Good Life Project - Tiffany Dufu: What if the Power Move Was to Just Let Go?

Episode Date: February 13, 2017

When Tiffany Dufu left for summer camp as a teen, both parents dropped her off. Only one picked her up.She’d soon discover her parents had split while she’d been gone. Not long after, her mom’s boyfriend moved in and began to behave in ways Dufu, a self-described preacher’s daughter, had never been exposed to. When this stranger in her home became violent she left to live with her father and began to rebuild her life.But it wasn’t until years later, when returning from maternity leave to assume her role as Chief Leadership Officer of Levo, that she found herself in crisis-mode, and began to ask deeper questions.While Dufu had spent years as a strong advocate for women in leadership positions at the highest levels of industry and government, she’d never examined the far more personal roles she and her husband had “defaulted” to in everyday life. She’d never realized how it was stifling her life and stopping her from truly stepping into her potential.Things had to change. How she navigated this challenging moment, recreated her relationship with her husband and opened space to thrive in life is a major focus of today’s conversation, along with the moments and stories that led to the wisdom in her new book, drop the ball.Be sure to subscribe to our weekly Good Life Updates and listen on iTunes to make sure you never miss an episode! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I had been really encouraging women to aspire to be CEOs and senators and to launch their own businesses to be entrepreneurs. But the women were saying, Tiffany, that's all well and good, but I'm just trying to figure out how do I get out of the house in the morning on time with everybody with the right backpack and the right lunch. And I just, I can't quite get there because I'm just so overwhelmed with what's currently on my plate. Today's guest, Tiffany Dufu, has been featured in New York Times, Essence O, NPR. She's a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, a speaker on leadership. She's presented at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit Makers, TED Women. She's pretty much a force of nature and an awesome human being.

And we sit down today to talk about a bit of a different topic. She's also the author of a new book called Drop the Ball. And it's an exploration of how sometimes we're so externally focused on building tools for leadership, for growth, for performance in the big questions, the big topics that we find are super important to us, super meaningful to us, the things we consider ourselves to be contributing to the world the most fiercely. And we kind of forget to reflect back on some of the deeper assumptions that govern our personal lives, our personal relationships, and really look at how those are affecting the way that we're bringing ourselves to the world. You know, re-examining roles of gender in relationships, typical roles and jobs within a household. And it's so interesting because I think so often so many folks who rise to power end up sort of ignoring this part of their lives. And that's really where we go in this conversation together. And a lot of really big aha moments and some great ideas that I'm personally going to be exploring in my own life and the way that I

sort of examine the roles that I play in my relationships. So really excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So good to be hanging out with you. Yeah, good to be hanging out with you too.

So fellow New Yorker by way of Seattle, of course, but dressed in all black as you guys can't see to honor the New York vibe. Yes, exactly. I did this for you. When people ask me, where are you from? I say, well, I'm from the Pacific Northwest. Most recently from Seattle. But what I love about New York, Jonathan, is that New Yorkers are so generous and that they'll let you be a New Yorker after a certain period of time. I mean, I've been here for 11 years. If I said I was from New York, no New Yorker would say, oh, you're not from New York. Very different from Boston where you have to be a Bostonian in order to call yourself that. Anywhere else like in New England, like a Mainer, unless you were born there, there's not even a chance. You can be there for like 60 years and it's like, yeah,

oh, you're visiting. Exactly. Exactly. New Yorkers are pretty good. I think we kind of mind our own business to a certain extent also. As long as you're just an okay person and you're like, we're good. We don't really care. Yeah. Yeah. It's all good. Yeah. Seattle like that too. What's the deal with the Seattle vibe?

Much more laid back, very open, very diverse in a very intimate way. New York is diverse, but there are pockets of diversity. You could spend all of your time in one neighborhood. So we're hanging out chatting on the eve of your first book. Yes. Congrats. Thank you. It was really interesting for me to sort of dive into this. The forward in the book is

written by Gloria Stein. And she paints a picture of her childhood, which I guess her mom was very ill when she was younger. And so her dad effectively raised her for the first 10 or 11 years of her life, took her around. And she was profoundly formed by that experience of her dad really playing that role. You paint a very different picture of sort of your upbringing. Take me there a little bit. Yeah, I'll take you there. Well, I mean, first I'll say that I asked, I call her Auntie Gloria, because I grew up in a culture where you don't call grownups who have come before you by their first name.

So she's Auntie Gloria to me. And I asked Auntie Gloria to write that story specifically because I feel there are a lot of people who don't necessarily understand where her feminism is rooted. And it's rooted in her optimism and her hope and the potential that she understands men have for being primary caregivers and for making an impact in the world in the way that we don't normally see. And I wanted her to open the book with her father as the primary caregiver and how disruptive that was for her in that time and how that shaped who she was, in particular, because I knew that my story was much more traditional, that I grew up in a home with my primary caretaker being my mother and my father working outside the home like many traditional families and adopted many ideas about what that would mean for me in the future based on that experience. Yeah. As you share, your dad came from a really large family.

Yes. He was one of 11 kids. He grew up in a housing project in Watts, LA. It was the mid-1970s, so suffice it to say it was a rough place. It was a rough time. He largely stayed out of trouble. He dabbled in drugs, but for the most part, wanted to help people. Thankfully, my mother, when she found out she was pregnant with me when she was 19, encouraged him to join the military. And that's how they escaped the environment that they were in and how they were able to really obliterate a vicious cycle of poverty and addiction and violence in one generation. I'm one of the most patriotic people you'll ever meet because I am very sensitive to the truth that it's only in America that they could have really done that. Yeah. It is amazing how you can sometimes take this one profoundly disruptive action that completely changes the trajectory of your life, your family's life generations after that. Oh, absolutely. And to, you know, a lot of times, and I say it to all the time, because it's a quote by Marian Wright Edelman, that you can't be what you can't see.

