Rewriting your story with Allison Sweet Grant | ReThinking with Adam Grant

Adam Grant 0:00 I can't believe you're doing this.

Allison Sweet Grant 0:02 Aren't you gonna welcome me to the show?

Adam Grant 0:04 Oh, I don't have to do that. You're my wife.

Allison Sweet Grant 0:06 Thank you so much for having me.

Adam Grant 0:08 Oh, [laughs] I'm, I'm so, I'm so happy you're here. Welcome to ReThinking, Allison Sweet Grant.

Allison Sweet Grant 0:13 It's my pleasure. I really traveled 15 feet from my office to yours-

Adam Grant 0:18 [laughs]

Allison Sweet Grant 0:18 ... to get here. It's quite an effort. [upbeat music]

Adam Grant 0:23 Hey, everyone. It's Adam Grant. Welcome back to ReThinking, my podcast on the science of what makes us tick, with the TED Audio Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. I have a special guest today, Allison Sweet Grant, my wife and the real writer in our household. Allison's debut novel, I Am The Cage, was inspired by her experience growing up with a limb discrepancy, and the emotional impact of medical intervention to fix it. She delves into themes of identity, agency and control, shame, and trust and betrayal.

Allison Sweet Grant 1:04 It's easy to want to sugarcoat things, right? We don't want our children to be afraid, and we don't want them to be in pain, but the truth is, is that some things in life hurt, right? And it's so much better to be honest with them.

Adam Grant 1:18 Allison's book is bracingly honest. I found it raw, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting, and the advanced praise made it clear that I'm not [laughs] blinded by love. John Green called it brilliant, visceral, beautiful, and triumphant. And in their starred review, Booklist describes it as a moving, powerful work, an outstanding character study with a captivating sparkle. I Am The Cage is available now. Do

Adam Grant 1:49 you know how many times I've tried to get you to appear on my podcast?

Allison Sweet Grant 1:53 I'm not one to promote myself, and so, I mean, I'm a very private person, as you well know. It's a very vulnerable position to just sit on a couch and expect you to ask good and relevant questions, and-

Adam Grant 2:09 Do you have that little faith in me after 21 years?

Allison Sweet Grant 2:12 No, I'm, I have no doubt you'll do a good job. It's just, you know, it's, I'm not used to it. I'm not a public figure, so it's a little nerve-wracking.

Adam Grant 2:19 I thought it was gonna be a lot of work to get you to agree to do this-

Allison Sweet Grant 2:22 Okay

Adam Grant 2:22 ... but it was way less work-

Allison Sweet Grant 2:24 Oh, really?

Adam Grant 2:24 ... to convince you to come on the podcast than it was to get you to write a book.

Allison Sweet Grant 2:28 Uh, that may be true. It took a little bit of convincing.

Adam Grant 2:32 [laughs] A little bit.

Allison Sweet Grant 2:33 Yeah.

Adam Grant 2:33 A decade and a half.

Allison Sweet Grant 2:34 Yeah.

Adam Grant 2:34 And here we are. I think part of your hesitation to put yourself out there is because you're even more introverted than I am.

Allison Sweet Grant 2:42 Mm-hmm.

Adam Grant 2:42 I think part of it, though, also is shyness.

Allison Sweet Grant 2:45 It, it just always feels like a lot of pressure, you know. Like, there are some people who can talk and talk and talk, and it just comes out of this, like, bottomless well. I was explaining it to someone-

Adam Grant 2:57 [laughs]

Allison Sweet Grant 2:57 ... actually earlier. When I see people who can talk about anything to anything, to me it looks like they have, like, somebody sitting at a little typewriter inside their head, and they're typing, and this, like, stream of paper just, like, keeps coming out of them, right?

Adam Grant 3:12 I love that image.

Allison Sweet Grant 3:13 And I don't know how they... Like, where do I get somebody like that? Where do I get a little typewriter man sitting-

Adam Grant 3:19 [laughs]

Allison Sweet Grant 3:19 ... inside my head to tell me what to say? I would like that, but I don't have it.

Adam Grant 3:24 But, okay, but a lot of people would, would throw that back to you and say, "How did you pour a whole novel out of your head?"

Allison Sweet Grant 3:32 Right.

Adam Grant 3:32 And a lot of people can't write, so-

Allison Sweet Grant 3:35 Right

Adam Grant 3:35 ... you have a little typewriter. I don't think it's a man, but-

Allison Sweet Grant 3:38 [laughs]

Adam Grant 3:39 Don't you?

Allison Sweet Grant 3:40 You know, it feels totally different when I'm formulating words to come out of my fingers versus come out of my mouth.

Adam Grant 3:47 What's different about it?

Allison Sweet Grant 3:48 I don't know. I remember this group of girls from school that I, like, wanted desperately to be friends with, and I can still, like, hear them laughing and giggling and talking and this musical quality, right, that came out of their conversation. And I remember thinking, how do I fill that space? How can they just sit in this group, and it just flows in this beautiful way, and there's no awkward silences, and they all know exactly what to say, and it all sounds so, so perfect, and where does that come from? I always am processing the words that I wish would come more naturally. It's a talent, though, I think, if you can talk to anybody about anything.

Adam Grant 4:31 For sure, but so is being able to, to write so beautifully and fluidly, and I think you've, you've kind of brushed this off before because you're the worst compliment acceptor I've ever met by far. But-

Allison Sweet Grant 4:45 Is that a compliment?

Adam Grant 4:46 You, you've said a lot of times when I've praised I Am The Cage, you've said, like, "Well, but of course you're gonna love it. You love me." But I loved your writing before I loved you. I remember, it must have been on our, I think it was on our third date. Could have been second date. You told me that you had written more than one novel, and no one had ever read them.

