Here’s a question that I learned from life coach Rhonda Britten of Fearless Living: Am I making it up, or is it true? This is important to ask yourself whenever you’re triggered and going down the reactive rabbit hole.

Example: You’ve been left on “read” by someone you’ve been waiting for a response from.

Notice what you’re telling yourself about it:

What did I do wrong? I must’ve upset him.

Not too busy to be scrolling on Instagram, but too busy to respond? I see how you are.

Must be nice to be sooo important that you can’t be bothered to reply to my text.

The reality of the situation is that you have no idea why he isn’t replying to you. It could be one of any number of reasons, including 1) maybe he thought he did or 2) maybe he forgot or 3) maybe he’s trapped under something heavy.

But the more you ruminate (a.k.a. make shit up in your head) about it, the worse you feel. And that’s not helpful.

We get to decide how to feel about things that are beyond our control. We can practice this by retraining our brains when those thoughts flood in by asking ourselves a simple question: Do I know what is actually going on, or am I catastrophizing?

And another thing about what’s true is that reality can be whatever you want it to be. Maybe that makes me sound like a complete nutterbutter, but hear me out for a minute.

My older son and I were out on one of our evening walks, and he started telling me about Joshua Norton, a transient man from the mid-1800s living in San Francisco who declared himself “Emperor of these United States.”

Here’s a brief synopsis of his story: Born in England, raised in South Africa, landed in Boston in 1846 and San Francisco in 1849. He ran a successful business for a few years but ultimately made a few bad business decisions and was forced into bankruptcy in 1856. But he didn’t see himself as a failure…in fact, he was so disgruntled with the government that he simply declared himself Emperor in a manifesto that ran in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin.

And you know what? He embodied it so well that the city adopted his persona, continued to print his decrees in the paper, and referred to him as Emperor Norton.

There’s a plaque commemorating his life that has changed locations but still remains in a tavern in Colma, California. He even became the inspiration for characters written by Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Why am I bringing up this dude?

While my son was chuckling at what a lunatic this man was, I said, “But he must’ve been so happy.”

My child turned and looked at me like I was the lunatic. “What? Mom, that guy was crazy.”

“Sure, but he didn’t think so. If he truly believed he was the Emperor and lived his life as such, I bet he felt really powerful and revered. And who cares what everyone else thought? He couldn’t feel or even care less about their reactions if he truly felt like such an important person.”

(Note: At that point my son confirmed that he thinks I’m a bit insane, which is fine by me…I thought my mom was insane, too, but she was a great mom so I take it as a sign that I’m doing a decent job at momming.)

So because ‘ol Josh lived his life as though he was actually the Emperor of America, most of San Francisco’s community followed suit. It’s human nature to fall in line when someone is overflowing with confidence…the Emperor’s new clothes and all that. (We also have plenty of not-so-fantastic evidence of this phenomenon in our current reality.)

I’m sure many people did think that man was insane, and maybe he was. But my point is that he believed that he was the Emperor; it didn’t matter what anyone else believed. And he believed it so thoroughly that he left a lasting legacy to inspire two great American authors…and here I am, too, writing about him 145 years after he died.

There are no limits to what you can create. Perspective is everything.

So decide what you want to be…who you want to be. Embody that person. This is so much more than “fake it ’til you make it”…this is about actually becoming that version of yourself in your mind before you’re fully there in your reality.

Because guess what? Every single person will have a different idea of who you are. Someone might think you’re a terrible person because you were running late and were unintentionally short with a barista that morning, while someone else might think you’re incredibly kind because you gave a woman your last $5 when she came up short buying baby formula later that day at the grocery store.

Are you an asshole or an angel? Why not both? Multiple things can be true at one time.

We tend to get so ensnared in black and white/right or wrong/us vs. them mentality that we lose sight of that concept. The fact remains that you can choose what to believe about yourself, about other people, about what’s happening in the world.

Because we don’t know what we don’t know.

Someone can seem like an absolute jerk because they let the door slam in your face, but maybe that person just got some absolutely devastating news and was deep in thought, completely unaware of you and the door at that moment.

When you don’t hear back from someone, it doesn’t automatically mean that you said something wrong or that they don’t like you anymore…it could be any number of things. We’re not living inside anyone’s perspective but our own, and jumping to the most disastrous or painful conclusion is a learned response that can be unlearned.

We’re humans, and our brains aren’t fixed. We have neuroplasticity. And when you begin to shift your perspective to allowing grace and space for everyone around you, it becomes easier to extend it to yourself as well.

So take that incredible power and become the person you want to be now. You don’t have to wait for reality to show her to you, because she’s already there inside of you. If she weren’t, you wouldn’t be able to imagine her in the first place.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it forever and ever…practice, patience, and persistence are required for transformational change.

Why?

Practice. “To perform or work at repeatedly so as to become proficient.” (Webster’s Dictionary)

If you don’t practice something, you can’t get better at it. That’s just a fact. But if you’re anything like me (and many others), if something feels difficult when you start doing it or if you forget to do it one day or if you just really suck at it at first, you’re likely to toss it aside as “This is too hard” or “It’s not for me” or “Why would I waste my time on something I suck at?”

Here’s why. There are certain things that, once you get good at them, will literally transform your life. Mindset shifting is one of those things.

When you’re able to take your automatic negative thoughts and practice (there’s that word again!) gently explaining to yourself that those thoughts are 1) not true, or 2) kinda true but you’re putting in the effort to change, you’re taking those little steps toward a massive shift in your energy and how you exist in the world.

Patience. Despite what we’ve been led to believe by society, there’s no such thing as “overnight” anything. (Except oats, apparently.) So while you’re practicing, honor your efforts with the patience to forget to do the thing, to fuck up the thing, and even to quit that thing only to redirect toward a different thing that might work better for you.

As long as you’re not giving up on improving yourself and going for your dreams, you’re still in it. You’re still striving. And you can achieve it (or something better) with a mindset and energy shift. When you embody the mindset and energy of the person you want to become, the result is that you actually become that person. And that effort takes patience.

Persistence. This is here because practice and patience aren’t always enough. We get frustrated; we get discouraged; we get downright fucking exhausted sometimes.

Because self-improvement work can be sooooo tedious. What’s fun about not eating all of the things or not drinking your face off or not staying up until 2 in the morning bingeing episodes of an old sitcom? (Answer: Feeling good in your body by being well rested and not nauseated, headachy, or bloated.)

We also don’t get a direct path to our goals. The road to your best life is filled with detours, mistakes, accidents, and occasional tragedies. Life is gonna life, and there’s nothing we can do to avoid it. What we can do is be persistent in our pursuit of our own peace, joy, and fulfillment.

And when you get it, you get it. That’s when you remain in dogged pursuit of the life you dream of no matter how many circumstances seem to “prove” that it’s not coming.

The thing is this: It’s already here. It’s within you. When you tap into it…when you envision it and practice visualizing and feeling in your body as though you are already that person, living that life…you’ll start waking up every morning feeling like you’re becoming a different person.

But it’s not just how you feel…when you make the shift, everyone around you will feel it, too.

People will treat you differently because when you believe in yourself, treat yourself with the utmost self-kindness, and wholeheartedly own your self-worth, you won’t attract the same kind of people.

That’s been one of the best parts of my own transformation. I used to be an absolute magnet for energy vampires, poor-me pariahs, and people occupying all regions of that cozy narcissism spectrum.

Seriously…when I was younger it seemed like every person seeking an emotional handout (and other various grifters like the aforementioned “producer” from Chapter One) would sidle up to me, and instead of filling my own cup first I continuously poured into theirs — several at a time, often even complete strangers — until I had nothing left.

I worked really hard, not at investing in finding my deeply buried self-esteem, but in giving and giving and giving…because I believed that’s what made me a good person. And there’s nothing that I wanted more than that — to be seen as good, kind, generous, supportive, encouraging — not realizing that over-giving can be the back road that heads straight into bitterness and resentment.

Then I would wonder why I kept giving up on myself.

Hindsight being what it is, I realized that many of the friendships I valued most were with people who were draining me of my most precious and valuable resource: my energy. Whether it was intentional or not, I can’t be sure. But those friends are no longer in my life (usually not by my doing, since I’m still fiercely loyal), and the pain I felt at the time of those losses eventually transitioned into the relief of awareness.

Now I’m aware of what I deserve. I used to seek “emotional reciprocity” because I was still looking for validation from my outer relationships. These days I know the truth: I deserve unconditional love from myself first.

WE ALL DO.

That’s what a self-kindness practice leads to: Unconditional love of self. And when you have that, you can accomplish nearly anything.

Now, that doesn’t mean perfection. Quite the opposite, actually.

It means that you give yourself support, encouragement, and grace every single day. You allow yourself to be disappointed, frustrated, or even angry with yourself and others…but instead of flagellating yourself, carrying it around like some unrelenting burden, you acknowledge that 1) you can’t control what other people do, think, or feel and 2) everything that happens is leading you to your next level in this human experience.

I’m talking about all of it — even your huge setbacks, even the terrible things that life can throw at us, because none of us are immune to heartbreak and loss.

We all lose loved ones. We’re all affected by natural disasters, economic hardships, or the end of relationships at some point. We all experience things that are beyond our control, but what we can control is how we react.

We’re born with a clean slate, a pure and innocent heart. Then our environment takes over. Lots of us dealt with abuse, abandonment, or some kind of difficult start to life in our childhoods, and that can be extremely challenging to move past.

But what if those things were just part of fabric that wove the incredible badass you are now? What if you were to shift your perspective of that abuse or tragedy?

No one is born deserving bad things to happen to them, and yet bad things happen all of the time. Sure, we could lament to the Universe, crying out “WHY ARE YOU SO CRUEL?” Or we can understand that all humans were created with free will, and human cruelty likely comes from a long line of unprocessed generational pain that began eons ago.

So we can decide to marinate in our pain and make it our prevailing story, or we can lay that burden down. (Like in the Annie Lennox song, Little Bird: Lay that burden down, down, down.)

Yes, my friend, because you also have free will, difficult circumstances can be managed, shifted, and overcome. Wounds can be healed…even ones we’ve believed for our entire lives never will.

All human beings have one thing in common…an expiration date. There’s no denying that or avoiding it. So you can decide to spend your precious life living in fear, or you can make the time you have here as fulfilling as possible.

You already have everything within you to make the rest of this life the one you can’t wait to wake up to every morning. It’s your choice where to go from here.

So there you are…you’ve figured out that all those rules you’ve been following are for suckers, that you’re grown and have a mind of your own, and you’re going to start controlling it yourself, dammit! No one is going to tell you what to believe about you anymore!

You’re on the self-kindness train now…WOO WOOOO!!

Wait a minute.

Why is everyone else around you still the same? Actually, why are they kinda being dicks to you now?

Well, because no one else is inside your reality. They’re in their own world. And if they don’t want to change, they’re not gonna.

One thing that I think we get confused about is this: If we’re going through all of these wonderful, profound changes, why can’t everyone else around us do the same thing?

You’re telling them how to do it…you’re sharing everything you’ve learned. I mean, they’re seeing how much lighter you are, right? So what’s wrong? Why aren’t they happy for you?

People often get kinda pissed off when someone they’ve come to rely on being able to take advantage of starts to grow a spine. So when they’re not the least bit happy for you, that could be an indication of someone who maybe doesn’t have your best interests at heart.

Or perhaps they just need time to adjust to you reprioritizing yourself.

In my own experience I can say that when I started to assert myself and not be such a people pleaser in my marriage, my husband wasn’t super-receptive at first. But that’s not because he’s a bad guy or a user or anything like that…it’s because he was used to the dynamic that we had established in our relationship.

I’m embarrassed to admit how much over-functioning I did, so let’s not go there. Turns out that treating your spouse like a child isn’t healthy for your relationship! Who knew?

And after years of both of us being resentful and walking on eggshells so as not to “hurt each others’ feelings,” he admitted that he often felt emasculated by me, which made me feel terrible but also explained why our marriage took the turn that it did.

Hindsight being what it is, our relationship probably would’ve turned out a lot differently had we not been so precious about things and expressed our actual feelings instead of avoiding them. But fortunately, we love and respect each other to the extent that we’ll always be family no matter what the future holds. We may not be traditional, but who cares? If that bothers or upsets other people - not our problem.

Honestly, I’ve stopped caring about what other people outside of my husband and two sons think about me and the way I live my life. Not in an apathetic way, but in a detached way. Other people aren’t living my life, so what would they know about how to manage it?

And that perspective shift, beautiful dreamer, is what I hope for you. When you’re able to release the weight of other people’s expectations, you feel so much lighter in your day-to-day existence. It happens gradually over time, just like everything else that you have to practice…but as it does, you’ll notice your contentment increasing and your stress level decreasing.

I don’t make promises lightly (as my children will emphatically reinforce), but I promise you this: If you keep track of it, you’ll REALLY notice the shift. Here are a few journal prompts to help you out.

Chapter 15 Journal Prompts:

• What’s one thing that I handled like a fucking boss today?

• How can I reward myself for it in some small way? (*Note: This doesn’t need to be a purchase - it can be giving yourself a high five in the mirror or playing your favorite song and having a private lil’ dance party - something to remind yourself of what a badass you are for handling your shit. Woohoo!)

• What is one thing that bothered me today that, in hindsight, really wasn’t a big deal?

• How can I kindly and compassionately reframe it?

• How can I remind myself going forward, if/when a similar situation arises, that it’s not something to get in an emotional tizzy over?

That’s my mom on the bridge to Cinderella’s Castle, circa 1965.

Let’s talk about perfectionism.

Perfectionism is defined as “a disposition to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable.”

And if that feels familiar, you’re not alone.

Many of us walk around holding ourselves to a standard that no human could adhere to.

Now, I’m not talking about the helpful (and maybe slightly unhinged) kind where someone labels and color codes everything in their garage. I mean the self-defeating kind.

You know what I’m talking about…the kind that whispers, If it’s not perfect, don’t bother. The kind that convinces you to wait until the exact right time when the plan is finally flawless.

Meanwhile, people who seem far less skilled are out there just throwing all kinds of crap at walls and somehow moving forward.

Why do we get stuck in perfectionism? Because there’s this voice inside most of us that says anything less than perfect isn’t worth putting out there. (Yeah, I know it well.)

Your brain wants safety, not growth. So yes, cuties…it’s going to fight you.

But your thoughts can be your prison or your playground.

Perfectionism ties directly into all-or-nothing thinking: Right or wrong, black or white. But most of life? It exists in the unspecified gray, the spectrum we tend to ignore.

This brings to mind a discussion I had years ago with a conservative friend about education. Her angle was that there’s no other option than “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, working hard, educating yourself.”

You might recognize the dismissal of the concept that people are not fully in control of the situation they were born into. 

That’s all-or-nothing thinking.

I pointed out that not everyone is fortunate enough to have the finances and/or the awareness of resources available for furthering their education.

While we both agreed that education is the most vital resource we have, we were coming at it from completely different directions. 

That moment taught me something crucial: Most disagreements, as with most inner conflicts, aren’t really about right or wrong. They’re about perspective.

So if all-or-nothing thinking keeps us stuck, how do we move forward without waiting for “perfect” to show up?

One of the most powerful tools I’ve found is called bridge thoughts.

A bridge thought is a thought you can actually believe. It’s a small step toward the belief you want without trying to leap straight to something you deem impossible.

Step 1: Notice the thought Example: “I hate myself.”

Step 2: Separate from it This is just a thought, not a fact.

Step 3: Get curious Why does this thought show up? What triggered it?

Step 4: Choose a bridge thought Find something small you can actually believe:

• - I’m kind to animals.

• - I’m a loyal friend.

• - I parallel park like a badass mofo.

You can integrate slow, steady breathing to help process any strong emotions that arise as well: Inhale for four counts, hold for a beat, then exhale for four counts.

Truth? You don’t have to leap from self-criticism to self-love. One believable step is enough.

And if you get stuck, reach out to me. Brainstorming bridge thoughts is easier with a little support.

Change doesn’t happen overnight. Your old habits roar back because your brain is always working to protect you. But every time you notice a thought that makes you feel awful about yourself and you pause to choose a bridge thought, you’re rewiring your brain just a little more.

Progress isn’t perfection. It’s showing up, step by step, thought by thought. Your brain is learning. You are changing. And that’s powerful.

Chapter 14 Assignment:

1. Write down an area where you might tend to see only black or white, then start journaling about the gray.

2. Write down a negative thought you often have about yourself and come up with a bridge thought you could believe instead.

People-pleasing is one of those things that when you’re doing it, you don’t even realize it…but once you’ve stopped, when you see someone else doing it you want to shout, “OH MY GOD, STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!”

I imagine it’s like that for any unhealthy habit you’ve been able to break, like a former heavy drinker seeing a super drunk person behaving like a lunatic and cringing down into her liver and back again.

But how do you even know if you’re a people-pleaser? Maybe it’s not obvious, so I created a little quiz for you.

Dana, you didn’t say there was going to be a test.

Aw, c’mon…it’ll be fun! Let’s find out where you stand.

Are You a People-Pleaser? Take This 10-Question Quiz to Find Out

Instructions:

Answer each question as honestly as you can with A (Always), B (Sometimes), or C (Rarely/Never).

Keep track of your answers, and add up your results at the end.

1. When someone asks you for a favor, do you say yes even if it inconveniences you?

A) Always – I’m a complete push-over.

B) Sometimes – It depends on my schedule.

C) Rarely – I’m pretty good at prioritizing my needs

2. How guilty do you feel when you say no?

A) One a scale of one to ten? Thirteen.

B) It depends on where I am in my cycle, to be completely honest.

C) Not a bit. People need to be more self-sufficient in these trying times.

3. If a friend, coworker, or family member is upset, do you feel responsible for making them feel better?

A) Always – My mood depends on the moods of the people around me.

B) Sometimes – I want to be supportive, but I also realize that’s not always possible.

C) Rarely – People do what they do, and I’m not responsible for their emotions.

4. Do you often alter your opinions or preferences to avoid a disagreement?

A) Yes - I want to keep things peaceful. It’s easier that way.

B) Sometimes, but only if the situation feels like it might be exhausting or unsafe.