But one of the things that I've learned from my parents is that you can manifest what you can't imagine. I was talking to my father when I was pregnant with my second child, and I was having this very sentimental conversation about what I hoped for with this second child, even though I didn't even know if it was a boy or a girl. And I asked him in that moment, Daddy, what did you hope for when mom was pregnant with me? And he was very quiet. And I thought I almost heard him sniffle a bit. And so I retracted my question. I said, I'm so sorry that I asked you. It was just a sentimental moment. He said, no, baby. He said, I want to answer. He said, the truth is I'm embarrassed of my answer to that

question because when your mom was pregnant with you, what I most hoped for was that you would graduate from college, from high school and not get pregnant. He said, the woman that you are now, I didn't know women like that existed when your mom was pregnant with you. I just hoped. I just hoped. I just kept hoping. And it was such a profound moment for me because I realized that my parents hadn't planned at all. They couldn't have even imagined at all.

And yet, they were intentional about doing things differently. And I say in the book, and I always say to people when I speak, I say, if you want something that you've never had before, you're going to have to do something you've never done before in order to get it. And that's what my parents taught me. Yeah. And on some level, I mean, I'm fascinated by the role of belief in possibility in situations like this, where you haven't personally experienced the outcome, but yet you believe there's something. It doesn't have to be 100% faith, but the door is just the slightest bit cracked open and there is a possibility.

I don't even know what it looks like because I haven't seen and felt it myself, but I know the qualities of this outcome. And I believe that in some way, shape or form, it's possible for me or for others. And that you're committed to some kind of philosophy to help you get there, right? Or some kind of worldview. So for example, my parents were very much about connecting with others and being nice to people and treating people really well. Because you never know when that person could help you.

And I remember whenever it was time to go get gas, like I would never want to go with my dad because he could never go to the gas station and just get the gas and leave. Like he'd always have to talk to the guy who was pumping the gas, talk to the people who were outside of their cars. And I'd be like, come on, dad, we got to go. And he would always say, baby, you never know who that person is and how they might be able to help you. And I saw my father really navigate that well. And he still continues to get plenty of discounts for all kinds of things simply because he's got a great affect, but that's just one of them. That seems like something that's really threaded throughout your life. I mean, you talk about the power of your, I actually don't love the word network, but the power of your relationships. I call it an ecosystem.

Yeah. And it seems like that was a really powerful enduring lesson for you. It was an enduring lesson, but it's also my capital. I think it's probably something that I cultivated because I felt like that was all that I had. I didn't have an Ivy League degree. I didn't have parents who were going to make introductions for me. All I had was people seeing me and identifying that I had some kind of potential and believing in me and opening doors for me. And I wanted to do right by them. And I wanted to make sure that they got a return on their investment.

So that's all I really am is the cumulative investment of a lot of people, a lot of really generous people. Yeah. But at the center of that, there's got to be something inside that also says I'm worth it. Yes. Well, fortunately, I have this really incredible privilege that I did not appreciate when I was growing up, which is that my parents every day, particularly my mother, used to tell me, Tiffany, you are so smart. You are so beautiful. You are so loved. And I remember being 16 and being so annoyed by this because she told me so often. And I would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When know, when you're 16, all you want are bigger boobs, you know. You don't care so much for affirmations about who you are. But I have to say, for all of my dismissal of those words, whenever I'm in a room and I'm feeling like, oh, I'm the only woman, oh, I'm the only Black person. I'm the only person who doesn't seem to be like everyone else. And I begin to doubt myself. All of a sudden, those words come back like

armor ringing in my ears. So I think there probably is something deep down inside that makes me feel like I'm entitled to something better. I should strive for something more. I should alter the course of my experience. If I feel like it's not working for me, I owe that to myself. I'm deserving of that. Yeah. And it's interesting that you said, I owe that to myself, not I owe that to my mom or to my parents. I've had conversations with a bunch of people where the line of thought was more, my parents didn't work so hard to get me where I am. So I owe my success to their effort. That's not what you're saying. Well, I do. I mean, I was racially socialized, so I owe everything to all black people on the planet,

you know, in one way. But I think probably because I've gone through my drop the ball evolution, I've become clear about the distinction between the decisions that I make for other people and the decisions that I make for myself. And that's really hard to do. It's part of what I try to take, you know, women through and men through in the book is how do you get clear about what matters most to you separate and apart from everything that you've been taught and everything that you've been told, which is pretty insidious and sometimes lopsided. Yeah, and probably more than sometimes. I think that's the rule more than the exception. It's funny, as you were talking, I also have a habit of texting my daughter, like, smiley faces saying, I love you, you're awesome, and stuff like that. And it's really funny, because I know that it probably lands a little bit like, oh, really? But the same thing, I have that same belief that it's just, you know, over a period of

repetition and years, just the message, somehow it's just going to sink in. Yeah. Well, what you're doing is you're helping to instill the voice that will talk back to the other voice inside of her head. So you're building that up. And when she wakes up in the morning, like I do and say, oh, you're not going to the gym again. The other voice can say, excuse me, but I was up till four o'clock in the morning listening to Jonathan's podcast. And I don't have to go to a gym this morning. Please tell me you weren't up at four in the morning listening to my podcast. I was multitasking. I was doing a bunch of things, but I kind of got sucked into them. It's like, oh my God, I'm ruining her night. No, I was really obsessed with Ken Robinson. He's like, oh my God, I'm ruining her night. No, I was like really obsessed with Ken Robinson.

He's a fascinating guy. He's like, he's so fascinating. And I was like, Tiffany, you really should go to sleep. But I just wanted to hear, I just want to get to the end. Yeah. I mean, his whole backstory, you know, growing up with polio in post-war Liverpool is really, nobody had explored that in any detail. So when I had a chance to sit down with him, I was like, let's go there. Yeah. And the fact that he was like the kid in his family who was supposed to be the soccer prodigy and that in any detail. So when I had a chance to sit down with him, I was like, let's go there. Yeah. And the fact that he was like the kid in his family who was supposed to be the soccer prodigy and that it all ended. Yeah.

