Episode with Dr. Becky Kennedy

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:00): Most adults in the corporate environment are really just babies in disguise.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:00:04): All humans need the same things, whether we’re one or five or 45 or 85. When you look at bad behavior, the actual problem is someone doesn’t have the skill they need to manage something happening internally.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:16): Love your advice. It works not just for kids, it works for adults.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:00:18): Our whole parenting philosophy is resilience over happiness. When we’re thinking about a resilient work culture, we want people who can say, “This is hard and I can do hard things.”

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:28): You teach kids are good inside, no matter their behavior, is that useful in work?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:00:32): The idea of being good inside inherently requires us to separate behavior and identity. We infer a lot from people’s behavior. Someone’s late to work a lot, “Oh, that person’s lazy.” The quickest way to have an unproductive conversation is to lose sight of the fact that someone’s good inside.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:49): I definitely wanted to ask you about this idea of boundaries.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:00:51): Boundaries are what you tell someone else you will do, and it requires the other person to do nothing. Making a request, that’s not a boundary.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:59): Is there a corollary to adult work environments in potty learning?

(00:01:05): Today, my guest is Dr. Becky Kennedy, a clinical psychologist, author, and CEO of one of the most popular parenting books, podcasts, communities, and apps called “Good Inside.” Why would I have a parenting expert on this podcast? Because if you think about it, many of the people that we work with in the workplace act a lot more like babies than adults. And I’m half joking, but I’m half not. Think about coworkers that got really mad when they had to share their stuff, that always need to be the center of attention, that get really upset about not getting their way, that need other people to fix things for them.

(00:01:38): These are just a few examples, and there is a lot that we can learn about how to effectively deal with people at work from a parenting expert like Dr. Becky. I have never heard a conversation like this anywhere that bridges the gap between parenting advice and leadership advice, and you will leave this conversation both a better leader and a better parent. We talk about the power of repair, the importance of building long-term resilience versus short-term happiness. Why your goal as a leader is to become sturdy, the power of curiosity over judgment, the framework Dr. Becky calls the most generous interpretation, also a ton of really specific phrases that work really well with kids and adults who you’re having a hard time with. And so much more.

(00:02:20): I am so honored to have Dr. Becky on this podcast, and I hope you have as much fun listening to this conversation as I had recording it. If you enjoy this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. That helps tremendously. And if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of a ton of incredible products, including a year free of Devin, Lovable, Replit, Bolt, n8n, Linear, Superhuman Descript, Wispr Flow, Gamma, Perplexity, Warp, Granola, Magic Patterns, [inaudible 00:02:46], ChatPRD, D-Mob and PostHog and Stripe Atlas.

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(00:05:18): Dr. Becky, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:05:23): I am truly very excited to be here. I’m an avid listener of your podcast and all of your content, so I’m honored to be here.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:05:29): I can say exactly the same thing. I’m even more excited. First of all, just what is Dr. Becky doing on this podcast? Let’s help people understand what’s going on here. I have an explanation, but I want to ask you first, actually. What’s the idea here?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:05:44): I think Good Inside, which is kind of I guess the company and the method around all the things I’ve thought about is known for helping parents with parenting struggles and different things that are going on with our kids at various ages. But at the end of the day, it’s a set of core principles that help us better understand human beings, ourself, the core relationships we’re in, why we do the things we do and why we act the way we do in certain systems. And the system I tend to focus on the most is the family system.

(00:06:12): But the workplace is another system, a marriage is a system, sibling relationships are a system, extended family over the holidays, that’s a system. And once you start to think through a lens of understanding how we operate in the system, any good principle can then be applied to any system. And I’m very oriented around efficiency also. So to me, what Good Inside really gives people is a way to think about themselves and the way to think about leadership.

(00:06:40): And whether we’re talking about leadership in parenting or leadership in the workplace, it’s actually the exact same principles that can be applied. And the good news for that is whether you’re a parent, you’re a leader at work, you’re both, learning one system and applying it to multiple areas becomes a very efficient way to think about showing up in our relationships in a way that feels better to everyone.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:07:02): Awesome. Okay. I love that explanation. I have another lens that’s-

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:07:06): Oh, okay.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:07:07): … maybe funny, maybe too real. So I have a former podcast guest, Shreyas Doshi. He’s one of my favorite product thinkers. He’s been on the podcast a couple times. He’s got this brand that most adults in the corporate environment are really just babies in disguise. They look like adults, they act like adults, but they’re really babies. For example, they want to always be the center of attention. They don’t want to share stuff they’ve accumulated. They want to keep their resources, their budget, their people. They get irrationally upset about things not going their way.

(00:07:39): Even when it’s just a terrible idea, they’re just like, “Nah, that was my idea. I wanted this thing to happen.” There’s also just power struggles and, “No, no, I want this to happen because it’s what I want.” And they often just need people to fix things for them. For example, today my toddler, he just grabbed this Yoto player that we have and he threw it across the room. He’s like, ” Pick it up.” So with that, I think understanding how babies think and toddlers think and operate is helpful in the corporate environment where we think we’re working adults, but a lot of times they’re more like babies. How does that resonate?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:08:15): I guess my most generous interpretation of what you just said is slightly different but similar, which is that all humans need the same things. Whether we’re one or five or 45 or 85, we tend to need the same things. When the needs are not being met, we all tend to express ourselves in kind of ineffective, less than ideal ways. And so maybe that’s my interpretation of agreeing with what you’re saying.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:08:39): Awesome. Okay. Okay. So let’s get into the first topic lesson. Let’s talk about the power of repair, one of your more important and impactful lessons that you teach parents. Explain the toddler, kids version of this and how this is useful in raising kids and then just how this might translate into a corporate environment.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:08:57): Yeah. I think repair is kind of the number one relationship strategy we have. And the thing that keeps us from repairing, which really is the idea of going back to a person after a moment we didn’t feel proud of, taking responsibility for our part, maybe acknowledging the impact it had on them and talking about what you would do differently the next time, is actually this very false idea that there’s a goal to be perfect. Right? And in our family, we say something, we actually now say it at work, “Perfect is creepy.”

(00:09:27): I just think it encapsulates… You don’t even want to be perfect. It’s actually very creepy. Only non-humans can ever be perfect. And what defines kind of the human condition is that we want to do well and we mess up over and over again. And one of the things I remember learning in clinical psych grad school was that the thing that really differentiated secure attachment, which is the nature of a relationship you really want to have with your kid is the presence of repair.

(00:09:56): And I remember the professor continuing to talk and I was kind of stopped in my tracks thinking, “What? Oh, so secure attachment isn’t defined by getting it right all the time? Secure attachment is just defined by, we’re all going to mess up, but secure attachment has an adult who’s willing to repair?” That felt very hopeful to me because it felt like something I could realistically get good at. And over and over, whether it’s with your kid, when you say to them, “Hey, sorry I yelled.” Some version of, “I had a stressful day at work. That wasn’t your fault and I’m working on staying calmer even when I’m upset.”

(00:10:32): Or we say to someone, I don’t know, on our team, “Hey, earlier in the meeting, I totally cut you off. I used a really harsh tone. Honestly, I did disagree with what you’re saying, but it’s no excuse for me to talk to you the way I did. Stuff was going on before the meeting. I’m sorry. I’m going to work on that.” There’s just nothing to reestablish trust and connection like repair. And when trust and connection are reestablished, then whether it’s your kid or someone at work, they cooperate better, you don’t get into conversations that are kind of run on conversations that are really an act of defensiveness and you can just get a lot more done.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:11:05): There’s kind of an associated concept you talk about, which is around connecting before correcting, which reminds me of radical candor a little bit of just this idea of challenge directly but care deeply. Talk a bit about this concept of connecting before correcting.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:11:19): Yeah. Well, I’ll use kind of… let’s take it out of parenting and work because I think it really shows the importance of connecting in all of our lives. So all of us say about our kids, “My kid doesn’t listen. My kid doesn’t listen to me.” Right? But if you picture me on the couch and let’s say my… I have three kids, they’re all sleeping now and I’m finally settling in for now the two minutes I have before I pass out because I’m tired. And let’s say my husband comes out and just says, “Becky, we have to do our taxes.”

(00:11:45): And you’re watching the scene and you see me say, “Whoa, I just sat down to read a book.” And he goes, “You don’t listen to me. You have a listening problem and if you don’t do the taxes with me right now, I’m taking away your dessert for a week.” Okay? Lenny, I’m pretty sure no one would tell me I have a listening problem. They probably say, I have a husband problem if that happened. Right? They’d be like, “Wow. You’re…”

(00:12:08): But we do that to our kids and we do that at work all the time. Now, let’s say the same situation happened and he said, “Whoa, I realize didn’t tell you this. We have to get our taxes done tonight. You look like you’re just settling in to that book. Oh, can we get on top of this together? I know we’re on the same team. Can we figure this out?” The chances that I will do taxes just skyrocketed. Right? Why? Because he sees me in my reality as a full human being, not just as an object in his world to get something done.

(00:12:43): He kind of joins my world where I’m embedded in my own priorities and by doing that forms a bridge, that’s what connection is. So I can kind of walk back over to his world with him to do something that’s a priority in his world. So connection, it first all just feels good anyway, but it’s not such a kind of soft topic. Connection is what forms a bridge between two people so they can act together in the same interest. And so whether you’re thinking about your kid not listening or thinking about things at work, coming back to connection is really the foundation for both cooperation and at work, even productivity.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:13:21): I love the way you phrased it at the beginning, that the way you just said it, I’m like, “Oh wow, I get why someone would start.” To listen to help people actually do this in day-to-day, what’s the way to approach the way you phrase beginning that connection conversation?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:13:38): The truth is the first step is a mindset. And I know that sounds annoying because it’s like, “Just tell me what to do.” And anyone who knows me knows, I love telling people script ideas, but we feel people’s intention, not just their intervention. So the same intervention will be felt completely different based on our mindset. So if I’m going into a conversation with you, Lenny, and let’s say, I don’t know, I want you to do something for me. I’d like you to come water my non-existent plants. Okay? And I’m like, I’m going to connect to Lenny first. First I’m going to say, “Oh, how’s it going? Tell me this thing about your life.”

