It's great to be back.

Definitely. Launching a book is like running a mile as fast as you can in a race, only to find yourself on the start line of a 5K and then a half marathon and then a marathon. So it's a wonderful opportunity to practice what I preach.

Yeah. So I learned this with my first book. You feel like launch day or the couple days are just so busy, full of various activities that you want to help the world recognize that your book has finally arrived and ultimately get the books in the hands of readers. If you're not careful, and I learned this the hard way, you can go full tilt in those three days, and then on day four, you're completely exhausted. But days five, six, and seven are just as important in many ways as days one, two, and three. At the end of the first week, you can feel completely spent. But the first month is also significant, as is the first year. While this is true of creative projects where you want to just push hard to share your work when they're first released. It's so important to take a long view and realize that any successful work will not be made in a day, a week, or a month. It's going to be made over shepherding it out into the world for years.

I think that this metaphor applies far beyond book publishing or just any creative project. It applies to starting a company, being engaged in an intimate relationship, having a child, building a home. We tend to get really excited and put forth so much energy very early on. But if we're not careful with how we pace, it can leave us feeling quite empty and burnt out.

It's such an energy grabber, and it's so important for me to remember what's in the book and why I wrote the book and how I feel about those things. And the more I can do that, the more I'm able to draw from that well of energy. Even so, for my own temperament and my own being, it is very important to remember that just because you feel good at mile one of a marathon and you want to run six-minute pace, that doesn't mean it's going to set you up for success at mile 24 Mile. So I think that drawing into that well of energy and fuel and making sure that you're not neglecting things like sleep and physical movement and nutrition in time with friends and family. That's all the stuff that is easy to get thrown out the window when you're launching a book or any big project for that matter. And while you can get by doing that for a few days, it's not a sustainable path for the long haul.

Yeah. This is a big theme in the Practice of Groundedness. In particular, the chapter on being patient to get there faster and what might seem inefficient in the short term is almost always going to be very efficient in the long term. So stepping away for rest and recovery, going slow, consulting other colleagues and experts at the moment feels wholly inefficient because it is slowing you down. But when you look back after a month, half a year, a year, or a decade, it's the fact that you had the self-discipline and the ability to show restraint and to slow down to be inefficient. Now that is what makes you hyper-efficient later. I think that this culture is so obsessed with moving fast and breaking things in different hacks and strategies to optimize as fast as possible that we've kind of forgotten about the art of practicing patience because I have come across few, if any, significant endeavors that were truly overnight breakthroughs. And even so many things that we think of as overnight breakthroughs tend to have years and years of work behind them.

So an example that I use in the book is the story of Charles Darwin and the theory of Evolution. When we look back, most people say that that was a scientific breakthrough. But Darwin worked on his theory of Evolution for 20 years before he published it. So from the moment that he had the idea on his voyage in the Galapagos to publishing a natural selection, it was 20 years of tinkering and missteps and consulting with other researchers and other friends in revising. So many of the things that we think are overnight breakthroughs are actually these very long processes. And I think it's vital that we celebrate that long process for ourselves, our colleagues, and our communities because we don't want to send a false message that the way to success is to move fast. Because I argue that ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, the way to success is to move slowly.

Sure. So researchers from MIT and Northwestern partnered to try to look at the age of successful entrepreneurs, and they judged a success by company revenue. If a company IPOed, its value and success at IPO. What they found really surprised them because, as you alluded to, the myth is that you want to be young and even a little bit reckless in startup culture. What these researchers found is just that that is a complete myth. The average age of a successful founder is forty-five years old, and they speculate that this is the case. And I wholeheartedly agree because as important as cognitive flexibility and mental speed and acute problem-solving, which are capacities that tend to pick younger, often in our mid to late 20s, those things are important. Still, they have to be balanced with wisdom, and there is no fast-tracked wisdom.

The only way to get wisdom is to learn, experience, fail and grow, so you can almost think about these two curves. You've got a wisdom curve that goes up as you age, and then you've got, we'll call it, a raw talent or skills curve that gradually goes down as you age, and you're most successful when those two things cross. Now, different pursuits have different slopes of those curves. But for starting a business, the researchers found that it happens to be in midlife when those two things cross. This is also very true in many of the arts of intellect. Most researchers receive their Nobel prizes in mid-air late life. So this notion that youth is wasted on the young is not always true. Some of that is learning when you're young so that you can then break through later.