That's right. No, different world. All right. Back to you. So you came up in this family and eventually sounds like had also just a really strong understanding through your family, through what eventually happened with your folks, that you were somebody who was going to really have to provide for yourself. That's right. That's right. And not

just provide for me, but provide for my family, not as the breadwinner, but as the caretaker. So I had a pretty uneventful, even though at that time I thought every day was very eventful, pretty uneventful, pretty privileged upbringing. I mean, we didn't always have everything, but we loved each other. And my dad, the same one who my mom had to convince to join the military, eventually went to college on the GI Bill, eventually earned a PhD in theology. When I was growing up, I literally lived in a house with a white picket fence around it. My dad was the pastor of churches, and he was a counselor, and he shepherded the flock, and he did his morning

jogs and took care of everything outside, and my mom took care of everything inside, and she was the pastor's wife. And it was a pretty picture-perfect, in hindsight, looking back, childhood. But it was disrupted when I was 16. My parents drove me to camp, to summer camp, but only my mom picked me up from camp. And on the way back from camp, back home, she explained to me that my parents were getting a divorce. She didn't use the word divorce, but I knew what she was talking about. And I have a sister that's just 17 months younger than me. And as soon as I got home, I ran inside to my sister's room so that she could explain to me what had happened. And sure enough, over the summer, something ran inside to my sister's room so that she could explain to me what had happened.

And sure enough, over the summer, something had come to a head. She didn't know exactly what it was, but my father had already moved out even from the time that I was at camp. And so my world turned upside down. Everything that I thought was true was real. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It turned out actually to be the best thing that ever happened to me. And I say now that I have an extraordinary marriage because my parents got divorced. Because looking back on it, it wasn't the best relationship, but I just didn't know until later on in my own adulthood. But very quickly,

things turned a bit for the worse. My mom was dating a guy. She moved him in rather quickly. He was completely counterintuitive to everything that I had been taught. I mean, remember, I was a preacher's daughter, you know? So this guy, he drank. Like, I had never even smelled beer. He drank, he smoked, he swore. But what was most horrific for me was that he hit my mom taught me, what my parents taught me about what I was entitled to and what I was deserving of and that I was smart and beautiful and loved, that there was now this person in my home who I perceived as a monster. Fortunately, I had my dad and I called him and I went to live with him. My sister did the same thing and my dad took care of me and he made

everything okay. He was never the funnest parent, but he was consistent. He was consistent and he had enormous amount of discipline and he got me through. But what unbeknownst to me, I seemingly was the only person in the home who had picked up how to cook, how to clean, how to go grocery shopping, what days to go grocery shopping, how to create a meal plan. So overnight, when I moved in with my dad and my sister, I essentially became the woman of the house. And it was daunting at first, particularly because I really was one of those kids. I was the oldest. I was a scholar. So I cared deeply about my schoolwork and wanting to do well. So just trying to keep up with all of that and trying to make sure that my dad and my sister were taken care of was a lot. But I didn't

think twice about the fact that it was my responsibility to do so. It was just assumed. I just took it on. By everybody. Yeah, I just took it on. In fact, I write in the book about a time when I got really frustrated because I was feeling overwhelmed, like doing too much at school and too much at home. And so I told my dad and my sister that we should take turns cooking and that we should rotate. And I assigned my dad and my sister that we should take turns cooking and that we should rotate. And I assigned my dad evenings and I assigned my sister evenings. And the first night my sister made hamburger helper cheesy macaroni. And it was like kind of cooked all the way through.

But that was her meal. And my dad's first meal I'll never forget was top ramen. He boiled top ramen. He opened a can of pears. He made toast. And he put it all on the same plate. So the top, like the broth from the top ramen. I'm just like picturing that right now.

And the pear, the syrup from the pears like kind of merged together with the toast. It was like, oh. And I just said, never mind. I said, nevermind. I'll cook. And I just, I felt like I just did it myself from there on out, which was kind of okay until it became not okay. And I just couldn't do it anymore, which is what I discovered many years later. Yeah. What was going on with your mom when you guys were not there? Have you had that conversation with her? No, because you know that cycle that I described of poverty and addiction and violence, those cycles are unbeknownst to me. I'm not familiar with them. I don't understand what they are because my parents disrupted that whole cycle. But what

happened after my parents' divorce was essentially that my mom spun back into those cycles. So I still to this day have a very difficult time understanding her in part because she didn't have the mother that I had. She instilled in me this very deep sense that Tiffany, you are the most powerful change agent in your own journey. But if someone wasn't instilled with that, then you can't save them. It's very difficult. So I have a younger sister. My mom had a daughter with her second husband, who's incredible. And I stayed connected to my mom long enough to ensure that my little sister always knew there was another option, that there was another opportunity. She didn't have the house with the white picket fence. But as soon as I moved my little sister in her college

dorm room, I began to lose track. It was harder to keep track of my mom, but she's always with me. In the book, I say that we're estranged because that's the best word in the English dictionary to describe our relationship, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like she's always present with me because I can always hear her voice ringing in my ear. You're so smart, and you be so much emotional and cognitive dissonance around that though, with knowing that that part of you came from her and then to sort of see, you know, just later choices and later circumstances. I got to imagine that's just we tell. And one of the things that I share with very hectic, busy working moms who are trying to essentially curate the future stories of their children. So, oh, I want to do this because I want her or him to know, and I want them to look back at their childhood and be able to say X, Y, or Z. Always remind them, you have no control over that story. And I was reminded of this a few years ago when I was talking to the sister that's right below me. I mean, we're 17 months apart. And she was sharing the story and I share this story in the book. She was really angry with my mom about something and she was telling me about it and she wanted me to join her in the anger. And I wasn't adding my ingredients to the soup, so to speak. And she tried to get me to join in by giving me the reasons why I should be angry

