No parent is perfect — and that’s for the best, according to child psychologist Becky Kennedy.

When parents make mistakes, and then make an effort to repair those missteps, they teach their kids important lessons about maturity and bonding, Kennedy told comedian Trevor Noah’s “What Now?” podcast in a Dec. 4 episode. Those lessons can help kids maintain happy and healthy relationships going forward, she said.

“We learn the most in our relationships when people take responsibility for their behavior, when people repair,” said Kennedy, a Columbia University-trained child psychologist, host of the parenting podcast “Good Inside” and a mother of three children herself. “I wouldn’t want to deprive my kids of that opportunity, and that’s such [an important] part of healthy relationships.”

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Repairing a mistake or a rift is the best way to get closer to another person, Kennedy said, calling it “the ultimate relationship strategy.” In parenting, those repairs can strengthen the parent-child bond and give your child a model for how to own up to their own mistakes, said Kennedy. They can teach kids that it’s natural to make mistakes, and how you respond to them matters.

Other parenting experts broadly agree: Parents should model to their children how to bounce back from a mistake by apologizing and then moving on. Learning that mistakes are inevitable rather than a sign of inherent flaws can help your kids avoid the stress of perfectionism, which can lead to long-term mental health issues like anxiety and low self-esteem, according to developmental psychologist Aliza Pressman.

“If our kids didn’t see [our mistakes], they would not have much hope that they get to make mistakes and grow and still be loved and be worthy,” Pressman told “The Mel Robbins Podcast” in a July 28 episode.

For her part, Kennedy said that she’s far from a perfect parent, admitting to Noah that there have been “innumerable” times where her kids threw tantrums — and all of the lessons she teaches about leading with empathy went out the window.

“I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again, and I mean it with such honesty that my kids don’t have some Dr. Becky[-type] person as a mom,” she said. She recalled an instance where one of her kids whined about what she’d cooked for dinner, and she lost her temper and yelled at the child. You shouldn’t do that, of course, she noted — but if you do, don’t be paralyzed by the shame or guilt of losing your cool.

“Every parent does that,” said Kennedy. “There’s not one parent who has not been in that situation.”

As for why you need to own up to your behavior: Consider “what happens for a kid when the person they depend on for safety becomes the person who scares them,” Kennedy said. It’s “a very frenetic experience” that can leave your child overwhelmed as they try to cope through a mixture of “self-doubt and self-blame.”

Instead of blaming your child for the frustration that caused you to lash out, say something like, “I’m sorry I yelled,” said Kennedy. “And this line really matters: ‘It’s never your fault when I yell. I’m working on staying calmer, even when I’m frustrated. I love you.’”

The apology is just a first step for parents who are prone to outbursts, Kennedy added. If that’s the case, she recommended working on catching yourself before you lose your cool by taking the time to identify what triggers your frustration. That way, you can try to take a beat and calm down with a deep breath rather than resorting to yelling, she said.

“You can’t help your kid if you’re not doing some type of internal work,” said Kennedy.

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Manipulation doesn’t always look dramatic or explosive. It could be a loaded comment in a meeting, a subtle guilt trip in an email, or a casual remark that leaves you questioning yourself long after the conversation ends.

What makes manipulators effective is their ability to influence how you feel. Research on social influence and coercive control shows that manipulators aim for emotional impact: the drop in your confidence, the spike in your anxiety, the moment you start defending instead of deciding.

In my decade advising Fortune 500 companies as a behavioral researcher, I’ve seen this pattern at every level: the person who controls the emotional tone often controls the direction of the interaction.

The most powerful response to a manipulator isn’t to confront them. This often backfires, triggering gaslighting, denial, or escalation. Here’s a simple strategy I teach to help you “CUT” through manipulation.

When your nervous system spikes, your thinking narrows and your behavior becomes easier to steer. Studies on emotional regulation show that staying physiologically calm preserves decision quality under pressure. Slow your breath. Lower your voice. Buy yourself a few seconds before responding.

