Good Inside with Dr. Becky - What We Learn About Love Before We’re 10 (How We're Raised with Will Guidara)

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

This episode is part of our new series, How We’re Raised — conversations about how the homes we grew up in shape the way we lead, love, and parent today. Dr. Becky sits down with restaurateur and author Will Guidara to explore how being deeply seen as a child shaped the way he builds culture — in restaurants and at home.Will shares what it was like growing up with a mother who became quadriplegic after brain cancer, the quiet power of full presence, and how those early experiences led him to build a career around “unreasonable hospitality” — not in pursuit of product, but in pursuit of people.Together, they talk about: Why feeling seen matters more than being impressive The gift — and cost — of being the person who cares for everyone Why holding your child can matter more than fixing their problem And how to bring more intention into your home life Get the Good Inside App by Dr. Becky: https://bit.ly/4fSxbzk Your Good Inside membership might be eligible for HSA/FSA reimbursement! To learn more about how to get your membership reimbursed, check out the link here: https://www.goodinside.com/fsa-hsa-eligibility/ Follow Dr. Becky on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinside Sign up for our weekly email, Good Insider: https://www.goodinside.com/newsletter For a full transcript of the episode, go to goodinside.com/podcast. Thank you to our partners for making this episode of Good Inside possible! -Care.com: For a limited time, you can use the code GOOD35 to save 35% on a Care.com Premium Membership.* -Airbnb: If you’re ready to host but want some support, find a co-host at airbnb.com/host. -Skylight: Get $30 off a 15-inch Skylight Calendar at myskylight.com/becky. -Hiya: Use the code DRBECKY for 50% off your first order. *Offer applies to initial term of Care.com membership subscriptions. Not applicable to add-on features or non-renewing access fees or services. Expires 4/26/26. Care.com does not employ or place any caregiver. Background checks are an important start, but they have limits. Visit www.care.com/safety. Order your copy of Leave Me Alone!, Dr. Becky’s new picture book about Deeply Feeling Kids. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Caregiving is one of the biggest sources of stress for parents today. The data shows that most parents spend nearly every waking hour focused on someone else. And if you feel depleted, that's not failure. That's the reality of how much you're carrying. Another thing the data tells us is this. Almost three quarters of parents say having a stronger network of trusted caregivers would improve their mental and emotional health. And I see that play out all the time.

When parents have real support, the mental load lightens a bit. and they become more present, calmer, and more regulated. Care.com makes it easier to find that kind of support with background check caregivers, reviews, and filters for the exact skills you're looking for, whether it's infant care, before, or after school, help, camps, daycares, or senior care. And right now, care.com is offering something

they've never offered before. For a limited time, use the code good 35 to get 35% off a premium membership, plus a free subscription to Headspace, because when you have support, you can show up as your best self for the people you care for and for yourself. In spite of the fact that she could not walk or talk, I have never felt more loved by anyone in my entire life.

Do you know when someone is so focused on a single person that you know you are the only thing in the world that matters to them? We made the choice to be unreasonable, not in pursuit of product, but in pursuit of people, and relentless in pursuit of the one thing that will never, ever change, which is our human desire to feel seen. Here's something I think about a lot. The way we lead at work, at home, anywhere isn't random.

It comes from somewhere. And usually it's shaped early by what got noticed in our house, by what didn't. And my guest today is someone who has built a career around care. Will Godara is a restaurateur and the former co-opened. owner of 11 Madison Park. Under his leadership, it became one of the most celebrated restaurants in the world, earning four stars from the New York Times and the title of world's best restaurant. And Will is so much more than that. He's the author of Unreasonable Hospitality, a book about going beyond service into something more human, something relational. And he's the author of Unreasonable Hospitality Field Guide.

