thing parents really need to have reasonable expectations
It's also, even if they know it, even if you should be able to expect them to be able to handle it, they still need to hear it 8,000 more times. And I'll give you the perfect example of this that everyone accepts as totally normal. Just like if you went into an NFL locker room or a Major League Baseball team, these are people paid hundreds of millions of dollars.
They're the best in the world at what they do. They've been doing it since they were tiny. They have all the drives and motivations and skills to be really good at what this thing is. And what are the coaches doing? Reminding them of the most basic shit you could possibly imagine over and over and over again. They have to put it up on posters on the wall.
They have to have daily meetings about it. And I'm not even talking about skills here. I'm just talking about like basic even motivation stuff or basic life facts of like some things are in your control and some things are not in your control. Don't get distracted. Step by step.
And so if they need to hear it one thousand times, you could probably use to remind your kid one more time why we don't do X, Y and Z or why we have to do X, Y and Z and not expect and not make them feel like an idiot or some kind of, you know, like failure for needing to hear it. However many times they need to hear it.
I love sports metaphors, too, because it makes it so obvious. So I think another element that we understand in sports that we don't kind of have the same generosity with kids is let's say I had a basketball player who was just missing every foul shot. Right. Again, we professional basketball players who hit 60 percent of a free throws, right? Like this is happening.
But let's say I got to work with this player. Now it's really down to a bad percentage. And I say to the player after the game, hey, this week, I want you to come in 20 minutes before every practice. I'm going to work on it together. Number one, Ryan, nobody says that's a permissive coach. You're giving that player extra attention. You're basically saying it's okay to miss free throws.
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Chapter 6: What role does emotional regulation play in parenting deeply feeling kids?
And let me help you practice that the way a... Coach would say, hey, when the game's on the line, there's been a lot of turnovers. We're going to simulate that game and that moment in practice. And we're going to really practice passing in a different way. That's a good coach. And we just haven't really thought about parenting in the same way until now.
Pete Carroll has talked about this where it's like confidence is so important, which we know it is in sports. He's like, why would you ever do anything that undermines an athlete's confidence by telling them you suck or how could you do that or what were you thinking, right? And so, but then as parenting, by the way, where the... In coaching, there is no kind of moral obligation.
Like it is a cutthroat business where you could just be like, hey, I paid you $10 million to make this catch. You didn't make this catch. I'm going to replace you with anyone else who will, you know, if they're there saying like, no, no, confidence is important. We believe in you. We're going to mold you. We're going to get the most out of you.
And then then with your kid, you're like, what the fuck? This is a C on a math test. Are you an idiot?
Well, and I think, you know, one of the things I think that's helpful to understand is as a parent, we are our kids' mirrors. I don't know if you and I have talked about this, right? So we reflect to a kid who they are and they take in that image and it forms their identity. And just the math becomes obvious. I can't be reinforcing an identity that I'm trying to help my kid move away from.
So I want to give you an example of something that happened in my house when my kids were a lot younger because it was such a different intervention. So I have three kids, but I think especially in any family with two, It's really easy to have your kids start operating on a binary. It's just like I have a generous one. I have a selfish one. I have an academic one. I have an athletic one. Right.
Because kids operate in systems. Right. That's why I'm obsessed with systems. Right. We take on roles. And so there is a stage when I had two kids where it's true. My daughter would just give my son everything he wanted, right? Everything he wanted, right? And my son would be in the opposite role. No, it's mine. No, it's mine, right? And so what do we want to say to our kid who won't share?
Why can't you share like your sister? What is wrong with you? You're so selfish. Pause. Out of the role play. Trying to help my kid access. And this is actually really important. I think it comes from our approach. I don't think I have to help my kid develop generosity. I do believe it's in there. It's just got to help unlock it.
My best approach to help my kid develop generosity is to tell him he's selfish. I. It just doesn't even make sense. Of course, now I'm the selfish one. You know what I'm going to do? Act selfish. And I remember this moment where my kids are debating about a snack. Right. And, you know, my daughter was asking my son, hey, can I have some of your snack?