Instead of reacting with:

• Snapping or raising your voice: “Why are you saying that? That’s not true!”
• Over-explaining or defending yourself: “Actually, I did do [X], and here’s why…”
• Appeasing or over-committing when it’s unreasonable: “Okay, I’ll handle it.”
• Getting defensive or anxious: internal panic, self-doubt, or visible agitation.

Try responding with:

• Neutral acknowledgment: “Noted.”
• Redirect to facts or agenda: “Let’s focus on the next step.”
• Brief, calm clarification if necessary: “I understood it differently; here’s what I did.”
• Pause and buy time: a slow breath, or a moment to compose your response before engaging.

By staying neutral in your responses, you remove the emotional fuel that manipulators rely on and shift the interaction back into your control.

Even when your heart is racing, how you show up matters. A relaxed posture, relaxed facial expression, and steady verbal pace signal that there’s nothing to hook into.

Research on status dynamics and dominance signaling shows that the least reactive person is often seen as the most powerful. Staying unfazed tells the manipulator: Your tactics aren’t working on me.

This is where most people slip. They explain, defend, justify, and try to be understood. But feeding the emotional layer is exactly what keeps manipulation alive. Instead, refocus on facts, boundaries, or the task at hand. Pay attention only to what you can control.

Together, these three moves cut off the oxygen from the interaction. You’re no longer a lever that can be pulled. Over time, that shifts the power in your favor.

The most powerful response is far more destabilizing to the manipulator’s strategy: emotional non-cooperation. Calmly, neutrally, and consistently refusing to feed the emotional leverage, you take away the fuel that sustains their behavior. When emotional leverage disappears, the manipulation often stops.

Shadé Zahrai is an award-winning peak performance educator, behavioral researcher, leadership strategist, and author of “Big Trust: Rewire Self-Doubt, Find Your Confidence, and Fuel Success.” Recognized as one of LinkedIn’s Top 50 Most Impactful People, she supports leaders at some of the world’s biggest brands, including Microsoft, Deloitte, Procter & Gamble, and JPMorgan.

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Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos doesn’t have management books stashed in his work bag, on his desk or piled on his nightstand.

Sarandos doesn’t really read management books at all, he said in an interview for an episode of CNBC’s “Leaders Playbook,” a series set to premiere on Wednesday. Instead, he reads fiction novels to learn about leadership, he said. His favorite management book: “Typhoon,” a 1902 novella by Joseph Conrad about a steamship captain and crew navigating a severe storm while at sea.

“It doesn’t sound like a management story on the surface, but I think it’s the most powerful leadership story I’ve ever read,” said Sarandos, 61. “I read it over and over again because I find … I get something different in the book every time I read it.”

When Sarandos first read the book roughly 20 years ago, he thought the captain was a reckless “hot dog” who put himself and his family in jeopardy, he said. On more recent reads, he’s come away with a more salient lesson about leading in the face of conflict and uncertainty.

“Now, what I see is that when you go through life and you go through business, you make a lot of decisions that don’t turn out the way you thought they would,” said Sarandos. “The real leadership test is: How do you manage through that?”

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Sarandos joined Netflix as its head of content operations in 2000, and further learned how to embrace uncertainty while working for Netflix co-founder and former CEO Reed Hastings, he said. “I think the lesson that he’s left for me is that you pick the best people, give them the tools to do the best work of their life, and get out of their way,” said Sarandos.

He recalled a specific instance in which he acted with a lot of autonomy, taking “a big financial swing” with no guaranteed payoff. About a decade into his tenure at the streaming company, Sarandos spent $100 million of Netflix’s money to create the company’s first original television series, “House of Cards” and greenlight it for two seasons — without asking Hastings for permission, he said.

“When he asked me, ‘Why would you do that?’ I said, ‘Reed, it’s a simple risk-reward for me. If this show fails, we will have dramatically overpaid for a show. We do that all the time, but if it succeeds, we could completely transform the business as we know it,’” said Sarandos.

Sarandos isn’t the only prominent businessperson who draws inspiration from fictional stories.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ leadership style has been partially shaped by Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day,” according to author Brad Stone’s biography “The Everything Store.” Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates frequently touts the value of reading fiction, noting in a Nov. 25 blog post that some novels can ”[pull] back the curtain on how something important really works.”

