Speaker 1: Today, It's great to chat with Juli Lithcott Hyms on
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. Juli believes in humans and is deeply
Speaker 1: interested in what gets in our way. She is a
Speaker 1: former corporate lawyer in Stanford, Dean. She serves on the
Speaker 1: board of Common Sense Media and on the advisory board
Speaker 1: of leanin dot org, and she is a former board
Speaker 1: member at Foundation for a College Education, Global Citizen Year,
Speaker 1: The Writer's Grotto and Challenge Success. Juli is the New
Speaker 1: York Times bestselling author of the anti helicopter parenting manifesto,
Speaker 1: How to Raise an Adult. Her second book is that
Speaker 1: critically acclaimed an award winning prose poetry memoir, Real American,
Speaker 1: and her third book, which is the focus of today's conversation,
Speaker 1: is Your Turn. How to Be an Adult, came out
Speaker 1: in April twenty twenty one. Julie, I'm so excited for
Speaker 1: this highly anticipated interview with you, Oh Scott, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for having me. I'm really appreciate it and delighted
Speaker 1: to be with your listeners. Thank you so much. What
Speaker 1: in incredible book? This is how to be an Adult?
Speaker 1: You know, I read this because I was curious. I
Speaker 1: don't feel like an adult, but I'm old enough to
Speaker 1: be one. They tell me that I shouldn't be an
Speaker 1: adult already, you know. So how do you define adulting
Speaker 1: as you call it adulting? I pronounced it adulting for
Speaker 1: adulting adulting, Fine, it's all good. I think adulting is
Speaker 1: simply the stage of life between childhood and death, a
Speaker 1: set of decades we hope in which we are in
Speaker 1: charge of ourselves in the context of a world where
Speaker 1: we absolutely lack control, but we are in charge of
Speaker 1: our own self, our choices, our decisions, our way forward,
Speaker 1: and hopefully a set of years that are healthy. So
Speaker 1: that's what adulting is. It's not a mysterious thing. It
Speaker 1: is simply the longest stage of life we will be in,
Speaker 1: bookended by periods of life childhood and being quite elderly
Speaker 1: or sick toward the end of our lives where we
Speaker 1: are cared for largely by others. So it's this period
Speaker 1: where we are in the driver's seat, where we are
Speaker 1: the decision maker, where what we know to be true
Speaker 1: about ourselves, the direction in which we want to head,
Speaker 1: and the things we do is more under our control
Speaker 1: than it will be at the beginning of life and
Speaker 1: at the end. Beautiful you know, your prior book, which
Speaker 1: I loved, How to Raise an Adult, really did push
Speaker 1: back this idea that as parents we have to do
Speaker 1: everything for the child. You know, we have to always
Speaker 1: worry every second, you know, what could happen next, and
Speaker 1: make sure that we swoop in there and make that change.
Speaker 1: Between writing that book and then like today, what has
Speaker 1: changed in the world do you think in terms of
Speaker 1: I mean a lot has changed, right, But what do
Speaker 1: you think see as some of the most pressing things
Speaker 1: that has changed even how you would think about being
Speaker 1: an adult back then when you were writing that book. Well,
Speaker 1: I think obviously the pandemic has really sharpened the focus
Speaker 1: for a lot of us about ourselves and about our families,
Speaker 1: about what matters to us about our society. And I
Speaker 1: think it's been an opportunity to clarify. Okay, when I'm
Speaker 1: back out there, when I'm unleashed again, when I feel
Speaker 1: less fettered by circumstance, what am I going to do?
Speaker 1: I think I try to live my life listening to
Speaker 1: the poet of to the words of poet Mary Oliver,
Speaker 1: who said with us, yeah, what are you going to
Speaker 1: do with this one wild and precious life? She asked,
Speaker 1: and I have that question in my head always, and
Speaker 1: I think, having been through over a year now of lockdown,
Speaker 1: various states of limitation thanks to a pandemic, many of
Speaker 1: us are, you know, champing at the bit, ready to
Speaker 1: be unleashed back out there. But this time, perhaps if
Speaker 1: we've done the work, if we have done some good
Speaker 1: thinking and some good self examination and some pondering and
Speaker 1: some dreaming and some planning, you know, maybe we will
Speaker 1: unleash ourselves and be a little bit more deliberate, a
Speaker 1: little bit more purposeful about whatever it is that we
Speaker 1: have decided matters most to us. I think we've all
Speaker 1: had a reckoning around what matters and what doesn't, and
Speaker 1: we've all gotten a clearer glimpse that life is finite,
Speaker 1: and that we shouldn't take people for granted. We shouldn't
Speaker 1: take opportunities for granted. We shouldn't take what we already
Speaker 1: have in our lives that's going reasonably well for granted.
Speaker 1: So all of these things that I'm describing are the
Speaker 1: kinds of conversations I hope adults are having in their
Speaker 1: own minds about their own lives. And I think you
Speaker 1: ask what adulting is, and I would say, I think
Speaker 1: primarily I've defined it as a set of years between
Speaker 1: childhood and death, but I will add that it's a
Speaker 1: state of mind. And so this pandemic I think has
Speaker 1: given us that opportunity to really re examine this state
Speaker 1: of mind that we have about our own desires, our
Speaker 1: own fears, our own wants, our needs, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it has been an opportunity to be more
Speaker 1: intentional and deliberate about adulting. Yeah, that's interesting that you
Speaker 1: call it a state of mind. You know that people
Speaker 1: a lot of people talk about growth mindset, Is there,
Speaker 1: you know, an adult mindset? Absolutely, an adult mindset. And
Speaker 1: I talk a lot about Carol Dweck's work and growth
Speaker 1: mindset in this book as the antidote to perfectionism, which
Speaker 1: really holds so many of us back as we emerge
Speaker 1: out of childhood into adulthood and for many of us
Speaker 1: well into adulthood. Are we are perfectionists and think that's fine,
Speaker 1: or we learn that it's not fine and we need
Speaker 1: to cast it off and hopefully we all get to
Speaker 1: this place of it's actually about our effort and trying
Speaker 1: to learn and grow rather than be perfect all the time.