If the original book is the what, think about this as the how. What moves me the most about about will isn't just excellence or care or hospitality. It's actually his intentionality, the way he thinks about people. You're going to hear it today. He's also a doubt of two, which means he's not just building culture in restaurants. He is building culture at home. And he has a few pointers that I think we might all want to take in terms of the culture in our home. Today we're starting a new series called How We're Raised. Conversations about the homes we grew up in and how our early experiences shape the way we live, lead, and love today. So this isn't a conversation about business strategy. It's a conversation about

the child under the leader, about the patterns that help us succeed and the ones that sometimes get in our way. I'm Dr. Becky, and this is good inside. Well, I'm so glad you're here right now, but before we get into anything reflective or deep, we're going to do all of that. I just want to locate you, kind of situate you in your life right now. Like, where are you in your life? What does a normal week look like? Just give us the basics and then we're going to jump in. Gosh, my life is so much different now than I thought it would be.

I remember my wife and I were in Seattle like five years ago and we were walking past a houseboat. And she said, can we live on a houseboat in Seattle one day? and I said, no, we live in New York City. We will always live in New York City. And she said, kind of wish you'd told me that before we got married. And I thought that would be my life. Yeah. Owning restaurants and living in New York City.

And now neither of those is true. My family and I live in Nashville. I spend time with a small team. There's about 10 of us. I write books and I do speaking to companies across pretty much every industry. We have a creative studio where we get to dream of worlds that we wished existed and then one day welcome people into our imaginations. And I replaced restaurants with children. And I'm really grateful that I don't have restaurants and kids at the same time because I don't think I'd be able to be

nearly as good at either as I'd want to be. So you're catching me in a season that I feel so grateful to be in. But I feel like with you there's always this through line. I mean, I don't know if my word's going to be right. But care, it just feels like you've built a career around care. You're attentive to other people's experience. Now your dad, care is certainly, you know, part of that partnership. I'm just curious because that was that a theme in your life that was pointed for you from day one?

Like when you were a kid, was care a big part of your home? Like, how did it become such a, such a theme? I think it was a big theme in my home brought about through adversity. So when I was a kid, my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer. And by the time I was 7, 8, 9, somewhere in that range, the radiation treatment she received during her cancer, when they removed the tumor from her brain, had rendered her into becoming a quadriplegic. And so, I mean, my. dad is my hero like watching him work restaurant hours legitimately take care of her and still be a good dad to me and never once feel bad for himself and in fact to the contrary like I would watch him and I don't

I don't think I like consciously registered it at the time yeah but I felt it and it infected me in it in a good way he derived pleasure out of caring for her and then as I got a little bit older we were a team, right? So I would take care of my mom and I would feed her. And I think because of the example that he said, yeah, listen, if I can go back in time, obviously, and wave a magic wand, she would not have gotten sick

and she'd still be alive today. But I never was like, gosh, I wish my mom was healthy. Like, that was our situation. Yeah. My dad and I took care of her. And she, in spite of the fact that she could not walk or talk, I have never felt more loved by anyone in my entire life. Like the, I think from her, this is not totally in line with your question, but

eye contact, like the little movement around a smile, do you know when someone is so focused on a single person that you know you are the only thing in the world that matters to them? I want to go back to that to something you just said. How loved you felt by your mom having her like the way she gazed at you, her movements, having her full attention. Maybe not, but do you remember a moment like just to zoom in on or anything like visual or said like, where were you? I just, I find that so compelling.

Maybe it's especially compelling because our lives today are so chaotic and we're pulled in a million directions. I don't know how you're a memory. works when you think back to like those early days or honestly these days last week. Yeah. But I remember like glimpses, right? There's like these little things that for whatever reason, I can almost watch like an old VHS tape of a five second clip of my life. I used to ride a bicycle home from school.

It was like so close. That's how I got home. And at a certain point, probably when I was a, I don't know, eighth grade or something. By that point, my dad had brought in a nurse to help during the day because now we just needed it when my dad was at work. And my mom would have the nurse push her to the end of the street like 10 minutes before I was likely to come home and she would always be waiting there. And I don't know which day or what, but I remember one of those moments. I remember coming down that little hill and her just, and she would just have the,

biggest smile on her face. And so that's the moment. I remember like the eye contact and the smile. And maybe that's an amalgamation of a bunch of those days wrapped up in one. I'm not sure. But it is so interesting the story we tell ourselves about what kids need to feel confident. I don't know like now, right? Like the starting center on their soccer team,

which means they need five private lessons a week and three teams and they need to be the math star and they need to have all the friends and they need the fancy birthday. party and if their friends all have this water bottle, they need this water bottle. And I'm just thinking about, like, my mom waited for me and she was just watching me. There was nothing more important or interesting or compelling than waiting for you to ride your bike. And my guess is you are at best an average bike rider. I don't know. She was not sitting there marveling in my cycling skills. I don't know if the pedaling was, you know, but just you on your bike for this like very short ride Yeah.

