to yourself. (I mean, what other sane choice is there?) And it turns out that even as a kid, you have more power than you think. When we give our survival instincts a chance, they’re stronger than our shame.
This instinct divinely led me to start on a self-help journey when I was fifteen, when I found The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz in a bookstore for 50 pence (63 cents). It opened my eyes to the world of choice and the power we all have as individuals. Everything changed for me that day. I haven’t stopped reading since (one of the most popular articles I ever wrote is called “Top 5 Lessons from 500+ Self-Help Books” — Google it for the CliffsNotes version of this book!).
And as my young adult life was taking its own inner shape, I fantasized about things I wanted to do when I was an adult:
•Live in New York City
•Have a big job that paid me a ton of money (so I could take care of my mom if she needed it)
•Write for fancy magazines
•Be in a “normal” marriage with a man who respected me and loved me fiercely
•Do important work that made other people feel happier
•Be the fairy princess of a unicorn ranch
And the truth is, I achieved these goals simply because I tapped into the inner, real, powerful me I came to understand existed. I had to. I loved my parents but did not want a life like theirs. I learned that to create a different kind of life, you must do things differently.
DIRECT MESSAGE
Simple, right? If you want a different result, you have to do things differently. Where might you already notice yourself repeating something not useful or healthy right now — even a small family pattern you might recognize in yourself? It can be dangerously quiet!
In some ways, I was lucky to have had the childhood I had, because I got started on this path of self-discovery before many people get to. In fact, I got to tick off all these childhood goals by the time I turned thirty. (Except, sadly, for the unicorn ranch. That ambition is still unreached.) But it doesn’t matter when you start — what’s important is that you get started. You can make this shift at any time. You can pursue your goals and passions with the belief that you deserve for them to become real-life manifestations.
After living in women’s shelters as a kid, I learned how parents are just like us. They’re scared, too — just taller and older. And the power they have to make choices as grown-ups can scare them a lot because every choice brings a consequence. When I was six or seven years old, a woman I lived with in the shelter told me that her husband used to put pebbles in the driveway so he’d know if she left the house. She stayed for years, enduring all sorts of behavior control and abuse. Her parents (and in-laws) were Catholic, and divorce didn’t feel like an option. She thought she had to stay, since they were wealthy and respected churchgoers. And so I learned early on that “staying in your lane” and not ruffling feathers isn’t just exhausting but dangerous, too.
This is why I’m obsessed with overcoming this approval-seeking problem: because I had every reason to live a small, scared life. I had an unstable upbringing, I was shuttled around to more than twenty schools, my family was riddled with addiction and mental illness, I received no formal education after the age of eighteen, and I was divorced when I was twenty-three. But along the way, I’ve realized that the mark of success isn’t escaping life’s challenges and the suffering. Because suffering is a given, no matter who you are or what you have. It’s about working through the challenges and facing the suffering, knowing you have options. And that you’ll be okay.
DIRECT MESSAGE
Never underestimate the fact that you have options in almost every situation. No matter how hopeless something seems, there are always at least three solutions to every problem (more on this to come). The more options you allow yourself to see, the more empowered you’ll always be. That even rhymes.
We’re so used to falling for approval traps — big and small — that we don’t even know how much we’re holding back sometimes. But I know one thing for sure: provided that your intentions are good, you need zero permission in this world to do whatever you want. There’s no such thing as a good excuse. Because it’s still a dang excuse. You’re born with that permission slip we talked about in the introduction. You just lost it somewhere along the way on a day you probably don’t even remember. And I get why you dropped it. It can be really scary out there. And plenty of people will tell you what you can and cannot be, do, and have.
It’s okay even if your mom and dad were those people. They did their best for you. But now that you’re an adult, it’s time for you to do the best for yourself.
Check this:
No One Else Knows What They’re Doing, Either
Life, wrote a friend of mine, is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
E. M. FORSTER, A Room with a View
My friends joke that I’m the least-qualified person they know. I’m not originally from the United States, I didn’t graduate from college, and I certainly didn’t have any family “connections,” unless you count my dad’s well-known drug dealer “Lips” (everyone called him that because he had big lips). But I was able to do most of what I’ve wanted in my career because of just one thing I learned: everything you need to succeed is already within you.
When I was twenty-five, my now husband, Heath, and I moved to New York City. It was 2009, the job market was bad, and I needed a job, fast. Heath had one that paid him barely enough to cover our living expenses, so our credit card debt was on the up while our savings were going down. Often, whenever friends or family would check in to see how the job search was going, I couldn’t help but feel there was an undercurrent of “Gosh, I really hope you’re not screwed.”
I’d