C) Rarely – I’m not going to change who I am for anyone.

5. You’re exhausted, but someone asks for your help. What do you do?

A) Say yes, even if I’m a hot mess afterwards.

B) I’ll consider who’s asking before I decide.

C) Politely decline and take care of myself first.

6. When making decisions, do you worry more about what others will think than what you actually want?

A) Always – It’s more important to be liked than to be comfortable or content.

B) Sometimes – this is something I’m aware of, and I’m learning to care less about what people I don’t know think about me.

C) Rarely – I trust my own judgment.

7. Do you over-apologize, even when something isn’t your fault?

A) Yes, all the time!

B) Sometimes – It’s a habit I’m trying to break.

C) Rarely – I only apologize when necessary.

8. When someone disagrees with you, do you feel anxious or defensive?

A) Yes, conflict makes me so uncomfortable!

B) Sometimes, but I try to stay open-minded.

C) Rarely – disagreements are part of life.

9. Do you often put your own needs last?

A) Yes - I take care of everyone else first, regardless of how I’m feeling.

B) It depends on the person and/or situation.

C) Rarely – I know the importance of “putting on my own mask first,” as the expression goes.

10. How do you feel when someone is upset with you?

A) I’ll be upset for days…and if that person still won’t talk to me, every time I think about it I get upset again.

B) Uneasy, but I remind myself that it’ll be resolved eventually.

C) I can’t control another person’s feelings, and this will work itself out.

Results: Are You a People-Pleaser?

Mostly As: Sorry, babe…you’re definitely a people-pleaser.

You prioritize making others happy, often at your own expense. It’s vital for you to begin learning that setting boundaries and self-kindness isn’t selfish—it’s necessary. Start practicing saying no and recognizing that your needs matter, too.

Mostly Bs: Congratulations, you’re in recovery!

You’re aware of your tendencies and are working on setting boundaries. Keep practicing self-care and standing firm in your choices. You’re moving in the right direction to writing that new rulebook.

Mostly Cs: You’re Ms. Independent (throw your hands up at me)

You understand the importance of boundaries and self-respect. You put yourself first while still being kind to others. You’re well on your way to writing your own rules…keep being your confident, authentic self!

Okay people-pleasers, let’s talk about this.

What exactly is people-pleasing, anyway? It’s a behavior that keeps us firmly rooted in our struggle with feeling stuck, unsatisfied, resentful, or lost. Why? Well…in a nutshell, it’s because we spend all of our energy trying to be someone we’re not in order to be liked and/or accepted by other people.

If you are a people-pleaser, you tend to do one or more of the following:

1. Say that you agree with someone when you don’t.

2. Apologize for things that you didn’t actually do.

3. Say yes to things that you’d rather say no to.

4. Altering your personality to suit the wants, needs, or preferences of others.

5. Basing your entire self-worth on others’ opinions of you.

Being a people-pleaser means that you might completely alter your personality to avoid conflict; you may base your entire self-worth on other people’s opinions and can only feel good about yourself if someone else gives you praise or validation, even acting out in extreme ways to get it.

Listen…there is zero judgment here. I was a people-pleaser for decades. I still am to a lesser degree because it’s not something you can just turn off like a faucet. I mean, I’ll still agree to do things that I know I don’t enjoy and tell myself, “Well, it doesn’t hurt to try again.” That’s called flexibility, right?

Well…there’s a fine line there, beauties.

Yes, it’s okay to try things that other people like to do even if you historically didn’t enjoy it. Maybe you didn’t like Indian food but now you’d like to see if your palate has changed. Perhaps you had an aversion to sports but are willing to attend a baseball game and see if it could be fun.

But if “trying again” makes you uncomfortable in a bad way – meaning you’re putting yourself in actual physical danger, or you’re putting yourself in a situation where the outcome could be emotionally harmful to you – that’s not okay. Ever.

It takes awareness and a lot of reflection to even understand how to begin curbing it, so I’m going to discuss each of those traits one by one.

First – agreeing with someone that you don’t agree with is usually because you a) want them to like you or b) want to avoid conflict.

If you are avoiding a dangerous situation, then by all means, agree away and get yourself to safety ASAP. But if you find yourself just nodding along and exclaiming “Yes, I like them too!” when someone is talking about how fabulous the Grateful Dead is even though you can’t stand their music, then that’s an example of people-pleasing.

Are you agreeing because you think that person is cool and you want him/her/them to think you’re cool, too? Or are you agreeing because you don’t want to get in a silly argument over a band that you don’t like?

Let me offer this: If you think that person will only like you if you agree with them on everything, then you’re basically lying to that person.

Louder for the back rows: People-pleasing isn’t being nice; it’s lying. You’re not going to agree with everyone on everything. AND THAT’S OKAY.

And another few words about lying to avoid confrontation…there are instances where it’s understandable. Like I said earlier, if you’re in danger by all means agree agree agree then GTFO. But if you’re simply wanting to avoid this conversation:

“I don’t like that kind of music.”

“What? That’s dumb. How can you not like that?”

Then a reasonable response is this: “Because I’m allowed to like what I like.”

And if someone is going to start arguing with you over something so trivial, there’s always the option to get up and leave or hang up the phone.

And for the record (pun intended) the Grateful Dead are completely overrated. They have one good song - Touch of Grey - and I will die on that hill. BUT HEY…That’s my opinion. It’s not right or wrong; it’s an opinion.

That’s my point. Like the expression ”Opinions are like assholes, everyone has them,” you’re allowed to have yours, and you’re allowed to disagree with others.

Second – Apologizing for things that you didn’t do is a classic people-pleasing move.

Have you ever noticed that women in particular tend to walk around apologizing to everyone? Someone bumps into a woman and she immediately exclaims, “Sorry!”

A woman with an opinion on the internet nine times out of ten starts with, “I’m sorry, but…”

Why? Why do we do that? “Excuse me” is fine in that first scenario. And in the second, just express an opinion. You’re allowed.

But for some reason we think we’re not allowed; we think we have to apologize for our existence.

We are the bringers of life into this world, and the only thing we should ever apologize for is if we make an actual mistake, hurt someone’s feelings, or cause something bad to happen.

Third – saying yes when you’d rather say no.

This one’s a doozy. How often do you find yourself overextended because you agreed to do something that you just don’t have the bandwidth for?

Have you asked yourself why? Is it because you want everyone to like you? You’re wanting to be helpful? You think it’s the “right” thing to do?

Doing things because other people want us or expect us to do them puts us in a state of stress. If we do things because we genuinely WANT to, that’s different. But when we’re always volunteering to do things out of a sense of obligation, that just adds to resentment and emotional dysregulation.

Fourth – Altering your personality for the wants/needs of others.

Oh, boy. I was so guilty of this in my first marriage and even in my second, to an extent. It’s something I have to stay pretty vigilant about even now.

In my first ever relationship my now ex gave me a list of my “wrongs,” and I set out trying to “fix” myself for him. After nine years he left, declaring me “not challenging enough” for him. I was DEVASTATED.

Then a few months later I realized that he did the best thing for me. I learned all about co-dependency and how to untangle the confusion I felt over his rejection. (For more on codependence, I recommend the classic Codependent No More by Melody Beattie.)

Thinking all of those years that there was something wrong with ME, not that maybe we just weren’t compatible. And now, rather than wasting my energy in regret of that relationship, I look at how much I learned from it.

So if you find yourself becoming a chameleon in every situation you enter, I’d like to suggest you take a look at that. It’s fine to want to learn about other people and their passions and interests, but it’s not fine to abandon your own in the process.

Fifth – basing your entire self-worth on the opinions of others.

This one is tricky. We all want to be liked; we all want to fit in. That’s basic survival. However, when you don’t learn how to appreciate the things that you like about yourself, you continue to look outward for validation. Ultimately, not everyone is going to like you. Without learning how to like yourself, other people not liking you can feel downright devastating, as can any amount of criticism or disagreement.

People-pleasing is harmful to us. It disconnects us from who we truly are. It throws us into a continual state of emotional confusion because we are always trying to “read the room.” And it’s actually lying to people by trying to maintain control over how people view us and interact with us.

When we are agreeable just to be nice, it’s actually the opposite of nice. It’s deceptive.

Example: If you’re spending time with someone and don’t actually genuinely want to spend time with that person to “be nice,” you’re keeping that person (as well as yourself) from spending time with someone who actually enjoys them.

Do you see what I’m getting at?

If we don’t actually want to be doing the thing we’re doing, we grow resentful. We overextend ourselves and then stop taking care of our health. This is why people-pleasing keeps us stuck in comfortable misery.

So how do we stop doing this?

Well, reading this is a step toward learning how to take responsibility for your own emotional regulation, peace, and acceptance. So yay! (And thanks for reading.)

Practicing being assertive with people is another way to stop. It’s hard, I know. We don’t like conflict; most people don’t. But if you could consider framing “conflict” as a conversation rather than a confrontation, you’ll be able to shift the mindset from passive (or passive-aggressive) to assertive.

Feeling negative emotions, processing them through your body, sitting with them and befriending them rather than fearing them is another way. And we can also learn how to firmly establish a feeling of self-worth within ourselves instead of seeking it from external sources 24/7.

Again, practice, patience, and persistence is required…but now that you have such amazing awareness, you’re well on your way, aren’t you?

Chapter 13 Journal Prompts:

• What immediately comes to mind when I think of my own possible people-pleasing behavior?

• List two or more ways in which you people-please.

• What is one small way I can begin to practice unlearning this tendency?

It’s the most important thing and it’s one of the things most lacking in this world…self-kindness.

Why do I say that?

Let’s look at this objectively. If everyone learned how to be kind to themselves from the time they were little kids, then maybe no one would feel the need to bully anyone else. We’d feel worthy, enough, and appreciated from the time we could speak.

But Dana…wouldn’t we all be a bunch of little narcissists running around, gazing in mirrors and delivering soliloquies about how wonderful we are to each other?

Um…no. If we all knew how to be kind to ourselves, we’d also know how to allow for kindness to each other and to our society as a whole.

We’d learn what kindness can be: It’s existing in harmony, teaching each other, lifting each other up while also correcting things, not just ignoring things that are done poorly. (We’re not going to let electricians put the blue wires where the red wires are supposed to go just to be kind…that’s a fire hazard.)

Kindness doesn’t mean carte blanche “you can do no wrong.” Kindness means that we allow for disappointment, we allow for feedback, we allow for mistakes. Kindness means treating each other with respect, with humanity, with love.

As in “Love your fellow human” -- that popular idea floated through every religion but so rarely practiced.

Obviously, that’s not the way the world is…but wouldn’t you agree that it could be part of our mission to work toward it just a little bit more every day? It doesn’t take much, and it costs nothing.

It’s the same concept as language matters. Kindness matters, too. It’s all embodied in our energy, vibration, frequency. When we practice self-kindness it seeps into everything else.

Like I talked about in the last chapter, you begin to naturally move into a state of being where you want to take better care of yourself. You speak differently about yourself. You move differently in the world. At first it’s very subtle and you barely notice, but when you journal and read back on it, you can see it and you will blow your own mind. (It’s pretty rad.)

Once you are practicing self-kindness, you’ll allow yourself to process emotions as they happen, not when it’s convenient. And that’s not always fun, right?

Now, that doesn’t mean you burst into tears during a meeting when you’re criticized by your boss. It does mean that instead of smiling through gritted teeth through the rest of the day, going home and plowing through a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and a bottle of wine (I’m looking at you, past Dana), you go home and cry in the shower, or rage out loud in the car into the recorder on your phone, or write in your journal while you listen to the saddest playlist that ever did sad.

You develop healthy, non-destructive coping mechanisms. Imagine that!

And maybe you’ll have a glass of wine, but with awareness and control…not as if you’re having an out-of-body experience where your detached emotions are pouring glass after glass and you’re zoned out because you don’t want to deal with the day you just had.

You may think that not dealing with it is showing yourself kindness, but it’s not. When you don’t process emotions, when you zone out and do whatever your detachment activity of choice is over them, you’re actually keeping them in your body. So not only are you engaging in a possibly unhealthy activity, you’re also creating inflammation in your body.

What does that mean?

It’s more complicated than I want to get into, but here’s a brief summary. Did you know that our brain and gut are connected by the vagus nerve and enteric nervous system? That means that we literally have a mind/body connection within us. Everything we eat and drink affects our brain function, and if our gut bacteria gets crazy out of whack, it can make life pretty miserable.

For more information I highly recommend you follow Dr. Amy Shah on your preferred social media platform. She’s a double-board certified medical doctor and wellness expert specializing in gut health, food allergies, and hormones. (I highly recommend reading her book “Why Am I So Effing Tired?” )

So on top of that, it’s also been shown that as we suppress emotions over time we can store those emotions as pain in our bodies…in our hips, back, knees, etc. So not only do the high-stress lives we’ve been conditioned to live contribute to the mental health challenges we’ve been facing, stress also buries itself in our bodies.

Cool, cool, cool.

OMFG, so WHAT do we do about this?

The AWAKEN Technique from the previous chapter is a great start. The last chapter of this book will lay out meditation, breathing, and visualization practices that can help release some repressed emotions and stored toxic energy.

I’ll also go into more detail about how what you consume - what you eat, what you watch, what you listen to, what you surround yourself with - all matters to your overall health and how you can make small, sustainable changes that will make a really big difference.

Tara Brach, a Buddhist-influenced psychologist and author of Radical Acceptance, teaches a process using the acronym RAIN: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nourish.

Buddhist teachings explain that most human suffering is caused by our tendency to want to avoid and resist what we can’t control. When we are able to shift our awareness to what we are feeling in the moment and process it at the time we are feeling it to the best of our ability, we become a little better able to manage our emotions without suppressing them every day.

So walking though Dr. Brach’s acronym from her Practice of Radical Compassion:

Recognize what’s going on: This is acknowledging the behavior or feeling or thought that’s affecting you in the moment. You can just whisper to yourself what’s happening.

Example: Saying silently to yourself, Paul from HR saying that to me is making me want to scream in his face that he’s a sexist piece of shit and throat-punch him.

Breathe. Inhale through your nose slowly for a count of four, exhale slowly through your mouth for a count of six.

Allow the experience to be there just as it is: Allow yourself space to feel this stuff without judgment and shame but with compassion and kindness. This can feel really strange, right? If you’ve never allowed yourself to do this before, how do you even know how to do this?

All you have to do is pause and acknowledge it. Nod. I see you, Rage Monster…didn’t expect you to show up in that pink sweater. Cute!

Investigate with interest and care: What is it that needs my attention right now? What am I experiencing? You’re probably going to start creating a story or concept around this moment, but instead - lean in to what you *feel* in your body.

What’s happening in your body? Does your face get really hot? Do you get really nauseated or light-headed? Do your hands tingle with that bitch-slap feeling?

Nuture with self-compassion: This one seems to be tricky for a lot of us. We tend to immediately feel guilt or shame for even getting angry in the first place, even though we have every right to *gasp* experience negative emotions.

Dr. Brach recommends that you soothe yourself with words like, “I’m here with you. I’m sorry, and I love you. I love you, and I’m listening. It’s not your fault. Trust in your goodness.”

That’s so lovely, isn’t it? And sooooo not what we’re used to.

Then there’s the Ho’oponopono mantra: I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.

“I’m sorry”: Acknowledges your part in any issue or negative memory.

“Please forgive me”: Asks for forgiveness for creating the problem within yourself.

“Thank you”: Expresses gratitude for the experience showing you what needs healing.

“I love you”: Sends love to the divine/your inner self, replacing negativity with harmony and connection.

Now I don’t know about you, but these are a few of my inner dialogue’s favorite things to hurl at me:

“Bitch, stop complaining. You’re lucky to have everything that you have.”

“It’s already 6pm and that’s all you’ve gotten done today?”

“Why do you waste so much time?”

“Why aren’t you further ahead?”

Those are sort of toxic things to say to myself, huh?

Which takes me to this: Notice before where I wrote and bolded (and italicized) “to the best of our ability”?

All growth is about meeting yourself where you are. This might be the biggest challenge for those of us who are so used to making incredibly high demands of ourselves. If you continually try to hold yourself to impossible expectations, then you will continue to feel unsafe in your body…and that is woefully unkind.

For those of you thinking, “But how will I know if I’m holding myself to impossible expectations if I’ve never done this before?”

Listen: I’m not trying to stress you out about this…but just know that by asking that question, you are holding yourself to impossible expectations.

Stop trying so fucking hard.

Take a minute right now and breathe.

YOU are supposed to be your safe space. I know that no one teaches us that. We are conditioned (directed) our entire lives to look outward for validation and/or protection -- to our parents, our church, our friends, a romantic partner, society, the government, law enforcement.

LIES.

That’s a lie we were told to be influenced (controlled) by something outside of ourselves. I’m not saying to trust no one. What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t trust anyone more than you trust yourself or your own inner knowing. (If you just responded with “BUT I DON’T TRUST MYSELF/I MAKE TERRIBLE CHOICES” we’ll discuss that in a minute.)

Like I said earlier, YOU get to decide what to believe. YOU get to decide who you are and what you stand for. Once you’re a fully-formed adult, it’s on you to support and validate yourself. And it’s supposed to be! That’s the entire point of becoming a “grown-up.”

That’s why cults can be so appealing to vulnerable people. It can be really fucking scary to have to completely support yourself, and there they are with all of that, “We’ll take care of you and accept you and love you just as you are” rhetoric. Then they indoctrinate you, brainwash you, and before you know it you’re wearing a uniform, your head’s been shaved, and you’re expected to worship some dude named Cueball.

It’s a slippery slope.

And because we’re friends now, and friends tell each other the truth…can I be blatantly honest?

It’s really up to you to keep yourself safe from the bullies - both outside and inside yourself.

Nobody else is going to do that for you. No one is coming to save you.

And that “I don’t trust myself” response? That’s something you learned, and it can be unlearned with practice, patience, and persistence.

You can have the most amazing group of friends, the most incredibly close family, or the most supportive partner, but when push comes to shove…you’ve got to have your own back in order to truly feel safe in this world.

But that’s the best news ever, because you’re the one who knows how to take care of you better than anyone else.