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Chapter 7: How can parents prepare their children for life's challenges?
Because in sports, it's like every day you're getting older and slower. And so you're having... And you just realize it's all about conservation of energy and resources. So you get... really good at separating the extraneous from the essential. And I think as you go on any journey, you just get better at that.
You're just like, oh, I was just doing a lot more than I had to do to accomplish whatever meager results I'm getting. How do I match it as close to one-to-one as possible?
I think that's a really powerful framework, the conservation of energy. I also think that Probably what I've learned over the years is, number one, I can trust my parenting more than a moment. Like, I don't have to do all my parenting in this moment. Like, OK, everyone's seeing the situation publicly. I don't have to prove that I'm a good parent.
I don't have to say everything I want to say in this one moment. I think I really used to feel like that. And it would then definitely just make things explode more, you know?
Well, one of the things the Stoics talk about is just like extrapolation is the enemy. And there's actually a very interesting parenting example in Marx's Meditations where he goes like, your child is sick, but not that they'll die of it. And you could think about how... What that would have meant also in an age of infant mortality and primitive health care as Rome was.
But he's saying like, look, like it's just a sneeze. Okay. He's not saying like don't care about it at all. But he's saying you can't get in this anxiety spiral. And I think about how many of the things you end up getting in fights or arguments or anxiety spirals with your kids because you're like... They keep acting this way.
They're going to be a monster or they're going to end up living under a bridge somewhere or they're going to be, you know, you're just you're not able to go like they shoved their brother because he was in the way. Not because they're a budding bully. Like it has it's it's a singular instance and you are making it into a pattern of behavior which will lead to a series of consequences which will.
And at the core of it, it's usually like, and then I'll look bad. Like I'll be the parent of said person. That's right.
Well, I think I call that the fast forward error, which I think is kind of the cardinal cognitive error in parenting where you have a moment. And then what happens in that moment is you fast forward. Often it is like 20, 30 years. And you feel like you know everything about this kid. And then if you think about those 30 years ahead, of course, you'd accumulate a lot of anxiety and fear.
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Chapter 8: What is the importance of compassion and understanding in parenting?
Like, everything we do is dependent on other people, right? If you're a business person, you're selling things to other people. So if you have no empathy, you don't understand what they want, you don't understand what they like, you don't understand what it does for them. This isn't like this mushy, feely nonsense. Like, if you don't, don't have a theory of mind of other people.
How can you do anything?
That's right. And I think the thing that's, you know, maybe some of this responds to, I don't know about those two individuals, but something I've definitely seen is this kind of overcorrection around how we understand feelings, right? Where... A lot of adults think, OK, I grew up in a family. I was like, nobody cared about my feelings.
Go to your room or I don't want to go to Aunt Sally's birthday lunch. We don't care. Put on your shoes. We're going. Right. And I think there has been a little bit of an overcorrection to not only do I care about kids feelings. Now their feelings dictate my parental decisions. Those are two extremes that are probably equally bad for kids. But there's so much that can live in the middle.
Yeah. It's like, hey, you're having this feeling. Not all feelings are appropriate. And how often are the feelings based on an assumption or a misinterpretation or whatever? And so, yeah, you have the understanding that you feel this way because of this. And then we can have a discussion about what we're going to do. Your feeling doesn't override and change my reality.
That's exactly right. And especially with parenting. And maybe it's a good example, right, where we grew up in a kind of you don't want to go to Aunt Sally's 85th birthday lunch. Nobody cares. We're going.
Oh, that coach makes you uncomfortable. Suck it up. And that's all sorts of serious problems. A hundred percent.
And then we're living this world now. If you don't want to go, I'll get you a babysitter. Right. And I think what's in the middle, which, again, we don't even think about as an option is, oh, I get it. You don't want to go. Not going to be the most fun part of your weekend. And we're going as a family. That decision has already been made. And so get your whining out now.
And here's why. Yeah, and here's why. This is it. I'm not just doing this. Like, I don't want to go either, by the way. Well, that's right.
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