Books |
You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life
Jen Sincero
By
Published: Feb 13, 2020
Category:
Self Help
Sometimes you think, “This is as bad as it’s going to get,” and then it gets worse. I don’t need to list the week’s events; you read the news, you know what’s been happening since the acquittal in the Senate. And you watched the primary results with dismay. Is it actually possible — is it actually likely — that this President will be re-elected?
I don’t know how it is where you live and what you and your friends are saying. I can report there’s a fog over New York. History is not a straight line projection. Anything can happen between now and November. (Who would have predicted a virus would empty Chinese streets and close Chinese factories and that two words — “supply chain” — have the potential to crater our markets and our economy?)
Indulge me a peek into a possible short-term future. More cruelty to minorities and immigrants. Blunt attacks on women’s rights. Deliberate efforts to create a permanent underclass. Blow after blow after blow — the result is trauma. That’s a happy result, as some see it. Because sensitive, decent people are the Enemy.
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I believe the re-election of this President could trigger a suicide plague. Not a mass event. Just despairing people, one at a time, privately deciding that life is no longer worth living, so they quietly remove themselves from the planet.
A therapist I admire told me: “I say to my creative clients, ‘Put your head down and do your work. It’s the best thing for your mental and spiritual health.'” I have done that. It works. More or less.
Part of my work is Head Butler. And as Head Butler, my mission is to suggest culture that helps you create a better life: greater knowledge, pleasure, even joy. So, from time to time — and, as events warrant, more often than that — I’m going to dive into self-help. As a rule, I’m allergic to self-help books. But I’m also allergic to bullies and cowards and greedheads. Let’s start here…
But a therapist who’s wicked smart tells me she gives “You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life” to every millennial patient.
And one of the smartest women I know says it’s her go-to book when she doesn’t have a clue.
So I bought it.
To my surprise, it’s straight-up Eastern wisdom, translated into current lingo:
When we’re born, we have an instinctual understanding of some of the most important basics of life that includes, and goes way beyond, bending at our knees, instead of our lower backs, to pick a beer can up off the floor. We’re born knowing how to trust our instincts, how to breathe deeply, how to eat only when we’re hungry, how to not care about what anyone thinks of our singing voices, dance moves, or hairdos, we know how to play, create, and love without holding back. Then, as we grow and learn from the people around us, we replace many of these primal understandings with negative false beliefs, fear, shame, and self-doubt. Then we wind up in emotional and physical pain. Then we either numb our pain with drugs, sex, booze, TV, Cheetos, etc. Or we settle for mediocrity. OR we rise to the occasion, remember how truly mighty we are, and set out to relearn everything we knew at the beginning all over again.
No surprise, when you consider the source. (You really, really want to watch this video.):
You already know everything she says. The universe is bountiful, but not if you don’t think so. You want money? It exists for you. Want a lover? She/he is waiting. Got an idea for a business? It hopes you’ll start it. But none of that can happen if you don’t feel worthy — if you don’t accept and love yourself. And there are 240 pages that pound that lesson home, until you are flattened into submission and read to be your true self. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
I remember going to hear a talk by Gurumayi. A lot of what she said went by me, but this stuck: “You are loved more than you can ever know.”
Jen Sincero says the same thing:
You are powerful. You are loved. You are surrounded by miracles. Believe, really believe that what you desire is here and available to you. And you can have it all.
Yeah, it sounds like bullshit. She’s the first to agree. The problem it, it kind of works. (She’s not Pollyanna; she has a lot to say about hardship and failure.)
Can it be this simple: Love Yourself. You are a badass.
Ridiculous? As she’d say: Is what you think now working any better?
