The Rich Roll Podcast - Julie Lythcott-Haims On How To Be An Adult

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

I love my parents. I grew up with a world-class education. And yet, nobody actually ever taught me how to be an adult. As a result, I made a ton of avoidable mistakes. I suffered far more than necessary. And I fumbled in the dark for years until eventually, I figured a few things out. Unfortunately, my experience is all too common. Today’s guest—a woman who spent years mentoring and advising some of the brightest young people in the entire world—would agree, so she decided to do something about it. Julie Lythcott-Haims is the former dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at Stanford University, where she earned her B.A. (as my classmate) before obtaining a law degree from Harvard and a master’s in fine arts and writing from California College of the Arts. Today Julie is an author and authority on what we now call—in Millenial parlance—adulting. Her TED Talk 'How to raise successful kids without over-parenting' has over 5 million views, and her books include the New York Times bestseller, How To Raise An Adult and Real American—a memoir centered on coming to terms with her racial identity. Julie’s latest work and the focus of today’s conversation is Your Turn: How To Be An Adult. For those just emerging into the grown-up world, it’s a must-read life handbook. For parents, it’s a must-gift for your young ones entering their adult phase of life. All in all, it’s a guide I very much wish existed during my formative years. This conversation is packed with practical insights for both parents and young people alike. We cover the downfalls of being a helicopter parent, the importance of learning conversation skills, and why paying attention to what you like and don’t like is more important than finding a purpose. But more than anything, this conversation is about why diversity and inclusivity are vital in parenting, educating, and adulting. To read more click here. You can also watch listen to our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. This is appointment listening for young people emerging into the world or parents striving to best guide their kids into maturity. But no matter your age, we can all use some wisdom about how to grow up a little bit more. Peace + Plants, Rich

We treat our kids like they're our bonsai trees. You know, the bonsai is such an exquisite creation of the gardener. The gardener decides the direction in which that tree will grow, which branches will be clipped and which will flourish and the shape of it. And it's a lovely creation, but at the end of the day, it is a possession of the gardener. It's something to be oohed and aahed over, and people can come to a gardener and say, look what you've done, aren't you amazing?

We now treat our kids like they're our bonsai trees. We need them to be glorious so that we can feel better about ourselves. How many of us are devoting countless hours to chauffeuring, concierging, helping with the homework, over-helping, outright doing the homework, over-helping, outright doing the homework, planning and fixing and managing our kids' lives. And we have a primary partner over there in the wings. And our relationship with that person is dwindling and diminishing and suffering because we're not watering that plant. We're not giving

that relationship attention. The very relationship that might've created these children, you know, not giving that relationship attention. The very relationship that might have created these children, you know, languishes because we are investing everything in the project that is making these children excellent so that we can feel that we have, you know, the right sort of accolades to boast about at a cocktail party. So those were some of the changes I noticed. And my job was to root for young people to thrive. And I could see that those who were overmanaged were lacking in agency. And I found myself asking, hey, kid, have you ever made a choice? Have they let you make a choice? Or are you just incredibly good at doing what you're told. The Rich Roll Podcast. I don't know about you, but despite having great parents,

despite the privilege of having a world-class education, nobody actually ever taught me how to be an adult. And as a result, I made a ton of avoidable mistakes. I suffered more than I needed to, fumbled around until eventually I figured a few things out. And I think my experience, unfortunately, is all too common. Well, today's guest, Julie Lithcott Hames, would agree. So she decided to do something about it. Julie is the former dean of freshman and undergraduate advising at Stanford University, where she earned her BA and we were classmates. I first met Julie when I was 18.

She also earned a law degree from Harvard and a master's in fine arts and writing from California College of the Arts. Today, she's an author and authority on what we now call in millennial parlance, adulting. Her TED Talk, How to Raise Successful Kids Without Over-Parenting has over five and a half million views. And her books include the

New York Times bestseller, How to Raise an Adult, Real American, which is a memoir centered on coming to terms with her racial identity, and her latest and the focus of today's conversation, Your Turn, How to Be an Adult, which is a phenomenal book for those just emerging into the grown-up world. I think it's a must-read handbook for parents. It's a must-gift for their young ones entering the adult phase of life. And the book I have to say very much wish existed when I was young. A few more things to mention before we dive in, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety.

And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find

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When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had

that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide,

to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help,

go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Julie Lithcott-Hames. I don't wanna say too much about this other than that it's a really wonderful conversation. I really enjoyed it. It's packed with practical insights

for both parents and young people alike. And I just want Julie to do the talking. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Julie Lithcott-Hames. So nice to see you. It's really good to see you and to be here and to have flown here. It's a big experience. I appreciate you doing that.

I'm glad to be here. We talked about doing this when the book came out and I was just so reluctant to do this on Zoom in a remote context. So we waited, it took a minute, but here we are. I'm delighted. Yeah, and it's wild because we go way back. Like I met you first week of freshman year at Stanford.

We were both 18, 17, something like that. I briefly dated your freshman roommate at Branner where I spent a ton of time in that dorm. And what's so, the more I reflect on your story and my own, what's interesting is that we're very different people. We have divergent backgrounds and experiences, of course, but here's the thing. I mean, irrespective of meeting at 18,

and we weren't like friends in college, but I knew you and I've sort of followed you over the years. We're both Gen Xers who grew up with very achievement oriented parents. Yeah. And that made us sort of go-getters among a generation of the kind of forgotten latchkey kids that is the hallmark of what it means to be Gen X.

We're both hyper-competitive people pleasers. What? Right? Yes. And those tendencies both led us into corporate law careers and the misery that that produces. You got out earlier than I did, but that kind of overlap in our Venn diagram is interesting.

I agree. It's been really cool to kind of watch you evolve over the years and step into this position of authority on the subject matter that we're gonna talk about today. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for noticing all that. Yeah.

You know, you were this, you were part of that cadre of athletes who came by and there was this aura surrounding y'all because the program you were a part of was elite and we all knew it and respected it. irreverence and high achievement of athletics and academics. And here you were part of that group. And so I did not, we weren't friends, as you said, but I definitely knew of you and knew that people respected and admired you. And I've loved watching your journey. I've loved watching the ways in which you have dared to be vulnerable with the world, with strangers about your path. And I love how you're serving people. I appreciate that. Yeah.

That means a lot. It's been a journey for both of us. And I think one of the many things that I loved so much about Stanford was this sense of possibility. Like I grew up on the East coast and, you know, was reared in a kind of checklist household, which is something you talk a lot about where it's like,

you do these certain things and you're on a certain track. And I was able to be successful within that construct, but it wasn't until I got to Stanford and I wouldn't say Stanford had the most diverse student body, but there was a diversity of experiences. And I think layered on top of that, this sense of possibility, like an environment that was conducive to trying to bring the best out of people

in whatever it was that they were interested in. And it was the one place where, you know, I visited a lot of colleges and they would say, well, you can either excel as an athlete or you can excel academically. You're not gonna really be able to do both. You're gonna have to choose. And Stanford was like, no, you can do both.

Like, let us help you figure out how to make that happen. And I just, that maybe it's a California sensibility. I don't know, but I just really fell in love with that. And I loved being a student there, even though, I can't say I made the most of that experience. Well, we all have our regrets about college as probably not a person listening if they went to college who doesn't.

You know, when I think about that special blend at Stanford Rich, I think there's a profound respect for the individual there. And yeah, it is a place that contends with stereotypes and whatnot, but the dominant stereotype nationally that it is not possible to excel as a scholar and as an athlete, that stereotype is shattered at Stanford. And I think that's part of the magnificence of the place. You spent many years as Dean of Freshmen there.

Yeah. And in that capacity, I can only imagine the experiences that you had, not so much dealing with the kids, but having to deal with the parents, which has obviously, of course, informed the books that you've written and given you this perspective on parenting.

Yeah, absolutely. A real surprise, frankly, I got there actually in 98, I left law in 98, became the associate dean for student affairs at the law school for two years, spent a couple of years in the president's office and then said, hey, I think we would be a better place as a world-class research university if we had a tiny office dedicated to the needs of our newest,

to the needs of those at the very bottom of the totem pole. And they said, yeah, go give it a try, you know, give you a dilapidated office. Someone has vacated. I pitched, you know, dilapidated office, someone has vacated. I pitched myself to Apple computer for some computers and made a go of it. And our ethos, our philosophy was, I want to be sure, we want to be sure everybody's not just admitted, but knows they've been let in. And it really speaks to the potential exclusion of myriad folks who for whatever reason don't feel entitled to be in the center of the page. And so to try to lead with a philosophy as you belong here, you matter to us. You're not a nameless, faceless number. Your journey is of relevance to us. Your needs matter. We are here to try to be alongside you as you begin to figure yourself out.

That was kind of the big picture purpose of what we were doing. And yeah, in those years, so this would have been 2002 when I began in that role, we had begun to see on the campus maybe four to six years earlier, parents doing unusual things, parents needing to talk to a faculty member about a grade or parents wanting to register their quote, air quote, child for a class. And in the early years of it, Rich, we giggled. I'd get a call or an email and very politely explain to the parent, I'm sorry, I can't give you your son or daughter's password. We can't give them to third parties. Oh, I'm not a third party. I'm his mom. Well, no, actually you are, you know, or it's too hard or he's so busy or she's so busy.

And, you know, I'd be polite and respectful and articulate the rules. And then I'd hang up or hit send on the email and go down the hall and find a colleague and relay the story. Like, you're not going to believe this parent. So crazy. And then they really increased in number. So it became less this sort of one-off weird parent you joked about. This would have been the early 2000s. And as the numbers grew, it really became a population of people

we had to take seriously and contend with. It was clear that childhood had changed. So parents were arriving differently on campus. They were arriving and staying. They weren't just dropping you off or helping you move in. They felt they had a role to play in the day to day management of life in the life of their child. And I found myself thinking, you know, this child could be in the Marines, but here they are, you know, not putting their lives in danger. They're at a well-resourced

university, which you're paying a tremendous amount for them to attend, quite likely. What are you so afraid of, parent? Why is it that you think you need to be the one to have the run-of-the-mill conversation with a faculty member, to get involved if there's a roommate dispute, to attend an overseas studies orientation, because you don't think your child can go abroad unless you've had the orientation, so don't think your child can go abroad unless you've had the orientation so that we know how we can be successful abroad. We listened to the pronouns changing.

It was, we're going abroad. We've gotten into this seminar. So those were some of the changes I noticed. And my job was to root for young people to thrive. And I could see that those who were over managed were lacking in agency. And I found myself asking, hey kid, have you ever made a choice?

Have they let you make a choice? Or are you just incredibly good at doing what you're told? Yeah. And it saddened me. Yeah, it produces a certain handicap where the child not only lacks self-efficacy, but that produces lower self-esteem and a lower sense of their own inherent capabilities.

And certainly, Stanford is your experience, but this is not endemic simply to Stanford. Not at all. This is a nationwide, if not a global thing. Absolutely. That is so fascinating. And I feel like has only continued to metastasize. So the catch all kind of umbrella phrase for this

is helicopter parenting, of course, or the tiger mom phenomenon. What is your sense of how this started and how we got to this situation? Very interestingly, there were a set of changes happening in this country in the mid 80s that conspired to, in the aggregate change all of childhood. So in no particular order, rich five things.

Stranger danger was born with a made for TV movie, Adam, about the abduction and murder of Adam Walsh in 1983. And everybody watched it. There was no internet. All of your entertainment came through the big screen or the small screen or your headphones. Everybody tuned in for that show and it scared the bejesus out of everybody.

So Stranger Danger was born 83. And then that guy's dad became the host of, what was the show that he did? America's Most Wanted. Exactly. Yeah, John Walsh, exactly. And missing kids began appearing on, photos began appearing on milk cartons.

