Julie Lythcott-Haims || How To Be An Adult

The Writer's Grotto and Challenge Success. Juli is the New York Times bestselling author of the anti helicopter parenting manifesto, How to Raise an Adult. Her second book is that critically acclaimed an award winning prose poetry memoir, Real American, and her third book, which is the focus of today's conversation, is Your Turn. How to Be an Adult, came out in April twenty twenty one. Julie, I'm so excited for this highly anticipated interview with you, Oh Scott, thanks so

much for having me. I'm really appreciate it and delighted to be with your listeners. Thank you so much. What in incredible book? This is how to be an Adult? You know, I read this because I was curious. I don't feel like an adult, but I'm old enough to be one. They tell me that I shouldn't be an adult already, you know. So how do you define adulting as you call it adulting? I pronounced it adulting for

adulting adulting, Fine, it's all good. I think adulting is simply the stage of life between childhood and death, a set of decades we hope in which we are in charge of ourselves in the context of a world where we absolutely lack control, but we are in charge of our own self, our choices, our decisions, our way forward, and hopefully a set of years that are healthy. So

that's what adulting is. It's not a mysterious thing. It is simply the longest stage of life we will be in, bookended by periods of life childhood and being quite elderly or sick toward the end of our lives where we

are cared for largely by others. So it's this period where we are in the driver's seat, where we are the decision maker, where what we know to be true about ourselves, the direction in which we want to head, and the things we do is more under our control than it will be at the beginning of life and at the end. Beautiful you know, your prior book, which I loved, How to Raise an Adult, really did push back this idea that as parents we have to do

everything for the child. You know, we have to always worry every second, you know, what could happen next, and make sure that we swoop in there and make that change. Between writing that book and then like today, what has changed in the world do you think in terms of I mean a lot has changed, right, But what do you think see as some of the most pressing things that has changed even how you would think about being

an adult back then when you were writing that book. Well, I think obviously the pandemic has really sharpened the focus for a lot of us about ourselves and about our families, about what matters to us about our society. And I think it's been an opportunity to clarify. Okay, when I'm back out there, when I'm unleashed again, when I feel less fettered by circumstance, what am I going to do?

I think I try to live my life listening to the poet of to the words of poet Mary Oliver, who said with us, yeah, what are you going to do with this one wild and precious life? She asked, and I have that question in my head always, and I think, having been through over a year now of lockdown, various states of limitation thanks to a pandemic, many of us are, you know, champing at the bit, ready to

be unleashed back out there. But this time, perhaps if we've done the work, if we have done some good thinking and some good self examination and some pondering and some dreaming and some planning, you know, maybe we will unleash ourselves and be a little bit more deliberate, a little bit more purposeful about whatever it is that we have decided matters most to us. I think we've all had a reckoning around what matters and what doesn't, and we've all gotten a clearer glimpse that life is finite,

and that we shouldn't take people for granted. We shouldn't take opportunities for granted. We shouldn't take what we already have in our lives that's going reasonably well for granted. So all of these things that I'm describing are the kinds of conversations I hope adults are having in their own minds about their own lives. And I think you ask what adulting is, and I would say, I think primarily I've defined it as a set of years between childhood and death, but I will add that it's a

state of mind. And so this pandemic I think has given us that opportunity to really re examine this state of mind that we have about our own desires, our own fears, our own wants, our needs, and so yeah, I think it has been an opportunity to be more intentional and deliberate about adulting. Yeah, that's interesting that you call it a state of mind. You know that people a lot of people talk about growth mindset, Is there,

you know, an adult mindset? Absolutely, an adult mindset. And I talk a lot about Carol Dweck's work and growth mindset in this book as the antidote to perfectionism, which really holds so many of us back as we emerge out of childhood into adulthood and for many of us

