You Are a Badass®: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life

by Jen Sincero

All this is to say that it’s not your fault that you’re fucked up. It’s your fault if you stay fucked up, but the foundation of your fuckedupedness is something that’s been passed down through generations of your family, like a coat of arms or a killer cornbread recipe, or in my case, equating confrontation with heart failure.

As French author and fearless truth-seeker André Gide so aptly put it, “One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

Shirley, are you really going to quit your secure corporate job to open a nail salon when you’ve got two children, a mortgage, and high blood pressure? So few new businesses succeed, especially in this economy—aren’t you worried about what will happen to your family if you fail? Of course Shirley is worried about what will happen to her family if she fails! She wakes up every night seized by panic about it, but she’s moving past her fear to create something she’s really psyched about, rather than dying a slow painful death hanging around the watercooler with you, whining about how dry the cake was at the birthday party your boss threw for you in the conference room last week.

The Big Snooze is like an overprotective Italian mother who not only doesn’t want you to ever go outside, but who wants you to live with her forever. Her intentions are good, but fully fear-based.

It’s just as easy to believe we’re awesome as it is to believe we’re giant sucking things.

Do not spend your life clinging to the insulting decisions you’ve made about yourself.

Stephen has played the drums since he was five, and is the kind of younger brother every bossy older sister dreams of: talented and endlessly enthusiastic with a very high threshold for pain.