Everything Is Figureoutable

by Marie Forleo

  For a while, I tried to ignore that small voice inside. Tune it out. Focus on the task at hand. But the voice only grew louder. Then, one day, I was running tickets on the floor of the exchange and started to feel physically sick. I couldn’t breathe. I told my boss I needed to head outside to grab a quick coffee. Instead, I made a beeline for the nearest church, which was near the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway. Being raised Catholic and having just graduated from a Catholic university, I was trained to ask God for help as my go-to fix in a crisis.

  “What is WRONG with me?” I asked. “Am I going crazy here? Why can’t I stop these voices in my head? If it’s You telling me to quit, can You also please tell me what exactly I’m supposed to do instead?! It’s not like I have a backup plan. Throw me a sign. I’m dying down here.”

  After a few minutes of pray-crying, I got my first clue on what to do next. Call your dad.

  This made sense. The guilt of knowing how much he sacrificed to pay for my education was eating me alive. Now, I was having mild panic attacks because all I could think about was quitting, but I had no other job lined up and no other way to support myself.

  I sat down on the church steps and opened my flip phone. (Remember those?) I barely got a full sentence out before I started bawling again.

  “Dad, I’m SO sorry . . . I don’t know what to do . . . I HATE where I work. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but nothing’s helping. This doesn’t make any sense—I’m grateful to have a job. I love working. I feel ashamed to even say this, but I keep hearing these voices in my head. They say I’m not supposed to be doing this. That I’m meant for something else. But they don’t tell me what I’m supposed to be doing instead . . . I know how hard you and Mom worked to put me through school . . .”

  I paused to wipe my face and catch my breath when my dad broke in. “Ree, calm down. You’ve always been a hard worker. You got a job at nine years old! You’ll figure out a way to pay your bills. If you can’t stand this job, leave. You’re going to spend the next fifty years working hard. You have to find something you really love doing.”

  I had no idea how to find work I’d love doing. Even the idea of trying felt wildly irresponsible. And yet, I knew he was right. Within a week, I handed in my notice and embarked on a journey to discover what the hell I was meant to do in this world. To say I was full of fear was an understatement, but I was more invigorated than I’d ever been in my life.

  The first thing I did was start bartending and waiting tables again so I could pay my rent. Then I applied to Parsons School of Design in NYC, because I was hunting for clues about what I would love to do for work. As a kid, I loved art, so I started there. But after I went through the application process and was admitted, I changed my mind. Turns out, going back to school didn’t feel right either. What I did know was that I needed to be more creative at work. Searching for signs, I found a summer adult art program in Boston. I moved into an attic apartment above a Japanese art studio and continued to rack my brain for possible career paths. My only clues were that I loved people, I loved the world of business, and I was highly creative. Then I had an idea: Maybe I belonged in magazine publishing. It made sense. There’s the business aspect of advertising and the creative realm of editorial. Maybe that’s what I was supposed to do! So I returned to New York to give it a shot.

  I hustled, went to temp agencies, and finally landed a job as an ad sales assistant at Gourmet magazine. The first few months were great. I loved learning about ad sales and getting to be part of a team that was producing a beautiful monthly product. My boss was smart and kind. Best of all, my desk was right next to the test kitchen, and the editorial staff would bring me samples. (Did I mention I love food?) Things seemed to be going well.

  But after the novelty wore off and I began to understand what a future in this career would look like, I started hearing those same voices again. This still isn’t it, Marie. This isn’t where you’re supposed to be. You need to quit.

  NOOOOO! Not again! I was filled with shame and dread. What the hell was wrong with me? It made zero sense. I love working. I held multiple jobs throughout high school and college. Why couldn’t I just be happy?

  I tried to look more objectively at the situation, which is when I realized something interesting. I had no desire to one day become my boss (an ad executive), or my boss’s boss (the publisher). I thought to myself, If I don’t want to climb this corporate ladder, what the heck am I doing wasting their time and mine?

  Maybe these past few jobs were focused too heavily on the business side of things. My past gigs centered on sales, money, and numbers. What about my creativity? Maybe publishing was the right industry, but I’d be happier on the editorial side instead. It was worth a shot. I leveraged my connections and secured a position as a fashion assistant in the editorial department of Mademoiselle magazine. Okay, this has got to be it, I thought. I’ll be working with highly creative people doing interesting things. Going to fashion shows, helping on photo shoots, designing layouts, seeing all of the newest collections and accessories. What’s not to love?

  It was exciting at first. I loved meeting new people and learning the ins and outs of editorial production.

  But then . . . it started again. Less than six months later, the inner voices came back, this time even stronger. Wrong again. This still isn’t you. This isn’t where you’re supposed to be or what you’re supposed to be doing with your life.

  F U U U U U C K!!

  A deep panic set in. I felt so embarrassed and confused and, frankly, damaged. I knew how lucky I was to have a job. But, at the same time, my body and heart revolted. Everything felt wrong. I scrambled to find some kind of reason. Was my brain broken? Did I have some type of cognitive or emotional or behavioral dysfunction? Was I just a loser with commitment issues who’d never amount to anything? Nothing made sense. How could I be the valedictorian of my graduating class, be an extremely hard and dedicated worker, and still be this clueless after a string of dream jobs? At that point, it had been a few years since I graduated. My friends were all getting promotions and building adult lives. All I wanted was to quit my job. Again.

