by Karen Karbo
Dedication
For Kathy, who taught me how to enjoy life,
and swearing
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Preface
Introduction: Hello You
Part I
Chapter 1: Today Is the Day
Chapter 2: The Great Female Self-Improvement Bamboozlement
Chapter 3: It’s Complicated: Self-Improvement for Girls
Chapter 4: Your Best Self Is Like an Imaginary Beloved
Chapter 5: A Short History of Self-Improvement During the Late Modern Age
Part II
Chapter 6: Where the Wild Things Still Are
Chapter 7: True You Rising
Chapter 8: The Yeah, No. Not Happening Cheat Sheet
Chapter 9: Why Yes, and . . .
Epilogue: Collioure
Notes
About the Author
Also by Karen Karbo
Copyright
About the Publisher
Preface
An edited excerpt from my morning pages, before I swore off self-improvement.
Today, I should eat more leafy greens. I should have a smoothie at lunch instead of a sandwich. Dave’s Killer Bread is organic, non-GMO, verified whole grain, but it’s still bread. I read somewhere that even if you don’t have a gluten thing, wheat fucks up your brain or gives you bloat, one of the two. I should be more mindful of my gut health in general. I do chug a Lemon Ginger KeVita Sparkling Probiotic Drink instead of the usual Diet Pepsi with my daily afternoon bowl of buttered popcorn. That’s got to be an improvement. But I should really find out what probiotics are. Are they the opposite of antibiotics?
I should be a more adventurous eater in general. It took me a long time to get on the quinoa bandwagon, because I couldn’t pronounce it and was too embarrassed to ask. Maybe farro (pronounced like pharaoh, yes?).
I know they say you should meditate first thing in the morning, but first thing in the morning I haven’t had enough time to be completely disappointed in myself or the day yet, so it seems like a waste of time. I should really do the twenty-minute Headspace meditation instead of the ten-minute slacker option. I should do it twice a day, like David Lynch and other cool creative people. David Lynch has been meditating every day for nine hundred years. Without Headspace.
I should really wear my Fitbit. I threw it in my jewelry basket on the bathroom counter because I was sick of it beeping at me all the time. Also, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being a lab rat. On the days I didn’t make my 7,500 steps (already down from the required 10,000 steps), I felt like a failure. I figured out if I waved my arms around a lot it thought I was walking, but who am I kidding? Myself. I’m kidding myself. I should stop doing that, even though it seems like self-delusion is a key component to self-improvement.
Introduction: Hello You
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Women are the self-improvers of the world. Those famous Paleolithic cave paintings in France and Spain? Created not by bison hunters dabbling in self-expression, as originally supposed, but by cave women inventing interior design. This cave is a dump! Let’s add a few stick animals and handprints to liven up the place. Then came the wealthy ladies of ancient Egypt, early adopters of makeup and the practice of spending a fortune on it. We have Nefertiti and Cleopatra to thank for black eyeliner, blue eye shadow, and the classic red lippy. Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of France, then England, during the twelfth century, was also queen of self-betterment: she could read and speak Latin; sing and play the harp; weave, spin, sew, and whip up a fetching needlepoint pillow; identify the constellations; ride, hunt, and hawk. She literally and figuratively ruled.
Fast-forward to the twenty-first century, where this lovely feminine impulse to beautify and improve self and surroundings has evolved into a nutty, near-religious pursuit of perfection. We ladies of late-stage capitalism spend our days chasing the ever-receding mirage of our so-called best selves, existing in a continuous state of telling ourselves we’ll do better, be better, and always be thinner or fitter.*
We drift off to sleep at night knowing that in the morning we must awake naturally, without the alarm. We must think positive thoughts as we arise in the dark, slip into our flattering athleisure ensemble, then knock out a ninety-minute workout that would bring a Navy SEAL to their knees. We must then meditate, read, and journal. We must say our affirmations. We must make sure the kids have their homework and correct uniforms or instruments for their extracurriculars. We must pack nourishing lunches for them, being careful not to include anything that will cause them to be ostracized from their usual table. We must not lose our temper, but rather practice gratitude, as we try to shove something semi-healthy into their ungrateful little maws, then chauffeur them to school as they stare at their devices. All this before our own breakfast, which usually involves a fibrous green avoided even by the starving hordes of yesteryear.
The rigors of modern self-improvement are exhausting. One Huffington Post piece about cramming some self-improvery into your life involved a “6:00 a.m. outdoor boot camp” followed by a parsley protein shake. Inc.com offers “50 Ideas to Help You Design Your Morning Routine,” including making a video log upon waking, working on a side hustle or business idea, learning one to three new things, taking a cold shower after doing a complicated breathing routine that looks as if it might make you pass out, and reviewing your previous day’s spending.
Are you a mom? Are you trying to get pregnant? Are you a millennial trying to figure out adulting? Are you trying to crush it in your career? Are you an artist? Massage therapist? Head of HR? Are you a survivor? Empty nester? Church lady? Every demographic brings with it a list of impossible-to-achieve nonsense to which women are expected to aspire. Meanwhile, life is passing us by.