well into adulthood. Are we are perfectionists and think that's fine, or we learn that it's not fine and we need to cast it off and hopefully we all get to this place of it's actually about our effort and trying to learn and grow rather than be perfect all the time. An adult mindset is I can, which is of course agency. An adult mindset is I can cope, which is of course resilience. An adult mindset is there's more than me

in this world. I'm one of seven plus billion, which is at its core a way to have good character or way to recognize that other people matter and other people have needs. An adult mindset is I'm responsible for myself, and I have to also try to be of use to the others around me, whether they are my family,

my children, my colleagues, my neighbors. Adulting is the first time you really have the obligation, I think, to not be that little narcissistic child, not narcissistic in a clinical sense, but a child's world tends to be very self focused and self absorbed. But as we emerge into our adult lives, we come to appreciate that, no, there's others around here.

I need to pay attention to that, and ultimately that benefits them and it benefits me because we're a social species and we need to be in community and collaboration with one another. And so I think ultimately the adulting mindset is, you know, I'm going to get real clear on who I am, and that I'm capable, that I'm strong, that I can bounce back, and that I'll do my work and also take the needs and feelings of the others in my life into account and try to be

of use to them. Well, I love that mindset. You know, a lot of times we get a lot of external pressures and messages of what we're told what it means to be an adult. Sometimes there's this concept that there is a certain right track that you should be on as an adult. You challenged that idea of the right track concept, right, I do, And frankly, this is the first of the first chapter I wrote that I felt good about. I tried and failed for three years to

write this book. I had a book contract. My publisher was clear they wanted this book. I had assigned a contract, but I couldn't find my way in because I was really struggling with whether I had any authority to write a book on adulting. And then I came to accept no one is an authority on adulting. If you're an adult, you're an authority, no more or less than anybody else. You're doing it by definition. So this chapter, which happens to be the first chapter I wrote, is chapter five

out of thirteen. In the book, it's called stop pleasing others. They have no idea who you are. That's the chapter heading, and I think it is emblematic of the book, which speaks very bluntly, very frankly, very declaratively, but also compassionately to the reader. And I'm you know, I summoned my former Stanford Dean voice in writing this book, picturing myself sitting with a young person who is struggling with the right track concept and struggling with the pressure they feel

to please others. And this chapter is both about work, career and your personal life, your identity, who you choose to be in community with, who you choose to love. In both of these realms, the professional and the personal, there's this sense that there's a right way and a wrong way, And certainly with career we call it right track and Scott, there is no right track. First of all, adulty doesn't come right. There's no track, there's no path. But so many young people have been raised in a

childhood that definitely had a track. There was a track to the right school, there was a track through the right math classes, a tract to the right college. Then when you're in college, you think there are only five acceptable majors, And in this book, I am shaking those assumptions at their foundation. People who think there are only five acceptable majors or careers or jobs are so limited. I feel badly for them. There's this vast, wide open

landscape of possibility. If we're at least middle class, I mean, I realize if you're working class, if you're poor, there are a significant set of limitations that may impede your forward progress. And yet even so, a good mentor a decent education can get you out of difficult circumstances and to a place of opportunity. And when you are there, you you know or you don't have to be a doctor, you don't have to be an investment banker to have

a rich and rewarding, wonderful life. There are just an infinite set of things, and it is up to nobody to tell you what the right way forward for you is. So this chapter, ultimately that totally assaults the concept of right track, ultimately asks the reader listen to your inner voice, figure out who you are, Why are you here on this planet? What do you know to be true about yourself? Forget everybody else? What are you good at what do you know? You are good at? What do you love?