You know how to keep you safe and protected. Yes, you do. You just might’ve forgotten for a little while. But that’s what I’m here for…to help you remember.

In order to do that, though, you’re gonna have to relinquish your memberships to the people-pleaser and perfectionist clubs. We’ll get started on that paperwork in the next chapter.

AWAKEN is an acronym for:

Awareness

Why

Amend

Kindness

Engage

Notate

I created this acronym as a simple way to remember to practice being kind to yourself.

Notice I said “simple,” not “easy.” None of this is easy. If it were then the world would be a much different place.

Using the word AWAKEN hopefully makes it easier, though, since it’s like an awakening of sorts when you step into self-kindness. When you first dip your toe in, it’s like “AHHHHH FUCK THAT’S COLD”…then you ease in little by little, and soon you’re swimming comfortably (and not miserably). And you’re awake!

The A is for Awareness

All change begins with awareness. Next time you mess up, listen to your inner voice. What do you hear? What are you feeling? When you start paying attention to what you tell yourself, you know what you’re up against. (Challenge accepted!)

The W is for Why

Now’s the time to get curious. Why do I say that to myself? Where did that thought come from? When you ask these questions, you begin to uncover your inner bully and are better prepared to change the story. Remember: Thoughts and feelings aren’t facts.

The second A is for Amend

Amend that initial thought. How can you reframe it and begin to think about the situation differently? Like I’ve said before, you’ll want to start small. Taking big swings from “I’m the worst” to “I’m the best!” are too extreme and make your brain spaz. Try “I’m figuring things out” or “I’m doing my best.”

The K is for Kindness

Start working on being kinder to yourself. Being an asshole to yourself might seem like it works, but eventually you end up feeling (and acting) defeated. When reworking your thoughts, try setting the judgment and shame aside for a minute. Pretend you’re supporting your best friend, child, or partner; lead from a place of kindness and compassion.

The E is for Engage

Lean in. Feel the emotions that are attached to the new, kinder thoughts. Do they feel fake or uncomfortable? Yeah, that’s normal. (Like getting slowly into a cold pool.) Remember that when you start something new, you’re not instantly great at it. The same thing goes for changing how you talk to yourself.

The N is for Notate

Write it/Record it. If you journal, write about the process. If you’d rather talk about it, record a voice memo on your phone. Don’t skip this step. It keeps track of your progress. Bonus: Write a kind-to-you affirmation on a sticky note and put it on your bathroom mirror or somewhere that you’ll reread it often.

I developed the AWAKEN Technique for my clients about a year into my coaching career. I started out as a weight loss coach, but it didn’t take me long to see a pattern in my clients. The concepts they were talking to me about weren’t just about being overweight…that was a side effect.

The common thread among every single client I had was that they were all 1) really hard on themselves, 2) people-pleasers and/or perfectionists (these tend to go hand-in-hand), and 3) used their weight as the “focal problem” in order to avoid dealing with the real issue: Comfortable misery. They were all living lives that they barely tolerated, let alone enjoyed or loved.

The kicker? They all have pretty good lives on paper, and they all acknowledged that. They have families, have all their basic needs met and then some. Every one of them shows gratitude and thankfulness; every one of them is a loving person who cares deeply for their family and friends. But the shared perspective was that none of it felt good enough; that they weren’t enough.

I created a 12-week program aimed at weight loss that I may re-release in the future, but that program revolves around the changes that I am talking about in this book; i.e. changes in how you talk to yourself. How you treat yourself. How you think about yourself.

When you truly know your worth…when you appreciate your gifts and embrace your flaws…when you believe in the profoundly wonderful uniqueness of yourself…you naturally begin to take care of yourself. This is inherent self-kindness.

You gradually make changes that make you feel better, like eating healthier foods because you want to be more energetic or eating less food because feeling too full is uncomfortable. You stay hydrated because it lubricates your skin, eyes, and joints and you want to feel less itchy and achy. You prioritize sleep because you prefer to not be a cranky bitch all day long. You research “gut health” and “healthy perimenopause management” because you know you deserve to have the best care available to you as you age and prefer to ripen, not rust.

I’ve covered a lot in these chapters, and I know that this can seem daunting. But it’s like that old adage: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

And since you’re reading this, you’re one of the ones who already know that you’re worthy of living an incredible, fulfilling life. You may not totally believe it yet, but you sense it deep down.

In the next chapter I’m going to give my generic version of a Ted Talk about why self-kindness matters more than just about anything on the planet…how it’s right up there with oxygen and water.

Time to talk about manifestation.

What is it? It’s the process of energetically attracting things to you. More specifically, it’s focusing your thoughts, actions, and beliefs toward bringing a specific desire, goal, or outcome into reality. It’s the basis of The Law of Attraction.

Omg, Dana…what the hell is the Law of Attraction?

Okay, so there was this documentary film called The Secret that apparently came out in 2006 (even though my memory recalls it about five years earlier, but whatever), followed by a book, and people just went nuts over it (including me).

Rhonda Byrne, the filmmaker and author of The Secret, pulled together a bunch of motivational speakers and writers and interviewed them about the common thread running through their lives…that being The Law of Attraction.

The law states that basically what your pour your energy and focus into will come into your life. So if you’re worshipping at the altar of Murphy’s Law (“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”), then that’s what your energy will attract.

The three segments of the Law of Attraction are: “Like attracts like,” “Nature abhors a vacuum,” and “The present is always perfect.”

1. “Like attracts like” is pretty self-explanatory, I think. What you are, you attract. If you’re insecure, you’ll attract insecurity. If you’re kind, you’ll attract kindness.

2. “Nature Abhors a Vacuum” - In a nutshell: If you remove the thing that isn’t what you want and leave space for what you do want, it’ll show up.

3. “The Present Is Always Perfect” - This means that everything that happens is supposed to happen. So you can look at every circumstance as being a tool for learning, or you can look at it as “everything sucks and I hate it here.”

This might be the first time or the thousandth time you’ve heard this, but you are the creator of your own reality. Every blessing and every struggle you have was created by the energy you put out into the Universe.

Note: I’m not talking about foundational things from when you were a child. As children we may have had terrible experiences that we had no control over. However, what we do have control over is how we react to those things now that we are adults. (Theoretically, we are born into lives we chose for ourselves before we were born…but that’s a rabbit hole for another time.)

You could be saying to yourself, “Well, that’s all absolute crap, Dana. I’m the most generous person I know and no one does shit for me.”

Well, okay, but…WHY are you being generous? Is it to make people like you, or is it because it’s who you truly are? This is where the dissection of people-pleasing and perfectionistic behaviors become really important. (More to come.)

It’s also theorized that we live in a timeline, there are infinite realities occurring at the same time, and we can project ourselves into other realities to capture energy from the alternative versions of ourselves (quantum jumping). I find that truly fascinating and can go on for days, but I’m getting off track.

The thing that’s missing from the Law of Attraction is this: In order to attract what you want, you have to create the experience of having what you want in your body…meaning you have to practice the feelings of being the person that you want to become.

For example: If I still wanted to be a pop star, I’d pour my energy into imaging what it would feel like to be Taylor Swift.

If you want a better friend group, then visualize it by imagining the group of friends that you’d like and then call into yourself the feelings of being with them: Loving, supportive, super fun, filthy rich, whatever.

If you want a healthy romantic relationship, then get really clear on what you want in a romantic partner (write a list, journal it out, or voice record it) and then generate the feelings you desire by visualizing being with that person.

Note: If you’re wishing for a certain person who you know isn’t interested in you, this can be self-defeating. The idea is to generate the feelings within you and your energy will attract the person with the qualities you’re seeking.

So did you notice those words “get really clear on what you want?”

Simple, right? Not easy. That’s where a meditation practice can be super helpful.

Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work (Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Becoming Supernatural) is about combining the visualization of what you want combined with generating the feelings of being in that reality in your body through meditation. Now, I was meditating for about nine months when I started reading his books and studying his methods and it immediately took my practice to a higher level.

Meditation is the pathway to connecting your current energy to the energy that you want called to you. What is it? Simplified: Closing your eyes, focusing on your breathing, and clearing your mind.

If clearing your mind sounds impossible, just hang on a sec. You don’t *have* to stop thinking about things…like anything else, it’s a practice. You can start with a few minutes and build from there.

I’m going to summarize the practice that I’ve morphed into here. When I meditate, it can be really difficult to get my ADHD brain to shut the f*ck up for even ten seconds. Instead of berating myself over it (here comes self-kindness), when I catch myself thinking about my to-do list, I repeat the word “thinking” and gently pull my focus back to my breathing.

That’s a tip from Pema Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart. HIGHLY recommend that one.

Back to meditating. Basically, don’t overthink it. That’s what creates overwhelm and keeps you from starting. Meditation is one of the easiest and free-ist (it costs $0) things you can do to improve your overall wellness. It’s a great tool for regulating your nervous system which is crucial if you want to learn how to manage depression, anxiety, and overwhelm.

I used to tell myself that meditation is pointless because I’d always fall asleep during it. When you fall asleep during it, though, it means you’re overly tired. Your body is telling you that you need to get more quality sleep. So from there you can opt to meditate before you fall asleep at night.

There is no wrong way to do this. There are optimal ways, sure…but any type and amount of introspection is a beneficial thing. And I’ll give you some meditation and breathing basics that you can follow in the last chapter.

But I wanted to talk about manifestation because there are so many more things within your control than you realize. By working on some mindset shifts, you can create an atmosphere entirely different from the dissatisfying one you live in right now.

It’s really vital to get clear on the way you want things to be, though. If you’re not specific, how can you get a specific outcome?

Example: “I want to be thin” vs. “I want to be fit, healthy, and look really good in my clothes.”

Example: “I don’t want to worry about money” vs. “I want to have a solid income of $10,000/month or more by the end of this year.”

And then you focus on it. You write about it, you think about it, you mediate on it to feel it in your body and emotions…but most importantly, you believe in it. Everything hinges on your belief system. If you don’t believe that it can happen, then it won’t. It’s that simple.

Simple, but not easy.

Look, I know it sounds like I’m saying, “So if you don’t get want you want, you can only blame yourself!” (I read a lot of counterpoint to these concepts, and that’s the way people who don’t believe in this react.)

But it’s more nuanced than that. It takes dedication and discipline and requires a spark of faith in better outcomes.

Like I mentioned in an earlier chapter, we have a crapton of limiting beliefs in our unconscious and subconscious minds that we need to deconstruct and rewrite. You might even uncover things you didn’t know were there in the process. I sure did.

It takes (here we go again!) practice, patience, and persistence.

Now before you start flipping tables, I’d like to point something out here…you have all of the power here. YOU do. No one else can control what YOU TELL YOUR OWN MIND.

Isn’t that fucking empowering?

Here’s another cool thing: I’m here to support you all the way! All you have to do is reach out to me and we can start coming up with your outline for YOUR rulebook and how to manifest everything you want while living by your new and improved rules.

But before I go…

…story time! Gather ‘round, children.

Here’s the story about one of my greatest manifestations — meeting Colin Farrell.

It was the summer of 2002 and I was working for a guy hosting karaoke in the west side of Los Angeles. Ordinarily when I was done my Friday night gig I’d go to his house and unload the gear into his garage then drive home to West Hollywood. But for some reason, that night he’d locked his garage so I just took the gear home with me and left it in my car since I had a tiny one bedroom apartment with no garage.

He called me the next day (this is when we still used to call each other, texting wasn’t a thing yet) and apologized for the garage being locked by mistake. I said no biggie, how should we handle this? He asked if I could bring the gear to his next gig which was the following night in Santa Monica. So that’s what I did.

Now I should probably mention that this was right around the time in my life when I was obsessed with Colin Farrell. I’ve always been very attracted to dark-haired, brown-eyed men with strong eyebrows and semi-brooding features.

The details of the birth of said obsession are fuzzy, but I must’ve seen him in one of his earlier films and well…he’s just smoking hot. Then probably caught an interview and heard the Irish accent. Boom. Goner.

So I arrived at the gig with the gear and my boss and his co-host began unloading the gear. He offered to buy me dinner and a drink for my trouble and asked if I wanted to sing first. I said no, but I’ll go third. (I don’t like going first unless I’m the host. It’s just my weird thing.) But while I was at the front of the stage area, I was looking around the room and noticed a really attractive man and woman sitting at a table. The man’s head was shaved, he had a goatee and tattoos…drool.

I’m not a total creeper so I didn’t stare or anything, but I do enjoy seeing good-looking people as much as the next person. So I was checking them out, particularly the man, when suddenly it occurred to me that OH MY GOD THAT’S COLIN FARRELL. I about dropped whatever I was holding and ran outside to call my best friend. She told me to stop panicking and offer to buy him a beer.

Instead I pretended not to see him and waited nervously at the bar for my turn to sing. Then I sang and was (of course) more nervous than I’d been in years.

COLIN FARRELL HEARD ME SING.

He went outside to smoke and I waited a beat - I’m not a stalker I’m not a stalker I’m not a stalker okay that’s long enough - then followed him, even though I don’t smoke. Thankfully, one of the regular singers (let’s call him Ron) at my Friday night show was outside already chatting with him while they smoked.

Ron turned to me and said, “Dana, you sounded great. I don’t think I’ve heard you sing Linda Ronstadt before.” (I sang “You’re No Good”)

I said something like “Oh yeah hahahaha bbbtbtejtbejbtejbt nonsense” (I honestly can’t remember what I said).

Colin turned and looked at me.

COLIN FARRELL LOOKED AT ME.

He said these words to me: “You have a fucking amazing voice.”

COLIN FARRELL SAID I HAVE A FUCKING AMAZING VOICE.

How I didn’t burst into flames I have no idea. Pretty sure my face was scarlet the entire time thanks to my propensity to flush when I’m nervous.

Anyway, I did manage to maintain my composure a little bit, pretended I only sort of knew who he was, and held an entire conversation with him without blacking out.

Turns out he was in LA filming the movie Daredevil (thus the shaved head and goatee) and had come to the Kings Head Pub with his sister for dinner. I did offer to buy him a beer, but he declined. This ended with him saying, “If you’re ever in Dublin, you should look me up.” (Yes, I have been trying to get to Dublin ever since. I was supposed to go with my family for my 50th birthday, but that ended up not happening. Thanks, Covid!)

I asked my boss’s co-host if I was acting like a freak, and God love him, he lied and said I was acting normal.

I’m sure if you ask Colin if he remembers this run in, he would have no recollection of it. But to me this is proof that manifestation works. I spent a lot of time fantasizing about meeting that man in those days - and I did. WILD.

Wanna know another synchronistic thing? My husband was working in the downtown Los Angeles building where Daredevil was filming…and he met Colin, too. This was years before he and I met each other. Isn’t that bonkers?

I know that story doesn’t really have much to do with writing your own rulebook, but it kind of does…because if I hadn’t been prone to writing my own rules, I wouldn’t have still lived in Los Angeles in the first place. Once my first marriage ended and that producer ripped me off, I would’ve run back to Pennsylvania.

But the transformation had already begun for me, so I’ve gotten to experience a lot of really cool things that if I’d followed the rulebook that I grew up with, I never would’ve done, like:

• Hanging out with several people before they were famous

• Appearing on a (terrible but super fun) reality show in 2001

• Releasing an album on an independent label (Outback Records) in 2006

• Traveling the county multiple times

• Owning two homes in California

I took a lot of risks back then, but I still allowed a lot of self-doubt and judgment to fuel my efforts. So once I met my husband and had a family, those risks got buried. I downshifted into being a mom and thought I’d put those dreams behind me.

Now my sons are almost adults. At age 50 I remembered that fear and doubt didn’t write my rules and started my company, Revolution Within Consulting.

And today I believe in myself to write this book, to write music again, to heal the fear-based mindsets of anyone who will listen…it’s all possible. Anything is. Our dreams are possible. They’re waiting for us to feel the fear, the doubt, the uncertainty…and fucking do the thing anyway.

I’m awake now. Let’s wake you up, too.

I’m going to take the concept of faith and turn it slightly askew.

Having faith is wonderful. But it also requires inspired action.

Faith doesn’t mean that we sit around praying and that money just *poof* shows up in our account or the weight just *shhhhhhppppp* falls off us. It shows up in subtle ways that require us to do something.

When you do laundry, do you put the clothes in and then walk away? No. You turn on the machine, you add the soap, you set it to permanent press or whatever, then you hit start. When it’s done, you put the clothes in the dryer and then add the dryer sheet, turn on the machine, choose a setting and hit start.

Duh, Dana. I know how to do laundry.

Wonderful. But let me ask you a few questions:

Do you expect things to just happen? Do you expect motivation to sprinkle down from the heavens like golden snowflakes and rest upon your shoulders? Do you expect to do something twice and be an expert at it? Do you think that everything must happen exactly the way you think it should? (I could be speaking to past Dana just a bit here.)

That’s not how faith works. Faith is belief in God/Creator/Universe (use your term of choice) having your back. That when things don’t turn out the way you want, something better and/or more appropriate for where you are at this stage in your life will arrive.

To paraphrase the Rolling Stones: “You can’t always get what you want, but you just might find you get what you need.”

I believe that faith and being of service — to your family, to your colleagues, to the world, even to yourself — go hand in hand, and the more you lean into love, kindness, and generosity, the more you’re exercising true faith in being held and cared for by God.

I also believe that as you’re becoming more aware and practicing new things that you’ll have moments (sometimes reeeeally long ones) of doubt, fear, uncertainty, anger, etc. because that’s all part of the human experience.

As humans, we feel all kinds of feelings: Anger, frustration, joy, hope, despair, grief, boredom, optimism, etc. (You can type “Feelings Wheel” in any search bar for more examples.)

Our default feelings come mostly from our upbringing and somewhat from our genetic history. Depending on our surroundings and influences, we lean toward optimism or pessimism. All of this affects our actual faith in ourselves, which is where we need to invest it to live our lives to our fullest potential.

No, this isn’t selfish or against what God intends. We’re made in God’s image. God is everywhere. God is all around us. God is within us.

But God is not some old white dude in the sky, lounging on a bunch of clouds that taste like cotton candy. (That’s what I imagined as a kid.) God is the Universe, and it’s all energy. God is not a person, but energy. Everything is energy, and all energy already exists.

