What is the main message of You Do You?

The main message of You Do You is to embrace your true self and live life on your own terms.

Who is the author of You Do You?

The author of You Do You is Sarah Knight.

Personal Development

You Do You Book Summary - You Do You Book explained in key points

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You Do You summary

Name: You Do You
Rating: 4 (307 reviews)
Author: Sarah Knight

Sarah Knight

How to Be Who You Are and Use What You’ve Got to Get What You Want

4 (307 ratings)

20 mins

Brief summary

You Do You by Sarah Knight encourages readers to embrace their true selves, to stop caring about what others think, and to prioritize happiness over fitting in. It's a fun, light read that gives practical tips on how to be unapologetically you!

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Table of Contents

You Do You
Summary of 7 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? A guide to living life on your own terms.

“Be yourself.” Sounds easy, right – after all, who else could you be but yourself? In truth, it’s one of the hardest skills you’ll ever master. That’s why millions of folks follow the crowd, accept conventional wisdom, and spend their lives trying to please others.

But it’s not impossible. Take it from best-selling “anti-guru” Sarah Knight, a woman who knows both what it’s like to feel trapped in a life you didn’t design and how to turn things around and find actual happiness. The trick? Three words: You. Do. You.

This is about putting your happiness first, and that means it’s time to stop letting others tell you what you should and shouldn’t be doing. So what if your dreams are weird? So what if you’re weird? Life’s too short to worry about what other people think of you or your goals.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why your “flaws” might just be untapped superpowers;
how to put your own interests first without being a jerk; and
what a kitty litter tray can do for your mental health.

The world is full of arbitrary rules that you don’t need to follow.

Life is full of rules. With the exception of laws and formal codes of conduct, most of these are unwritten and enforced by social pressure. Some make a lot of sense. “Don’t tag your friends in unflattering photos” and “Don’t answer the door nude” are pretty good rules, for example.

Others, however, don’t make a lot of sense. And because the world is full of sticklers hellbent on enforcing these arbitrary rules, there are always going to be folks telling you when you should go to college or have kids, or what you should wear to a party. Breaking these rules might not land you in prison, but it may lead to social ostracism.

But here’s the thing: deep down, no one knows more about who you are and what makes you happy than you do. Living by other people’s rules risks leading you away from this intuitive understanding of what you need to do. Instead of living in ways that fulfill you, you may get pressured into Lowest Common Denominator Living. You’ll stifle traits and tics that don’t fit other people’s definition of normality, and consequently end up miserable.

In these blinks, we’ll help you break out of this trap. The name of the game is to learn to see social expectations for what they are and take some of the pressure off yourself by refusing to follow senseless rules.

The best place to start doing this is to embrace a model called Mental Redecorating, an approach to reappraising your supposed “flaws.”

This is about recoding qualities that society regards as negative. “Nerdy,” for instance, is often used to put people down. Mental redecorating, by contrast, would redescribe this character trait in positive terms like “smart” or “knowledgable.” The same goes for a word like “weird,” which is just another way of saying “unique.”

The point to bear in mind here is that there’s nothing wrong with who you are – the social rules that make you think you’re the problem are to blame. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how you can start breaking away from social expectations.

Despite what society tells you to do, you don’t always have to give your best, be a team player, or put others first.

If some rules are sensible and others are senseless, how do you tell the two apart? Well, if a rule hurts you more than it helps others, you should probably question it. This puts three commonplace commandments – “Do your best,” “Be a team player,” and “Don’t be selfish” – in the firing line.

Let’s start with the notion that you should always do your best. Constantly giving it your all is exhausting, and that can take a toll on your health. Take it from the author.

There’s nothing wrong with taking risks and being vocal about what you want.

Standing your ground can be tricky, not least because you’ll often be told that you’re “being difficult.” Put like that, it sounds like you’re being childish and petulant, and that’s why it’s often phrased that way – it’s a great method of stopping you from sticking up for yourself. But there’s nothing wrong with digging your heels in and being clear about what you want in life.