Speaker 1: An adult mindset is I can, which is of course agency.
Speaker 1: An adult mindset is I can cope, which is of
Speaker 1: course resilience. An adult mindset is there's more than me
Speaker 1: in this world. I'm one of seven plus billion, which
Speaker 1: is at its core a way to have good character
Speaker 1: or way to recognize that other people matter and other
Speaker 1: people have needs. An adult mindset is I'm responsible for myself,
Speaker 1: and I have to also try to be of use
Speaker 1: to the others around me, whether they are my family,
Speaker 1: my children, my colleagues, my neighbors. Adulting is the first
Speaker 1: time you really have the obligation, I think, to not
Speaker 1: be that little narcissistic child, not narcissistic in a clinical sense,
Speaker 1: but a child's world tends to be very self focused
Speaker 1: and self absorbed. But as we emerge into our adult lives,
Speaker 1: we come to appreciate that, no, there's others around here.
Speaker 1: I need to pay attention to that, and ultimately that
Speaker 1: benefits them and it benefits me because we're a social
Speaker 1: species and we need to be in community and collaboration
Speaker 1: with one another. And so I think ultimately the adulting
Speaker 1: mindset is, you know, I'm going to get real clear
Speaker 1: on who I am, and that I'm capable, that I'm strong,
Speaker 1: that I can bounce back, and that I'll do my
Speaker 1: work and also take the needs and feelings of the
Speaker 1: others in my life into account and try to be
Speaker 1: of use to them. Well, I love that mindset. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of times we get a lot of external
Speaker 1: pressures and messages of what we're told what it means
Speaker 1: to be an adult. Sometimes there's this concept that there
Speaker 1: is a certain right track that you should be on
Speaker 1: as an adult. You challenged that idea of the right
Speaker 1: track concept, right, I do, And frankly, this is the
Speaker 1: first of the first chapter I wrote that I felt
Speaker 1: good about. I tried and failed for three years to
Speaker 1: write this book. I had a book contract. My publisher
Speaker 1: was clear they wanted this book. I had assigned a contract,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't find my way in because I was
Speaker 1: really struggling with whether I had any authority to write
Speaker 1: a book on adulting. And then I came to accept
Speaker 1: no one is an authority on adulting. If you're an adult,
Speaker 1: you're an authority, no more or less than anybody else.
Speaker 1: You're doing it by definition. So this chapter, which happens
Speaker 1: to be the first chapter I wrote, is chapter five
Speaker 1: out of thirteen. In the book, it's called stop pleasing others.
Speaker 1: They have no idea who you are. That's the chapter heading,
Speaker 1: and I think it is emblematic of the book, which
Speaker 1: speaks very bluntly, very frankly, very declaratively, but also compassionately
Speaker 1: to the reader. And I'm you know, I summoned my
Speaker 1: former Stanford Dean voice in writing this book, picturing myself
Speaker 1: sitting with a young person who is struggling with the
Speaker 1: right track concept and struggling with the pressure they feel
Speaker 1: to please others. And this chapter is both about work,
Speaker 1: career and your personal life, your identity, who you choose
Speaker 1: to be in community with, who you choose to love.
Speaker 1: In both of these realms, the professional and the personal,
Speaker 1: there's this sense that there's a right way and a
Speaker 1: wrong way, And certainly with career we call it right
Speaker 1: track and Scott, there is no right track. First of all,
Speaker 1: adulty doesn't come right. There's no track, there's no path.
Speaker 1: But so many young people have been raised in a
Speaker 1: childhood that definitely had a track. There was a track
Speaker 1: to the right school, there was a track through the
Speaker 1: right math classes, a tract to the right college. Then
Speaker 1: when you're in college, you think there are only five
Speaker 1: acceptable majors, And in this book, I am shaking those
Speaker 1: assumptions at their foundation. People who think there are only
Speaker 1: five acceptable majors or careers or jobs are so limited.
Speaker 1: I feel badly for them. There's this vast, wide open
Speaker 1: landscape of possibility. If we're at least middle class, I mean,
Speaker 1: I realize if you're working class, if you're poor, there
Speaker 1: are a significant set of limitations that may impede your
Speaker 1: forward progress. And yet even so, a good mentor a
Speaker 1: decent education can get you out of difficult circumstances and
Speaker 1: to a place of opportunity. And when you are there,
Speaker 1: you you know or you don't have to be a doctor,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be an investment banker to have
Speaker 1: a rich and rewarding, wonderful life. There are just an
Speaker 1: infinite set of things, and it is up to nobody
Speaker 1: to tell you what the right way forward for you is.
Speaker 1: So this chapter, ultimately that totally assaults the concept of
Speaker 1: right track, ultimately asks the reader listen to your inner voice,
Speaker 1: figure out who you are, Why are you here on
Speaker 1: this planet? What do you know to be true about yourself?
Speaker 1: Forget everybody else? What are you good at what do
Speaker 1: you know? You are good at? What do you love?