And yes, occasionally children were abducted by strangers. And it is, of course, as we know as parents, the most horrific thing we can imagine. And yet children are more likely to die at the hands of a family member than they are at the hands of a stranger. They're more likely to die as a passenger in a car, yet we drive them in cars constantly to get them to and from their activities. So we reshape childhood around the very, very, very infinitesimal likelihood of a stranger harming our children. And we can really

trace that back to that movie, Adam, 1983. The play date was born in 1984. Kids used to play with each other. We found each other, right, Rich? It was like, where are the bikes? That's where my friends are. That was a Gen X childhood. That changed. Parents started arranging play with other parents,

deciding with whom and when, but also watching over it, hovering, micromanaging. Are they playing with the right things? Are they bored? Let me help them. The self-esteem movement, give them ribbons and trophies, certificates and awards just for playing soccer or just for swimming

rather than for being any good at it. The notion that we need to always praise. Great job, Billy. You slid down the slide. Great job. You didn't hit Jack. A Nation at Risk was published saying American teenagers needed to be, you know,

more high achieving vis-a-vis their international counterparts. We needed more testing, more teaching to the test. All of these things meant that childhood was now watched and managed by parents. We also got safer in cars with seatbelt laws and car seat laws and bike helmet laws and bicycles, we got safer in our transportation. It led to this mindset of, you can put a helmet on them always, you can bubble wrap every aspect of their environment, prepare the road for the kid

instead of prepare the kid for the road. All of those things happened in the span of three to five years. The first kids to come to college en masse with parents who couldn't let go in the late 90s were the first to have been subjected to play dates in 1984. And why does it persist? Because it works, Rich. When you stand next to the rock wall and prevent your kid from falling onto the plastic wood chips, they go unharmed. So you've saved them in that moment. But over the long-term, your kid

hasn't developed that kinesthetic sense of how their body works or of how to do something different or better next time. So short-term win, long-term loss. Right. And on top of that, it's all set up within the construct of performance, right? How do I set my kid up to get into the best college? Like that is the ultimate end game. And so when you're looking at short-term gains, it's all oriented around academic performance, making sure that they have the appropriate extracurriculars. And the only way to ensure that

is this level of over-involvement. That of course, even in the successful cases where a kid ends up at Stanford, that kid ends up knocking on your door, you know, having all kinds of, you know, mental issues or self-esteem issues or, you know, body dysmorphia. I'm sure it shows up in a million different ways where they're handicapped and unable to really figure out how to live and exist and thrive on their own. That's exactly right. So we've done the thinking for them, the planning for them,

the troubleshooting, the fixing, the managing, the handling, all in furtherance of these outcomes we think lead to a successful life. And it's almost like we take our helicopter rotors and we lift them in the helicopter and arrive them at the future we have in mind. And then we can say, look, you've arrived, you're here. And then the kid is bewild them at the future we have in mind. And then we can say, look, you've arrived, you're here. And then the kid is bewildered at the place of arrival because they haven't done the heavy lifting. They've certainly worked hard. It's not to say kids aren't hardworking in this context, but they've been so over-managed and over-helped.

They really are unfamiliar with their own selves. And in my first book, How to Raise an Adult, I call it existential impotence, unfamiliar with the self. My sense is that there's a pendulum that swings and that pendulum swings generation to generation where parents end up parenting in opposition to the way that they were parented to ensure that their kid gets what they feel like they didn't get, right? So if you have the Gen Xers who were the latchkey kids

who were completely unattended to, they're gonna be the ones who are more likely to show up and over parent. Is that how you feel like it works? Or have we arrived in a situation now where the pendulum is kind of locked in this place where parents are fixated in an unhealthy way on how their kids are doing and performing?

I certainly agree with you that many of us want to parent either the opposite of how we were raised or we appreciate how we were raised and we wanna do it the exact same way. We don't seem to have room for nuance. I wanna point out that it was the baby boomers that started the helicopter parenting phenomenon. We Gen Xers inherited it because you're in a community and you see how other parents are doing their kids' homework in the fourth grade and the seventh grade. Well, how are you not going to

do your kid's homework? Because you need your kid to keep up, right? So we arrived as parents in an environment where helicopter parenting was already in many communities, the norm. And I find it ironic that baby boomers who questioned authority, I mean, that was their bumper sticker when they were young. They were now questioning authority on behalf of their own kids. They had forgotten that they created and matured their own voice by using it. And instead, they sort of treated their own kids like little pets and projects that they would continually question authority on their behalf. With Gen X, many of us can appreciate the freedoms of that latchkey

childhood. Yes, there were examples that were neglectful and harmful, and none of us want to replicate that. But you see in the Gen X memes on social media, the kind of lauding, the pride of like, look what I was able to do. Look what my childhood entailed. There's pride in that. And I hope that Gen Xers listening will ask themselves, why am I not offering that same degree of freedom to my own child?

Why do I want less for them? The justification that the parent will make is that this is all for the best, all in the best interest of the child. Like that's all that I care about. I just wanna set my kid up for success. But beneath that, what you find is a really unhealthy level of enmeshment.

This like projection onto their child that their performance is a really unhealthy level of enmeshment, this like projection onto their child, that their performance is a reflection of how well the parent parented the kid, right? You know, I grew up in Washington, DC, that's a community, you know, in upwardly mobile neighborhoods where everybody puts the bumper sticker on the car of the school that the kid goes to. And it's such an unhealthy thing where the parent is so wrapped up in how well the kid

does because they want to be able to go to the cocktail party and say this, that, or the other that reflects well on them. Right. So I talk about, we treat our kids like they're our bonsai trees. You know, the bonsai is such an exquisite creation of the gardener. The gardener decides the direction in which that tree will grow, which branches will be clipped and which will flourish and the shape of it. And it's a lovely creation, but at the end of the day, it is a possession of the gardener. It's something to be ooed and awed over and people can come to a gardener and say, look what you've done. Aren't you amazing? And, you know, I'm super clear. And let me say as a caveat, I have over-parented my

own two. They are 20 and 22. I am in this both as quote unquote expert and as subject. Okay. this both as quote unquote expert and as subject, okay? We now treat our kids like they're our bonsai trees that we need them to be glorious so that we can feel better about ourselves. And it's harmful and it speaks to an unwellness in our psyche, in our spirit. How many of us are devoting countless hours to chauffeuring, concierging, helping with the homework, over-helping, outright doing the homework, planning and fixing and managing our kids' lives, and we have a primary partner over there in the wings, and our relationship with that person is dwindling and diminishing and suffering because we're not watering that plant. We're not giving that relationship attention.

The very relationship that might've created these children, you know, languishes because we are investing everything in the project that is making these children excellent so that we can feel that we have, you know, the right sort of accolades to boast about at a cocktail party. Yeah, I think it was in your TED Talk where you said they're not bonsai trees, they're wildflowers.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that image instantly comes to mind for me of being out on a trail somewhere in our beautiful California and taking in the majesty of a wild landscape. That's who we humans are.

Yes, there's some rules and regulations we all need to abide by in order to play nicely with one another, but there's so much room for variance, for difference. We are, we have some core things in common and yet each one of us is this unique, precious thing. You know, I like to, the poet Mary Oliver is very much in my heart as I talk to young people. You know, they'll say, how do I tell

my parents I don't want to be a whatever the parents have decided is the right path, the sort of tiger type? How do I, you know, and I'm trying to incentivize a young person to claim their own agency. And one of the phrases I use is from Mary Oliver, who said in one of her poems, what is it, tell me, she said, tell me what is it you plan to do with this one wild, precious life? It is wild.

It should be. It is precious. And unlike the bonsai tree that requires that pruning and that level of deep involvement, the wildflower is fine on its own. Maybe you gotta water it a little bit once in a while, but you walk away from it. That's right.

And let it do its thing. Let it become what it is. And that's terrifying for a lot of parents. And as a parent of four, I bought up against that as well. I appreciate how you bring your own experiences into your writing and you're very frank about where you've done it right

and where you still find yourself, you know, tripping up and repeating patterns that you learned from your parents and how unconscious those impulses can be. Absolutely, you know, I'm a memoirist. I try to write nonfiction because I believe in the beauty that can come when we can dare to be vulnerable

about our lived experience. I know that a deep, profound, meaningful connection with other humans is available when we can open up or when we can pull the facade or mask away and say, you know what? I did this. And I try to tell the truth to the extent I can bear it. There are still plenty of truths I can't yet bear to tell,

but I'm only 53, we'll see if I get more years, who knows I may write more. Well, it gives people permission to express or at least contend with their own vulnerabilities. Like if you're creating a space in which, look, I can say this, maybe you can bring to the surface something that you've been repressing or hiding.

And I think we need more of that now. And if there is a fear with Gen Z and the younger generation, the digital natives, it's that they're so accustomed to communicating in a digital space and yet completely handicapped when it comes to how to actually interact with another individual in three dimensional space in real time.

Absolutely, one-on-one in person. In my new book, which is aimed at helping young adults thrive or really helping anyone live their best life as an adult, I talk about humans being everything, about human relationships at the end of the day, being the predictor or one of the greatest predictors of our longevity. I know you have done plenty of work on your own

and you know plenty of people who have all kinds of wisdom about how to live and thrive. And certainly we know from the Harvard Grant project, Harvard Grant study that's lasted for decades, that it's not your cholesterol level at 50 that determines whether you live a long life. It's the quality of your relationships at 50. And so I'm trying to help young people who haven't had a childhood where they just had to sit around with their friends and figure out what they wanted to do. with their friends and figure out what they wanted to do. And instead, if I had access to friends via technology,

I'm trying to help them learn how to go deep with a person. What are the questions you ask when you're really seeking to know? How do you show up with your body and your mind and your energy if you're really seeking to demonstrate care and concern and interest. These are the things. I think if I was a parent today of young ones, I would be really focused on helping them develop

that emotional intelligence, those soft skills around interacting with your fellow humans. Yeah, it's so crucial. And yet our educational system is bereft of any of that type of education. And I think it requires a certain level of emotional maturity on behalf of parents

to recognize the importance of that and to emphasize it. I just reflect back on when I was in my early 20s, I didn't have the facility to have that type of conversation. And I often lament the fact that I was at this unbelievable institution and didn't make appropriate use of it to engage with my inner voice.

Never once did I ask myself, what is it that I wanna be? I was on this track. This is what I was gonna do. This was what I was sort of set up to do and didn't have any emotional intelligence to even ask myself what it is that makes me uniquely me. What gets all these questions that you ask in the book, like what gets you excited?

What gets you out of bed in the morning? Like what are the activities that you naturally in the book, like, what gets you excited? What gets you out of bed in the morning? Like, what are the activities that you naturally gravitate towards? I was just on this habit trail. And I do remember, I mean, times are very different now, but I do remember, and I'm interested in whether you have this experience. I remember going to, and I've told this story before,

going to the career center at Stanford. Cause I was like, I don't know what I wanna do. And I remember there was a coffee table with some brochures on it. And it was like Boston Consulting Group, Anderson Consulting, Merrill Lynch. And that was kind of it. None of that. I was like, I don't even know what that is.

Like, what is consulting? Everybody seems to be interviewing with these consulting companies. Like, what exactly am I supposed to consult on? I don't know anything. And so law school just sort of happened because I didn't know quite what to do. And that was the socially approved route.

Yeah. Oh, Rich, what was your major? I started out as Humbio. And I thought I wanted to be a doctor. And I've often thought, I started part as Humbio and I thought I wanted to be a doctor. And I've often thought, you know, I kind of, I started partying too much and lost interest in that and pivoted to American studies, which I enjoyed. I was an American studies major. I'm sure we were in the same classes. I can't believe this.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, yeah. So first of all, I'm feeling a lot of compassion for your 18 to 22 year old self who didn't know, who didn't ask the right questions, so to speak, who wishes maybe he could go back and do those or some of those opportunities over again. I think it's a pretty universal lament though.

You know, at 18 to 22, as we now know, your prefrontal cortex is just starting to get itself locked in. And the expectation that you should know at that time, I think is a really ridiculous burden that we place on young people. It is ridiculous. And it's gotten worse because nowadays in any independent high school and any well-heeled public high school in America today, well-heeled public high school in America today, a child is asked at ninth grade,

what is your passion? Find your passion. Find your passion, kid, quick. Like it's hiding on a bookshelf and if they just work hard enough, they can find it. Why? Because a college admissions dean wants to know about it in their senior year, in January of their senior year,

or preferably November, because we want you to apply early, right? Find your passion in pursuit of pleasing somebody else who's going to admit or deny a new opportunity to you. It's become this utilitarian, perfunctory thing. I mean, I believe in passion and path and purpose and the rudder that steers you no matter which way the wind is blowing. I know my why. That's what I think of as passion. I'm just sort of really against the notion that every 18-year-old must have one outside of the fellow 18-year-old they're attracted to. I mean, that's a natural passion for someone at 18 to have. To know your life's

pursuit at 18, I think is rare. Yeah. I mean, de facto, when you're that age, you've only been exposed to a limited number of experiences. So how could you possibly know that? Yeah. I think a work that has been instrumental in helping me rethink that, and I think every young person should read is David Epstein's range.

