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 bestselling 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 twentieth 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 twentysomethings (and thirtysomethings, 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

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.

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.

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.

It’s never too late to grow

I enjoyed how this book included so many different perspectives and stories. There is a huge encouragement for connection while also an urge to look inward and determine what type of person you want to be and how you can contribute to the world around you.