  Then one day at work, I stumbled across an article about a brand-new profession, “coaching.” (This was the late 1990s—it was all so new back then.) Coaching was a burgeoning industry focused on helping people set and achieve goals, both personal and professional. One of the things that resonated with me was how coaching was distinct from psychotherapy. Therapy is about healing the past. Coaching is about creating your future. (Side note: I started off as a psych major in college but promptly walked out of my first class four minutes in when my Psych 101 professor started his lecture with “as you’re about to discover, everything that’s wrong with you can be traced back to your parents . . .” Even as a seventeen-year-old, I knew blaming your parents for what’s wrong in your life wasn’t productive. I walked to the bursar’s office and immediately switched my major to business administration.)

  Not kidding. When I read that article about coaching, something inside me lit up. Clouds parted, choirs sang, and baby cherubs shot sunbeams out of their eyes, directly into my heart. A deep, gentle presence inside me said, This is who you are. This is who you’re meant to be. Of course, my rational mind was quick to doubt.

  Marie, you’re twenty-frickin’-three years old. Who in their right mind is ever going to hire a twenty-three-year-old life coach?! You’ve barely lived life!! Not to mention you can’t hold down a job. You’re a mess. You’re in massive debt. You have nothing to offer anyone. Who do you think you are!?! Are you nuts? This is the dumbest, stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And can we please talk about how cheesy “life coach” sounds?

  Despite the barrage of self-ridicule, I couldn’t deny how right this felt in my bones. That persistent, stubborn inner knowing was like nothing else I’d ever experienced. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get this idea out of my head.
Within a few days, I had enrolled in a three-year coach training program. I worked at Mademoiselle during the day and studied at night and on weekends.

  About six months into my training, I got a call from the HR department at Condé Nast. They were offering me a promotion. At Vogue. It was more money and a lot more prestige. This was my fork in the road. Do I stick with the steady paycheck and health care, and work at the top fashion magazine in the world, or do I quit and start my own weird-ass coaching business? Cue the vicious fear ensemble erupting in my head . . .

  Life coaching is the stupidest thing. Ever.

  You have no clue how to start or run a business.

  Who do you think you are!?!

  This is insane.

  You’re a loser.

  Everyone is going to laugh at you.

  You’re in debt up to your eyeballs.

  You’re a mess. You can’t help anyone—who are you kidding?

  Watch. This will be one more thing you’ll fail at.

  And yet, a calmer, preverbal presence practically pushed me out the corporate door. I turned down the Vogue gig and quit my job at Mademoiselle, too.

  I spent the next seven years slowly (very, very, very slowly) building my business, all the while supporting myself through bartending, waiting tables, cleaning toilets, personal assisting, teaching fitness, dance—you name it. Nearly two decades later, I can say that the only thing that allowed me to take that leap was because a deeper, wiser part of me believed that somehow I’d be able to figure it out.

  WHERE ARE YOU?

  The ancestor of every action is a thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Look around right now. No, really. Do it.

  Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, stop reading and notice every item within your eyeshot. Become aware of what’s in your hands (including this book), the devices you have near you, what you’re wearing (if anything—hello!), what you’re sitting in or standing on, and any and all objects or structures that surround you.

  Here’s what I see: My fingerprint-smudged laptop screen. A coffee mug. A wall of wooden kitchen cabinets covered in chicken wire and filled with glasses, vases, and books. A spiral-bound notebook. A few bottles of wine. That’s just the obvious stuff.

  There’s a good chance we’re both sitting amid a few modern miracles like electricity, indoor plumbing, and Wi-Fi. Do you realize that virtually everything that surrounds us was once only a thought? An idea? A wild, formless figment of someone’s imagination?

  Every movie you’ve ever seen. Every story you’ve ever heard. Every book you’ve read. Every song that’s made you sing, dance, or cry has taken the mystical journey from the world of unmanifest to the manifest. From formless idea to concrete reality. These minds of ours are magical creation machines. They’re the birthplace of every extraordinary experience we’ve ever encountered and every major breakthrough in human history. Our minds are what give us the power to manufacture reality, both for ourselves and others. That’s because . . .

  Everything in the material world is first created on the level of thought.

  At six years old, I was walking in downtown New York City with my parents. Suddenly, a zinger of a thought popped into my young mind: I’m going to live here one day.

  This idea was so unquestionable and exciting, I couldn’t help but say it out loud. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk near Bleecker and Perry Streets, held my hands in the air, and shouted, “I’m going to live here when I grow up!”

  Puzzled, my mom said, “WHAT are you talking about?! We live in New Jersey. That’s where you go to school. That’s where your friends are. That’s where me and Daddy are and that’s where you belong.”

  “No, Mom. I belong here. When I grow up, I’m going to live here and work here and have my very own apartment right here. You’ll see!”