I am done, reader. Done viewing myself as a permanent fixer-upper. Done feeling that I’m always supposed to be doing something to better myself, then feeling guilty about being too lazy to commit to the latest self-improvement regimen, or, conversely, if I have committed to said regimen, feeling as if I’m not doing it enough or with the proper pure and holy mindset. I’m done feeling bad that I don’t live in a perpetual state of red-carpet readiness, even though there is no red carpet to walk, and done feeling that it’s my fault I can’t stop time, thereby remaining an eternal tousled-hair beauty clad in an oversize cashmere sweater and no pants,* sipping tea from an artisanal mug by a fire made by a man who pulls down seven figures.
Done done done.
So, I decided to swear off self-improvement. A lifetime of striving and struggling to improve myself hadn’t yielded much other than frustration and self-loathing. I was fit enough, fifteen or so pounds overweight, a domestic disaster, an avid reader, a rescuer of dogs, a good friend. I was no stranger to an apple or a green salad. I got enough sleep and flossed regularly. I didn’t smoke. That was going to have to be good enough.
But I was afraid. Would I instantly transform into a troll under a bridge if I gave up face serum? Would I become the laziest sloth in Slothville if I made yeah, no, not happening my regular morning routine? Would my husband leave me if my glutes and abs stayed exactly as firm as they are this minute, adjusting for age? I worried that I would gain weight, even though the last time I said fuck it all to dieting, I lost a few pounds, just as the people who beat the drum for that approach to eating always promise. The worst thing that would happen, that did happen, is that I got real about who I was, what I enjoy, and how much I just don’t give a fuck about all the self-improvery foisted on women.
S
o far, I’m less anxious, and less worried that whatever I’m doing I should be doing something else, and have more time to devote to stuff I’m interested in. Like singing karaoke while slightly hammered, slinging around my awful high school French, and napping. My blood pressure has gone down. And I’ve lost seven pounds, even though I said yeah, no, not happening to kale. I hate that shit. It’s a decorative winter shrub and should go back to where it came from.
I’ve written this book to urge you to join me in the radical act of swearing off the endless quest for self-improvement. To stop thinking wistfully and magically that tomorrow you will start the diet, the challenge, the program, the method. To bid a respectful adieu to your imaginary best self, the one you will always fail to inhabit.
A few things before we get started:
Learning to say yeah, no, not happening isn’t about giving up on yourself, or health, or beauty. It’s about reclaiming your common sense and your confidence that you know what works for you and what doesn’t. It’s not about settling for a lesser life, but experiencing more, because you’re no longer captive to the ridiculous, ever-shifting demands pressed upon women in the modern world, most of which are expensive, time-consuming, not very much fun, and fucking lame. It’s about standing up for yourself, to yourself, and to the world.
Saying yeah, no, not happening makes space for who we are this minute. This book isn’t a self-improvement program disguised as an anti-self-improvement manifesto. Regardless of where we are in life, we’ve all absorbed messages from our mothers, our peers, and mass consumer culture about what it means to be a successful female. We are who we are, right here, right now.
In addition to demonstrating how to say yeah, no, not happening going forward, I will encourage you to give yourself a break for long-established habits that may technically be considered self-improvement. Some of the ways in which we are pressed into improving ourselves and being “better” women do resonate with us. We can’t help it, nor do we want to help it. We like our red lipstick. It’s part of who we are. When we say “no more” to new self-improvement schemes, we are saying it from where we are this minute. Part of chucking the impulse to self-improvery also involves swearing off perfectionism and celebrating our inconsistencies and contradictory natures. It means understanding that there is beauty in complexity.
Additionally, it bears noting that I come from a place of considerable privilege. I am a cisgender, heteronormative, white, middle-aged woman with a college degree, and this is the only experience I can address with any authority. That said, all women living in a capitalist consumer culture are subjected to the message that they’re not good enough and coerced into spending whatever resources they possess to try to improve themselves, and I’m hopeful that my observations aren’t merely of interest to my white sisters of the (vanishing) middle class, although I can’t guarantee this will be the case.
The politics of self-improvement in the digital age, and the way in which women are effectively hobbled by their inward focus on bettering themselves, deserves a book of its own. Here, I’m focused on how self-improvement affects us personally, in the belief that if we’re able to say fuck it all and swear off a portion of the self-improvery nonsense thrust in our direction, we would have the time and space to look up and out at the world. The amount of time, energy, and money women of privilege spend on self-improvement rivals the sun as a power source. Imagine what the world would be like if we directed even half of that toward lifting up other women and doing our bit to save democracy, not to mention the planet.
In the end, your most basic task in life should be to occupy the you of you. I’m not going to use the word celebrate. It’s overused and brings with it the expectation of treating yourself to something ridiculous and expensive, then overposting it on social media. Occupying the you of you is not just good enough, it’s good.
A beating heart.
A human soul.
A character and personality like a beech tree—you know the ones I mean, blown into crazy shapes to accommodate the elements. You are flawed. You are wondrous. Why try to square the corners? Why iron out the creases? Why fall for the wisdom of someone else who doesn’t know you, who’s just trying to make a buck?
