This week I finished reading You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, which is only one of the many books I received from Amazon during these last months and which I presented in the Week 6 – Readings of the Week, from how to be a Badass to Discovering Hygge post. I am better at reading and enjoying books than at writing about them, so I will be paraphrasing a lot while presenting this book, starting by describing this #1 New York Times Bestseller as the self-help book for people who desperately want to improve their lives without getting busted while doing it. The concept in a nutshell is that everything is possible when you are really convinced that what you are doing is meant to be and in fact sometimes you do things spontaneously, without questioning yourself, just because for some reason it makes sense to you, and generally it works. The whole idea of this book is to apply the same unconditional trust in all your projects, while learning to love yourself unconditionally.
“In this refreshingly entertaining how-to guide, bestselling author and world-traveling success coach, Jen Sincero, serves up 27 bitesized chapters full of hilariously inspiring stories, sage advice, easy exercises, and the occasional swear word, helping you to:
- Identify and change the self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors that stop you from getting what you want,
- Create a life you totally love. And create it NOW,
- Make some damn money already. The kind you’ve never made before.
By the end of You Are a Badass, you’ll understand why you are how you are, how to love what you can’t change, how to change what you don’t love, and how to use The Force to kick some serious ass.”
If you don’t want to read the book just yet, you’ll find hereunder the links to each chapter’s summaries. Although you will have a clear view of the message of each chapter it won’t be as fun and entertaining as reading this passionate book:
- PART 1: HOW YOU GOT THIS WAY
- PART 2: HOW TO EMBRACE YOUR INNER BADASS
- PART 3: HOW TO TAP INTO THE MOTHERLODE
- PART 4: HOW TO GET OVER YOUR B.S. ALREADY
- PART 5: HOW TO KICK SOME ASS
As I have been blabbing on and on through this blog about how I have become addicted to self-help books lately, most of the ones I have bought were carefully chosen after intense research on the internet and were in fact great. Great in the sense that most of the ones I chose brought me joy and motivation and thought me acceptance and patience. I could have also written about the very good “Happiness Project: : Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun” that I haven’t finished yet but which is a delight to read: fun, light-hearted, very true.
However, I felt the need to write about “You are a Badass: etc…” more than any other book only because I was really struck by how much it insisted more than usual on two major points which made a particular impact on me.
Love Yourself
Ok it is so obvious, but is it really? how many times when someones hurts you or you do something wrong, you judge yourself harshly, much harder that you would judge someone else. Although we are often inclined and in fact happy to find excuses for others’ behaviour, we are particularly demanding with ourselves, and when something goes wrong we accuse ourselves of not being good enough: “why am I always distracted, why can’t I never manage to do this, why do all my relationship fail, why am I incapable of being loved” and so on. We need to be nice to ourselves, we are capable of great things, ad we do great things daily. We might also make mistakes, but why should we be more forgiving with others than with ourselves?
We need to love ourselves if not only because we are the only persons who will stick around forever!!
Also, when you are happy and all in love with yourself, you can’t be bothered with your our own or other people’s bull****, and after thinking about it, I realized that people who are really convinced about their worth can go through failure knowing that the event is only a minor setback, not doubting how great they are and trusting that success is coming soon no matter what. So, to summarize it:
- Appreciate how special you are
- Drown yourself in affirmations
- Do things you love
- Ditch the self-deprecating humour
- Let the love in
- Don’t compare yourself to others
- Forgive yourself!
The Big Snooze
“The Big Snooze” is used to refer to the shadow self, or the false self, or the self that’s acting like a weenie. It’s the part of us that sabotages good things in our life because deep down we don’t feel worthy of being loved or deserving happiness. For the author the leading cause of sucking is that we haven’t yet woken up to how truly powerful we are or to how massively abundant our Universe is. And it is much safer (or so it seem) to stay right where we are, hiding.
The Big Snooze fuels itself from your limiting false beliefs. It gets validation from outside sources, is fear-based, and extremely committed to keeping you safely confined within the reality you’ve created based on these limiting false beliefs (aka your comfort zone).
Your true self or your higher self on the other hand, gets validation from within, it’s proactive, love-based, and is committed to creating a reality based on your limitless potential.
Of course the Big Snooze will do everything it can to stop you from changing and growing, especially since you’re attempting to obliterate the very identity that you and everyone else has come to know as “you.” That’s why things seem to all go wrong when you initiate some serious change, and that’s when you need to hang on.
If you want to take control of your life, stop at nothing. Have faith. Trust that your new life is already here and is far better than the old. Hang tight if the Big Snooze pitches a fit. Whatever happens, stay on course. It’s just as easy to believe we’re awesome as it is to believe we’re giant sucking things.
“Life is an illusion created by your perception, and it changes the moment you change it.”
This and many other inspiring concepts made me stronger and brought me back some faith. And apparently I am not the only one who loved it:
New York Times Bestseller
“Sincero (Don’t Sleep With Your Drummer) brings a fun, feminine verve to now well-tread self-help tropes… The tone is far more feisty than academic, and there’s humor on every page, all of which is exactly what her intended audience most needs”
—Publishers Weekly online
“If touchy-feely self-help tomes make you feel, shall we say, less than inspired, this no-nonsense manifesto to awesomeness might be just what you’re looking for. Filled with blunt and sassy advice, do-it-yourself exercises in personal transformation, and a whole lot of hilarity, You Are a Badass will silence your inner critic, and help you build a life worthy of the kind of Facebook news feed that others envy. Take a day off from looking for your inner goddess, and spending some time cultivating your outer badass instead.”
—Bustle.com
Way forward
While writing this post (that is why I say that writing this blog changes my life daily) I discovered that Jen Sincero just published You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth, same concept but applied to being rich. Ultimately I have been looking for a way to earn money while leaving my well paid stable job, so I trust that I will find some good ideas if not a practical solution to change my life.
“Hilarious . . . This book truly crystallizes the concept that financial abundance is an inside job—in that it all begins with your mindset—and Sincero gets serious (in the funniest ways possible) about helping you identify your particular limiting beliefs surrounding money.” —PopSugar
“A cheerful manifesto on removing obstacles between yourself and the income of your dreams.” —New York Magazine
“An accessible book for anyone looking to push the restart button on their personal finances.” —New York Post
52 Weeks Challenge 
I haven’t read the book, but I have the page-a-day calender which I’m enjoying and trying to put the advice to use!
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