I think that it's such a language change. So what I call groundedness, I believe, is very similar to what you talk about mastery. These are paths that you have been on for a very long time. So you zoom out the quarterly report or the annual report. Those are mere data points or checkpoints—this is a longer path. If you can take that view, not only do you feel much better because it takes a load of pressure off, but you and your organization, over the long haul, will perform better. Now I realize both individually and organizationally. This is swimming upstream because the entire society runs on the quarterly cycle in the business world. In the personal world, we celebrate birthdays. We think we get to certain life stages, and we should have accomplished these various things. But what not just my own hypothesis with the research very clearly shows is that progress is non-linear. And just because you've been working at something and you haven't yet seen the results doesn't mean that that breakthrough isn't a year or two years, three years off.

He was 51, which is the same age Darwin was when he published his theory of natural selection. Another example I give is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who certainly came onto the scene in 2015 and seems like a sensation overnight. Part of it is that he has very young energy. But Ta-Nehisi Coates was thirty-nine years old when he 'broke through'. From age 22 to 39, he lived on unemployment checks because he was trying everything to make it as a writer. In conventional terms, he was failing. But what Coates would say is that he was actually gaining the experience in the wisdom to breakthrough later on. So there are all these stories where we look at these people, and we say, wow, Steve Jobs or Darwin or Ta-Nehisi Coates, they just break on the scene. But that's only because that's what we're told, and that's what we see. Another metaphor I love for this that I use in the book is you can think about most big endeavors in life as chipping away or pounding in a big rock. And it might take a hundred pounds before the rock breaks, and during those first ninety-nine pounds, you don't see anything. But that doesn't mean that they're not beneficial. Without them, the rock wouldn't break. So visible progress is not always the best judge of success.

Yes.

This isn't designed to throw progress at measurable progress or conventional success completely out. You don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm arguing that the sole focus shouldn't be on the shorter-term progress markers or notions of conventional success but rather on the path to achieving those things. I argue that the data support this that the great paradox is the byproduct of less focus on measurable results. So I am a big fan of metaphors because, as a writer, I think they're so powerful. Another way to think about this is as follows. There are two paths to the peak of the mountain. This mountain can be real. It can be metaphorical. On one path, the climber is obsessing about the peak and is worried that they might not make it. I cannot stop thinking about what it will mean when they do make it to the peak. On the other route, the climber wants to get to the peak but is really enjoying each step of the journey. They have fun camping. They're enjoying the views, the life on the side of the mountain. Both climbers make it to the peak, so they both attain the same success, but the texture of their journey, the path looks very different, and it's the climber that was able to be where they were along the way that is happier, more fulfilled and less likely to burn out. Because if every mountain you climb, you are just obsessing about getting on the peak. You will not last long as a climber because the stress that puts on your system is unsustainable.

So I'd say that the two biggest things in the last seven months were that we got a puppy who's now ten months old, barely still a puppy, and a guy who's a big old German shepherd. And it's been absolutely wonderful. It's been both better than I thought and harder than I thought. And then the second thing is, I think what so many people around the world are experiencing, which is just managing through COVID 19. Well, my family's been very fortunate that no one has gotten sick. No one has lost their income. It has still been a source of distress and challenge. We have a young child and are deciding whether to send them to school or pull them from school. Is this just a cold, or could this turn into COVID? Not being able to go out in the world and do lots of things and connect with lots of people in ways that we're accustomed to? It has been very hard. So, on the one hand, I'm doing what I can with my wife, my son to keep perspective and be very grateful for where we are.

On the other hand, I'm also giving myself and us permission. I hope they give themselves permission to feel like crap on some days and realize that there will be more arguments in the kitchen because we're going through a time that we haven't been through. The last time there was a global pandemic was in 1918. So it's been a while, and I think it's about being able to hold both those things at once. So maintaining perspective and being grateful allows yourself to realize that you too may be going through acute challenges. The challenges are different. It's not that one of us is hospitalized or on a ventilator, but that does not discredit the kind of cloud of stress that COVID 19 has put forth. The thing that I'm trying to practice, which is extremely hard to do, is to really focus on what is in front of my face. Because if I can come to the present moment, not get from or reach out, I am not really focused too much on what's happening beyond an arm's length. Thankfully, things are pretty good.

Yeah, his name is Ananda.