Allison Sweet Grant 5:10 Parts of novels. Like, yes.

Adam Grant 5:12 I'd never heard of someone just writing that way for themselves before.

Allison Sweet Grant 5:16 Stories.

Adam Grant 5:17 Yeah.

Allison Sweet Grant 5:17 Yeah.

Adam Grant 5:18 But normally when people write a story, they're writing it to share.

Allison Sweet Grant 5:22 Right.

Adam Grant 5:23 And you didn't want to share it.

Allison Sweet Grant 5:24 Yeah.

Adam Grant 5:25 Why?

Allison Sweet Grant 5:26 Because I wasn't writing it for anybody else. I was just writing it for myself.

Adam Grant 5:30 It was like journaling, but maybe more like creative self-expression the way, like, people paint without trying to sell a painting.

Allison Sweet Grant 5:38 Sure.

Adam Grant 5:39 Yeah. That, I'd, I'd never come across that before. I guess I think about writing as such a communicative act if it's not a journal, that it seems like you'd want to put your creative ideas out into the world.

Allison Sweet Grant 5:49 But it's not not communicating. I'm communicating with myself in a way, right?

Adam Grant 5:55 That's true. I could not be more excited that you finally decided to take all this skill that you've been hiding from the world and share it.

Allison Sweet Grant 6:02 Wow. Thank you. I don't know if it's skill. It's a story, and, uh, a story that I really wanted to tell. It was really important to me to put it out there, and I'm just delighted that it finally is.

Adam Grant 6:16 What was your inspiration for I Am the Cage?

Allison Sweet Grant 6:20 So I Am the Cage is a work of fiction about a young girl who undergoes a very serious and complicated medical procedure in order to correct a congenital limb discrepancy, and the story really is about how she deals with it as she becomes an adult. Um, it is fiction, but it was inspired by my own personal experience with the same diagnosis and undergoing the same treatment when I was 11. I was born with one leg shorter than the other, significantly shorter, um, and the procedure, which was called the Ilizarov procedure, is a external fixator, like a metal device that's attached to the leg, and the bones are cut strategically, and then the fixator is used to pull the bones apart over a period of time. And then new bone grows within the cut portions and, essentially, the goal at the end of the whole thing is for both limbs to be equal in size and length.

Adam Grant 7:28 It sounds barbaric.

Allison Sweet Grant 7:30 Well, at least my experience was that it was definitely not fun. [laughs] Um, obviously, I can't speak for anybody else, but it was a very arduous and painful experience. Um, it was both physically and emotionally taxing at a really difficult time. That's where the motivation to write it came from the struggle.

Adam Grant 7:55 Well, I think, I think you turned something extremely traumatic into a really beautiful story that's gonna move and help a lot of people.

Allison Sweet Grant 8:03 Thank you. I hope so. I mean, that's absolutely, you know, my aim in putting this out there, in talking about it, you know, is to help somebody who might be going, if not through the exact same thing, of course, something similar.

Adam Grant 8:22 Allison, I- I've gotten already so many notes from people who have read early copies of the book complimenting what an incredible writer you are. Some of that, I think, is they love the poetry and the descriptions of scenery. Um, for me, the best parts are the mic drops. Let's talk about a, a few of the, the mic drop sentences that really stuck with me.

Allison Sweet Grant 8:45 Okay.

Adam Grant 8:46 Maybe my favorite concept in the book is the junk drawer.

Allison Sweet Grant 8:51 Mm-hmm.

Adam Grant 8:51 Can I read you your writing?

Allison Sweet Grant 8:52 Yeah.

Adam Grant 8:53 At one point in the book, you write, "I imagined real me hiding in the back of my mind somewhere in a junk drawer, and every day more junk gets thrown into it. Spare pennies, some Post-It notes, a snide comment, a judgmental laugh, shoving real me to the back."

Allison Sweet Grant 9:10 The idea of the junk drawer is something that I carried throughout the book. For me, it's like this really deep visual, right, of a part of us that we all have where we keep the things that we don't want other people to see, maybe that we don't wanna see ourselves. Like, I don't know about you, but I can think back to a comment that somebody made when I was a kid, right, or a look that somebody gave me or even maybe something negative that I thought about myself, and it's been filed away. And the junk drawer is the place where I keep all those files, where I keep all those comments.

Adam Grant 9:51 You, you end up shifting your view of what to do with the contents of the junk drawer over the course of the book.

Allison Sweet Grant 9:57 Mm-hmm.

Adam Grant 9:57 And I think that arc actually paralleled how I've experienced it. I guess my junk drawer for a long time was full of embarrassing memories, which I just wanted to crawl into a hole and hide from. Remember when Jimmy Kimmel made fun of me?

Allison Sweet Grant 10:10 Yeah. [laughs]

Adam Grant 10:11 And I wasn't even on Jimmy Kimmel, [laughs] but I looked like such a, like a robot on another show that he picked it up.

Allison Sweet Grant 10:18 Yeah.

Adam Grant 10:20 That, that was awful at the time. I, I, I remember never wanting to go on TV again. I'd still rather never go on TV if I could avoid it. But at some point, it hit me that most people just thought it was amusing.

Allison Sweet Grant 10:33 Mm-hmm.

Adam Grant 10:33 They, they didn't think the fact that I looked like a, a stiff weirdo on TV meant that I was a stiff weirdo all the time. And at some point I decided I'm gonna start showing this video to my students because I wanna get comfortable putting it out there and being able to laugh at myself-

Allison Sweet Grant 10:50 Mm-hmm

Adam Grant 10:50 ... and not be ashamed of the experience.