Anyone can glean real-life takeaways from novels if they practice summarizing the plot, analyzing the motivations of the characters and spend time drawing parallels between the conflict in the book and issues they may face at work, Northwestern University leadership professor Brooke Vuckovic told CNBC Make It in January 2023.

“Our best leaders are looking for ways to develop themselves, and fiction represents an often underused and incredibly powerful, low cost, ongoing, pleasurable way to develop ourselves — if read correctly,” said Vuckovic.

Watch Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos on CNBC’s ”Leaders Playbook″ premiering Wednesday, Jan. 7 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT. All new episodes Wednesdays.

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This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which examines how people earn, spend and save their money.

Living in New York City’s Manhattan borough on $53,000 a year isn’t easy.

For Eileen Tyrrell, a bookstore manager who lives with two roommates in the pricey Chelsea neighborhood, making it work means saying no in a city seemingly built for spending. In Manhattan, a single adult needs about $68,000 a year just to cover basic necessities, before taxes, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator.

“People ask me all the time how it’s possible to live here on that income,” Tyrrell tells CNBC Make It. “I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It’s hard, but it’s so worth it.”

For Tyrrell, 26, making the math work comes down to three things: having almost no debt, paying relatively low rent for Manhattan and keeping her everyday spending low.

“When you think of New York, you think of all of these amazing experiences, and you think of going to a Broadway show, and then going to a club after that, and then doing brunch at an amazing restaurant the next day,” she says. “But when you live here, you can’t live like that.”

Still, Tyrrell says she feels fulfilled by the life she’s built in New York, which includes work she finds meaningful and time spent volunteering in her community.

Here’s a look at Tyrrell’s expenses for September 2025, which were a bit higher than usual because she was catching up on some bills.

Tyrrell usually spends about $3,000 a month on expenses, including rent, utilities, insurance and transportation, with housing making up the largest share of that total.

She pays $1,566 a month for her share of a three-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, which rents for a total of $4,698 per month. While that may sound steep compared with much of the U.S., similar units in her neighborhood list for around $7,000 a month.

In addition to living with roommates, Tyrrell lives in a rent-stabilized apartment, which means annual rent increases are limited under city rules. Tyrrell moved into the unit in 2022 after a friend invited her to join the lease — something she says she felt lucky to have.

“Having a rent-stabilized apartment means we’re never going to have the sticker shock of a huge rent increase,” she says.

Outside of housing, Tyrrell relies more on responsible spending habits than a formal budget. She aims to keep grocery costs under $300 a month and shops mostly at Trader Joe’s. She dines out rarely and sticks to inexpensive options when she does, like breakfast sandwiches from her neighborhood deli or a $6 Dunkin’ combo.

Her discretionary spending is typically under $400 a month, with about $100 of that going toward donations. To help keep costs low, she takes advantage of couponing and rewards programs at local retailers.

“I just don’t spend a lot of money,” she says. “All of my furniture and most of my possessions are things that I either brought with me from college or are hand-me-downs that friends gave me.”

Tyrell’s frugality also extends to how she spends her free time. She finds enjoyment in low-cost routines, like walking around New York, meeting friends for coffee instead of drinks and or watching TV at home.

“I had to train myself to find hobbies and interests that weren’t related to spending money,” she says. “And that really helps when you’re living on this type of budget.”

Tyrrell says the hardest part of living on a modest income in New York isn’t tracking expenses — it’s resisting the constant pull to participate in the city’s social life.

Learning to opt out of those experiences was an adjustment, especially when she first moved to New York in 2022, but one she’s grown more comfortable with over time.

“It’s OK that I’m living on this tight budget,” Tyrrell says. “Where I’m at right now is so rewarding and so meaningful. I have a job that I love, I have a life that I love and the financial stability is not quite there. But for now, it’s a tradeoff that I’m comfortable with and willing to make because I love my life so much.”

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In 2020, Tyler and Lindsey Dobson started upcycling furniture they found on the street to furnish their home in St. Petersburg, Florida. But their hobby would soon turn into a lucrative side hustle and eventually transform their lives as they leveled up to flipping entire homes.

