Your Turn

How to Be an Adult

By: Julie Lythcott-Haims

Narrated by: Julie Lythcott-Haims

"Lythcott-Haims’s narration is perfectly sincere and approachable. This is the type of audiobook that truly benefits from an author narration, given the importance of balancing authority with vulnerability...its advice and personal testimonials are inspiring to anyone trying to take responsibility for their life and role in the world." (Booklist)

This program is read by the author.

New York Times best-selling author Julie Lythcott-Haims is back with a groundbreakingly frank guide to being a grown-up.

What does it mean to be an adult? In the 20th century, psychologists came up with five markers of adulthood: finish your education, get a job, leave home, marry, and have children. Since then, every generation has been held to those same markers. Yet so much has changed about the world and living in it since that sequence was formulated. All of those markers are choices, and they’re all valid, but any one person’s choices along those lines do not make them more or less an adult.

A former Stanford dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising and author of the perennial bestseller How to Raise an Adult and of the lauded memoir Real American, Julie Lythcott-Haims has encountered hundreds of 20-somethings (and 30-somethings, too), who, faced with those markers, feel they’re just playing the part of “adult,” while struggling with anxiety, stress, and general unease. In Your Turn, Julie offers compassion, personal experience, and practical strategies for living a more authentic adulthood, as well as inspiration through interviews with dozens of voices from the rich diversity of the human population who have successfully launched their adult lives.

Being an adult, it turns out, is not about any particular checklist; it is, instead, a process, one you can get progressively better at over time- becoming more comfortable with uncertainty and gaining the knowhow to keep going. Once you begin to practice it, being an adult becomes the most complicated yet also the most abundantly rewarding and natural thing. And Julie Lythcott-Haims is here to help listeners take their turn.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company

©2021 Julie Lythcott-Haims (P)2021 Macmillan Audio

Like having a wise auntie come visit

As the parent of two young adults, an educators who has worked with students from preschool through college, and and parenting coach, I simply cannot recommend this book enough. It's like having a wise and cool auntie come visit and share her story, her wisdom and her hope that you have a life you are proud of and give your purpose.

If you know an emerging/young adult (i.e. 18-35) or are a former emerging adult, you need to check this book out.

It’s part memoir, part how-to optimize your life on your terms. It’s honest and vulnerable, and includes the voices of so many young adults. It contains messages and lessons I WISH I had taught my own kids or had exposed them to other smart and compassionate humans who would share these lessons. Now, they have Julie is this incredible albeit lengthy book.

I listened to her read it on Audible and literally spoke out loud to her. LOL. The print book is something you can easily pick up and read topics of interest rather than sequentially.

Julie captures so many lessons we all need to hear, laid on a solid foundation of inclusivity, acceptance, responsibility, and passion.

If you’re still on the fence, check out her interview on WHYY.

Inspiring & enlightening — Julie does it again!

I absolutely love how this book addresses so many experiences I’m working through from people from all walks of life. What a great way to reflect on seasons of adulthood and moving through challenges we face.

Great for Gen-Z

Maturing requires compassion, patience, open-mindedness, and never losing your authentic self. This book exemplifies that notion in a way that rests a lot of unease that has been building on the shoulders of young adults. 10/10

Comments from a reader

This is a must read for those not knowing if they are acting and thinking like an adult. In a time when being an adult is being delayed and not reached more and more, this book could not have come sooner.

Helpful insight as to what it means to be an adult.

I am a 61 year old Mom of a 17 year old pansexual adopted young man. I love this kid more than life, and have approached parenting as mindfully as I was capable of. He has blessed my life with many challenges aka learning opportunities. Just now with the pandemic and just being himself he is demonstrating a reluctance to launch. “You’r Turn, How to be an adult.” Is a gift to me at this point. Helping me to see him and his challenges more clearly, and myself in my adult journey. I hope and believe this will be a valuable resource for him in his adult journey.

When it comes to Adulthood, this Book is marvelous

Short Version Review:
When it comes to adulthood, this book is just simply awesome!
Full Version Review:
Basically, Ms. Julie Lythcott-Haims has answered almost everything that I am looking for an answer to when it comes to adulthood. I think that it is also great that she presented specific cases of people and the situation that they've been through in almost every chapter and I came across a few people who face very similar situations to mine. I think that overall, I am very much encouraged by this book. I would highly recommend this book!

Things I didn't know that I needed to know about being an adult.

This book resonated with me on so many levels and offered enormous insights into adulting that I never knew I needed to know!

Good book but toooo long

The content is good, but there are too many examples and personal anecdotes of the author. I had to skip for minutes in nearly every chapter.

I wish I could rate 6/5

I would recommend this book to anyone. It is straight forward with heart. It is empowering and honest. It is tender, bold, and also practical. Amazing.

Good advice in general but too long and too woke.

This audio is 20 hours long.
I don’t know any Gen Zer that would stick this book out.
It has some good nuggets of advice to young adults. Really good nuggets. But it’s just too long. Too many stories. And for me just too woke. She uses the F word a lot in a way that comes across as she’s trying to be relevant. This is an a book about being an adult and professional and she keeps dropping the F-bomb in the beginning, it seemed to taper off which was good. But I just couldn’t stomach all the pandering and long attempts to be inclusive and apologetic attitude for realizing she’s going to not acknowledge some small segment and thus hurt their feelings for not being included.
It was just too much to take anymore.