Name: Unfu*k Yourself
Rating: 4.6 (1037 reviews)
Author: Gary John Bishop

What’s in it for me? Strategies for overcoming your own worst enemy – you.

Out of everyone in your life, who do you spend the most time talking to?

If you said your mom, you’re wrong – even if you call her seven times a day.

If you said your best friend, you’re wrong – even if you live together.

If you said the members of your most active WhatsApp group, you’re wrong – even if you’re sending them a hilarious meme right this second.

The person you talk to most is … yourself. You have approximately 50,000 thoughts a day, and a lot of those thoughts occur within the context of self-talk. That’s right. You’re in a constant dialogue with yourself – whether you’re examining yourself in the mirror, working up the courage to talk to an attractive stranger at a bar, or second-guessing the contents of an important email.

Now, it is possible that those conversations you have with yourself are uniformly supportive, encouraging, and rational. But seeing as you’re reading a Blink titled Unfu*k Yourself, we’re going to assume that you’re like most people – that sometimes, even a lot of the time, the voices in your head are negative, undermining, and panic-inducing. That those voices are holding you back from living the life you truly want to live.

Changing the way you talk to yourself can change everything. This Blink sets out five radical assertions designed to help you make that change – and make it stick.

You live the life you choose for yourself.

Be honest with yourself – there are parts of your life that you find unsatisfactory. You face big problems – a job that feels like it’s going nowhere, for instance. And you deal with minor irritations – perhaps your partner doesn’t pull their weight with housework.

Of course, you didn’t choose to get stuck in a dead-end job or fall in love with someone who’s apparently allergic to washing the dishes.

Or did you?

If you’re willing to put up with unsatisfactory circumstances, then you are, effectively, choosing to live with them. So here’s a question for you: Are you willing to change what’s dragging you down?

You might be tempted to say something like, Of course I’m willing to quit, but the job market right now is …

Stop right there. You’re not really willing to make that change – yet. As soon as the word “but” creeps in, you start justifying your choice not to change your life for the better. Willingness is a hard state to access; it’s often easier to get comfortable with life’s negatives than do the work required to change them. But once you do access it, you’ll find it’s a powerful force. As the political strategist Niccolo Machiavelli said, “Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.”

So, how do you invite willingness into your life?

Begin by getting real. What’s one thing you want to change in your life but haven’t been able to? Why haven’t you done something about it? Perhaps you’re too busy. Or too tired. Or you’re not quite ready yet. Or it’s actually really complicated … the list could go on forever. But there’s really only one reason you haven’t made that change, and it’s you.

You haven’t been willing to do the work to make things better. But don’t get depressed or down on yourself. It’s liberating to realize that you are creating a life you don’t want for yourself. Because that means that you are equally capable of manifesting a life you do want.

Once you’ve accepted the crazy amount of power you have over your own life, you simply need the willingness to use that power to make the necessary changes. So, here’s the first assertion that will rewire your negative self-talk: I am willing.

Are you willing to change your job? I am willing.

Are you willing to improve your relationship? I am willing.

Are you willing to hit the gym, move to a new city, put your work out there, do things that scare you? I am willing.

And here’s a little trick – if you’re feeling daunted by the big changes ahead, flip the script. Focus instead on the things that you’re no longer willing to put up with. It can feel like a lot to promise yourself that you’ll hand in your notice at your steady job and make the leap into a new role.

So ask yourself this: Are you willing to spend your life doing work that doesn’t fulfill you, for people who don’t appreciate your efforts? You know how to answer that: I am unwilling!

Being willing isn’t a magic wand. It won’t make change happen – change happens through work, persistence, and sacrifice. But the state of willingness is what sets the stage so all of that can happen.

Got a tough problem? Get some perspective.

The bad news is, no matter how positive your mindset, life is still going to throw some heavy shit at you. Relationships will break down. People will die. You’ll have to deal with trauma, health problems, financial setbacks, and more. Positive thinking won’t protect you from any of it.

But here’s the good news. When life happens, your mindset can powerfully frame your response. With a negative mindset, one problem can be enough to blow your entire life off course. Stress from a financial crisis, for instance, can seep into other areas of your life – you’ll find yourself snapping at your partner over what should be a pleasant dinner, and underperforming at work. Soon you’ll catch yourself thinking things like, My life is so hard and I can’t catch a break.

Make friends with uncertainty.

Odds are, you’re an addict. Every time you check the weather forecast, read up on trends in the stock market, or peruse election polls, you’re trying to satisfy a craving. Your drug of choice? Certainty.

Put simply, we like knowing what’s going to happen next. But here’s why you need to quit certainty cold turkey: certainty is the enemy of new.

Key ideas in Unfu*k Yourself