Yeah, so in Buddhism, he was one of the Buddha's finest disciples. And it also means joy and bliss in Sanskrit.

I could connect it back to the book, and I promise the audience that this wasn't a setup. There's a beautiful parable in the chapter on building a deep community from the Pali Canon, the oldest recorded Buddhist text we have. And Ananda, the Buddhist disciple, goes to Buddha and says, "I've heard that friendship is 50 percent of the spiritual path. Is this true, Blessed one?" And the Buddha says, "No, Ananda, no, it is not true, and it is not true that friendship is 50 percent of the spiritual path." So Ananda says, "Blessed one. Blessed one. What then is true?" And the Buddha says, "Ananda. Friendship is the whole spiritual path." It is 100 percent of the spiritual path. And I just think that's true. B It's such a beautiful passage and C. How could I not name my dog, Ananda?

So my approach is to look for truth with a capital T, and what I mean by that is I want to uncover principles and practices that are applicable to lots of people and lots of different situations. So to do that, I take a very broad view. So I look, I think of anything that I write about any practice or principle. In my book, I test against a metaphorical three-legged stool. The first leg is science and empirical research. So what is the theory behind the practice? Has it been tested in a controlled setting? Are there meta-analyses? Have there been cohort studies? Peer review science. The second stool is ancient wisdom. So what do the ancient wisdom traditions say about this concept, this topic, or this practice? Is it something that's been spoken about and written about in many ancient wisdom traditions in different parts of the world at other times? Has it survived millennia of thinking? And the third stool is daily practice. So when I go out, and I report, and I talk to individuals that are sustainably performing at their potential, feeling fulfilled, feeling good and well along the way, are they practicing these things so it can't just exist in the ancient text or the ivory tower of academia? It has to work when the rubber meets the road.

And if a principal has all three of those things behind it, that is when I can be confident. But this is true with the capital T. If it has to, the stool is a little bit shaky. It might be true. It might be something to test in my own life to write an article or an essay about, but it doesn't make it into a book. And if a principal only has one leg of the stool, well, then you can't stand on that stool. So it's really around pattern recognition and looking for support again in the hard sciences and ancient wisdom traditions. And then also daily practice where the rubber meets the road.

Yeah, I mean, how can it not? I think that's true. It's wise of you to make it explicit because you're right. Any time anyone, not just a writer, picks up a study or reads a book or has a conversation with someone or figures out a spiritual practice, it is always the union of you. And it, and particularly in creative pursuits like that, is the definition of creativity. It is how your own unique experience, self or whatever you want to call it, ground. How that relates to something external in whatever comes out of that union is new. So, yeah, I think that's a poignant remark.

So where I land, there is a big part of why I have this three-legged stool. I am not very confident in any single study because it's just a single study. When you narrow in on just science, I think this is the power of finding a meta-analysis or several meta-analyses, which are studies of studies. And I also think in the social sciences, often I think mostly unconsciously, sometimes perhaps with motivation, researchers will stumble upon a concept or a tool, and they will take that tool and start wondering if that tool is the fix for everything. It would be better suited if we could say that many of these concepts are tools in a toolkit. In some situations, they're the right tool to pull out. In other situations, they are not. Unfortunately, I think what often happens is there's a tool that's really powerful. It's a good hammer. But suddenly, if someone has the flu, they think that that hammer will fix the flu when with a hammer it was really for group dynamics. I think that the publishing industry definitely is part of this issue because when a concept explodes, let's take some very popular concepts like grit or specialization or body posture—they kind of fuel this well. Grit is the answer to everything. Power posing is the answer to everything. Specialization is the answer to everything. This inertia then perhaps leads those researchers to overreach their science without any malintent.

I think that I am a reader of these concepts. I like to think of it as well. Grit is important in some cases but not in others. And how you hold your body is important for some people in some cases. In other cases, it's not. I have the luxury of not being an empiricist in a lab needing to do this narrow work. I know it is tough when you have to publish or perish. I can step back and say, "Oh, like this, this seems like a concept worth keeping in mind." I do not doubt how you hold your body impacts your mind because I haven't read about this in the book. My mind is the body of the body is the mind. I do not know beyond what specific circumstances specific ways of holding your body might affect your consciousness. So I try to focus on these things and think of them as tools in a toolkit, and you can try different tools in different situations. It's a long-winded answer, but I think the issue is when we take a single tool and start thinking it's the answer to every problem.