with our mother. She says she doesn't know her grandchildren. She doesn't send them birthday gifts. She doesn't send them Christmas gifts. I mean, how can you not be angry? How can you not be upset that she's not more present in our lives? And siblings, I don't know if you have siblings, but they have a way of making you want to burst out into tears. They know how to push those buttons. And I almost wanted to burst out into tears, but I said, Trinity, I just choose to tell a different story about our mom. The story that I tell is from the time that she found out she was pregnant with me until I was 16 years old. She gave me everything that a mom could possibly give a daughter in order to set her on the right path. And I feel that my kids have an empowered mom because of what she did. And that's the greatest gift that

a grandmother could give her grandchildren. And that's my story. I'm sticking to it. I feel like she didn't have someone who did that for her. If in this lifetime, a mom was supposed to serve a purpose, I definitely feel like my mom served hers and she did her job and she did the best of her ability for as long as she could. And I benefit from that. Of course, my younger sister says you're still Pollyannish. So, you know, I feel like that's power. Yeah. I still agree with you on that. And it's really, when we sort of step into a place of agency about the stories we choose to tell about circumstances over which we really have no control, I think that's where so much power comes from. But it doesn't mean it's easy. No. It's often brutally hard, but it's when you make that choice, it's, yeah, it changes everything.

The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required.

Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. So you ended up living with your dad and really sort of taking on all those traditionally mom roles. Yes. That were in the household, then eventually went to Spelman, but just for a year. Yes, just for a little bit. You know, if you were a black girl growing up in the, you know, late 80s, early 90s in the Pacific Northwest, you wanted to go to Spelman.

You know, School Days was the big movie of the time. You were watching The Cosby Show. You were watching Hillman, the spinoff that came out of that. And that's what you aspired to. And I wanted to go to Spelman so bad. And in fact, when I got my acceptance letter, it was the only college that I applied to when I got my acceptance letter. I slept with it under my pillow for weeks because it meant so much to me. But my father could only keep me down there a year. You know, he was a single dad and he really wanted me to go. And now that I'm a parent, you know, I look back on that experience and think about how difficult it must have been for him to know that that was my dream. That was the only place that I wanted to go. But that he had to call me and tell me, I can't keep you down there. I

need you to come home. And so I went to the University of Washington, which of course turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. And everything seems so tragic in the moment, but everything happens for a reason. I met my husband there. I really developed some great leadership skills there. It turns out that big state schools, because they're so large, have a lot of resources for minority students. And so I ended up getting very involved on campus and becoming an activist, but all the while just assuming unconsciously what my responsibilities would be at home and in the world as a woman. It was like you were pushing and questioning in this one area of your life and being very

strong and forward-facing and the other just very traditional and never asking the question like, where did this come from? And is this- Oh, no, not at all. I mean, publicly, for all of my career, I've been a staunch feminist who advocated for women's non-traditional roles in the public sphere and who talked about how culture in our society needs to be disruptive when it came to gender roles. But at home, I was on Stepford Wife autopilot. I mean, if you had done an analysis of the household division of labor between my husband and I for the first eight years of our marriage, even though we thought of ourselves as a very modern, progressive, forward-thinking couple, it was the same

household division of labor as a couple in the 1950s, like without exception. Yeah. And that's probably representative of a lot of couples. A lot of couples. A lot of households. A lot of households because we fall just into these gender norms without having really discussed them. And for me, one of the big Tiffany's epiphanies was that we discussed everything else. We spent a lot of time as partners talking and discussing everything from what we would do to support one another in our careers to what we would do to remain and continue to be fiscally responsible. We talked about our children, how many we wanted to have, when we would have them.

We talked about our family, the kind of contributions that we wanted to make to our local community, to our larger global community. I mean, we talked about everything except who was going to vacuum and who was going to wash the car. No, it's not even like you're deliberately avoiding it. It's just like it's just a default setting. It's like the ringtone on your iPhone. When you get it, you just don't change it. You just don't even think about it. It's just assumed into existence.

This is the dynamic that exists. And because it's not the quote important things to talk about. It's not the, it's just all the things that you are having conversations about. That's what we're supposed to have conversations about because that's what life is about. Rather than the day-to-day stuff that happens, like that weaves through every single day, that makes a profound effect on the way that we experience our relationships, our lives, our health, our vitality, our joy. That's right. Yeah. So what happens? What brings us to your head? Because that didn't stay your... No, it didn't. I actually did a very good job of doing what I thought I was going to do and what

I had been told I was going to do, which was be this ambitious professional outside of the home and to have a career right alongside my husband and to also be someone who ensured that everything was perfect. And I use that word intentionally on the home front. And I had in particular this really bad case of what I call in the book HCD. It's home control disease. It's basically when you want things at home done a certain way, just basically your way. And I find a lot of women have this.

And that manifested into an enormous amount of work. And it seems really small and insignificant relative to big social issues that I'm always talking about, like equal pay for equal work or affordable childcare. But being obsessed about having all of the hangers in your closet facing the same direction or having to sort the mail every single day because you're terrified that it's going to get piled up and then you'll never be able to get through it. You know, all of those little things add up to an enormous amount of work. I was fine until one day, and it was a very particular day. It was the day that I left my home and went back to work for the first time after maternity leave. So eight years into our marriage, we had our first child. And it was tough for me in the beginning

because we made another move from we were living in Boston at the time and we moved to New York. And I felt a little bit like my career had kind of been put on hold or at least a hurdle had been put on my racetrack because I couldn't quite figure out how I was going to go back to my old job of being a major gift officer that required a lot of travel and also take care of this infant that seemed to be feeding off of me every few hours or so. But my husband got a job in New York and he suggested that we move. And I said, yes, a little bit reluctantly and we did it. And I thought, you know, this is fine. I'm just, all I need to do is find a job that I'm passionate about, which is easy for me because I kind of am stuck on my purpose of advancing women and girls and find childcare and I'll be set. I can get right back on track. But the first day back from my maternity leave was a complete mess. I mean,

it was physically a mess, but it was emotionally a mess. And it was the first time that it hit me, Tiffany, you're not going to be able to maintain the same level of flawlessness at home and at work as you did before and be a parent. Oh, and by the way, be a worker and a wife and a sister and a daughter and all of those things. Yeah. So where do you go with that is the big question. I mean, so for the first time, the person who's questioning everything and fiercely advocating for the big issues, all of a sudden there's other stuff going on. There's a lot of stuff going on. Well, you know, I fortunately, I have a lot of obsessions. One of them is reaching out to other people for help. My youngest sister, she always says,

