I spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how I wanted to lay out this book. It’s the most—I hope anyway—tactical advice I’ve ever written down. I wanted it to be easy to understand and easy to apply to any kind of goal, and so I needed to get to the core of what has made it possible for me to achieve my dreams. What I finally asked myself was, Which elements have either helped or hurt me in my pursuit of personal goals over the last fifteen years? After all, I’m not an expert. I’m not a specialist or a professor, and I don’t know the answer for everybody else. What I do know is how to get from a little town and a childhood filled with trauma to being a successful entrepreneur who built a multimillion-dollar company with only a high school diploma under her belt. I do know how to go from being an insecure young girl drowning in the anxiety of other people’s perceptions to a confident and proud woman. I do know how to go from being severely overweight and unhealthy, using food as a coping mechanism and unable to walk up the stairs without getting winded to a marathon runner who leaps out of bed each morning ready to take on the day. I do know how to go from being a desperate people-pleaser just hoping for love to being a woman who is so filled with love for others, for my passions, for my work that I no longer need to seek it out in negative ways. All of these areas of growth in my life were once goals I had for myself, and while I didn’t know what I was doing when I first started on this path, I can look back and see the commonalities between each success and failure that got me from there to here.
I am not an expert. What I am is your friend Rachel, and I want to tell you what worked for me. I have tried a bit of everything, but ultimately, achieving big goals both personally and professionally came down to these three things:
1. Letting go of the excuses that kept me stuck.
2. Adopting great habits and behaviors that set me up for success.
3. Acquiring the skills necessary to make exponential growth possible.
I honestly didn’t have the self-awareness to identify these steps as I was living them, but I can look back now and see that these were the main factors that led to every success I’ve had along the way. I have laid each part of the book out in this foundational order on purpose.
I started with excuses to let go of, because if you don’t recognize the things that are limiting you right now, you’ll never be able to move past them. You’ll notice, too, that the excuse section is the longest in this book. That’s not an accident. The habits and skills we need are straightforward, but the litany of excuses that stand between where we are and where we want to go is longer and more dramatic than the second half of Hamilton. Once you wade through them and identify them as the lies they really are, you can move on to things that make you stronger.
The second part of this book is behaviors to adopt, which is my fancy way of telling you that your habits matter a great deal. If you want to see traction and results, consistency is key. Meaning, you can’t just do something one time or even ten times and expect it to get you where you want to go. You have to develop behaviors that are so habitual they feel grounded in your DNA. You have to make it so living as the best version of yourself becomes your new normal.
Finally, I finish with skills to acquire. These are universal things everyone needs when pursuing any goal. What may throw you off is that these items are rarely listed out as skills. Things like confidence or persistence are typically considered characteristics you either have or you don’t, but I want to change your perception about these things. You can cultivate new positive characteristics in yourself, and more importantly, you must if you want to achieve your personal goals more easily.
This book has a lot of information (it took me a lifetime to acquire it), but please don’t allow that to overwhelm you. You are strong and bold and capable of more. From here on out, choose to see ideas for change as possibilities in your life. A life filled with possibilities is a recipe for your kind of greatness. Let’s dive in!
PART I
EXCUSES TO LET GO OF
ex·cuse1
ik’skyōoz/
verb
1. attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify.
2. release (someone) from a duty or requirement.
synonyms: justify, defend, condone, vindicate
Excuses disguise themselves as any number of things. Some people believe them with all their hearts. They really do think they’re not enough or that they don’t have time or that they’re not a “goal kind of person.” They don’t realize that every time they hold on to these beliefs, not only do they rob themselves of motivation—they give up before they even start. Let’s stop doing that. What are the excuses you’ve been believing? Chances are, one or more of these ideas has lived inside your head as justification for why you’re not able to pursue and chase your dreams. I hope that by digging into what the most common excuses are and why we don’t actually have to give them any power, you’ll be able to break the shackles currently holding you back.
EXCUSE 1:
THAT’S NOT WHAT OTHER WOMEN DO
I used to have shark teeth.
No, truly. I was one of those unfortunate children whose baby teeth wouldn’t give up the ghost. Rather than shuffle out the door like any self-respecting incisor, they held on for dear life. Simultaneously, my adult teeth were having none of it. They came barreling into town like an aggressive in-law and took up residency. I had two rows of teeth. Shark teeth.
Around this same time, I decided to cut my own bangs with my dad’s mustache scissors. Now, to give myself a little credit, I did recognize that this wasn’t the smartest course of action. I was—and still am—a stringent rule follower, and cutting my own hair at age eleven was on par with performing open-heart surgery with Mema’s mismatched silverware. Not advisable. But in this instance the bangs were hanging in my eyes and driving me crazy. As much as I was a rule follower, I was also—and still am—a woman of action. I decided to handle it myself. When my dad discovered the results of my pro-action, he attempted to rectify the uneven bang line. Unfortunately, he wasn’t any better at barbery than I was. And he has terrible OCD . . . which means he’s a stickler for a straight line. He kept cutting my bangs shorter and shorter, trying to get the edge neat, until they were barely longer than an eyelash. My fifth-grade pictures were a sight to behold.
Did I mention that I shaved my eyebrows in those days too? I didn’t know how to pluck them yet. I only knew that I didn’t want a unibrow any longer, and sliding my big sister’s razor down the middle of my forehead seemed like the right choice.
I was also chubby.
And I played fifth-chair clarinet.
I was awkward and my hair was frizzy, and I was always twice the size of the cheerleaders and dressed in Goodwill clothes that rarely fit at all. All I wanted in the whole world was to be popular and pretty and to fit in with everyone else. And I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.