Because we have this idea that a young person who toggles between many different things and can't quite commit and, you know, appears on the surface to sort of be lazy and disengaged. And somebody we would call a dilettante is actually just experimenting and exposing themselves to a number of experiences as part of that necessary process of either elimination or selection, right? So that book, I don't know if you read it, but it basically puts to the test the idea that high performers in all areas of life from academia to sports, science, et cetera, art, were people who at a very young age latched onto it and did the 10,000 hours thing and distinguished themselves.

When in truth, the reality is that these people are people who did lots of different things as a young person and have many, many experiences that then all inform the thing that they finally key in on and become an expert in. You know, I think I've done my 10,000 hours across three different careers and more than 10,000 hours. It took me some time to tell myself the truth

that I'm a people person, God damn it. And I'm gonna be a people person and I'm here to be a people person. I think when I was young, I thought the fact that I had people skills, I knew I had people skills. When I was little, people would come to me and ask me questions revealing vulnerability. They seemed to value my perspective.

They seemed to feel safe with me. That has been true all my life, as far back as I can remember. But I think, Rich, I thought that being a people person was somehow attached to my gender. I'm female, female presenting. Maybe it's a sort of female, girly thing. I didn't value it as a skill. We weren't speaking about soft skills or EQ when you and I were in college. I think I just discarded it. I was hell bent on being a left brain analytical lawyer who was going to have a profession that would allow me to make change

in the world and help people. I knew I wanted to help people, but I wanted to do it have a profession that would allow me to make change in the world and help people. I knew I wanted to help people, but I wanted to do it in a way that society told me was the right way. Tap into your intellect, tap into your left brain. Whereas the right brain side of me and the very soft EQ side of me was really underserved, massively underserved

when I chose corporate law, which of course was not a way to help people. It was a way to help me feel that I was meeting society's expectations. That was my people pleasing side, as you alluded to at the start. And so finally, in my misery, I came around to, you know what, I'm a people person.

I need to do work helping people. I need to figure that out. Julie, get back on the path that you know is your right path. And I keep iterating around to, okay, so what is the best way for me to try to help people now, now that I know what I know? I've been observing people for 53 years. And in my work, I'm continually trying to take whatever I've learned across those many hours of being immersed with humans, to try to turn that into something I can offer people back

by way of assistance. And perhaps all those different avenues that you pursued all inform the depth of the resonance that you can now share. It's not like, oh, I regret doing that. On some level, I'm sure those experiences contribute to the value that you can now. 100%.

Sure. Yeah, for example, I know, doesn't matter how much money they pay you, if you're miserable in the work, the money will never be compensation enough. And we can hear that a million times, but until you experience it, it's different. But I'm also rooting for us

not to have the high blood pressure before we leave the work or not to have our hair falling out before we decide to pivot. That's when we tend to give ourselves permission, right? I am dying here. We have that objective evidence that this isn't working for me.

And that allows us to say to our dads and moms and friends and society, like, okay, I couldn't take this. And I'm rooting for us all to find that truer north before the body starts to scream at us, stop, you're hurting me. Coming back for more, but first. All right, back to the show. What was the Rubicon for you with corporate law and getting out? It was the high blood pressure.

I mean, nine months in, I had a knot in my stomach at 2 p.m. on a Sunday, knowing I had to go back. Yeah, I know that feeling. I loved the people. You know the feeling. If you weren't at the office already on a Sunday afternoon knowing I had to go back. Yeah, I know that feeling. I loved the people, you know the feeling. If you weren't at the office already on a Sunday afternoon. I was gonna say, right, exactly, exactly. Every lawyer would make that caveat. Let me be clear, I was at a great firm, as far as firms go, great place, good people.

You were at Cooley, right? I was at Cooley in Palo Alto. Where were you? I was at Littler Mendel Mendelson in San Francisco for a while. And then I moved down here to work in a entertainment litigation firm. Okay. I was at Cooley, then I was in-house at Intel.

Bum, bum, bum, bum. Right. As a trademark lawyer, which is why I have to do that. So you took a base, you had some self-awareness to know, like maybe the law firm thing isn't good enough, but that's the typical sort of sidestep, like, oh, in-house. Go in-house,

the hours are better. Yeah, exactly. But here's the thing. After nine months, I had the knot in the stomach on the weekend. I was going into my doctor to, frankly, I think try to get pregnant. And she discovered my blood pressure was high and she wanted me to wear a cuff five times a day. And it was low in the morning and it was low at night and it was high at work. And so that was data. And I began to, I did this exercise with myself. I was sort of miserable out of my back porch

in Menlo Park one night, just, and mad at myself for being miserable because I'd done everything right, air quotes, right? The right college, the right law school, the right career, the right life, good money, mentored, great opportunity. Like they were telling me, hey kid, you're good at this. And so I couldn't understand my own discomfort

because I'd done everything right, so to speak. So I was impatient with myself and I'd gone to law school to help people. And now here I was miserable as a lawyer, you know, wanted to help those in misery, now feeling misery myself. And I gave myself this sort of tongue lashing, like you are not suffering. You know, you are unhappy, but figure it out because you have been given so much by way of opportunity. You got to figure out your way back to helping people. Your will, The solution lies in your will. Yeah. The application of your will to this problem. Yeah.

So I tried to leave three times. I knew our alma mater was up the street. I still have these very fond feelings for it as I do to this day. I was driving past Hoover Tower, you know, between home and work. And it was beckoning. Like you can work with people.

You can help people here, Julie. So I tried to get a job in student affairs and I tried to get a job in admissions and I tried for another job in student affairs. And every single time I'd make it far in the process with a great cover letter and great interviewing skills. And then they'd say, you don't have the skills actually to be a student affairs person because you didn't study this. You studied law. And finally I caught a lucky break. I filled in for somebody on maternity leave. That tells you where my will was and that tells you the risk I was willing to take. I went to my boss at Intel and said, I think I don't want to be this type of lawyer anymore.

I think I want a new career. I have a chance to test drive it by filling in for somebody. Will you hold my job for 10 weeks, 12 weeks? And she said, yeah. For your sake, I hope you like it. For my sake, I hope you don't. So not that risky, then that's pretty awesome. Well, if she had said no, I would have quit. Yeah. Yeah, but I thought,

because I was so determined at that point, I thought I better at least ask if I can, if she'll save my job for me, if she'll hold it. But if she doesn't, I know I'm gonna leave. It felt like an escape hatch and I had to take it, even if it was only a 12 week opportunity. And the stakes even higher because you're the primary breadwinner

in the household, right? Like your husband works part-time and is a caregiver to your kids. Certainly did once the kids came. At that time, we didn't have our kids yet, but that would be our pattern, our way of being parents. Yeah, so, and I take pride in not just being a breadwinner, but a huge piece of my identity is wrapped up in my work.

My husband is far less so that way. And so, yeah, I was determined to find work I was both good at and loved. I think that's what the knot in my stomach and the blood pressure taught me. Doesn't matter if you're good at it, if you hate it. You know, Andre Agassi, famous athlete, who's reportedly had that experience

of best in the world for a time, but pretty darn miserable at times. And I tell parents, like you don't wanna raise an Andre Agassi, you wanna raise a Jeremy Lin, who was in probably great at basketball and loved it and had his moment of absolute ecstasy in that sport. It's interesting what's happening in sports right now,

particularly women's sports with Naomi Osaka, like basically saying I'm taking a mental health break and all the kind of kerfuffle that happened around that. And then do you see what just happened today with Simone Biles? Yeah. Not a physical injury, just saying it's a mental health thing

and I'm opting out. Like that is wild. It's gotta be wild. I know that you have a degree of appreciation as an elite athlete that many can't possibly have for that circumstance. From my vantage point, they're both black women as am I. And the pressure we are under when we step out onto our platform, whatever it is, the pressure we are under in this America is immense. We are said to be sort of the exception when we break stereotype

and we are held to such impossibly high standards. And when we fall, then the vitriol comes. And I know without knowing either of these two remarkable young women, I know that the hate that they get on social media, the way in which they're excoriated impacts their mental health. In addition to, I'm sure the stress and pressure of being an elite athlete and all that comes with it. So my goodness, what a remarkable thing it is that they can say, you know what, I'm out, I can't, I'm not, I'm choosing not to do this.

I'm choosing to step to the side and do something that is even more important than winning this tournament or this medal, whatever it may be. Yeah, to do that at the Olympics when, you know, Simone being set up to be the darling of the entire games and all the success leading up to that and all the expectations,

like I can't begin to fathom what her interior experience must be like. Absolutely. And the level of courage it must've taken to just make that stand when so many people are invested in that success. And we treat our elite athletes like they're racehorses. And that is we're betting on them and we need them to win.

And we're on the side of this one, not this one. We see it in the NFL, we see it in the NBA. We see someone like Laura Ingraham saying to, I believe it was LeBron James, shut up and play. Right. Right? And I'm here to say as an African-American woman, we are not your racehorses. We are not your animals.

We are human beings who have dreams and fears and we bleed and we cry. And my God, every one of us rich just wants to be treated with dignity and kindness. You know, because I've heard you talk about it. That's the message of black lives matter. It's not, we matter more. We're not trying to be black supremacists. We're saying can't black life and black lives matter comma two.

And I think, you know, this, this dignity is probably one of the main adjectives I would use to describe Simone Biles right now. I mean, I think she even, if I read it correctly, one of her quotes was, you know, I was worried about my performance, my ability to perform, and I didn't want to jeopardize the team's chance of meddling. Here are people saying, now you're not going to get the gold because Simone withdrew. She was saying, I owe it to my team. I'm so worried about my performance. We might not meddle if I show up the way that I am.

So in some ways the ultimate sacrifice. Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting lens. I only just saw that it happened today and I didn't like delve deeper into better understanding it. But that idea of expectations and making sense of racial identity is obviously terrain that you've explored in your writing.

You wrote a memoir called Real American. And in that book, what I intuit or extrapolate from that is this journey towards self-love and self-acceptance, which was this missing piece driven by not really feeling like you fit in to any of the respective communities being biracial and with the parents with whom you were raised and the experiences that you had. And it broke my heart to hear you share stories

about being at Stanford and trying to seek out community and not really feeling like you could find it in the way that you wanted and understanding only later that you had to heal like your own sense of self, that it wasn't as much about you or about the community welcoming or not welcoming you. It was more about like how you perceived yourself. That's exactly right.

Black biracial kid, white mother, black father. My father, which was raised in the Jim Crow South, he would have been 103 if he was still alive. So really different era, born in 1918, escaped through track, was a great runner. They called him the Oklahoma Flyer when he got to Bates, was running track. And his trajectory was do not be impeded by white racism.

He helped eradicate smallpox in West Africa in the 60s. And being among Africans, his blackness was not an impediment to his thriving. And he really came of age as a black man in his 40s in West Africa on the smallpox team, came back to America in 1969 and was met with what he was familiar with. and was met with what he was familiar with. I was born to people who transgressed law by daring to marry. I was born to people who broke the rules by falling in love, marrying and having me.

And I got the message from age four as far as back I can trace it. I knew as a four-year-old that in the eyes of some white strangers, my daddy was problematic and that something was wrong with me too. I gleaned that. And I think my having lived outside the lines, having been uncontemplated positively, certainly in the late 60s when biraciality, multiraciality was not accepted the way it is now, I've lived outside the lines my whole life.

And I think when I think about, why do I try to help people on their journey? I was otherized from the start. I was rejected, dismissed. And I think that gives me a deep care and concern for anyone who, for whatever reason, has been marginalized. And your dad became assistant surgeon general under Carter. So we lived in Reston, Virginia, North Virginia when you were in DC.

Yeah, I noticed that. But it was before high school, right? It was, because Reagan beat Carter right as we were starting high school. Right. And your mom being white, but she would dress herself in beautiful African linens and fabrics and things like that. And that had its own kind of thing with it. Because she had spent seven years there. Right.

And her always wanting you to be proud of your blackness and your dad being someone who coming from that experience and having to weather what he went through, I'm sure compensating by wanting you to be achievement oriented so that the color of your skin would be irrelevant and you would be able to make your way in the world. But the piece that was missing was you coming to terms

with that and what it meant to you. Is that fair? Thank you for reading so closely. It's really quite moving when somebody holds your words that close. It really is, thank you. Yeah, that's exactly it. They would, if my father was alive today, he would say this.

