by Marie Forleo
I’m not good with money.
I don’t know the first thing about writing fiction.
I don’t know who I am without her.
No one’s ever done it this way.
I don’t know anything about running a business.
I don’t have any good ideas.
Say this instead:
I’m not good with money yet.
I don’t know the first thing about writing fiction yet.
I don’t know who I am without her yet.
No one’s ever done it this way yet.
I don’t know anything about running a business yet.
I don’t have any good ideas yet.
You can say this in your head or write it down. Either way, this simple three-letter word “yet” will help you stay in the mindset of growth, learning, and progress.
Grab a piece of paper and write this down:
FIVE SMALL THINGS I CAN DO TODAY TO MOVE THIS PROJECT AHEAD
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Write at least five positive things you could do today to make progress. They don’t have to be monumental. Just write whatever comes to mind. If you go past five, wonderful. Then underneath that list, write this:
ONE SMALL THING I CAN DO RIGHT NOW
Choose one item from your list, write it down in big letters, and circle it (because circling it is fun). Say it out loud. Then DO IT! Bust yourself out of stuckville. Doing something is the secret to doing something.
Nice effort. Remember . . .
Life doesn’t demand perfection. Life doesn’t require you to be constantly fearless, confident, or self-assured. Life simply requires that you keep showing up.
Figureoutable Field Notes
Substance abuse, debt, suicidal thoughts, a nervous breakdown—everything is figureoutable helped Ula change her self-defeating habits, and become debt-free and healthy again.
I was a mess—emotionally, physically, mentally, and professionally. My beloved dad died of a brain tumor, I got married and divorced, I relocated to another country and needed to start all over again. I got into a passionate and toxic love affair that ended badly. Made a few wrong business decisions and ended up in great financial debt. All of this led to a massive breakdown. I was thirty-five.
I had nothing. No partner, no friends, no family, no job, no motivation to carry on. I felt like the biggest failure there is. I hated myself. I forced myself to get an easy job to pay my debt and monthly bills, but I hated the job and hated myself for doing it. I was a cleaning lady and believed I was unable to do anything else. I couldn’t stand facing people. After hours cleaning apartments, I would come back to a little studio that desperately needed renovations. I hated it. I hated myself. I hated life. I was thinking about ways to end it. I drank liters of wine and smoked tons of cigarettes. Every evening the same. I drank, smoked, and cried myself to sleep.
One day, I heard about MarieTV. During my usual after-work routine of wine and cigarettes, I put on the episode “What to Do When You Feel Useless and Alone.” Marie was answering the question of a teenage girl. I cried tears of relief throughout the episode. I felt like I was that girl and that Marie was talking directly to me.
I didn’t change my self-destructive habits immediately. I still hated myself and was ashamed of who I am, what I do, and where I got myself. Together with wine and cigarettes, though, I had MarieTV. Every evening I watched a few episodes. And with each day, with each episode, something was melting inside my heart.
One day, I woke up and decided to believe what she says, “Everything is figureoutable.” I still didn’t believe in myself, but I decided to believe Marie. She was the purest and most honest example of walking her talk. After work that day, I didn’t buy wine and cigarettes. I put on my sneakers instead and went to the park for a run. It wasn’t easy, but it felt like a major breakthrough.
Fast-forward to today and I’m back. I watch every episode of MarieTV (some repeatedly) and read all her emails. I trust and care about myself. I reconnected with family and friends, I have a beautiful relationship, and I’m part of the amazing B-School community. I’m out of debt and I’m working on my photography—my passion and my business.
I’m not afraid of failure and mistakes, I learn from them and I keep going. I take small steps, one at a time. Learning is my favorite part of life now. When in doubt, I think of Marie and I hear her saying, “Keep going, Ula—EVERYTHING IS FIGUREOUTABLE!” I trust her immensely. She is the best role model there is. She has my back and I’m never alone.
I now understand that mistakes and failures are part of life. That we are students for life. I was in a loop of self-doubt and self-hate, so afraid to fail. When I watched MarieTV, each time I REALLY, REALLY felt like the episode was made just for me. It reached me, deep. I began to trust. Slowly, I started changing my behavior. Exercise, healthy diet, meditation. I kept going and kept learning—one step at a time. It works! I love life and I’m grateful I’m here.
—ULA
THE NETHERLANDS
9
Refuse to Be Refused
You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.
Babe Ruth
Years ago, I was in a really tough spot. My business was going great, but my relationship with Josh, my beloved, was on the rocks. So much so that we were in couple’s therapy. Most people don’t do couple’s therapy unless it’s serious, which in our case, it was. One of the biggest issues on the table was how much time I spent working.
Here’s the truth. I love what I do—it’s part of my DNA. It’s creative and exciting and fulfilling and it’s a huge reason why I believe I’m on this earth. This was a hard issue for me to face, but there was indisputable evidence I couldn’t deny. At that time Josh and I had been together for seven years and not once had we taken a vacation together. Yes, we traveled, but it was always work related: speaking engagements, conferences, and workshops. I sat in our therapist’s office feeling angry, scared, and conflicted. From my point of view, one of the things I loved—my career—was threatening the relationship with the man I loved.