Tiffany, you're so boring. You never want to learn a lesson yourself. That's how she interprets it because she'd rather, regardless of what someone tells her, just go out into the world and do it the way she wants to do it. And if she falls flat on her face, like that to her is what life is. I'm much more risk averse in a way. So I'd rather build on what other people have done and have learned. So I did what I always do, which is I go out to a bunch of people. I used to call them my sages. Over time, I came to understand that these were mentors. And I basically share with them what my problem is. And they use their knowledge of me to ask me questions to help me achieve clarity through guidance and encouragement. And what I like to do,

because everyone has a different circumstance and different situations, so you can't always just take someone else's advice, is I like to ask multiple people and then find the common thread in what they say as close to the truth as possible, and then kind of combine that with my gut to decide how I'm going to move forward. And so that's what I did. I started reaching out to people. In the beginning, I just tried to do more. I became quite resentful of the one person in my life who was most poised to support me and help me, which was my husband, and became quite resentful that he seemed to have detoured around this dilemma of how do you do everything at work and how do you do

everything at home? It seemed as if I was his solution to having it all, but I needed to figure out what my solution was going to be. And I was resentful in large part because I was doing the vast majority of work at home and I didn't feel like he understood that or really saw that or appreciated it. And it took a while before I came to the point where it became very clear that he was socialized in the same world that I was, that he's not a Neanderthal. He's not lazy. He also had a mother who had it all and did it all. Why wouldn't he think that his wife would be able to do all of this and had to learn to meaningfully engage him and other people in the journey. And that started a conversation.

Yes. Yes. The beginning of a very important conversation. I used to do this thing that a lot of people will be familiar with. It's called imaginary delegation. The first few years of this journey, it's basically when you assign someone a task mentally, you never actually tell them that you assigned them the task, but then when they don't do it, you're really pissed. Of course, I've never done that. You've never done this, right? You've never done this. And then when common sense prevails and you say to yourself, well, Tiffany, you never actually told them to do it. You snap back at common sense. Well,, you never actually told them to do it.

You snap back at common sense. Well, nobody ever had to tell me to do it. Nobody has told me to do this around here. And then that just keeps going, you know, around and around and around. I know you've never experienced it. Of course not. really learning how to delegate with joy, which is, you know, engaging someone in helping you to complete something or do something, but contextualizing it in the higher purpose, you know, so less of why don't you take out the garbage? I asked you to do that yesterday, you know, to actually, I'm really trying to change the world here. And there's a bunch of things that

I'm doing that aren't adding up to that. And you've always been here for me. And I know you care about me being my best self. Like, do you think that you could take out the garbage? I know it seems so small relative to me changing the world, but it would actually make a really big difference. You know? But how do you get from the first conversation to the second? And what's so interesting is, you know, like somebody might listen to this and be like, well, this is such a little thing. Can we talk about the big things going on in the world? Can we talk about the big issues? And I bring that up because I think when we do that, we discount, yes, this is a little thing, but then there's another and another. And then there are 25 tiny little things that add up to anger and resentment and frustration

and separation and loneliness and fear. So when we discount it by saying, well, there's big stuff happening in the world. Let's focus our energy there and just deal with this little stuff. This is not worthy of our attention. I think we really, yes, we do have that big stuff and we should be focusing on it. It's a yes and, not a but. And I think we do ourselves a really big disservice by saying this is not worthy of our attention. Well, it's a fair argument. And I have to be honest and say, I used to be one of those people. In fact, I spent the vast majority of my career focused on collective solutions to women's problems. And in 2013, in particular, I did a lot of public speaking. And during my talks, I would fill the content with all of the

solutions that I felt were important to move society forward related to women. I really felt that we needed public policies that would be supportive of working families. I really felt that corporations needed to implement things like flexible workplace policies that would allow both men and women to be caregivers and to be workers. And you know what? I found it strange that every time I would end one of my talks and I would open it up for Q&A, the first set of questions would always be personal questions that to me had nothing to do with what I spoke about. So literally, a woman would raise her hand and she would say, so yes, Tiffany, I noticed that during your talk, you spoke about your daughter who's seven and your son who's 10. And you mentioned your husband who's in Dubai right now. You're here with us in San Francisco today,

but you live in New York and you're going to be in Baltimore tomorrow. And we like your dress and your shoes and you seem kind of fit and healthy and happy. And you've got this career that's all about you being committed to your passion and purpose. And I'm just kind of wondering, how are you doing it all? And then I would look around at all of the other women in the audience who would be clapping and thinking, yeah, yeah, that's kind of what I wanted to know. And I used to have one line that I would say, which was, oh, I just expect far more for my husband and way less for myself than the average woman. And that would get some laughs. And I would try to move them on to what I felt were more substantive questions. But one day, I stepped back from the podium and this Tiffany's epiphany just kind of came to me

and it said, Tiffany, it's not about you. They're not asking you about how you manage it all because they care about you and your personal business. They're asking you that question because they're trying to figure out how can I manage it all? And if your life's work is advancing women and girls, you owe them a better answer than that one liner. You do. And there's a woman named Marie Wilson, who is a really important part of my journey. She's my mentor and my sponsor. She started Take Our Daughters to Work Day. She built the Miss Foundation for Women. She founded the White House Project. And she always used to say to me, Tiffany, if you want to create real change in the world, you're going to have to learn to meet people where they are. You can't expect them to come to where you are. And in that moment, I realized

that I had been doing the opposite, that I had been really encouraging women to aspire to be CEOs and senators and to launch their own businesses to be entrepreneurs. But the women were saying, Tiffany, that's all well and good, but I'm just trying to figure out how do I get out of the house in the morning on time with everybody with the right backpack and the right lunch? And I just, I can't quite get there because I'm just so overwhelmed with what's currently on my plate. And that was the catalyst for the book, was my own recognition that the little things do matter. They really do. They stifle our ambition and they tie us up in ways that don't allow us to be able to get to the big stuff. And that's

