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5 mins

Sarah Knight’s Mental Space Manager

Sarah Knight is the New York Times bestselling author of the No Fucks Given Guides. Here, she talks about the book that made her rethink her life, her career, and helped her get happy.
by Carrie M. King | Mar 21 2019

What do you do when you’re exceeding all your goals and you’ve got everything you dreamed of, but you’re still not happy?

Maybe you double down on the old dream and the magical world you thought it would unlock. Or maybe the real magic is in throwing up your hands, making a change, and saying “F&*% it.” That’s what happened to Sarah Knight when she found a book that would change how she thought about her life, and eventually led her to become the bestselling author of the No Fucks Given Guides.

“A lot of self-help books and gurus provide you with these goals to reach this really aspirational state and for me, it was more about looking in the mirror and going: this is terrible, what’s happening right now. I want this to stop. I want these feelings to stop. I want this attitude to stop. I want my day-to-day life to stop being so shitty.”
Sarah Knight

Hear Knight chat with Terence about quitting her dream job to pursue lasting fulfilment and the book that inspired her to say no to things she didn’t want to do, make more time for what she did want, and eventually, write the book that’s transformed the lives of millions of people.

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Who’s Sarah Knight?

Holacracy at Blinkist
Photo of Sarah Knight by George Townley

Sarah Knight is the author of international bestsellers The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck and Get Your Sh*t Together. Before becoming an “anti-guru,” she graduated with honors from Harvard University and spent fifteen years working in New York City’s top publishing houses. Sarah’s bold decision to quit that career and move to the Dominican Republic underpins much of the advice in her bestselling No Fucks Given Guides.

What is Self? Help!

Self? Help! is the podcast for anyone who’s thought: Who the hell am I? What in God’s name am I doing? And how did I get here of all places? Then, to figure it all out, you turned to a book—because you’re that kind of person, and so is your host, Moth Storyteller and creator of Memory Motel, Terence Mickey.

It doesn’t matter from where you seek your guidance—whether it’s Leo Tolstoy or Dr. Seuss. Terence believes that we cannot get enough help in this life and that books are, indeed, magic.

Self? Help! is made by the same people who make Blinkist, a learning app where you can read or listen to the key ideas from a nonfiction bestseller, in just about 15 minutes. You can try Blinkist for free for 14 days when you use the voucher code: knight

It takes a village to raise a podcast

Self? Help! was created and produced by Terence Mickey, with audio engineering help from Dominick Egley, and production assistance from Nat Darozhkina. Additional audio engineering and ad music by Ben Jackson and Ody Constantinou. This show could not have happened without the help of Caitlin Schiller and Ben Schuman-Stoler, hosts of Blinkist’s other much-loved podcast, Simplify. Thanks also to Joshua Phelps, Lotta Kortekallio, Hugh Brace, Natalia Piana, Justyna Kusa, Sarolta Geréb, Kaleb Wentzel-Fisher, Sarah Moriarty, Sarah Kennedy, Yerang Choi, Clément Halloo, Gloria Ciceri, Emily Phillips, Robyn Kerkhof, and Therese Sivertsson.

Say hi!

Tell us what you think of this episode by dropping a line to [email protected]. Send us feedback, questions, comments, or even a wish, if that’s what floats your boat. You can Tweet at Terence directly @terence_mickey or Blinkist @blinkist. More than anything, we want to hear about the books that made a deep impact on you, personally. So please tell us, because #booksaremagic and we want to hear all about them!

Link it all together

If you’re looking for some links to click, allow us to recommend these ones:

Sarah Knight’s website
No Fucks Given Guides
Marie Kondo’s website

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