My mother is alive, very much part of my life. My amazing mother. She would say, if she was sitting here with me right now, which she would love to be, by the way, she would say, you know, we just knew, we wanted you to be comfortable everywhere. We wanted to raise you so you could walk into any room and get what you needed, command attention,

get the respect you deserved. And I appreciate that that was their reality and their truth. What they overlooked is how desperately important it is for a black or brown child, and I can't speak for people with other identities, but I'm sure it may apply to others, to have peers who look like them, to have a few teachers who look like them, to have neighbors who look like them, to have a pediatrician or a librarian or another adult authority figure who looks like them. We say representation matters today

and I have lived a life that bears out that truth, Rich. When somebody wrote, look, I was at an all white high school. By all white, I mean 1200 kids, two Jews who were not considered white and me. And on my 17th birthday, somebody wrote the N-word on my locker. And I was president of the student council, doing very well academically, pom-pom girl, singer in the choir, popular, if you will.

I was so ashamed to be the person who had had the N-word written on her birthday sign on her locker that I didn't tell a soul. But I'm here to tell you that if one teacher over the course of those four years, and they were all white, so I don't need to say white teacher, had pulled me aside and said, hey, kid, you look a lot different from everyone else here. I want you to know I'm here for you. Should anything ever go down, you come see me. If one teacher had thought to have had that conversation with me, I feel like my experience would have been so much better.

I would have felt less ashamed, less bewildered and less alone. I'd like to think that that would be the case today. I do too. A lot has changed for sure. And yet look at us tumbling backward. Yeah, it's a confusing time. It is.

With all of this. And as much as I feel like we've made progress, there are so many glaring blind spots in all of this. And as much as I feel like we've made progress, there are so many glaring blind spots in all of this. Yeah, agreed. How does it look at Stanford these days on that tip? With regard to race relations? Yeah. You know, so I did leave nine years ago.

I can't speak for the ins and outs of campus life today. But of course, know plenty of people who are there. And I'm proud of our alma mater. You know, Stanford was co-ed from the start. Back in 1891, when the Ivies were only accepting men, our alma mater accepted people of all genders, as we would put it today. modder, accepted people of all genders, as we would put it today. Stanford is very much a place where diversity is cherished and championed. I think kids of color thrive there. I think queer kids thrive there. I think poor and working class kids are increasingly thriving there with concerted efforts within student affairs to ensure that folks in that community are supported and mentored by folks who have walked that path. There's a real intentionality around supporting the individual on their journey. And that place, not to say it's perfect, it is not perfect. An institution is simply made up of its people and we are all imperfect. But I think it's a place that can be proud of what it's doing even as it seeks to continue to

be better yeah i hope so yeah well well how did you feel with the response during the pandemic when they announced that so many sports were going to be cut i watched the community feel anguish. Going back to this notion of Stanford always marrying excellence in athletics with excellence in academics, winning that NCAA cup every single year, making a decision to cut sports. I mean, I just felt heartbroken for the athletes because I know what it feels like

when you're so invested in your sport and you're on kind of a ticking clock timetable, like the lifespan of the athlete, particularly the NCAA athlete is not very long. So a year is like eons, that makes the difference between you achieving your potential and missing your window to do your thing. And I just couldn't help but think what I would have felt like had I been in that situation

and I would have been devastated. Absolutely. Yeah, I can't imagine having to figure that out. And just now watching the Olympics, you see Katie Ledecky got a silver the other day in an event that I'm sure she and everybody expected that she would win. And I couldn't help but think if the Olympics had gone on

as scheduled last year, there's no way she would have lost that race. And I don't know what her past year has been like. It's been challenging for everybody. And a silver still amazing. And she's an extraordinary human and athlete. So good for her, but it's not without its toll. And yet in the grand scheme of things,

like we're dealing with a global pandemic and people are dying and we're trying to solve this problem and figure out how to keep everybody safe. These are not easy problems to solve and compromises are made and decisions are made. Some of which we'll look back on in retrospect and say those were the wrong decisions. And some of which of course we'll say,

it's good that we did that as soon as we did. So, I don't know beyond that, I'm not sure I have any great insight, but other than just compassion for all of this. Back to this idea of raising healthy adults, how to become a healthy adult. What I loved about the first book, how to raise an adult is that the New York Times called it

the Black Hawk Down of helicopter parenting. Like that is like the ultimate line. That's so awesome. Yeah, it was, look, it's pretty cool when you get the call that your book's gonna be reviewed and then you read the review and it's positive. And then they use an awesome line like that. It was pretty much kind of a grand slam for me.

Right. And when I think of you and the work, I think of Jonathan Haidt, Jessica Leahy, Susan David, who tweeted this morning. You saw that tweet, right? Yeah. In response to us getting together. Lisa DeMore, Lori Gottlieb,

who comes up quite a bit in your writing as this sort of brain trust of people who have thought deeply about the issue of how to effectively raise young people and position them for success in the world. Yeah, I missed the question. It's not really a question, it's more just an observation.

Like, I suppose I would say you're not alone in having this perspective. There are other people that share it who, you know, are excellent writers and deep thinkers and academics, et cetera. And so I feel like these ideas are percolating in the culture at the moment. And I wonder how much of it is being put into practice.

And I say this because when you share the experiences that you've had with parents, when you were a Dean of freshmen at Stanford, and I kind of see what I see out in the world, there's this sense that we're producing a generation of very fragile human beings who are overly sensitive and it's all about safe spaces and entitlement and kind of the other catch words that you hear.

And I feel like for a while, there was this sense that, well, when they leave the protective enclave of the college or the university and go out into the real world, they're gonna get a dose of real life medicine. And they're gonna figure out that, what worked for them in university is no longer gonna work.

But instead, I think what we're seeing is, generations of people who are matriculating into the grownup world, and then sort of rise into positions of influence where they're hiring people. And now we're seeing entire industries, whether it's journalism or entertainment, where that sensibility is now part and parcel

of kind of what we consume in terms of the news that we read and the programming that we consume. So how do you, yeah, that's not a question either, but. Yeah, no, but I appreciate your elucidating, your perspective on this. You know, there are a lot of folks who would call the concept of safe spaces, a snowflake concept. And I think there are extremes one can go to

where one is unwilling to hear a thought they don't like or that they find offensive. And I find that very problematic because I am very much a believer that you counteract harmful speech with more speech and that you have to know your enemy quote unquote perspective in order to strengthen your own perspectives. You have to be aware of quote unquote the other side. So I'm not interested in safe spaces where people put their fingers in their ears and go, la, la, la, la, la, I'm not listening. At the same time, I think the request for safe spaces and the request for kinder language has come out of the

let's not harass people doctrine and has come out of the social justice doctrine. Like let's treat people with dignity slash let's not be assholes here. Sure. So I think I'm longing for that middle ground, which is we can be frank and blunt. We can disagree. And yet we're not demeaning people on the basis of some aspect of their identity. And I think Gen Z, frankly, has the tenacity to get us there. I try not to be too much of a blanket, you know, Gen Z are this, millennials are that, Gen X is that, but Gen Z has been raised,

first of all, the most diverse generation in American history. They've been raised with social and emotional learning in their schooling. Their media has depicted a more diverse range of characters than any prior generation. They've had active shooter drills since they were kindergartners.

They have lived in a different America. They have learned that the adults have not solved the problems. And they seem collectively to have a voice that says, move over, we're here. Oh, and I forgot to mention, they understand technology innately. So I'm actually here as a Gen Xer 53 to say, you know what? I want to stand with you. I'm not going to be that okay boomer elder who tries to tell them what to do they are reshaping a world they arrived into broken the world was broken and they i think are people we can learn from so i'm here with curiosity

and a little bit of that older wisdom like what don't forget you have to try to talk to people look them in the eye if you can asterisk i will say because what we now know more than ever is some people have social anxiety and some people are on the autism spectrum. And you can't just say, look me in the eye, what's wrong with you? You have to appreciate, not everyone can. So I think we are in this 21st century arriving at an understanding of our many, many myriad differences and the ways in which appreciating those differences can actually evolve us forward as a human community. Very well said. I mean, can actually evolve us forward as a human community. Very well said. I mean, certainly an appreciation for those differences

and a recognition and a respect for that is crucial and important. On the resiliency piece though, I think perhaps what's getting missed, maybe I'm totally off base here, but is a resiliency to be able to engage with people who have a different point of view without it being necessarily quote unquote unsafe, right?

Can we have a nuanced conversation where two people who disagree can sit down and maybe leave that conversation still not agreeing, but do it in a way in which each is conducting themselves with some level of like maturity and respect. A hundred percent. And I would say back to you, so where did we go wrong? Or maybe the more interesting question is,

where do we turn to reinstate if it ever did exist? Where do we go to reinstate that manner of being? Is it the family? Is it youth groups that no longer exist the way they used to because now it's all about performance-based youth groups and it's not about character? You know, where are we,

what institutions are currently failing us and which ones are we gonna shore up? You know, look at what's happening in America and it's like, my gosh, when did we stop teaching science? When did we stop teaching ethics? When did we stop teaching how a democracy works and how it functions? Like, why is it that all of these things we consider the underpinnings of this experiment called America seem to be fragile now? And where do we go to shore them up or completely rebuild the foundations. I do think our universities have to be places where people with wildly differing viewpoints can and will talk with one another, can and will find spaces to be heard. I think that's essential.

It has to be that way. It has to. But before university, I think in our K-12 environment, it shouldn't be about clamping earmuffs and blinders on our kids so that they don't see and don't hear, but rather we get better at engaging in difficult discourse. And character is at the heart of how we can bridge the gaps, right? If you and I can be of good

character, be kind, treat each other with dignity, and have completely different viewpoints, but not excoriate each other, not demean each other, you know, we can get somewhere. Right, right. So we can point the finger at the family or the university or the institution or the corporation, but ultimately those are things that we have very little control over.

What we do have control over is how we acquit ourselves. Right, so in this book, Your Turn, you go through, I mean, it's like freaking 500 pages long. I know. Thank you for reading. But what's great about it is- Cause life is long, Richard, it should be. You can't TLDR adulthood.

This thing is, I mean, it is a book, right? It is a book. And what's great about it is it's perennial, right? This is like a book that parents can give to their young ones as they're emerging into the grownup world every single year upon graduation. It's a book that I think every young person who is grappling with how they're gonna navigate

adulthood can benefit from. And me being 54, wishing that I had a book like this when we were back, you know, finishing up our years at Stanford to help me make sense of how I was gonna, you know, try to figure out how to be a man in the world. There was no book like this. You know, I basically fumbled around

and made a million mistakes. And until I finally started to figure out a few things for myself, but this is really kind of a roadmap and a manifesto and a primer for things that young people need to take responsibility for and need to think about. But it really all begins with this inward journey of self-connection, learning how to love yourself

and also learning how to pay attention to what moves you. That's really the first base of this whole thing. I love that. As you know, cause you've read it, I opened by saying, I failed to write this book that you're now reading because I couldn't claim the authority my publisher had given me

and given me a book contract to write it. And then I appreciated who is an authority on adulting? Either we all are or none of us is, right? It's not authority in the traditional sense. There isn't a PhD. Hold yourself out as an authority. There isn't a PhD in adulting I failed to attain for myself. I came to appreciate, I care about humans.

I observe humans. I've studied my own life pretty thoroughly. Therefore, I think being older, farther into this landscape called adulting I can take what I know turn around and shine a warm light back on those younger than me that's all I'm trying to do

the failings and the fumblings and the flailings and all the other stuff that you talk about having gone through I call those life's beautiful f-words we need them they are our teachers of other stuff that you talk about having gone through, I call those life's beautiful F-words. We need them. They are our teachers. When you screwed up in the pool, your coach told you you screwed up. They told you, maybe you watch tape. I don't know what swimmers do, but you focus on, bend your arm this way or kick your legs that way or take your breath this way. You screwed up,

and that allows you to focus in on what you need to do differently and improve. You know, you screwed up and that allows you to focus in on what you need to do differently and improve. This is what life is. It's a continual opportunity to get better and better and better and clearer on being who we are. And so I'm hearing this book say, yeah, you're gonna screw up. Yeah, you're not perfect.