One afternoon, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea. What if, for his birthday, we took a vacation? A real, nonworking couple’s vacation?! I looked at our calendars. Between both our schedules, there was only one little four-day window of time that this birthday vacation could happen. That it needed to happen. I went online and researched possibilities. I booked us a quick but exciting trip to Barcelona. It’s a place Josh had talked about going for years (seven, to be precise), and yet had never visited. And we were finally at a financial place where we could make it happen.
The day of our vacation arrived. As usual, I had a full schedule with non-movable coaching calls that went right up until the moment we needed to leave. According to my calculations, we’d get to the airport right on time. The second I finished work, we hopped in a taxi and zoomed off to JFK. As it always happens when you’re tight on time, we hit major traffic. I started to sweat, but even with the delay, I figured we were still fine. We jumped out, passports in hand, dragging our luggage up to the ticket counter to check in.
“Hi there, we’re here to check in for the 5:45 p.m. flight to Barcelona please . . .”
The woman behind the counter took our passports and clicked away on her keyboard. She scrunched up her face, looked at her watch, pulled over a colleague to show him the screen, then looked back at her watch and said, “I’m sorry, Ms. Forleo, but there’s no way you’re making it on the 5:45 p.m.”
“What are you talking about?! The flight hasn’t left yet. It’s only 4:50.”
She said, “I’m sorry, but you just missed the deadline to check your bags. Unfortunately, I can’t put you on tomorrow’
s flight because that’s completely full, but I can put you on one that departs in two days.”
“TWO DAYS? That’s almost our entire trip!” No no no no no no no. “Please, we have to get on that plane tonight. There’s got to be something you can do.”
“I’m sorry, for international flights, you must check your bags at least one full hour before departure. And your gate has changed so the flight is now departing from another terminal. I’m really sorry, but you’re not going to make it.”
Time froze. My heart sank. My eyes filled with tears.
Those words “you’re not going to make it” were about a lot more than the flight. I looked over and saw the disappointment on Josh’s face. Not just about the trip. About us. I stood there for a moment in disbelief. Then something clicked inside of me. The deeper, wiser part of me remembered who I really am.
Everything Is Figureoutable
Everything Is Figureoutable
Everything Is Figureoutable!
I turned to Josh and said, “Get our boarding passes, I know we can figure this out.” Immediately to my right was a staircase that led down to the shopping concourse. I ran down the stairs and the very first thing I saw was a luggage store. I dashed in and told the store clerk, “Real quick—I need your biggest piece of carry-on luggage and I need it NOW.”
Within three minutes, I was running back up the stairs with a brand-new duffel bag.
Josh had our boarding passes. In the middle of the terminal, we started taking everything out of our big suitcase and jamming as much as we could into our new carry-on. Our frenzy was causing a bit of commotion. Understandably, two airport attendants came over to ask what we were doing.
“We REALLY need to catch this flight. We missed the deadline to check our bag so the only shot we have is if we carry on our luggage.”
“Well, you can’t just leave an empty suitcase in the middle of an airport. That could cause a major security lockdown,” one of them said matter-of-factly. Josh, who’s one of the best problem-solvers, said, “You keep packing, let me handle this.” And he did.
In the meantime, I got everything I could into that duffel bag. This thing was stuffed like a friggin’ sausage. We started running to the AirTrain because, remember, our flight was now departing from a whole other terminal. We got on the AirTrain at 5:20 p.m. We were three stops away from where we needed to be. Now I was a nervous wreck. I tried to stay positive, but I had to admit, this was not looking good. We got to our terminal at about 5:30 p.m., which meant we had fifteen minutes left, but we still needed to get through security and to our gate.
The AirTrain doors opened and my heart sank again. It dumped us off in some weird parking lot that we had to cross to even get into the terminal. Of course, walking in front of us, at a snail’s pace, was a swarm of seven-year-old soccer players and their parents. I looked at Josh and said, “If these soccer-playing Smurfs get to that security line before we do, we’re toast.” So Josh and I picked up our overstuffed sausage (which was at least forty pounds and had no wheels) and started running around the swarm of seven-year-old soccer players and made it to the front of the security line.
At this point, it’s 5:35 p.m.—ten minutes before takeoff. We took off our shoes and loaded everything onto the conveyor belt as fast as we could. We were about to walk through the metal detector when a sweet, older TSA security guard stepped in front of us, held his hands up, and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa . . . hold on a second here.” He looked Josh up and down with a suspicious, confused stare and said, “Aren’t you that guy?!? Yeah. Yeah, man. You’re that guy from TV. I’ve seen you on Law and Order. Hey, Joey—Joey! C’mere a sec. It’s that guy on TV. You gotta meet him.”
My head was about to explode. Josh replied kindly, “Yes, that’s me. Thank you so much. I don’t mean to be rude, but we have less than ten minutes to make our flight.”
