Book notes: 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

Synopsis: “Best-selling author, speaker, and world-traveling success coach Jen Sincero cuts through the din of the self-help genre with her own verbal meat cleaver in You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life. In this refreshingly blunt how-to guide, Sincero serves up 27 bite-sized chapters full of hilariously inspiring stories, life-changing insights, easy exercises, and the occasional swear word.

Sincero, a former skeptic herself, delivers the goods minus the New Age cheese, giving even the snarkiest of poo-pooers exactly what they need to get out of their ruts and start kicking some ass. By the end of You Are a Badass, you will understand why you are how you are, how to love what you can’t change, how to change what you don’t love, and how to start living the kind of life you used to be jealous of.” -Audible

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Opening thoughts:

When I bought this book, I really had no clue who this author was. All I knew was that this book received a ton of reviews and overall had a positive rating. I’m guessing she’s some type of online/internet personality or celebrity. Maybe she has a huge online following or something. Maybe she’s some sort of motivational speaker or something. Either way, I have a feeling that I’ll be motivated or inspirational.

Key notes:

• This book is either to ease you into the self-help world or give you a new perspective that could lead to a breakthrough
• After all the seminars and hiring her first coach, within 6 months she tripled her income using an online business that she created around coaching writers
• Stay open or else you are screwed
• First, believe we live in a world of limitless possibilities
• Part 1: How You Got This Way
• Chapter 1: My subconscious made me do it
• It’s not your fault if you’re fucked up. But it is if you stay fucked up
  1. Our subconscious mind contains the blueprint for our lives. It’s running the show based on the unfiltered information it gathered when we were kids, otherwise known as our beliefs
  2. We are for the most part oblivious to the subconscious beliefs that run our lives
  3. When our conscious minds finally develop and show up for work, no matter how big or smart they grow to be, they’re still being controlled by beliefs we’re carrying around in our subconscious mind
• Chapter 2: The G-Word
  • “If you want to learn the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration” – Nikola Tesla
• Start to develop an awareness of and a relationship with the source energy (God) that’s surrounding you and within you, which is all the same energy and will be your best pal if you give it a chance.
  • The world is made up of energy, and you are vibrating at a certain frequency. Everything you want and don’t want is also vibrating at a certain frequency. Vibration attracts like like vibration
  • Otherwise known as Law of Attraction
    • Basic idea: focus on that which makes you feel good and you shall attract that
  • You need to raise your frequency to match the vibration of the one you want to tune in to
• Chapter 3: Present as a pigeon
  • If you’re depressed, you are living in the past. If you’re anxious, you’re living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present
• Chapter 4: The big snooze
  • Ego is the leading cause of sucking
  • Your true / higher-self operates according to your connection with God or source energy. Get validation from within.
• Seek out those who are already kicking butt, or beginning to do so, or people who you know will be supportive and confide in them
• Your ego will do everything it can to stop you from changing and growing
• If you want a new life, have faith
  • Trust that your new life is already here and is far better than the old. Stay the course
• Chapter 5: Self-perception is a zoo
  • Try seeing yourself through the eyes of someone who admires you
    • They believe in you and aren’t connected to your insecurities and negative beliefs about yourself
  • You are the only you there is, and you are the only you that will ever be
• Part 2: How to embrace your inner badass
• Chapter 6: Love the one you is
  • “If we really love ourselves, everything in our life works” -Louise Hay
• Best ways to win yourself over again:
  1. Appreciate how special you are
  2. Drown yourself with affirmations
  3. Do things you love. Make time for the things you love. Make enjoying your life a priority
     • Be proactive about creating a life you love
  4. Find a replacement. Pay attention to your thought patterns and behaviors
  5. Ditch the self-deprecating humor
  6. Let the love in
  7. Don’t compare yourself to others
  8. Forgive yourself
  9. Love yourself. It is the holy grail of happiness
• Chapter 7: I know you are, but what am I
• Don’t waste your precious time giving one single crap about what anybody else thinks of you
  • The only questions you should consider when making decisions about your life:
    1. Is this something I want to be, do, or have?
    2. Is this going to take me in the direction I want to go?
    3. Is this going to screw anybody else over in the process
• How to not care about what others think and be your most powerful self:
  1. Ask yourself why
  2. Always do your best