Speaker 1: Can you find work that is at the intersection of
Speaker 1: those things. You got to be good at it to
Speaker 1: make your way in that career. You got to love
Speaker 1: it in order to feel satisfaction. If you're just good
Speaker 1: at it but don't love it, you'll feel like a
Speaker 1: drone in your own life. If you just love it
Speaker 1: and you're not good at it, you probably won't get
Speaker 1: very far. So this sweet spot around work is are
Speaker 1: you good at it? And do you love it? If so,
Speaker 1: go go go and ignore everybody else who doesn't get it,
Speaker 1: who doesn't accept it, who criticizes you, et cetera. It
Speaker 1: is not up to your parents, it's not up to
Speaker 1: your grandparents. It's not up to your whole ethnic community,
Speaker 1: your friend group to decide or validate what you choose
Speaker 1: to do for your work. This is a deeply personal knowing,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to entice readers to listen for that
Speaker 1: deep knowing within themselves that tells them what is the
Speaker 1: right track for me? Not let me adhere to someone
Speaker 1: else's or society's conception of the right track. Oh, I
Speaker 1: couldn't agree more and this is. You know, we're very
Speaker 1: aligned on this, you know, as someone who tries to
Speaker 1: help people self actualize in their own direction. As Abraham
Speaker 1: Maslow said, we try to make a rose into a
Speaker 1: good rose, not turn a rose into lily's, you know. Right,
Speaker 1: and yeah, so very much aligned. But certainly some professions
Speaker 1: are more socially acceptable than others. And right, so for
Speaker 1: some people it's a lot harder for them to just
Speaker 1: embrace that they want to go into a certain profession
Speaker 1: than others. I mean, you hint it this absolutely when
Speaker 1: you say you don't have to be a doctor, you
Speaker 1: don't have to be this or that. You know, But
Speaker 1: what advice do you have to people who want to
Speaker 1: go in field? You know, you want to be a
Speaker 1: clown in the circus. Let's say someone's like they follow
Speaker 1: their inner knowing, and their inner knowing tells them, you know,
Speaker 1: to be a trapeze artist or I don't know, whatever
Speaker 1: kind of things that just are not as as socially acceptable.
Speaker 1: What advice do you have for them? What sort of
Speaker 1: pep talk? Well, I think my first thought is if
Speaker 1: you want to go be a clown or a trapeze artist,
Speaker 1: go be that person. As long as you can pay
Speaker 1: your bills and keep yourself healthy, and well, it's really
Speaker 1: nobody else's business what you do for a living. You know,
Speaker 1: if it's illegal, if it's problematic and violent toward others,
Speaker 1: don't do that. But outside of that kind of societal judgment,
Speaker 1: like you really should not be an axe murderer, Who
Speaker 1: are we business do we have telling other people what
Speaker 1: to do? The second thing I'll say is, you know,
Speaker 1: we spend so much of our years trying to please
Speaker 1: our parents or our grandparents. You know. I cite someone
Speaker 1: in the book who was cut off from her very
Speaker 1: wealthy family because she chose to attend Stanford University rather
Speaker 1: than one of the Ivy League schools, and she just
Speaker 1: stood up to that grandparent and said, you know, I
Speaker 1: wish you could love and support me for who I am.
Speaker 1: I'm a designer. They have a design school there. Those
Speaker 1: back East schools don't have the opportunity to study design.
Speaker 1: This was back in the eighties, and you know, she
Speaker 1: walked away from that. And somebody could say there's a
Speaker 1: lot of privilege inherent in being able to walk away,
Speaker 1: But for that young person, it felt pretty consequential to
Speaker 1: walk away from that family money from that trust fund,
Speaker 1: if you will. And she has led the most engaged,
Speaker 1: fascinating life in work, discus new ways of making manufacturing
Speaker 1: operations flow and soar and succeed, and all of that
Speaker 1: is a function of the degree she got related to design,
Speaker 1: and you know, and her grandmother may never understand, and
Speaker 1: so be it. I mean, I think the ultimate message
Speaker 1: the pep talk is your life will feel most deeply satisfying, nourishing,
Speaker 1: delicious to you when you are the trepeze artist, even
Speaker 1: if you grew up in a family of lawyers. You know,
Speaker 1: if you want to be the person who takes people
Speaker 1: whitewater rafting down the Colorado River and your whole family,
Speaker 1: you know, doesn't get it, that's okay. You know you're
Speaker 1: not here to please your family. And I know that's
Speaker 1: an easy thing for me to say, and I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to offend anybody. Culturally, we do owe our families
Speaker 1: a lot. Often they've provided for us materially in terms
Speaker 1: of emotional support. But no human has the right to
Speaker 1: say you matter to me more if you get a
Speaker 1: law degree. You know, I love and accept you when
Speaker 1: you get the MD. Like that's just you know, that's
Speaker 1: an insecurity in that person's mind. Whomever's trying to impose
Speaker 1: their own right career right track on you is insecure.
Speaker 1: They need you to be that so they can feel
Speaker 1: better about themselves. They need to go get some good
Speaker 1: therapy to deal with that. Meanwhile, I'm here rooting for
Speaker 1: you to lead the life you want to lead. I
Speaker 1: feel so inspired right now that I'm so glad, you know, Scott.
Speaker 1: I mean this relates to career, but it also relates
Speaker 1: to identity. I mean, how many of us are struggling
Speaker 1: with what we know to be true about who we are,
Speaker 1: whether it's around our gender, our sexual orientation, our racial
Speaker 1: or ethnic identities. We're struggling to just be that person
Speaker 1: that we intrinsically somewhere deep at the level of spirit, soul,
Speaker 1: you know, just self knowing. We know this is what's
Speaker 1: right for us, and yet we have a family construct
Speaker 1: or a community construct that says, nope, nope, we're not that.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a huge conflict, and I am here
Speaker 1: rooting for all of us to listen to that, to
Speaker 1: listen to what is coming up and out of the self,
Speaker 1: rather than feeling the imperative to conform to society, family community.