We were through security and it was almost 5:40 p.m. We still had to get to the gate. We checked our tickets and of course, of course our gate was the farthest one away and the terminal appeared to be at least a half mile long. I said to Josh, “Take your backpack and run. Do not let that plane leave without us. I’ll be behind you—going as fast as I can.”
Josh grabbed his backpack and took off down the long corridor. I summoned all my strength, picked up our forty-pound overstuffed-sausage-luggage in both hands, and started to run. Within seconds, I was sweating like a pig. Then I started to cry. Snot was streaming out of my nose and I couldn’t wipe my face because I couldn’t let go of the sausage-luggage. My legs were on fire and my heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest. I started praying to God and baby Jesus and Mary: “Please, oh Lord . . . give me strength! Keep these legs going—please keep me gooooooing!!”
I turned a corner, and way off in the distance, I saw a tiny figure jumping up and down, waving his arms over his head. It was Josh! I cried even harder because I couldn’t tell if he was telling me to stop or keep going. So I kept going, and going and going and going. Finally, I made it about thirty feet from the gate. Josh and the flight attendant ran up to me, grabbed the sausage-luggage, and the attendant comforted me, saying, “It’s okay—you’re okay, miss. You made it. Just breathe.” We stumbled onto the plane in a daze, sweaty and disheveled. We shoved our sausage-luggage into the overhead bin and collapsed into our seats.
I grabbed Josh’s hand, looked at him, and said, “Babe, we’re going to make it. I really think we’re going to make it.” We took a deep breath and fastened our seat belts, when the captain came over the loudspeaker.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard flight 1125. Unfortunately, due to some severely high winds, air traffic control is keeping us here at the gate. It doesn’t look like we’ll be able to take off for at least another hour. So just sit back, relax, and we’ll get on our way as soon as we can.”
One missed connecting flight, one rental car, and seven hours of driving through Spain later, eventually we made it to Barcelona.
Obviously, this is a personal story about doing whatever I could to save my relationship. But the point is this: Sometimes, figuring things out requires that you refuse to be refused. Just because someone else—a parent, teacher, critic, friend, loved one, flight attendant, coworker, boss, culture, or society—says, “No, you can’t” or “No, that’s not possible” or “No, that’s not how it’s done around here,” doesn’t mean you must agree with their version of reality.
You won’t always be victorious, but you never know what’s truly possible unless you try. Make it a habit to question the rules. Who can predict what strengths, capabilities, or perspectives you’ll develop when you refuse to be refused? This is a practice that must be repeated again and again and again, in both small and monumental ways. Making lasting change in any aspect of our lives, or culture, is a long-term game.
Millions of scientists face years, often decades, of “failed” experiments on the path to groundbreaking discoveries. Students make countless spelling errors, mathematical miscalculations, and mistakes as they stretch to grow and learn. Artists and athletes spend years grappling with rejection and defeat in pursuit of greatness. In the United States, LGBTQ+ activists suffered countless painful losses before the Supreme Court finally ruled same-sex marriage a constitutional right. Especially when it comes to issues of social equality, we’ve still got a very long road ahead.
From the personal to the global, if solving a problem is that important to you, don’t give up too quickly. As Margaret Thatcher reportedly said, “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”
HOW TO END A WAR: “WE REFUSED TO GO AWAY”
Reality is something you rise above.
Liza Minnelli
A young woman named Leymah Gbowee was born in 1972 in Monrovia, Liberia. At the time, it was one of West Africa’s most vibrant and sophisticated cities. Growing up, she wanted to be a doctor. But s
oon after high school, a brutal civil war erupted. Leymah and her family were forced to flee to a refugee camp in Ghana, where her life became one of constant chaos, fear, and unimaginable suffering. Leymah found her way back to Monrovia when the fighting subsided in 1991, but a few years later, she gave birth to a son and found herself trapped in a nightmare of domestic abuse.
The war had taken an enormous toll on all Liberian families, but especially young women and children. Both rebels and government soldiers used rape and murder as weapons. Leymah trained to become a trauma counselor working with former child soldiers, the first of many powerful steps she used to turn her agony into action. She vowed to rebuild her life and find a way to create a better future for herself, her family, and her community.
In 1999—nearly a decade after the first civil war began—a second war started. Life grew unbearable. Again. Her abusive partner was out of the picture, but Leymah still confronted unthinkable horrors. Trucks full of armed men. Children seized in broad daylight and forced to fight. Her neighbors carried the wounded in wheelbarrows to makeshift clinics. At the sound of approaching fighters, Leymah and her family would run inside in terror. In her outstanding book, Mighty Be Our Powers, she recalls, “The boys, in their bandanas and oversized jeans, just passed through the cluster of homes, cradling their guns while they looked us up and down and leered. ‘One of these days we’ll be back to fuck you.’”
Leymah began a deep study in the field of peace-building, focusing on the philosophies of Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., and Gandhi. Determination and anger replaced hopelessness. In 2003, she helped organize and lead the Liberian Mass Action for Peace, where thousands of Christian and Muslim women came together to march for the cause. They wore white T-shirts and white hair ties, sitting in public protest in the town’s open field. Their message was simple and clear: We demand peace.