Everything Is Figureoutable

by Marie Forleo

  Tiffany, a psychotherapist in San Francisco, wrote to me and said:

  It’s easy for those of us who come from modest backgrounds or have generational histories of social trauma and disenfranchisement to be bogged down by the weight of despair. As the daughter of my once-impoverished African American dad, I inherited the hopelessness that comes from a legacy of being beaten down, having rights removed, fighting and then having one’s land, home, family wrenched away no matter what you do. In tiny ways, that mentality would defeat my efforts. I’d start something, come upon an obstacle, and grow sad, not realizing that I could figure it out. I DO have the resources to make something happen. Marie, you taught me this! As someone who has struggled for YEARS with how to move forward and then do it, one thing you said changed my life. EVERYTHING IS FIGUREOUTABLE.

  To be clear, taking responsibility doesn’t mean staying silent about injustice. It doesn’t mean blaming or shaming yourself. It doesn’t mean beating yourself up or living with constant guilt. Instead, taking 100 percent responsibility for your life means recognizing that you’re in charge of deciding how you feel and who you wish to be in response to what happens now and in the future.

  Could you imagine if Malala Yousafzai felt she wasn’t old enough, privileged enough, or strong enough to champion girls’ education? Remember, Malala was a preteen at just eleven years old when she began to fight for girls’ rights to go to school. She was only fifteen when she was shot in the head by the Pakistani Taliban during an assassination attempt. Remarkably, she survived and addressed the United Nations on her sixteenth birthday. At seventeen, she was the youngest person to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Malala refused to allow a bullet to the head to become an excuse to stop advocating for education.

  The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the economy, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.

  Albert Ellis

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  Do you know the story of Bethany Hamilton? When she was thirteen, this aspiring athlete went for a morning surf with friends at Tunnels Beach, Kauai. She was lying on her board with her arm dangling in the sea when a fourteen-foot tiger shark attacked, severing her entire left arm below the shoulder. By the time she arrived at the hospital, Bethany had lost 60 percent of her blood and was in hypovolemic shock. It was unclear whether she’d survive.

  Bethany pulled through and, despite her extraordinary trauma, was determined to get back in the water. One month after the shark attack, she returned to the sea and her surfboard. A little over a year later, she won her first national surfing title and has gone on to win and place in many more events, competing regularly and fulfilling her lifelong dream of being a professional surfer.

  After that harrowing event, it would have been completely understandable for Bethany to say some version of “I can’t” and decide that losing her arm meant the end of her surfing career instead of the beginning.

  In her darkest hour, Bethany made an important choice. She chose to take responsibility for herself and her future. She chose to meet her circumstances with grace, courage, and determination. She decided that this life-altering event wouldn’t stop her from pursuing her dreams. In fact, it would do the opposite—it would fuel her to work even harder. She made no excuses and figured it out. In doing so, she’s become an awe-inspiring model of the indomitable strength of the human spirit.1

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  Here’s one more example. In rural Zimbabwe, an eleven-year-old girl named Tererai was in primary school for less than a year before her father married her off, for the price of a cow, to a man who would beat her regularly. She desperately wanted an education, but she was poor and a girl. Using her brother’s schoolbooks and leaves as paper, Tererai taught herself to read and write. Still, by the time she was eighteen she was the mother of four.

  Years later, Tererai met an international aid worker who asked every woman in her village about their greatest dreams. Inspired, Tererai wrote her wildest dreams on a scrap of paper. She hoped to one day study abroad, earn a bachelor’s degree, a master’s, and then a doctorate.

  Her mother looked at those dreams and said, “Tererai, I see you only have four dreams, personal dreams, but I want you to remember this. Your dreams in this life will have greater meaning when they are tied to the betterment of your community.” And so Tererai wrote down a fifth dream: “When I come back I want to improve the lives of women and girls in my community, so they don’t have to go through what I had gone through in my life.”2

  Given her circumstances, those were pretty far-reaching goals. Some might even say impossible. Tererai sealed those dreams in a tin box and buried them under a rock.

  Tererai began working with local aid organizations as a community organizer. She saved every penny she could and used some of her earnings to take correspondence courses to quench her thirst for education. In 1998, she applied and was accepted to Oklahoma State University. With the support of the organizations she worked for and her community, she made her way to the US to study—with her now five children in tow, husband, and $4,000 in cash wrapped around her waist.

  Despite this breakthrough, Tererai’s life became harder than ever. Her family lived in a tattered trailer. Her kids were constantly hungry and cold. Instead of helping out, her husband continued to beat her. Tererai fed herself and her children from trash cans. She considered giving up, but found the strength to press on because she believed quitting would somehow let down other African women. As recalled in the excellent book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn called Half the Sky, Tererai said, “I knew that I was getting an opportunity that other women were dying to get.”3

  Tererai worked tirelessly at multiple jobs and attended class as best she could, enduring little sleep and sustained abuse from her husband. At one point, she was nearly expelled from school because she was late on her tuition payments. Miraculously, a university official stepped in to advocate on her behalf and rally support from the local community.

