Brad Stulberg

This is so hard, particularly in organizational settings, because you get these people that rise to leadership positions by just constantly crushing it, by making things happen.

They even become known in the organization as someone that can make things happen.

Well, if you're an N of 1, that works.

If you're leading a team of 10, that works.

If you're leading a team of 1,000, that makes you a micromanager that's going to burn out because it's impossible to make things happen across 1,000 people.

So it's true both in an individual context when we need to learn to just let go, to peak, but it's also true when you're in an organizational context

where you get better and better and better using this one quality, and then eventually you have to let things happen on their own.

The metaphor that I use in the book that I find really powerful is from the mid-century psychoanalyst, D.W.

Winnicott, who talked a lot about the good enough parent.

And what Winnicott said is that the helicopter parent that is constantly intruding on their kids and doing things for their kids, the kid does not end up well.

The negligent parent, the parent that checks out, that kid does not end up well.

The best way to parent is to create a space for your kid to unfold.

And when your kid goes off the path to gently nudge them back on.

And while I absolutely love that as a style of parenting, I also think it's a wonderful way to think about how we relate to ourselves and the big projects in our lives.

So how can we be good enough to ourselves?

How can you be a good enough leader, a good enough writer, a good enough podcast host?

Which doesn't mean every little thing you need to make perfect and you need to fix right away.

It doesn't mean that you check out.

It means that you're creating the space for the process to unfold.

And when things go awry, you lean in really hard.