Yeah. So I define groundedness as a sense of inner strength, stability in a wholeness out of which a more joyful, situated striving can emerge. So I want us all, myself included, to more often than not be mountain climbers. That is truly where they are enjoying the journey, performing well but feeling good on the way up to that peak. I do not want us to be the mountain climber that is compulsive about reaching the peak, that is so anxious about reaching the peak, that is so worried about reaching the peak. So being grounded along the side of the mountain is really important versus feeling unmoored. I think that so many people in today's culture feel unmoored. They feel like they are just swept up in this frenetic energy of bright and shiny objects and one thing to the next and restlessness and exhaustion and burnout. How do I possibly keep up? It can feel like there is no solid ground upon which you're standing. There is no foundation. So groundedness is that foundation. And the six principles that support that foundation are to accept where you are to get where you want to go—being present to own your energy and attention. Being patient to get there faster. Embracing vulnerability to build genuine strength and confidence, building deep community in moving your body to ground your mind and for each of these principles. It's not enough just to know them or to understand them. But then we have to do them. So in the book, I call this the knowing-doing gap. First, you need to know something and understand its value, but then you need to figure out how to do it in the world and practice it.

I think that there are so many books in the genre. Perhaps some of my earlier work can fall short on the doing part. And in this book, I try to hold every single page of the book to close that gap? Am I helping readers not only know something but also helping them be able to take action in the real world to impact their lives positively? And what is fascinating but not surprising about these six principles of groundedness is that they are very much contrary to the current ethos.

So instead of accepting where we are, the current ethos tells us to delude ourselves to engage in magical, overly optimistic thinking. If something is challenging, we're supposed to consume our way out of it, or perhaps even worse, numb it with substances. The current ethos is all about constant novelty and stimulation, and distraction. It is more complicated than ever to be present, yet presence is where we find fulfillment and peak performance. We alluded to this earlier. The current ethos is about speed and hacks, moving fast, and breaking things. The current ethos is invincible and tough when the research is clear that patience is key to progress. If you're going to be vulnerable, perhaps doing it in an overly performative way when the truth is that real vulnerability ought to feel hard when you're doing it because it is hard. The fifth principle, deep community, when we become so obsessed with optimization inefficiency, in outward performance in the metaphorical peak of the mountain, what tends to get crowded out first is the time and energy that we could use forging deep bonds and relationships in belonging. Yet, the most important thing for our life satisfaction is having those bonds and the six principles moving your body to ground your mind. Why have we been so caught up in a brain-based model of the South, where we think that all good ideas and all emotions live here, when in fact wisdom, research, and practice show us that we are Mind-Body systems and we cannot think of the brain as disconnected from the body.

Yes, many. Name a principal, and we'll dive into some concrete practices.

So the reason is there is just a wonderful human being that I coached for quite some time. And this person I know tunes in to your Intersections shows. So if they're here, this will be beautiful. So I'm going to call this person, Donna. It's not their real name, and I had started working with them shortly after they were promoted into the C-suite of Magna International Global Company. This person was feeling massive imposter syndrome. This person was the first woman at that level in the company. And also the only person of color at that level in the company at that time. And this person didn't have a clear path to being an executive at this multinational Fortune 100 company. They called themselves an accidental executive. So when this person would speak in front of large audiences or board meetings or with the CEO, they would sometimes feel imposter syndrome and go to this default of performing or trying to come across like they have it all together. I asked this person, I said, "What would you say if you felt in those moments?" And my client told me, "Well, what I'd say is I'm feeling quite overwhelmed. Some days I wake up, and I don't know how I got into this position." And I asked this person, I said, "Well, why don't you just open up your talks with that?" They said, "Oh, I can't say that. People might lose confidence. They might not take me seriously." I took responsibility, and I said I would take responsibility if that happened. I think you'll be surprised.

So, sure enough, at the next global roadshow of company strategy, the person got on a stage and felt that sense of imposter syndrome. Instead of going into a performance mode, they said something closer to what they really felt along the lines of I'm honored to be here, and wow, is it overwhelming to be an executive at this huge company? This is beyond my wildest dreams. I never thought I'd be here. I need your help to make me strong in this position. And sure enough, they felt immensely more comfortable on stage and in feedback from the audience. They performed better. The audience connected with the person more. Why? Because instead of seeing someone that is unreachable superhuman, they saw another human being going through human experience and struggling with imposter syndrome.

