Is emotional regulation always a good thing? with Julie Bowen and Aliza Pressman

**Julie Bowen** (0:00)
An organizational psychologist, is that right?

**Adam Grant** (0:04)
Guilty as charged.

**Julie Bowen** (0:06)
I'm very organized. I'm wondering if I have this skill set.

**Adam Grant** (0:11)
You've come to the right place. I was going to offer to rearrange your closet.

**Julie Bowen** (0:15)
I have a feeling that's not it. You don't label the snacks in the pantry.

**Adam Grant** (0:22)
Hey, everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to ReThinking, my podcast with Ted on the science of what makes us tick.
I'm an organizational psychologist.

**Julie Bowen** (0:30)
What is an organi... Is it about what, then?

**Adam Grant** (0:32)
And I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.
Julie Bowen is an Emmy Award-winning actress best known from her roles as Claire on Modern Family and Happy Gilmore's love interest, Virginia. For this conversation with Julie, I have a co-host, one of our past guests, developmental psychologist, Aliza Pressman. You might know her from her podcast Raising Good Humans. She's an expert on translating research into actionable info, and she's also related to Julie by marriage. Julie, Aliza, and I had an unusually delightful chat about authenticity, emotional intelligence, and parenting. But before she let us ask any questions, Julie wanted to understand what exactly I do.

**Julie Bowen** (1:15)
What is an organizational psychology?

**Adam Grant** (1:17)
I could have been like a male Marie Kondo.

**Julie Bowen** (1:19)
Yeah, that's what I thought. I thought, we're going to talk about organizing our junk drawer, but do you want to give me the one sentence that we just digest?

**Adam Grant** (1:28)
Originally, I thought my job was to make work not suck.

**Julie Bowen** (1:31)
Okay.

**Adam Grant** (1:32)
That has turned out to be really hard. So now, I'm on a more modest mission to make life suck less.

**Julie Bowen** (1:39)
Life? It's easier to make life suck less than making work suck less?

**Adam Grant** (1:43)
I think so because it gives you more spheres and aspects of your existence that you actually have control over.

**Julie Bowen** (1:49)
Okay. All right.

**Adam Grant** (1:52)
Maybe. I don't know.
I think another way to say this is, I try to do for adults what Aliza does for parents and kids.

**Aliza Pressman** (2:00)
Julie's like, still not with you.

**Julie Bowen** (2:05)
So it's not terrifying even though Matt Damon and JJ Abrams asked really heavy questions.

**Adam Grant** (2:11)
You've done your homework, Julie.

**Julie Bowen** (2:13)
Yeah.

**Aliza Pressman** (2:13)
She's no joke.

**Adam Grant** (2:14)
Wow. You realize you're the guest, not the host, right?

**Julie Bowen** (2:18)
No, but you have to know what you're getting into. I always said, Jessica-

**Adam Grant** (2:21)
No, you just need to know you.

**Julie Bowen** (2:23)
No, no, no, I don't. No, I don't. So how do you guys do this?

**Aliza Pressman** (2:27)
That's a really good question.

**Adam Grant** (2:29)
We don't know. We're going to invent it as we go along.

**Julie Bowen** (2:31)
Okay.

**Adam Grant** (2:32)
I do need to say, Julie, I feel like I know you even though I don't because I've been a fan since Happy Gilmore, of course, one of the defining movies of my upbringing, but I actually think I feel most attached to Carol Vesey.

**Julie Bowen** (2:48)
Oh, okay. You won my heart.

**Adam Grant** (2:49)
I was an Ed super fan and I still dream of buying a bowling alley and fixing it up because of that show.

**Julie Bowen** (2:57)
Okay. You just really won my heart because that was such a special show. It was such a special time. We all were all still really close. Everybody met their spouses on that. We all went to each other's weddings and baby showers. So it was just such a magical time. We were shooting at an old, literally an old like family fun center in New Jersey.
We were so isolated working such long hours, but that was just my chosen family at the time. I loved it. So thank you.

**Adam Grant** (3:31)
I'm so happy to hear that. There's something about the tone and feeling of that show that I've rarely ever seen on a screen before. I actually think Ted Lasso gets closer to it than anything I've seen since.

**Julie Bowen** (3:44)
Yeah, and it was an hour long. It was a dramedy. So, yeah, I wish they would still do things like that, but they don't.

**Adam Grant** (3:52)
Eliza, are you a fan? Did you watch it?

**Aliza Pressman** (3:54)
This is terribly awkward.

**Adam Grant** (3:55)
She has no idea what it is. You haven't seen it?