It’s trippy when you really think about it, because energy can’t be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed from one form to another. Science has proven this. It’s a law of physics called The Law of Conservation of energy. Therefore, if God is energy and we are energy, then God is us and we are God. We’re all part of the Source, the Universe.

“We’re not a body with a soul, we’re a soul with a body.” — Wayne Dyer

We’re souls walking around in human bodies, and it’s all made up of (say it with me now!) energy.

Okay, now that I’ve hammered that point into oblivion, I offer this: It stands to reason that with enough focus, energy can be exchanged between you and God. How do we do that? Through daily effort engaging in meditation, visualization, or another type of connection practice. (More on this in a later chapter.)

Now let’s answer this: If you have faith, why are you still doubting so much shit?

Okay. Remember what I said in a previous chapter about the survival instinct in our brain keeps trending negative? This is particularly true for those of us who grew up in an emotionally withholding environment. Our brains love to jump right to “Watch out for that falling sky!”

But like I said before, as a society we’ve evolved from having to constantly be in survival mode. We no longer must hunt and forage for food; now we get in our cars and drive to the grocery store.

Also, we aren’t being hunted anymore, despite what the receptors in our brains that true crime podcasts thrive on telling us. Not to bash true crime podcasts -- I enjoy them in very tiny doses -- but too much exposure stops “preparing you” for terrible shit that’s incredibly unlikely to happen and just perpetuates your fear.

To shift the trend toward noticing and being appreciative of the overabundance in our modern lives, though, we need to create a practice around it. And in doing so we have to drop the perfectionist mindset around change. These shifts take time, study, and the understanding that some things that work well for others might not be for you. And that’s okay.

Maybe you’re a person who identifies with the concept of “waiting for the other shoe to drop,” and you can pull twelve different examples from your life about how just when things were going great everything fell apart.

Let me ask this: How has that thought pattern been benefiting you? How have you been feeling while living inside a mind that is perpetually laser focused on all the things that’ve gone wrong in your life? That sounds stressful as hell to me.

Did you even know that you can practice thinking different thoughts which will gradually make you feel better? I’m talking about the unshakable fact that not every thought you have is true, and that you don’t have to continue to believe the bad shit you’ve been telling yourself.

Your current thoughts are just what you’re used to thinking because you’ve been conditioned that way through years of practice. And you can choose to engage in a practice that leads to seeing that, when things do fall apart — which they will, because all energy has its opposite — there are not only lessons to be learned, but there’s also beauty in the chaos that ensues.

As the brilliant author Anne Lamott wrote: “God only has one shoe.”

That’s faith.

It’s taking what comes and learning how to trust yourself in dealing with it. Yes, bad shit happens. But it doesn’t always happen. And while you’re looking up at the sky, waiting for it to fall on your head, you’re missing the good things that are quietly happening in the background. While you’re anticipating that second shoe dropping, you’re missing out on enjoying the present moments of joy that came along with the first shoe.

Basically, if you take your focus and keep it on the bad things, then that’s all you’re going to see. And I notice this all the time in media and social media alike…people making posts about the tragedies they’re enduring, the sad anniversaries, the horrifying shootings, the unfathomable wars.

Caveat: If that’s how you process and heal, then have at it. Share your pain with the internet. Post your problems, your struggles, your bittersweet memories of those you’ve lost. But use that process to help release it, not to relive it over and over again.

I’d like to note that it’s been proven many times over that negative stories get way more attention than good ones and therefore make more money. What a way to control, divide, and conquer a population, eh?

The bleakness of this world is undeniable. I get it, I really do. Believe me…I could easily turn back toward that energy and fall right back into depression. But I’m here to help as many people as I possibly can lean toward hope and light, and I take steps every day to do so.

Some days the steps are long strides, and some days I can barely muster poking my toe out from underneath my weighted blanket, but it all counts.

If you take anything away from this book, I hope it’s the understanding that it is absolutely possible to practice your way out of comfortable misery (or depression or chronic anxiety) by rejecting the rulebook you’ve followed your entire life and writing yourself a new one.

If you actually want to heal, if you want to feel better, if you want to rise from a constant low hum of despair and begin to feel…I don’t know…hopeful…then begin today. Take one small action. Spend one to five minutes meditating or journaling. That’s your assignment for Chapter 9.

No, we’re not getting rid of “bad” words. Fuck that. Cuss words are fun and satisfying.

I mean the words you use when you speak about yourself to yourself as well as the words you use when you speak about situations, circumstances, etc. (The words you use about other people too, but we’ll get to that further on.)

This builds upon what I talked about in Chapter 5 regarding your shitty self-talk. As you practice removing those internal berating diatribes, I’d like you to take notice of the way you talk about other things.

“Omg, it always takes me like, forever to get the Wordle.”

“Ugh, I’m always tired.”

“I’m always hungry.”

“I never have enough money.”

“Traffic is going to be a nightmare.” (Well, that’s not something you can control, but you can prepare for it.)

These words may seem harmless, but every time you utter them, you’re putting more energy toward making them true.

Everything is energy. I’m going to talk more about this in the next chapter, but what you focus your attention on — even in the words you speak — creates an energetic pull toward it, a frequency.

That doesn’t mean you can immediately start speaking things into existence, because you can’t instantly believe new stuff. Not in this reality, anyway. Our brains don’t work like that. It requires a shift in mindset to raise your vibration to match the energy of what you want things to be like in your life.

Of course, you can only control what you can control. You can’t control the traffic or the weather, but you can control your reaction to it. If you sit in traffic and freak out about how late you’re going to be, why is this taking so long, what the fuck is wrong with this city, why does everything suck…how does that feel? Does that feel good or terrible? Do you feel relaxed or anxious?

You can practice shifting your brain to a thought like this while you’re sitting in traffic: This isn’t something I can control, so I might as well stop freaking out. Practice being patient.

If you’re late for a meeting, call ahead and let someone know. But you sitting there panicking about it, making up worst-case scenarios about it, who is that helping? No one. Who is it hurting? You. Only you.

So when you’re struggling with a problem, maybe you can be challenged by a project instead. Or if you think your boss is always mad at you, maybe you can decide that your boss has issues at home that are 1) none of your business and 2) have nothing to do with you.

Investing energy into worrying about things that you have no evidence of even being true isn’t helpful. (No wonder you’re always tired.)

Quick tip: If you keep the phrase “I never have enough money” in your vernacular, you will make certain that you don’t. Try this: “I have all the money that I need.” If you’d like to have more than enough money, then practice, “I always have more than enough money.”

It won’t feel true at first because you’ve been practicing the opposite for so long, but every time you hear yourself think or say “I don’t have enough,” replace it with a thought or phrase that you feel like could be true: “I can have enough” or “I have the ability to make more” or something that feels good to you.

A thought or phrase that you believe could be true is a called a bridge thought. Bridge thoughts exist because jumping from “I don’t have enough” to “I’m a millionaire” is a wildly disconcerting leap, and our brains typically can’t do that. There are plenty of examples of people winning the lottery who end up losing it all within a short period of time because their brains didn’t know how to handle it…so even just saying it won’t make you believe it.

Engaging the part of our brain called the Reticular Activating System is also very helpful when you’re working on changing your language and thought patterns. This is the part of our brain that sees what we’re looking for. It’s why we tend to find evidence for what we already believe, even if what we believe is absolute nonsense.

The RAS is useful when you want to start seeing more good things in your life. Look for the person who holds the door open for you rather than the person who cut in front of you in line at the grocery store. Notice the beautiful flowers around your neighborhood rather than that one neighbor who has a lawn overgrown with weeds.

There’s beauty and kindness and hope all around us, but historically there hasn’t been any money in it. It’s been in the best interest of the powers-that-be to keep us all engaged in our comfortable misery, staring at our phones, waiting for the next violent outbreak to occur…keeping our focus on fear and divisiveness.

Divide and…what’s the next word?

With kindness, with enoughness, with worthiness, with belief in ourselves and each other…they can’t conquer us.

You have control over your own mind. No one can take that away from you.

Start small. Move gradually. Practice often. Have patience. Be persistent. And you will transform. You’ll be amazed at how different you’ll be in a year.

Blame is about throwing all of the negative shit of something that happened at a particular person or circumstance without ownership. It’s about finding fault rather than resolution, and it has negativity and deflection at the root rather than the desire to find a fair and peaceful solution.

Responsibility is about stepping up and taking ownership. It’s about seeking a constructive outcome rather than a “One-two-three-not-it!!” mentality. The heart of responsibility is to learn and grow from the situation; accountability, not accusation.

When you steep in blame — of self or others — you’re keeping yourself in the energy of fear, resentment, and avoidance. And while pointing fingers seems constructive, it’s just going to end up coming back at you in one way, shape, or form.

When my first marriage ended, I took on all the blame. I had very low self-esteem in those days, so when I was shamed or belittled by him I fell face first into the assumption that I’d done something to deserve it, even if his reasoning didn’t make sense. (One of his most memorable quotes: “When I’m wrong about something, I’ll let you know.”)

But once that toxic mess was in my rearview mirror, I was able to see that relationship for what it was: Two people who brought out the worst in each other had created a codependent, emotionally abusive environment that should’ve ended long before nine years had passed.

That’s how I took responsibility for it. I went back through and reassessed it. I stopped blaming myself for making him so angry that he would say terrible things; I took responsibility for not standing up for myself. I stopped blaming his raging temper for my cowering and not fighting back; I took responsibility for thinking so little of myself that I overstayed in a situation that I absolutely didn’t deserve.

I acknowledged that my fear of being alone, along with the fear of how he might react if I left, had kept me for far too long in a partnership with a person whose behavior toward me when he was displeased was, quite honestly, hateful. He blamed me for his unhappiness while I became a martyr, taking on that blame without question. And once he met someone else and left me, I was able to see it all with clear eyes and an unencumbered heart.

I never would’ve categorized it as an abusive relationship while I was in it because “he never hit me” (oh, how many times I’ve heard — and said — that one), but it was undoubtedly emotionally and mentally abusive.

But I’m not using this as an example to blame him. That’s all in my past, and I’ve freed myself from the guilt, shame, and self-judgement of overstaying in that unhealthy space. My anger at him faded years ago; he was simply being who he was because of his perspective.

In his eyes, I was instigating his rage by being needy. And he wasn’t entirely wrong. When we met I was an incredibly insecure 18-year-old who couldn’t take any amount of teasing or criticism. It made me feel dejected and terrible about myself, so I’d sulk, cry, or throw an emotional pity-party.

The fact is he didn’t even want to date me at first, but I chased him until he relented. I hadn’t yet learned the hard truth about relationships: That you should strive to be in ones where the other person can tolerate you at your lowest points and respect you as a flawed human being who won’t always be able to chameleon into satisfying their every whim.

Early in the relationship after a fight that teetered on a break-up, he gave me a list titled “The Wrongs of Dana.” Instead of laughing in his face and telling him to go play in traffic, I took that list to heart and tried my hardest to change nearly everything about myself to please him.

That ain’t it, beauties and cuties. Changing who you are according to a list of your flaws? The flaws that someone else thinks you should change because he thinks it’ll make it easier for him to be around you?

Oh, my fucking Goddess, nooooo.

But I was nineteen years old at that point and thought he was my soulmate, which makes me cringe now.

I didn’t yet understand that my happiness was my responsibility; I was still seeking it from other people. Up until then I’d experienced nothing but rejection from boys, and having a boyfriend was the Holy Grail of acceptance to me. I foolishly thought nothing would make me happier, and the idea of losing him terrified me.

That all came after a childhood that left me with the distinct impression that I wasn’t and could never be loveable…a childhood chock full of emotional outbursts, short tempers, and loud voices. No wonder the unhealthy relationship with my ex felt like home to me.

The dramatic ups and downs of my first love relationship/my first marriage were something that I thrived on. That was normal; that’s what romantic love felt like to me.

In fact, after my divorce and many years before I really dug into building my self-esteem by practicing self-kindness, I had a friend whose nickname for me was Drama. And rightfully so! I overreacted to everything. I felt things so deeply. When things were good, I was a delight; when things weren’t good, I was an emotional vampire/trauma dumper.

My mom used to say that this nursery rhyme was written about me:

“There was a little girl

Who had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good

She was very, very good

But when she was bad

She was awful.”

Again, not wrong. But having grown up in an environment where that was my designation, it makes sense that I went in the direction that I did.

Admittedly, there were a couple of years when I blamed my parents for my issues. But then I stepped into adulthood and realized how pointless and unhelpful it is to throw the fault for my self-destructive behavior on them. They’re two people who did all that they knew how to do to raise their kids into good humans. It’s not like parenting books, classes, and support were running rampant in the wild, uninhibited days before the internet.

My mother grew up living in abject poverty. My grandmother was a Ukrainian immigrant with a third-grade education who worked as a waitress her entire life. My grandfather left her with three young daughters to remarry and raise three boys with his second wife. This happened in the 1940s…the days where being a divorced woman was akin to having a scarlet letter emblazoned upon your chest. Can you imagine?

I remember my mom telling me stories about how she grew up in North Philadelphia. Her family didn’t have enough money for a full week’s worth of food, so to avoid being hungry she’d sleep the entire weekend until she’d go back to school. Her deepest desire in high school was to become an artist…but her mom literally burned her art supplies, telling her, “You can’t make money as an artist. You’re going to become a hairdresser.”

And so, she did.

She carried a lot of resentment toward her mom for years. But one day when I was in my 20s, she told me that she finally understood why her mom did what she did.

“She didn’t want me to turn out like she did.”

My grandma wanted my mother to be able to support herself better than she was able to, just in case my dad turned out to be “a no-good bum” like my grandfather was in her opinion. It was her way of protecting my mom, to prepare her for anything.

And my dad grew up Catholic with a gruff, neglectful father and a demure, kind, and obedient mother in a lower-middle class South Philadelphia neighborhood. His mom died when he was only 19 years old. He then followed in his father’s footsteps, joining the IBEW local union branch (that his father founded) right out of high school and becoming an electrician. He learned a trade and worked hard to provide for us until he retired at age 67.

And they stayed together. Married for just over 50 years until my mom died on New Years Day, 2016. Living life the way that was modeled to them. “This is just how it is.”

So, blaming my parents, really? No. The responsibility is mine. They were parenting as they learned from their parents.

We also don’t know what we don’t know, and in the 70s and 80s no one knew a thing about how to parent neurodivergent children. They were humans who made mistakes but were ultimately doing the best they could. They weren’t deliberately causing harm. And both of my parents had parents who did the same.

Generation after generation…we’re all just doing the best we can.

Despite what the media and many sources of entertainment have led us to believe, most people are not backstabbing and evil. When someone in our family does something to hurt us, it’s usually from a place of love. They believe that they know what’s best for us, and so they say or do things from their perspective.

Wouldn’t you say that you do the same thing?

That’s something I didn’t understand until I was really made aware of it; until I learned that I didn’t have to believe everything that I’ve been taught about relationships, particularly by my own brain.

Consequently, a big part of taking responsibility is identifying the emotions that you’ve been suppressing/ignoring and releasing them. That’s how you can really step into self-kindness. It’s hard to forgive the trespasses against us if we’re still secretly pissed off about those trespasses.

I’m allowed to be angry that I was dismissed as difficult and spoiled rather than supported. But who am I mad at? Not my parents. Not my siblings. I’m angry at the situation. The lack of resources. The overall atmosphere of shrugging with “That’s just the way it was back then” tacked on.

I could certainly be furious at the fact that there are still so many who assign blame rather than responsibility because of a basic lack of emotional intelligence education. But that’s a far bigger issue and since I don’t enjoy being angry, let’s move on.

The point is that learning how to shift blame and fault to responsibility and ownership is the key to moving into an energy of kindness. I’m not suggesting that you take on other people’s responsibility for things; rather, I’m saying to examine a situation that doesn’t feel good to you, figure out your part in it, and ponder ways in which you can either change the outcome for the better or walk away/release your attachment to it.

Your language around occurrences in your life matters. When you wake up and allow life to live you, that’s when stress is the show runner. Living in the energy of “I have to” makes everything suck, but if that’s how you’re reacting to things right now just know that it’s not going to be an immediate switch to living in an energy of contentment.

You know the expression, “Don’t sweat the small stuff”? And then the correlating one, “It’s all small stuff”?

It really is all small stuff. Very few things are that big of a deal. Once something happens, you can’t go back and make it unhappen. Therefore, wasting precious time and energy freaking out about it for weeks isn’t going to help you handle it. In fact, it’s going to take you longer to settle things than if you accepted and began working on managing the situation.

How we react to things determines how much we enjoy our lives. If we react to little things with big drama, then we create more big drama. Our focus stays on the disaster part rather than the “How do I handle this?” part.

Very few things are actually life or death situations. Learning and practicing how to regulate your nervous system will go miles towards teaching yourself that. And learning this practice is a major step toward ultimate self-kindness. Constant stress not only feels terrible emotionally, but over time it begins to break you down physically, too.

Chapter 7 Assignment:

List 2-3 things that you’ve been blaming someone else and/or yourself for. How can you reframe those circumstances in the context of responsibility rather than fault?

I asked other people to chime in on everything I created, and every opinion reinforced that it wasn’t good enough. That’s how I heard things, anyway.

Granted, not everyone is a talented writer and even fewer everyones can write music well, but the arts have a level of subjectivity to them that I failed to consider. I’ve gotten enough feedback on my work at this point to know that many people think I’m talented and many people think I’m not, and that both things can be true…depending on one’s perspective.

When I was younger, I invested all my focus and energy into listening to the people who think I’m not. These days I’m fully invested in the opinion of one person - myself. And I think I am, which is what matters because I’m the one making the effort.

Yes, I still take feedback (quite gracefully, I might add - I’ve worked particularly hard on that). I value some of it, and I ignore the rest. These days I trust myself to know the difference between valuable feedback and someone’s subjective opinion.

But even better? I don’t take that shit personally anymore. At all. Someone else’s opinion is not a reflection on me. In fact, it’s a direct reflection of that person’s inner monologue.

That’s my point here. When someone says something mean or flippant or disrespectful to you, 99% of the time it’s not about you in the least. It’s about their own bullshit, and they’re throwing it on you because you asked a question or were trying to start a conversation or were merely in their periphery.