Speaker 1: You know, my second book, Real American, is on being
Speaker 1: black and biracial growing up in white spaces where I
Speaker 1: was otherised. I was made to feel like the other,
Speaker 1: I was called the N word was I was mistreated
Speaker 1: on the basis of my skin color, and it harmed
Speaker 1: me and I have therefore, I think tremendous empathy for
Speaker 1: anybody who, for whatever reason, has been marginalized in those ways.
Speaker 1: I'm rooting for all of us to say, Nope, actually
Speaker 1: I'm this, and I love myself as this person, and
Speaker 1: to hell with the rest of you, because I'm not
Speaker 1: here to please you. I'm here to make my way
Speaker 1: in this one, wild and precious life. Yes, yes, I
Speaker 1: remember this story you told about being a racism incident
Speaker 1: happened to you in grade school. I don't know if
Speaker 1: if we can talk about it publicly, but in the
Speaker 1: locker right there was Yeah, do you feel comfortable talking
Speaker 1: about that? Yeah, that's the incident I was alluding to,
Speaker 1: just talking about at an all white high school. I'm
Speaker 1: seventeen years old. I'm turning seventeen and it's my seventeenth birthday,
Speaker 1: November of my senior year. My high school is all white,
Speaker 1: by which I mean twelve hundred white kids, two Jewish
Speaker 1: kids who were not considered white, and me black and
Speaker 1: biracial me. I have fairly light skin, and yet I
Speaker 1: was the blackest thing this town had ever seen when
Speaker 1: I darkened up in the summer thanks to the August sun.
Speaker 1: I had a white person there. Everybody was white. I
Speaker 1: don't need to say I had a white person do
Speaker 1: this because everybody was white. I had a person walk
Speaker 1: past me and just stop in her tracks and say,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, you're so tan. Like there was in
Speaker 1: her worldview that said, while yes, I was darker because
Speaker 1: of the summer sun, there was nothing I was so
Speaker 1: outside the norm there. She didn't have any conception that
Speaker 1: I might be a person of color, a black person,
Speaker 1: a person from a different of a different race. That's
Speaker 1: how different and weird I was to them. On my
Speaker 1: seventeenth birthday, my best friend had made me a beautiful
Speaker 1: birthday locker sign, as girls tended to do in my
Speaker 1: high school then maybe they still do, a bunch of
Speaker 1: pieces of paper taped together on this five foot tall
Speaker 1: locker to celebrate my birthday. She had taped the paper
Speaker 1: together and paste it onto the page's imagery she'd cut
Speaker 1: out from teen magazines imagery and words to celebrate me,
Speaker 1: and it was a beautiful gift. I loved it. And
Speaker 1: by the late morning, somebody had come by with a
Speaker 1: thick black marker and written the N word on my
Speaker 1: locker sign in some of the empty white space where
Speaker 1: there wasn't pasted stuff. Wrote that word three times, misspelled
Speaker 1: it used only one G. But I knew what they'd meant,
Speaker 1: and I didn't tell anybody Scott because I was so
Speaker 1: ashamed that it had happened to me. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to bring further attention to my blackness by making any
Speaker 1: kind of fuss. I also wasn't sure that anybody would
Speaker 1: take it seriously, and I didn't want that happen either,
Speaker 1: So I didn't tell a soul until I went back
Speaker 1: to school at age forty four to do an MFA
Speaker 1: to try to get better at writing, so that maybe
Speaker 1: I could write a book on the harm of helicopter parenting,
Speaker 1: which is my first book. I was at a poetry
Speaker 1: class and I wrote a poem, a very abstract poem,
Speaker 1: and told in seven voices and seven typefaces about my
Speaker 1: highest years. And one of those seven voices was the
Speaker 1: voice of this stranger who had called me the N
Speaker 1: word on my birthday. And that's when I began to
Speaker 1: open up about it. Wow, thank you for being so vulnerable.
Speaker 1: I have deep empathy for that. I think my own
Speaker 1: my own analog to that would be the R word,
Speaker 1: you know, as a kid in special ed, you know,
Speaker 1: being called the R word. Oh, I'm so sorry, my goodness,
Speaker 1: absolutely yeah, absolutely so yeah. It stays with you, doesn't
Speaker 1: it It does, you know what? Let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know about you, but I wonder
Speaker 1: if you've had an experience along the lines of mine.
Speaker 1: I hid. I was so ashamed I didn't tell. But
Speaker 1: the word the taunt burrowed itself into my psyche and
Speaker 1: just sat there or grew for three decades, you know,
Speaker 1: or two and a half decades. And when I finally
Speaker 1: told myself that it had happened, when I grabbed that
Speaker 1: memory up from where it was lurking or hiding, festering,
Speaker 1: you know, within me, when I summoned it back up
Speaker 1: to my conscious brain and said, this happened. And I
Speaker 1: began writing about it, and I wrote that poem and
Speaker 1: began to write other poems related to my experiences with race,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately wrote a memoir where that story sits
Speaker 1: alongside you know, many many others. I found that I
Speaker 1: have released the pain of it. The pain of it
Speaker 1: is now gone from me. It's no longer living in
Speaker 1: my body or in my mind, you know. So let
Speaker 1: me ask you a question. Would you say that you're
Speaker 1: no longer a victim of that situation? I never used
Speaker 1: the word victim, so I need to, but I know
Speaker 1: what you mean. Yeah, yes, I will say that I
Speaker 1: have been. Really, the way that I describe it is
Speaker 1: that that experience had me in its grip. That experience
Speaker 1: was like a vice grip clamped on my heart or
Speaker 1: on my sense of self wherever those things live in
Speaker 1: a bodily sense. And when I turned around and faced it,
Speaker 1: you know, I just dared to stare at it and
Speaker 1: call it what it was, the vice grip began to loosen.