So the practice there in the book, I broaden this out and talk about it by asking yourself what you want to say and saying something as close as possible. I think that the amount of cognitive dissonance and distress that comes from not expressing ourselves authentically is by far more significant than any benefit of coming across as having it all together. I even argue in the book that if someone comes across as having all their shit together all the time, that's probably a person to look the opposite direction of because they have no humility. We think imposter syndrome is terrible, and being overwhelmed by it is undoubtedly not great, but you ought to have a little bit of imposter syndrome. I have a bit of imposter syndrome talking to your audience of executives right now.

We're confident that's another thing that happened with this client, and I think that's key. So it's contrarian and paradoxical because we believe that if we're feeling vulnerable, we can't be confident. But I argue in the book that by going to those weak spots and by embracing and addressing those vulnerabilities, we become more confident because we're not covering up our cracks. When we try to repress those things or delude ourselves or pretend that they're not there intellectually, we might tell a very confident narrative. But deep down inside, we know that we're hiding something, whereas if we can go to those weak points and embrace them or at least know that they're there, we gain true confidence because we're not hiding anything. We're not hiding anything from ourselves, and perhaps we're not hiding anything from others.

I'll draw this back to ancient wisdom as well as to science. So I'll start with science. A series of seven studies at the University of Mannheim in Germany had individuals like you and I engaged in conversation. They instructed one of the two people to be extremely vulnerable. After the conversation, the vulnerable person was ashamed, embarrassed, didn't feel good, and thought the person across from them would think the same. Yeah, the person across from them. The receiver of that information said that they respect the person. So the more vulnerable we are in the moment, it can feel hard and scary. It is actually what builds trust and respect with other people. And in the book, I look at the therapies, like cognitive-behavioral, acceptance, and commitment therapies. They find the same things with us. So even though it's so hard confronting our vulnerabilities, why don't we do so? Sometimes, with the help of friends, spiritual leaders, therapists, and psychiatrists, we become stronger and better friends with ourselves.

So that's the science of ancient wisdom. There's an old Greek God named Pan. Pan, in these myths, lived just outside of the village boundary. And when people got lost and stumbled upon Pan, they became terrified, so scared that they froze to death and died of fear. Whereas a few brave villagers would knowingly go out to visit Pan. And when they found him, he would bestow wisdom and strength upon them. Pan represents our vulnerabilities. If we're scared of them if we never go there. Well, when we stumble upon them, they're going to completely uproot us. Whereas if we cannot go to them deliberately again, sometimes with the help of trained professionals and confront them, then we become wiser. We become stronger.

Yeah, I think so. I believe that because when your teams are conventionally successful, there can be pressure to perform that role and forget that you're still just a human like the rest of us.

Yeah, it's a tool, and I say that right. All of these practices are tools. The overarching principle about vulnerability, building strength, and confidence is universally true. I think practices then become tools. So if your company has one month of runway and everything is going to crap, you probably don't want to share those terms with the team. I would argue that showing emotion is generally held to a point. Something that's happening in the workplace now that's very interesting is so many people are struggling in many different unique ways from COVID 19. And in the name of vulnerability, they're bringing these challenges to the workplace. I think this is beautiful because if it goes beyond that point, the workplace can become like group therapy. But managers aren't trained as therapists. And most organizations still have to produce a good or a product or service. There has to be some productivity.

So all of these things are not doable. The days of no vulnerability, show up to work stoic are out, and that's a good thing. But if work turns into a support group for anxiety or depression with all kinds of parents in it, again, starting with your managers aren't trained therapists. So these are very non-dual concepts. They're meant to be wrestled with in that way.

Let's do acceptance. So accept where you are to get where you want to go. All right. When you are in the midst of a highly charged emotional situation, it is tough to accept and see clearly what's happening. The way to do this, perhaps the only way to do this, is what researchers call self-distancing and ancient wisdom traditions called tapping into your greater awareness or your soul or your loving awareness. And what that means is as follows.