And if it’s not about you, then what should you start practicing?

Anyone?

Say it with me now: I should practice not taking things personally.

Exactly.

The more you learn how to release that worried, anxious energy of thinking that everyone is mad at you or that you’re doing something wrong because someone looked at you weird or or or —

Omg, just stop. Breathe.

Most of the time everyone is thinking about themselves. We are all the stars of the movie in our heads. We are all the protagonists of our own story.

Now, you might not believe that. But take yourself for instance: Why do you automatically think that when someone is upset it’s about you?

Because you’re thinking about yourself. Ah-ha!

Does that make you selfish, egotistical, or perhaps (gasp) a narcissist? No.

It makes you human. It’s about survival. We’re focused on our own needs before those of others because we’re wired to survive, and being accepted by other members of society is a major part of our survival instinct.

However, our society moved a lot faster in our modern way of living than the human brain’s adaptation ability did. Our brains don’t understand the difference between the worry of being eaten by a tiger that’s hunting us or the worry of being disliked because we’re late for a meeting.

Here’s a maddening cycle that many of us end up in: You worry that you’re disappointing everyone, even though you’re trying your best — which looks different every day, since the effort available to you isn’t always going to be 100%. This creates an underlying hum of anxiety.

That hum leads to overwhelm, which often causes you to look for ways to cope (food, alcohol, social media, etc.) and disappear into a dopamine hit to avoid those anxious feelings. That frequently results in letting people down by not showing up or canceling or whatever…thus creating and, over time, reinforcing the disappointment they feel toward you.

And you’re swirling in so much self-judgement and shame from all of that pressure you’re putting on yourself to do everything right (perfectionism) so that everyone likes you (people-pleasing) that you might end up losing yourself and alienating the people that actually love you for who you are, not what you can do for them (self-sabotage and isolation).

So how does all that tie into not taking things personally?

When you realize that people are focused solely on their own thoughts, fears, wants, needs, and desires almost all the time, that can reduce the pressure of thinking that you’re doing something wrong.

And when that pressure is lessened, it’s easier to gift yourself the kindness of working through feelings of shame, judgment, and guilt for “making someone angry” at you about something that has little-to-nothing to do with you.

Perception is important. And understanding that we all have different perspectives is even more important. Every single person is living life through their own experiences: The privilege (or lack thereof) they’re born into; the geographic location they’re exposed to; the education they receive (or don’t); the family dynamics they’re immersed in every day.

Let’s acknowledge that. Take all of that into account when you’re receiving the energy of others. Practice reframing things like getting cut off in traffic as that person having a bad day rather than being a fucking lunatic that’s trying to kill you. When your awareness heightens and your practice of this reframe sharpens, your kindness toward others increases.

But does your kindness toward yourself increase, too? Not necessarily. That’s entirely up to you. You can decide to try and be nicer to everyone else while still holding yourself to different (impossible) standards. I did that for a long time, and it led me back to the same place every time: Shame, judgment, and repeating cycles of self-harm.

A major realization I had was that I was still blaming myself for past mistakes and misunderstandings rather than taking responsibility for my part in it.

What’s the difference and why does it matter? I’ll explain in the next chapter.

Nothing happens overnight. (Except maybe yeast rising or paint drying.) Logically we know this. But when it comes to changing things in our lives, the frustration of supposed lack of progress is probably the biggest dream killer out there.

I’ve seen this happen countless times now, and I’ll use weight loss as my example because it’s the most prevalent in my personal experience.

It’s January 1 and you see the latest book/fad/course/ad “Lose Weight, Feel Great!” The ads show a side-by-side of a woman who’s lost a significant amount of weight; her “before” photo she looks dumpy and miserable, and in her “after” photo she looks radiant, slim, and happy happy happy.

You think to yourself, “I want to be her.” Or like her. (Or however you say it to yourself.) It registers to you as easy to do because of the marketing; Before/After photos are great visual tricks because they signal to your brain that instant weight loss success is possible.

What you don’t see is the months of hard work she put in. The numerous times she skipped lunches out with co-workers and turned down events with friends because, in her words, “I don’t want to break my diet.” You definitely aren’t privy to things like the gradual increase over time of nighttime binges because she was starving herself during the day.

You’re only seeing the instant gratification portion of the assignment here. And your brain is finding more evidence as you go, because that’s what our brains do…we’re wired to find evidence for what we already believe.

So you sign up for the plan, pay the money, and decide that your “brand new me” arrives Monday. You spend the days until then eating your face off to get rid of the “bad foods” because you don’t want to waste them, and you vow that you’ll never have them again.

So you clean house and buy foods you’ve never even considered eating before but they’re on the plan, so you decide that you’ll figure it out. Monday arrives and you start off strong. But by Friday you’re not only wondering why you’re so hungry — you’ve never been so hungry before in your life — but also why you haven’t lost any weight yet. So you call yourself a failure and dive into the weekend with a bag of chips and a bottle of wine.

This may not feel at all familiar to you, but it’s basically how I approached weight loss for the first 40 years of my life. I had to follow a “diet plan”; I had to cut out entire food groups; I had to eat only a certain amount of calories. If I didn’t follow the rules perfectly, I was a failure and quit within a matter of months/weeks/days.

This is all diet mentality horseshit. Diet mentality is the rulebook that we’ve bought into about the only way or the correct way that we can successfully lose weight and keep it off. The real insidiousness of it is that the repetition of the pattern eventually convinces us that we’re complete failures for not being able to permanently change everything we consume with the snap of our fingers. Time passes, we gain weight back, then eventually we become fed up at ourselves again. And then a new set of rules (new diet plan) comes along to reignite our hopes, keeping us in a cycle of weight loss/gain.

Most of it was designed by capitalism. We can’t point at one source; it’s a myriad of industries over decades that taught us through marketing and lobbying that this is the best or only way to be skinny, which is the only acceptable way to be. Since I grew up in and began laying the foundation for my personal diet mentality in the 80s, let’s do a quick summary of the “fat makes you fat” misnomer.

It was becoming known that sugar isn’t good for you back in the 1950s. There were studies being done on the effects of too much sugar on our health. So in retaliation, the Sugar Research Foundation messed with the studies to point the blame at fat instead of sugar, thus kicking off the “fat free” craze in the 80s. (Resource — NPR: 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat)

Granted, the entire food industry pays for studies to point the damage elsewhere…our food supply is heavily doctored, and anything with a label on it has been processed. Pro tip: Generally speaking, gravitate toward eating things that aren’t in a package (i.e. an actual piece of fruit rather than a fruit-like substance).

Because of the damage done by the dieting rulebook I followed, it took me a long time to wrap my head around “healthy fats.” But I took the time to learn what that actually means, so now I understand the differences and know what to look for.

Back to things not happening overnight. We’ve grown into even more of an “instant gratification” society with the internet, social media, and the ability to order just about anything and have it show up at our door within an hour.

We’re working against ourselves here in a lot of ways…our inner Veruca Salt is hollering, “I want it now!” while oh, I don’t know, reality exists. It’s generally not possible to instantly change a bad habit. And expecting ourselves to is just fueling that inner bully and forcing us to follow someone else’s rules that don’t even fit our abilities (or anyone’s, really).

Okay, so let’s talk about that inner bully for a minute. Think about the last time you messed up, like: You were late to an important meeting. You overate at dinner. You forgot to fill the gas tank.

What happens? Does an inner voice start berating you? Does that voice say really mean shit to you?

“You idiot. You’re always late.”

“Great…you pigged out again. Here comes the weight gain, fatty.”

“Now you’ll run out of gas and get stuck on the side of the road and your cell phone will die and someone will come along and murder you. Great job, moron.” (I don’t know if anyone else’s inner voice goes real dark real fast like that, but mine can at the strangest times. Anywho.)

This might be the first time or the hundredth time you’ve heard this, but…you don’t have to keep living like that. That inner voice, like I mentioned before, is a conglomeration of all of the mean assholes and well-meaning-but-blunt folks and cranky cashiers and and and…you get the idea.

It’s a voice that holds you back, keeps you small, and just flat-out fucking lies to you about you. So what do you do?

Well, identify the feelings that come up when it starts chirping. Fear? Anger? Shame? Judgement? Check check check check.

Alright, so what do you do about that? Scream back, “Shut up, you’re wrong!” I mean, sure. But typically meeting anger and fear with more of the same escalates the situation.

So…let’s reframe. What if you could reason with it rather than be afraid of it? Maybe try welcoming that voice. “C’mon in, let’s chat.” Let’s have a conversation, not a confrontation. You don’t fear having conversations with people generally speaking, but confrontations feel scary and anxious.

You can respond with:

“Alright, relax bucko. Is that even true? I was late today, yes. But am I really always late? No. I might tend toward it, but I’m aware of it and I can learn how to get better at being on time.”

“Oh honey, please. Overeating one time - even one day, all day - isn’t going to make me gain ten pounds. I can decide to do better tomorrow, and I will. One day of overindulging doesn’t make me fat or a pig or anything. It makes me a human being.”

“Babe. You can fill the tank next time you get in the car. Running out of gas doesn’t mean that everything else will follow in B-horror-movie sequential fashion. Chill.”

This all works even better if you write it out or record it, by the way.

Annnnnnnnnndddddd this all takes (what?) practice. And patience. And persistence. You’re not going to be instantly brilliant at awareness, reframe, and implementation. You’re going to forget and go right back to bullying yourself. You’re going to have times where you feel like you will never get better at self-talk.

Guess what? That’s okay. Notice your progress, no matter how small. Just gaining the awareness that you didn’t have before you read this chapter? Progress.

And I highly recommend getting yourself a journal specifically for writing down the things you do right. A “Celebrate the Fuck Out of Myself” journal, if you will. Doesn’t have to be fancy - a one-subject spiral notebook will do.

But this is a crucial part of practicing self-kindness: Keeping track of your positive changes gives you visual reinforcement of the way you’re taking control of the voice in your head and kicking that asshole to the curb…or at least lowering the volume on that nonsense to barely audible.

Chapter 5 Assignment:

Find at least one thing to celebrate about you every day and write it down in your journal. Then at the end of the week, go back and read how fucking awesome you are. Then read it all again at the end of the month. See? Practice.

Get used to it, beauty. It’s time to lean into your worth.

Okay…time to break it down so we can rewrite this bitch.

This is when the rubber meets the road. If you want to learn how to be truly kind to yourself, you’re gonna have to go back and deconstruct some stuff that you may not want to.

This work is challenging, beauties and cuties. It’s not supposed to be easy. If it were then everyone would be as successful as Oprah and as blissfully peaceful as the Dalai Lama.

If you’re currently spending more time being unhappy than you are being content (and you don’t want that), then this work must be done. It’s vital that you figure out which of the unconscious rules that you’ve been following aren’t serving you, that you work through and release the feelings behind them, and then write your own damn rules.

So where do you begin? Well, get yourself a journal or download a voice recording app to your phone. We’re gonna go back to your childhood and answer a few questions.

This doesn’t have to be deep, dark, and depressing. This is to help show you that the ideas you grew up with aren’t the only ones that exist. It’s to illuminate to you some things that you may not realize are influencing the way you think about yourself.

This is referred to as shadow work by Dr. Nicole LaPera, whose work has been fundamental in helping so many people learn their attachment styles and figure out how to manage them.

This isn’t an exercise in going back and dole out blame to your parents, your friends, your pastor, or your teachers. While I’m certain that there are people who have done and said terrible things to you and/or about you in your life (and if there’s unhealed abusive trauma rolling around back there, I recommend therapy), those people had their own reasons for their words or actions that had little to nothing to do with you.

Perspective is important.

Growing up we were subjected to parenting styles of people who really didn’t know what the fuck they were doing but at the same time were doing their best. Which yeah, for a bunch of us was really shitty. We felt ignored and misunderstood. And regardless of the intent, the way our little developing child brains processed our caregivers words and actions could’ve caused trauma without any of us even realizing it.

Having said that, blame is really unhelpful. This isn’t about blaming anyone or getting retribution…it’s about uncovering it, feeling the feelings about it, and releasing it.

And it’s also about forgiveness.

Forgiving those who’ve harmed us? It’s not for them…it’s for us. When we carry resentment toward people in our past, it keeps us in pain. It keeps us from truly moving forward and being our most authentic selves, because we’re still holding on to unprocessed emotions.

If we weren’t allowed to express our anger because our emotions were “too much,” then that’s what’s holding you back from truly being kind to yourself and believing in yourself.

Holding on to all of those unprocessed feelings can also turn you into an emotional vampire. What’s that? Someone who walks through life with Eeyore energy and tells everyone within earshot about the terrible things that have happened to them in life. It’s also known as trauma dumping.

Trauma dumping isn’t cute or sexy. It’s your responsibility to take care of this, not your friends or colleagues.

What’s the difference between venting and trauma dumping? Venting is complaining about traffic, your kids leaving dirty socks everywhere, that you don’t know how on earth you did it, but you burned dinner in the crockpot. It’s pretty mild, all things considered.

*Note: Constantly complaining about little things in your life without acknowledgement of the good stuff can lead to having the emotional energy of a dumpster fire.*

Trauma dumping is repeatedly going back to your painful experiences and unloading about the same things over and over again while not *really* moving forward. You might think that you are because you’re talking about it…but unless you’re doing the work of transitioning your emotions through the grief and anger that leads to peaceful acceptance, you can stay stuck in bitterness and resentment of life’s heartbreaking experiences for years.

I’m not saying that you can’t talk about your problems with your friends and your support system. I’m talking about awareness here. When you trauma dump, you’re going back and rehashing the emotions to live in the trauma of the experience without releasing those emotions.

And you can become addicted to it, because that repeated pattern is actually a way for you to get your fix of that comfortable misery that you’ve grown to love so much.

And you don’t even know you’re doing it.

Now now, don’t get defensive…I was a trauma dumper for YEARS. That’s how I became so aware of it. It led me to sink deeper into depression and ruin many relationships. It kept me stuck in a cycle of being jealous of others while simultaneously feeling unworthy of the life of pleasure and ease that I imagined they were living.

But here’s a few secrets that no one tells us:

1. No one has it all figured out, not even the billionaires.

2. Those who have what you want don’t have perfect lives.

3. You can change your entire experience in this life just by shifting your perspective.

You might buy into the myth that the über-wealthy have a cheat code in life. This isn’t true. Self-made millionaires/billionaires think about money differently than most of us do. They don’t necessary work harder than you do, but they certainly work smarter. They make money work for them, and many of those who make it, keep it, and grow it don’t live in an energy of urgency, worry, lack, and scarcity about money.

Having said that, I know several people with a lot of money who still live in the energy of anxiety and fear way more than they live in peace and contentment. (These people are, generally speaking, total control freaks.)

Maybe that seems a bit harsh, but it’s our desperate need to control the outcome that pushes anxiety to the surface. That’s what anxiety is — fear of the unknown; of not having control over the outcome of something.

Pssst! The only thing anyone has control over is our own perspective. And it’s so easy to worry about everything that is out of our control, because that’s what we’ve been conditioned to do.

Your worries are born from what you’ve learned in your youth, and you quite possibly don’t remember any of it. Because it’s most likely not from things that were overtly *done* to you.

Disclaimer: I’m not talking about obvious physical or sexual abuse. I recommend working with a therapist for that level of trauma. But if that’s not a financial option for you, there are free resources available thanks to the beauty of the internet. (I’m also happy to offer direction in that respect. Message me.)

I’m talking about what you absorbed. The atmosphere of “stay small.” “Be seen, not heard.” “This is the way you’re supposed to look.”

And it’s all subtle. These things may not have even be said out loud…but they influence the way you feel about yourself and what you deserve in life. They’re the things that have kept you following the rules:

• Graduate high school and go to college or get a job. (If you go to college, you’ll get a much better one.)

• Meet someone, fall in love, get married, buy a house, have children.

• Work until you’re 65, retire, push your kids to give you grandkids, then die.

Doesn’t matter if you like these rules or not — they’re the ones that you’ve been conditioned toward, that you’re *supposed* to follow.

So that’s what almost all of us in my generation (the one with the X in it) have been doing. Including me. I did “follow my dreams” by moving to California…but I didn’t really believe I could achieve them. I didn’t have the confidence I needed to create the determination to keep trying after a few failures.

I bought into the rules of being too old to be in the music business by age 30. I believed the myths of not looking the way I was supposed to look to be a successful songwriter…I was even told by some asshole in Massachusetts that I’d be a better songwriter if I lost 20 pounds. (Well, that’s what I heard. He may have said I’d have a better chance at “making it,” and the way things were in the 90s he wasn’t wrong.)

My fear and my lack of belief in myself held me back from doggedly pursuing a career in songwriting. I bought into the idea that my dreams were too big and unrealistic. I also believed friends who told me I wasn’t good enough and didn’t believe friends who told me I was.

I’ve been writing songs for 35+ years and writing articles and books for 25+ years now while editing other people’s stuff and hiding behind the belief that I’m not worthy of putting my work out into the world. It turns out that my dreams were my guide, and I wouldn’t even be able to have them if I weren’t meant to achieve them.

That’s a real secret that no one tells us.

Your dreams…your deepest desires…the beautiful things that you envisioned for yourself when you were a child, before everyone else’s nonsense came in and stomped all over them…those are what you’re here for. Here in this life, in this timeline, you were meant to create the essence of those dreams into your reality.

And someone else’s rulebook told you to knock it off and stop daydreaming.

Someone else’s downtrodden dreams took yours and squashed them, too.

I allowed mine to be suppressed for years. But they were never completely suffocated because they’re still inside me.

And since you’re reading this I know that yours are, too.

Maybe they’ve shifted a little with time, age, knowledge. Maybe they’ve shrunk so much that you don’t even remember them. But they’re in there, I promise you. You just have to look for them.

And you can do that after you deconstruct the massive load of horseshit that you bought into that made you squash them in the first place. Here’s your assignment to start doing that.

Chapter 4 Assignment:

1. Think back to when you were a little kid. What did you imagine for yourself? What did you want to do when you grew up? I’m talking about all of them…wanting to be a fairy or Batman or whatever. No matter how unrealistic it seems now, write it out.