There are over a thousand known varieties of bananas in the world. The one we buy in the store is called the Cavendish. Think of it. More than nine hundred ninety-nine other kinds of bananas, but what winds up in our lunch sacks and fruit salads and in the sad buffet at the Holiday Inn Express? The Cavendish.
We are pressed into thinking we all must be the Cavendish. From outside and in, we get the message dozens of times a day. We must be slim and trim and grateful, and leafy green–eating and journal-keeping and productive geniuses of decluttering and hygge (hand-knitted slippers, cozy fire, home-baked gluten-free cookies, bingeing prestige shows on Netflix), posting wacky pictures of our rescue pets (guilty as charged), and endlessly prepping for the next trendy “challenge.”
Let’s say yeah, no, not happening to all of it. Let us be those other bananas.
Swearing off self-improvement means swearing off a life of overthinking, chronic rumination, and self-doubt. It means trusting yourself and your own judgment. The more we do this, the more our confidence grows. We begin to know who we are, what’s worth our time and what isn’t. We begin to feel more at ease owning, cherishing, and strutting our impeccable, imperfect selves.
It’s sobering that even now being who we are is a rebellious act.
Part I
Chapter 1
Today Is the Day
And, like all the best quests, in the end, I did it all for a girl: me.
—Caitlin Moran, How to Build a Girl
On March 3, 1979, I began a diet in which I lost twenty pounds. On April 19, 1988, I began a diet in which I lost twenty-three pounds. On June 13, 1998, I began a diet in which I lost thirty-seven pounds. I know these dates by heart. I recall them much easier than I do any other important dates, save my daughter’s birthday. Graduations, wedding anniversaries, publication dates, that one Thanksgiving when no one drank too much and got sad—all less memorable than a trio of days a decade apart when I started a diet and stuck with it. Pathetic.
More pathetic still: I haven’t been able to stick to a diet, rebranded in our times as a clean-eating plan, for twenty-two years, but that doesn’t stop me from telling myself on the first day of the month (also the fifteenth, and, if I’m going to be honest, every Monday) today is the day. Today is the day I am going to get back on track. Today is the day I am going to become more productive, more creative, more organized, and less curmudgeonly. I’m going to become a more loving, sexy, and agreeable partner, a better mom, and a more supportive and understanding friend. And thinner. Every time I’ve decided to do something to improve myself, losing weight is always part of the plan. Being thinner is the crisp white wine of self-improvery; it pairs well with everything.
I haven’t really been trying to lose weight since the days when carbs were good and Entenmann’s Fat-Free Danish was considered healthier than an avocado. Even so, upon awaking on the first or fifteenth of the month, and every Monday morning, I’ve told myself today was the day. It had become a habit, like hanging my clothes according to color and swishing after flossing with the original Listerine, the one that tastes like something used to clean an operating room. Even as I told myself today was the day, I was under no illusion that I would do anything but fail, so I got it over with as quickly as possible, driving three blocks to my favorite breakfast spot for a waffle, then returning home to waste the morning online. The irony is this: if today was not the day I was getting back on track, I would have drifted into my regular morning, not-completely-unhealthy routine—peanut butter on whole grain toast for breakfast, then a run around the neighborhood until I couldn’t stand the boredom, generally about twenty-five minutes.
If you met me, I’m confident you wouldn’t imagine I was this deranged. You might have the same impression of me that I have of Janet,
a business coach and consultant who also hosts a podcast for entrepreneurial women. Janet is one of those soft-spoken kick-ass women, with a pretty smile and warm demeanor. Her mission is to cure women of the urge to apologize for their ambition and to help them to learn “how to CEO.” There are plenty of women working in middle management, but corporate leadership remains less than 10 percent female. Janet’s job is to help women over that hurdle. She’s passionate in her belief that women have been sold a load of crap, that society has convinced us that success and happiness rely on constantly working to improve ourselves, rather than on the acquisition of practical skills. “Take self-care. It’s not massages and mani-pedis but learning how to say no to things you don’t want to do. That’s really taking care of yourself,” she says.
I called her up. I figured, if anyone was immune to the compulsive urge to improve herself, it would be Janet. When I asked her secret, she dropped her phone. I could hear her laughing as she picked it up. Janet, it turned out, was just as imprisoned by self-improvement as anyone else. She was in a regular panic about meal planning. Before she started her job, every meal had four colors. Now it was frozen pizza in the oven, over which she experienced heart palpitation–inducing guilt. Her “shoulding” was off the charts. She should be getting more exercise, tracking her steps, journaling. Every night she said she spent at least an hour online looking for programs that would help her create balance, or a “magic tool” that would help her become a better wife, mom, sister, friend, and businesswoman. “I never feel optimistic about improving myself,” she said, “because when it comes to self-improvement, there is always a better better beyond better. There is always something more we can do. There are always more steps we can take.”
As I write this, Roxane Gay tweeted: “I am tired of self-improvement. I have done so many terrible difficult things this year. I just want to be trash for a while and have that be okay.”