Forget that. That is not the destination you seek. It is a fallacy. You're here to learn and grow. You know, I think we need a referendum on what we're talking about when we talk about failure. I wish there was a fallacy. You're here to learn and grow. You know, I think we need a referendum on what we're talking about when we talk about failure. I wish there was a different word that could replace that. Yeah, because nobody wants to fail.

But it's- Nobody does. But also no success is born out of failing to fail. Like all success comes from a resiliency around failure and a tolerance level for messing up because those are the experiences that teach us the most. That's exactly right. And let me model what can happen after you fail

and you forget what you're about to say, you can come back to it, which is I came to realize as I'm writing this book, maybe I'm not attending to my mind and body the way that I need to. I'm advising my younger readers, take good care, your mind and body, I say, are to. I'm advising my younger readers, take good care. Your mind and body, I say, are sort of like the wheels of a bicycle. And you're not going to get

where you want to go if you're not attending to them. I'm now at a place, relatively speaking, through mindfulness of much greater self-awareness, which has led to self-love, having exercised the demons of internalized oppression that were in me saying, you're not worthy as a black person. I have dislodged them from my spirit and soul. I've become clear on who I am and what I want and where I want to learn and grow now, next. And now my prayer, I'm not a religious person. I'm a spiritual, but not religious person. Now my ask is, person. I'm a spiritual, but not religious person. Now my ask is, please let me live long enough in this being that finally loves and knows herself. And this is a sentence I could not have uttered at 21. And I am delighted for the joy that fills me when I say that.

I think I'm saying like, I am directly working my shit out. I am in that process and I have been through a lot and there will be more. And I know that the process is the work and is the life and I am loving it. Please, now that I have come to this understanding of what life is,

let me have as much of it as possible. Beautiful. Shit. The poet much of it as possible. Beautiful. Shit. The poet in you just came out. I love that. I mean, what is the process look like for you to get to that place? Like what specifically were the things

that you were doing to wrestle with the demons and exercise them. I have a little hesitancy engaging with you on this because of who you are, because you're an elite athlete, because you are plant-based and vegan. And I'm just saying, like, let me just say, right? I'm not that person. You are that person.

I know you're not judging me, I'm pretty clear. And yet just as if I was in the presence of an Olympic athlete and I was an amateur in the sport, I would be like, okay, can I really share my struggles with this person? Rich, I was afraid to go to doctors most of my life. And that's because when you and I were juniors at Stanford University, I went into the student health center for a bronchial cough that had dogged me for five weeks and the doctor put me on a 1200 calorie diet. He said, do you know how much weight you've gained since you got to Stanford? I was rowing for the women's crew team freshman year.

I shouldn't be a rower. I'm not tall enough to row, but I loved it. I stroked the third boat, women's novice crew, the best of the worst, and felt the pride of wearing my uniform and rowing for Stanford. And I put on weight when I stopped rowing. I'd put on about 30 pounds in two and a half years. So I was a lot less than I am now. I assure you I was about 175 pounds That day which is far less than I am now And that doctor instead of treating my cough Said do you know how much weight you've gained since you got here and I didn't know

And he came out with went out and found a flyer with a 1200 calorie diet And I learned and I said, okay. What about my cough? And he said oh, we'll give you antibiotics for that And I learned in that day that when I have a legitimate health issue, it will be about my weight And it kept me from seeking Um a doctor's advice when I couldn't conceive for two and a half years because I was worried I was too heavy to have a child. I wasn't Okay, I was afraid And in writing this book to try to help other people on their journey, I said, God damn it, Julie, get into the doctor.

And I discovered that through a sleep study, I wake up gasping for air at night. And I've been wearing a CPAP machine now for two weeks. And it has changed my life. I'm thinking clearly now. I have this sense of what it means to wake rested. I'm looking after that self and it may sound weird or simple to people, but I'm telling you my journey to that mask, to that diagnosis, to that doctor's office was a long one. And I'm glad that I went. And anyone listening who's like got a nagging anything, wherever it might be in your mind or body, and you're like, yeah, I probably need to get on in there, go. My information is largely good and you deserve it. If you have the privilege of access to healthcare

and a way to pay for it, go and get it. I'm sorry that you had that experience at Stanford and that it took so long for you to come to terms with that. That's heartbreaking, but I'm glad. It took so long for you to come to terms with that. That's heartbreaking, but I'm glad. Sounds like, you know, that was a big solution for you. So that's cool. And I can't help but think that there's a relationship

between your writing and problem solving. Like Real American really is the product of you trying to make sense of this idea of racial identity for yourself. And in the process of writing these other, kind of parenting, adulting books, you're able to kind of solve some of these other lingering problems that you've had, right?

Like they're living, breathing documents that are compelling you to live the truth that you're speaking on the pages. Absolutely. I'm trying to achieve that. I think I do experience that. And I'm trying to be of service. I believe you can write all you want about your life in your journal, but if you're going to take the leap and say, other people should read it, I'm going to publish it, it damn well better be because you want to be of service and think you can. And the joy that I've experienced as the author of Real American, which came out about close to four years ago now, in the book signing line, black and brown people will linger to the back, queer people will linger to the back,

people who've been marginalized and otherized for other reasons will linger. And then they'll come. And you know what this is like when people come to the book signing line and they lean in and they reach out for your hand and they say, thank you for telling your story. I feel seen. I feel less alone. I've never said the things out loud you just delivered in your reading or that are between the pages of this book. And when that happens to me, I hold the person's hand and we go back and forth and I smile and I look at them in the eye and I say, I wrote this for all of us.

And that's how I feel about the new book. I'm here rooting for everyone to make it. And I feel like I don't have all the answers, but maybe I can write a book that is like a mirror that I hold up to you and you see yourself where you need to in its pages. Every reader is going to relate differently. Yeah. Right. Well, one of the reasons why this book is so long and I should qualify, I'm not, I haven't gotten all the way through it. I'm still in the middle of it. But one of the reasons why it's like 500 pages is because a lot of it is sharing the stories of this just wide diversity of young people's experiences, right? Like you interviewed or conversed

with so many different types of people from different walks of life. So that I can only presume the reader will be able to find the thing that they're looking for. That's exactly right. What they need to hear from the right person. Like it's not just about the information, it's who's delivering the information in a manner in which I can hear it because I relate to that person's experience. Yeah. So back to what I said about never belonging, being otherized from the start.

I know what that feels like. I know what it feels like to open a nonfiction book and feel like it was written for white middle-class straight folk. Right, that's like my book. Well, but now you know, don't do that, right? White folks haven't had to think about those things as a routine matter because y'all are the,

what we call the majority and the norm. And well, those things are thankfully starting to be questioned and changed. And I'm trying to do my small part as an author to say, I'm going to write a nonfiction book that purports to be for everybody and to demonstrate that it is. I'm going to try to make sure that I'm careful to mention and bring in quote unquote, everybody. If I say you need to make eye contact, I'm going to say, this may be hard for you. If culturally people like you aren't need to make eye contact, I'm going to say this may be hard for you if culturally people like you aren't supposed to make eye contact or you have social anxiety or you are on the spectrum. I try to, in the advice giving, acknowledge the folks for whom it might be different. I'm also trying to say don't dare give examples that only emanate from one narrow swath of the human community.

Everybody does matter. Everybody does matter. Everybody should matter. If everyone is to matter, we got to do a much better job of bringing those who have traditionally been marginalized onto the center of the page. There's so many interesting and compelling ideas in the book, and we obviously don't have time to talk about all of them, but there's a couple that I would like to highlight, not the least of which is this idea of fending, right? So explain what that means. So what is fending?

You know, it's funny, Rich, since the book came out, people have really called out that term. They're like, fending, you used that term. I was like, wait, what does that mean exactly? I know defending, fending for yourself. So all I can say is this term was such a part of my childhood. My parents must've constantly been talking about when you're grown up, you fend for yourself.

Because to me, it's a word that we use like any other word. Fending is this visceral animal kingdom truth that applies to us humans. We're mammals. Can we posit that, right? We're mammals. We have jackets and cell phones, right? We wear fancy watches and sneakers and we are mammals. And like any mammal parent, we have to know for our own biological determination, like we have to know our genes will get passed on. How do our genes get passed on? If our kids can fend for themselves out in the world without us, like any mammal parent, we need to know that. So fending comprises the small set of things,

small, basic, fundamental set of things a human's got to be able to do in order to take care of business, take care of their body, their belongings, their bills. Adulting is, you know, you are more or less responsible for yourself. It doesn't mean you go it alone, but more or less, you're responsible for yourself. Childhood, someone else was more or less responsible for you, assuming your parents could show up and did show up to look after you. So fending is that I'm responsible for myself, more or less. It's the basics basics which is why it's only you know chapter two right out of 13 right and I feel like parents understand this intellectually but in practice we end up kind of doing it ourselves for them because it's just easier that's right and we

believe or we delude ourselves into thinking that by doing it while they're observing it, that they're learning how to do it, but actually you're handicapping them and creating a dependency. So there's actually a four-step method for teaching any kid any skill. And we'd seem to be ignoring steps two and three and expecting them to go from step one to step four. Step one is we do it for them.

Step two is we do it with them. Step three is we flip the tables and watch them do it, but we're still there. Step four is we do it for them. Step two is we do it with them. Step three is we flip the tables and watch them do it, but we're still there. Step four is they can do it. When we're over parenting, we're in step one, maybe step two. We're there handling, fixing. Of course we can do it, Rich. We've been fourth graders. It's their turn, right? Okay. We're supposed to- But I'm late. I got to get to work and you know this kid can't tie his shoes exactly so i gotta get going then you have an eight-year-old who can't tie their shoes or i'm too busy to teach them to cross the streets then you have a 12-year-old who's never crossed

the street by themselves so you can see the ways in which we undermine we have to parent with a little bit more patience and for the longer term i, I like to tell folks, like it or not, and nobody likes it, we'll be dead one day. We have to raise our kids so that when we are gone and hopefully well before, they've got it. They can look after us in our old age. Obviously there's a spectrum between helicopter parenting and like kind of, you know, flagrant disregard. Yeah. So, you know, where is the line? How

do we find that sweet spot or where is that line? Like identifying that. And I suspect it's going to be different with every kid. Yes. Sure. It's different for every kid, just as you've got your four and you're going to pay attention to their needs and proclivities and whatnot and do things slightly differently. Every kid is different. And yet there are fundamental things. So I'm going to use the sport of bowling as a visual metaphor for where you draw the line or where you put up the bumpers. Okay. When somebody is brand new at bowling, you raise the bumpers so that their ball doesn't go into the gutter. So they have some chance of hitting a pin and not just flailing, not just, right? When we over-parent, it's as if we're taking those bumpers and instead of just putting them at the

edge where the gutters are, which the parenting equivalent of is make sure your kid doesn't drown, make sure your kid doesn't walk into traffic. Okay. Life or death, we're supposed to protect them from dying. Okay. And let them have the experiences of life. Let that ball meander and maybe it'll hit a pin or two. And maybe over time, it'll hit three and then five and then 10. Okay, we bring the bumpers or the guardrails or whatever they're called. Clearly, I'm not actually a bowler. We bring them in so narrowly.

And if you can see me now, I'm holding my hands at the width of a bowling ball so that the kid just throws the ball and we are right there making sure it goes straight down. And they miss out on the experiences that will teach them how to throw the ball straighter and more confidently and with greater heft. Okay. That's the visual. Okay. We're also supposed to be delighted by them learning a skill. So sometimes parents say, when do you start? Whereas the line is a sometimes parents say, when do you start? Whereas the line is a question I get, when do you start giving them independence? I also get, and I say back, why did you stop? When they were learning to walk, you didn't over-parent. They fell. You didn't yell, get up. We're embarrassed by you. Your older brother walked sooner, right? We don't

do that. We take pictures and clap and laugh and video grandma. If we over-parented in that moment, it would be to get behind them on our knees and put our hands under their armpits and slowly walk them forward toward the other parent. And then we'd get to the end and say, we walked, right? No, you didn't. You did. The kid didn't. If they forever fall into your strong body, they haven't learned the skill. did, the kid didn't. If they forever fall into your strong body, they haven't learned the skill.

So the right line there is remove the objects on which they can impale themselves if they fall while learning to walk. Make sure the environment is safe, but let them go and do it. Yeah. Yeah. Over time, of course, this leads to the messaging is you're not capable of doing it yourself unless I'm helping yourself. That's right. Unless I'm helping you. That's right. And that really is pernicious. It is. And it messes with their developing brain and their sense of self.

