Why am I writing this book?
I’m writing this book because I want you to have the best possible life you can have.
I want you to feel healthy, confident, and strong, as every human being deserves to feel. I want you to have beautiful relationships and meaningful work that excites you. I want you to feel 100 percent self-expressed and to create a legacy that you can be proud of having shaped. Your legacy might be raising enough money to build a school for kids in Cambodia, or building your own business in America, or working to change the broken health care system, or mentoring teenagers to help them get ready for college, or running for president, or opening a kickboxing studio, or writing a book filled with stories and advice just like this one.
We’re all capable of leaving a positive mark on the world. I want you to leave yours.
But in order to do that, you need to take ownership of your life. You need to get clear about what you want your legacy to be. You need to get honest about where your time is currently going, what you need to focus on every day, and what needs to get cleared out of your life in order for you to thrive.
There are probably quite a few changes you’d like to make; things you want to start doing; things you want to stop doing; standards you need to raise; tiring, draining situations that really shouldn’t continue any longer.
I want you to make all of those changes, and I want you to begin that journey today.
I don’t want you to wait until you hit rock bottom like me.
Don’t wait, as I did, until you’ve been battered. Don’t wait until you need emergency heart surgery, or until you’re so miserable that you sink into the throes of addiction, or until you wake up one morning and admit to yourself that you’ve been married to the wrong person for twenty years, or until you’ve given three decades of your life away to a career that’s not right for you.
Please don’t wait that long.
This is your one and only life. The clock is ticking. This is it.
Nobody is going to improve your life for you. Nobody is going to build your legacy for you, either. If you want to feel different or to live differently, then you’ve got to take ownership of those goals. Nobody can make those changes except for you.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your
one wild and precious life?”
—Mary Oliver
What It Means to Take Ownership of Your Life
I got myself entangled in an abusive relationship. You’ve already read one piece of that ugly story. But I’ve since spent more than ten years in a loving relationship with someone who treats me with care and respect.
I was once a broke, single, teenage mom, relying on food stamps for groceries. Now I run my own business that brings in millions of dollars per year. After having two kids, I felt out of shape and uncomfortable in my own skin. This year, I posed for the cover of a magazine in a midriff-baring top. I can do push-ups, pull-ups, and perform an aerial routine on circus silks. I’m in the best shape of my life.
I still have plenty of things that I’d like to improve. Like anybody else, I have days when I want to dive headfirst into a bucket of warm chocolate chip cookies, curl up under a blanket, procrastinate, and ignore all of my responsibilities. I have days when I lose my patience and snap at my kids. I have days when I skip my yoga class even though I promised myself I’d go. But overall, when I compare my life today with how my life used to be ten years ago, it’s like night and day: a complete transformation. The version of me that existed back then doesn’t even feel like “me.” I almost can’t believe that she and I are the same person.
Not many people know all the details of my past—maybe not even my therapist. But when people find out where I’ve been and what I’ve survived, they are usually pretty curious. I’ve been asked, “How did you change your life so dramatically?” and, “How did you become the person you are today?” It’s a long story, which is why I needed to write an entire book. But the short version of the story is…
I took ownership of my life.
When I use the phrase “taking ownership,” what I mean is…
•I stopped waiting for other people to step in and rescue me.
•I stopped waiting for a parent, a friend, a mentor, or a fairy godmother to tell me, “Hey, you’re allowed to leave that awful relationship.” “It’s not too late to go back to school.” “You can start something new if you’d like.”
•I stopped waiting for permission.
•I stopped labeling myself a “helpless victim” and labeling other people “villains.”
•I stopped blaming other people for my unhappiness, for my abysmal financial situation, for my overly busy schedule, or for the way I looked and felt.
•I stopped complaining about my circumstances.
•I started taking personal responsibility for my choices.
•I stopped waiting for the perfect opportunity to fall from the sky and started creating opportunities.
•I got honest with myself about what I really wanted and decided I deserved success and happiness as much as the next person.
That’s how I define “taking ownership of your life.” It means that you’re accepting 100 percent personal responsibility for everything you want to do, have, create, and become. It means that you take full responsibility for what happens from here on out.
It’s a promise you make to yourself—a promise you keep renewing and practicing, day after day, like yoga. And just like with yoga, there’s no perfection, but there’s continual progress. There’s always another level you can master, and, even when there are setbacks and difficult lessons to learn, there’s grace, beauty, and joy in the process.
Your Life Belongs to You
All the pieces of your life—the parts that you love, and the parts you don’t—each hold choices for you to make. No matter how unlucky your current circumstances or how unlikely your dreams might seem, what happens next is driven by what you choose. Ultimately, taking ownership of your life means recognizing that you are not helpless.
Even if someone does something horrendous to you—like what I described in the first pages of this book—even then, you still get to choose how you’re going to respond. Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying abuse is right or that it’s OK. I’m saying that in my experience, once we move beyond “right/wrong” and “victim/villain,” we get back into the driver’s seat of our lives. The less we identify as victims, the more powerful we will feel. We get to choose what we’ll say, what we’ll do, and where our story goes from here. We can reclaim our power. We can refuse to see ourselves as helpless.
Despite whatever social, cultural, economic, and historical factors might be stacked against you, despite the current political climate, despite everything that has happened to you in the past, you must claim ownership of your life. If you don’t, who will? In doing so, you will discover how powerful you can truly be.
Right now, you might be thinking, “This sounds like a really privileged point of view, Andrea!” So I think this is a good moment to stop and talk about privilege—a hugely important cultural conversation that we’re finally having—because when we are willing to acknowledge our own privilege, we can take responsibility for our role within systems that are fundamentally inequitable. If you’ve been reading my story and thinking, “What you overcame is nothing compared to what I’m up against!” please stay with me. I wrote this book for you.
I had a difficult childhood. You’ve already heard a little bit about my family. When I was fourteen years old, I felt so unsafe at home that I ran away. I slept in clothing donation dumpsters and crashed on strangers’ couches. I skipped school for months. A lot of times, I didn’t know where I would