Smart Girls Screw Up Too Book Summary - Smart Girls Screw Up Too Book explained in key points

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Smart Girls Screw Up Too summary

Name: Smart Girls Screw Up Too
Rating: 4.4 (76 reviews)
Author: Bella Zanesco

Bella Zanesco

The No-Nonsense Guide to Creating the Life You Want

4.4 (76 ratings)

26 mins

What is Smart Girls Screw Up Too about?

Smart Girls Screw Up Too (2019) is a helpful and empowering guide to turning your life around. It provides an abundance of advice, tools and exercises that will take your life from the downside, a place of low self-esteem and bad jobs and relationships, to the upside, where you’ll be firing on all cylinders and making the most out of what you have.

Table of Contents

Smart Girls Screw Up Too
summarized in 9 key ideas

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What’s in it for me? Discover some proven ways of bringing more happiness into your life.

Author Bella Zanesco has been through a lot. She’s experienced the burnout of an unsatisfying career, soul-crushing heartbreak, as well as being diagnosed with IBS, depression and adrenal failure. The fact that she’s bounced back from all of this is why she’s known as the Smart Girl Comeback Queen.

A Smart Girl isn’t someone with a college degree who thinks she’s never made a mistake in her life. On the contrary, a Smart Girl is anyone who’s aware that there’s always room for improvement in life, and who has the courage to admit that she’s made mistakes and is willing to learn from them.

So if that sounds like you – or the person you want to be – then you’ll likely benefit from the advice that Zanesco has to offer. This is advice that has not only helped her get her life back on track, but has also allowed her to reach new levels of success and satisfaction.

In these blinks you’ll find

how yoga can help balance your nervous system;
how your diet can affect your mood; and
how dance and creative pursuits can help you heal.

Changing your life for the better starts with understanding your problems, needs, and where things went off track.

If you’re reading this, you may be familiar with the downside. It’s the kind of life in which everything seems drab, gloomy and uninspired. The author was well-acquainted with the downside – so much so that she became fed up and committed to finding a way to the upside. This is the place where you feel happy, inspired and eager to be productive.

One of the first steps on the path to the upside is to write down three things: the current problems in your life, how you feel on a typical day, and how you would like to feel in the future. Maybe your problem is that you’re depressed and have lost all enthusiasm for the things you once found meaningful. So these days, you might feel sad and disconnected, but would like to feel purposeful, creative and energetic.

By writing these things down, you can begin to identify clearly what needs to change in your life and what that change will lead to. This simple exercise provides a clear goal for your self-improvement.

While you’re recognizing your problems, see whether you can trace them back to a point in the past when things began to go off-track. Often there’s a point in our lives at which our intentions get derailed, and we later find ourselves wondering how we ended up in this mess. Looking back to this point can often help us recognize the passions and hopes we once had, regain those dreams and get back on track.

Maybe you took a job one summer ten years ago, thinking it would be a temporary position, only to find yourself still stuck there – in a career for which you have no passion. So think back to the days before you got sidetracked and remind yourself of what got you excited back then.

Now, there are some people who get stuck in the early stages of self-improvement because they feel like devoting time to such concerns is self-indulgent. But the truth is that we all have needs, and if you’d rather not be miserable, then you have to tend to those needs. This means taking care of yourself and doing things that are good for your body and mind. So let’s look at some more ways to do just that and get ourselves on the upside.

Adopting positive core beliefs and identifying your touchstones are foundational keys to self-improvement.

Has someone ever told you to cheer up, and all you could do was shoot daggers at them with your eyes? Most of us have been there – and yet, having a more positive attitude is an important step to reaching the upside.

You may think that good things need to happen before you can adopt a positive outlook on life, but it tends to work the other way around. Your emotions are what shape your behavior, your behavior is what dictates your habits, and your habits are what form your reality. This is why having positive core beliefs is a fundamental part of turning your life around.

Starting a regular yoga practice can greatly improve your physical and mental health.

Changing beliefs and becoming more confident can be difficult for anyone, but it’s especially hard for those of us who’ve been told in the past that we’d never amount to anything. When this happens, we often internalize all of that naysaying, which can result in a negative attitude toward ourselves and our abilities. This is why it’s important to take action that both supports a positive outlook and disproves that negative attitude.