(00:14:10): And you just know that is in and of itself a transaction to get you to do the thing I want you to do. Not only is it not going to quote “Work,” it’s going to feel like dirty to you. You’re going to feel it and it’s going to feel off. So the mindset we need to be in, which is so hard, and I talk a good game, but it’s hard for me too. Okay? Is trying to get into a kind of without an agenda mindset, even if it’s for 30 seconds with someone. Being present with someone without an agenda is increasingly hard to do, but that is what connection is about.

(00:14:43): No one wants something of me. They just kind of see me or they’re recognizing something I’m doing or they kind of plop down on the couch next to me. And so what could that look like with your kid? It’s often very, very simple things. Okay? And it’s going to feel really small, especially anyone who works a lot where we get so addicted to accomplishing and dopamine. It’s sitting next to your kid and putting your hand on their back, literally, for longer than feels natural. It’s saying to your kid, “I’m happy to see you.”

(00:15:14): And that’s it. Such a nice thing to say when your kid comes home from school or you come home for work or first thing in the morning. It’s watching your kid play and describing what they’re doing instead of peppering them with questions, “Oh, you’re making a tall tower.” Versus, “Oh my goodness, is that a fire station? Oh my goodness, we can make the best fire station in the world.” And I hear myself say that because I can say that, but it’s not connection actually.

(00:15:36): At work, it’s probably saying, “Hey, tell me a little bit about your long weekend.” And not kind of counting down the seconds for them to finish so you can tell them what to start on this week, but kind of giving yourself permission to say, “Can I actually just kind of drop down into that moment?” Right? And so I think it’s the mindset and then it’s actually something that doesn’t have an agenda, that’s just about seeing someone, noticing someone in a really, really small way.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:16:04): I love this idea of just the mindset. And that’s such a powerful reframe of this is don’t think about what are the correct words to say. It’s just actually just feel, “Okay, I just want to connect with you first for 30 seconds.”

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:16:15): Yeah. And I want to reveal something about myself. Right? So one of the things I think about is that efficiency and relationship building are often in opposition. We’re doing one or the other. And one of the things I’ve learned the very, very hard way about myself, especially since I’ve been working, the way I’ve been working the last couple of years, is my efficiency is kind of reinforced at work. Right? And a lot of us who can be very efficient and get things done, we can have a little morality about it. We listen to someone’s story, we’re like, “Come on, get to the point.”

(00:16:50): When that person in our life is like, “The whole point is that I want to tell you the whole story.” And I think if anyone’s listening and thinking, “Yeah, I’m kind of an efficiency oriented person, dropping into relationship mode takes real intention.” And it’s hard, especially if a big part of your life, the efficiency is reinforced. So if it feels awkward and slow. And I always call it with my kids, my best time just feels low stim. It just feels so low stim. I’m like, “Is this right? Am I doing this right?” That’s probably a sign I am because not much is happening and I’m not being efficient with my time. I’m just in kind of relationship building mode.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:17:30): What I think about as you’re talking about this is the best people I’ve worked with that are most effective at work are the people that are really good at this, that you feel like really listen, really care, just aren’t rushed. And so I could totally see the power here.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:17:44): Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:17:46): So one of the core principles you teach, the name of your book and the name of your product and community and everything you built is “Good Inside.” I’m curious if that’s a useful lens in the work environment too. You teach kids are good inside, no matter their behavior, they may be having a hard time, but they’re still good inside. Is that useful in work at all? Are people always still good inside? I imagine not always.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:18:08): I think it’s a very useful framework. And I’ll say why, but I want to separate things that we often confuse. No part of me if my kid is, when they were younger hitting, would I be like, “My kid is good inside, so who cares that they hit?” Or, “This employee’s good inside, so it doesn’t matter that they’re not getting their PRDs in on time,” whatever it is. No. And I think that’s actually the other thing that’s core to Good Inside is the idea of being good inside inherently requires us to separate behavior and identity.

(00:18:38): Most difficult times we have personally or interpersonally come because we’ve collapsed behavior and identity. And it’s easy to do because we infer a lot from people’s behavior for our own. Right? So someone’s late to work a lot, “Oh, that person’s lazy.” Right? Seeing that person as good inside starts with this sentence, “This is a good person who is late.” Right? Or, “I have a good kid who’s hitting.” And I do this thing with my hands because it actually helps my brain and body see the difference.

(00:19:09): One hand is identity, the other hand is behavior and literally just separating them forces you to distinguish who someone is good inside from their behavior. And ironically, that’s what allows you to effectively change and improve their behavior. Because we all know what it’s like to feel defensive. Do you know why we’re defensive? Because we think someone else, instead of talking about our behavior, is talking about our identity. And then we can’t even talk about our behavior anymore and being late because we feel like they’re accusing us of being a bad person or being lazy or not caring about the other people in the meeting.

(00:19:42): Now we can’t even talk about the reason for my lateness because my whole identity feels wrapped up in it. So the quickest way to have an unproductive conversation is to lose sight of the fact that someone’s good inside. If I’m talking about someone at work, let’s say again, who’s always late, here’s like a quote “good inside,” infused conversation. I would start by saying, “First of all, I want to say we’re on the same team.” If that’s the only thing people take from this, that is the most amazing way to have a more productive conversation with anyone.

(00:20:10): “I want to say we’re on the same team. I know you’re a good person. You probably don’t need me to tell you that we need to start meetings on time. We both know that. It’s also been happening consistently, which lets me know something is going on that I want to get to the bottom of with you. Because we need you to be there at 9:00 AM to start this important leadership meeting. So tell me what’s been going on. Is there something at work that feels bad that makes you not want to come in? Is there something going on at home? Is this, I don’t know, a hard time managing your time, whatever it is, let’s get to the bottom of it together so we can figure it out.” So that to me is that lens.

(00:20:44): And it’s honestly, Lenny, it’s the same thing we do, I don’t know, and like a good sports coach. I don’t know someone, I don’t know, who’s a good even professional sports coach who’s like, “You missed all the layups today. What’s wrong with you? And here’s what I’m taking away.” It’s like, “Whoa, you’re a good player. Something’s going on. Let’s get in the gym tomorrow. Let’s figure it out. I believe in you. I am putting you on the bench now because it’s not really working out, but we’re going to get to the bottom of this together.” That comes from seeing the good inside someone.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:21:11): Just hearing you say these things is always like, I could see exactly why this works. So a takeaway here is just kind of start with admitting to them and showing them you know they are smart, they know what is the right thing to do, they just maybe aren’t doing it.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:21:25): Yeah. And because now we can take that off the table. And if someone’s thinking, “But I don’t think that of the person,” then it’s actually just a very different conversation, but we put that in a different category. But if you start talking about someone’s behavior right away and they think, which we all tend to think, “You’re actually saying I’m not a smart person.”

(00:21:44): You’re not even talking about the behavior anymore. Now their language seems like it’s talking about the behavior, but all you’re doing is you’re having a debate you don’t even realize you’re having, which is whether they’re a good, moral, worthy person. That’s not an effective work conversation.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:22:00): So just kind of laying out that you know they are good, they’re smart, they know the right thing to do, but here’s something that isn’t going the way that it should?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:22:08): Yeah.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:22:09): This connects to something else that you teach, which is the MGI, the most generous interpretation. Talk about that and how that might relate to work.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:22:17): Yeah. I’ve realized I have an allergy to ideas that don’t have action. I’ve realized this actually at work with and just with psychology too. So this whole idea, people are good inside, how can you separate behavior from identity as a framework to then go into a conversation, all of it just feels too theoretical for me. And so I like to think like, what is one tool I can use to action on that idea?

(00:22:41): And it started, I think through parenting. I’d finished day with my kids. I was going to bed when my kids are [inaudible 00:22:48]. I was like, “Wow, that day was just disaster.” And then I would hear myself start talking about my kid in a way where I always loved my kid, but I didn’t realize till later, even through the language, I stopped liking my kid. I was just.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:23:00): Even through the language, I stopped liking my kid. I was just listening to your Peter Dang episode, which was a lot about language and how language then impacts thoughts. And I think, a lot as a parent, but it’s true as a leader, the story you tell yourself as a kid at night, kind of becomes the parent you are the next morning. Probably same truth. The story you tell yourself by your organization at night, becomes the leader you are the next morning. And I realized I was using what I later called this least generous interpretation. I think we all do that naturally, at least I do. Like, I see my kid not listening and laughing if I’m trying to discipline. And my first thought is, I think my kid’s a sociopath. I don’t know how I get there. My kid’s two years old, but it happens so fast. Okay?

(00:23:43): And I realized at night, the only way to shift this and get into a good inside mindset, was just to say to myself, what’s the most generous interpretation of why I would say to my kids some version of, stop jumping on the couch, it’s dangerous, you’re near the glass table, and he’d look at me and jump doubly hard on the couch. My least generous interpretation was that he’s sociopath. I already covered that one. My most generous interpretation, there’s not one right answer. It might be, this is a kid who’s really oriented around wanting to feel in control. And when that feels threatened, he doubles down. He is 0% people pleasing, this third child of mine, zero. So the whole, I’m disappointed with you, it’s not going to work with a kid like that.