And it was, like, it was captivating. It was captivating for her. And her energy was captivating for me in return. Out of necessity, like, she couldn't do anything. Yeah. She was fully present. Like, as a dad now, I have all these things that I try to do to ensure that I am fully present.

I don't know that I'll ever be as fully present as she was with me. And you can feel it when someone is. Yeah, you know, one of the things I say to myself, to try to stay really present in the moment with any of my kids when they're talking to me, I just say, Becky, listen for the next two minutes. Like, they are the most interesting person. It feels like your mom, like, was just when she was with you. like that's always full attention.

Like you were the most interesting person in the world. Yeah, I mean, like, listen to this. I played the drums. Yeah. Like, let that sink in. I threatened my friends to buy their kids' drums if they're failing in our friendship. And I had a band, a grunge band when I was like 14.

We played up here. She was directly below us. There's no chance that it sounded good. And she loved it. Like, loved it. And I'm not saying like that because I don't love when I hear some parents say, oh, my kids so good at the every, like that. But it wasn't, that wasn't the spirit of it.

She just loved being, like, able to be a part of this thing that I was doing. Sounds like she delighted in you. Yeah, she did. You end up getting to this, you know, career all around hospitality, around care, around entertaining, around actually a lot of things that aren't simple, that can be also exceptional, right? So just take me on that journey. So this is some of your early years. And then what brought you into that career? Did it just seem like every step was the obvious next step? No. I mean, so again, my dad worked in restaurants.

And I mean, my dad and I are very, very, very close. and so I just wanted to spend it like it didn't really matter what he did for living that would have been the thing that I wanted to do and I would go to work with him on Saturdays because he'd work Monday through Friday, long days and Saturday he'd go and just like to the office and have a few hours

and sometimes I'd be in the office with him other times he'd drop me off at one of the restaurants here in the city and I'd help air quotes help and I just fell in love with restaurants I fell in love with like the choreographed chaos. Like the idea that every one of life's relationships was happening concurrently within the same four walls.

But the fact that you go into the kitchen and there would be obsessed, someone obsessing over food, the sommelier with wine, someone about graphic design interior. Like no two days would ever be the same. And it seemed like these people were getting paid to make other people happy. Yeah. And so when I, my dad, he is nothing if not intentional and was very insistent on imbueing that trait and me.

And so when I was like, he would take it too far. Right. So when I was 12, I think we're like on our way to the airport from SeaWorld or something. And he's like, well, it's time to come up with your goals for life. And I have been, and I know this because he wrote them down and he gave them to me in my 20. was one go to Cornell and study hospitality two open my own restaurant in New York City and three Mary Cindy Crawford

and I got like two out of three and on the third I think I might have done even better you know let's be honest and so it's all I ever wanted to do so I did get into Cornell and I did like I worked he he really pushed me to work for the best restaurants and so I worked for Drew Neerprint at Tribeca Grill I worked for Wolfgang Puck at Spago. I did all that stuff.

And then I graduated from Cornell, went to work for Danny Meyer. Mm-hmm. And I worked there for a couple years. But at this point, I didn't want to be in fine dining. I'd worked in fine dining, and I'd been turned off by it.

I'd been turned off by the fact that at this stage, if you worked in a restaurant, you were there to serve the chef. Like, it was all, about the food. And the way that hospitality was manifested had taken a back seat. And so I wanted to.

My goal was to work at ShakeShack. And so Danny Meyer came to me as I was at moment. He goes, hey, we're trying to do big things of the Madison Park. I'd love for you to go there. I said, no, I want to go to Shake Shack. But my dad, one of the many lessons that I carry with me from him

was if you work for a company and you want them to be there for you when you need them. You need to be there for them when they need you. So the deal I made with Danny was that I would go to 11 Madison for one year and then I'd get to go run ShakeShack. And then in that year, I just realized it didn't have to be the way that it was. And in fact, in fine dining, at that level,

you could create magic for people at a level beyond what, I think anyone had had dreamt of. Yeah. And so a year later, he came and said, you're ready to go to Shake Shack? And I said, no. Now granted, had I gone to run Shake Shack, I probably would own the building.