Speaker 1: It was almost like when a bully is chasing you
Speaker 1: and you turn around and you face the bully and
Speaker 1: you call it what it is. Often it runs away,
Speaker 1: a bully in form of a human. So, yeah, I
Speaker 1: am no longer victimized. I am no longer traumatized. I
Speaker 1: am no longer ashamed. I am free of that. Yes,
Speaker 1: it happened, It's a part of my past, but it
Speaker 1: no longer dictates how I feel about myself. Yeah. Wow,
Speaker 1: so powerful. Thanks again. I mean, I recognize as always
Speaker 1: easy to bring up these kind of memories and things,
Speaker 1: So just thank you so much. No, I'm happy to
Speaker 1: talk about it, and I appreciate that you shared that
Speaker 1: you were called the R word. I'm sorry that that
Speaker 1: happened to you, and you know, it speaks to the
Speaker 1: different time we're in scott You know, when you were
Speaker 1: growing up, you're younger than me. When I was growing up,
Speaker 1: people routinely said the cruelest things to one another. We
Speaker 1: have definitely become I mean, some will say were it's
Speaker 1: political correctness, but I prefer to say we've learned not
Speaker 1: to be assholes to one another. We've learned that it's
Speaker 1: deeply harmful to be cruel towards somebody, period, particularly so
Speaker 1: on the basis of some kind of perceived identity or
Speaker 1: actual identity or way of being. And this is something
Speaker 1: else I write about in Your Turn. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: in your Turn. I'm normalizing that we've all got something
Speaker 1: we have conditions, diagnoses. Maybe we don't have a diagnosis
Speaker 1: for what we've got, but it's a thing that we
Speaker 1: contend with. It's a situation. And in my book, I'm
Speaker 1: not like asterisk in case you have you know, depression
Speaker 1: read page three hundred and nine. I am normalizing the
Speaker 1: fact that in our human community we struggle and contend
Speaker 1: with various things that comprise the beauty of who we are.
Speaker 1: And so this book is deliberately inclusive in that sense
Speaker 1: of people who have been labeled and people who have
Speaker 1: been made to feel like they're not good enough or
Speaker 1: that there's something wrong with them. This book, for all
Speaker 1: young adults struggling with adulting, aims in its narrative to
Speaker 1: be as inclusive as possible, of all so that every
Speaker 1: single reader. It is my sincere's hope that every reader,
Speaker 1: no matter what their background is, and I mean background
Speaker 1: in every sense of identity, I hope that every reader
Speaker 1: at some point will get to a page where they
Speaker 1: say she was thinking of me when she wrote this.
Speaker 1: You know, I relate, I relate, I therefore feel seen,
Speaker 1: I therefore feel support or did I therefore feel less alone? Well?
Speaker 1: I certainly felt that way reading your book, I certainly
Speaker 1: felt that way. Yeah, I can tell you my favorite
Speaker 1: chapters if you want it. Do you do you want
Speaker 1: to do you want to know? Do you want me
Speaker 1: to nerd out with you a second? On what? I what? Really? Uh?
Speaker 1: I resonate with So there's a chapter where you talk
Speaker 1: about taking good care and then you have like parentheses
Speaker 1: of yourself, you know, And I think that like it's
Speaker 1: very easy to forget to do that when you're the
Speaker 1: when you're kind of like in a healing position, you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm a coach, you know, I I have like
Speaker 1: so many clients, and then I like just forget like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm allowed to take care of myself, you know? Could
Speaker 1: you do you want to talk about taking good care
Speaker 1: a little bit? And then I can tell you my
Speaker 1: next favorite chapter. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So this is chapter nine,
Speaker 1: and it's the part of the book where we're really
Speaker 1: going to go deep into that kind of internal self.
Speaker 1: After we've talked about your work and your identity and
Speaker 1: your relationships and your money, now we're in this sort
Speaker 1: of like, hey, you know, taking care of your self
Speaker 1: is essential. It is probably your most important work. You
Speaker 1: cannot be of use to your clients, to your family
Speaker 1: or friends, your loved ones, you cannot be of greatest
Speaker 1: use to them if you are not nourishing that self.
Speaker 1: It's that old adage from the airlines, put your own
Speaker 1: oxygen mask on first before helping others. If you aim
Speaker 1: to be of use to others, you've got to be
Speaker 1: taking care of yourself. So, as with all of my chapters,
Speaker 1: so this is the chapter where I really go deep
Speaker 1: around whatever your identities may be, whatever I call them situations.
Speaker 1: If you have a diagnosis, if you have a challenge,
Speaker 1: whether it's physical, whether it's emotional, whether it's cognitive, whether
Speaker 1: whatever it might be, Like know it, desire to know
Speaker 1: that self, learn about that self, Learn what your self,
Speaker 1: your space self needs in order to thrive. Be continually
Speaker 1: interested in that, revisit it regularly because maybe you're on
Speaker 1: a set of meds and they're working for you, but
Speaker 1: maybe you want to be examining are they still working
Speaker 1: for me? You know? Is this therapy still the right
Speaker 1: therapy for me? You know? Is this community still nourishing
Speaker 1: me in the ways that I want it to so
Speaker 1: that I can learn and grow rather than feel stifled
Speaker 1: or unseen. So this is the chapter that's really putting
Speaker 1: the mirror up to the reader and inviting the reader
Speaker 1: to go deep into like what who am I actually?