(00:24:28): And when I started using an MGI, a couple things happened. I realized I liked my kid again. And I think we don’t talk about that enough as parents, that that’s the thing that keeps us up at night. It’s not their behavior. It’s that we slowly stop liking them based on how we’re describing them. And then I realized we were on the same team. And then I came up with a whole different range of interventions because I used a most generous interpretation. I think the same thing is true at work. Someone, I don’t know, is belaboring their point in a meeting, when everyone else has gone on. And maybe the least generous interpretation, maybe is what I was reacting to in your initial question is, oh, they’re being a baby or everyone just is vain.

(00:25:10): My most generous interpretation, I don’t know, could be a variety of things. Did they not feel heard the first time? Still doesn’t make them going on forever, acceptable. But if that’s true, I might say to them in private, Hey, something happens in meetings where I wonder if you don’t always feel heard. And then you keep talking and then honestly, the rest of the room gets annoyed, which makes us tune you out more, which probably makes you belabor your point more. We’re in a bad cycle. Can we work together on changing this? And now all of a sudden, instead of everyone complaining about that person or whatever it is, and nothing changing, which is just horrible for culture and productivity, we have one conversation through an MGI lens and things start moving forward in a more productive way.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:25:48): It’s interesting how much of this comes back to just kind of assuming they’re smart and are trying to do their best job and are good inside and translating to, okay, in spite of that, here’s something that is still going wrong, let’s try to figure out… There’s kind of this idea of curiosity over judgment, trying to figure out what’s missing.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:26:06): And I mean, that’s exactly it. Those are two things also that I think are in opposition. You inherently cannot be judgmental when you’re curious. And when you’re judgmental about something, you’re inherently not curious about it. And I think it’s assuming… I say assume, good inside or assume MGI, other people say assume positive intent. Whatever language hits your heart, I think is the language that’s… Everyone’s different. MGI makes sense for me, but if there’s someone else that has a different phrase, someone should use that one. And then, I think also assuming, this person would want to work through this with me. And I think Lenny, that’s one of the things that we also miss a ton in our kids. The kids who hit, no matter what they say, they really don’t like feeling out of control. The kid who’s lying to your face, they don’t want to lie to your face. They don’t want to behave this way either, again, which doesn’t make the behavior okay, but it makes us soften a tiny bit and realize we’re on the same team. And I think actually we all want the same outcome.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:27:08): Wait, say more about that, because that doesn’t feel, as a parent, that my kid doesn’t want to… When he’s throwing a thing across the way or just resisting going in the car. I want to hear more about what’s going on there.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:27:20): Yeah. I mean, first of all, I’ll start with the baseline, right? That as a clinical psychologist, I was initially trained in this very reward, punishment, timeout, sticker chart, mode. And to be honest, I loved it, because I have a very healthy left brain and our left brains love logic and we love linearity. And as soon as you’re a parent, you’re like, there’s no linearity or logic really, but our brain wants that to be a system. And it’s kind of a system of punish the bad and you have less of the bad and reward the good. And no one really says, Well, how are we raising a human? Those are just behaviors, but our brain loves it. And that’s what I started teaching to parents, I did, in my private practice, because it felt clean. But it was at complete odds with everything I knew was helping all the adults in my practice change their lives.

(00:28:11): And that’s actually what gave me insight into starting Good Inside. It’s like, there’s no way that what helps the 35-year-old rewire their brain and change for the better, is that theoretical opposition with what a two-year-old and five-year-old needs to become resilient and confident. That just doesn’t make sense. And I think we have these ideas about kids. Even something I hear a lot, you’re making a bad choice, to kids. You’re a good person, you’re making a bad choice. This is not about forgiving bad behavior, I’m pretty firm about that. But I just don’t believe a four-year-old who’s throwing is like, hold on, should I throw this at my sister? Should I or should I not? I will choose as not… I mean, think about us. When we act out, I don’t think most of us are in a decision making place. We escalate and here’s one of the big insights besides people are good inside, that helped me form all of my other approaches, is kids are born with all the feelings and none of the skills to manage feelings.

(00:29:12): Bad behavior at any age can basically be reduced to feelings that overpower skills. And yes, behavior is a problem, but behavior isn’t the core problem. It’s a manifestation of the problem. The actual problem is someone doesn’t have the skill they need to manage something happening internally. And if they had that skill and could access it, the behavior would change. But that would be kind of the outcome, not the place of actual intervention. And so, when a kid hits, they look also and kids will say things like, “I don’t care what you say.” They’re out of control. Maybe they’re in a situation where, I don’t know, they could be tired, but also they’re angry that a sibling has a toy and they don’t have skills to manage anger, they’re jealous that someone is playing with something and they can’t manage the jealousy. And when you look at bad behavior through the lens of feelings that overpower skills, you start to think like a coach.

(00:30:09): It always has struck me with kids, that we don’t punish them into learning how to swim, which I know sounds funny. But if you paid for swim lessons and the person said, You know what? I’m just not going to put up with this. It’s this inappropriate behavior. By the way, your kid has to learn to swim if they’re going to function in life. So, send them to their room and tell them to come back when they learn how to swim. It’s absurd, it’s obviously laughable.

(00:30:34): I think swimming is very important, but an even more important life skill is learning how to manage your emotions. It is. And nobody learns new skills by being sent to their room, nobody learns new skills by adding shame. All that does is increase the gap between feelings and skills. It’s just totally counterproductive. The answer is, we have to set boundaries. We have to be the people setting boundaries around out of control behavior. But then we actually have to teach our kids the skills they were missing, which levels up the skills. And that’s how not only you change behavior short term, but you actually change behavior massively long term.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:31:08): I’m actually in the middle of starting potty training with our kid and I’m taking this little online course and they call it potty learning, not potty training, for exactly that reason. You’re not training them to do a thing. They don’t know how to do it, so you just teach them, like you’re teaching them the alphabet, just teach them all little steps and what they need to learn.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:31:24): You’re not doing our potty learning course? Lenny, I’m going to talk to you after.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:31:30): Oh, I didn’t know you had one. Okay.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:31:31): Our marketing message isn’t getting out there.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:31:33): I’m switching immediately. Well, how do people find it? Goodinside.com?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:31:39): It’s actually one of the things I feel very strongly about putting out for free. Because, I think potty stuff is one of the early lessons around body autonomy and skills. And the quickest way we kind of mess it up as parents is kind of trying to take over the process. And it could be so stressful. And I actually told my team while ago is, I just think this should be a service. So, if you Google Good Inside potty, you can have it for zero dollars.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:32:05): Oh, it’s actually free already.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:32:07): Yes, it’s free.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:32:08): I’m switching immediately.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:32:09): Yes.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:32:09): Is there a corollary to adult work environments in potty learning?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:32:15): Yeah. There is, there always is.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:32:15): Do tell.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:32:17): Well, okay. So, let’s think about what the potty stuff is about for kids. When our kids are younger, they control two things in their entire life. What goes into their body and what comes out of their body? That’s all. No, obviously, hopefully we let them pick their clothes here and there, but thematically… By the way, and they shouldn’t be in charge of a ton more categories because they’re two, right? But it’s why those two areas can become so heated for families because we get so stressed. And when kids, especially if you don’t have a people pleaser, okay? When kids even smell, my parent is stepping into one of the only two domains that are mine, holy moly, will they do nutty things to push you back. And so, what’s the general lesson, the human lesson is, what is it like for someone to have not that many areas of life that they’re in control of?

(00:33:10): Number one, just think about that. Think about the first 10 minutes of your kids’ day. We wake them up. We tell them what the weather is. We tell them, No, you can’t wear that. We tell them what’s for breakfast. We tell them their shirt’s on the wrong way. If my husband woke me up that way, I would be in a bad mood the rest of the day. Okay? And I’d probably be looking for a million different areas to just grasp control of as a way of screaming to the world like, I am my own person. Right? And so, if we think about that in the workplace, well, first of all, temperamentally, there are a subset of people, I call these the resilient rebels. They present as strong-willed, defiant kids, whose… I think we all walk around with the core fear that we end up acting out. Their core fear is the loss of control. They are very, very attuned to people kind of stepping into their domain, and if they smell it, they resist.

(00:34:01): Well, we have those as adults too. It’s tricky to collaborate with them. And again, we need to have an expectation, but we might see that as, why do I ask someone to switch a meeting time? And it feels like I took a knife to their heart, the way they react, right? Well, that theme might be coming up and maybe we can go one level deeper and say, Is this someone who in general… I’m making this up, but, oh, someone got promoted before they did on their team, they just had a change in manager, they just had their vacation denied, whatever it was. Oh, is that actually what we’re talking about? And it’s manifesting as this difficulty changing meaning time, but actually there’s other themes of control and independence at play.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:34:42): As maybe a lesson here is, clarifying, here’s what you own on this team, on this project, here’s things that you’re going to drive, here’s where I’m going to be really involved. Is that maybe a takeaway?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:34:53): I think that is definitely a takeaway. I also just love naming your intention, that’s always really helpful. Hey, I want to look over this project together, because I want to get ahead of some things and I think that’s actually going to help you do the most independent work. That’s why I want to go through it in such detail. When you name the intention very, very clearly for someone, they’re much more likely to interpret your behavior through the intention you just named, because your intention isn’t to control them or make them feel small. But if that’s also something they have a predilection for, it’s even more important for those people to do the naming of the intention up front.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:35:30): And there’s also just a whole micromanaging, I don’t know, element to this. So, this is why people in part hate micromanagement. Like, I want to be in control of something, why get out of this?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:35:39): Yeah, which is a dance. Exactly.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:35:41): Yeah. Okay. Something else that you teach, that I find really helpful, is this idea of sturdy, becoming a sturdy parent, learning to be sturdy. That feels very related to being a good leader, just like learning how to deal with challenges. Talk about that from the kids’ context and then how it might be useful in work.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:35:59): Yeah, I think that’s the essence of what Good Inside does. We help parents become sturdy leaders, so they can raise sturdy, confident kids. And when I started this, I’d use that word a lot. People would say to me, I’ve never heard anyone use that word. I know what it means. But I think about language too, and I like language that helps me conjure up an image or a feeling. It takes it out of my brain and I think the word sturdy, if you picture someone in your life, even if you haven’t thought about them, who’s the sturdy person I know? I bet you can kind of locate them, you see them, and there’s a feeling you have around them. And I think the best leaders we have are sturdy. And so, I’ll start it with a metaphor, because I actually think that brings it to life. And I think this is as true in parenting and in the workplace.