Allison Sweet Grant 10:53 Everyone has their own junk drawer, and you do with it what you want, right? It can be a motivator. It can also be something that, you know, keeps you from doing great things.

Adam Grant 11:05 You wrote about it so powerfully. You said, "Maybe instead of looking at the junk drawer as this hidden, disgraceful part of me, instead of fearing it as something that can take me over, maybe I can think of it as something that I overcame, something that I conquered."

Allison Sweet Grant 11:20 Mm-hmm. Well, I think that's part of the character arc of this story, right? Like she starts out feeling very differently about all of the stuff that's been collecting in her junk drawer, and then at the end, right, there's a different use for it.

Adam Grant 11:36 I think the act of writing this book was, for you, a way of opening and dumping out some of the contents of the junk drawer.

Allison Sweet Grant 11:43 100%. Yeah.

Adam Grant 11:45 I, the, the flashbacks to age 11 were based on some things that happened to you that you had n- never even told anyone.

Allison Sweet Grant 11:52 Yeah. Not only the, the actual experiences, but my thoughts about them, my feelings about them, and then my feelings about myself as a result of these things that happened. It was all in the junk drawer, and this book really is a physical embodiment of all of that crap that was stuck in there and just bursting to get out.

Adam Grant 12:14 On that note, you also wrote about the shame of feeling ashamed.

Allison Sweet Grant 12:19 Mm-hmm.

Adam Grant 12:20 What, what is that?

Allison Sweet Grant 12:22 There's a shame in being told there's something wrong with you. And then there's this battle within, right? Like, do I believe this? Do I not believe it? And depending on what I choose to believe, there can be a second layer of shame, right? The shame of letting other people define you, not taking charge of your own destiny yourself. That's something that I struggled with. Having this difference, being born with a, quote-unquote, "defect" or abnormality or problem, whatever you wanna call it. There were many ways in which I felt shame and which I felt that I caused shame to other people as a result of this problem that I had no control over.

Adam Grant 13:07 There's a scene in the book that's based on something that you went through when you were in middle school, when you fell in the hallway. You write, "Then I slung my backpack over my shoulder, gripped my crutches, and continued slowly down the hall, leaving my pencils and my dignity behind me."

Allison Sweet Grant 13:25 That scene is based upon reality. When I fell in the hallway at school and my crutches slid across the linoleum, and I sort of bounced on the ground and my backpack spilled open and, and a circle of students formed around me, but nobody was willing to help me. Nobody wanted to touch me, and it was humiliating and mortifying. And when you're in that situation, you have no control over how people are looking at you. And on top of that, I had really very little control over my body, let alone what people thought of it. It's a very humbling experience on top of the lack of agency and control and autonomy.

Adam Grant 14:17 I remember reading it and [laughs] wanting to travel back to the past and pick up the pencils.

Allison Sweet Grant 14:23 Oh, that would've been nice.

Adam Grant 14:27 One of the moments that's really stuck with me from I Am the Cage is when you wrote about suffocation.

Allison Sweet Grant 14:33 That's actually my favorite chapter in the whole book, the suffocation chapter, because it's so inside the character's head in a way that is almost stream of consciousness, and it really just gives you a peek into not only the frame of mind of this adolescent, but it, the connection between how she got from where she was at age 11 to where she is at 19.

Adam Grant 15:00 I thought the distinction you made between the two types of suffocation was really powerful. You said type one is deprivation, where you're missing something good, like air.

Allison Sweet Grant 15:09 Yeah.

Adam Grant 15:10 And type two is oppression, where you have too much of something bad.

Allison Sweet Grant 15:16 Right.

Adam Grant 15:17 Like you've ingested something-

Allison Sweet Grant 15:19 And you can't get the air

Adam Grant 15:21 ... poisonous.

Allison Sweet Grant 15:21 Yeah.

Adam Grant 15:21 Yeah. Talk to me about that distinction.

Allison Sweet Grant 15:24 What I was trying to convey was that sometimes in this situation, this traumatic situation, right, there's not always one right answer. There's not always one right choice. There's not always one specific thing that you're feeling. Sometimes they could be totally polarized from one another. Like the dichotomy of childhood, wanting to be independent, but knowing that you're not quite independent, right? Tr- wanting to trust your parents and, and in the situation, the doctors, but maybe not completely being able to. Wanting to have friends, but maybe not these friends, right? It-- This book is full of so many opposites, and the suffocation chapter is one place where that's really visible.

Adam Grant 16:07 I, I was surprised by how much I learned about you that I didn't know reading your novel. And I, I think maybe this goes back to you being such a private person, but it was heartbreaking to read, like, about all these, you know, these experiences that were informed by what you actually lived and what they could do to an 11-year-old. One of the things that I didn't realize you taught me from that experience was that one of my parenting instincts was dead wrong. I remember the first time that, like, we had to explain to our kids that they were gonna get a shot, and my, my impulse was to say, "Don't worry, this will only hurt a little."

Allison Sweet Grant 16:44 Yeah.

Adam Grant 16:44 And you said, "No."

Allison Sweet Grant 16:46 Well, of course, like, no parent wants to see their child in pain. Not that routine vaccinations are anything extraordinary, but it's hard. We want to protect our children from everything, but by misleading them or deceiving them, especially when you can't change the outcome of what's going to happen, it really erodes trust. That's the experience that I had. I was not given a complete or honest picture about what was going to happen to me when I went through this complicated procedure, and I think it was sugar-coated. I knew the basics about what was going to happen, but I didn't understand the extent of how physically painful it was going to be. We don't want our children to be afraid, and we don't want them to be in pain. But the truth is, is that some things in life hurt, right? And it's so much better to be honest with them, let them know that they can come to you with questions, and for the truth, as opposed to feeling like you're gonna tell them what they wanna hear, which I think can just be so damaging.