For example, if you want to be a clothing designer but were told you would never be good enough to make a living at it, you could try making a few dresses in your spare time, selling them online and seeing how things go. With small, positive actions like this, you can start to gain confidence and change your life in some deep and powerful ways.

A healthy gut is key to a healthy mind, and we should all listen to our hearts more often.

When considering the importance of a well-functioning vagus nerve, it’s hard to underestimate the connection it provides between the brain and the gut. As Dr. Michael Gershon, of Columbia University’s Department of Pathology and Cell Biology, explains, the gut has around 500 million neurons that keep it in conversation with other parts of the body, including your brain via the vagus nerve.

Of course, we all know that our gut tells the brain when it wants food, but research has shown that the food we put into our gut also has a big influence on our mood and well-being.

A satisfying and fulfilling work life isn’t just about money, it’s about finding your passion.

Do you feel stuck in a career that you had no intention of getting into? The writer Steven Pressfield refers to this as a “shadow career” – a job you don’t feel personally invested in and certainly don’t consider your true calling.

But even if this is the case, you can take solace in the fact that you’re likely learning skills and gaining experience that will be put to better use later, once you do find your ideal job. Many people, however, are so ambivalent that they simply aren’t sure whether they’re in the right career or not, so let’s go over some of the questions the author is asked most frequently.

Leisure and creativity can help facilitate profound change.

In our desire to be productive and efficient in life, we tend to neglect the importance of leisure and being creative purely for the sake of being creative. This can not only lead to our lives becoming unbalanced, but it can also prevent us from gaining valuable strengths and personal insights that will actually lead to a more productive life in the long run.

For the author, dance as a leisure activity has provided deeply valuable experiences that have helped her grow and change as a person. You might want to consider taking it up yourself!

Supporting your body’s natural cycles can also support your mental health and bring added balance to your life.

Many women take the contraceptive pill for a number of reasons. Certainly, it can free you from period pain, unwanted pregnancy and even acne. What’s also great is that the cost of the pill is covered by many healthcare plans – but there are other costs that can take a toll on some women.

For example, in a University of Copenhagen study of over a million women, researchers found that those taking the pill were 23 percent more likely to experience depression. And those taking the progestin-only “mini pill” were found to be 34 percent more likely. What’s more, the study showed that other implant-type options, such as a hormonal IUD, ring, or patch, come with even higher risks of depression. On top of this, the US National Cancer Institute has found that the pill increases a woman’s chances of certain cancers, including breast, cervical and liver cancers.

There are six positive and helpful characteristics to look for when adding people to your inner circle.

If you want to find the confidence and inspiration that’s been missing in your life, you’ll want to surround yourself with supportive people. After all, escaping the downside is already enough of a challenge without being surrounded by naysayers and doubters.

When considering whom to include in your inner circle of positivity, there are six helpful personality types to consider.

There are steps to finding a rewarding and healthy relationship.

When the author polled 2,000 Smart Girls between the ages of 25 and 45, she discovered that seven out of ten people believed that their true love was either nonexistent, dead or married to someone else. So instead, they’ve decided to settle.

But the reality is, finding true love or settling aren’t the only options we have, because real life isn’t a fairy tale in which Prince Charming comes to sweep us off our feet. In the real world, finding love and being ready for it when it shows up is a step-by-step process.

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Best quote from Smart Girls Screw Up Too

As neuroscientist... Antonio Damasio reminds us, humans are not thinking machines that feel, but rather feeling machines that think.

—Bella Zanesco

About the Author

Bella Zanesco is a renowned life and wellness strategist who has used her self-help techniques to overcome her own experiences of depression, heartbreak, burnout and career dissatisfaction. She’s since gone on to become a world sailing champion, The Australian newspaper’s Travel Photographer of the Year and the self-described Smart Girl Comeback Queen.

Who should read Smart Girls Screw Up Too?

People eager to get their lives back on track
Women looking for self-help guidance
Depressed people looking for uplift

Categories with Smart Girls Screw Up Too

Personal Development Career & Success

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