(00:36:42): So, picture being a passenger on a flight. It’s really turbulent and you start screaming and everyone starts screaming, okay? So, everyone’s panicked in the flight and then you hear the announcement from the pilot and I think there’s three types of announcements you can have. The third one’s going to be the sturdy one, the first two, not as much. So the first one is some version of, What are you freaking out about? Stop screaming. You’re making this flight awful for everyone and you’re distracting me and stop making a big deal out of nothing. And that’s kind of when we say those words to a kid, Stop freaking out. You’re ruining this for everyone. But the truth is, if you think about yourself on a flight and the pilot says that, you don’t feel calmer.

(00:37:23): Number one, you’re worried they don’t notice the turbulence. Number two, you’re a little disturbed that it just takes your screaming to make the pilot kind of lose it at you, right? And that actually makes you feel less safe. And so, that’s like in a meeting where people, I don’t know, voice something that doesn’t feel good and the leader essentially is like, Stop complaining. That’s not sturdy.

(00:37:46): The second version is also not sturdy. And I think we’ve a little bit, at least in parenting, over corrected to this, which is a pilot saying like, I hear you screaming. You know what? I’m opening the cockpit door. Does anyone want to fly the plane because your screaming is make me anxious and I’m not really sure what to do. Maybe one of you want to do it. I think that’s a massive overcorrection I’ve seen in parenting and I just want to make it very clear that is not what we do at Good Inside, which is kind of, my kid is upset and instead of just caring about their feelings, now their feelings dictate my decisions.

(00:38:16): That’s terrifying for someone on a flight. If that’s me, I’m not even scared of the turbulence anymore. I’m scared that this person is my supposed leader. That’s also in a meeting when you complain about things and a leader might say, Oh, okay, you know what? Okay, we’ll just get consensus on this. When it’s a decision, that’s a leadership decision, not a consensus decision, which some decisions are, but some decisions aren’t because you are the only one who has certain information.

(00:38:41): Now, to me is the third announcement that I want to hear, when it’s really turbulent, is something like this. I hear everyone screaming back there, that makes sense. And you haven’t been in as many flights, you’re right, it’s very bumpy. And I know what I’m doing. This turbulence, though it scares you, it doesn’t scare me. I’m actually going to get off this loudspeaker right now to go back to do my job. I’ll see you when we land in Los Angeles.

(00:39:07): Now, even if the turbulence is the same, all of a sudden I feel this deep breath, because my worry is contained. This sturdy leader is able to see my emotional experience as real for me and not be overwhelmed by it themself. Those are the two distinct aspects of being a sturdy leader. I can see someone else’s experience as real for them, but I can still hold onto my experience and so I’m not overwhelmed by someone else. So to a kid, it might be saying, look, let’s say TV time is over, and my kid does not [inaudible 00:39:42] in my house, when I say TV time is over, I’m turning off the TV. When my kids were younger, they didn’t say, You’re right, mom, that’s a great decision. No. They freaked out because they wanted to watch another one.

(00:39:53): So, a sturdy leader would say in that position, I’m turning the TV off, that’s my decision. I get that you’re upset, I don’t really like to end TV time either. I also know we’ll get through it. Do your thing and then we’ll transition to brushing teeth and then I kind of wait it out. Or in the workplace, someone’s complaining about, I don’t know, making this up, but maybe it’s some policy change, vacation change, number of days in the office, where you say, look, I want to share something that I know some people are going to have a reaction to, here’s the new policy. People stop [inaudible 00:40:25], complaining. Look, I get it, this is a big change and you’re right. This does make things hard in a certain way, and I totally see that, and the way you’re feeling makes sense. And here’s some version of why we’re doing it and I know we’re going to get through it and I have faith in us to weather this turbulence.

(00:40:43): And I think, in every situation, kids, workplace, in laws, whatever it is, that sturdy leadership always feels good.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:40:54): This is a really good segue to something I definitely wanted to ask you about, which is this idea of boundaries, of how to set boundaries well and how that relates to long-term resilience, versus just this idea of short-term happiness. I was just yesterday watching your advice on how to set boundaries with my kid, because I struggle with it sometimes and I’m just like, What am I doing wrong? And it was extremely helpful. I started using your advice and I’m like, Wow, he’s doing exactly what I wanted to do. So, there’s a lot of power here. So, talk about just from your advice to parents around boundaries and this idea of long-term resilience and then how that might translate.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:41:24): Yeah. And so, I think related to being a sturdy leader, to make it more concrete, there’s two jobs we have as a parent. I think they’re the same two jobs we have as any sturdy leader in any environment. And that’s setting boundaries, which are limits we set, certain decisions we make. Boundaries often relate to your position of authority, where you have some long-term goal in mind that someone else in the system just isn’t as aware of, or a two-year-old isn’t as capable of holding onto, which is why you’re in the position of making a decision. So, that’s the boundaries. And the other side is, validating kids’ or someone else’s experience, while not being taken over by it. And I think we’ve moved so far in this direction of validating kids’ experience, and I’ll go on record and saying, validating kids’ feelings is an incomplete parenting approach. That is half of our job, but it doesn’t work if we’re not doing the other half, which is setting boundaries, which is the skill I feel best about teaching people, because I think it’s what we’re often lacking.

(00:42:21): So, my definition of boundaries, I do like because it’s immediately usable and testable. Boundaries are what you tell someone else you will do, and it requires the other person to do nothing. Too often I hear people say, My kid doesn’t respect my boundaries. My colleague doesn’t respect my boundaries. And with all due respect, I often think, I think you have an incorrect definition of boundaries. I think you’re probably making a request, which by the way, we do a lot. There’s nothing wrong with requests, but it’s not a boundary. Because if you’re setting what you call a boundary and you’re really making a request, you’re giving all of your power away to the other person, because you’re saying the success of this important moment depends on my two-year-old. What? I’m not going to give my power to my two-year-old. And I always tell parents, I would bet on you any day over your kid, and it’s not because I don’t like your kid. I do like your kid. I just believe in you more.

(00:43:18): And so a good example of this, let’s say, is, I have a kid, like I was describing before, who’s not a people pleaser. And so, I live in New York City, we live in a building with a lot of elevator buttons, where this kid, when he was younger, if he was left to his own devices, which had happened, he would press every elevator button, every one. And with my other kids, one of them especially, I probably would’ve been able to make a request like, Hey, when we go on the elevator later, it’s really important not to press all the buttons. Other people wait for this elevator, it’s rude, whatever it is. That’s not a boundary. Because I could say, Did I tell my kid what I will do? No. Does it require my kid to do nothing? No.

(00:43:56): A boundary, would be saying, when we go into the elevator, I’m going to stand between you and the button, sweetie, because I’m not going to let you press the buttons, because other people are waiting. And if you have a kid like my kid, they’re going to lunge for it anyway. And then I would block my kid, because I’m ready and I’ve done a workout, my muscles are ready. I’m not going to let you do that. Now, my kid might get upset, which allows me to do the other part of my jobs. Oh, I know you wish you could press those buttons or maybe just look kindly toward him and not say anything, but I’m going to still hold my boundary.

(00:44:25): And in this example, I think one of the places we get into trouble as a parent, is we say, Don’t press the buttons. If you press the buttons, no dessert tonight, or whatever, we threaten. But all of that is a way of completely undermining our authority, because I’m giving all of my power to my kid. I’m letting myself get frustrated. Now, I’m taking away dessert, and the honest truth, if we want to be honest about it, is at night, I’m going to give my kids sorbet anyway and then make up something how sorbet isn’t dessert, because it has fruit, all because I just didn’t set a boundary in the first place. And I think over and over, in parenting, maybe at work too, we’re asking our kid to do our job for us, because we just don’t want to deal with the emotional fallout, but that’s what I call job confusion and makes everyone frustrated.

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(00:46:35): Let me actually ask you a parenting question while we’re on this topic as I’m trying to learn this boundaries thing better. What’s the correct way to, if they’re not going to the car, and I’m like, “Okay. I’m going to carry you to the car if you don’t do this.” I’m still requesting them to go there. Is there a way to phrase that where they don’t need to do anything?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:46:55): Well, boundaries are something I will do when they require my kid to do nothing, we want to try. Look, we have to get in the car and whatever I try. I try a game, I try a song. And then again, the intention matters. The reason I’m going to carry my kid to the car is actually, I don’t want to let myself then be late and then yell at my kid and be frustrated.

(00:47:15): I’m doing it because I like my kid, and I’m on the same team as them. So then I might say, “Look. It looks like it’s hard for you to get to the car. I don’t really want to do this, but I don’t know. I’m going to turn around, I’m going to take a deep breath. And if by the time I turn around, you’re still here, I’m going to pick you up. I’m going to carry you to the car. And even if you’re crying and kicking and screaming, I’m still going to do that, sweetie. I know sometimes it’s hard to leave the house. We do have to leave. Here comes my deep breath.”

(00:47:39): Now, what’s really important, I don’t want to understate, is I think somewhere in us we think, “I’m going to do that, and then I’m going to be rewarded by my kid for my good parenting. I’m going to turn around and you’re going to be like, ‘I’m ready now, Dad.’” That might happen in some households, but it actually won’t reliably happen until you’ve actually set boundaries over and over, where it’s not about taking advantage of you. They’re just trying to learn the rules of the game. And so then I would pick up my kid.