Speaker 1: You know in my bones and my DNA in my makeup,
Speaker 1: and how can I really love that self? Ultimately, this
Speaker 1: chapter is about self acceptance and self love. And then,
Speaker 1: as with all chapters, I have some personal stuff in there.
Speaker 1: This book is a genre mashup of memoir, self help tips,
Speaker 1: and then these profiles of third parties and the third
Speaker 1: the three profiles I have after this long list of
Speaker 1: nineteen self care items, which includes everything from breathe to
Speaker 1: get sleep, to get therapy, to ask for what you
Speaker 1: need to have orgasms. You know, it's like everything is
Speaker 1: in here. The three people at the end are a
Speaker 1: kid dealing with anxiety and depression. And I say a kid,
Speaker 1: he's like twenty one, a woman who's now twenty nine
Speaker 1: who dealt with an eating disorder and OCD, and a
Speaker 1: guy who's in his forties, former military guy who's got
Speaker 1: pretty serious bipolar disorder. And how they hope with these
Speaker 1: things is so uplifting and so encouraging and inspiring. So,
Speaker 1: you know, all of these chapters and with stories that
Speaker 1: I hope inspire readers around what's possible. Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: great stories in here, and I mean, how do you
Speaker 1: find these people? Yeah? You know my network and then
Speaker 1: my network's network. You know. I I did put a
Speaker 1: survey out on media about three years ago saying I'm
Speaker 1: writing this book on adulting, and I really want to
Speaker 1: hear from people who are struggling with it or who
Speaker 1: think they are adulting. How do you know you are?
Speaker 1: I got a lot of responses to that, and some
Speaker 1: of these interviewees are like Jeff, who's at the end
Speaker 1: of Who's the Guy with Bipolar? Was a stranger who
Speaker 1: responded to a survey. I also deliberately crafted quite a
Speaker 1: diverse set of voices. So I got to a point
Speaker 1: where I was like, you know what, I don't have
Speaker 1: any Texans in this book. And you may not think
Speaker 1: of Texas when you think about, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: build diversity into your book, but I was like, Texas
Speaker 1: is the second biggest thing. I got to have a
Speaker 1: Texan in this book. And you know, I've got vegans
Speaker 1: in this book, but I also have black people and
Speaker 1: Latino people and Asian people and biracial people, and white
Speaker 1: people and Native people and queer people and gender queer
Speaker 1: people and trans people, and poor people and working class
Speaker 1: people and very educated and hardly educated and folks. You know,
Speaker 1: I've just I've really tried to put a broad range
Speaker 1: of humans in this book. Again for reasons I've already mentioned,
Speaker 1: and I found some of them came to me because
Speaker 1: they resonated with something I put out there. And some
Speaker 1: of them are friends or friends of friends. Do you
Speaker 1: have any stories of any like poor white people in
Speaker 1: the book? I do. Actually, book opens chapter two, tag
Speaker 1: you're it they offending for yourself. The first guy there, Kyle,
Speaker 1: is a child who grew up in Apple. It's a
Speaker 1: young man who grew up in Appalacho with a father
Speaker 1: died young when he was young. His mother, after a
Speaker 1: car accident and her husband's death, got addicted to opioids.
Speaker 1: So this is a story ripped from the headlines. Young
Speaker 1: you know, he's a teenager, he's got a younger sister.
Speaker 1: He's trying to provide for his family, keep his mom
Speaker 1: safe and sound, earn money, and you know, I think
Speaker 1: that's an incredible story. There's a guy named Levi and
Speaker 1: Sacramento white Guy. Both these are white guys whose father
Speaker 1: and mother said you're out at eighteen. His father was
Speaker 1: not very emotionally available, earned plenty of money, but wouldn't
Speaker 1: when the parents got divorced, wouldn't provide child support. Mother
Speaker 1: was poor but very loving, and so he grew up,
Speaker 1: you know, feeling that, you know, money does not make
Speaker 1: you a better person. My father has money, but boy,
Speaker 1: he's not there for us. And ultimately, he, you know,
Speaker 1: with his mother's love, gets out of the house to
Speaker 1: community college. And one of the scenes in his stories
Speaker 1: of him in his apartment for the first time where
Speaker 1: he's lying there in bed the first night, he's there saying, Wow,
Speaker 1: I did it. I have my own apartment. I'm paying
Speaker 1: for it with my salary, you know, with my wages
Speaker 1: from this job at NAPA Auto Parts, you know. And
Speaker 1: this satisfaction he feels of I'm taking care of business
Speaker 1: is why he's in that first chapter on the terror
Speaker 1: and joy offending for yourself. I love it. You know.
Speaker 1: You have such a you you have such an ability
Speaker 1: to look deeper to the humanity of each individual. It's remarkable.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember I I retweeted you
Speaker 1: like maybe a week ago or so. You wrote something
Speaker 1: beautiful about how you're here for everyone you know, you
Speaker 1: it's it's incredible, and even it's it's it's a theme
Speaker 1: throughout your whole book. I mean even I was gonna
Speaker 1: say my second favorite chapter, although I'm not like ranking,
Speaker 1: but another another favorite chapter was start talking to strangers.
Speaker 1: You're very good at that. I think that's that's part
Speaker 1: of seeing humanity in each and being curious, well even
Speaker 1: just being curious about the humanity, you know, like, what
Speaker 1: do you say to people who aren't there yet? I mean,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who are really suffering
Speaker 1: so much in our country that they're not They don't
Speaker 1: want to look outside of their in group right now
Speaker 1: because they're so you know, their focus is so much
Speaker 1: on protecting those in there in group. You know that
Speaker 1: next stage where you can open your heart to even
Speaker 1: people that you've been told are your enemy. What advice
Speaker 1: do you have there, Julie, Wow, it's a very big question.
