Yes Please

by Amy Poehler

am forty-two, which is smack-dab in the middle. I haven’t lived a full enough life to look back on, but I am too old to get by on being pithy and cute. I know enough now to know I know nothing. I am slugging away every day, just like you. But nonetheless, here we are. I’ve written a book. You have it. Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was.

Anger and embarrassment are often neighbors. Sometimes we get defensive about what we feel guilty about.

Imagine spreading everything you care about on a blanket and then tossing the whole thing up in the air.

About divorce.

Some would say this is “codependent behavior,” which I have discovered is a term that explains how most everyone acts all of the time unless one is a sociopath or a Russian computer that plays chess.

SO AGREE WITH THIS.

Treat your career like a bad boyfriend. Here’s the thing. Your career won’t take care of you. It won’t call you back or introduce you to its parents. Your career will openly flirt with other people while you are around. It will forget your birthday and wreck your car. Your career will blow you off if you call it too much. It’s never going to leave its wife. Your career is fucking other people and everyone knows but you. Your career will never marry you.

Your creativity is not a bad boyfriend. It is a really warm older Hispanic lady who has a beautiful laugh and loves to hug. If you are even a little bit nice to her she will make you feel great and maybe cook you delicious food.

I love this so much.

Career is something that fools you into thinking you are in control and then takes pleasure in reminding you that you aren’t. Career is the thing that will not fill you up and never make you truly whole. Depending on your career is like eating cake for breakfast and wondering why you start crying an hour later.

You have to care about your work but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look.

Success is filled with MSG.

Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

😳❤️

Change is the only constant. Your ability to navigate and tolerate change and its painful uncomfortableness directly correlates to your happiness and general well-being.

You can only move if you are actually in the moment. You have to be where you are to get where you need to go.

<new mantra>

When relationships end, it’s hard at first to stay in a setting you used to share. No one wants to be the cat scratching at the door that won’t open.

I think nonprofits should guarantee that giving your time and money makes your skin better and your ass smaller.

I am a firm believer that every few years one needs to shake one’s life through a sieve, like a miner in the Yukon. The gold nuggets remain. The rest falls through like the soft earth it is.