We're in right now. But that was the best decision of my life. Because what I got to do from that point forward was just the coolest thing ever. Tell me more about that. Tell everyone more about that. Like your brand of hospitality, of taking care of people, the experience at being at a restaurant, what that means, just jump off wherever. Yeah.

I mean, when you look at the best restaurants in the world, they're run by chefs more often than not. Yeah. And when you look at the best best restaurants in the world, they at that point were 100% run by chefs. People who, gosh, they were unreasonable in pursuit of the food they served, their product. and relentless in pursuit of innovation. What new techniques could they develop? What new ingredients could they start cooking with? And each of them in their own way

have influenced how restaurants around the world approach cooking. At a certain point, I was inspired enough by them, but cognizant of my own superpowers. And through those two things, was able to pair them together such that we made the choice to be unreasonable, not in pursuit of product, but in pursuit of people.

Yep. And relentless in pursuit of the one thing that will never, ever change, which is our human desire to feel seen, to feel cared for, to feel a sense of belonging, to feel genuinely welcomed. And it was years ago I wrote unreasonable hospitality on a cocktail napkin, but that articulation became like our call to arms.

Yeah, the human desire to feel seen. I've been traveling a lot lately for my book tour, which means airports, rental cars, doing bedtime, over FaceTime, and having some of the most meaningful conversations with parents. And every time I'm on a trip like this, I think about how much coordination it takes to step away from everyday life, even just for a couple of days. I know for so many families, when you do travel for work or for fun, it can feel good to know your home isn't sitting empty while you're gone. Because while you're away, you could be hosting your home on Airbnb.

and earning some extra income to put toward future travel. Okay, Becky, that sounds great, but I cannot take on one more thing. I get it, truly. And that's exactly where Airbnb's co-host network comes in. You can hire a vetted local co-host to take care of the hosting for you. A co-host can create your listing, manage reservations, message guests, and even provide design and styling. It just makes everything feel a little more manageable.

If you've ever considered hosting, but you need a little help, Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. You and I have talked about this, but everyone doesn't think, oh, am I a restaurant? Like, I'm going there to feel seen. But just say more about that, like what, how important that is. My favorite quote about hospitality comes from Maya Angelou. And it's when most people have heard. She said, people will forget what you say.

They will forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Gosh, I believe that to be so very true. when I think back on the experiences that linger with me, it's not something that someone did, the little technical element of a meal or whatever kind of experience that I remember. It's a little or a big thing that someone did for me. Yep.

And I say a little or a big thing because it could be in a restaurant something as small as me being on a first date and the server noticed that we had just run out of things and talk about. so they came in to like lubricate the conversation a little bit. Or it could be a big thing. And I have plenty of stories of those that others have done for me. But I think it's just being seen for me.

And obviously the cadence of this conversation having just talked about my mom. It means like, hey, you are an individual. You matter. This is not a one size fits all situation. I am here to deliver an experience that is specific to and special to you. And if you can take that idea and be as relentless and creative and intentional in pursuit of making people feel that. Yeah. Not only does it make other people feel extraordinary.

Not only does it make the deliverer of those things feel extraordinary because I really do believe that hospitality is a selfish. pleasure. But I came to understand that it was the greatest competitive advantage that we as a restaurant could have. And I now have come to believe it's the greatest competitive advantage that any business can have. How did you create a whole culture around that? Like, I'm just thinking about anyone listening. And we'll eventually, I want to talk about how you do this in your home, but making other people feel seen whether or not you work in restaurants. We're saying it's kind of the greatest competitive advantage of an individual, right? I mean, that's what, because there's no greater feeling we have. You know, I remember, I remember being at a restaurant when I had this cough and the waitress