Adam Grant 17:55 I, I think culturally, it's, it's common and normal for parents to tell white lies to their kids, like the Tooth Fairy.

Allison Sweet Grant 18:02 Yeah. Well, the Tooth Fairy, like, that doesn't hurt anybody, right? Telling a kid that, about the Tooth Fairy. But what, I think what you're talking about is parents making themselves more comfortable by lying to their kids, right? So the parent doesn't want to tell the kid, "Yes, this shot is gonna hurt," because- They don't wanna hurt their kids, right? But, uh, uh, so in order to spare them the discomfort of having to tell their kid that something is gonna hurt, they're really just postponing the pain is what they're doing, as opposed to giving their kids the tools to have, like, a mature emotional reaction.

Adam Grant 18:41 This is the same mistake that people make every day when they don't tell someone that they have food in their teeth. It's not gonna hurt the other person. I'm just avoiding the discomfort of being the one to point it out.

Allison Sweet Grant 18:51 Is that a thing? Like-

Adam Grant 18:52 Yeah

Allison Sweet Grant 18:52 ... a re- i- uh, is there research about that?

Adam Grant 18:55 People are remarkably hesitant to-

Allison Sweet Grant 18:57 Because they don't wanna embarrass th- the other person-

Adam Grant 18:59 They're trying not to embarrass the other person

Allison Sweet Grant 19:00 ... or themselves.

Adam Grant 19:01 They don't wanna feel like they're the one who embarrassed the other person.

Allison Sweet Grant 19:04 Yeah.

Adam Grant 19:04 And in doing that, they set the other person up for much more embarrassment-

Allison Sweet Grant 19:07 Right

Adam Grant 19:07 ... because now everyone else is gonna see the food in their teeth too.

Allison Sweet Grant 19:09 Oh, yeah. That's interesting.

Adam Grant 19:11 So I loved what you did instead when it came to preparing our kids for a shot.

Allison Sweet Grant 19:16 Telling them the truth, telling them what it's actually gonna feel like. It's gonna feel like a pinch, or it's gonna feel like a poke, or whatever it happens to be. Because then you follow up with, "But Hey, like, y- you can deal with this, right? Like, your sister pinches you all the time. It's not gonna be any worse than that," or, "Remember last week when you stubbed your toe? It's not gonna be nearly as bad as that." You know? And just giving them something to work with, it takes the fear out of it too, I think.

Adam Grant 19:43 It resonated right away, but you know me, I had to go look up the research.

Allison Sweet Grant 19:47 Mm-hmm.

Adam Grant 19:48 And sure enough, you were right.

Allison Sweet Grant 19:51 What? What was that?

Adam Grant 19:52 You were right.

Allison Sweet Grant 19:53 Oh, my God.

Adam Grant 19:54 My instincts were wrong. You were right. You're smart. I'm stupid. You're good-looking. I'm not attractive.

Allison Sweet Grant 20:01 [laughs]

Adam Grant 20:02 Gotta throw in a Happy Gilmore reference. There's actually a lot of evidence that when parents try to reassure their kids, they don't just postpone the pain. They can actually make it harder.

Allison Sweet Grant 20:12 Right.

Adam Grant 20:12 Because their kids are completely unpreve- prepared. They don't have a realistic preview of what's gonna happen.

Allison Sweet Grant 20:18 Right. Well, it is a betrayal, right? You're coming to the person who you, who you should be trusting, somebody to protect you and be honest with you, and they've deceived you. It's a double whammy of the pain of the poke and then the pain of, of being deceived.

Adam Grant 20:35 I wanna talk about one of the other parenting lessons that you taught me.

Allison Sweet Grant 20:39 Oh, my gosh.

Adam Grant 20:40 Do you remember that, that study where when you asked parents what they wanted most for their kids, they said they wanted their kids to be happy and kind, but when you asked their kids what their parents wanted most for them, their kids said successful.

Allison Sweet Grant 20:55 Right. I do remember that, yeah.

Adam Grant 20:58 One of the things that was really clear is, like, the messages that, that parents communicate all the time emphasize achievement, right?

Allison Sweet Grant 21:06 Right.

Adam Grant 21:06 Your kid gets home from school. "What grade did you get on the math test?"

Allison Sweet Grant 21:09 Yeah.

Adam Grant 21:10 Um, you hear about the soccer game. "Did you score a goal?" What we pay attention to sends a real signal to our kids about what we value, and so I said, "I want our kids to know that, that kindness matters as much or even more than, than success." So we started a weekly dinner conversation where we would ask our kids, "Who did you help this week?"

Allison Sweet Grant 21:34 Right, and then, "Who helped you?"

Adam Grant 21:36 That was the surprise for me.

Allison Sweet Grant 21:38 Okay.

Adam Grant 21:38 I didn't get it at all because I, I thought, "Look, we wanna teach our kids to be givers, not takers."

Allison Sweet Grant 21:43 Right.

Adam Grant 21:43 And then you said we should ask them who helped them. I'm like, "Why, why do you want them to be in the receiving position? I want them to be the ones doing for others."

Allison Sweet Grant 21:50 Right. But didn't you say, like, there's a few different paths to popularity at school, right? I want our kids to be friends with the other kids, not with, like, the most popular kid in school or the best dressed or, you know, whatever. I want them to look for the kids that they have a, a different type of connection with, the kids that have a different type of appeal, and I think by asking them, "Who helped you?" it really encourages them to look to others in the classroom.