(00:48:09): And by the way, depending on your kid’s temperament, two out of the three of my kids would scream and cry. And then we tell ourselves, “Oh, I’m not a good parent. I messed that up.” No. Again, a pilot is going to make a decision in certain key moments, not based on consensus. Let’s say I’m flying to LA, and it’s really turbulent, and the pilot says they have to make an emergency landing, and everyone’s complaining, and they’re like, “What? It can’t be that big of a deal. I don’t know if that’s a light. I have a big meeting in LA.” Can you imagine if the pilot was like, “Oh, Becky and Lenny are really upset about this. You know what, guys? Forget it. Forget it. Forget the emergency landing.” What?

(00:48:48): Even if we were upset, we feel deeply, deeply safe that our leader is doing something they believe is right with the information they have available. So even if I’m complaining when I get off the plane in Kansas, wherever I’m landing midway, I also in the back of my head am so grateful. And so I just want parents to know, when you set a true boundary, especially if it’s new, your kid will tantrum and protest. But if you actually see that as a sign that you’re successfully setting a boundary, instead of as a sign you did something wrong, your relationship with a tantrum changes. You’re almost oddly sickly grateful for a sign that you set a boundary. And you’re like, “Oh, this is actually…” I always say to myself, “This is going according to plan.” And it makes the moment so much easier.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:49:33): This advice you give about being the leader is really important, and I could see how it connects deeply, too, in the work environment. I’m curious just if there’s more advice there. So the idea that I’ve been hearing is just, people want you to be their leader, both as a kid and in the work environment. They don’t want you to be like, “Okay, what does everyone think? Let’s vote.” Talk about just the insight there.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:49:51): Yeah. First of all, I think a lot of things, two things are true. There’s definitely a time for consensus. There’s a time for getting 100%. That’s a really important part of leadership, too. But inherently, you’re in a position of leadership because you have experience other people don’t have, you have insight, you have judgment. You might just very literally have access to company information and data that other people don’t have.

(00:50:17): You’re not all working from the same set of information. So, there’s definitely a time for consensus building, but at least in parenting, I think we’ve over corrected. I need to collect more data from the working world if we’ve over corrected. I think it feels really good for people to hear some version of, “I took in everything you said, your voices matter, and I want to share a decision I’ve made with all the information I have. It might not make sense to all of you at the time. You can come talk to me separately. And I have conviction that this is the next thing we’re going to experiment with,” whatever the decision is.”

(00:50:57): I said this word earlier, and it’s another word I say that maybe other people don’t say. I’m always drawn to people I can locate. That’s the word. I can locate you. I know what you feel. I know your POV. I personally love people I can locate even if I really disagree with them more than being around people who seem to mirror what I’m saying. I’ve actually learned a lot in a working environment that’s what I need because I have a lot of strong ideas. So I love people who push back and have a POV.

(00:51:26): And I think especially at work when there’s so much going on, it could be so stressful, having a leader you can locate, which means I have a POV to be able to say, “This might not be what you want. I believe this is the best decision, and I believe we’re a strong enough team to work toward that.” I think that’s very, very holding, not all the time, but in more situations than we might realize.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:51:47): So the advice here is, even if it may not feel like your kid wants you to just tell them what to do or your team wants to have opinions and have a big say, in reality, the human brain seeks somebody to lead them.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:52:01): I think that’s exactly right. And I think we can all think back on our life. And again, you rarely say thank you to these people, but if you think back on really hard moments, or I don’t know, if I was out of control at some party, and I don’t know, I was being mean to people, I was saying awful things. Who knows? Maybe someone’s drunk. An act of love in that moment would be, at least if it was me and my husband, picking me up and carrying me out, kind of like, “I’m not going to let you self-destruct.” And if I was like, “No, I’m fine,” I might even look back later and think, “Why did you let me make that decision?”

(00:52:42): I’ll share a story, because some of this comes from it. I think about this teenager I was working with in private practice and she came to me, I’m just doing a first session, “Okay, tell me what to bring you here.” She’s like, “Well, you can see on my arms, I’m cutting.” I was like, “Okay, keep going.” And I was like, “Well, how long have you been doing that? ” She goes, “Two years.” And I said, “You just said I’m the first therapist you’ve ever seen. So what’s gone on in the last two years?” She was so snarky. And she goes, “Oh, wow. My parents tried me to send me to a therapist two years ago, but I said to them, “Oh, so you think I’m the messed up one in the family, and you can send me. I’m just going to lie the whole time and waste your money.”

(00:53:18): My heart always races when I think about this moment. It’s so visceral still. And something in me, I don’t know, I was on my game that day. I was like, “Becky, just be quiet. Don’t say anything.”

(00:53:26): And I don’t know, 10, 15 seconds later, everything changed for her. She looked down, and then she looked up, and she just goes, “Can you believe they let me make that decision?” She felt so betrayed and so not taken care of. And it just made me realize, at our worst moments, first of all, at our worst moments we speak, I think, our fears, not our wishes, Number One. And at our worst moments, we’re not a good place to make good decisions for ourselves. And we don’t want to be punished, but sometimes it is an act of love. And I tell this to people very explicitly when they’re like, “I know my teenager needs to go to therapy, but they’re refusing.” And I’ll give them an exact script, “Here’s what you’re going to say.” And it’s some version of, “Look, I am going to drive you every Thursday to therapy. Whatever you do in the room, whether you lie, whether you’re silent, that’s not on me. But my Number One job is making decisions that I think are good for you even if you’re not happy. That’s how much I care about you. And this is one of those times.”

(00:54:36): Every parent who told me they’d done that, their kids on some level, they’re like, “I needed that.” And I think the equivalent in the workplace is, there are moments when things are really turbulent, when people are, they’re saying different things because they’re anxious, and they’re looking for a leader to kind of say, “Hey, I’ve heard this all. Here’s what I’m doing.” You might even say, “I’m not going to lie to you. Do I have complete conviction that this is right? No. But I’ve put it all together, and this is what we’re going with, and I feel good about this direction. We’ll reassess in a month. Let’s go do this, team.” And I think everyone is waiting in certain moments for someone to show up that way.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:55:12): That was an awesome story. It makes me think about it, just people, they will take what they can get, and they’ll be wondering like, “Hey, wow, I’m getting away with all this.” When will they realize that someone working at a company where they’re not working that hard, “I’ll just get away with this as long as I can until they tell me that I can’t.”

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:55:30): Yeah.

(00:55:30): And I just saw the show on Broadway called Punch. It’s this really interesting story about this guy, true story that it’s based on, where essentially he ended up punching someone at a bar, the guy falls and dies, but he ends up getting to know that person’s parents after incarceration. And one of the things that comes up, because I think we tell ourselves, people will take advantage, they’ll take all the space you give them. I do tend to think about it in a more of an MGI way, where what happened in this show is, these parents, this guy killed their son. And the question they come to him with, because they end up meeting is, “Well, tell us what you’re going to do with your life here. What are you going to do with your life now?” And he ends up saying, nobody had ever asked me that question. Nobody had believed in me. Nobody had ever believed I could do anything useful. Changed the course of his life. It’s a crazy story.

(00:56:29): But I think about at work when someone, yeah, whatever it is we think they’re getting away with, or kids, sometimes I think kids are asking, “Is there an adult here? Is there an adult here who will help me, who sees that this is my form of acting out and being out of control? And will somebody help me?”

(00:56:45): And you know why kids act out more? It’s not because they’re taking advantage of you. It’s because they feel that much more dysregulated because they don’t feel like there’s an adult in the room who’s willing to put a container on their shell-less egg to help them come back together and move forward in a better direction.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:57:06): I think about just people that don’t have parents that are there and always seek someone as their partner that’s more, I don’t know, that gives them that later.

(00:57:13): This connects really well with this idea of building resilience long-term versus short-term. And I think about in the work environment, doing the hard thing, you will be better off versus just letting things progress because it’s hard for them to do. You think people will not want to hear bad news. Talk about just that kind of lesson and how that might translate.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (00:57:30): One of the chapters in my book and something that guides our whole parenting philosophy is just codified as resilience over happiness. And I don’t know if you hear this, Lenny, but I used to hear this all the time and I couldn’t let myself let this small talk moment go. “Don’t you just want your kid to be happy? You just want your kid to be happy, right?” And I’d always ruin a perfectly harmless comment. I was like, “No.

(00:57:53): And then again, we think in extremes, “Oh, you want your kid to be unhappy?” “No, I definitely don’t want my kid to be unhappy.” But I think if we zoom out, especially in childhood that I think I can make a parallel to work, too, optimizing for happiness in childhood is the quickest way to build anxiety and fragility in adulthood. Hard stop.

(00:58:13): Because in a kid’s early years, what they’re really learning is, “What range of experiences am I able to cope with? In how many different situations can I find my capability? Can I feel like I can get something done? Can I get through something? Or do I believe that the only way to feel like myself is to bring every form of discomfort to a zero and only find happiness?” The irony is, in adulthood, the thing that clouds out happiness often is our inability to manage disappointment, jealousy. Those things will always overpower happiness. And so happiness actually comes in adulthood from our ability to manage the widest range of difficult situations. That’s what resilience is. It’s our ability to handle the widest range of experiences. I’m not talking about toxic, but just disappointment, jealousy, anger, feeling less than. These are just human experiences we have. And unintentionally, something’s happened over the generations where we’re optimizing for kids’ happiness. Our kids will say something like, “I’m the only one in my class who can’t read,” and we hop in with, “Oh, that’s not true,” or, “But you’re so good at soccer, but you play chess, but you’re doing this,” as if I can’t even tolerate my kids’ upset feelings.