Can you find work that is at the intersection of those things. You got to be good at it to make your way in that career. You got to love it in order to feel satisfaction. If you're just good at it but don't love it, you'll feel like a drone in your own life. If you just love it and you're not good at it, you probably won't get very far. So this sweet spot around work is are you good at it? And do you love it? If so, go go go and ignore everybody else who doesn't get it,

who doesn't accept it, who criticizes you, et cetera. It is not up to your parents, it's not up to your grandparents. It's not up to your whole ethnic community, your friend group to decide or validate what you choose to do for your work. This is a deeply personal knowing, and I'm trying to entice readers to listen for that deep knowing within themselves that tells them what is the right track for me? Not let me adhere to someone else's or society's conception of the right track. Oh, I

couldn't agree more and this is. You know, we're very aligned on this, you know, as someone who tries to help people self actualize in their own direction. As Abraham Maslow said, we try to make a rose into a good rose, not turn a rose into lily's, you know. Right, and yeah, so very much aligned. But certainly some professions are more socially acceptable than others. And right, so for some people it's a lot harder for them to just embrace that they want to go into a certain profession

than others. I mean, you hint it this absolutely when you say you don't have to be a doctor, you don't have to be this or that. You know, But what advice do you have to people who want to go in field? You know, you want to be a clown in the circus. Let's say someone's like they follow their inner knowing, and their inner knowing tells them, you know, to be a trapeze artist or I don't know, whatever kind of things that just are not as as socially acceptable.

What advice do you have for them? What sort of pep talk? Well, I think my first thought is if you want to go be a clown or a trapeze artist, go be that person. As long as you can pay your bills and keep yourself healthy, and well, it's really nobody else's business what you do for a living. You know, if it's illegal, if it's problematic and violent toward others,

don't do that. But outside of that kind of societal judgment, like you really should not be an axe murderer, Who are we business do we have telling other people what to do? The second thing I'll say is, you know, we spend so much of our years trying to please

our parents or our grandparents. You know. I cite someone in the book who was cut off from her very wealthy family because she chose to attend Stanford University rather than one of the Ivy League schools, and she just stood up to that grandparent and said, you know, I wish you could love and support me for who I am. I'm a designer. They have a design school there. Those back East schools don't have the opportunity to study design. This was back in the eighties, and you know, she

walked away from that. And somebody could say there's a lot of privilege inherent in being able to walk away, But for that young person, it felt pretty consequential to walk away from that family money from that trust fund,

if you will. And she has led the most engaged, fascinating life in work, discus new ways of making manufacturing operations flow and soar and succeed, and all of that is a function of the degree she got related to design, and you know, and her grandmother may never understand, and so be it. I mean, I think the ultimate message the pep talk is your life will feel most deeply satisfying, nourishing, delicious to you when you are the trepeze artist, even

if you grew up in a family of lawyers. You know, if you want to be the person who takes people whitewater rafting down the Colorado River and your whole family, you know, doesn't get it, that's okay. You know you're not here to please your family. And I know that's an easy thing for me to say, and I'm not trying to offend anybody. Culturally, we do owe our families a lot. Often they've provided for us materially in terms

of emotional support. But no human has the right to say you matter to me more if you get a law degree. You know, I love and accept you when you get the MD. Like that's just you know, that's an insecurity in that person's mind. Whomever's trying to impose their own right career right track on you is insecure. They need you to be that so they can feel better about themselves. They need to go get some good therapy to deal with that. Meanwhile, I'm here rooting for

you to lead the life you want to lead. I feel so inspired right now that I'm so glad, you know, Scott. I mean this relates to career, but it also relates to identity. I mean, how many of us are struggling with what we know to be true about who we are, whether it's around our gender, our sexual orientation, our racial or ethnic identities. We're struggling to just be that person that we intrinsically somewhere deep at the level of spirit, soul,

you know, just self knowing. We know this is what's right for us, and yet we have a family construct or a community construct that says, nope, nope, we're not that. You know, that's a huge conflict, and I am here rooting for all of us to listen to that, to listen to what is coming up and out of the self, rather than feeling the imperative to conform to society, family community. You know, my second book, Real American, is on being black and biracial growing up in white spaces where I