Adam Grant 22:18 Th- this is, this is Mitch Prinstein. There's the, the dominance status path, and then there's the likability-

Allison Sweet Grant 22:24 Likability, yeah

Adam Grant 22:25 ... kindness path. And this is a big ReThinking moment for me because I realized that by asking them, like, what you taught me in that moment was that when we started asking them regularly, "Who helped you?" we were encouraging them to notice who were the most caring kids as opposed to who are the coolest kids.

Allison Sweet Grant 22:43 I don't know if you remember this. Our middle daughter told us this story about how she was sitting at lunch with a group of girls a number of years ago, and she just realized, "This is not the group for me. They're not talking about things that I'm wanna talk about. They're not behaving in ways that I'm interested in behaving." And she just literally stood up and walked away [laughs] which I told her she could have done that a little bit differently.

Adam Grant 23:08 More gracefully.

Allison Sweet Grant 23:08 Yeah, a little more gracefully, but it was pretty amazing to see a kid just realize that, "These are not the people that I want to be associating with," and to have the strength to stand up and make a different choice.

Adam Grant 23:29 Let's go to a lightning round. What's a hot take or unpopular opinion you're excited to defend?

Allison Sweet Grant 23:36 Oh, I don't even need to think about that. I don't think people like magic.

Adam Grant 23:41 I- I'm, I'm asking all of our listeners right now to back me up on this one because the pure joy that people get when they even just find out that I do magic tricks, let alone how fun it is then to do a little impromptu performance and s- astonish them, like, people love magic. It's just you. You're an outlier, and you're projecting.

Allison Sweet Grant 24:02 I don't see the appeal in magic at all. You know it's not real, so what is the big deal? I don't get it. When you're sitting there with a deck of cards and you make something disappear or reappear, it's basically you saying, "Lookit, I tricked you." And I, like, "Okay, congratulations. You did. I, I don't know how you did that, but-" Wh- what else is there?

Adam Grant 24:26 Oh.

Allison Sweet Grant 24:26 Like, I just don't understand, you know?

Adam Grant 24:28 No, I, like, I, I think so many people get the joy watching a magic show that you get watching, um, a ballet, right? It's the same, like, the artistry-

Allison Sweet Grant 24:40 Okay

Adam Grant 24:40 ... the aesthetic appeal, and it has the extra element of, "And I really wanna know how you did it-

Allison Sweet Grant 24:45 Yeah, but the, the-

Adam Grant 24:45 "... and I can't figure it out." It's just fun.

Allison Sweet Grant 24:47 It's like we all know it's a joke, but you're pretending it's not a joke, but I know it's a joke. Like, I just don't understand what's happening there.

Adam Grant 24:54 I, I think there's one point that, that you've gotten through to me on, on, on the magic theme, which is magicians are not cool. Was that Family Guy line?

Allison Sweet Grant 25:01 There's a hierarchy of entertainers-

Adam Grant 25:04 Yes

Allison Sweet Grant 25:04 ... and magicians are right above mimes and right below ventriloquists, I think, right?

Adam Grant 25:09 Exactly.

Allison Sweet Grant 25:10 Something like that.

Adam Grant 25:10 Yes.

Allison Sweet Grant 25:11 Yeah. I, I think that's about right.

Adam Grant 25:13 It's amazing that you were willing to go out with me despite the fact that I like doing magic tricks.

Allison Sweet Grant 25:19 Well, it's a good thing you didn't tell me that upfront.

Adam Grant 25:21 Who are the authors whose writing you admire the most, or who are some authors whose writing you especially admire? I think that most people, they read because they love plot and character.

Allison Sweet Grant 25:34 Yeah.

Adam Grant 25:35 And you are much more attuned to, like, the literary quality of the prose.

Allison Sweet Grant 25:40 Yeah. Well, I think two people come to mind immediately. The first is André Aciman, who wrote Call Me By Your Name, which I think is one of my favorite books ever, and surely the o- one of the most beautiful books that I've ever read. The second one that comes to mind is Tracy Chevalier, who I've been a fan of for years and years and years, and really describes things in the most beautiful and delicate way. And then there's a third who I've discovered more recently, which is Hanya Yanagihara, and her books are like dreamscapes, basically.

Adam Grant 26:23 The juxtaposition between your highbrow taste in books and-

Allison Sweet Grant 26:28 Highbrow?

Adam Grant 26:28 ... your lowbrow taste in movies is hilarious.

Allison Sweet Grant 26:30 It's... Look, art is in the eye of the beholder.

Adam Grant 26:33 And for learning.

Allison Sweet Grant 26:34 Right.

Adam Grant 26:34 Yeah. Um, okay, what's a question you have for me?

Allison Sweet Grant 26:37 Who would you love to have on your podcast that you haven't been able to have yet?

Adam Grant 26:43 I'm gonna choose thoughtfully here. Okay. I would love to have Simone Biles on resilience, Tina Fey on creative comedy, Magnus Carlsen on strategy. It'd be really fun to have Stephen King.

Allison Sweet Grant 27:00 Yeah.

Adam Grant 27:01 You've kindly invited me to rethink a lot of things over time. What's on your list right now of what you want me to rethink?

Allison Sweet Grant 27:10 Oh, gosh. Just one thing?

Adam Grant 27:12 You can give me multiple.

Allison Sweet Grant 27:13 Well, there was something that I mentioned to you not that long ago that I think you agree it's something you need to be rethinking, right? And that is that-

Adam Grant 27:23 It took me a little while, but I came around.

Allison Sweet Grant 27:24 Yeah. And that is that oftentimes when we are in public, um, walking somewhere, like walking from the car to a restaurant or just walking around a park or wherever, you are often 10, 15, 20 feet ahead of me, and I hate that. [laughs]

Adam Grant 27:45 I was completely oblivious to it when you first mentioned it.

Allison Sweet Grant 27:48 Yeah.