Speaker 1: If only we could turn our heart outward and be
Speaker 1: kind to our enemy, we would heal ourselves as a
Speaker 1: human species and just accelerate to a higher level of
Speaker 1: group consciousness. I think, and they're right, there's a piece
Speaker 1: of me that believes that's possible, that believes this may
Speaker 1: be the century in which that happens. There seems to
Speaker 1: be a collective consciousness growing around that imperative, and I'm
Speaker 1: here for it. But in the meantime, on this particular Friday,
Speaker 1: you know, what do we do? This? I know and
Speaker 1: you know, Scott, I'm not a psychologist, right anything that
Speaker 1: I say that relates to the mind or the psyche,
Speaker 1: this is what I know intrinsically from my own experiences
Speaker 1: and observations, what I've read and learned and feel. First
Speaker 1: of all, this us them that we do is ultimately
Speaker 1: about fear. You know, our ancestors who lived you know,
Speaker 1: you know tens of thousands of years ago, had to
Speaker 1: know who was the outgroup, you know, who is the danger,
Speaker 1: what's my group? What's what? Who are we? Who's the other?
Speaker 1: For self preservation and we don't need that quite so
Speaker 1: much anymore, but we still have that hardwired in us.
Speaker 1: And so we need to start being less afraid of
Speaker 1: each other, which means we have to learn about each other.
Speaker 1: They say a passport is an antidote to racism, meaning
Speaker 1: if you get a passport and you travel to other
Speaker 1: cultures and communities. You discover, hey, they're humans just like
Speaker 1: we are. Wow, you know, and we start to feel
Speaker 1: less afraid, therefore less hateful, more curious, more kind. So
Speaker 1: but I think before we can do any of that,
Speaker 1: we have to be okay within ourselves. You know, a
Speaker 1: person who doesn't love themselves has a hard time loving
Speaker 1: and connecting with others. So there is a lot of
Speaker 1: internal work to be done. I love myself, I know myself.
Speaker 1: I'm okay. Therefore I can take a risk, maybe be
Speaker 1: curious about this other person who looks different than me,
Speaker 1: but maybe we have something in common. Finding a common
Speaker 1: interest is a really important way forward. Before you take
Speaker 1: on your aunt or uncle, this and that who completely
Speaker 1: disagrees with you politically about politics, you do well to
Speaker 1: open the conversation with something you can both chuckle about,
Speaker 1: lean into with laughter and love. You know, you're demonstrating
Speaker 1: I'm a fellow human just like you. I am trying
Speaker 1: to create a bridge between us. Maybe we have something
Speaker 1: difficult to discuss, but first let's remind each other what
Speaker 1: we have in common. Yeah, yeah, preach, preach, preacher. But
Speaker 1: I gotta say one other things. Going back to Levi
Speaker 1: the Sacramento dude whom I love you because it really
Speaker 1: knits back to how how did I find people for
Speaker 1: this book and my curiosity and love for humans. Levi
Speaker 1: was my lift driver. Oh well, we'll talk to lyft drivers.
Speaker 1: He rescued us at the side of the road when
Speaker 1: our car broke down. He was going to drive us
Speaker 1: to the local car rental outside Sacramento to drive us
Speaker 1: to Palo Alto. I was going to rent a car,
Speaker 1: and he was like, you know, you can rent a
Speaker 1: car or I could just take you in this lift
Speaker 1: the whole way. And I didn't know you could take
Speaker 1: a two and a half hour lift, but he was like,
Speaker 1: it's probably going to be the same amount of money.
Speaker 1: I could use the money and I don't mind the time.
Speaker 1: And so he and I began chatting, and before I
Speaker 1: knew it, I was interviewing him for this book because
Speaker 1: he was this maybe twenty three year old who was
Speaker 1: just saying everything I wanted readers of my book to
Speaker 1: hear about how you begin to make your way forward
Speaker 1: out of out of childhood, toward uncertainty, toward dreams. I mean,
Speaker 1: you you listen, I do. I mean, like your ending
Speaker 1: story with Sean, Yeah, you know, you're like, oh, you
Speaker 1: had a child at that age. I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to follow up with you on this one, you know, right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: This dude had interviewed me for his parenting podcast. I
Speaker 1: loved his philosophy. I loved his ease and comfort in
Speaker 1: this conversation about parenting. And he sounded young. And here
Speaker 1: I am fifty three. So I said to myself home,
Speaker 1: he sounds like a young dude, And I said, forgive me.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to come across the wrong way, but
Speaker 1: I just want to compliment you for how wise you are.
Speaker 1: I mean, what are you thirty one? And he was nor,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty, and he said, I'm twenty four, and
Speaker 1: which meant this baby that he was so lovingly describing,
Speaker 1: this toddler son of his was born when Sean was
Speaker 1: twenty one. And that's when I said, oh, hey, can
Speaker 1: I interview you for my book because many people will
Speaker 1: find themselves unexpectedly welcoming a child into their life sooner
Speaker 1: than they had planned or ever even thought about. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to put that voice in these pages too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You're you're you're very you're very sensitive in the sense
Speaker 1: that you do you notice the details about people. It's fat,
Speaker 1: it's a fast I'm trying to really get the essence
Speaker 1: of what I've observed about you at my limited time
Speaker 1: getting to know you, but my delicious time getting that.