came up and I was like, oh, she's going to be mad or I don't know. And I just couldn't stop coughing. And she just brought me this tray of like two cough drops. It was like, I just, I can, I love that restaurant, by the way. I don't remember what I ate, right? But like, it doesn't matter. And by the way, they obsessed over every single dish they served you. Guaranteed there was a team of people working on every single plate of food. She wouldn't just had these in her pocket. Like I don't even know where she got them. Remember they came from. But that one simple gesture meant so much more to you than anything else that they did. That's exactly right. So this culture of hospitality of helping people feel seen and cared for in this unreasonable way. So bring me to your house. This kind of culture of care,

how does that show up for you as a dad? One of the things I say often about hospitality. And I said this for years in my restaurants, but I believe it applies to anyone. I would always say to my team, we have an opportunity, perhaps even a responsibility, to create our own little magical world in a world that needs more magic.

I think about magic a lot as it pertains to hospitality and caring and experiences. And one of my favorite quotes is by Teller of Penn & Teller. He said, sometimes magic is just being willing to invest more energy into an idea than anyone else would reasonably expect. I like that because it enforces something I believe in. None of the stuff I talk about is hard.

It just requires being willing to work a little bit harder. I think the biggest thing I think of and how I bring it home to my kids is just to try to create magic, try to create little and big moments that feel magical. We had a magic show at the Nomad back in the day. And when I introduced it in the beginning, I talked about I love magic so much. And I do love like actual magic and magicians. Because these days, and it's even more so now with AI,

we know how everything is done. And there's this childlike wonder that comes from not understanding something. So my kids, right now, like if their lives don't feel unbelievable, believably magical now, what am I doing? And so my favorite thing to do is a dad, in addition to the things I just should be doing to care for them and to protect them, is to just find little and big ways to create magic. Like what? Okay, Christmas is a good example.

Although my colleague and I, Brian Canlis, we've had all these conversations around how so many families are good at creating magic around the holidays, but it stops there. Like people go all out to make magic in the holidays, and then like the rest of the years is kind of boring. Yeah, seriously. But like, so last year, we watched the kids open all of their presents.

And I mean, everyone's experienced this. You spend so much time trying to buy all these gifts that you think they're going to love and wrapping them and setting them under the tree and then it is over in like 30 minutes and like it's like oh it felt so unfulfilling and so this year I was like okay how do we extend that

and make it magical so my kids are two and four at the time so I just didn't take me very long I just created all these scavenger hunts for their gifts I mean for a two year old to look at a picture and then run to a different part of the house and see another picture it felt like

a magic trick we do something that Brian Canlis inspired me to do. The Tooth Fairy is like such an awesome opportunity for magic. And yet it's not that magical. Like you talk about the Tooth very a little bit. You put the tooth, there's a coin. So he started this thing with his kids where when they lose their teeth, a tooth, they have to go open a window and scream as loud as,

they can, my name is blank, I just lost a tooth, I believe in magic. And they need to say it really loud so that the toothberry, wherever she is, hears them. And it just makes it more, I don't know, wonder, full. I put a space between wonder and full

with intention. We try to do little things like that maybe aren't even, I wouldn't go so as far as to describe them as magic, but my wife and I both work a lot. We travel a lot, but we are home on the weekends. And so Saturday morning is fancy cereal day. It's the only day they get to have sugary cereal. And pretty much every morning they wake up and they say, is it fancy cereal day? They like the cereal. But what they love is the knowledge that when

they're eating that fancy cereal, it means that for the next two days, they're going to spend their entire days with mom and dad. Yeah. And so I like, um, ritual. Rituals. I love the rituals. And can I just name something that you're doing that I, maybe it's not magic, but it's definitely joy and ritual and in some ways branding, like fancy cereal day.

Yeah. You just branded that for your kids, right? Like one day they will be, I don't know, 25 and someone will say the word fancy and serial and they'll hear that together. they will conjure up like all of these Saturdays. And kids love that. Because I think it feels like an inside joke to them. Right. And that feels magical to have. And, you know, my youngest was in a stage a couple years ago of having a hard time going to bed. Right. And it was always like, oh, one more this. One more this. I'm hungry. And more water in my water bottle. And there's a night,

I just went in and I said, do you know about sip and fill? He's like, what? I was like, sip and fill. He's like, no. What is that? You know? I was like, oh. Do you know what it is? No, but I'm just into it now. When you sip your water bottle, you hand it to your mom and she fills it up and brings it back. Like literally, that's what it is.