2. Now think about what made you shrink your imagination to the size of “the real world.” What are the beliefs you adopted or rules you followed? Where did they come from? What was it that made you fall in line — fear, doubt, shame?

3. Now imagine that you can be anything that you want. I’m not talking about as a job — let’s take that out of the equation. In this scenario, all of your financial needs/wants/desires are met. Let’s pretend you have an unlimited source of money, so now you don’t have to worry about making it…it’s already been done. What would you do with the majority of your time? What would you create? Where would you travel? Who would you spend time with?

4. What are a few rules that you’ve been following that you don’t want to follow anymore? What’s one small thing that you can do to get there?

Have you ever had that feeling of just knowing something is going to happen (or needs to happen) while your current reality is saying the opposite?

Examples:

— You’re up for a promotion along with three other people, and even though you’re the least likely to get it (according to the office gossip), you know you will…and then you do.

— You’re feeling the pull to end a relationship but you don’t because you feel so guilty about hurting that person and you’re terrified to be alone…but then that person leaves and once the initial sting passes you’re wildly relieved.

That inner knowing was the catalyst for how I began shifting from believing I wasn’t worthy of the life that I wanted to knowing I deserve and can create it.

Even though on the surface I felt unworthy and not enough and lacked confidence and so on, deep down I’ve always had a pull to help other people see their hidden potential. And I felt like if I could just unlock it in myself, then I could teach others how to do the same.

For decades the comfortable misery in my head was all I knew. And even though I wanted something different for myself, I didn’t know how to change it.

But eventually, I just got so fucking tired of hating myself.

I was tired of feeling terrible about myself. I was tired of hanging on to the mean stuff that was said about my weight and my personality, of the continual reverberations of “you should be doing more” and “you’re doing everything wrong” in my head.

Because just being alive means that you’re enough. That you’re worthy of the life you want.

Have you heard the phrase, “If you can dream it, you can do it”? Yeah. As trite as it may be, it’s the truth.

Just being able to conceive of something — owning home, living in a certain neighborhood, having a fulfilling relationship, having a career that you love — means that you can have it. Our Creator/the Universe is ready to give it to you. That’s your birthright. That’s why you want it.

So you might be thinking, “Well, if that’s true then why don’t I have it?”

Here’s why: Because of the subconscious limiting beliefs that you developed as a child, then continuing to buy into the negative energy around you perpetuated by a materialistic society that thrives on your insecurities.

It’s time to get clear on who you want to be, though, because general statements like, “I just want to be happy” or “I just want to be rich” ain’t gonna cut it.

Think about it for a minute. Are you deeply satisfied with your life as it is in this moment? If not, why not?

This is where so many of my clients begin to back away and toss into my lap one of my least favorite phrases: “I don’t know.”

That’s your fear talking. That’s unworthiness. Not enoughness.

“But I’m not a selfish person.” Neither am I. And contrary to what you’ve been sold by our societal attitude, it’s not at all selfish to want to live a life that you love. But it takes work. It takes research and study. And it takes practice. A lot of practice.

Actually, it takes practice, patience, and persistence. You’re going to read these three words in succession a lot, because they are a requirement for creating your ideal life.

And most of all — the fundamental truth in ALL manifestation, in positive changes, in pushing past fear and going for it — is this: You absolutely must learn how to be deeply, profoundly, and unshakably kind to yourself.

Notice that I’m not saying, “You have to love yourself.” That’s a concept that can be really hard to wrap your head around if you’ve spent your entire life beating the crap out of yourself. And really, the truest version of love is unconditional kindness.

Unconditional self-kindness is this: Embracing your faults and mistakes as part of the human education process. Understanding that absolutely no one gets out of this life without failures, without grief, without suffering…because without them things like success, elation, and pleasure wouldn’t be as amazing as they are.

Those feelings would be…well, meh. You can, in fact, have too much of a good thing in that case. Experiencing a range of emotions, challenges, and victories are why we exist in the first place.

There can be no light without the dark. There needs to be a balance in order to appreciate the gift that life is. And since no one gets out of this life without death, too, you might as well spend the rest of your time learning how to make yourself feel as good as you can.

But I don’t mean that in a hedonistic and/or self-centered way. I’m talking about learning how to truly value yourself without limits, without external expectations. And to do that, you need to practice things like gratitude, thoughtfulness, and compassion.

That all begins with self-kindness. If you learn how to be truly kind to yourself, you’ll be kinder to everyone else by default.

I don’t love everyone…hell, I don’t even like everyone…but I can certainly be kind to everyone. And the more I practice, the easier it gets. The more this becomes my natural state. My old default setting of “resting bitch brain” has evolved into a more peaceful and contented one.

As I said before, I began by allowing myself to be honest about my own unhappiness in my marriage, not just focusing all of my attention on how to fix me to please him.

I’m extremely fortunate and grateful to have a partner and co-parent who is willing to grow with me as well as in his own right. He is truly my best friend. He’s my family. And rather than trying to control me with what he thinks my wants, needs, and desires should be, now he lets me write my own rulebook. And I let him write his.

Now, that didn’t happen overnight or even in a year. That growth took us a several years, and it still continues. But no matter what happens…if we continue to live together or not, if we stay married or someday get divorced…we have agreed to be kind to and supportive of each other, no matter what. We work things out respectfully, even when anger is present.

This took work and discipline on both sides. We’ve read and researched a lot on our own. We’ve grown apart in some ways, and in others we’re closer than I thought we could be. Ultimately, the basis of this level of communication in our relationship is kindness. To each other, yes, but mainly to ourselves.

When you learn the truest form of self-kindness, you no longer allow anyone to take you down. Someone can hurl the deepest insult at you and it will only phase you for a short time, because you know your worth and what you deserve. It’s your truth, and there’s nothing that anyone can do or say to change it.

So what did I do from there? I continued to practice, even though for a few years I wasn’t fully aware of it. Here’s how.

I found something that I really liked about myself about both my looks and my personality. At first it wasn’t easy, because when you’ve spent years in the throes of disordered eating and body image, there’s a lotta hate there. But I have green eyes, and apparently that’s pretty rare. (Not in my family, but I’ll allow it.) And there’s like, five rings of different colors of green plus blue and grey. They’re really fucking rad. So I focused on my eye color.

As for my personality, I wrote earlier about being a great listener so I focused on that as my favored trait. And in those moments of my deepest self-loathing (most often centered around my body size), I’d remind myself that at least I’m a good listener and have beautiful green eyes.

As it turned out, I was the kind of listener who was compelled to interject with unrequested (and often unwanted) advice. But I’ve learned that about myself and now practice asking the question, “Would you like me to just listen, or would you like me to also offer feedback?” (This is an example of true kindness to others.)

The “how” took a long time for me to learn and practice for myself, and I’ve relapsed into depressive episodes often.

But the knowing — that inner voice — has always told me that I’m meant for something greater. That my purpose is to help people believe in themselves. The “how” of that isn’t all that important, though. What is important is that I continually remind myself of that on my worst days.

And that, rather than shaming myself by reinforcing the old refrain of “You’re too sensitive, Dana…suck it up and get over it” (Hi Mom! I love and miss you, but you’re wrong!), I acknowledge the feeling, I give it space, and I allow it to pass through me.

I take those days and nurture myself in whatever way is necessary. If that means I don’t get out of bed until 11am, I eat a box of cereal over the course of the day, and I do nothing but watch movies, then that’s what happens.

And when the guilt, the judgement, or the shaming thoughts creep in…because yeah, they still do…I don’t try to force them away. Instead I respond to them with, “This is temporary, and I’m taking care of myself.” And I remind myself of that throughout the day. (Self. Kindness.)

Doing that doesn’t make me lazy. It doesn’t make me worthless. In fact, since I journal a lot and keep track, I noticed the pattern of my depressive episodes getting shorter and less frequent over the past few years.

If you’re telling yourself right now, “Well that’s easy enough for her, I have too much responsibility to do that”…I want you to really examine that thought.

Is that thought really true? And are you willing to consider that the more you push through, the more pressure you put on yourself mentally and physically, the greater your chances of eventually not being able to function at all?

That’s tough to hear, I know. I heard it, read it, and felt it many times before I really got it, and I eventually ended up being forced to by my body. (But that’s a story for later.)

Here’s where the work begins.

Chapter 3 Assignment:

1) Write down 3-5 things that you’re grateful for about yourself every day for seven days.

Not about your life…about YOU. This isn’t “I’m grateful for my kids” or “I’m grateful for my spouse”…this is about yourself. Your insane parallel parking skills. The way you can harmonize with any song you hear. How funny you are. The way you light up a room. (Wait, no…skip that one. We can all light up a room, and according to Keith Morrison that makes us fodder for serial killers.)

It’s vital that you start shifting your focus from the things that are “wrong” with you to the things that are amazing. And believe me, there are way more than you’re even aware of…which takes us to the next one.

2) Now ask the person that you consider the closest person to you that question: What are the five things you love most about me?

The first time I asked my husband that question, his answers really surprised me. And the more I asked people who truly love and appreciate people why they do, the more I realized how much I do for others.

The point of the second one isn’t because we’re supposed to base our self-worth on the opinions of others (far from it), but it’s to show you a perspective outside of that critical one that’s embedded between your ears.

Today I exist in grand-scale multi-hyphenate energy — I’m an editor, writer, teacher, and singer/songwriter (sporadically, but it counts). I’m also the best mom, partner, daughter, sister, and friend that I can be. And I don’t expect that level to be the same impossible expectation of perfection and selflessness every single day like I used to.

I’ve always been profoundly independent in the physical sense. I’ve historically had trouble asking for help…just ask my husband. But 20 years ago I was wildly codependent, emotionally speaking. While a certain amount of codependency can be healthy, the amount that I was akin to was…not.

My self-esteem (and moods) revolved around things like my husband’s facial expressions (He’s mad at me!), the opinions of strangers on the internet (She thinks I’m annoying!), if someone looked at me strangely (She thinks I’m fat!) Something as innocuous as getting cut off in traffic used to send me into a rage spiral. (And since I live in the Los Angeles area? Good grief.)

Those days are behind me now. I now have a toolbox stocked with tactics to — oh, I don’t know — fucking communicate? Actually process my emotions?

If my husband looks pissed, I ask him what’s up instead of sulkily assuming I did something wrong. If someone in a comment section on social media insults me…well, I usually laugh to myself and respond, “Okay” or just don’t respond at all. If someone looks at me oddly, I assume they’re not even seeing me but thinking about something else.

Because here’s a fun fact: No one cares. Seriously.

People are thinking about themselves and their own insecurities, struggles, and worries 99% of the time. They’re not looking at you. They’re not judging your weight or your clothes or your whatever.

But okay, for the sake of argument let's assume a few people are judging you. Like that asshole at the gym? Here's the truth: That dude is judging himself way more and deflecting his internal misery on to you.

Or maybe you have a family member or close friend who consistently criticizes you. Here’s the thing: That person could actually believe that they’re being kind when they say hurtful things to you, because perspective is everything. And since we only see things from our perspective while simultaneously not being taught how to see things from the perspective of others (platitudes like “Put yourself in someone else’s shoes” isn’t enough education for most of us), we can end up bitter and resentful toward the people who are just trying in their own convoluted way to be helpful.

With practice, you can learn how to manage those feelings by gradually changing your internal narrative. This book is here to walk you through how I’ve done that for myself and offer some guidelines.

Oh, here’s something cool…I’m able to ask for and accept help now! Well, most of the time. Still working on this. Practice makes progress, not perfect. Perfect isn’t actually a thing.

I’ve not completely abandoned my childhood dreams. I still write music, and I still visualize “impossible” things…like hearing the strains of one of my songs floating through the end credits of a film. (In my imagination it’s almost always Kelly Clarkson singing it, just in case you were wondering. Why Kelly? Because why not?)

The depression that previously choked the life out of me has taken a back seat. Now my worst days are closer to my better days during the early years of being a mom, which is almost unbelievable to me. I certainly wouldn’t have believed ten years ago that I could get here.

This vast difference has to do with one thing: I’ve learned how to cut myself a huge fucking amount of slack, and I’m hoping to teach you how to do the same.

So why did I want to change? Depression wasn’t the only reason.

When I was young, I carried this perpetual undercurrent of desperation. In today’s psychology scene it’s referred to as having an anxious attachment style.

I wanted so badly to be liked…not just by the cool kids, but by everyone. And when someone didn’t like me (or even if it just seemed that way), I took it soooo personally and would berate myself for not being _____ enough.

Nine times out of ten, that fill-in-the-blank was “thin.” It was the 80s, after all…the era where everything on a girl had to be as tiny as possible (with the exceptions of hair, shoulder pads, and boobs).

And my God, I was negative. My attitude truly sucked. But hey, guess what? I was a teenager with undiagnosed ADHD (which wasn’t a thing 40 years ago).

My my, how far we’ve come. Now that I know, it explains soooo much.

Anyway, that desperation kept me locked in an energy that was the exact opposite of how I wanted to feel and who I wanted to be. There were glimmers of my true self, though. I was the friend that you could turn to in times of high drama, and that hasn’t changed. I made enormous efforts in high school to be the shoulder for my entire class to cry on, which led to being a peer counselor and winning the title of “Best Listener” in my graduating class’ “Best Of” list.

Another mystery of my youth that was solved as an adult…turns out I’m an empath and a highly sensitive person. Dr. Judith Orloff’s book The Empath’s Guide To Survival was a real eye-opener for me. It was in those pages that I finally found the validation I needed to really embrace how deeply I feel emotions. I had turned to her book at a time when I was once again left hurting by my over-giving tendency…but let’s back up a bit.

My mother had always told me that I was far too sensitive and needed to grow a thicker skin. I firmly bought into that and spent decades trying. She and I had a very close relationship, and I considered her my anchor. When she died in 2016, I felt unmoored for a long time. (It was about a year later when my marriage really started unraveling, coincidentally.)

Her opinion meant everything to me, and I figured out long after she wasn’t with me anymore that her voice in my head still was. I even remember her saying to me once when I told her that the voice in my head was super-critical, “Well, I hope that’s not my voice you’re hearing.”

Um…it was.

But not just hers. It was an amalgam of voices from my youth. Every insult about my weight, every taunt about my nerdiness, any rejection (real or perceived) was crystallized into the core that represented my entire personality.

And so for all of those years, I thought of my deeply sensitive disposition as a curse. I can walk into a room and immediately feel the energy of everyone in it. When someone I care about is hurting, I can feel it — even over the phone. It’s like I’m a sponge, absorbing the collective. A raw nerve in human form.

During the writing of this book, we had the worst fire season on record in Los Angeles (January 2025). The Palisades and Eaton Fires wiped out entire communities. The energy was fraught with fear and loss and devastation, and if I let my guard down I would feel it all. The depression that would ensue was crushing.

I had to develop much better protocols and boundaries around consuming media. I’ve even stopped listening to true crime podcasts and watching the news daily because it affects me so deeply.

So while examining those years of “Always being there for everyone” (I wrote that under my picture in my yearbook…yikes), I could suddenly see all of the resentment that I’d built up. I wasn’t doing this wholly from a place of purity of heart and spirit…it was also from people-pleasing and low self-worth.

And with a completely unrealistic expectation of reciprocity.

Since I wasn’t getting the returned devotion that I was expecting, I was hurt, bitter, angry…and had become a martyr. Being submerged in a life of bitter martyrdom feels terrible. I call it comfortable misery.

And how I acted out my personal comfortable misery in all of my relationships was by (often forcefully) taking on the responsibility for just about everything while being passive-aggressive and resentful of it.

“Don’t worry about my birthday, it’s no big deal.”

“I don’t need you to help me with that, it’s easier to do it myself.”

Because I didn’t ever want to be perceived as selfish or a burden. I wanted to be generous, the kindest person you could ever know, completely selfless…all the while bitterly longing to have just one of those fucking people be as considerate of me as I was of them.

That isn’t just martyrdom…it’s self-destruction. And I lived that way for decades.

In doing so, every time I would lose weight the weight would come back. I nearly destroyed my second marriage completely. And many friendships that I thought were intimate and lasting were actually superficial, because what I was giving I wasn’t getting back.

And I was really fucking pissed about that.

But now I can see that those former friends weren’t doing anything wrong…they just aren’t capable of friendship at the same level that I am. Now I know what to look for, and I can categorize people accordingly.

Every now and again someone slips under the radar, but I’m aware that everything’s a practice and have stopped kick the shit out of myself about it.

Unbeknownst to me, being like that also made me a target for narcissistic abuse. (There’s even an actual term for it— the empath-narcissist paradigm.) Fortunately I’m aware of it now.

After my first (failed, emotionally abusive) marriage, years of feeling not good enough, seeing the negative in every situation, and responding to disappointments with, “Of course that happened because nothing ever works out for me!” (someone call Veruca Salt, she left her tantrum here)…something shifted.

I decided that I didn’t want to feel like that anymore.

I learned how to accept myself the way that I am:

• Really sensitive. Not “overly sensitive.”

• Emotional. Not “too emotional.”

• Kind and generous. Not “a gullible sucker.”

• Protective of my energy. Not “a selfish bitch.”

And so on. Because who wrote my rulebook?

The old one? That was written by what I experienced, endured, and absorbed as a child. White privilege. 80s badness and radness. Body shaming. Catholicism. Sexism. Patriarchy. Capitalism.

The one I live by now? I fucking wrote it. And I rewrite it as I see fit every day, because I decided to invest in myself and get clear on who I really am (a badass), what I REALLY want (everything), and what I truly deserve (also everything).

And I’ve never felt more empowered, liberated, or fucking alive than I do at 53 years old. If you want the same thing for yourself, then keep reading.

My family was the typical 1980s family of five: The funny but angry hardworking blue-collar dad, the wise and beautiful stay-at-home mom of many unnoticed talents, the rebellious and cool-as-hell first-born daughter, the sarcastic and brilliant middle-child son, and me. Classified as the “oops baby” by my mother, having been conceived through a broken sheepskin condom, I didn’t exactly arrive into the world welcomed with open arms.

I was the perpetually chubby, annoying, bratty youngest…and reminded of those traits often.