Speaker 1: I know it's a word we use in your book,
Speaker 1: and I love that word. I've been over using that
Speaker 1: word a lot lately, so, but you know, my delicious
Speaker 1: time getting to know you. You're very Yeah, you're very astute,
Speaker 1: and I think you just notice, like I feel like
Speaker 1: you notice very subtle, subtle things about whether or not
Speaker 1: someone's if someone's judging you. I feel like you would
Speaker 1: be very astute at noticing that if someone's kind of
Speaker 1: like open, if someone you know their own stories. You're
Speaker 1: very astute. Does this resonate Scott? It does, and the
Speaker 1: way that I appreciate it. First of all, I take
Speaker 1: those as complements. I'm grateful that you're seeing me so clearly.
Speaker 1: I think you are seeing me clearly. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: how it feels to me, because here's what happens. I'm
Speaker 1: in a conversation outside of pandemic. I'm meeting with somebody
Speaker 1: want on one. You know, it's it's somebody I'm getting
Speaker 1: to know better, or it's somebody I know quite well,
Speaker 1: regardless we're in person, that's over coffee or what have you.
Speaker 1: And I'll say something like, so, wow, that must have
Speaker 1: been really hard for you, you know, whatever it was,
Speaker 1: and they're like, what do you How do you know?
Speaker 1: And I say, you know, I'm just sensing that, and
Speaker 1: and my sensing Scott is as clear. It's as clearly.
Speaker 1: Whatever they've given off feels to me like language I feel.
Speaker 1: They've said, I'm suffering, I'm grieving, I'm afraid, i feel judged.
Speaker 1: But they haven't been that clear. I've just heard it
Speaker 1: in the spaces in between the language they did use.
Speaker 1: I'm also probably paying attention to body language and energy.
Speaker 1: So I am often the person who's like, so you know,
Speaker 1: let's go deeper into that, like you and your mom
Speaker 1: you really have these issues, And they're like, what, how
Speaker 1: did you know? And I'm like, you know, so I
Speaker 1: seem to intuit or I have a degree of curiosity
Speaker 1: and empathy. You know, I'm not trying to be obnoxious.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to pry. I'm not trying to ask
Speaker 1: you that thing you don't want to talk about. What
Speaker 1: happens for me is it is as if they are
Speaker 1: talking to me about it, and I am just a
Speaker 1: mirror reflecting back what I feel their being is sharing
Speaker 1: and and I love that because I know that when
Speaker 1: we can connect deeply and vulnerably around the actual shit
Speaker 1: of our lives, we feel less alone, we feel more
Speaker 1: connected to this entire human experience. And so I seek
Speaker 1: those connections. You know, they a delicious delicious using that
Speaker 1: use word by both of us, but like these human
Speaker 1: connections are juicy and delicious and nourishing, and I do
Speaker 1: seek them out. And when I have a day that
Speaker 1: has contained an interaction like that, I just feel like,
Speaker 1: woo ooh, you know, I got to be with a
Speaker 1: human today, and wow, it was amazing. I feel that
Speaker 1: way right now talking to you, quite frankly, quite frankly. Good. Well, so,
Speaker 1: what are life's beautiful F words? There's no good way
Speaker 1: to segue into that, exactly, Failure, falling, floundering, fumbling, flailing,
Speaker 1: five or six beautiful F words. And I call them
Speaker 1: the F words because they begin with F and because
Speaker 1: we avoid them as if we are swearing, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we can never have that, like we parents, We humans
Speaker 1: are so desperately afraid of our kids or ourselves having
Speaker 1: any setbacks. And yet these setbacks, these things that didn't
Speaker 1: quite go as we might have hoped or dreamed or planned,
Speaker 1: these setbacks become our greatest teachers. And so I actually
Speaker 1: quote Sir Davos from Game of Thrones in this book
Speaker 1: have a lot of pop cultural records here, and we've
Speaker 1: got John Snow saying I failed, and Davos saying, good,
Speaker 1: go out and fail well again. You know that's the point.
Speaker 1: This is how we learn and grow. We only get
Speaker 1: stronger and more capable and more confident when we've had
Speaker 1: that setback that we can learn a little bit from
Speaker 1: retool and we actually strengthen from it, and then we
Speaker 1: go out and do the next thing. It is it
Speaker 1: is almost I would say required. So they are life's
Speaker 1: beautiful f words. Yeah, I also like the other I
Speaker 1: use that a lot in the book. As you know,
Speaker 1: there are f BOMs in this book. I know, I know,
Speaker 1: I know. I I cursed on Twitter yesterday and it
Speaker 1: felt so good, Oh good for you, thank you. If
Speaker 1: in the most when it's appropriately placed, it feels really
Speaker 1: good for emphasis. Well, you know you just hinted at
Speaker 1: the point of keep going, you know, which is another
Speaker 1: major theme in your book. I'd like to end today's
Speaker 1: interview with a bit of a passage from your book
Speaker 1: that I think is really touching. You say, it's a
Speaker 1: rough time to be making your way into adult life,
Speaker 1: and now it's your turn. You were born for this.
Speaker 1: You have to do it yourself. You have to want to,
Speaker 1: you have to learn how, and you have to have
Speaker 1: to is that what you say, and you have to
Speaker 1: have to meeting life has to throw you that tag
Speaker 1: You're it wrench to be. It's not just the question,
Speaker 1: it's the whole damn point. Thank you so much, Jillie
Speaker 1: for coming and sharing your beautiful new book. I really
Speaker 1: highly recommend it for people, and I wish you all
Speaker 1: the best in your book. Door Scott, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for having me. It's been wonderful to be in conversation
Speaker 1: with you, and thanks to the listeners for spending this
Speaker 1: time with us. I'm grateful thanks for listening to this
Speaker 1: episode the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in
Speaker 1: some way to something you heard, I encourage you to
Speaker 1: join in on the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the Psychology Podcast dot com thanks for being such
Speaker 1: a great supporter of the show, and tune in next
Speaker 1: time for more on the mind, brain behavior, and creativity.