So imagine a situation internal or external. Something that happened in the world of thought and feeling that you're having. And imagine a more profound sense of self. We tend to fuse with challenging things, and when we fuse with them, we become them. Whereas if we can create a little bit of space between our deeper sense of self and whatever is happening, we can make a more wise and discerning decision about what to do. So the question becomes, how do you create that space? Two very practical ways. One is to pretend that a close friend is in the same situation that you are in. What advice would you give to that friend? And then you have to follow that advice. We are much better at advising friends than ourselves. That's because when we advise friends, it creates that space. The second way to make some distance between a challenging time and your actions is to pretend that you are an older, wiser version of yourself, looking back on your younger self right now. What advice would older, wiser you give to yourself right now? And then you have to follow that advice.

This is the value of meditation or contemplative practice. It helps you learn that thoughts and feelings arise, the crest, and then fall. The more experience you have watching those thoughts and emotions rise and fall, the more you realize that you or a sense of identity or self or awareness are separate from those thoughts and feelings, and you get to decide what to do with them. Sometimes you want to fuse with them when you're launching a company, making love, playing a sport, or playing an instrument. The most extraordinary flow states are when you fuse with those experiences. But sometimes, you want to create some space to have more discernment and degrees of freedom between you and it. So it's not to go about life detached. It's to give yourself a choice. Is this something I want to fuse with immediately, or is this something that I want to evaluate from a little bit far?

Yeah. So right, deep community itself is a principle of groundedness, and part of the reason is that. The more that we can engage with other people on anything, the more power that will have on us and then, of course, those people around us. And right now, to be grounded is so important. It's why I wrote this book, but it still requires, in many cases, going against the cultural grain. Hopefully, if we can do this in a community way, we shift the culture so that being grounded is more of a default option. I think that is the value of taking these concepts and using them more broadly outside of oneself.

And of course, even if they're small communities of practice, ten-person teams, a book club, a synagogue, or a church or mosque group. It is much easier to adopt new practices to wrestle with them and talk about obstacles when you're doing it with other people than just going it alone. So my goal is that not only do people read this book, but they share it, and they have conversations and discussions with other people in their local communities that stem from the book.

Yeah, it also involves taking a broader view of your identity and realizing that what makes you you is your interactions with other people. So it's a line that I remember from the book because it's one that I like on Twitter and stuff I constantly hear already, which is great because I think it's important. And I wrote that we're all mirrors reflecting on one another. So our sense of self we're reflecting on from others and who we are in shaping who other people are. And again, this is not undoable. Do I think that there is a firm sense of self somewhere in there? Absolutely. But that situated sense of self that is firm is very much shaped by everything around. So it's not either-or; it's both ends. And I think the current culture is very focused on the self that's in there. That's alone, not the self borne out of a conversation with the community and other people.

So I think that this notion that all truth is a paradox in many ways. So one area where it struck home is we think of self-compassion and self-discipline as opposites. You have to have self-compassion and realize that some things are structural and can't control everything. And I think that the world is polarized into these two thoughts. One is to wake up, pull yourself up by the bootstraps self-discipline. The responsibility is everything. The other is that everything is a structural problem. Let's all hold hands. Sing Kumbaya self-love. And the truth is, you need both of those things, and they're both appropriate. And it doesn't matter. Race, gender, nationality, and highly fulfilled people that are well and do well. They can close that gap and have fierce self-discipline but marry it with fear, self-compassion, and self-love. That was surprising.

No second question is for what's next. I am trying so hard to practice what I preach and just be here and focus on this and ideas for what's next. But for now, it's just how I can help get this book into the hands of readers because I believe that it's an important work. How can I be there for readers when they come with questions, either as individuals or in their communities, to make sure that I have integrity for that knowing-doing gap? And even if that goes beyond the pages and helping people implement these practices themselves and in their communities.

I mean, I have a young son, and he's only three and a half, and at that age, they pick up on everything you do that you say how you're being, are you on your device when you're talking to them. So I think that my immediate answer is to start with yourself. Then I think that the second answer would be to have conversations about these topics in age-appropriate ways. So vulnerability, especially with young boys and young girls, is essential to show kids that it's OK to feel and it's OK to be sad. At times, it's OK to be happy. In not fostering this sense of here's a path, and this is how you should walk it—but trying to be in conversation with kids again in an age-appropriate way about the importance of these principles.

Yeah, thank you for having me, and thank you, everybody, who has come along and listened, and I encourage everyone to pick up the book to wrestle with the ideas. And I'm serious. I respond to all reader emails. So if you read the book and you have questions, or there are obstacles, just go through my website and don't hesitate to ask me your questions because I do value the back and forth and trying to take what's on the page and help people make it real in the world.