  3. Trust your intuition
  4. Find a temporary role model
  5. Love yourself
• Note constructive criticism and feedback that can help you make necessary changes to become a better person
• The power of giving is so strong that the excitement and good feelings are often greater for the giver than for the receiver
• When we share what we were brought here to give, we are in alignment with our highest, most powerful selves
• How to get clear on who you are and what your calling is:
  1. Be the alien. As an alien inhabiting your body, think:
     • What is the person so obviously awesome at?
     • What do they have the most fun doing?
     • What connections do they have?
     • What resources and opportunities are available to them?
       • Exercise: for 24 hours, be the alien and see what you come up with
  2. Take the first step
     • Pay attention to suggestions and opportunities that present themselves and notice how you feel
  3. Do your best wherever you’re at
  4. Don’t reinvent the wheel
     • Look around out there and see who’s life makes you totally jealous
     • What things are people doing that you would totally love to do too?
     • Who do you think is the coolest person ever?
  5. Don’t get caught up in the Thunderbolt hype
     • Let yourself off if you don’t have that one big perfect thing that you came here to do
  6. Listen to your intuition
  7. Follow your fantasies
  8. Love yourself like you are the only you that is
• Part 3: How to tap into the motherload
• Chapter 10: Meditation 101
  • Meditation connects us to source energy, which automatically brings us into the present moment, raises our frequency, opens us up to receive unlimited information and ideas, relaxes us, relieves stress, strengthens our intuition and ability to focus, allows us to hear our inner voice more clearly, fills us with light and love, puts us in a good mood, and helps us love ourselves
• Chapter 11: Your brain is your bitch
  • Our thoughts are the most powerful tools we’ve got
  • To change your reality, it is most likely outside of your present awareness
    • Your job isn’t to know the how, it is to know the what and to be open to discovering the how
• How to show your brain who is boss:
  1. Ask and it is given
  2. Act as if
  3. Upgrade your environment
  4. Make a vision board
  5. Surround yourself with people who think the way you want to think
  6. Love yourself
• Chapter 12: Lead with your crotch
  • Continuously living our dreams no matter what stage of life we’re in, instead of settling for mediocrity
  • Ask yourself:
    • When were you last turned on by life?
    • And what can you learn from those experiences?
  • Lessons from finding your groove: Just see what you can get away with
    • It makes more sense to go through life with the attitude of “Why not?“
  • Lose track of time
    • What makes you lose track of time and how often does it happen?
    • Hire someone and delegate the tasks you don’t like doing so that you can spend more time doing the things you want to do and get lost in
  • Keep being the beginner
    • Get really good and hone your craft, but don’t lose the fun in the process because what’s the point in doing all that work then?
    • The only thing you need to do is do the very best you can
      • Once you do that, the only other thing that matters is that you enjoy yourself
• Chapter 13: Give and let give
  • Giving is one of our greatest joys. It’s also one of the most fearless and powerful gestures there is
    • When we trust that we live in an abundant universe and allow ourselves to give freely, we raise our frequency, strengthen our faith, and feel awesome
  • Book: “29 Gifts” It challenged to give away 29 things in 29 days which resulted in an abundance being returned and the universe giving back
  • Good ways to get into that give and take flow:
    1. Pick up one or two causes that have real meaning to you and give to them every month. Give however much time or money you can, but do it consistently so that it becomes a habit and a part of who you are
    2. Give one of your favorite things in the world away to someone who would totally love it, and if you can’t, do it without them knowing where it came from
    3. Leave a dollar more than you normally would every time you tip
    4. If someone is being snarky or mean, instead of sticking to their level, raise them up by giving them the love
    5. Smile, compliment, and crack people up as often as possible
    6. Say yes to invitations you normally wouldn’t say yes to because you hate to inconvenience the person offering. Take them up on it and give them the opportunity to give to you
    7. Stop and feel in your body how great it feels when you give and receive. Raise your frequency and expect more great things to come your way
    8. Love yourself and everybody benefits
• Chapter 14: Gratitude
  • The gateway drug to awesomeness. When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears
  • Aside from making you feel like a good person, being polite usually makes people do what you want them to do if you’re nice about it
    • Manners is a form of custom, gratitude is a state of being
  • In the book The Science of Getting Rich, the author explains you cannot exercise much power without gratitude for it is gratitude that keeps you connected with power