was otherised. I was made to feel like the other, I was called the N word was I was mistreated on the basis of my skin color, and it harmed me and I have therefore, I think tremendous empathy for anybody who, for whatever reason, has been marginalized in those ways. I'm rooting for all of us to say, Nope, actually I'm this, and I love myself as this person, and to hell with the rest of you, because I'm not here to please you. I'm here to make my way

in this one, wild and precious life. Yes, yes, I remember this story you told about being a racism incident happened to you in grade school. I don't know if if we can talk about it publicly, but in the locker right there was Yeah, do you feel comfortable talking about that? Yeah, that's the incident I was alluding to, just talking about at an all white high school. I'm seventeen years old. I'm turning seventeen and it's my seventeenth birthday,

November of my senior year. My high school is all white, by which I mean twelve hundred white kids, two Jewish kids who were not considered white, and me black and biracial me. I have fairly light skin, and yet I was the blackest thing this town had ever seen when I darkened up in the summer thanks to the August sun. I had a white person there. Everybody was white. I don't need to say I had a white person do

this because everybody was white. I had a person walk past me and just stop in her tracks and say, oh my gosh, you're so tan. Like there was in her worldview that said, while yes, I was darker because of the summer sun, there was nothing I was so outside the norm there. She didn't have any conception that I might be a person of color, a black person, a person from a different of a different race. That's

how different and weird I was to them. On my seventeenth birthday, my best friend had made me a beautiful birthday locker sign, as girls tended to do in my high school then maybe they still do, a bunch of pieces of paper taped together on this five foot tall locker to celebrate my birthday. She had taped the paper together and paste it onto the page's imagery she'd cut out from teen magazines imagery and words to celebrate me,

and it was a beautiful gift. I loved it. And by the late morning, somebody had come by with a thick black marker and written the N word on my locker sign in some of the empty white space where there wasn't pasted stuff. Wrote that word three times, misspelled it used only one G. But I knew what they'd meant, and I didn't tell anybody Scott because I was so ashamed that it had happened to me. I didn't want to bring further attention to my blackness by making any

kind of fuss. I also wasn't sure that anybody would take it seriously, and I didn't want that happen either, So I didn't tell a soul until I went back to school at age forty four to do an MFA to try to get better at writing, so that maybe I could write a book on the harm of helicopter parenting, which is my first book. I was at a poetry class and I wrote a poem, a very abstract poem, and told in seven voices and seven typefaces about my

highest years. And one of those seven voices was the voice of this stranger who had called me the N word on my birthday. And that's when I began to open up about it. Wow, thank you for being so vulnerable. I have deep empathy for that. I think my own my own analog to that would be the R word, you know, as a kid in special ed, you know, being called the R word. Oh, I'm so sorry, my goodness, absolutely yeah, absolutely so yeah. It stays with you, doesn't

it It does, you know what? Let's talk about that. I mean, I don't know about you, but I wonder if you've had an experience along the lines of mine. I hid. I was so ashamed I didn't tell. But the word the taunt burrowed itself into my psyche and just sat there or grew for three decades, you know,

or two and a half decades. And when I finally told myself that it had happened, when I grabbed that memory up from where it was lurking or hiding, festering, you know, within me, when I summoned it back up to my conscious brain and said, this happened. And I began writing about it, and I wrote that poem and began to write other poems related to my experiences with race, and then ultimately wrote a memoir where that story sits alongside you know, many many others. I found that I

have released the pain of it. The pain of it is now gone from me. It's no longer living in my body or in my mind, you know. So let me ask you a question. Would you say that you're no longer a victim of that situation? I never used the word victim, so I need to, but I know what you mean. Yeah, yes, I will say that I have been. Really, the way that I describe it is

that that experience had me in its grip. That experience was like a vice grip clamped on my heart or on my sense of self wherever those things live in a bodily sense. And when I turned around and faced it, you know, I just dared to stare at it and call it what it was, the vice grip began to loosen. It was almost like when a bully is chasing you and you turn around and you face the bully and you call it what it is. Often it runs away, a bully in form of a human. So, yeah, I