(00:59:34): And I tell parents all the time, our kids can only learn to tolerate the feelings we tolerate in them. Nothing scarier to a kid that when they’re upset, if I can’t tolerate their upset feelings, that makes them doubly upset because it’s like, “Oh, I guess this is unmanageable,” which leads to adulthood where anything but comfortable and happy and doing a perfect job is actually experienced in your body is even worse, because you spent that many years thinking those feelings were wrong.

(01:00:02): So what that means is, when our kids are young and they go through hard experiences, those are our best opportunities to wire them for resilience and ironically for happiness later on. Because if I can support my kid, I’m not going to say, “Uh, no big deal,” but there’s a lot between no big deal and let me call the school to make this all better for you. There’s a whole world. That’s the world I think we try to live in and good inside where I can help my kids see they’re capable of dealing with this. That’s going to help them so much more over the years.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:00:35): How do you think that translates to work? The way I think about it is just like, it’s okay to upset people. You’re better off. I think it was Kim Scott from Radical Candor had this great story where she had someone she was working with, he was doing a bad job. She didn’t want to upset him. She didn’t give him any feedback. Nine months later, he just didn’t get any better, so she had to fire him. And he’s like, “Why didn’t you tell me that I wasn’t doing what you wanted me to do? You could have told me somewhere along the way.” And to us, it feels like, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings.” But then it ends up hurting their feelings a lot worse. It’s a lot worse for them.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:01:11): I think there’s so many parallels.

(01:01:13): One of the reasons I love talking about childhood is because that’s when our brain is wiring. It’s when we form the blueprint, or my friend Maile calls it the factory settings, for the rest of our kids’ lives. That’s the ultimate, is to wire them with the default that works for them. But actually you can think about work relationships the same way, where of course people come, their brain’s already wired, they’re older, or somewhat.

(01:01:37): But if you think about it as a building, your first number of months with someone is, you’re building the foundation for the whole building, which is the relationship you’re going to have. And the earlier you’re just optimizing for comfort and happiness, the more fragile your building’s going to be. And you’re right. Then you get to six months and you’re like, “Oh, this person isn’t doing so well. I’m going to give them feedback.” But in their mind, they’re thinking, “I’ve never gotten a piece of constructively critical feedback since I’ve been here. So I thought the nature of my relationship in this workplace was one of butterflies and rainbows all the time.”

(01:02:09): That doesn’t mean Day One I think you should sit someone down and say like, “Here’s everything you’re doing wrong.” They’re like, “I just started my job.” There’s obviously reasonableness. But yes, when we’re thinking about a resilient work culture, we want people who can say, “This is hard and I can do hard things,” not, “This is hard, so someone must be at fault and it should be easier.” And I don’t know anyone who would argue for the second culture. So I think we should ask ourselves, “Well, what am I doing in the nature of my conversations with people that help me build toward that? I’ll make it really concrete, because I think so much of dealing with anxiety and struggle, not all of it, but I like a good formula, is this combination of, “I believe you and I believe in you.”

(01:02:54): I think one of the ways we’ve majorly misunderstood anxiety, whether at any age, is we’re doing the I believe you part, but we’ve forgotten the I believe in you part, and they’re both, again, really necessary together, which might sound like this. “Look, I believe you. This is a hard project. You’re totally right. And you’ve never done something like this before. It makes sense,” that’s such a good phrase, “It makes sense you’re nervous about it.” Or something I say to my kids that I should say more at work. “I’d be nervous if you weren’t nervous. You have a big task. I’d be nervous if you weren’t nervous. Of course you’re nervous. That makes total sense. I’d feel the same way. And the reason we think you can take on this project is because we know you can figure this out. By the way, I’m here to answer questions and help you along the way, but I just want to make sure you hear that from me. Yes, this is hard and I also know you can work through this. And the way you’re going to feel at the end, you’re going to feel so proud of yourself. And I don’t want to take away the project from you, because I kind of think I’m taking away that feeling. And that’s going to be the feeling that propels you to do all the other amazing things you want to do here. And let’s work toward that.” And that’s actually, Lenny, something I used to say to my kids when they were your kids’ age. I just distinctly remember this time one of my kids was whining about this puzzle, and he’s like, “Do it for me. Finish it for me. You have to do it.” And of course, the easiest thing to shut down the tantrum is like, “Fine, here’s how you do it.” But it was the day I had a little more bandwidth. And I heard myself sing something that, I don’t know, it felt like healing to me, too. Honestly, I said, “Look, you’re right, this is a hard puzzle. It makes sense you’re frustrated. All of us feel frustrated when we want to do something and haven’t figured it out yet. You’re feeling this moment right. Take a break, take a breath, but I want to tell you why I’m not going to do this for you. There’s no better feeling in the world than watching yourself work on something and make progress on something and maybe even complete something that you originally didn’t think you could do. There’s literally no better feeling than that, and I will not take that feeling away from you.”

(01:04:59): And I think in the workplace, and definitely in parenting, we should be mindful of how often we take feelings of capability away from our kid. And I take that very seriously, because I feel very passionate about building a world where kids become adults who feel capable. And I think we can do that in these small moments more often.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:05:20): As you share these stories and examples, I’m just like, “I wish I had Dr Becky in my ear constantly giving me advice as I’m doing this stuff.” And we’ll talk about how people sort of can get that. But I’m actually really happy you talked about this I believe you Lesson. I was going to bring it up. That was right next on my notes.

(01:05:35): Because I’ve used it with my wife, actually, and it is so good and so effective. And this is why I love your advice is that it works not just for kids, it works for adults. Just like, “I believe you. I believe you feel this, even though I don’t know why and I wouldn’t feel that way, but just I believe you.” I like this, this makes sense piece. I haven’t thought about that. And then the I believe in you, that’s interesting because I did talk about, the way I remember phrasing this, this was a moment I really remember just like, “You’re smart, you’ll figure this out.” And then she just went back to me and she’s like, “Wait. What did you just do there?” That felt really good.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:06:09): Well, if you think about, and I’m very visual, so if you think about someone struggling, picture them in a hole, not an abyss, just like a little hole, okay? And we’re a relational species, at least we’ll see what happens with AI, but for now we’re a relational species, okay? And so when we’re really struggling, inherently, the reason why we’re struggling is we’re in a hole and we can’t see the way out of it. If we were in a hole and could see the way out, we wouldn’t struggle. So the only reason something feels so hard is because you’re in a hole without visibility. So what do you need as a relational species? You need someone you trust to have one foot in the hole with you. You do. That’s the I believe you part. So it might be saying to your kid, and those words are so powerful. I think deep down, Lenny, that’s literally what we’re all looking for as humans is just to be believed. “I believe you. You really don’t want to go to soccer practice. You’re no longer starting on the team. The first soccer practice after you lose your starting spot sucks, totally sucks. I believe you.”

(01:07:06): But if you think about them in that hole, they need you to have one foot out of the hole. They need one foot in, but they need one foot out. Because if we can’t see a more capable version of our kid than they can access in that moment, we’ve collapsed into the hole with them. And so the I believe you is, I believe in you would be, “Look, you’re going to go to practice today. You are. I’ll just be honest. It’s not going to be fun. You’re not going to want to be there the whole time. You’re going to feel embarrassed. You’re going to hate watching them run plays with you on the sideline, and you’re going to come home having survived. I’m going to be there for a hug. I’m going to let you know I’m proud of you. Maybe I’m proudest of you that moment even more than when you scored the goal last game, because that’s the hard stuff that’s going to help you in life and we’re going to get through it together.”

(01:07:49): And so I think for anyone listening, I find what’s really powerful with anything is thinking, what end of the spectrum am I on? Because it always gives me insight into where I can grow. Is the I believe you part easier for me or is the I believe in you part easier for me? And there’s no morality. Just knowing where you are is helpful. Do I like to say to people, “Come on, it’s no big deal. You can do it.” Okay, that’s the I believe in you. Ooh, I wonder if I’d be more effective if I focus on the first, I believe you. Or do I lead as a parent, as a leader with, I believe you, but ooh, do I sometimes go into the hole with someone? Oh, okay. It’s the other part I’m going to play around with. And I think that gives us all something to action on.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:08:29): This is such good advice. I got tingles as you were describing what you were telling your kid.

(01:08:34): If there’s anything you take away from this conversation, this is useful with kids, with partners, I think in work too, just this idea of I believe you and that makes sense. And then somehow making it clear that I believe in you.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:08:49): Yes. See a more capable version of them than they can see in the moment. Doing those two things at once, it’s magic. I talk a good game. It’s hard for me too. Again, these things are hard in practice, but at least, and I know you’re like this too, it’s helpful to have a framework to come back to.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:09:02): And just these words are s-

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:09:00): You’re like this too. It’s helpful to have a framework to come back to.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:09:02): Just these words are so… And you don’t have to say them exactly, but these specific ways of phrasing is actually really great. Okay. Let’s come back to how people can get your advice constantly. So a lot of people see your advice on TikTok and Instagram, just kind of on Twitter and all these places, just like, “Oh, there’s Dr. Becky giving me some awesome advice.” Not a lot of people know you have an epic business and product and community. Talk about that, just what you’ve built there, what it is, what people should know.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:09:28): So what started as an… I put up my first Instagram post on, I think it was February 28th, 2020. So it was two weeks before New York City at least shut down, probably a lot of places in the US. And I didn’t have some premonition about COVID. The timing was just kind of nutty. And I even put up that post without any business in mind. I felt so compelled by these ideas around what we’ve been talking about and how different they are from what we’ve been handed down to us as truth that the only way I can describe it is, this sounds like awful and visceral, but it felt like I was vomiting them out and I just needed somewhere to put them. And so when I look back, I was like, “Why did I do that?” I don’t know. It was more like relief than intentional goal setting.