And it's hard to correlate a parenting style with anything because parenting is 24 seven and it's hard to have a control group of children who weren't parented that way. Right. But people who study this have correlated the over-involved parenting style with higher rates of anxiety and depression in children because we are undermining the development of agency, which is the sense I can, and the development of resilience that comes from things not going great and you discover I can cope. We undermine the development of these things, which really are the foundations of a healthy life when we over help.

Yeah, there's an addiction piece in there too, right? The more deprived of that agency at a young age, the more there's a through line with addiction later in life or when they get to college, et cetera. Tell me. I don't know. I thought that was something that was addressed in something that I read in your work,

or at least over consumption, like this idea. I mean, it's certainly, it's my story, like getting 3000 miles away, suddenly being in college and on some level, free from the day to day kind of oversight that was a little bit overwhelming for me, I went in the other direction and kind of went a little bit nuts. And I have to believe that that's a fairly common experience. I imagine that's true. Absolutely. What I read about is what I hear about when I hear college administrators and high school leaders talking about kids,

interacting with kids, the pre-gaming that can happen, that does happen, of course, before parties and before events. This is all pre-pandemic when getting together was easier. Many people hypothesize that the pre-gaming today is in part to help reduce the tremendous anxiety around, I don't know how to talk to anybody.

I don't know how to be with anybody. I gotta get a little buzz on before I go to the party. So I can, I mean, I relate to that. I did that. Like I completely relate to that. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, that's a good segue into the whole thing about talking to strangers, right?

It's like, I just see this with young people and with our youngest, the whole thing about talking to strangers, right? Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's like, I just see this with young people and with our youngest, the discomfort with having a conversation with a real human being when everything is app-based and text-based. Yeah. It's like, I can't text the person.

No, you have to pick up the phone and actually call them. And here's the question you need to ask, impossible. Right, so we parents- Impossible. We've gotta train our kids how to ask, impossible. Right, so we've got to train our kids how to use the phone. Isn't that weird? But I'm here to say, I have done that. I have said, okay, learning to talk on the phone

is a skill, you've got to practice it. It's like hilarious that we're even talking about this. But here's why, but here's why. You grew up in DC? Yeah. All right, when you wanted to call a friend in middle school or high school, you called, it was a phone on the wall. Maybe there's a long cord and you took it into your bedroom

if you're looking for privacy, but no idea who would answer the phone. We had the party line. Okay, so you would call and if you had manners, which I'm sure you did, you would say, hello, this is Rich or Rich Roll. Hello, Mr. Smith, this is Rich rich may i please speak to whomever you had to oftentimes you had to get through your friend's parent or older sibling before you could get to

your friend our kids don't have to do that they don't have there there aren't these places of interference they can directly get to each other so of course it must be scary to think of, oh my gosh, I've got to talk to somebody I don't know. So yes, we have to teach it. Yeah. Yeah. We have to teach it. Just like we have to teach email etiquette.

How do you, if you're going to thrive in the workplace, you got to know how to write an email that feels respectful to whomever might be on the receiving end, whether a customer or a higher up or a colleague, right? We've got to teach these things. But the big one here is stop pleasing others. Yeah.

Which goes to the people pleasing thing that you and I share. Absolutely. Yeah. Every time you say that. That's a tough one. It does make me giggle. Yeah.

Yes, no, 100%. I have very much been a people pleaser. every time you say that, it does make me giggle. Yeah. Um, yes, no, a hundred percent. I'm a, I have very much been a people pleaser. And frankly, once I became more self-loving, then I got, uh, rid of a good chunk of it. Um, but it's still very much there. Of course, I'm just aware of it now. And I'm aware of cropping up and I can feel it and be like, oh, that's what you're doing. You're people pleasing. That chapter is stop pleasing others. They have no idea who you are.

And that subtitle is the kicker for me because I am here, remember rooting for them to thrive. So I'm saying like, it doesn't matter what your parent, your dad, your mom, your grandparent, your entire family, your ethnic community, your peers think is legitimate. This is your one wild and precious life. They do not know you better than you know yourself. And if they say they do and you feel they might, that is problematic. You need to wrestle your life away from the people in whose

hands it is being held. There's a bit of an ego piece in that as well, because it presupposes that, I mean, your parents are gonna care, but most people don't care, right? Right. Like, be you. Yeah. Most people would tell you that, right? But we feel like we have to be a certain way in order to get their approval or to be perceived in the way that we would like to be perceived,

missing the bigger picture, which is that people tend to gravitate towards people who feel self-actualized. Like there's an energy that that person emits that makes them infinitely more attractive than the person who is needy and just sort of coveting favor in that weird way. Absolutely. I saw so many college students who were majoring in pre-med because they had to, and maybe didn't want to be pre-med and were biding the time until they had the white coat and the MD degree to tell their folks, hey, I don't want to be a doctor anymore. But I also saw students who wanted to be nurses and EMTs and were consistently told, oh, you're too smart for that.

Go all the way and become a doctor as if there's this linear path from one of those other professions to being a doctor. And somehow it is a failure to stop at the level of EMT or nurse. I mean, who's more on the front line saving lives in the moment constantly than an EMT? And who among us has the right to say, oh, that's beneath you.

A lot of people who wanna teach and yet are at elite universities are told, oh no, go for the PhD and be a professor. Well, maybe you really wanna teach seventh graders because seventh grade was when somebody saw you in your capability. You didn't even believe in yourself, but they did and they mentored you.

And now you're this thriving, successful person because of your seventh grade teacher. And you wanna be that in a life of a new generation of kids. I'm here rooting for that to happen. Yeah, I do feel like there's been some tectonic shifts in education more broadly due to advances in technology and also kind of what the pandemic has reaped in terms of how we interface with education.

And also I hope, I feel like there's a little bit greater appreciation for trade than there used to be. Like it used to be, look, if you got a good job as a trades person, you could support your family, you could own a home. And that was a respectful path. And along the way, we lost our respect for that. But now because colleges become so expensive and inaccessible to so many people,

I'm seeing more and more people say, do we really need college? Like is college really the right thing for this kid? Maybe they can find their sense of self in an other direction. And there's a permissiveness to that that I think didn't exist when we were graduating from high school.

I think that's absolutely right. And I think it's both because college has gotten more expensive and out of reach and because more and more people are willing to say, you know what, I'm actually good at this thing. I love working with my hands and this is what I make and I'm good at it and I wanna get better at it. And the wages are good and the benefits are good.

Maybe there's even that sort of old fashioned employer, employee handshake where it's like, you work for me and I'll take care of you. And it's pretty enticing thing these days. Yeah, and I think the internet exposes young people to a broader diversity of career paths than the brochures that were on the coffee table at Stanford

when we were there. Right. And I think that allows people at a younger age to have a greater depth of imagination for what their life could look like. And yet I feel like education is still stuck in a certain kind of system or rubric that in many ways is outdated

given all the technological advances that we have. And given that we're gonna live to a hundred, right? So many of your kids and mine, they might as a routine matter, live to 100. So the notion that education is finite or education is only for the young is just really outdated. So, yeah, I'm excited to see the ways. Well, I'm optimistic and hopeful that the pandemic has so jostled the way in which we try to educate folks. we try to educate folks that the cleverest and most creative and forward thinking among us will seize this moment to reimagine K-12 and higher ed and the concept of education. But of course we see many who are going right back into the rows and sage on the stage and, you know,

content up at the front and it all has to, right? I mean, there are plenty of people just dying to go right back to what it was, not learning the lessons. To institutions that have absurd amounts of wealth, these funds and the amount of real estate that Stanford sits on, for example. I feel like the university fundamentally should be a public servant

and shouldn't be about restriction, but should be about expansion. And why, especially after going through 18 months of the pandemic, couldn't an institution like Stanford pivot to create a state-of-the-art digital experience that would be widely available to a much greater number of young people at a much more affordable rate. They're not going to be able to go live in Branner, but maybe from the comfort of their own home, they could get some version of the Stanford experience that would be a great service to humanity.

If you took like all of these collegiate institutions and reformulated them so that they could create greater accessibility. There has to be some deep thinking around this at these institutions. Or outside of them. Or is their brand so rooted in the exclusivity? Like that's their bread and butter.

So we're not gonna let go of that. And certainly Malcolm Gladwell has just in the last couple of weeks written about that. I mean, this is his thing. I know. He's going back to this. Maybe it's because he's Canadian. Stanford is in his sights.

I mean, he goes after it all the time. Yeah, yeah. He's just written a beautiful piece on the absurdity of the US news rankings, which I applaud. Well, he's doing something, I think it's coming up in an upcoming episode where he tries to game the system.

He goes to a smaller college and tries to figure out what they need to do in order to get higher up in the rankings to sort of play a game with it. Right. Because it's bullshit. Yeah, it is bullshit. And that's a big thing of what you talk about,

which is getting parents comfortable with the idea that it's not just bullshit, but there are all kinds of amazing institutions out there. Just like let go of this idea that if your kid doesn't get into the one of these colleges that not only did he or she fail, that you failed as well. So it's not where you go, it's who you are

and what you're capable of when you show up wherever you go. I'm a huge fan of the Small Liberal Arts College and I'll tell you why. When I was an administrator, a high-level administrator and dean at Stanford, I heard Stanford faculty saying, wouldn't it be great if we were like Reed College, which is a small liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. And what the context was,

and Stanford, of course, is an amazing place and excels at what it does and is, but it is not a small liberal arts college. And the faculty member was basically saying, the faculty at Reed only have to care about mentoring and teaching undergraduates because there aren't a set of graduate students. There isn't a research imperative, unlike a world-class university where the imperative is to create new knowledge and disseminate it. At a small liberal arts college, it's all about teaching and mentoring the undergrads. And places like Stanford are trying their best to incentivize faculty to also care about the undergraduates. And I think Stanford, among its peers, does a pretty darn good job of that.

But I'm here to say, if you want a truly amazing undergraduate education, be sure you're going to a place where the faculty can make time to meet with you and to know you and take an interest in your interests and your fears and your dreams. And that happens at small liberal arts colleges. It also happens at community colleges. And so those are two examples of categories that folks should be really investigating in addition to whatever other schools are sort of commonly talked about in your community. So if you're a young person listening right now and maybe you've got a job that you're gonna be starting in the fall

or maybe you don't have a job and you're going to be starting in the fall, or maybe you don't have a job and you're really just not sure what the next step is. What are the kinds of things that you say to that person to help get them thinking about who they are, what they might want to express, and kind of moving forward on a healthy trajectory? I think the first thing I would say is start anywhere. This comes from the field of improv. This comes from Silicon Valley design thinking, bias toward action, start. Any job is gonna give you some important pieces of data,

data about that industry and way of being in that industry and data about yourself. And your job is to try to be as learned and effort-making as possible in that environment. Learn what you can about the place and yourself and then examine those data and say, well, how am I doing? Do I like this?

Why? How am I showing up here? What is it telling me about myself? What does it tell me I might want to do differently? Look, my first job was as a corn detasseler in Wisconsin. Working for minimum wage, I know. Corn detassel, what? Yeah, you have to take the tassels

off the tops of the corn stalk. So that something about cross-pollination. And that was my summer job after a freshman year at Stanford. And I lasted for two days because I was walking in the hot sun and miserable. And it was a minimum wage job. So I quit and I got another minimum wage job as a bus girl at Perkins,

which was a 24 hour restaurant where I got to interact with people. And that was one of the earliest clues to me that I'm a people person. If the job can be really arduous or unpleasant, but if there are people with whom I can interact, I'll be fine. That was an early clue to me. So anyway, so to someone who doesn't know i'd say start start anywhere and pay attention to what you like and what you don't then iterate yeah to people who are like i could do this i could do that i could do this i got to keep all my options open i would say keep your options open is a blunt form of criticism or if criticism in disguise usually from your parents are like oh when you say i want to do this this summer like oh keep your options

open that's their way of saying i don't like that option choose a different one right or if you fail usually from your parents are like, oh, when you say, I wanna do this this summer, they're like, oh, keep your options open. That's their way of saying, I don't like that option. Choose a different one. Right, or if you fail, bad things are gonna happen. It's sort of catastrophizing. Yeah, so I would say your 20s, at the Design School at Stanford, they call them your odyssey years. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans have written about this

in their book and in the class they teach. These are your odyssey years. And let that not be an entirely privileged statement. These are the years when you can explore, what is my mind interested in? What does my body like to do? What are the environments in which I thrive? What are the ways in which I like to learn and contribute? You're gathering data about yourself. Long gone are the days of you will do one thing. You know, your grandfather, your great-grandfather lived that life. Your life is gonna have many more facets to it. Yeah, no longer.