am no longer victimized. I am no longer traumatized. I am no longer ashamed. I am free of that. Yes, it happened, It's a part of my past, but it no longer dictates how I feel about myself. Yeah. Wow, so powerful. Thanks again. I mean, I recognize as always easy to bring up these kind of memories and things, So just thank you so much. No, I'm happy to talk about it, and I appreciate that you shared that

you were called the R word. I'm sorry that that happened to you, and you know, it speaks to the different time we're in scott You know, when you were growing up, you're younger than me. When I was growing up, people routinely said the cruelest things to one another. We have definitely become I mean, some will say were it's political correctness, but I prefer to say we've learned not

to be assholes to one another. We've learned that it's deeply harmful to be cruel towards somebody, period, particularly so on the basis of some kind of perceived identity or actual identity or way of being. And this is something else I write about in Your Turn. I mean, I'm in your Turn. I'm normalizing that we've all got something we have conditions, diagnoses. Maybe we don't have a diagnosis for what we've got, but it's a thing that we

contend with. It's a situation. And in my book, I'm not like asterisk in case you have you know, depression read page three hundred and nine. I am normalizing the fact that in our human community we struggle and contend with various things that comprise the beauty of who we are. And so this book is deliberately inclusive in that sense of people who have been labeled and people who have been made to feel like they're not good enough or

that there's something wrong with them. This book, for all young adults struggling with adulting, aims in its narrative to be as inclusive as possible, of all so that every single reader. It is my sincere's hope that every reader, no matter what their background is, and I mean background in every sense of identity, I hope that every reader at some point will get to a page where they say she was thinking of me when she wrote this. You know, I relate, I relate, I therefore feel seen,

I therefore feel support or did I therefore feel less alone? Well? I certainly felt that way reading your book, I certainly felt that way. Yeah, I can tell you my favorite chapters if you want it. Do you do you want to do you want to know? Do you want me to nerd out with you a second? On what? I what? Really? Uh?

I resonate with So there's a chapter where you talk about taking good care and then you have like parentheses of yourself, you know, And I think that like it's very easy to forget to do that when you're the when you're kind of like in a healing position, you know, like I'm a coach, you know, I I have like so many clients, and then I like just forget like, oh, I'm allowed to take care of myself, you know? Could you do you want to talk about taking good care

a little bit? And then I can tell you my next favorite chapter. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So this is chapter nine, and it's the part of the book where we're really going to go deep into that kind of internal self. After we've talked about your work and your identity and your relationships and your money, now we're in this sort of like, hey, you know, taking care of your self

is essential. It is probably your most important work. You cannot be of use to your clients, to your family or friends, your loved ones, you cannot be of greatest use to them if you are not nourishing that self. It's that old adage from the airlines, put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others. If you aim to be of use to others, you've got to be

taking care of yourself. So, as with all of my chapters, so this is the chapter where I really go deep around whatever your identities may be, whatever I call them situations. If you have a diagnosis, if you have a challenge, whether it's physical, whether it's emotional, whether it's cognitive, whether whatever it might be, Like know it, desire to know that self, learn about that self, Learn what your self,

your space self needs in order to thrive. Be continually interested in that, revisit it regularly because maybe you're on a set of meds and they're working for you, but maybe you want to be examining are they still working for me? You know? Is this therapy still the right therapy for me? You know? Is this community still nourishing me in the ways that I want it to so that I can learn and grow rather than feel stifled

or unseen. So this is the chapter that's really putting the mirror up to the reader and inviting the reader to go deep into like what who am I actually? You know in my bones and my DNA in my makeup, and how can I really love that self? Ultimately, this chapter is about self acceptance and self love. And then, as with all chapters, I have some personal stuff in there.