I’m from the northeast US, specifically a county just outside of Philadelphia, PA. It’s really beautiful there…truly an idyllic place to raise a family.

The energy, though? Yikes. There’s a deep, permeating undercurrent of “not good enough.” I mean, have you ever overheard a native Philadelphian cussing out the Eagles when they fumble the ball?! Brutal. (Yes, still. Even after winning two Super Bowl championships.)

I love where I’m from, don’t get me wrong…but there’s also a reason why I left as soon as I graduated from college. And the conditioning of “be a good girl and follow our rules, but look the other way when we don’t follow them ourselves” that I learned while growing up in an oppressive religion (mine was Catholicism) was tough to shake.

It took me decades, but I demolished that rulebook and wrote my own. And you can, too. I’m going to do my best to teach you how to deconstruct your old paradigms and build new ones…ones that free you from constant people-pleasing, self-judgment, and perfectionism.

There’s no need to go back to my earliest beginnings…I spent so much energy wanting to be loved and accepted; wanting to be noticed, wanting to be cool or popular, thin or pretty. I have many blog posts floating around out there for that, if you’re really interested in learning all of my deep, dark, not-so-secret secrets that revolve around my childhood, developing chronic depression then bulimia in my teens, and my disaster of a first marriage. You can find those here: https://revolution-within.com/blog

I’ll start from when I moved to Los Angeles and settled in West Hollywood, California at age 27. This was when my adulthood really started: I arrived married to my college boyfriend, flush with cash and dreaming of becoming a wildly successful songwriter for film and television.

The first thing we did was pick up Music Connection magazine, go to the back pages where the ads for bands looking for other musicians were, and start looking for our next move. That’s where we found an ad for a music producer looking for independent artists to work with. Excited at the possibility of finally recording an album, we drove two hours outside of LA to meet him.

I must’ve had the word rube tattooed on my forehead, though, because I bought every lie that dude sold us and morphed into the TAKE MY MONEY! guy from the Simpsons.

I’d like to note that this was before the days where you could easily ask a search engine to verify things. There was no Googling “Is Richard Johnson* (*not his real or fake name) a legitimate music producer?” His references checked out, because why wouldn’t they? I’m sure everyone was in on it but my ex and me. Whomp whomp.

Good ‘ol Dick proceeded to scam us out of our life savings with a slow and steady drip of recording sessions and empty promises. The first tracks I heard sounded amazing in his studio…but on the CDs he sent me they sounded like absolute garbage. Over the course of several months, the mixes I received got shitter as well as fewer and further between…tracks that were perpetually “really close to being done” but never were.

Meanwhile, eight months after we swapped coasts together, my first marriage fell apart.

So there I was…my ex had left me for his pixie-esque, Kellie Martin lookalike co-worker, and I was in a very vulnerable place emotionally. Dickless took that ripe opportunity to further talk me into investing most of my credit into a video and “European tour.”

I know, I know. You’re like, how on earth could you believe that bullshit, Dana? (Yeah, you’re definitely not the only one who’s had that thought.)

Well, I believed what I wanted to believe. That’s how our brains work — we find evidence for what we already believe, and once you do that it’s nearly impossible to see the signs of anything else…even with heaps of indisputable evidence.

I just wanted to believe so badly that magical unicorn fairy dust created that scenario where two days into moving across country I met the influential man who would help guide my career. And then when my marriage tanked, I didn’t just double down…I leveraged everything I had (and some that I didn’t) into something that was completely fictional.

This is an ongoing theme for me until I hit my early 50s, but again — stories for other times.

So there I was, a year into my thrilling west coast life — getting divorced, sinking deeper into debt, and being conned a bit further from my songwriting dreams every day. He also started making sexual advances on me while his wife was doing things like cooking dinner for him and their kids upstairs. I turned him down every time, but looking back I can see how much danger I put myself in.

Looking back on my wide-eyed gullibility still makes me slightly nauseated and cringy, but I’ve forgiven him and myself for it. Grifters are gonna grift, and unworldly wannabes are gonna believe what they want to believe.

So by my 30th birthday I was divorced, drinking my face off, working two jobs six days a week, and swimming in debt. Oh yeah, welcome to REAL adulthood, babyyyy!

I’d say drowning in debt, but I got a reset — with the help of my ever-supportive parents — by filing for bankruptcy.

I started over by working as in reality TV post-production for MTV by day and a karaoke host in various areas of Los Angeles by night. Eventually I saved enough to buy my own equipment and run my first small business - Uncrazy Entertainment. (Fun name, huh? One of my best friends remarked that I was “the most uncrazy chick” he knew, and the name stuck.)

During those years I ended up getting signed to a no-longer-existing independent record label (Outback Records) and recorded an album. Things do have a way of evening out, after all. And that’s what I was up to when I met my second husband and father of my children.

When my husband and I met at a Starbucks in Burbank 20 years ago, marriage was the last thing on my mind.

I had no intention of remarrying then. Although my emotions still had me constantly seeking validation from men at that stage in my life, that first brief marriage in my 20s left me thinking that I wasn’t very good at it.

My dating life since my first husband and I had split when I was 27 years old had been…interesting. Sporadic. Reckless.

Since I mistakenly thought I met my “soul mate” at age 18 and we were married at age 25, I’d had zero dating experience when that crumbled. Once I got through the initial devastation of feeling like my life had ended and that I’d be alone forever, I realized that his leaving was the best thing that ever happened to me up to that point. (To this day I refer to my ex as my “starter husband.”)

So I spent the next five years dating…although I’m not certain you can call what I was doing in the early 2000s in Hollywood “dating.” (Let’s just call it that for shits and giggles.)

And the men I “dated”…you know what? I can’t use that term with a straight face. These days they’re called situationships. I went on many first dates, had a friend-with-benefits or two, and once I actually had sex with a guy with the hope that it would make him stop calling me. (It didn’t.)

Amazing how so many things backfired in my face. It took me many more years before I caught on to the fact that when you pour your energy into what you don’t want instead of what you do, that’s what you get more of coming at you like a bullet.

I experienced a great deal of what I thought was heartbreak before I knew what limerence was (limerence is, in a nutshell, one’s neurodivergence developing anxiety-riddled crushes on people who are usually ambivalent to them).

But the general consensus was that just about everyone I met in my age group (mid 20s - early 30s) was a total emotional mess; no one was really finding what they were looking for because no one even knew what the fuck they wanted in the first place. Classic Gen X. Think the Breakfast Club ten years later…still being ignored, but this time by their dreams of being famous actors, filmmakers, or musicians.

Except for Jeremy Renner. There’s usually one from every party crowd, and his is the (very deserving) success story that emerged from the karaoke/bar-hopping crowd in Hollywood that I orbited for a few years circa 2000-2004.

Enter dating websites. In January 2005 a friend of mine forwarded a profile from one of the major sites because she thought I’d be interested in this guy. (“This guy” is the one who became my husband, just to be crystal.)

He wasn’t her type; she came to that conclusion because he’d listed one of his interests as country music. I was a very recent convert to country because 1) it was such a big genre in karaoke at the time, 2) my songwriting style had been categorized as “pop country” therefore I was 3) working on my country album at that time with Outback Records.

I was in yet another situationship and beyond ready to get out of it, so I got in touch with the not-her-type guy through his secret email address.

What do I mean, “secret email address?” His profile read, “If you’d like to reach me, email me at my hotmail account,” which was not typed out in the profile. (You had to pay for that part, and this was the early days when it was pretty easy to create workarounds to avoid paying for online dating.) I cracked the code and emailed him at his username @hotmail.com.

Voilal! Such smartypants we were. Perfect.

We had a stilted phone conversation where I talked nervously nonstop and he answered my questions with one or two word answers. Through my jibberjabbering it was revealed that he played drums for a singer/songwriter who was the girlfriend of the bass player I’d randomly hooked up with a few months’ earlier, not knowing that he had a girlfriend. (Awkward!)

When I asked, “So…did you still want to meet me?” He replied, “I guess.” So yeah, definitely a pending love match. We made plans to meet for coffee the next morning, but I almost canceled from the sheer embarrassment of my overthinking.

Turns out he’s just pretty shy. That coffee date turned into lunch and lasted five hours.

Within three weeks we were boyfriend/girlfriend, three months were “in love” (I said it first, of course), six months were casually looking at rings, and on December 31, 2005 — well, technically January 1, 2006 because it was about 15 minutes after midnight — he proposed.

Do you want to know what really made me fall in love with him? Say yes to him?

He called when he said he would. He kept his word. He was — and still is — a good human. Steady. Not romantic or over-the-top passionate or anything like that, but truly kind. He has such a good heart. And since I hadn’t experienced that from a man since my prom date in high school, I was crazy about him after a few months.

And wow…it’s truly amazing how much emotions and biological clocks can reroute a person. Having children was something I’d spoken about vaguely with my first (starter) husband as a “supposed to,” but not as something I’d taken seriously or felt any real pull toward.

But once my feelings for my second (real) husband were locked in, I wanted a family with this man. It was overwhelming and unexpected for a woman who didn’t plan on getting remarried, let alone having children. But you know what they say about God crapping on your plans or however that expression goes.

We got married five months after he proposed.

As far as my writing/songwriting career went, it was fueled by self-doubt and listening to the opinions of the wrong people. I floated through several different jobs for a while until I ended up starting a small karaoke/DJing company that I owned for five years.

And so after those five years of working in bars, occasionally getting threatened to have my ass kicked by a disgruntled drunk fool, and once or twice narrowly missing being sexually assaulted, this newly married lady was over that fucking nonsense. I sold my business to a friend and got a “normal” day job in commercial property management.

Ugh, I hated that job. Most of the people there were great, but the work itself wasn’t creative at all and I was soooooo bored.

Also, my biological clock was *actually* (cue Marisa Tomei) TICKING LIKE THIS. For someone who didn’t really want kids, it was disconcerting to suddenly have baby urges at age 34. (I credit my husband for being good “dad material.”)

Being close to “geriatric” in terms of pregnancy (um…can we come up with a better category for pregnancies after 30, please?) I went to get things checked out. The ob/gyn recommended that I not wait much longer because of my age (and weight…that’s been a fluctuating factor my entire life, but that’s yet another story for another time).

So we got right to it! And I got pregnant pretty much immediately, even though it was heavily implied that I might not have an easy time of it. Why? I’ve pretty much always been overweight according to those highly accurate BMI charts (“highly accurate” is sarcasm in case that wasn’t clear), and women who are overweight supposedly have difficulty conceiving.

However, I didn’t worry about it…the more you focus on the doom and gloom, the more likely you are to create it. More on this later.

This isn’t to dismiss the devastating issues of pregnancy difficulties and losses AT ALL. I can’t even imagine the heartbreak. I’m just saying that for me personally, it was easy to have faith in the outcome because I made the decision to do so. And once I fully energetically decide something, I give it to God/our Creator/The Universe (choose your own term; there are no wrong answers). Whatever happens from there, I know it’s what makes the most sense for why I exist, even if it devastates me.

Note: Even though I wanted a baby, I was also scared as fuck to be fully responsible for the care and feeding of a human barely the size of a football…so I’m sure that also factored into my “whatever is meant to be will be” energy around having children.

But once I found out I was pregnant with my firstborn and got past the “ohhhh shit” factor, I was absolutely thrilled and completely enraptured by him before he was barely more than a clump of cells.

As you may already know, there’s no real way to prepare for becoming a mom. I planned for a natural birth but ended up in surgery getting a c-section 15 hours after having labor induced. So I thought I’d look at this baby (who had a perfect Apgar score, TYVM) and be relieved that his head wasn’t crushing my bladder anymore, but also confused and terrified.

The first time I saw him, though, I knew how God feels about us…and I became certain that the fire-and-brimstone, destructive, perpetually disappointed in how terrible we are at human-ing God of my strict religious upbringing wasn’t an accurate representation.

I immediately fell in love with my baby boy. That love is still like no other. And when I got pregnant with his little brother before he even hit the big “Oh-One”, I caught myself wondering how I’d manage to take care of two of them at the same time, let alone have more love.

But my heart grew to fit that overwhelming amount of love, as it does for parents. (Btw - You can apply this principle to other concepts, too.) I love them both equally and beyond measure, even though they couldn’t be more different from each other.

Anyway, I ended up leaving the boring job and became a stay-at-home mom by choice. It was financially challenging, but my husband and I agreed on it from the beginning.

That is something I recommend…not necessarily being a stay-at-home-mom, but this: Get very clear on the terms of parenting and financial responsibility with your co-parent before you even have kids. It’ll save you a whole lot of grief later. (I have far too many friends who can attest to this.)

Oh, motherhood. What a joyful, exhilarating, exasperating shitshow that can be. And oh, how much I’d prefer to say that I loved every moment of it…but I didn’t. Not by a long shot.

There really isn’t any way to fully prepare for it, and life will continually throw bonkers scenarios at you…like chasing a normally obedient but suddenly runaway toddler while pushing a newborn in a stroller. Like said newborn at around 16 months taking off his diaper and pooping on the coffee table.

The screaming fits. The broken sleep. The constant worry that something is wrong with the baby when he won’t stop crying or when he won’t sleep enough or when oh no, now he’s sleeping too much.

Those first five years of being a mom to two boys born 19 months apart were truly a blur. The best of what I remember are the baby snuggles in the glider, the dance parties to Disney tunes, and singing them to sleep. Even when I was exhausted to the bone, I would sing to them because it never failed to calm them down. (I’ll confess that those songs got shorter and shorter over the years.)

Looking back on it? Zero regrets. I’m proud to say that I was able to be a stay at home mom. I did consider being a working mom, but the finances didn’t add up. Since I didn’t really have an established career (I’ve been “a creative” with a job and/or self-employed my entire life), it made no sense to me to pay 90% of my salary to someone else to raise my two boys.

I have no judgment of working moms; quite the opposite. I remain to this day in complete awe at how much they can juggle. And as I became one myself when my youngest started kindergarten, I also understand the constant push/pull of it all.

Being able to raise the boys myself saved my mental health in some ways, but in others…not so much. Postpartum depression is something that we whisper about, but I’m going to shout about it for a few minutes.

IT’S FUCKING HORRIFYING. It was like my regular bouts of depression on steroids.

Trigger warning and note: I refer to taking one’s own life as “skateboarding” because the actual seven-letter ’s’ word can be so triggering. (Also I think by law you have to advertise a prevention hotline if you utter it aloud.) So…onward.

I spent the first two-to-four years of my boys’ lives desperately seeking ways to suppress my thoughts of skateboarding. So while raising them and battling urges to skateboard myself off of Niagara Falls (not sure why that was my vision…I’ve never actually been there, but I hear it’s lovely), I went in search of a way to deal with it.

But first things first: “Lose the baby weight!!!!” My brain, my conditioning, and our relentless societal fixation on women’s bodies demanded it of me, and so I obliged.The year I turned 40 I changed my tack on weight loss and began following calories in, calories out…weighing and measuring all of my food and logging it on a then-brand new website called MyFitnessPal.

And it worked great! I lost 70 pounds…but not the depression.

Now if there’s one thing that can be said about me, it’s that I don’t give up. It took me until my 50s to realize that, because I always viewed my “jumping from thing to thing” as failures. Turns out, it’s not a terrible thing to switch it up when you get bored or it’s not a good fit. It doesn’t mean you’re lazy, a loser, or crazy…it means that it’s not working as well and you need to adjust.

That’s all it means. Abandoned projects, not finding “the career” that you’ll do for a hundred years…it’s because we’re allowed to change. It doesn’t make us bad or wrong; it makes us human. Maybe even neurodivergent. (Could be ADHD.)

And learning that? Self-kindness.

So I kept trying new things for the depression that wouldn’t quit me.

I spent over two years training for half marathons, but decided I wasn’t fast enough. And even while running 20+ miles a week, the depression crept back in.

I tried many herbal supplements but either wasn’t consistent enough or had even worse side effects than being depressed.

I tried yoga but wasn’t flexible enough.

I tried mediation but couldn’t stay awake enough.

(Notice a pattern?)

Back to my marriage. As you navigate those first few years, you need to communicate with each other and you need to stay on the same page…because once you’re in that marriage, once that initial rush of new sex wears off and you don’t have great communication skills…two kids born 19 months apart…no family nearby so no local support system + severe postpartum depression = self-imposed isolation.

I wasn’t really aware of how disassociated I was from myself and my life until, about ten years into our marriage, my husband voiced how unhappy he was. The details aren’t important for this particular angle of my story - I mention it because this was a turning point for me. I immediately threw myself into trying to “fix what was broken” about me so that he’d be happy again.

A year later, after couples counseling and jumping through several hoops to meet his needs, it turned out that I still wasn’t. It was right around this time that it occurred to me that maybe my unhappiness wasn’t just about the chronic depression or that I’m just a difficult, negative person by nature.

This is when we began delving into a non-traditional relationship structure (i.e., we opened our marriage). Turns out through years of trial and error, we’ve figured out what works best for both of us individually and as a unit, and our unconditional relationship structure continues to thrive. (But again, that’s not the topic at hand.)

My point is this: I had realized that, no matter how hard I tried to make my husband happy…I couldn’t.

Does that make me a failure at relationships? No.

Because creating his happiness isn’t my responsibility. It’s his. And, in turn, creating my happiness isn’t his, it’s mine.

It had finally dawned on me that his satisfaction with our relationship wasn’t just on me…that I wasn’t to blame for it all. That yes, I had responsibility, but so did he. That I’d done my best to communicate in so many different ways but he wasn’t hearing it the way I was saying it, and that didn’t make either one of us terrible people. That we needed to start working together rather than pointing fingers at each other’s behaviors (or, more blatantly, at each other) and saying, “That’s what the problem is…” or “But YOU did THIS!”

That’s when my self-kindness practice began to take root.

So ever since then, I’ve been finding that in myself. I’ve deconstructed those old feelings of insecurity, shame, judgement, and inadequacy and transformed into someone who can honestly say that I really like who I am.

I do have moments of doubt, insecurity, and envy when I fall into unfair comparisons to people whose success I admire, but that’s because I’m still human. Emotions aren’t always consistent, and I’m still a person who experiences depression. But the skill with which I manage those episodes now is vastly different from the desperation of my postpartum days.