And it is a situation in which there's tension between sticking it out in a job that's not great to kind of develop a little bit of grit and resilience around just weathering stuff that just kind of sucks to do versus, you know, I have a history of staying in jobs too long because I thought, well, I'm just,

I'll just figure it out. Like I just need to like, you know, buckle down and suck it up until, you know, I have a full blown existential crisis. But on the other hand, you know, just quitting the moment it gets hard isn't good either, right? So there's a sweet spot in which you gotta develop

those kind of whatever the skills are that you're trying to learn in that job while also having a healthy recognition of like, this isn't gonna be my lifelong thing. At some point I'll pull the rip cord and try something new. Right, so I would say don't quit in a day. When something bad happens, don't just refuse to come in the next day.

We do see that a lot more these days than in the past. I would say go find your- It's gotta be a lot more. A lot more people- These days. Yeah, absolutely. And maybe that's good. I don't know. Well, I think if your boss- The boomer in me is like-

You're not a boomer. You're Gen X. We need all the Gen Xs we can- Yeah, but anybody who's not Gen X is okay boomer, right? That's right. That's right. I mean, I think here's the deal. If your boss is tyrannical, you're never gonna fix that. I would leave a situation with a truly tyrannical, awful, toxic boss. The question is, if they raise their voice at you,

are you considering that tyranny or toxicity? You might need to develop a thicker skin. And this is where talking to peers and talking to mentors in the workplace or older workers who've been there longer, who know the environment can give you a bit of a sense of reality check. You know, is this,

how often am I likely to experience this? How would you recommend I handle this? You wanna try to stay at a job for two years. You certainly don't want a repeat, repeat, repeat leaving sooner than two years, more than a couple of times in a row on your resume because it looks like you don't have staying power or resilience or grit.

Yeah, yeah. On the idea of keeping your options open, the one thing I would say is, people ask me like, what would you tell yourself at 20 or what advice do you have for young people? And I always say to invest in experience and live leanly. Like I think there's this, you know,

social pressure to accumulate, like, oh, I have to live in this kind of apartment or lease this kind of car. And you know, my heart always breaks when I see young people like over leveraged because that does short circuit the choices they can make if they do wanna pull the rip cord on a certain career path because it's not working out.

That's good advice. Like to always have like a bit of a trap door or just the flexibility financially to be able to segue into something else. I think I agree with all of that. And the one piece of advice, I think the universe tried to give me twice in my young twenties was on the value of compound interest. So I had a small windfall twice

that I spent and I can now look back and do the math and see how much money I would have now had I invested that money. And so that's a message I try to make clear in the book. The universe just sort of parachuted in a little cash and said, look, if you wanna out, like here's your little, you could. Well, they were things that at the time seemed, at the time I felt I was making the right choice. My father said to me, I'd rather give you this money.

He was spending $25,000 on my wedding, which I realized is a privilege for many. And nothing compared to what many people spend today. But he said, I'd rather give you this money than spend it on a party that's going to last for five hours. And all I could say was, oh, daddy, how could I not have a wedding? But I'm able to see the value of that 25 grand being 200 grand today. We had a fire in our moving truck on the way to California after I graduated law school. And we had a settlement from Beacons for about $25,000. And we spent it on new furniture

and maybe even upgrading our furniture. We're newlyweds, how could we not? But I wish we had lived a little bit more like grad students for a few more years and pocketed that cash. Right, right. Yeah. But you're like, hey, I'm gonna go be in this corporate law firm.

In Palo Alto. It's gonna be all gravy from here on out. I need a couch befitting my rise. I know, I know. Yeah. Yeah, it's tough to gauge those things in the moment, isn't it? Absolutely.

You know, what are some of the things that, in your experience of talking to all of these young people and the challenges that they have or the obstacles that they're facing, what are some of the other kind of themes that emerge from that, that are common, but perhaps unique to this generation? Well, interesting question. I don't know the extent to which they're unique to this generation. I'll have to think on that. What came to mind was we've been talking about work, but discovering the identities one carries is a huge task in young adulthood. Hopefully it happens in young adulthood as opposed to you don't figure it out until you're 40. And oftentimes people are asking me when I do assemblies for high school seniors

or talk to people slightly older, they'll say, how do I talk to my parents about this? Whether it's around work or identity. And I have this sort of five step thing, which is steps one through four, just prepare the way for you to be successful at it. Step one is you say to your parents, hey, parents, can we find some time to talk later this week or this weekend? Smile on your face, respectful tone of voice. You're signaling it's serious. You're

signaling I'm mature. They're going to be a little bit back on their heels. That's fine. You want them a little bit like, whoa. Okay. Step two- They go up to their bedroom and they're like, what do you think this is about? Step two, you're in the meeting and you open with gratitude and praise with whatever language works in your family, whether it's love or respect. You say, I know you love me and I love you, which will further freak them out. Or you say, thank you so much for raising me with these values. And you've taught me so much and I'm grateful. You offer respect in whatever language works in your family. Now there'll be more freaked out.

Step three, you say, I'd like to talk with you about X. I'd like to talk to you about my plans for grad school. I'd like to talk with you about my plans for after high school, or I'd like to talk to you about my relationship. And I'd like to hear your plans for me. And then I'd like to share mine. Is that okay? And they'll be like, yeah, okay.

It's like NVC, nonviolent communication. Right, exactly. And so step four, the parent talks. They say, well, we've always known you're so smart. We have always known you'd be a this or that, or we just want, we want what's best for you. But you know, we really think, whatever it is, whatever barrier you're facing

will likely come out. And you actively listen and reflect back what you've heard. So they feel heard and you say, did I get that right? And you really don't be defensive. Don't be mad. Whatever they say, just try to listen dispassionately and interestingly, interestedly. And then finally, step five, you can say, you know, I'd like to share with you my thoughts now. Is that all right? And steps one through four will have made it so much more likely that their ears and hearts and spirit will be open when you dare to say, you know what? The person I'm serious about is X.

And I realize you may not like or appreciate or understand or accept people like them, but this is what's right for me. And even if you can't understand or it wouldn't be what you would have done, it's what I need to do. And I hope you will love me anyway. You know, this is where it gets big and like, right? How many parents and adult children don't speak to each other anymore because those conversations never happened or really went awry because the parent insisted, no, no, no, I know what's best for you and you

shall not, whether it's about work or about relationship. Right, right, right. It's almost like a coming out. Yeah, it is. It's similar to that. It is. Even if it's, I want to be an EMT instead of a doctor. Right. You know, or I want to be a wilderness naturalist and I realize we're a family of lawyers. Or I want to go to Wall Street, even though y'all are theater geeks. Like I'm agnostic. I don't have anything against Wall Street.

If a kid wants to go to Wall Street and they're from a family of artists, they're struggling in the same way, but they have more societal validation. I feel like it's rigged that way. The artist parents who raise their kids in the artistic environment, those kids end up rebelling by going full finance. Like Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties back in our day. Yeah. And that's how our kids

become our teachers, I think, in many ways. Yeah. My daughter is a dual major right now in cultural anthropology and dance. And there were years when I could not accept or be proud of the fact that my baby girl is an artist. And working with other people's kids, denied the opportunity to pursue their dreams, woke me up to the reality that my child is an artist. And I do not want her at 20 to be in a college environment in tears, trying to explain to an advisor

why her parents are making her be X, Y, and Z, instead of letting her be who she is. I appreciate that honesty and vulnerability because as somebody who's this authority on parenting and who has observed so much in the space of how parents have improperly raised kids or set them up for failure when they were endeavoring to set them up for

success to acknowledge that, you know, we all have our blind spots with this stuff, you know, I think is important. Yeah. I mean, I think when people hear me tell my stories, they don't feel judged. I hope they feel seen and we can laugh and giggle a little bit about why we over-parent and why our egos are too invested and we're too enmeshed. But then I can tell a little bit more of the outcome side of it and what I've learned the hard way. And I hope that it'll help other people course correct a little sooner.

Yeah. Yeah, I think I've gone on a journey with this as well to the extent that you and I are both products of a certain type of education and a way of orienting your life around that ladder, right? Like you do this, you do this, you do this. It worked for a while for me. We each got out in our own respective ways.

And even though I'm aware of the pitfalls or where and how it kind of led me astray, that's my imprinting. So when I'm raising kids, I'm like, well, this is the way it's gonna be. And now my kids are like, well, not so fast. And I'm like, what do you mean? And then I have to grapple with my attachment to that,

in the many ways that you talk about in your books. Like where am I projecting onto my kid a certain expectation or an assumption about the way that they should pursue their young adulthood? And how much of that is in enmeshed relationship wherein my ego is associated with certain outcomes that have nothing to do with me. Yeah, ego is certainly possibly a piece of it for you,

for me, for anybody listening. It's also just hardcore love and fear. We know more about the world and how it works. We want them to be successful, healthy, safe, happy. And we think we know the path to those things. So why would we not curate their environment? And yet, and yet we say, I just want my kids to be happy. Yeah.

I just want my kids to be happy. So unpack that. Right, and yet we do all these things that lead to a straight jacketed childhood and you only can do X, Y, and Z, and then they're not happy and they resent us. Or maybe they are sort of wildly successful in a career that we chose and resent us because they didn't get to do what they wanted.

We've lost sight, Rich, I think of what it means to be happy. I mean, I think you know, I think I know we've gotten to those places, but too many of us think happiness equals the corporate degree with X salary. When in fact, happiness comes from being content with what you have and with who you are, right? Yeah, aligning your life in accordance with your particular values and being engaged with the world

in a manner in which you're able to, you know, harness the things that you care about and share them with others. So let me be super practical. A kid who grows up here in LA or where I live in the Bay, high cost of living, may not be able to live as an adult where they grew up if they choose a profession, a career, a trade,

where they don't earn a lot. But they can go be that person in a more affordable city. I mean, I think we're gonna see a lot of Gen Zers flocking to cities and towns that have jobs and a reasonable cost of living, better around climate change, right? There are places that are hospitable to young people. There are those places. Those places exist. Those places exist and they need to exist. Something is very wrong macroeconomically when not enough of those places exist. And of course, we're seeing

that in your town and mine. But I'm here to say to young people listening, there are places where you can be a social worker or a third grade teacher and afford a decent place to live and have a great quality of life. It just might not be in Palo Alto. Right, but if you choose to stay in one of these places on your checklist of the things we traditionally look at

as steps along the path towards adulthood, in one of these places on your checklist of the things we traditionally look at as steps along the path towards adulthood, it's like go to college, move out, get the job, get married, et cetera. But on the move out piece, like leaving home, that's less and less possible for a lot of young people. We're seeing young people returning to the home and staying there for periods that extend beyond what we were used to

when we were younger because cost of living is so high. And yet we have the opportunity to reframe that not as some kind of failure, but as an opportunity to continue to develop your adult skills, even though you're within the confines of your parents' home. Like you have to live at home. That doesn't excuse you from developing these other skills

about how to become an adult. That's right, Rich. So it's not with whom you live or where, it's how are you behaving wherever it is you live. And so there are young adults who came home in the pandemic and showed up as young adults. They'd been accustomed to freedom in college or the workplace. They're back at home in their childhood bedroom, but they sat down with their folks and they're like, hey, let me go get the groceries.

It's safer for me out there. Can I make a meal X times per week because I want to contribute? Like mature grownup participant. There were others who came home and retreated to their childhood bedroom and some combination of their parents and their behaviors were such that they were sort of like being 15 again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so there's nothing inherently wrong

with choosing to live with your parent as an adult. It's imperative, however, that everybody in that arrangement be given the independence and freedom and take on the responsibilities inherent with that independence and freedom so that everybody's needs are met and boundaries are respected.

Yeah, that's been our experiment over the last 18 months. Our boys had moved out. They were living on the other side of town in an apartment with some friends. When the pandemic hit, we were like, please come home. We don't know what's going on over there. And they ended up just moving back in.

Cause it was ridiculous for them to pay rent at an apartment that was tiny and that they were gonna have to sit in by themselves for all this period of time. But it's been this exploration of collective living with young adults who aren't kids, but now they're back at home living and we're not charging them rent,

but there's a certain set of expectations that come with that. They're gonna cook meals a certain number of nights a week. They're helping out with the carpooling and the driving of the other kids. And we've been able to like find our way with all of that and make it all work. And it's actually been great.