Sorry, I don't get too excited. Dude, I'm about to fill you in on the coolest thing ever. He's like, oh, because as soon as it became a thing and a branded moment and an entity, it became a point of connection, which is what kids need at bedtime and all the time, right? And they feel seen and you have a little special moment. I think those moments do feel magical. I mean, for us too. For me, 100%.

Like, here's another one, another rebrand that we started. We, I travel a lot. I'm given gifts when I go to do a talk. And one of the things I love what people are doing and have a gift to me is centered around this recognition that the best way to love on somebody is to love on the people they love. And so I'm increasingly getting gifts for my kids when I go to travel. And I love that.

Now, the problem is I don't want my kids to expect something from me every time I travel. And I don't want them to just have too much stuff. And it's less based on my OCD nature. It's more, I just don't want spoiled kids. Gotta keep it real. Yeah. So we were struggling with that. And we came up with this.

idea of the treasure store. And so every two months, we get to go to the treasure store. But the way the treasure store works is you have to bring a bunch of stuff to the treasure store. And then once you have, you get to go inside and get one thing from the treasure store. Just between you and I, the treasure store is the goodwill. But it is so fun. Yes.

And when they know they're going to, we're going to go to the treasure store, we go up to their room and they just start running around and they start grabbing stuff. and they fill up a bag and then we go to the treasure store and it every single time like I can't imagine absent that branding

the arm twisting that would be required to get my kids to give away anything and I don't want to give away my stuff so good okay question for you I feel like all of our strengths

that can work for us can work against us um this extreme talent you have, really, to notice people, to see people I've gotten a gift from you and, you know, the most thoughtful best gift I've ever gotten from anyone. Oh, thank you. Does it, does it ever work against you?

Does it deplete you ever? Are there times when, you know, you feel like you lose yourself in the process? It just, I don't know. Does that resonate at all or not really? I understand the question. It doesn't deplete me. I find that some things I do are energizing and some things are energy depleting. Yeah.

Like to run a great restaurant or I think a great business of any kind, I think it's equal parts focusing on excellence and hospitality. I really care about details. I derive pleasure out of executing at a very high level, every single little detail. and yet as much as I do, that is depleting to me. The hospitality side, it always is energizing. Now, I will say that sometimes I can be so focused on trying to care for everyone in a room

that maybe I'm not as good at caring for the few people that I really should be caring for. Like I can go somewhere with my wife. And I want to make sure everyone else feels comfortable and good. And then all of a sudden I'm like, I'm not being a great husband right now. And so I'm trying to get better at caring less about some people so that I can care more about others. Yeah. The reality is that you can't make everyone feel important at the same time. in a business sense, like taking care of people,

this really, really high expectation, excellence, right? I'm thinking about in your home, so much of what can be good for a kid is being so supported and having space to struggle, to mess up, right? To not be excellent all the time for your parent to actually get it wrong because in that moment you learn something about yourself. How does that show up in parenting for you?

I mean, you know, my kids are so young. and so being good or not good at stuff we haven't gotten there yet at the age they are right now I have not yet had the experience of watching them truly struggle and that's going to be an entirely new game for me to start playing but I think it's I think it's a part of it like because of my mom

my dad was at work a lot. I didn't have anyone to helicopter me. I didn't have anyone to like, my dad was there. Like, I remember I came home after suffering my first heartbreak when I was like 15.

And my dad is a big, manly, intense man. I did his voice earlier. He's will. I mean, he has got to, and he went over and he held me in his arms

while I was crying for like two hours. Like, he knew when it was time. for me to know that I was held in that relationship. But he also let me figure a bunch of stuff out. Maybe it's just my filling in the blanks, but I don't know why I'm thinking about your mom, like being there for you with no words and just presence.

Was that a version of what your dad did in that moment too? Yeah, I think so. I've never actually made that connection. Yeah, he just literally, I walked in and I'm just, I mean, you know, the first heartbreak. like, I mean, just devastated. And I walked in, I'm sure it was like snot crying. And he just walked up to me and he just picked me.