  Took me seventeen years, but eventually I made that idea my reality. In fact, the West Village is the only neighborhood I’ve called home in the nearly twenty years I’ve lived in New York. Never more than a few short blocks from that original six-year-old’s declaration.

  I bet you’ve got an idea-to-reality story, too. A time where you had a mere thought about something you wanted to see, do, create, experience, or become—and you eventually did it.

  Maybe it was a thought about your education, playing a sport or musical instrument, or having a particular career. Maybe it was an idea about something you wanted to make or develop. Maybe it was about traveling to a specific place, learning a skill, having a certain relationship, or starting a business. Maybe it was about healing an addiction or getting out of debt.

  At first, that idea may have seemed like a long shot. You might have had no clue how to make it happen, or if it was even possible for you. But somehow you turned that idea into reality. That’s a breathtaking power, isn’t it? Sadly, it’s one many of us take for granted, which is why it’s so important that we remind ourselves . . .

  Nothing exists in our world that does not first exist in our mind.

  That’s the universal gift we’ve been given to help us shape our lives and, collectively, the world around us. We’re born creators with an innate power to bring our ideas and visions into reality. Though admittedly simplified, the process of creation goes something like this:

  Thought —> Feeling —> Behavior —> Result

  While this might seem painfully obvious, this formula is one we can easily forget—especially as it relates to things we want to figure out.

  Beneath our thoughts, however, lies an even deeper force that directs and controls our lives. It’s a critical component of the creative process, both individually and collectively. In fact, this force shapes our thoughts and feelings. It dictates every aspect of our behavior: how much we sleep, what we choose to eat, what we say to ourselves and others, if and how much we exercise, and what we do with our time and energy. It helps birth our self-worth and our net worth. It impacts our health and fuels our feelings. It determines the quality of our relationships and, ultimately, whether we lead a life of joy, accomplishment, and contribution or one of misery, pain, and regret.

  It’s a force that underpins every action we take and how we interpret and respond to the world around us. This deeper, commanding force is our beliefs. Beliefs are the hidden scripts that run our lives.

  Like a track running underneath a train, our beliefs determine where we go and how we get there. But before we start talking about concepts without clearly defining them, let’s use this shared definition: A belief is something you know with total and absolute certainty. It’s a thought that you’ve decided—consciously or unconsciously—is The Truth. Our beliefs are the root of our reality and our results.

  Therefore, our creation formula looks more like this:

  Belief —> Thought —> Feeling —> Behavior —> Result

  In order to solve any problem or achieve any dream, we must first make a change at the level of belief. Because when you change a belief, you change everything.

  THE HUMAN BODY ON BELIEF

  Turns out, our beliefs control our physical body, too. In his excellent book The Anatomy of Hope, Jerome Groopman, MD, writes:

  Researchers are learning that a change in mindset has the power to alter neurochemistry. Belief and expectation—the key elements of hope—can block pain by releasing the brain’s endorphins and enkephalins, mimicking the effect of morphine.

  Intellectually, you know this. Let’s say you’re hiking in the woods. You catch a glimpse of something long, dark, and S-shaped on the path a few yards ahead. Immediately, your heart races, your palms sweat, and you tense up. “WTF!?!? Is that a snake?!?!” Your physiology shifts based on a nanosecond belief of possible danger ahead, even if that snake turns out to be a stick. This happens in more subtle ways, too. Who hasn’t made a whopping headache instantly disappear when someone important calls
and pulls our focus in a completely different direction? Or miraculously recovered from feeling sick or exhausted when an exciting “unmissable” invitation appears at the last minute?

  I’m sure you’ve heard of the placebo effect. If not, it’s the idea that if you believe something will help you feel better (like Advil), it will—even if you’re just taking a sugar pill. But what about a placebo surgery?

  Just wait until you hear this: Bruce Moseley, an orthopedic surgeon, was skeptical about the benefits of “arthroscopic surgery.” So he tested it. He conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial, the gold standard in scientific research.

  In the study, some of his patients would receive the full and complete knee surgery. Others would get a sham surgery, meaning they’d go through all the motions of real surgery (getting wheeled into the operating room, seeing the doctors in white coats, being put under anesthesia, etc.) but only receive a few shallow cuts to their knees and be sent home with a healing protocol and painkillers. One-third of the patients who received the real surgery experienced pain relief. But what stunned researchers was that one-third of patients who underwent the sham surgery had the same results. At one point during the study, those having the sham surgery enjoyed better results than those who got the real deal!

  Here’s another example. In 1962, the Kyushu Journal of Medical Science included a stunning report about an experiment focused on thirteen boys who were hypersensitive to the leaves of Japanese lacquer trees, which has poison-ivy-like effects. With their eyes closed, the thirteen boys were told that they were being touched on one arm with the poisonous Japanese lacquer leaves. Unsurprisingly, all thirteen boys had a dramatic skin reaction on their arms, including redness, itching, swelling, and blisters. The catch? Their arms were actually touched by the leaves of a harmless, nonpoisonous plant.