I’ve been able to develop protocols and methods of handling heavy-backpack days (thank you to Jenna Fischer from The Office for that brilliant simile regarding her depressive episodes) so that they don’t end up wiping me out for weeks at a time anymore.

And in everything I’ve learned, every procedure I’ve created, everything I’ve practiced, the undercurrent is always the same: When you are profoundly and deeply kind to yourself…everything is easier. Full stop.

And I’m gonna share it all with you in the hopes that you’ll develop your own protocols; or in simpler terms, that you’ll write your own rulebook.

This book is dedicated to you, beautiful dreamer.

May you find that bottomless well of self-kindness,

that unshakable belief in your own self-worth.

I’m forever rooting for you.

***

For a long time I didn’t believe that anyone would want to read anything that I wrote.

I spent quite a while sulking in that tragic mindset, wondering who could possibly benefit from reading about my transition from the negative, Debbie-downer, queen of self-deprecation I was to who I am now: A woman with complete autonomy and unshakable faith in her worth, her gifts, and her innate ability to raise others up from their feelings of self-judgement, shame, and doubt.

While mapping out this book I realized that every creative person alive has an interesting story to tell, because every one of us has a different perspective.

As for my perspective…turns out I’ve lived a rather interesting life.

The environment I grew up in wasn’t exactly rife with support and encouragement (with the exception of my mother), but I still “went for it,” even when I didn’t know what “it” was. I left the east coast at age 27 and moved to California. I wrote stuff that was published on websites. I was on a (terrible) reality TV show. I recorded an album (for a now non-existent independent label).

But because I struggled and ultimately wasn’t able to make a living doing what I loved, I considered myself a complete failure. What I’ve learned, though, is that I lacked the self-belief and faith in the Universe necessary to go for “it” with confidence, intention, and full authenticity.

So — not a failure…rather, a late bloomer.

Through my life experience I’ve developed the kind of resilience that led me to write this book. Even though I didn’t hit the big time by age 30 (the year that ends any importance women can have, according to much of our cultural influence) and you might have no idea who I am, there are sooooo many things I’ve figured out that I want to help other women learn.

Yes, there are already many great and well-known older women out there being the example for and/or teaching how to achieve great things. But I don’t let my lack of notoriety intimidate me anymore. The comparison game is a challenging one, but it’s one I’ve managed to get some control over.

I’ve been led to write, to speak up, to heal others through my work, regardless if that number of “others” is twelve or twelve million. And if you’re being led toward unearthing something that you have inside of you, whatever it is, it’s time to let it out.

Women need to know that we have all of the power. We’re the ones who have the ability to bring life into the world. I know that, generally speaking, men have historically been wont to shrink us as much as possible; to control us and what we can do with our bodies.

But they wouldn’t even exist if we didn’t give birth to them.

That patriarchal control comes from fear…they’re afraid of us because they can’t do what we can. We can grow entire people inside of our own bodies, for fucks sake. Men don’t have the life-giving power we have, and they’ve been in control of way too much for far too long.

So we’re not doing that anymore. We’re releasing our magnificence all over the place around here.

I want you to feel hope again…like there’s way more that life has to offer after 40 than Netflix, bookclubs, and your teenage kid’s crap strewn throughout your house. That life is meant to be explored and enjoyed, not just endured and muddled through.

I want you to go from feeling emotionally (and occasionally physically) dead inside to knowing that you deserve more and that you’re ready to figure out what exactly you want “more" to look like.

It’s truly time for us to stop relying on external validation and believing that we don’t have the ability to lift ourselves out of whatever circumstances are keeping us from living the lives we truly want to live.

If not now, when?

We don’t need anyone to tell us or show us that we have extraordinary gifts to offer. It’s all inside of us…but sometimes we just need a little push to find it.

Let this book be your push.

Over my 5+ decades on this planet, I’ve gone through four years of college, several levels of unofficially documented education, and read countless self-improvement/educational/psychology books (the best of these can be found in the reference section at the end of this book)…so I’ve learned a thing or two hundred about how to manage your emotions, shift your mindset, and create a better life for yourself.

Most of these types of books are written with a lot of inspirational rah-rah spirit. This one will be no different in that sense; however, I write unfiltered. I use humor for levity and frequently lack brevity with zero apologies.

Enough said. Here we go.

Chapter 1 will be released next Sunday.

Do you spend a lot of time wondering what’s wrong with you? Like you’re the only one not figuring out your shit, like you’re making all the mistakes a human can make?

That you’re…dare I say it…broken?

Nah. You’re not broken.

But there is a part of you that needs compassion at the deepest level you have. It’s the part that, no matter what’s happening around you, keeps aching with regret or longing.

It’s the part that remains overwhelmed and overstimulated. The part that can’t forgive your past mistakes or let go of the things that truly don’t serve you.

And it keeps showing up, blocking your creativity like a boulder you can’t seem to move.

But here’s what I’ve been learning (or maybe remembering): That part of you? It’s not getting in the way of your work.

It is the work.

We neurospicy/highly creative people tend to be hyper-sensory in every way, and our inner noise is almost always turned up to eleven.

We feel everything soooo viscerally. We process deeply. We walk around like exposed nerves, and yet with every sting it seems like we never toughen up enough (even though that’s what we’ve been told to do our whole lives).

And sometimes our emotions don’t politely wait for the “right time” to burst forth — they come streaming through our eyes and crashing through our mouths mid-sentence while we’re just trying to get the words out.

It’s frustrating, I know…the feeling that your brain will never cooperate, no matter what you do.

That you’re too distracted, too sensitive, too out-of-sync, too tangled up to contribute anything worthwhile.

But those feelings? They’re not signs of dysfunction.

They’re signals.

I channeled this the other night: “The more you humanize your feelings the easier it becomes to understand them, to manage them, to have compassion for them.”

And I felt a shift. A big one.

What if, instead of trying to suppress or override those emotions, we treated them like a cherished friend in pain?

The kind of friend we’d show up for, drop everything for — not to fix, but to sit beside and say, “You’re not alone. I’m here. Let’s breathe through this together.”

That’s the kind of relationship your creativity is asking for.

Not more structure. Not more shame-based discipline.

More patience.

More presence.

More permission to feel.

There’s a part of you that needs your utmost kindness and unconditional love to become the version of yourself you most want to be.

And that’s not a lame idea — it’s a radical one.

Because when you show up for your inner world like it matters? Your outer world transforms.

You don’t have to be “fully healed” or perfectly focused to make something beautiful.

You don’t need to suppress your sensitivity to be successful.

You just need to stop abandoning the part of you that’s asking to be understood while realizing that reaching your “most evolved self” is an unrealistic expectation, because crossing the finish line of emotional intelligence isn’t a thing.

Maybe the true creative path is learning how to walk with all of ourselves…especially the parts we’ve been trying to ignore, outrun, or outgrow.

And if you’ve started to see life more clearly like I have — if you’re living in the light now — your job is to bring empathy, not resentment, to those who are still in the dark.

That’s our responsibility.

That’s our artistic expression.

What part of you are you learning to create with instead of against?

Leave a comment below…I’d love to read your thoughts. Restack if this resonates, and thanks for reading.

Sage Words

Mel Robbins and Plagiarism

Photo of Cassie Phillips published October 2022…

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2 years ago · 3933 likes · 496 comments · Sage Justice

I’m reposting it because more people are finding out the truth, and still more people need to.

Ever since I read Sage Justice’s articles on the plagiarism allegations against Mel Robbins, I’ve been thinking about this whole “Let Them” situation. (Find Sage’s inspiring Substack here: https://substack.com/@sagewords2027)

Let’s review the timeline summed up in this YouTube video by Andy Mort:

Mel Robbins conceals the truth of her let them “discovery”

- Cassie Phillips wrote an incredibly relatable poem in 2019 called “Let Them.”

- It went viral in September 2022. (What a way to describe something catching on, eh? Aligning it with a virus. Cozy!)

- Cassie’s follow-up poem titled “Let You” goes viral in October 2022.

- Mel Robbins’ team allegedly shared Cassie’s “Let Them” poem on her Instagram account sometime in 2023. (I wasn’t able to find actual evidence of this in my research, just people claiming to have seen it. If anyone has a screenshot, please send it my way and I’ll link it here.)

- Mel has a TikTok sharing “her discovery” of “Let Them” during the pre-prom festivities at her home for her son, Oakley, and his friends in May 2023.

- According to Mel’s account in her book (I’ve listened to the first two chapters on Audible), her daughter Kendall kept repeating the words “Mom! LET THEM” as Mel attempted to micromanage the group of teenagers, who just wanted to be crazy kids in full prom attire, eating dinner beforehand at a local taco stand in a rainstorm. It’s a delightful story.

- May of 2024 — The MR team files to trademark the phrase “Let Them” (which you can’t actually do…two little words in succession floating through the zeitgeist can’t be trademarked. Just ask DJT about “You’re Fired” or Paris Hilton about “That’s Hot”).

- Fall 2024 — MR begins publicity for her upcoming book, “The Let Them Theory”

- Mel claims it as her own discovery when she releases said book in late 2024.

- December 2024 — MR’s book is published by HayHouse and becomes an instant New York Times bestseller.

Within the past couple of months, Sage Justice has taken the mantle of crusading for Cassie Phillips to get credit for her original idea and for starting the “Let Them” movement; this noble cause has begun to pick up steam.

There was an article in the NY Post (so please consider the source) about it just yesterday where Mel responds to the accusations: New York Post article

And I read a post or comment (apologies to whoever wrote this, I didn’t mark it and now I can’t locate it) that calls out Mel as a fraud…that “self-help gurus” (Oprah, Gabriel Bernstein, Deepak Chopra, and Jay Shetty were all mentioned) are basically grifters, scamming gullible people out of their hard-earned money with trite self-help tomes tucked inside great publicity maneuvers.

Well, sure. That’s what it is if that’s how you see it. (“That’s just, like, your opinion, man.” — The Dude, The Big Lebowski)

If that’s how you view the world, then you’ll perceive the messages as nothing but “more self-help bullshit.”

Perspective is important, and we all have our own.

Then there are MR’s vehement defenders who borderline idolize her and view her as infallible in the comment sections, although I’ll admit two things:

1. In my research for this article, I’ve found way more people bashing her then defending her at this particular time, and

2. I wouldn’t classify my personal admiration for Mel as idolatry or “she can do no wrong” by any means, but I am well-known for referring to her as “my future bestie” in past articles and blog posts.

So yes, that happens too. We have people that we look up to, that we admire, that maybe we see a bit of ourselves in.

Mel Robbins has struck a very relatable chord with millions of people. She’s also really good at selling her image and has been for a long time now.

And sometimes people need someone else to lead them; to guide (or flat-out tell) them how to think. There are people who are far too afraid of the big, dark, scary world out there to venture beyond the borders they’ve grown up in or transitioned into along the way.

One viewpoint is: Rich people are getting richer by packaging these age-old tropes, marketing them to rubes, and capitalizing on it.

Another viewpoint is: The current incarnation of passing age-old philosophies down through generations is through slick, well-curated packaging and marketing.

The influencers of today were influenced by the influencers of yesterday:

John Earl Schoaff → Jim Rohn → Tony Robbins → Too many to mention

Florence Scovel Shinn → Louise Hay → A whole bunch of people, including Mel Robbins (since Hay House publishes her books now)

Wayne Dyer. Ekhart Tolle. Byron Katie. Brene Brown. Dr. Daniel Amen. Dr. Caroline Leaf. These people and countless others have devoted their lives to studying, researching, and disseminating information about how our brains work and how we can better manage our negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

And these people all have families and themselves to support, just like we do.

I mean, c’mon…you think your religion isn’t a well-packaged and marketed philosophy? Think again.

That’s the thing: Spreading philosophies that’ve been in existence since time began — that human kindness over chaos and destruction is a better way to live; that peace, calm, and clarity are found within; that we are responsible for our thoughts and feelings — isn’t a bad thing, in my opinion.

And for the most part, all of this information is available to us for free…but the way of human nature is typically to consider something we haven’t paid for as having little-to-no value.

We also won’t learn something until we’re ready to *actually* learn it. We can hear the same thing a thousand times, but unless we’re in a mentally receptive mindset for that information — we won’t process and/or implement it.

That’s because there’s a component of our brainstem called the Reticular Activating System that filters out things it deems as unimportant and focuses in on things you’re interested in. For example: You’re looking for a new car — let’s say you’d really like a shiny new Ford Mustang Mach-E (in glacier gray, please!) — and suddenly you’re seeing them everywhere.

So unless you’re super into something, you’re likely to dismiss it.

These philosophies narrow down to one thing: They don’t pass the buck. They put the onus of how we react to things that happen in our lives on us, and that can be really uncomfortable to think about, let alone accept.

Notice that I didn’t say we’re responsible for everything that happens to us; I said we’re responsible for how we react to it.

It puts that accountability on us because that’s what it’s supposed to do. We are supposed to figure out that everything that happens to us, be it within our control or not, happens because we’re meant to learn and grow from it.

Those are the things that shape you into the person you are now and the person you can become.

So you can take anything that comes at you with cynicism, with victim mentality, with the vehemence of “I’m going to break that bitch down and destroy her!”

Or…

…you could decide to learn from it. You could understand that you don’t have to believe every thought that you have, that you don’t have to suppress and carry around every negative feeling you experience. You could start telling yourself, “I’m going to get through this pain, and I’m going to grow from this.”

Having said that, reactions aren’t gonna be the same for everyone…and they don’t f*cking have to be.

That’s the beauty of free will.

Cassie Phillips is a beautiful, talented woman who doesn’t currently have the financial means to go after the PR machine and multi-million dollar organization that Mel Robbins is the face and mouthpiece for. What she does have is her well-developed “let them” mindset as well as a group of thousands of advocates and supporters…and I’m now one of them.

But does that mean I’m joining the procession of MR haters? Not at all.

I prefer to approach this the way that Sage and Cassie are — let’s leave space for Mel to step up and do the right thing.

Granted, it’s not looking good at this moment, but who knows? Maybe she’ll have a change of heart someday and at least acknowledge that she didn’t *actually* discover an idea that’s been around for like, a thousand years.

What she has done is researched and fleshed out a concept (with the assistance of many other people, including her daughters), put it in a book, and she and her team devised a clever marketing campaign for that book.

And that concept was based on a simple and commensurate philosophy: People do what they do, and you can’t control them…but you can control how you react to them.

And millions have found this groundbreaking, because they couldn’t see it until it was presented in this way by this woman in this time of our collective existence.

Even Cassie says that she didn’t discover it…she was inspired by Tyler Perry’s Madea character. And I’m sure Mr. Perry was inspired by someone else. And so on back down the line. As human beings we all have full, unabridged access to the Akashic Records.

My issue is how it appears that Mel is pulling the success ladder up behind her. Here’s a prime opportunity for her to champion another brilliant woman who has great ideas and important things to say, but instead it seems like she’s just glossing over it with plausible deniability. (Well, she is an attorney.)

I’m being careful with my words here for a reason. Here’s why: We don’t know what we don’t know.

The other thing some people are throwing shade about is how Mel co-wrote the book with her oldest daughter, Sawyer, and at first didn’t give her credit on the cover but has since added her name to it.

But we don’t know if Sawyer was like, “Ewww, no I don’t want to be on the cover with my MOM, gross!” Or maybe HayHouse Publishing had the stance that Mel is the star of the show and there’s only room for one at the top…or or or…

We don’t know what we don’t know.

Maybe Mel actually never read Cassie’s poem. Maybe she heard the phrase, it sparked her to post that TikTok, and then she promptly forgot about it because she has three hundred people working for her, she has a family and home to take care of, she has a marriage to maintain, and she’s meeting new people all the time.

And then Kendall said it a few times that fateful day, Mel had that “Oh my God” epiphany moment, and the rest is her history…leaving Cassie’s history completely out of it, because maybe it wasn’t in her scope to begin with.

Don’t get me wrong…I’m not condoning her position on this. Personally I would’ve acknowledged Cassie and given her credit for the inspiration, even if I’d read the poem after the fact.

But that’s who I am. Mel is not me. We don’t all have the same perspective.

Listen, I firmly believe that Cassie Phillips has every right to be angry. I’d be pissed if someone tried to pass off one of my songs as their own, and I’d be absolutely furious if it became a huge hit for them. (I’d also be screaming “I KNEW that song had a great hook!!” from every street corner, but that’s an entirely separate tangent.)

Cassie has been handling this with kindness, class, and quiet resolve. She’s not badmouthing Mel; she’s speaking her truth.

From the New York Post article: “Phillips acknowledged that the spat is ‘a David and Goliath situation,’ but she just wishes Robbins would have handled the situation differently.

‘It just comes out as a very inauthentic way of coming up with something. Had she given me credit, that would have also given me a hand up,’ she said. ‘People would have found my art along the way.’”

Mel Robbins, on the other hand, had been virtually silent on this issue until that article in the Post, where she vehemently denied any correlation to Cassie’s work:

“When asked about the timeline allegations, Robbins reiterated, ‘People can obsess over any detail, but the facts are simple: I have not seen her poem, I have not read her poem, and it was not and will never be the source of inspiration for my book. This is nonsense. I have spent 10 years shining a light on other people’s work, so the allegation that I would steal someone else’s work is ridiculous. As I write in ‘The Let Them Theory,’ you cannot control what people say, do, feel, or choose to make up about you. People can say anything about you — at school, at work, on the internet — and you can’t control it. Let Them.’”

But I don’t think that Mel is a bad person; she’s an opportunist. She has her reasons for carrying this out the way she has, and we will probably never know the actual truth.

Perspective remains important, and we still don’t know what we don’t know.

We can keep parsing the timeline; we can keep railing against our capitalistic society that appears to continually reward notoriety over propriety.

Or we can do what Cassie herself is doing, what Sage is doing: We can allow room for differences of awareness while we keep moving forward, doing our part in achieving justice for Cassie.

No part is too small. Follow Cassie and Sage on social media, share Cassie’s story and Sage’s articles. That’s what community outreach does. People still have power.

And eventually, if the outcome ends up in the favor of the proverbial Goliath, (the equally proverbial) David can choose to…let them

.