This book is a genre mashup of memoir, self help tips, and then these profiles of third parties and the third the three profiles I have after this long list of nineteen self care items, which includes everything from breathe to get sleep, to get therapy, to ask for what you need to have orgasms. You know, it's like everything is in here. The three people at the end are a

kid dealing with anxiety and depression. And I say a kid, he's like twenty one, a woman who's now twenty nine who dealt with an eating disorder and OCD, and a guy who's in his forties, former military guy who's got pretty serious bipolar disorder. And how they hope with these things is so uplifting and so encouraging and inspiring. So, you know, all of these chapters and with stories that I hope inspire readers around what's possible. Yeah, you have great stories in here, and I mean, how do you

find these people? Yeah? You know my network and then my network's network. You know. I I did put a survey out on media about three years ago saying I'm writing this book on adulting, and I really want to hear from people who are struggling with it or who think they are adulting. How do you know you are? I got a lot of responses to that, and some of these interviewees are like Jeff, who's at the end of Who's the Guy with Bipolar? Was a stranger who

responded to a survey. I also deliberately crafted quite a diverse set of voices. So I got to a point where I was like, you know what, I don't have any Texans in this book. And you may not think of Texas when you think about, you know, trying to build diversity into your book, but I was like, Texas is the second biggest thing. I got to have a

Texan in this book. And you know, I've got vegans in this book, but I also have black people and Latino people and Asian people and biracial people, and white people and Native people and queer people and gender queer people and trans people, and poor people and working class people and very educated and hardly educated and folks. You know, I've just I've really tried to put a broad range

of humans in this book. Again for reasons I've already mentioned, and I found some of them came to me because they resonated with something I put out there. And some of them are friends or friends of friends. Do you have any stories of any like poor white people in the book? I do. Actually, book opens chapter two, tag you're it they offending for yourself. The first guy there, Kyle, is a child who grew up in Apple. It's a young man who grew up in Appalacho with a father

died young when he was young. His mother, after a car accident and her husband's death, got addicted to opioids. So this is a story ripped from the headlines. Young you know, he's a teenager, he's got a younger sister. He's trying to provide for his family, keep his mom safe and sound, earn money, and you know, I think that's an incredible story. There's a guy named Levi and Sacramento white Guy. Both these are white guys whose father

and mother said you're out at eighteen. His father was not very emotionally available, earned plenty of money, but wouldn't when the parents got divorced, wouldn't provide child support. Mother was poor but very loving, and so he grew up, you know, feeling that, you know, money does not make you a better person. My father has money, but boy, he's not there for us. And ultimately, he, you know, with his mother's love, gets out of the house to

community college. And one of the scenes in his stories of him in his apartment for the first time where he's lying there in bed the first night, he's there saying, Wow, I did it. I have my own apartment. I'm paying for it with my salary, you know, with my wages from this job at NAPA Auto Parts, you know. And this satisfaction he feels of I'm taking care of business is why he's in that first chapter on the terror and joy offending for yourself. I love it. You know.

You have such a you you have such an ability to look deeper to the humanity of each individual. It's remarkable. I don't know if you remember I I retweeted you like maybe a week ago or so. You wrote something beautiful about how you're here for everyone you know, you it's it's incredible, and even it's it's it's a theme

throughout your whole book. I mean even I was gonna say my second favorite chapter, although I'm not like ranking, but another another favorite chapter was start talking to strangers. You're very good at that. I think that's that's part of seeing humanity in each and being curious, well even just being curious about the humanity, you know, like, what

do you say to people who aren't there yet? I mean, there are a lot of people who are really suffering so much in our country that they're not They don't want to look outside of their in group right now because they're so you know, their focus is so much on protecting those in there in group. You know that next stage where you can open your heart to even people that you've been told are your enemy. What advice do you have there, Julie, Wow, it's a very big question.