  Tererai finally got her violent husband deported and continued to persevere. She earned both her BA and her MA. Every time she achieved a goal, she returned to Zimbabwe, dug up that piece of paper, and checked off another box. Tererai remarried a plant pathologist named Mark Trent and continued pushing ahead. Eventually, in 2009 she was able to check off the final goal on her list: completing her doctoral dissertation, receiving her PhD, and at long last, becoming forever known as Dr. Tererai Trent.

  Today, she is the founder of Tererai Trent International, an organization whose mission is to provide universal access to quality education while also empowering rural communities. Want to know what Tererai’s favorite life motto is? “Tinogona,” meaning “It is achievable!”

  I couldn’t agree more.

  Can you imagine all the excuses Tererai could have used to hold herself back or quit? Pretty valid excuses at that. While her journey wasn’t easy or fast, Dr. Trent proves once again the possibilities that await us when we focus on the results we want rather than reasons why we can’t (or won’t).

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  If these folks didn’t let excuses—or anything else—hold them back from figuring out their dreams, why should we? This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. “Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it.” It’s part of a longer passage, which reads:

  Attitude is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, money, circumstances, than failures and success, than what other people think, say, or do. It is more important than appearance, ability, or skill. It will make or break a business, a home, a friendship, an organization. The remarkable thing is I have a choice every day of what my attitude will be. I cannot change my past. I cannot change the actions of others. I cannot change the inevitable. The on
ly thing I can change is attitude. Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it.4

  You always have more power than you think. Your mind is the most extraordinary tool you have to shape your reality.

  Let me ask you this: Isn’t it true that at some point in your life—when you really, really wanted something, when it was supremely important to you—you somehow figured out a way to make it happen? An inner switch flipped and, suddenly, you got resourceful. You got committed. You created results despite the odds.

  Scan the mental Rolodex of your past. What’s one instance where, at first, you believed you didn’t have the time, ability, or resources to make something happen—and yet, you figured it out anyway? Here are a few simple examples from my own life.

  In college, I was a dedicated student and held down multiple jobs. Nine times out of ten, when friends invited me to parties or concerts, my response would be, “Thanks, but I can’t go because I’ve got work to do.” From my perspective, it wasn’t a lie or an excuse. That’s what I believed to be true.

  There was one particular night where I had both an important ethics exam to study for and a law brief to finish. My intention, as usual, was to stay in and work. But before I made it back to my dorm, I ran into a guy I liked. He asked me to go to an event that night. Rather than my reflexive, “No, I can’t—I don’t have time,” something made me pause (hello, hormones!), and instead I said, “Sounds great. See you at seven.”

  I still had every intention of getting my work done, but that extra motivation made me realize it wasn’t about having the time, it was about making the time. And there’s always more time than we realize (more on that later).

  I got hyperfocused, stayed up late, and woke up early the next morning to fit it all in, without cutting corners on my studies. The desire to both excel in class and go on that date helped me push beyond my comfort zone and far beyond my well-worn “I don’t have time” excuse. The time was there. I just had to want it bad enough.

  Early in my career, I learned about a retreat in South America that I really wanted to go on. The problem was that I didn’t have the money. I was still deep in debt and working constantly to pay it off. This scenario had happened before; I’d come across other educational events that were intriguing, but I’d tell myself, Maybe someday, but right now I can’t afford it. That was usually the end of the discussion.

  There was something different about this particular trip. Logically, I couldn’t explain it. I just felt this persistent pull in my body. I knew in my heart that somehow I had to be there. Have you ever had that experience? Where you know something deep down that defies logic and reason? Whether you call it gut instinct or intuition, it’s wise to listen.

  Unable to shake the feeling that I had to go on this trip, I made a bold move and negotiated a special payment plan with the retreat organizers. I gave them my word that no matter what it took or how long it might take, I would not let them down on my financial commitment. Then I hustled my ass off. I found three extra side jobs to make it happen.

  That was back in 2003 and it’s still one of the most profound experiences of my life. Turns out, that trip was where Josh, my beloved partner, and I fell in love. Looking back, I’m thankful not only that I trusted my instinct to go, but also that I didn’t let my “I can’t afford it” excuse stop me from being as resourceful as I was capable of being.

  Excuses are dream killers. If we allow them, our excuses will keep us locked in a prison of our own making. As the adage goes, if you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them.

  If we really want to, we can all find something to blame for our lack of results. But nothing is more of a deterrent to your long-term success than an untrained mind. Whenever you catch yourself making an excuse, don’t buy it. Don’t allow any excuse to rent space in your head or heart. Ask yourself, what about the Bethanys or the Tererais or the Malalas of our world? Or the billions of heroic people across the planet who overcome extraordinary challenges each and every day?