Adam Grant 27:48 It hadn't even crossed my mind. I, I'm on a mission, right? We're in an airport, I'm trying to get to the gate-

Allison Sweet Grant 27:54 Mm-hmm

Adam Grant 27:54 ... 'cause I've managed the timing so that we can leave as late as possible and not have to stop walking from the airport to getting right on the plane.

Allison Sweet Grant 28:03 Yeah, but I'm not talking about in an airport where you're on a mission. I'm talking about, you know, just walking down the street, walking from the car into a building, um, walking around a museum, right? You, you don't like to stick by my side. You're always... I'm always staring at the back of your head.

Adam Grant 28:24 I'm sorry. I, I feel bad about that, and it just... I, I think even in those situations, like, I'm... Yeah, I have a destination that I'm going toward, and I've failed to realize we're supposed to be going there together-

Allison Sweet Grant 28:36 Mm-hmm

Adam Grant 28:37 ... in lockstep, side by side.

Allison Sweet Grant 28:39 Mm-hmm.

Adam Grant 28:40 And that's something I am working on improving, and sometimes I'm still not aware of it, and so you have to point it out-

Allison Sweet Grant 28:47 Yeah

Adam Grant 28:48 ... for me to even notice.

Allison Sweet Grant 28:49 Right.

Adam Grant 28:49 I, I do wanna invite you to rethink one aspect of this.

Allison Sweet Grant 28:52 Okay.

Adam Grant 28:53 If we're taking two cars somewhere-

Allison Sweet Grant 28:55 Yeah

Adam Grant 28:56 ... just like we walk at different paces, we also drive at different speeds.

Allison Sweet Grant 29:00 Mm-hmm.

Adam Grant 29:01 And if you're following me-

Allison Sweet Grant 29:02 Mm-hmm

Adam Grant 29:03 ... I think it's the person following who's responsible for keeping up.

Allison Sweet Grant 29:06 No.

Adam Grant 29:07 'Cause I can't see you all the time, whereas you can see me all the time.

Allison Sweet Grant 29:09 No. If you're ahead of me, it's your job to slow down so that I don't lose you.

Adam Grant 29:16 No.

Allison Sweet Grant 29:16 Right? A-

Adam Grant 29:16 You're going, you're going 14 in a 25.

Allison Sweet Grant 29:19 I'm not going 14. I might be going 20.

Adam Grant 29:22 [laughs]

Allison Sweet Grant 29:22 I'm not going 14. You're going 35.

Adam Grant 29:25 I'm going 29. This is not one we're gonna resolve, but I am fully committed to walking beside you.

Allison Sweet Grant 29:30 Okay, sure.

Adam Grant 29:30 And I'm just asking if you could drive a little faster if you're following me.

Allison Sweet Grant 29:35 I think you're in the wrong, and I think everyone-

Adam Grant 29:37 [laughs]

Allison Sweet Grant 29:37 ... is gonna agree with me.

Adam Grant 29:39 Okay. If we get feedback that most people are with me, will you concede?

Allison Sweet Grant 29:43 No.

Adam Grant 29:43 Compromise?

Allison Sweet Grant 29:44 Because I'm telling you this is how fast I'm comfortable going. You need to slow down to... I... It's, it doesn't hurt you to go slower, whereas it's difficult for me to go faster.

Adam Grant 30:00 Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, it just, it wa- it doesn't hurt me. It wastes time, but it's only a few minutes.

Allison Sweet Grant 30:05 It wastes, like, two minutes.

Adam Grant 30:06 True.

Allison Sweet Grant 30:07 Two minutes.

Adam Grant 30:08 True. Okay. That's a good point. All right. Noted. Okay. I wanna, I wanna talk about movies for a second. You rewatch movies more than anyone I've ever met. I, I can't imagine rewatching a movie unless there's either someone that I'm excited to experience it with who's never seen it- Or if it's so funny that it makes me laugh again. Like, if it, if it's a non-comedy, like rewatching it, I already know what's gonna happen, so what's the point? Help me make sense of this.

Allison Sweet Grant 30:39 Well, I think we've determined it's sort of an anxiety reducer, right? Because you know what's coming, and so instead of being anxious for the jump scare or whatever it is, you can really enjoy the nuances of the movie or the book or whatever it is that you're consuming again more because you don't have to have your guard up, I guess, so to speak.

Adam Grant 31:06 That's right. We did, we did come across some research on that, that people who are anxious tend to rewatch movies and shows more.

Allison Sweet Grant 31:13 Yeah.

Adam Grant 31:14 The familiarity brings some comfort.

Allison Sweet Grant 31:15 Absolutely.

Adam Grant 31:16 This is the difference between us, is it sounds boring to me. But you're not looking for stimulation, you're looking for calm.

Allison Sweet Grant 31:22 Yeah, it's actually the opposite. It's sort of like a lullaby, right? Like, it's, it's calming.

Adam Grant 31:27 Oh.

Allison Sweet Grant 31:28 Because you know what's coming, you know what to expect. There's like a lull to it.

Adam Grant 31:33 Oh, this is like listening to music.

Allison Sweet Grant 31:35 That you know.

Adam Grant 31:36 Yeah.

Allison Sweet Grant 31:37 Yeah.

Adam Grant 31:37 I don't listen to music that often, right? Sometimes I go months or years without intentionally playing a song, but-

Allison Sweet Grant 31:44 Right

Adam Grant 31:45 ... I almost always-

Allison Sweet Grant 31:46 It's like singing a song that you know.

Adam Grant 31:47 Yeah.

Allison Sweet Grant 31:47 Yeah.

Adam Grant 31:47 I, I almost always go back to songs that I do know.

