You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero

You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

She has a lot of good points and the book is very funny which makes the book very readable, but it's not earth-shattering. I agree that you need to be positive and just go out and do stuff to make progress in life. And there's a lot of science to back up meditation.

And oh, boy do I agree with her message that THERE IS ENOUGH TIME FOR WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO. Yeah, some months might be crazy, but most people I know watch television and spend time on the internet... so probably there is time to do whatever you want, especially if it can be done in small chunks. Assuming you actually want to do it. Relatedly, the self-introspection advice is solid as well.

But I struggle with the super aggressive message of being constantly positive. A lot of people are very positive, the rest of us can work on being more positive, sure. But there are a lot of huge problems in life, and the aggressive focus on positivity suggests that people get what they deserve which is most often not the case.

I am always happy for friends that are achieving great things. Their happiness adds to the happiness of my life in so many ways. What I don't enjoy is when people subject me to huge positivity lectures via social media. It's not sensitive to everyone else's life struggles. Really? Don't you know people are caring for their dying parents or taking their kids to cancer treatments-- you're just going to tell everyone to manifest their best life with positivity? Barf. Not coincidentally, a lot of these people who "manifest" their positivity propaganda all over the place are not big readers.

I completely disagree with her message about buying the more expensive car and then "manifesting" the money. Horrible. Americans already have plenty of debt. They need to learn to live in a budget. I also don't understand this super hyper-capitalist schpiel from someone who supposedly meditates. Money is important, but science has pretty much proved that once our needs and some fun luxuries are met, excessive amounts don't make us any happier. Here's one of the "bad stories" I told myself about money: when my income was at the highest it's ever been, I was the unhappiest I'd ever been. It's not that it has to go together, but if your main focus is money, and you happen to live in America, it likely will go together because we're not a labor-friendly country.

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