Imagine you’re in a restaurant. You like your steak well done and that’s how you order it. When it arrives, however, it’s rare. You remind the waiter of your order and ask for another steak. If you’ve been in this kind of situation, you’ll know that there’s a good chance someone at the table will accuse you of making an unnecessary fuss.

You’re free to define success however you like and you can take any route to achieve it.

Some people are happy following the conventional rules and take the freeway through life. Others prefer the scenic route and stick to quieter backcountry roads. Either way, it’s a personal decision, and that means no one gets to dictate how you’ll be traveling – except you.

Take the author. As she sees it, having kids is a pretty simple choice. If you want children, you should have them; if you don’t – well, you shouldn’t. The problem, however, is that lots of folks question the legitimacy of the latter choice. When the author decided she didn’t want children, she was constantly nagged and told that she’d regret her decision. This kind of pressure is one of the most common ways in which people are forced to follow norms they don’t actually subscribe to.

Being pessimistic and “weird” has lots of perks.

“You won’t get anywhere with that attitude!” Like being told you’ll regret your choices later on, this is one of the ways in which people apply pressure to peers who don’t conform to social norms. What they’re really saying is that the way you’re acting is just too weird and that you should make more of an effort to fit in. But guess what – that’s bullshit too.

There are no two ways about it: contemporary Western society is pretty down on pessimism. If you want to get anywhere in life, we’re told, you have to be upbeat and optimistic. That’s fine if you happen to have a sunny disposition, of course, but some people – like the author – are natural-born pessimists.

Finding help when you need it and setting your priorities are the best ways of looking after your mental health.

If you’d visited the author in her office a couple of years back, you’d have noticed something odd: a litter tray filled with sand under her desk, into which she occasionally dipped her bare feet. What was going on here? To explain that, we need to rewind a little.

The author experienced her first full-scale panic attack at the age of 31. At first, she was highly skeptical about getting professional help to address this issue. There wasn’t anything wrong with her physically, after all, and she didn’t like the idea of being told she was “crazy.”

Accepting yourself as you are means ignoring what others think about you.

We all feel the pressure to look or act in certain ways. Conforming to these social expectations might buy you a little peace and quiet, but it won’t make you happy. The only way you’ll feel genuinely great in your own skin is to do what’s right for you – not what other people say you should be doing.

This means you can ignore all sorts of arbitrary social rules. Take being nice. Sure, you shouldn’t be a jerk to the folks you come across on an average day, but you’re not obligated to be nice to them either – politeness is more than enough. When the author lived in New York, for example, random strangers in the street constantly told her to smile. But why should you have to put on a fake smile and act upbeat if you don’t feel that way? The truth is that you don’t.

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What is You Do You about?

You Do You (2017) is part broadside against the enforcers of silly norms and part invitation to rethink our relationships with ourselves. Packed with no-nonsense truth-telling, these blinks suggest that whatever you’ve been told to the contrary, there’s nothing wrong with being you – warts and all. In fact, Sarah Knight argues, embracing your true self is the surest path to getting what you want out of life.

You Do You Review

You Do You by Sarah Knight (2017) is an empowering guide on embracing your individuality and living life on your own terms. Here's why this book is worth reading:

With its refreshing perspective on self-acceptance, it encourages readers to embrace their uniqueness and reject societal expectations.
Packed with practical advice, it provides actionable steps to help readers navigate personal and professional challenges, fostering personal growth.
Through honest anecdotes and relatable examples, the book keeps readers engaged, ensuring that the exploration of self-expression is never boring.

Who should read You Do You?

Individualists and contrarians
Conformists tired of living by the rules
Freedom fighters in search of happiness

About the Author

Sarah Knight is a freelance writer and anti-guru known for her best-selling, tell-it-like-it-is takes on the self-help genre. She is the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k, a guide to using your time more wisely based on a TEDx talk that racked up 6 million views, and Get Your Sh*t Together.

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