If only we could turn our heart outward and be kind to our enemy, we would heal ourselves as a human species and just accelerate to a higher level of group consciousness. I think, and they're right, there's a piece of me that believes that's possible, that believes this may be the century in which that happens. There seems to be a collective consciousness growing around that imperative, and I'm here for it. But in the meantime, on this particular Friday,

you know, what do we do? This? I know and you know, Scott, I'm not a psychologist, right anything that I say that relates to the mind or the psyche, this is what I know intrinsically from my own experiences and observations, what I've read and learned and feel. First of all, this us them that we do is ultimately about fear. You know, our ancestors who lived you know, you know tens of thousands of years ago, had to know who was the outgroup, you know, who is the danger,

what's my group? What's what? Who are we? Who's the other? For self preservation and we don't need that quite so much anymore, but we still have that hardwired in us. And so we need to start being less afraid of each other, which means we have to learn about each other. They say a passport is an antidote to racism, meaning if you get a passport and you travel to other cultures and communities. You discover, hey, they're humans just like we are. Wow, you know, and we start to feel

less afraid, therefore less hateful, more curious, more kind. So but I think before we can do any of that, we have to be okay within ourselves. You know, a person who doesn't love themselves has a hard time loving and connecting with others. So there is a lot of internal work to be done. I love myself, I know myself. I'm okay. Therefore I can take a risk, maybe be curious about this other person who looks different than me, but maybe we have something in common. Finding a common

interest is a really important way forward. Before you take on your aunt or uncle, this and that who completely disagrees with you politically about politics, you do well to open the conversation with something you can both chuckle about, lean into with laughter and love. You know, you're demonstrating I'm a fellow human just like you. I am trying to create a bridge between us. Maybe we have something difficult to discuss, but first let's remind each other what

we have in common. Yeah, yeah, preach, preach, preacher. But I gotta say one other things. Going back to Levi the Sacramento dude whom I love you because it really knits back to how how did I find people for this book and my curiosity and love for humans. Levi was my lift driver. Oh well, we'll talk to lyft drivers. He rescued us at the side of the road when our car broke down. He was going to drive us to the local car rental outside Sacramento to drive us

to Palo Alto. I was going to rent a car, and he was like, you know, you can rent a car or I could just take you in this lift the whole way. And I didn't know you could take a two and a half hour lift, but he was like, it's probably going to be the same amount of money. I could use the money and I don't mind the time.

And so he and I began chatting, and before I knew it, I was interviewing him for this book because he was this maybe twenty three year old who was just saying everything I wanted readers of my book to hear about how you begin to make your way forward out of out of childhood, toward uncertainty, toward dreams. I mean, you you listen, I do. I mean, like your ending story with Sean, Yeah, you know, you're like, oh, you

had a child at that age. I'm going to have to follow up with you on this one, you know, right, yeah, yeah, exactly. This dude had interviewed me for his parenting podcast. I loved his philosophy. I loved his ease and comfort in this conversation about parenting. And he sounded young. And here I am fifty three. So I said to myself home, he sounds like a young dude, And I said, forgive me. I don't mean to come across the wrong way, but I just want to compliment you for how wise you are.

I mean, what are you thirty one? And he was nor, you know, thirty, and he said, I'm twenty four, and which meant this baby that he was so lovingly describing, this toddler son of his was born when Sean was twenty one. And that's when I said, oh, hey, can I interview you for my book because many people will find themselves unexpectedly welcoming a child into their life sooner than they had planned or ever even thought about. And I wanted to put that voice in these pages too. Yeah.