“As we accumulated more and more [furniture], we didn’t have space in our house,” Tyler tells CNBC Make It. “So we decided that we could make a run at doing this for a nice side hustle, and it just kind of rolled from there.”

At first, the couple flipped about one to two pieces of furniture a week, earning about $500 a month in profit by taking discarded items like dressers and chairs and refinishing them. They say that grew to around $1,000 a month as they dedicated more time to upcycling.

They also started pulling in extra money from brand deals and social media payouts as they grew a following sharing videos of their furniture flips — and later, home renovations — on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

Flipping homes was a “natural progression,” Lindsey says. In addition to filling it with upcycled furniture, the couple began making renovations and additions to their own home. When they moved in 2021, they were able to sell it for $352,500 — more than double what Tyler had paid for it in 2018.

The Dobsons bought and moved into another St. Petersburg home in 2021, selling it in 2025 after completing another live-in renovation. The two homes brought in a combined profit of $559,702. 

Between 2020 and 2024, they renovated and sold four other Florida homes for a total profit of $577,000, minus capital gains taxes they paid on the sales. In total, they’ve earned over $1.1 million from flipping homes since 2020, before taxes.

“We’re crazy,” Lindsey says. “Every time we finish a house, especially one we live in, I don’t know what’s wrong with us … once there’s no projects left, we just get the itch to do it again.”

It’s worked out so far. Lindsey left her marketing job in July 2021 and Tyler followed soon after, leaving his finance job in 2022. They hadn’t fully replaced their annual 9-to-5 incomes yet, but they felt confident taking the “leap of faith” to rely on their social media income and the profits they would bring in from flipping homes, Lindsey says.

Still, the Dobsons say they don’t consider themselves full-time house flippers. For them, it’s more of a lifestyle choice; while they do renovate homes and sell them for a profit, they typically live in the homes they’re working on.

This strategy also allows them to keep more of what they earn because married taxpayers can exclude up to $500,000 in capital gains when they sell their primary residence, if they meet certain eligibility rules. That includes living in the home for at least two of the five years prior to the sale date and not taking the exclusion within the prior two years before a sale.

“Renovating homes has simply become a way to design a life with more flexibility, creativity and freedom from conventional full-time jobs,” Lindsey says.

They aren’t interested in scaling up into a full-fledged flipping business. While the flips they don’t live in have helped support their vision for a lifestyle free from 9-to-5 work, the homes the Dobsons live in while renovating are their main focus.

“Fixing them up, living in them, furnishing them with all of our free and secondhand pieces and then eventually moving on have been our most financially rewarding, as well as personally meaningful, projects,” Lindsey says.

The combined income from their home sales and social media lets the Dobsons live comfortably and mortgage-free. They bought their current residence, a 1930s craftsman-style home in Springfield, Missouri, in March 2025. While they may sell it in the future, they’re not in a rush. They’re taking their time with renovations and expect to take a few years to fully complete their vision.

The Dobsons earn anywhere from a couple thousand dollars to $8,000 a month from social media, they say. It varies based on how well their videos perform and whether they have a brand deal.

“We primarily are just working on our own home and renovating it and filming our projects on social media to fund it,” Lindsey says. “We’re luckily able to still live on all of our reserves from the proceeds of our [previous] home sale.”

The couple still owns a home in Florida they rent out for $2,500 a month, and they continue to search for other investment properties. In October 2025, they bought another home in Springfield, which they plan to renovate and sell for a profit.

The couple’s income totaled around $95,000 in 2024, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. That includes earnings from their social media content, brand deals and profits from a home sale.

The Dobsons are able to continue living and supporting their flipping lifestyle without full-time jobs in part because they keep their expenses fairly low.

They bought their current residence and recent investment property in cash, so they don’t have monthly mortgage payments. And moving to Missouri has nearly halved their property taxes and home insurance costs, Lindsey says, so they are able to invest more of their money back into their projects.

“We’re both very frugal, so I think any way we can try to stick to a budget, we do that,” she says. “We definitely do our due diligence before purchasing a property and make sure that it’s going to be a safe investment for our family.”

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