How to be an adult – and how to raise one (w/ Julie Lythcott-Haims)
How to Be a Better Human
TED
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2023
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Whether it’s grades and test scores, cushy jobs or big salaries, our ideas of “success” tend to be incredibly narrow and often start incredibly early. Julie Lythcott-Haims is a New York Times bestselling author and former Dean of Freshmen at Stanford, and she is dedicated to helping people reconsider what really makes a happy, “successful” adult. Julie shares wisdom for parents and anyone who has been parented on why it’s crucial to question societal expectations, how to find your own path and why empathy towards yourself and others are the true key to loving who you’ll grow up to be. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ted Audio Collective. |
| 0:02.0 | Audio Collective. |
| 0:04.0 | You're listening to how to be a |
| 0:08.0 | you're listening to how to be a better human. |
| 0:12.0 | I'm your host Chris Duffy. |
| 0:15.0 | Sometimes with friends I play this game where we try and pinpoint what our internal age is. |
| 0:19.0 | I don't mean our actual biological age, but rather how old we feel on the inside. I have some friends |
| 0:25.9 | who are definitely extremely elderly. They're ones who love an early bedtime and they love an early |
| 0:32.0 | bird special. They like to eat dinner while the sun is still high in the sky. |
| 0:36.4 | And personally, for me, I feel like I am 10 years old on the inside. |
| 0:41.0 | I'm just like so excited to be here and to get to run around and to read chapter books and to learn facts. |
| 0:47.0 | Now your internal age it may or may not change, but on the outside we all do age. We all age in the same direction and at the same pace. |
| 0:55.0 | And that comes with real challenges, usually challenges that we do not have a roadmap for how to address. |
| 1:00.0 | And without formal instruction, we all have to figure out on our own what it means to be an adult. |
| 1:06.0 | For you, that might mean anything from learning how to budget your money to navigating relationships, |
| 1:11.0 | to developing agency and self-regulation. |
| 1:13.6 | Or maybe for you being an adult means something completely different, |
| 1:17.4 | like having fresh berries in your refrigerator. |
| 1:19.8 | I know that for me whenever I see fresh berries in someone's fridge I think oh wow that is an adult |
| 1:25.7 | regardless of what being an adult means to you figuring out how to be an adult is what today's |
| 1:31.9 | guest Julie Lith got H Hans is an expert in. |
| 1:34.1 | If you're a parent looking for wisdom on how to impart skills to your kids, |
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