Why I built Lovely
Building Prezi, getting to know users around the world, and having the privilege of meeting world leaders were everything I had dreamed of. But eventually I realized this adventure was distracting me from what mattered most to me: my family. My focus on Prezi covered up a lack of confidence in how I showed up as a father and husband. Therapy and introspection raised my awareness, but insight doesn't equal improved behavior. I still often didn't know what I should actually do to show up as my best self, and it was hard to tell whether my efforts were even paying off.
That's where Lovely came in. I wanted a way to see my own behavior with my kids evolve over time, not just intend to change it. Pioneering scientists like Cheryl helped me marry four decades of behavioral science with modern technology, something no previous generation of parents has had. I'm living with it in my own home first, before asking anyone else to trust it.
I want to both temper and raise your expectations. Great parenting takes real personal work, and Lovely isn't a magic wand. As a good friend of mine likes to say (channeling John Barth), self-knowledge is often bad news. But if you find the courage to examine yourself, and do more of the good and less of the bad, small changes tend to add up. We say love is a practice because so much of it consists of learnable skills! If you haven't experienced it, it's hard to imagine how good it feels to clearly see your child's well-being, and your own confidence as a parent, improve. That in turn matters more than what you might think. Decades of research, including the Harvard Study of Adult Development, suggest that the quality of our close relationships is one of the strongest predictors of long-term health and happiness.
Children who grow into caring, connected adults are often raised by parents who never stop learning. We'd like a few of those parents to build the next version of this with me.