(01:10:12): And then New York City shut down. And then what happened was things just took fire. And what was really powerful and I just kind of watched happen and tried to respond to was the community that formed around it, what people wanted. I started doing these live workshops just because I had so much more to say than I could put into a carousel post. And the way people were connecting live, it still happens now in the live events. I think certain ideas I have or stories I tell can be really impactful to people, but if I had to choose between that versus what happens in our community, I would bet on the community every time. It’s just amazing because I think these ideas tap into some value system or healing inside of ourselves and safe communities form around value systems. And so what ended up happening from there is people were just telling us.

(01:10:59): They actually kind of incepted this idea like, “Dr. Becky, I feel like you’re doing parent school.” And I was like, “What?” And they’re like, “I go to school for everything that I’ve ever cared about.” And I always joke that a friend said, “Do you know how much money I spent on gardening school? I like my flowers, but I care about my children more, but I’ve spent more time and I’ve invested more in my tiny little garden or my cooking or my hobby.” Certainly I’ve spent more learning about Greek history, which for most of us, no shade to Greece, doesn’t actually impact our life that much anymore than I have in parenting. And I realized, and this is what this whole, our business is around, is I really feel like parenting is the last area in life that we glorify instinct alone, where we say, especially to women, this whole idea of maternal instinct, I don’t know, this is probably a little controversial, I was like, “Wow, what a way to gaslight parents.”

(01:11:54): Not to say there aren’t some moments that are instinctual, but if I’m parenting by instinct, do you want to know what I’m going to do when my kid has a tantrum or when my kids lies in my face? It’s not going to be pretty. I don’t know if any of us feel like that’s a good option.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:12:09): I believe you. No, you would not do that.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:12:09): Yeah. Right. And instinct, by the way, what’s instinct? It’s everything we’ve learned until that point. And what feels naturally in parenting is simply how we were parented. That’s all that’s going to be natural. And so I really, like I started to get very angry with my community where like, why isn’t there a better way? And by the way, with modern technology, shouldn’t this be easy on your phone? Shouldn’t you get access, not to make a moment perfect, but we all spiral after a hard moment. It’s not the spiral that makes us have a bad week. It’s the way we extend the spiral from how we talk about ourselves and the bad patterns. That last weeks. These are the things that add up to our and our kids’ mental health. And I did, I started to get angry thinking there should just be a better option for parents to learn without shame, without the expectation of perfection, to have something in their pocket, to combine it with modern technology, now AI, so many different things, and to preserve the human interactive element.

(01:13:02): So yeah, so that’s what Good Inside is. My co-founder and I are both psychologists. We’ve known each other forever, and we have a whole team where, yes, there’s the podcast and Instagram. And I always consider those flags, like a strategy and a tip we hear, they’re like flags. They’re like things we try, but most of our struggle in parenting is we don’t have a framework and an actual approach, which is the ground we would plant a flag into, which is why parenting feels like whack-a-mole where we’re just trying things, right? Even though we would never do that at work. We don’t even do that with gardening or tennis.

(01:13:37): And so Good Inside and our app to me is the most modern, alive, personalized, technologically informed way of feeling like I have something in my pocket and someone and a community too in my pocket that can just close the gap between how I kind of want to show up and how I do show up. None of us close the gap completely, but I do believe we deserve access to tools that can help us do that. And that’s what Good Inside as a business is built around.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:14:07): Just to give you a more chance to plug what this is, exactly, what do people get when they say download the app, sign up for the community?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:14:13): What you get is, first of all, you get to just tell us what’s going on with you, and we get to be the holder of that story and make sure we hit on the important themes. I really do believe, I know kind of, not formula that makes it too specific and perfect, but we need to learn how to set boundaries. We need to learn how to stay connected to our kid without martyring ourselves. By the way, I also think the thing that you get in the app, which we have to learn better communication if we’re in a partnership because that gets tricky. We have to learn how to repair. We have to understand why we get so activated in our nervous system, and we have to do it in a way that we could do, I don’t know, five minutes here or there in the go. So that’s exactly what we’re set up to do.

(01:14:52): If you can give us five minutes, we will give you something that’s not just a tip, that is something… I always combine two things, understanding and action, right? Insight and something that you can actually do today, because I think that’s how we can take a deep breath, understanding gives us clarity, and action gives us capability, and that’s what we give parents. So you get that, we’ll drip it to you, you tell us what’s going on. We also have an incredible AI chatbot experience that also beyond helping you in the moment can help you say like, “Hey, this kind of thing that seems different, they’re all kind of the same. Here’s the common theme. Here’s what we suggest for you to kind of get ahead of things.” And then there are so many live events. I believe deeply that parenting is something where we have to connect to people.

(01:15:37): So I do, I don’t know, usually two or three live events in a month. We have coaches we’ve trained, so we’ve manualized the Good Inside approach. We have coaches who do support sessions. If you have a deeply feeling kid, you can come to as many of those in a month as you want. And there’s always a parent to kind of connect. And so I would say you get answers to your questions, you get deeper dives if that’s for you and you have the time and you love to learn. And then you also have a very, very active, expert driven, but also just parent community for the live connected help that I think we all need.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:16:08): Amazing. I’m a happy member. I was actually just chatting with your AI chatbot at Dr. Gigi is-

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:16:13): Yes. Gigi, exactly.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:16:15): Gigi. So good.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:16:15): Yes.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:16:17): Okay. And where do people find this? Goodinside.com?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:16:17): Yes.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:16:17): Is that right?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:16:17): So easy.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:16:19): Okay. So easy.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:16:20): We try to make it easy. Goodinside.com.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:16:23): Okay. I have another question, I’m going to ask about this experience, but before that, I’m going to take you to a couple of recurring corners on this podcast. The first is AI corner. I’m curious if there’s some way you found AI useful in your work and your life.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:16:36): So yes. So it actually connects to what I was saying before, how I’ve learned about myself. I’m kind of allergic to ideas without action. And people would always say to me, “Dr. Becky, one of the reasons I love your parenting guidance is you both help me understand a situation more deeply than I find elsewhere, but you also help me translate it into this absurdly practical thing I can say or do.” And it’s interesting because what I’ve learned is I’m so glad that’s helpful for people. That actually is just the way I think. And I’m seeing that as I run my company also. And AI helps me close that gap. So let’s say we’re talking about the product and we’re talking about a new onboarding flow and I have an idea. I currently was playing around with Figma Make and I was like, oh my goodness, I can vomit my ideas.

(01:17:28): And I have so many ideas, not just about like, this is how I want to make someone feel. And I don’t want it to sound like this. I want it to sound like this. I have so many ideas around my intention and the impact and I don’t like to have an idea that I can’t fully see out. So I want to see the UX design or I want to see the whole email flow. And my team knows me well enough to know that’s just how I think so they can get a totally new abandoned cart flow from me and they might be like, “Becky, we don’t like this. We wish you just told us the idea before you built this out.” I don’t do that for them. And I’m like, “If you want to trash the whole thing, I don’t care. I’m not attached to it.” But AI has allowed me to take an idea and turn it into something I can visualize and that’s more real in such a rapid way. And I’m so excited about that.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:18:10): That is super cool. It feels like this is what these apps are so useful for. People that are not designers, product managers, engineers, trying stuff out, prototyping, thinking through and real designs, not just sketches. Well, Figma Make, that’s cool. Proud podcast sponsor. Is that the one-

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:18:11): Yes.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:18:27): You find most useful?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:18:29): It’s funny. I’m just laughing because Andrew Hogan who does insights at Figma, he’s been a big Good Inside member. He’s always talking about it. And I said to him, “If it would help at all, I want to make a video for just your team to tell them how obsessed I am with Figma Make in case that…” And he’s like, “Go ahead.” So if this fails, I’m going to become an affiliate or something for that. But that is the one I’m playing around with. I’m also playing around Replit. My team is just showing me that one and Lovable. So I love playing around with any of those new tools. And then yeah, whether it’s Claude or ChatGPT, I find the way I can work rapidly to get my ideas into a place. And I show my team how I use it. And I really do think that people who get the most out of prompting, like there is, like a vomiting aspect.

(01:19:20): Tell me all your thoughts. And I think a lot of people, especially women, we’ve been conditioned to put everything into this neat, organized package before we present it to the world in general. And I find prompting is best when we do complete opposite, right, and get it all out there and then you can refine. And that’s one of the things I do with my team a lot. I’m like, I want to show you. Just be in the room and I’ll show you how I work through this with, let’s say it’s a ChatGPT. And I think that’s one of the ways I’m also helping my team get a lot more from AI, is showing them that kind of way of using it.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:19:53): How big is your team, by the way? What’s like the Dr. Becky operation? What does that look like?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:19:56): 65.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:19:57): 65 people. That’s incredible.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:20:00): Yeah. Well, and we’re profitable.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:20:02): And profitable.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:20:02): So proud of that.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:20:02): Have you raised money-

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:20:02): Yes.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:20:03): Or is it bootstrapped?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:20:05): We did raise money a couple years ago. We felt like, again, we have a very, very big vision for what we want to accomplish. I feel like at our core, it’s a set of ideas and stories and a way of making people feel that happens to be represented as the biggest part of our business now in a digital product. But there’s just so many other things in a Disney type ecosystem that I think can come out out of IP and story and feeling and connection. And there’s a lot of really other exciting things, 2026 and 2027 that will further build that ecosystem. And I feel like as a team are set up to do that.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:20:37): Oh, man. We need to do a whole episode on just the whole operation. But-