Allison Sweet Grant 31:50 It's something that has given me enjoyment or pleasure in some way, and so I'm just recreating that.

Adam Grant 31:58 I wanted to bring up something else that you taught me about, which I was not aware of the research on, but I think you might have learned about in your original psychiatric training, which is the idea of worry time. This is one of my favorite things.

Allison Sweet Grant 32:13 Yes. This is something we use with our kids, right? When they're feeling-

Adam Grant 32:17 And sometimes with us

Allison Sweet Grant 32:18 ... sometimes when we're feeling anxious about something, um, how to find a designated period of time to focus on those worries, talk about them, express them, and then decide to put them away so that we don't mull on them all day long, and how much this helps with really keeping things in perspective.

Adam Grant 32:41 When you start to spin out of control being worried about something, to say like, "Okay, I'm gonna deal with this at worry time," it's like writing something down on a to-do list.

Allison Sweet Grant 32:49 Yeah.

Adam Grant 32:50 Where then you're kind of offloading it from your, like your mental-

Allison Sweet Grant 32:54 Headspace.

Adam Grant 32:54 Exactly. Let's come back to writing.

Allison Sweet Grant 32:57 Okay.

Adam Grant 32:58 I've seen a different side of you, uh, in the last five years since you started working on I Am the Cage. I think before, your job was very much a job when you worked, and this has looked much more like a calling.

Allison Sweet Grant 33:13 Yeah. It's felt much more like a calling. I mean, I didn't sit down and start writing this book because I was looking for a paycheck or because somebody asked me to, right, or I was r- fulfilling a requirement or something like that. I literally had this story within me that I felt was bursting to get out. And so by sitting down and writing it, it was a relief in many ways, right? Because I was finally getting it out of myself. Although it was a very long process, in many ways it wasn't, like, long enough, right? Once you write the book, you can't write the book again.

Adam Grant 33:54 You've always been extremely disciplined, but the level of, of, of absorption that you had in this process was different than, than I've ever seen you take on a task before.

Allison Sweet Grant 34:04 Mm-hmm.

Adam Grant 34:05 I, I, there were times [laughs] when I, I check my email in the morning and you've sent me something at 2:00 or 3:00 AM.

Allison Sweet Grant 34:10 Yeah.

Adam Grant 34:11 You're, you're always asleep-

Allison Sweet Grant 34:13 Yeah [laughs]

Adam Grant 34:13 ... much earlier than that [laughs] . Like, why is, why is Allison awake?

Allison Sweet Grant 34:16 Yeah.

Adam Grant 34:16 You would drop w- a sh- a movie that you were watching because you had an idea-

Allison Sweet Grant 34:21 Right

Adam Grant 34:21 ... and you race up to the office. It, it felt like there was never a moment where you had to push yourself. Like, you were, you were actually being pulled.

Allison Sweet Grant 34:26 Yeah. That's a great way to put it.

Adam Grant 34:28 Which is, like, the purest form of intrinsic motivation, and I'm wondering if you have any advice for people who wanna start writing or who wanna start something creative. How did you find that intrinsic motivation?

Allison Sweet Grant 34:40 The only reason that I was able to do this project in that way was that I knew what I was writing. It was coming from a deep place within me. I did feel compelled to do it. I think when you find something that you feel that passionate about, it just came very o- organically. I don't know that I could have written a different story at that time in that way.

Adam Grant 35:10 Part of what's interesting about that is when you started writing, it was much more memoir-like-

Allison Sweet Grant 35:15 Mm

Adam Grant 35:15 ... and you were drawing heavily on your own experiences.

Allison Sweet Grant 35:17 Mm-hmm.

Adam Grant 35:18 For the listener who, who hasn't yet read the book, the main character, um, is on two timelines. She's 19, and she has flashbacks to when she was 11.

Allison Sweet Grant 35:28 Right.

Adam Grant 35:29 And when you started writing, the 11-year-old's experience, the leg lengthening procedure, was very much grounded in what you had lived.

Allison Sweet Grant 35:36 Right.

Adam Grant 35:37 But then you had to invent this whole storyline that was not writing what you knew. You have a character who took the reins of her life in a way that you, you would've wanted to at 19 but didn't have the opportunity to.

Allison Sweet Grant 35:48 Right.

Adam Grant 35:49 The, the book begins with the main character, Elizabeth, essentially running away. Is that something you wanted to do at some point?

Allison Sweet Grant 35:58 I, I would say, like, escape would probably be a better way to describe it, right? It was a... Certainly when I was going through this medical procedure, I'd rather be anywhere but there, right? Don't we all have times in our life where we wish we were anywhere but there? And it felt very natural to expand upon that.

Adam Grant 36:19 Part of what I found fascinating about it is it seemed like in some ways you invented the world that you thought you should have grown up in. I remember you said to me at some point you thought you were born in the wrong century.

Allison Sweet Grant 36:31 We kinda joke about this a lot, right? I think you often do f- feel that I was born in the wrong century. I mean, apart from the air conditioning [laughs] yeah. I do-

Adam Grant 36:40 Wait, what, what year do you wanna, do you think you were supposed to-

Allison Sweet Grant 36:43 I don't know

Adam Grant 36:43 ... be born in?

Allison Sweet Grant 36:44 Be- I mean, that's a good question. I, I feel like the late 1800s, but, like, there's definitely things about that time that I would not have liked, you know? Like ... sanitation.

Adam Grant 36:55 Sanitation.

Allison Sweet Grant 36:55 Yeah [laughs] .

Adam Grant 36:55 I knew you were gonna say that. Germaphobe alert.

Allison Sweet Grant 36:57 Yeah. For sure. It's the noise nowadays that really, uh, gets to me.