all I'm trying to do is encourage women to drop the ball so they can get to the big stuff. Yeah. I mean, and it's those fundamentals. It's that basic foundation that gets laid in the questions that you aren't asking and that so many of us never ask. It's the assumptions that we make that limits so much because it ripples out. Like if one tiny little assumption sets in motion a whole bunch of other stacked on top of that and becomes more constraint, more constraint, more constraint until all of a sudden when you try and do the big thing, you find out that there are a hundred little things that aren't set up to allow you to do it. That's it. And you never even realize that, you know, like you had made those decisions because you didn't, it just happened. So yeah, I agree. I think it is important to revisit those things that seemingly don't really matter, but really they're the heartbeat of so much else. with them. I have this workshop that I do when I'm trying to help women get into this idea of

dropping the ball. It's very hard. When I go into a room full of women and I say, for how many of you, the idea of drop the ball is terrifying, like most of the hands go up in the air? Tell me what you mean by drop the ball too, just so we have clarity on that phrase. So, well, I don't mean the way that we talk about it in popular culture, that it's a scary thing, you failed, you've made a terrible mistake and you should avoid. When I talk about drop the ball, I talk about releasing unrealistic expectations of doing it all and engaging other people in your life so that you can achieve what matters most to you, right? So dropping the ball in a freeing way, which is the way that when I ask women, do you wish that you could do it in that

way? They say, yes. How? And when they say how, I always start with this little exercise where I ask them to think about all of the different roles that they play in their lives. Maybe your earliest role was that you were a daughter, that you were a friend. What are all of those roles? And then I ask them to just by default, because women do it and I've worked with them long enough to know that they do put good in front of all of them because women put good in front of, I want to be a good, it's not enough to be a wife. You just got to be a good wife. You have to be a good daughter and a good worker and a good student. And I ask them to write down, what does a good ex do? What does a good student do? What does a good daughter do? What does a good husband do? What does a good ex do, right? What does a good student do? What does a good daughter do,

right? What does a good husband do? What does a good worker do? And they write down all of those things. And then I ask them, how do you know that that's what a good ex does? How do you know that that's what a good mom does? It's a very important exercise because one, when I ask women to read off the answers to the questions, very quickly you realize we must all be like singing from the same hymn book. How did this happen? That, you know, I make my own choices and I'm very empowered. And yet my list of what it means to be a good wife is the same as hers and hers and hers and hers. And we grew up in different parts of the countries with different parents. There must be something going on here, right? The decisions that we're making that we think are our decisions may not only be our decisions.

They're very much heavily informed by what we saw, what we were taught. And we talk about everything from television shows. When I was growing up, I was going to be Claire Huxtable from The Cosby Show. I thought she was amazing. And it didn't occur to me until much later in my adulthood that a woman who was always dressed beautifully, whose hair was feathered perfectly in the right direction, who had a perfectly clean home, and five well-behaved children could have never made partner at a law firm, which she did in one episode. I mean, she was flawless. It comes from everything. Choosy moms choose Jif. Yeah, it's all the messages.

Yeah. And by the way, men have really powerful messages that they're indoctrinated with too. That's a whole nother book that I hope someone else writes. Because for men, dropping the ball means dropping the ball on this unrealistic expectation that you should be a breadwinner at all costs, even at the cost of time with your family. Yeah, I'm raising my hand. I think we all come with certain wiring. Part of it is familial, part of it is social construct, part of it is media that we've just sort of, it's been built into our experience and we assume this is the way it's supposed to be and we never test it. I mean, it's kind of interesting for me because quite a while back now, I kind of opted out of a lot of what would be considered conventional paths. So much of the community that I've sort of rebuilt around my life and my choices matches my ethos. And we tend to live very differently in the world. You know, as we're recording this right now, we're recording it in a studio built in my home

so that I don't have to go out. And, you know, when my daughter comes home, I'll be here, you know, and I can be physically and emotionally present in her life. And I'm in business with my wife and we work together and we live together 24-7 because we love being around each other. You know, and I realized that in the not too distant future, my daughter is very likely going to leave the home and I have a fixed amount of time. And being physically and emotionally present to me is a value that I hold more dear than

certain other values right now. There will be time to do other things. But I've also come to realize that that is not the norm for a lot of men my age. I'm a 51-year-old white dude in the Upper West Side of New York City, and that's not normal. So it's taken some rewiring and a lot of questioning on my side. And I think a lot of the same questions that you're asking around women and the traditional roles, I've sort of been exploring around men. And you're right, there's a lot of wiring to deconstruct on both sides of the equation that isn't really serving a constructive role in the way we build our relationships, the way we parent, the way that we contribute to the world and society. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more

comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I had this moment of realization. I write about it in the book. My husband had decided that after spending a lot of time working and traveling that he wanted to be more stateside. And he was going through the process of interviewing and trying to find different roles. And I kept overhearing him on the telephone, telling people that he needed to be closer to home because his wife was nagging him. And it really bothered me because

it was so untrue. I had always supported his endeavors and his career. And he's from Ghana and his life's work is advancing sub-Saharan Africa. And I just couldn't fathom why he kept telling people that, I mean, he felt like he was making me look bad. And I asked him about it one day. I said, you know, it's really bothering me. I can hear you on the phone telling people that your wife is nagging you about coming home. And it's just not true. And I just, I don't understand why you keep saying this. And he looked at me and he said, well, what am I supposed to say, Tiffany? Am I supposed to tell people that I want to be closer to home because I want to take my kids to school because I'm tired of them only interacting with me over Skype on the laptop that I miss my family? I can't say that. I just wanted to burst into tears

because of course, women are allowed to say that all the time. We're allowed to express our commitment to our families in relationship to our careers. It's what allows it to be acceptable for us to take our foot off the gas pedal, so to speak, or to work a flexible schedule or to go part-time or to say, you know what, I'm just going to opt out. I say that word, I don't feel like we opt out. I feel like things are inflexible and we kind of get pushed out, but to stay at home. And it just really hit me that men don't have that option. But I think what is most unnormal about what you've just described in terms of your own circumstance is the intentionality, and I know you value that word, with which you've gotten clear about what matters most to you and then re-curated your life

in order to make that fit. So it's not just that you're in your home and you have the studio, it's that that's in alignment with what you've decided is important to you and what matters most to you. And that's where I wish that we could spend more time. And part of the reason why I wrote the book is that so few people are intentional about getting clear about what matters most to them, getting clear about their highest and best use in achieving what matters most to them, which then allows you to figure out what you can delegate to others or what you can just let go altogether and allows you to be able to curate the kind of life that you have. Because it doesn't have to look like Jonathan's life, right? It should.