You're you're you're very you're very sensitive in the sense that you do you notice the details about people. It's fat, it's a fast I'm trying to really get the essence of what I've observed about you at my limited time getting to know you, but my delicious time getting that. I know it's a word we use in your book, and I love that word. I've been over using that word a lot lately, so, but you know, my delicious

time getting to know you. You're very Yeah, you're very astute, and I think you just notice, like I feel like you notice very subtle, subtle things about whether or not someone's if someone's judging you. I feel like you would be very astute at noticing that if someone's kind of like open, if someone you know their own stories. You're very astute. Does this resonate Scott? It does, and the way that I appreciate it. First of all, I take

those as complements. I'm grateful that you're seeing me so clearly. I think you are seeing me clearly. I'll tell you how it feels to me, because here's what happens. I'm in a conversation outside of pandemic. I'm meeting with somebody want on one. You know, it's it's somebody I'm getting to know better, or it's somebody I know quite well, regardless we're in person, that's over coffee or what have you.

And I'll say something like, so, wow, that must have been really hard for you, you know, whatever it was, and they're like, what do you How do you know? And I say, you know, I'm just sensing that, and and my sensing Scott is as clear. It's as clearly. Whatever they've given off feels to me like language I feel. They've said, I'm suffering, I'm grieving, I'm afraid, i feel judged. But they haven't been that clear. I've just heard it in the spaces in between the language they did use.

I'm also probably paying attention to body language and energy. So I am often the person who's like, so you know, let's go deeper into that, like you and your mom you really have these issues, And they're like, what, how did you know? And I'm like, you know, so I seem to intuit or I have a degree of curiosity and empathy. You know, I'm not trying to be obnoxious. I'm not trying to pry. I'm not trying to ask

you that thing you don't want to talk about. What happens for me is it is as if they are talking to me about it, and I am just a mirror reflecting back what I feel their being is sharing and and I love that because I know that when we can connect deeply and vulnerably around the actual shit of our lives, we feel less alone, we feel more connected to this entire human experience. And so I seek

those connections. You know, they a delicious delicious using that use word by both of us, but like these human connections are juicy and delicious and nourishing, and I do seek them out. And when I have a day that has contained an interaction like that, I just feel like, woo ooh, you know, I got to be with a human today, and wow, it was amazing. I feel that way right now talking to you, quite frankly, quite frankly. Good. Well, so,

what are life's beautiful F words? There's no good way to segue into that, exactly, Failure, falling, floundering, fumbling, flailing, five or six beautiful F words. And I call them the F words because they begin with F and because we avoid them as if we are swearing, you know, like, oh, we can never have that, like we parents, We humans are so desperately afraid of our kids or ourselves having

any setbacks. And yet these setbacks, these things that didn't quite go as we might have hoped or dreamed or planned, these setbacks become our greatest teachers. And so I actually quote Sir Davos from Game of Thrones in this book have a lot of pop cultural records here, and we've got John Snow saying I failed, and Davos saying, good, go out and fail well again. You know that's the point.

This is how we learn and grow. We only get stronger and more capable and more confident when we've had that setback that we can learn a little bit from retool and we actually strengthen from it, and then we go out and do the next thing. It is it is almost I would say required. So they are life's beautiful f words. Yeah, I also like the other I use that a lot in the book. As you know, there are f BOMs in this book. I know, I know, I know. I I cursed on Twitter yesterday and it

felt so good, Oh good for you, thank you. If in the most when it's appropriately placed, it feels really good for emphasis. Well, you know you just hinted at the point of keep going, you know, which is another major theme in your book. I'd like to end today's interview with a bit of a passage from your book that I think is really touching. You say, it's a rough time to be making your way into adult life, and now it's your turn. You were born for this.

You have to do it yourself. You have to want to, you have to learn how, and you have to have to is that what you say, and you have to have to meeting life has to throw you that tag You're it wrench to be. It's not just the question, it's the whole damn point. Thank you so much, Jillie for coming and sharing your beautiful new book. I really highly recommend it for people, and I wish you all the best in your book. Door Scott, thanks so much

for having me. It's been wonderful to be in conversation with you, and thanks to the listeners for spending this time with us. I'm grateful thanks for listening to this episode the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in on the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.

That's the Psychology Podcast dot com thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain behavior, and creativity.