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By Michelle Joy
If you’re looking for a motivational self-helpy book that is also humorous and “real,” this is the book for you. If you’re not looking for that, this is still the book for you.
Honestly, everyone should read and/or listen to Jen Sincero’s You Are A Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living Your Awesome Life. It’s hilarious and amazing. There are so many quotes I love that I could annoy my friends on Facebook on a daily basis for months with them! (Don’t worry; there’s an example further in the story.)
Part one is How You Got This Way, and Jen focuses on how we all tend to be — worried and down on ourselves — how our past (and our parents’ pasts and their parents’ pasts and so on) can affect our present if we’re not conscious about what we’re doing and taking charge to change that to what we want.
Part two, How to Embrace Your Inner Badass, is about living in the present: focusing on the things we want as if we already have them. Part three is How to Tap into the Motherlode. This is one of the many words/phrases Jen uses for “The Universe,” The Force, The Big Guy, etc. and as it states, this portion is all about how to become one with whichever term you prefer and be open to accepting the gifts that are waiting for you.
“It was about no longer being the kind of person who takes what she can get, and finally becoming the kind of person who creates exactly what she wants.” – Jen Sincero, You Are A Badass
From there, we move on to How to Get Over Your B.S. Already (Part four), which focuses on another of Jen’s phrases, the Big Snooze, or B.S. (though the typical use of those letters could also apply). The Big Snooze is when we live in fear and have a certainty that we cannot achieve our goals or dreams. It’s when we sleep through life and don’t go after what we want—what we deserve.
That brings us to Part Five, How to Kick Some Ass. This part obviously focuses on taking everything you’ve learned from the first four sections of the book and actually DO it. Don’t just read the book and walk away, but take these things you’ve learned and put them into action and achieve all the greatness the Universe wants for us.
You get crazy stories about things Jen has experienced throughout her life, like Loincloth Man or what she learned during an insane, 12-hour bus trip in India. She’s not afraid to laugh at herself, and getting to hear her talk about these (in the audiobook) is just great. I’ve listened to this book and read it, because there’s that much to absorb. I highly recommend it to anyone. Read it and then recommend it to everyone you care about. Recommend it to random people on the street. You might get crazy looks, but who knows what the Universe has in store for those people, or for you, by that momentary meeting by chance!
Read this book and then go be the badass that you already are; you just don’t know it yet.
Michelle Joy is an assistant professor at Saint Leo University and is a Beachbody coach. Like her page on Facebook to get some serious fitspiration.
This post is part of Life Between Weekends’ Tuesday Takeaway series. Every Tuesday, we’ll share the most compelling insight we’ve gleaned from a book, movie, tour, documentary or article to inspire you during the workday.
Top Photo: Julia Caesar/Unsplash; Book Cover: Amazon