You could still get up and go to work every day. For you, for another man, being a good husband could be being a breadwinner and providing. We don't take the time to stop. Yeah, and it's not about making the decisions that you've made or that I've made. It's about like what you said to me, it's about, it's about a process of self-inquiry that allows you to know yourself, to know those you're in partnership with on a level where you can be intentional. That's it. Where you can actually say, okay, we get what matters to us individually. We get matters to us collectively, and we're going to make these choices intentionally rather than reactively or by default. And then whatever you choose from there, own it. So it's not about being Tiffany or Jonathan or anyone else. It's just about

choosing rather than defaulting, really. That's it. And then putting in practice and practice some either habits or strategies that help remind you of your choice, right? Because life happens and then we get distracted. And as soon as we start getting emails pouring into our inbox, we forgot what we chose. Right. So tell me about how does that unfold in your life? Oh, in so many ways. I mean, I have one practice I call stop and sit. I know it sounds silly and small, but I actually do have to remind myself to stop and sit. And it was prompted by a friend who had moved in with me while my husband was in Dubai for a year. And she made this observation after two months of living with me. She said, Tiffany, why don't you come and sit down on the couch?

She says, I've never seen you sit down in your own apartment except for when you're nursing or you're eating. Those are the only two times I've ever seen you just sitting down. And I remember when she said it, I was wiping the table or something thinking there's too much to do around here. Now I don't have time to sit down. But I thought also about how my husband seemingly spent a lot of time just sitting down on the couch. And I thought maybe there's something to this. And so I instituted this practice that I still do called stop and sit, where I just say, Tiffany, I get my iPhone and I put myself on a timer and I sit down. In the beginning, I had to multitask. I could just sit there. So I had to fold clothes or do something while I was sitting there. But now I can just stop and sit and reflect. And it's amazing

when you just calm yourself and you're just in the moment, how everything that you five minutes before thought was so urgent, all of a sudden can melt away. Very important. Another habit practice that our family has instilled is something that's called a MEL. It's a management Excel list. Basically, there was this other epiphany I had at work one day when I was leading my team in executing on a project. And I decided that we would start by putting everything that needed to happen in order for this to be successful up on the whiteboard. It's like a brainstorm. And then after that, I let everyone in the process of us deciding who would take on each task based on our skills, our talent, our gifts, our abilities,

our jobs. And it hit me that, you know, Tiffany, this is not how you manage your home. You're a terrible manager at home. You have all these expectations about how things should be. You don't engage other people. You do everything. And you do everything because you have this belief in a false efficiency. You think that since you do everything better than everybody else, you should just do it yourself. But that's why everything's on your list. And that's why it doesn't work. And for the first time that night, I came home, I sat on my bed, I opened my computer and I started an Excel list. And the first column was just a list of all the things that I thought were required to manage our home. Everything from, you know, taking out the garbage to washing the car, to paying the bills, doing the taxes,

every laundry, everything. And I then created a column for myself, but then I quickly erased and put a column for my husband first and then one for myself. And I started to put Xs next to all of the things that I completed before I realized, Tiffany, that's terrible. You would never do that to your team at work. Like basically show them the brainstorm that you've already done with all the things that you already do. You wouldn't do that. I'm like, that's true. So then I just took it to him and I said, hey, honey, I said, I have an idea. And it was easy to engage him on this one because we had had an experience just a few months earlier where I let the mail pile up so bad that it took him a few days to get through it. So you know that situation with the mail, like I don't want that to happen again. He's like, yeah, I'm in. Like I don't want to have to sort through that much mail ever again.

And what was interesting was I thought that the next part of the exercise was going to be us assigning tasks to one another and figuring out who would do what. But the first part of the exercise actually was him working on completing the list. So it never occurred to me that my husband does things that I don't necessarily know about around the house. And I remember the first thing that he put on there was botanist. So it was also fascinating that I had put tasks like wash the clothes, but he put titles, right? So he put botanist, right? I'm like, botanist, what are you talking about? He's like, when have you ever our frequent flyer miles are like who schedules our trip when like we travel for vacation who finds the best deal and who i'm like okay he's got me on that and he's like you know water infiltration because he replaces the brita water filter i mean

and some of it i thought was ridiculous but in the end i thought wow, wow, I've been operating for so long, a good 10 years of this marriage with this assumption that I did everything around here, when in fact I don't. And that became the most important tool that we still use on a consistent basis to figure out how do we manage our home. And it's important because depending upon what's happening in our lives, we have to retool the Mel, right? Right now, there's a lot of Xs in his column because I'm about to go off on a book tour. When I come back from the book tour, we'll retool it again. But the most important column on our Mel is what I call the no one column. So literally, there's a column that says no one at the top. And we put X's next to the things that neither one of us are going to do. And we've agreed that no one's going to do.