  • Making someone laugh at what you say is like meeting them and exchanging energy at a high frequency. Their laughter is like a way of thanking you for saying something hilarious and it gives off an even stronger connection
• Get to the point where you have both unwavering faith and unwavering gratitude for that which you desire. Mixing these two is the high holy grail of manifesting
  • To sum it up, it is being grateful for the imaginary life you do not have yet
• Exercise: whenever anything excellent, mediocre, or lame happens to you, meet it with the statement, “this is good because…” and fill in the blank
  • Making this a regular practice will help you see how much easier it is to be in gratitude for much more than you realize
• If you look for ways to be grateful for everything in your life, it not only raise your frequency, but it allows you to grow by opening you up to the lesson
• Exercise: every day, write down 10 things you can be grateful for in your life
• Chapter 15: Forgive or fester
  • Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past
  • Forgiveness is all about taking care of you, not the person you need to forgive
    • It is about putting your desire to feel good over your desire to feel right
    • It’s about taking responsibility for your own happiness instead of putting it in someone else’s hands
  • Holding onto resentment is like taking poison and waiting for your enemies to die
• To forgive someone, find compassion
  • It’s like pulling a bullet out. It hurts, but is the only way to start the healing. Imagine the person you hate as a little kid and simply acting out of fear
  • People act poorly because they are in pain or confused or both
  • Decide you’d rather be happy than right
  • Look at it from all angles
• Book: Loving What Is: Four questions that can change your life, by Byron Katie
• Chapter 16: Loosen your bone Wilma
• What India taught her about tapping into the mother load:
  • Talk to strangers, we are all family on this planet
  • Expect and enjoy the unexpected
  • Find the humor. Join the party. Live in the moment
  • Time spent enjoying yourself is never time wasted
  • Share your space
• Chapter 17: It’s so easy once you figure out it isn’t hard
  • “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one” -Albert Einstein
• What do you choose to focus on becomes your reality. Sometimes we noticed things that we didn’t see before
• All you have to do is make the choice to let go everything you’re so attached to that’s not serving you, and manifest the reality that you want
  • Life is an illusion created by your perception
  • Become aware of your stories and what you’re gaining from them
  • We don’t realize it but we are making the perks we get from perpetuating our stories more important than getting what we really want because it’s familiar territory, it’s what we’re comfortable with, and we are scared to let it go
  • Take action and get out of your routine
• Chapter 18: Procrastination, Perfection, and a Polish beer guard
  • Good news:
    1. We all know way more then we give ourselves credit for knowing
    2. We are drawn to things we are naturally good at, which counts more than having a graduate degree in the subject
    3. There’s no better teacher than necessity
    4. Passion trumps fear
  • Just start, even if you don’t feel prepared, qualified, or ready
• Tried and true tips to help you stop procrastinating:
  1. Remember that done is better than perfect
  2. Notice where are you stop. Identify the point where you quit and prepare solutions accordingly like hiring coaches or an assistant or something
  3. Make a bet with someone mean. Someone who will hold you accountable and have no mercy
  4. Own it and work with it. Don’t stress out if you know you’re the type to do things last minute. Figure out how much time you truly need to get the job done, and then go do something else until the clock starts ticking
• Chapter 19: The drama of overwhelm
  • Having time and not having time is merely an illusion
  • Have respect for time, and treated like you were a person. Don’t expect it to show up if you treat it like crap
  • Once you know what your favorite distractions are, you can build up a good defense against them
  • Brains love chunks. Divide up your work into chunks during the day instead of setting aside the entire day. Between chunks, take a break and do something else
  • Stop talking about how busy you are. Focus on what you enjoy about what you do and the spaces in between the doing instead of being weighed down by it all
  • Sometimes it helps to get an outside perspective on our issues
  • One of the best ways to manage work is to delegate to someone else
    • You cannot do great things if you try to do every single little thing by yourself
• Chapter 20: Fear is for suckers
  • Fear lives in the future. The feeling of being afraid his real, but the fear itself is all made up because it hasn’t even happened yet
  • Most of the time, we have no guarantee that what we fear is even going to happen and that if it does it is going to be scary
  • All it takes is learning to be comfortable in instead of terrified of the unknown. This is done through faith
  • Our greatest fears are our greatest wastes of time