I've loved having them back home. Like I don't want them to move back out. I know. They're going to be again soon because they have dreams and goals that they're chasing, et cetera. But I've come to look at it as really precious and something that would have not have happened

had this, you know, pandemic not occurred. Absolutely. I've had the same thing. Mine are a little younger happened had this, you know, pandemic not occurred. Absolutely. I've had the same thing. Mine are a little younger than your boys, I think, right? And we worked on, I love that, I think you just use the term repatterning or patterning. I use that term with respect to mine, particularly my older one, whom I write about in the book is having had some challenges around ADHD and anxiety in his young adulthood. And he allows me to talk about this. So I'm not outside of bounds here. We've been working as a couple,

my partner, Dan and I, on repatterning our way of being with this kid. We realize we've been too worried about some of his sensitivities and things such that we've overmanaged and handled, overhelped, which conveys, I don't think you can. Which a psychologist at Yale has written about in The Atlantic so beautifully. When we try to curate the environment to meet their every need, we can turn their fears into full-blown anxiety. It's as if we're saying, that thing you fear is such a big deal. I agree. I will make sure it never happens. And it undermines their ability

to develop an ability to cope and the resilience that comes as you cope. And so we're repatterning with that kid and in family therapy, which is so wonderful. And learning how to stand shoulder to shoulder with this man, 22 year old son, in a way, I don't mean shoulder to shoulder right next to, I mean, near him, walking the journey of life in his vicinity, rather than pushing him from behind, holding him by the hand or dragging him from the front. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it is great. One of the things that I plead guilty to doing is sitting down my kids at various stages

over the course of their young lives and saying, "'Listen, you have everything you need to be successful. You literally could be anything that you wanna be if you set your mind to it. And I felt so proud of myself for that big speech. Sure. So what did I do wrong here? Well, I think the only missing component is,

I mean, you added, if you put your mind to it, a lot of parents just say, you can be anything you wanna be. If you put your mind to it, A, if you work damn hard is B, and that was missing, I think. And I think C, I would add, things may often not go your way, but with hard work and continued effort, you'll be surprised at how much you can accomplish. So I think what we're trying to do is embed in the message that it's tremendous hard work that is required to be anything you wanna be.

Yeah, I always try to hammer home that piece of it. I figured. Cause that's kind of like my jam. Yeah. But I also, a big piece for me also is just modeling the behavior. Like I'm not big on telling them what to do or not to do, but I'm all about just making sure that I'm modeling

the kind of habits and behaviors that I wanna see in them. Not that there's an expectation that they're gonna follow in that regard, but just so there's a bit of a North star there. Like they know, you know, like this is how I conduct myself in the world. Absolutely. So how is that, like, how does that measure up in terms of, like how impactful is the modeling of behavior versus like what's coming out of your mouth and the things that you're saying

to your kids? I think anybody who studies or writes on the subject would say they watch what you do and pay far more attention to that than they listen to what you say, right? So obviously we have to walk the walk. We absolutely have to walk the walk. And my kids called me on it. When I talk the talk about any college is fine. Oh, any college is fine. Any college is fine. I was actively counteracting the Palo Alto message of you have to go to one of these four colleges. Right. It's gotta be crazy in Palo Alto. It is crazy.

Well, it's gotta be crazy. Off the chain with all those Silicon Valley people. I can't imagine the links to which some of those parents are going. Of course. To get their kid into college X or Y. Well, the college admissions scandal, the varsity blues was an indicator.

But when I, you know, I was with my daughter, I was not happy with her fall schedule senior year. And I let her know. And she's like, mom, there literally is nothing else I want to take. They screwed up my schedule. I'm going to fill it with a study hall. And I was like, find another class to take. Find another class to take. That college you've said you want to go to will want you to have had another class to take. She said, are you telling me to just take any class to please some college? I'm pretty sure that's not what you've said. I just looked at her. It's sort of like, oh shit.

Even I, who tells other people what to do, I'm still getting it wrong. And she called me on it and I owned up to it and told her thank you. And I apologized and stepped back. I had to step off. I was like, I was on the platform with her forming the way in which she would dive.

Yeah. And let me be clear when I say modeling behavior, like that's probably 10% of how I actually behave. Like I'm an idiot most of the time. And I do all kinds of crazy stuff that my kids are like, I can't believe you did this or that. So- You know, talking about, first of all, that's fine.

That's okay. And it's wonderful for people to know that you're a normal person. You talked about the chapter, don't talk to strangers. And we talked about how important it is to teach kids how. My husband and I, Dan, my partner, husband, we were in the kitchen one day recently. Sawyer, our now 22 year, was in the kitchen making food.

We were at the other end. We were talking about the fact that we'd purchased this expensive thing from a man. And we were not happy with how it had all gone down. And so we were engaging around, how do we talk to this guy? What do we say that is respectful of him but also communicates our needs? And we were brainstorming how to write an email to this guy? What do we say that is respectful of him, but also communicates our needs? And we were brainstorming how to write an email to this guy. Sawyer quips, thank you for having this conversation in front of me. We looked at him like, what are you talking about? He said, it's helpful to me to hear that adults have anxiety about how to talk to other adults and to hear you

talk through your options about how to do it. And we realized we'd been having all of those tough regular, but sort of how to live life, how to negotiate the complicated terrain of human interaction or a bureaucracy. We had negotiated all of that out of the earshot of our kids. Because some wise person said, don't let your kids out of the earshot of our kids. Because some wise person said, don't let your kids hear you struggle or be in a, ah, that's how they learn.

So we said, you're welcome. And we'll try to do it more often. Yeah, I'm a big believer in that as well. The flip side of that, of course, is that your kids learn early and often that like parents don't, like adults don't know anything. Nobody knows what they're doing, which is kind of like it's bursting this bubble

that like, oh, when I grow up, I'm gonna get it. I think what you don't wanna do is blubber all of your difficulty. You don't wanna be hyper-vulnerable with your kids. They need to see you are an authority. They are safe. You are confident. So they don't wanna see you fall apart.

But again, it's about balance. It's like, let them see that- They need to know that like you got their back and they're safe and all of that. But the idea that your life is not without struggling with how to manage certain aspects of life, I think is important to telegraph to them. And the other thing is money. You know, money's a big thing too. I mean, I grew up never once was anything helpful shared about like how to deal with money. It was just a verboten subject off the table completely.

So I had no sense of that whatsoever. You know, simple things like balancing your checkbook, but just like that whole world that suddenly when you're a young adult and you're in the world becomes absolutely crucial to your survival. And was just a complete black hole in my learning experience. Same here.

And then I was perhaps like you, one of many who find themselves embarrassed and bewildered. I'm so educated and yet I don't seem to understand how money works. In my money chapter, I talk about how critical it is that as a young person, you care about your 65-year-old self who will have wanted you to pay attention to its needs, to their needs at the same time, to not be an indentured servant to your 65-year-old self because who you are now matters too. It's about a balance of

the now and the future. And in that chapter, I profile somebody who came out of the working poor into community college, into a job with UPS as a driver and has now finished 35 years and has such a beautiful career trajectory, is now solidly middle-class with a second home in Gainesville, Florida and a stock and has an American dream and how he did it. And I have someone else profiled who's an artist from Stanford, majored in dance, took out student loans for Stanford and for University of Florida MFA

to be a dancer in New York City. So she's got all of the student loan debt and finally realizes I gotta pay this. I'm only earning this tiny amount as a dancer. I gotta get rid of my debt. And she became this disciplined person who would walk around three blocks out of her way to make sure the food smells from her favorite restaurant were wafting in the air so that she wasn't tempted to spend money at a restaurant instead of her budgeted food from a grocery store.

And she paid down her student loan debt. It was 50 grand with interest, 32 principal. She paid it down in three years on an artist's salary. And how she did it, and the fact that she's now a financial planner with a side gig, when she's not dancing, she can advise people on their finances. That's who she is. And she advises people. She went out on Facebook and said, I'm going to be debt-free in three years. I'm debt-free, Danae. And she didn't get any comments. She got a ton of likes. But she got all these direct messages. And she realized, people are comments. She got a ton of likes, but she got all these direct messages. And she realized people are ashamed to comment. I need your help. In the direct messages,

it was, how did you do it? How do I start? Can you help me? Nobody would say it in public. And so this is now, it's funny. She's like a finance person as her side hustle, where the art is the main gig. For many people it would be the reverse. Yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah, I think it's a huge problem, especially amongst young people who are emerging from college

or in situations where they're able to get those loans, which feels like in certain instances are handed out without kind of a manual for like what this actually means and what to do with it and all of that. And credit cards. And we're just, you know, basically sending young people out into the world saddled with unbelievable debt that shortcuts, you know, the choices that they're capable of making.

And, you know, it's just wrong. There's gotta be a better way to do this. Absolutely. It is wrong. This generation has more student loan debt than any of us ever had. It's terrible and you can't get rid of it. You could declare bankruptcy, it never goes away.

It's ridiculous. And the cost of living is too high in many cities such that you can't afford a one bedroom, right? What are they supposed to do? And their granddad saying, what's wrong with you? Get a job in my day. It's like, shut up, it's not your day.

Exactly, right, when you could go work at the factory and own a home and a car and all of that, like that you just can't do that anymore. That's right, maybe one day, maybe soon. Yeah, well, we gotta wrap this up, but final words, maybe like a final word for the parent and a final word for the young person, somebody who's new to these ideas,

who's got a young person in their house and maybe they've made a few mistakes. They're trying to get it right. Like, where does this person begin? Other than with picking up your books, of course. Yeah. To any parent listening, I hope it's clear. I'm with you.

I'm in it. I'm screwing up left and right. I'm just really mindful of what I'm doing and trying to iterate and get better. So I'm here to believe in you. If you're hearing yourself in any of the examples we've been discussing, that's step one.

Now go to step two and ask yourself, what am I gonna do about it? And be in community with other parents who are tired of the rat race and are tired of micromanaging your kid's existence in order to get them to the right future. The right future is a kid who leaves your home with agency and resilience and good character.

Those are three things you can instill for free. And you don't have to play this crazy game of lunatics. You do. That's making everybody crazy. That's exactly right. And to young people listening, I would say, keep listening to great podcasts because there's so much to learn from the experience of others who have gone before you or going through it with you. And this is your one wild and precious life.

It is nobody's business to tell you how to live it. I want you to figure out who you are, by which I mean, what are you good at? And what do you love? And where do you feel a deep sense of belonging? Find the Venn diagram intersection of those things, go out and make that life happen. It's waiting for you. I think you just stuck the landing

like a Simone Biles floor routine. Powerful, thank you. Thank you so much. It was beautiful. That was super fun. Is it done? How do you feel? We're still recording, but like, you good?

I'm good. Did we hit everything? I think so. It was fantastic. Thank you so much. In the meantime, everybody pick up your turn, How to Be an Adult. It is quite the book.

Like I said, I think this will be a perennial bestseller for parents and young people alike. Something that you'll wanna gift your young person upon graduation and a book for every young person who's entering the work world or the world of grownups and trying to make sense of this insane spinning planet that we're all sharing. In the meantime, if you wanna connect with Julie,

what's the best place to send them to? Your website, your Twitter, your Instagram? Absolutely. I'm everywhere on social at JLithcottHames. That's my first initial last name, no hyphen. Maybe even TikTok one day soon, we shall see, but definitely Twitter, Instagram, Clubhouse and Facebook. I got some thoughts for you on that. You have points for me? Are you doing the Clubhouse thing? I'm trying. Yeah. I mean, Adam Grant is somebody who I know we both for you on that. You have points for me? Are you doing the Clubhouse thing? I'm trying. Yeah. I mean, Adam Grant is somebody who I know we both know

and I'm trying to, he helped me out with it a little bit. My website is julielithcotthames.com without the hyphen. And that's a great way to learn more about me. So yeah, follow me, check me out. If anything I've said resonates, I do like to interact with folks who wanna interact with me. Cool.

And let's do this again sometime. I would love that. All right. Thank you. Thanks Julie. Thank you. Cool. And let's do this again sometime. I would love that. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Julie. Thank you. Peace. Namaste. Namaste.

That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive,

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Peace. Plants. Namaste. peace plants namaste Thank you.