Because even with two people managing a home, if you're lucky enough to have two people, it's still too much work for even two people. But you realize when you actually do an Excel spreadsheet like this. So that no one column basically says, look, neither one of us are going to wash the car for a few months. We're all just going to pull our clean clothes from a pile of laundry. We're not going to bother to fold them. And no one's going to be upset with somebody else because it wasn't done. We've agreed that it's not going to happen and we'll get to it when we can. And it's also been the most important column because it's been the column that we use to engage our community. So when people say, hey, you've got

this book tour coming up. I know you're going to be traveling. I can't imagine Kojo's totally holding down the fort. How are you guys doing this? Do you need help? We can look at that no one column and say, hey, can you go take our car to get washed? Because it hasn't happened. Would you mind folding that pile of laundry? So we have a village of support because whenever they ask, can we help? We have something for them to do. Yeah. I love that. And it also brings in the idea of the importance of community that you make decisions about the family in it. And at the same time, community is, you know, this really powerful extra sort of circle outside of the family that can make a difference in a really major level. It's interesting too that the, you know, when you talk about if you just transpose like the exact process you're talking about to a work

environment to like, well, of course, that's what you do. You know, like you respect the different people, you understand what are the needs, what are the constraints, what are the outcomes we want, who has these capabilities. And you do it in a way that everyone feels like they're leveraging their best strengths and aligned with their values. That's right. And the concept of doing this at home is just this alien, I mean, to me too. And now I'm thinking, huh, maybe we need to try this at home. But I mean, it's logical. But again, it's applied to this area of life that we just think sort of somehow exists outside of that realm of rationality.

And I think in a life where so many people feel like they blink and it's moving faster and faster and faster and they're living more and more and more reactively and maniacally busy, but not with things that make a difference to them. Tools like this matter. It really matters. They can be the difference maker, both in the way you experience those personal relationships and in our ability to then become not just functional, but optimal in those big areas of contribution outside of that, where we want to go out and make a dent in the

universe. That's it. And I've experienced this personally in such profound ways. One of the reasons why I wrote this book is because I really believe that our homes are not benefiting from the ingenuity and the talent and the creativity of men, the way that workplaces are benefiting from the ingenuity and talent and skills of women. And it's largely because we have this amazing workforce revolution where women went out to work in droves. It wasn't as if men then took on roles in the home at the same speed, at the same level. And I have been blown away and completely humbled by what's happened in our family because my husband, quite frankly, does so many things better than me that I didn't realize before. I remember this time I was

coming back from a trip. I was still on the airplane and he calls me and he asks me for all of the names of our babysitters and their cell phone numbers. And up until that point, I had always managed our childcare, all the babysitters. And I asked him, why do you want this? He says, well, there's a dinner tonight and I need you to come. And he'd already figured out that given the fact that I had already been traveling, the likelihood of me saying yes to going to this dinner, like I don't want to put on a cinching black dress and go smile pretty for your clients. I want to see my babies. That's what I want to do tonight. So he kind of anticipated that by offering to get the babysitter so that I'd have less of a reason to say no.

And I completely dismiss him. I'm like, look, you're not going to be able to find a babysitter in this short amount of time. He says, can you just give me the numbers? I said, fine. 30 minutes later, he calls me, I've got a babysitter. And I'm like, wow, okay. He lucked out this time because it usually takes about 24 hours to find a babysitter, Jonathan. Okay. I know this because I've done this many times. And you email the person who you think could do it. You wait for them to get back to you. If they can do it, great. If they can't, you go to the next person. And it's part of the reason why I don't accept. At that time, I didn't accept a lot of invitations to do things last minute because I always knew that I would have a childcare issue. But over the next few months,

he quickly realized, okay, if I've got a babysitter, I can get her to say yes to something. And I quickly realized that it wasn't a fluke. This guy can find a babysitter, I can get her to say yes to something. And I quickly realized that it wasn't a fluke. This guy can find a babysitter in like 20 minutes. Like, what is this? He's got ninja babysitter skills. So I'm like, so finally I ask him one day, I'm like, what are you doing? How are you able to complete a task in 20 minutes that takes me a good 24 hours? So he explains to me his strategy for finding a babysitter, which is basically, he sends an open text message to all of the babysitters at one time. It's like,

tonight, 7pm, 20 bucks an hour, first person to get back to me has got the job, right? It's like an auction. Right? And I'm horrified, Jonathan. I'm like, oh my God, this is so rude. I can't believe this is the way you're treating our babysitters. A few days later, I see one of our babysitters in the bank, and I start apologizing profusely. I'm so sorry. I had no idea that Kojo was doing that. And she takes a deep breath, and she says to me, Tiffany, I kind of like the way Kojo does it. And I said, how? I said, it's just so rude. She says, well, it's so much less pressure for me. You see, when you send me an email, I know that you're only sending that to me. And if I can do it, it's okay. But if I know that I've

got a conflict, I feel a lot of pressure to try to rearrange my schedule and try to work out the conflict. And I feel like if I say no to you, that that will then impact you reaching out to me the next time if I keep saying no. So I feel this pressure that I need to say yes. Whereas when Kojo just sends a text message, if I can do it, great. I know to hurry up and let him know. But if I can't, I don't feel any pressure. Oh, that's funny. So I like it better. Assumptions.

Assumptions, right? That's just one small example. I could give you countless examples of, you know, this drop the ball journey where it's become very clear that men should be engaged. I'm sure there's so many on all sides of the conversation. So I think it's a good time to come full circle. So we're hanging out here having this conversation and the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer out that phrase to you, to live a good life, what comes up? For me, living a good life means that I'm no longer living someone else's life. It means that I've gotten clear about what matters most to me. I've gotten clear about

what my highest and best use is in achieving what matters most to me. And that I've gotten clear about what matters most to me. I've gotten clear about what my highest and best use is in achieving what matters most to me. And that I've engaged the people in my life who are really there to help me live my best self and be who I want to be in the world in a meaningful way. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful. To me, living a good life means that I can have, as a woman, an incredible juicy marriage. I can have kids who are fairly happy and well-meaning, who are at least on track to be conscious global citizens. I can be fit, and I can be healthy, and I can have a career that I'm passionate about. And I can have all of this at the same time, all at the same time. That's what dropping the ball has done for me. I feel really lucky to have an awesome good life.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's lives. Take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you.

And then of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much, as always, for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best.

I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.