Adam Grant 37:03 Yeah. I didn't connect the dots when you were writing it, but the world that you created for 19-year-old Elizabeth escaping to a cabin-

Allison Sweet Grant 37:12 Yeah. It's very simple

Adam Grant 37:12 ... she lives like it's the late 1800s for a while.

Allison Sweet Grant 37:15 Right. Right. With indoor plumbing [laughs] .

Adam Grant 37:18 Yes [laughs] . What's your biggest fear releasing your debut novel?

Allison Sweet Grant 37:24 Oh my God, how long do you have? I, I mean, I'm terrified. I'm terrified that, uh, nobody will read it [laughs] . I'm terrified that nobody will like it.

Adam Grant 37:36 And yet, despite those fears, you went forward with it anyway.

Allison Sweet Grant 37:40 Yeah.

Adam Grant 37:41 What's, what's your hope?

Allison Sweet Grant 37:43 My hope is that somebody who's struggling might find a pebble of meaning in the book, you know? That somebody takes something away from it. In writing this story, I was sort of able to rewrite my own, right? And part of that is being really honest about things that had happened to me that were kept secret for so long. And a part of that is putting it out there so that other people who are going through their own traumas, right, know that they're not alone.

Adam Grant 38:19 Allison, I tell other people this all the time, but because of your compliment and praise aversion-

Allison Sweet Grant 38:25 [laughs]

Adam Grant 38:25 ... I don't say it to you very often, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it now. I am incredibly proud of you. Th- this, this book is extraordinarily beautiful. Um, I, I'm not a crier, as you know, and it brought me to tears more times than I can count. My favorite part of this experience in some ways is I'm more excited for your book launch than when I launch a book, and I'm much prouder of you than I ever have been of anything I've written. One, because the quality of your writing is on a different level. But two, it's, it's been, it's just been really meaningful to watch you share this story. One sign of true love is when you're prouder of someone else and more excited for someone else than yourself, and I, I f- could not feel that more.

Allison Sweet Grant 39:15 As you know, it was not an easy couple of years writing this book, and nobody was there for me more than you. And it was because of that, because of your presence and your support and encouragement that I was able to do it, so thank you.

Adam Grant 39:34 So this was your first podcast experience. How was it?

Allison Sweet Grant 39:37 Good. I mean-

Adam Grant 39:38 Really?

Allison Sweet Grant 39:39 Yeah.

Adam Grant 39:39 I, I think you're gonna ... You are, you, you are my most consistent and reliable source of tough love, and I think you're gonna give me a four and a half later.

Allison Sweet Grant 39:48 No.

Adam Grant 39:48 So you might as well do it now.

Allison Sweet Grant 39:50 I'm not giving you a four and a half. I'm giving you an eight and a half.

Adam Grant 39:53 You-

Allison Sweet Grant 39:53 I'm giving myself a four and a half, because I, I blundered a lot. But here's my question. Like, this is really nice and easy, right? Because all I had to do was walk into the middle of my own office, apparently.

Adam Grant 40:08 Yeah.

Allison Sweet Grant 40:09 And it's very comfortable, 'cause I'm in my own house. How do I take this really idyllic podcast situation and translate it to the next podcast, God willing, right? Because it's not gonna be the same, and I'm not gonna have somebody in front of me giving me, like, the easy questions and being really reassuring and considerate and all of those things.

Adam Grant 40:41 Well-

Allison Sweet Grant 40:41 It'll be harder

Adam Grant 40:41 ... just like the writing process, you'll get more comfortable with it as you do more of it. And-

Allison Sweet Grant 40:46 Yeah

Adam Grant 40:47 ... I've been thinking it would be fun to have a cohost on ReThinking, and I think it would be a lot of fun to bring you in to cohost some of, if not all of, our conversations. All right. Well, ReThinkers, if you have a point of view on whether Allison should appear more often, I would love to hear it.

Allison Sweet Grant 41:06 Oh my gosh, that's giving a lot of freedom to your audience. [upbeat music]

Adam Grant 41:14 ReThinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is part of the TED Audio Collective, and this episode was produced and mixed by Cosmic Standard. Our producers are Hannah Kingsley-Ma and Aja Simpson. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our fact-checker is Paul Durbin. Original music by Hansel Hsu and Allison Leyton-Brown. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob Winick, Samaya Adams, Roxanne Hailash, Fanfan Cheng, Julia Dickerson, Thansika Sungmonivong, and Whitney Pennington Rodgers. I'm trying to think of the movies that you rewatch the most.

Allison Sweet Grant 41:49 National Treasure for sure.

Adam Grant 41:50 Definitely National Treasure.

Allison Sweet Grant 41:52 Yeah.

Adam Grant 41:52 You've Got Mail. First Daughter and Chasing Liberty.

Allison Sweet Grant 41:55 First Daughter [laughs] . Chasing Liberty. Yeah, what else is in that bucket? All those are-

Adam Grant 42:00 A Walk to Remember.

Allison Sweet Grant 42:01 A Walk to Remember, yeah. Well, those are all-

Adam Grant 42:03 The Fault in Our Stars.

Allison Sweet Grant 42:04 Right. I mean, those are all movies that are really warm, right? And they have all the feels, and so watching them is, yeah, really reassuring. It's like a big hug.

Adam Grant 42:17 Sometimes they're sad, though. I'll come into the room and I'm like, "Did someone die?"

Allison Sweet Grant 42:21 But they're not sad.

Adam Grant 42:21 "You're crying." You're like, "No, I just rewatched a movie I've seen 32 times."

Allison Sweet Grant 42:23 No, but that's the thing. You don't cry. Like, how many times can you watch A Walk to Remember? You're not gonna cry every time. You know what's coming [laughs] .