Can a book change your life? Does it matter whether you believe that a book can change your life or not? There is some serious magic going on in Jen Sincero’s books, and most likely in the lady herself. I pre-ordered You are a Badass Every Day and read it as soon as it came out. Let me share a couple of moments of magic involved in that relatively mundane event.

1. I was pre-ordering a different book, and I got an Amazon credit;
2. I looked at the books in that category, and found You are a Badass at Making Money, which I’ve already read but obviously needed on my tablet full-time;
3. The new book popped up in my recommendations, the first I had heard that it would soon exist;
4. I bought it and then promptly forgot about it;
5. Got the email reminder maybe two months later and read it in one sitting;
6. Looked at Sincero’s website while working on my review;
7. Saw that she will be appearing in person within walking distance of my apartment in just a few days, her only appearance in my state.

Kismet! Kismet, I tell you!

Also, I found a $20 bill a few feet outside my front door earlier today, just as I was thinking, “I’m finally going to upgrade my computer the first week of January.”

The thing about manifesting is that you can only really believe it works after you’ve experienced it in action. Otherwise it sounds kinda dumb. For those who know, this will be a delightful and very useful book to keep handy. For those who don’t know, um, it might be better to start with one of her other books. Which, I mean, you’re going to want to read them all anyway, obviously. There’s a reason why you keep seeing so many cool-looking people reading You are a Badass everywhere you go.

I loved this book. I loved it so much that it actually occurred to me to make some cross-stitch samplers out of some of my favorite quotes. As with her previous books, You are a Badass Every Day has sections that feel like they were written specifically for me, directed at my exact issues. I bookmarked the heck out of it. This is magnificent to do with a digital copy, because you can look at just your notes and bookmarks, and it’s like a custom manifesto!

There is so much in this book, so much in each of Jen Sincero’s books, that I feel all fluttery and wound up when I think about what I want to say. Maybe I’ll write a concordance, 800 pages that will finally organize my commentary. Until then, just read the book. You know you want to.

Favorite quotes:

An excuse is simply a challenge that you’ve decided has power over you.

When you succumb to fear, you are under the illusion that you can predict the future.

If you keep waiting for the right time, you’ll keep living the wrong life.

I love this book!

The premise of Write It Down Make It Happen is very simple: writing down clear, specific desires helps them to come true. This is sorta ludicrous on the face of it, isn’t it? Yet Klauser begins by offering several examples of famous people who did it, including Suze Orman, Scott Adams, and Jim Carrey. I do it myself, as I have done on a regular basis for many years, and that’s why I’m always looking for ways to improve my process. What I love about Write It Down Make It Happen is that it focuses on getting more analytical about the wish-formation and writing part of the process, rather than just the yearning part. Writing down what you want is a way of figuring out what you want and planning how to make it happen.

Chapters focus on different areas where someone might want to manifest something. One of my favorites is the chapter “Getting Ready to Receive,” in which a lonely older woman writes diary entries to her future soul mate as though he already existed in her life. I did something similar before dating my current husband. I did intensive journaling exercises to make sense out of my divorce, work through everything I didn’t want, decide whether I was even interested in a long-term monogamous relationship, and figure out what emotional context I wanted if I ever got married again. Without all of that writing, which took hundreds of pages, I know I would not have recognized my husband as an eligible partner. It’s about recognizing how you want to feel while you’re with your partner, not how tall he is or what music he likes.

Write It Down Make It Happen advises that we write about our anger, fear, and resistance around a situation as well as our wishes and positive feelings. This is so hugely important! We are reminded that our understanding of a situation may be incomplete, and that we often assume something can’t go our way without actually asking about it. There’s a really excellent example in the book about a woman who wishes to live in Europe and thinks she’ll have to make a difficult career trade-off. She is astonished to learn that her wish is a win-win for her employer, too. Living a bigger life means contributing at a higher level, and that means giving more to others and the world than you would by staying unhappily stuck.

Write It Down Make It Happen is a classic example of why wishes deserve to come true. Henriette Anne Klauser undoubtedly wrote down her wishes that she could write this book, that it would find a publisher, and that readers would enjoy it. While she wished for these things for herself, what she was really doing was propelling herself to create something more valuable to others than it was to herself. Now we can only wish that she’ll write another one!

Favorite quote:

“Writing a full-fledged description of what you want is one way of saying you believe that it’s attainable and you are ready to receive it.”