  They don’t have some magical gene you don’t. They’ve simply learned how to tap into their inborn power. The goal is not to compare ourselves to others (always a losing proposition), but to be inspired by our shared humanity.

  No matter what you believe your limitations are, I promise that if you look hard enough, you’ll find someone with more challenges than you. A lot more. Even Tererai said, “Who am I to complain that I’m feeding my children from trash cans? Where I come from, millions of homeless kids are eating food from trash cans that no one is washing. At least in the American trash can, someone washes it.”5

  Seek out stories of people who can become touchstones for your mental and emotional strength. People whose stories of relentless heart and determination inspire you to dig deeper and keep going. Finding others who have persevered despite difficulties doesn’t negate the validity of your hardships. Use those stories to keep your own life in perspective. If they were able to figure it out, so can you.

  You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

  Erica Jong

  While I tend to dislike frameworks that ignore the nuances of life, sometimes a clear contrast wakes us up. Here’s an adage that serves this conversation well:

  There are two kinds of people in the world: those with reasons and those with results.

  If you want, you can keep all your reasons (i.e., excuses) why you can’t make change happen. Why you can’t figure things out. You can hang on to all your reasons—your age, your parents, your genetics, your health, where you were born, ad nauseam. No one is going to come and take those reasons away. You have every right to think and believe whatever you want.

  But if you do hold on to the reasons why you “can’t,” know this: You’ll never experience the depth of your love, your gifts, your strength, your creativity, and your highest potential. Neither will the world.

  TRUTHS AND TACTICS: OVERCOMING PERCEIVED LIMITATIONS

  No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

  Attributed to Voltaire

  At this point, you’re in one of two camps. Camp 1: You know excuses are weak AF. They’re toxic lies that do nothing but strangle your life force. If this describes you, head straight into the Insight to Action Challenge at the end of this chapter.

  Or, you’re in Camp 2. Philosophically, you’re on board, but you need tactical help to shed your day-to-day constraints. Let’s dive deep into the three most common excuses: lack of time, money, and know-how. You’ll be happy to know that, like everything else, they’re all figureoutable.

  EXCUSE #1: “I DON’T HAVE THE TIME.”

  Who doesn’t feel time-starved these days? Being “crazy busy,” stressed-out, and chronically overwhelmed has become a cultural epidemic. Just because overstuffing our lives with endless to-dos is popular doesn’t mean it’s wise. Or that it’s the only way to live.

  Like it or not, we all get the same twenty-four hours in the day. Only you get to decide how you spend it. Yes, I know. We all have jobs. Many of us have multiple jobs, and kids, and spouses, and pets, and parents, and grandparents, and health challenges. Never mind loved ones with special needs, community work, unreliable public transportation, and an ever-growing list of projects and responsibilities. Even with all that, don’t get snookered into the “I just don’t have the time” mindset.

  Whatever your schedule or responsibilities, they didn’t just happen. Your life, including how you spend your time, is a by-product of the choices you’ve made. For better or worse, you played a part in getting yourself here.

  To be clear, the difficulties you face right now aren’t your fault. There’s a difference between owning your choices and blaming yourself. For example, when my stepson was a preteen, sometimes I’d complain about tidying up after him. I was struggling to grow my business and holding down multiple side jobs. Cleaning was not
how I wanted to spend my free time. I’d throw myself a little pity party and act bitchy, which naturally created tension among Josh, my stepson, and me. That’s when I had to remind myself of an important truth: I chose to be with a man who had a young son. That meant, even though I didn’t want biological children, some part of me wanted to be a stepmom. How do I know that? Because I am one. I made that choice. And that choice has always been worth the price of admission.

  Own your choices. If you take responsibility for how you spend your time, you reclaim the power to change it. Since “not enough time” can be one of the toughest excuse nuts to crack, write this oh-so-important time truth down:

  If it’s important enough, I’ll make the time. If not, I’ll make an excuse.

  Say it. Chant it. Sing it. Do whatever it takes to allow this truth to keep you in the driver’s seat of your life. The key to demolishing the time excuse is to first embrace the fact that everything you’re doing with your twenty-four hours is a choice. Your choice. A choice that you make and a choice you can change. Consider this wild yet true fact:

  YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO ANYTHING IN LIFE.

  Everything you do, you choose! And I do mean everything. Feeding yourself. Going to work. Giving the kids a bath. Paying taxes. Staying in a relationship. Responding to emails, or using email at all (some incredibly accomplished humans don’t). Participating in social media (again, some very accomplished and happy people don’t). Watching the news, TV, or movies. Reading books. Grocery shopping. Answering your phone. Running your business. Doing laundry. Talking with your family. Every single thing you do in life is a choice you’re making, whether you realize it or not.