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:20:40): Yes.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:20:40): I guess just to cover the empire, there’s the book, there’s the podcast, there’s the app, there’s the community.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:20:47): So yes, and my second children’s book will come out next year. So I feel like that’s our first entry into kind of more physical product. And my second children’s book is about deeply feeling kids. Those kids are kind of my passion project within the passion project that is Good Inside. I think they’re the most misunderstood kids in the world. They’re labeled dramatic, oppositional. A lot of parents even tell me professionals tell them the issue is they don’t punish them enough or they’re not consistent. Those kids don’t fear a loss of control. Their core fear is being too much and they can act that out and unfortunately get it confirmed by the world. And so my second children’s book will be about deeply feeling kids and gives parents something. If our app is like the companion for the parent, I feel like the connection moment and for a kid to see themselves in this book is the purpose of that.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:29): Is that something people can pre-order yet or not yet?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:21:30): Yes, they can pre-order. It’s out-

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:32): Okay.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:21:33): February 2026 and pre-orders, thank you. Yes, help so much. And I’ll be doing a little tour around it as well.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:21:40): And what’s it called for people to look it up on Amazon or wherever they want to buy the book?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:21:40): It’s called Leave Me Alone!: A Good Inside Story About Deeply Feeling Kids. And if you have one, these kids, the reason the title I think will resonate and honestly, a lot of people say, “Ooh, that gives me a lot of insight in my partner, someone at work.” Is around their fear of being too much, they tend to have big explosive feelings and push the people away they care about the most in the exact moments they actually need them, thereby confirming their fears. See, I really am too much, which exacerbates the cycle until they know how to change it. So leave me alone is something a deeply feeling kid will often scream in their room when they’re completely out of control and that’s actually in some ways their deepest fear, not their wish. And so the title plays to that.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:22:20): How cool. Okay. We’ll definitely link to that in the show notes.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:22:23): Yes.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:22:23): You can look it up on your favorite bookseller. Dr. Becky, how fun was this? What a unique conversation. We touched topics on every level of humanity, I think. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you wanted to share? Anything else that you want to double down on?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:22:43): Kind of I think before we started recording, I was saying how excited I am. I really mean it. You’re like a major celebrity to me and my whole team knows it, that of all of the podcasts I’ve been on, they’re like, “You must be nervous for Lenny.” I was like, “I am.” What I said to you is that I love your podcast because I just learn so much. Right. As a psychologist, CEO, obviously there’s a lot for me to learn and I’ve learned so much from you and I really am addicted to learning. And the reason that’s coming up for me now is I think about all the people who listen to your show who I think they’re like that too. They’re forever learners. They love to learn. It’s why they love your podcast because you get so concrete and you follow the thread down the rabbit hole and it helps us feel more capable at work.

(01:23:28): And one of the things I’ve found interesting is so many people who have that forever learner growth mindset, whatever you want to call it at work, we forget to access it with our kids. We say things like, “It is the way it is.” I feel like people who listen to your podcast probably don’t say that at work. That’s why they’re listening to their podcast. Maybe it doesn’t have to be the way it is. Or, “Oh, I didn’t know that before, but now I do. So I can try something new.” And again, I’m never going to be perfect. Perfect is creepy, but I can grow. I’m more addicted to growing and learning than being right. And I think, I guess I would just ask anyone listening, especially as a parent, to say, “What if I just took that mentality home?” Like, okay, yelled at my kid.

(01:24:06): I didn’t mess them up forever. Do I know how to repair? By the way, did I have a parent who actually repaired with me? Because if I didn’t, no wonder it feels awkward. I’m kind of the first person in my whole lineage to give a true apology to my three-year-old. Of course, that’s going to feel hard. Or, yeah, I don’t understand tantrums or I don’t really understand why my good kid is lying to me, but maybe I could learn. I learn things at work all the time and I give myself credit. And what if I took that way of being and just applied it to this other area? I’d both, I think, be more compassionate with myself, but I probably also feel better over time about how I was showing up. And I just think we forget to apply that because again, parenting has been told as something that should just feel natural when it doesn’t, right? So if we think of it as a set of skills, it’s actually very hopeful. Oh, I learn skills from Lenny all the time. I can do that in parenting too.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:24:59): That’s such a beautiful message. What I feel is anytime I watch one of your clips and then do that thing and then it works, it’s like, oh, that expands your mind. Oh wow, there’s so much more I could learn. I should go deeper on what the hell I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. So that is a really important message of like you can learn this skill. It’s not something anyone just knows how to do.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:25:19): Yeah. And I like giving people very concrete things. So a question recently that I’ve asked my kids that have led to amazing moments just as a, is some version of, “If I could do one thing different this week to be a better parent to you, what would it be?” I guess it’s kind of like a 360 degree-

Lenny Rachitsky (01:25:37): Yeah. That’s [inaudible 01:25:38].

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:25:38): Review. Right. And-

Lenny Rachitsky (01:25:39): Give me a raise.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:25:40): Sometimes your kid says the hurtful things. “You can not be on your phone as much,” which just get ready for it and just get ready to receive. “Okay. Thank you for telling me that.” And I think the thing that stops us is we think our kid is going to say “stupid things.” “You could let me watch TV.” The truth is no matter what your kid says, it’s a window into their world. And again, you can be the pilot who listens but doesn’t open the cockpit door. “Oh, what would it be like to watch all the TV you want? Oh, your friends watch more. I’m so glad you told me that. Oh, does that mean I can watch TV? Sweetie, that’s not going to be one of the things I budge on, but maybe here’s something we could do instead.” But just asking your kid that question and not expecting a profound answer.

(01:26:16): It makes me think if anyone thought, “What if my manager asked me that question? Wouldn’t I immediately just feel better about my manager anyway just from the asking of the question?” And I think it’s just something so actionable that every time I do it with my kids, I notice their behavior’s kind of better for the rest of the week just from that. And I want to give something high impact to anybody who’s made it this far in the episode.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:26:36): I love that that’s like the reverse of this approach to this episode is like from the work environment, what can you bring to your kids? And it’s like, do a little 360, ask for what feedback can you give me in my performance review as a parent this week.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:26:48): Exactly.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:26:48): So good. Okay. With that, Dr. Becky, we reached our very exciting lightning round. I’ve got five questions for you. Are you ready?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:26:56): Yes.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:26:57): Here we go. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:27:03): I love The Power of Moments. I love Messy Middle and I got a lot from Creativity, Inc as well.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:27:11): Is there a recent movie or TV show you have really enjoyed?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:27:14): I really liked Secrets We Keep, which was actually recommended to me by our product leader on Netflix. And I really loved KPop Demon Hunters so much. I wrote a whole guide on it because I think it’s just such an opener for really good, deep connected moments with our kids. And so those two come to mind.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:27:33): Is there a product you recently discovered that you really like? Could be an app, could be clothing, could be a gadget.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:27:39): I started doing Liberty Puzzles. Do you know it? So some people-

Lenny Rachitsky (01:27:39): No.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:27:42): Have heard of Stave. They’re like these, but this is Liberty. They’re thick wooden puzzles where they’re kind of hand cut pieces. You never know what’s an edge. Sometimes the colors that connect are kind of the end of one color and start of another, so they’re tricky. But having this out at night, number one, I find puzzling is something where you have to monotask. You truly cannot multitask. And I find it so hard for me to monotask these days, even though it gives me such grounded energy. So that allows that. And it’s something, yes, with my kids, but oddly enough, me and my husband will find ourselves doing it together at night versus being on the couch, doing work. And I feel like we’re in the same world working on something together. And it’s been really fun for that as well.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:28:25): My kid has been really into puzzles recently. We have this menorah puzzle that we got and he’s just every bedtime, he wants to do it four times, finishes it, again. He speaks Spanish because his grandma speaks Spanish to him, so he’s like mas, una mas.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:28:38): Oh, I love it. Love puzzles.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:28:40): And I love that he’s just like, “Break it apart. Okay, let’s start from the beginning.”

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:28:43): Amazing.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:28:44): Yeah. Puzzles. How fun. Okay. Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you find useful in work or in life?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:28:52): This feels hard because it is hard, not because I’m doing something wrong. I just think this is so true in parenting at work. It’s so interesting how often something is hard and we tell ourselves the story that we’re stupid or we’re not good at it. And there’s something so simple about reminding myself, no, this feels hard because it is hard. I’m feeling this moment right. It’s just hard. And I find that I always feel my feet on the ground again when I tell myself that.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:29:15): Great segue to our final question. So you’re building a product, building a company. As a non-product person, what’s something that surprised you about the experience of building a product and building a company?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:29:28): It’s funny. I’m hesitating only because I’m thinking of something and I’ll say it, but I’m like, why did that surprise me? It should be so obvious. But I guess it’s true that a company is just people. And before I started this company, I was in private practice, seeing people for therapy. And I feel like those skills are remarkably useful as the leader of a company where there’s so many things I can’t do. You’re not going to ask me to financially model or data analytics, but I feel like there’s really strong people who can do that. But I believe that understanding people or just having the skill of attempting to understand people is a surprisingly, but I guess also retrospectively obvious, really good leadership skill.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:30:12): Dr. Becky, this was incredible. It’s such an honor to have you on. I just see you everywhere all the time, have learned so much from you. And what a treat to have you in this podcast. I have people are like, “What the hell is going on here?” I learned a ton myself and I know people will too. Two final questions. Where can folks find you, Good Inside, your book, anything else you want to share? And then just how can listeners be useful to you?

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:30:33): Oh yeah, just goodinside.com. You can find our product there. You can find all the books that I’ve written there. You can find our yeah, newsletter if you’re just curious to start there. All of it’s at goodinside.com. I really do love feedback. So if you’re there, if you’re thinking, “Hey, I’m in your app and I wish you did this.” I mean, your listeners are such a treasure trove of brilliant product, marketing, just thoughts that I can never have myself. And we’re really trying to build something that makes a parent always exhale and feel a little more capable and parents have the best information of how to do that. So being willing to share feedback and ideas. Anyone can reach out to me on DM or you could email office@goodinside.com, but that’s a way to help. I love learning from other people.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:31:26): Awesome. Dr. Becky, thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Becky Kennedy (01:31:29): Thank you.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:31:30): Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.