    • Face your fears with the truth that they are all in your mind and they will lose their power over you
  • Be in the moment right now to combat your fear
  • Don’t think of anything upsetting in bed at night
• Chapter 21: Millions of mirrors
  • “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent” -Eleanor Roosevelt
  • People are like mirrors for us
    • If somebody bugs you, you are projecting onto them something you don’t like about yourself
    • If you think they’re awesome, they are reflecting back something you see in yourself that you like, even if it’s not developed in you yet
  • The people you surround yourself with are excellent mirrors for who you are, how much or how little you love yourself
    • We attract people into our lives for a reason, just as they attract us into their’s
  • We respect, and sometimes fear, people who respect themselves
  • Aside from growing from the challenges presented by difficult people, you also need to learn when to remove these people from your life
  • If it’s something you want to do, start right now
    • You’ll never be this young again. Visit the people you love as often as possible
  • Part five: How to kick some ass
• Chapter 23: The Almighty decision
  • When you make a no-nonsense decision, you signed up fully and keep moving towards your goal regardless of what’s flung in your path
  • If you made the decision that you were going to reach your goals, you would do whatever it took
• How to get what you want:
  1. Want it bad. Have the audacity to be honest about what you really want to do
  2. Get good at it.
• A common trait of successful people is that they make decisions quickly and change them slowly
• Deciding is freedom. Indecision is torture
  • This doesn’t necessarily mean making the right decision immediately, but immediately going towards handling the problem and not putting it off or walking away from it
  • Practice on the little things to build up your decision making muscles
  • Decide to become the person who makes quick, smart decisions and you will
• The secret to success: tenacity
• Chapter 24: Money, your new best friend
  • Expand your beliefs about what is available to you in all areas of your life, including money and finances
  • Act as if you are where you want to be. Align your energy with the financial abundance you seek
  • Having money is not only a blessing, it is a responsibility
    • Change your story to money comes to me all the time, and make it your affirmation
  • Nothing has any value other than the value we put on it
  • The universe responds to details. The universe responds to energy
  • Decide what it is you want and write down the exact cost
  • There is power in clarity, urgency, and not screwing around
    • The money is there if you really truly desire it, it’s just a matter of being so serious that you don’t stray from the path of manifesting it no matter what gets thrown in it
    • The trick is to treat your dreams with the same urgency and determination
  • Get mentoring and hang around the right people. The teacher appears when the student is ready
• Chapter 25: Remember to surrender
  • When you believe that everything you desire already exists, you are in a natural state of surrender
• Chapter 26: Doing versus spewing
  • Dump your old bad habits
  • Hang high by hanging out with people who are kicking ass
  • Set honest goals that are just outside your comfort zone, and build from there
  • Read your manifesto daily. Write down your goals and your vision of your ideal life in the present tense and to be as specific as possible
    • Where do you live, who do you live with, what do you do for fun, Who are you surrounded by, how much money do you make, how do you make it, how do you want to get back to the world, what are you wearing, etc
  • Get a coach. Your mind will follow where are your body leads
  • Figure out what gets you pumped up and inspired, and do more of that continuously
• Chapter 27: Beam me up Scotty

Closing thoughts:

Near the beginning after the first few chapters, it felt very surface-level in terms of self-help. I think maybe me being so deep into personal development gave me the impression that this was a bit too fundamental for me. It felt like a “self-help 101” or introductory course. However, for the beginning reader, she starts off covering some very import concepts like mindset, limiting beliefs, internal scripts, and understanding how your subconscious mind works (inertia and your primitive “crocodile brain” referenced in other books like Pitch Anything). Other books that reference same topics would be 5 Second Rule and Mindset.

While this book started off very “rah-rah” inspirational and foundational level mindset stuff, it definitely got better during the section about gratitude. If I can sum up the book, it would be about the power of self-love, gratitude, faith, and the law of attraction. Lots of lists in this book, but I appreciate that there are a lot of action steps and exercises that the reader can put into play immediately.

This book will definitely give you the “feel-good” from beginning to end. The delivery style and author tone may not have been my exact cup of tea, but the principles and insights in this book were solid.

Nutshell: Love yourself + law of attraction.

Rating: 3.5/5

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