He didn't even ask me why I was crying. Like, so I want to be the dad that shows up in those moments. But with intention holds myself back from showing up so consistently in some of the smaller moments. And I think that's, I mean, talk about like feeling seen, feeling cared for. It is. just, I mean, just, I feel like just isn't the right word because it makes it sound like it's easy, but it's just being there, like just being there, full attention, full presence, probably not saying much, you know, no solutions, no lecture, no brilliant advice, just, and you said

holding. I mean, I think that it goes back to systems in a way and being a container. That's kind of what we are for our kids, right? The systems around them and their hard moments where we're all like an egg without a shell. We're like, just be my shell. You know? I mean, even my daughter now, like sometimes when she'll really hurt herself and she runs in the house crying. I remember the first time she like jumps into my arms and I'm holding her.

And I'm like, hey, what happened? And she's like, I hurt my toes. Like, can I look at it? She's like, no, no, no, no. She just wanted to be held. She didn't want any help outside of feeling held. And now I've learned when she runs in, I'll just hold her. But I don't need to fix anything for her.

I just need her to know that I'll be there to hold her when she needs to be held. Which again, back to what is depleting and what is energizing. Gosh, that's the best. I don't want my kid to be hurt or to be sick, but the way they let me hold them when they are hurt or sick is literally one of my favorite things in the entire world. It's okay. I have a little phrase for that. Because I think of it as sick joy.

Like when your kid is not, you know, they didn't break their bones. But like they had a hard moment essentially. They experienced a bump in the world. They didn't get included somewhere. They couldn't figure out the puzzle. And, you know, just knowing if you have this long-term vision of where you want your kid to go, which is just, I want my kid to be someone who can take on challenges and survive them. And no one gets so good at exiting from struggle.

You just kind of can get good at tolerating it and finding yourself through it. if you're orienting to that long term, then these moments, you have a little bit of sick joy knowing, like, this is going to have a big impact. Like, this is it. One of the things I found myself doing in restaurants in the beginning, I would say relationships are relationships. And the lessons from the ones we have in life can be applied to those in work. More recently, I've started to think the same thing in reverse, that the lessons I learned at

work can be brought back into my home because almost with that exception most successful people I know are far more intentional with the choices they make at work than they are with the choices they make at home. Yeah. I have been trying to be as studied and intentional and creative in curating the experience in my home as I always have been at work. But I think that is something that everyone could stand to do a little bit more consistently and a little bit better. If you're reserving a majority of your intention for the workplace, I think you're selling yourself short and you're not making the most out of what, forget about like being other centered towards your children, but just not making the most out of what life can be.

Yeah. I think hospitality happens at the intersection of creativity and intention. And doing that at home a little bit more, I think it just makes life a lot more worth living and a heck of a lot more fun. I could talk to Will forever. And there are so many takeaways I'm going to have from our conversation. But there are three that feel pretty loud in my head right now. So I'm going to share them with you. Number one, I don't think I'll ever forget the way Will talk.

about his mom, having her full attention, the way she looked at him with interest and wonder, that will really stay with me. Number two, adding more magic, making a moment with our kid a little more fun, adding a story. Those things I know it can feel like, oh, do I have the energy for that? But sometimes putting in the energy saves us a lot of energy for the rest of the day. And number three, keeping it simple. So often the moments we all remember are the moments someone was just there for us. They held us, sat next to us, put their hand on our back, and said nothing. I'm going to remind myself that that is more than enough during my kid's next hard moment, which will probably be later today. Before we go, I want to zoom out for a moment. This is part of a new

series that we're calling How We're Raised. Every couple of weeks will feature another conversation like this about how our upbringing shapes who we become. If this format resonated with you, let us know. I love when our listeners help shape what we do next in the podcast. And if there's something you'd love to hear in this series or someone whose story you're curious about, please tell us. You can reach us at podcast at goodinside.com. Now, let's end the way we always do. That won't change. Place your feet on the ground and a hand on your heart. And let's remind ourselves, even as we struggle on the outside, we remain good inside. I'll see you soon.